THE GENERATOR - CONCLUSION (#15)

Rise of the Machines…………….

Day 5: It was agreed that Jimmy would come out in the morning and complete the job. Chris had never shown up at the shop and was officially MIA. Jimmy shows up as promised and on time. 
Five minutes into the job he announces, “I don’t know what Chris was thinking. The tork settings are all wrong. I’ve got to pull the manifold and reset them.”
Then he proceeds to snap off the head bolt.
A few hours of drilling (did I mention $85/hr.) and a trip to NAPA auto parts and we were back to our starting point from two weeks ago. Four hours into the job his girlfriend gets bored hanging around the shop (They live in the shop. Not behind it, not in the back of it, nor above it. In it.) and she appears. While Jimmy and the Captain are down there trying to figure the damn thing out, the girlfriend keeps asking him when he’ll be done and can they go out for Mexican food. I keep thinking “$85 an hour” and congratulate myself for buying beer the day before. 
We’d started this whole mess (hiring Jimmy) on the recommendation of the electrician we were using. The same one who screwed up our electrical system. “Jimmy’s the only guy you want for that” he insisted pointing to the Genset while simultaneously mis-wiring our battery switch. 
It turns out, Jimmy doesn’t work on generators. About $700 into the project, I hear him tell the Captain “This is the first Northern Lights (brand name) I’ve ever worked on.” The inmates are running the asylum. I lock myself in my cabin and pull the sheet over my head. 
Ship of Fools: I wake up to the sound of a working generator. The Captain tells me when they pulled the manifold, it was full of carbon. He whack it a few times with a ball peen hammer to dislodge it and surmised that was the issue. We had just endured two weeks of nautical hell for nothing. The bill is $900 but what's done is done; we have power. I’m not assured though. I know this boat now. It isn’t going to give up easily. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for signs of an insurgency. I know it’s coming. That you can bet on.
Epilogue: ………  Flushed with success (but low on cash), the following day we deal w/our outboard motor (it’s next on the list). After getting it ashore to yet another Key’s mechanic, his crane snaps while hoisting our dinghy out of the water, sending it crashing onto the concrete dock w/our spare engine inside. The guy apologizes, then says he can’t work on it until he fixes his crane. That leaves us depending on our equally undependable back-up motor which now has a headache from the accident. But that’s not what this is about.
I’d slowly been filling up our water tanks at the rate of five heavy gallons a day. With our usage, I figure we were half full. (The tanks hold 150 gallons.) While we were ashore dealing w/our outboards, a water line popped loose emptying our tanks. Now we have power, but no water. It’s just as I feared. These nautical/mechanical demons didn’t waste any time seeking retribution. I can only wonder what’s next. Plague?