THE GENERATOR - PART 2 (#13)

Sitting In Limbo……………


Friday - It's now been a week and while the Coast Guard is searching for Chris (and our generator head), we hunt down our injectors. They’re discovered at Key’s Diesel. We walk in. The owner’s sitting behind his desk with his stocking feet up.
“They’re not ready yet” he announces between a handful of salted peanuts. This is two days after he promised Chris he’d have them ready. “You want them back?”
“No, we want you to test them.”
“We’re backed up” he replies, scratching one foot with the other. “It may be a couple of more days.”
“Could you at least test one of them?” we plead.
“I’m not sure. Maybe. But I can’t promise you.”
We leave and head to K-Mart. The Captain wants to look at fishing poles. I search for cattle prods and come up empty handed.
“Key’s Diesel just called” he says at the register. “The lying bastard claims their tester just broke and wants us to come pick them up.”
Injectors in hand, we head to the only other diesel shop in town. The guy’s standing behind the counter and appears to have his shoes on. I take that as a positive sign.
“Sure. We can test them after lunch. No problem.”
We return two hours later after gorging on Cuban food and get our answer.
“They’re all bad. They’ve been set incorrectly too.”
“But we just had them rebuilt two months ago up in Stuart? How can that be?”
“Dunno. That’ll be $95.00. Cash or check?”
We overnight them up to the guy in Stuart who rebuilt them. Three days later he calls:
“The injectors are fine. Whoever you took them to not only had the wrong model number for the generator but the wrong manufacturer for the injectors. You sure you took them to a real diesel shop?”
“We’re not sure of anything anymore. Can you ship them right back?”
“Probably tomorrow but it’ll be regular post. You should have them in three or four days.”
We prepare to spend the next four days like sitting ducks waiting for the next quack to cross our wake. Meanwhile, our batteries drain down to where the heads won’t flush and they start backing up. The fragrance is “startling”. Food stores are dwindling and our outboard’s acting up again leaving us stranded out in the harbor where I begin to imagine the Captain plucked and de-boned simmering in a nice Madeira sauce w/just a hint of rosemary.