Tuesday, October 02, 2012

What's a Handyman without any Tools?

The other night as we were drifting to a restless slumber in our lumpy motel bed under a single, threadbare sheet* Scott suddenly rolled over to me, eyes wide open and whispered, "Holy (expletive), all my tools are in Trinidad....how the hell am I supposed to work on our boat without any of my tools?"  A look of defeat washed over his face as the magnitude of this oversight sunk in.  Whoopsie.  We hadn't thought of this.

You see, Scott boxed up all of our belongings in Trinidad just before we sold Rasmus.  He then took them all to a shipping company which was going to ship our boxes here to Ft. Lauderdale in "about a week". This was over a month ago.  We just got word that the boxes are not going to ship for at least another week or two due to some sort of customs clearance issue and when they do finally ship, they're on the "slow boat" so it could take another week or more after that.  It seems that during our extended stateside hiatus, Scott and I completely forgot about "island time".  This was a mistake.

Not only are all of our tools in those boxes, but so is everything else - our dishes and cutlery, our pots and pans, most of our clothes, charts, our bosun's chair, portable electronics, books, spare parts, navigation aids, pillows, bedding...everything.  Aside from the few duffles we have in our jalopy and our sweet baby, we are bare bones'n it down here.  We've been living without most of that stuff for a long while now so waiting a couple more weeks isn't a problem, but the tools - well, that is a problem.  I've always said Scott is super handy and can fix anything (literally, anything) but only when he's got his extensive tool bag handy.  He's definitely more clever and resourceful than you're average Joe, but I don't even think MacGyver could help us here.  The projects we have will need more than some dental floss, a roll of duct tape and a pocket knife to complete.

Or will they?....

Looks like we'll be hitting up the rental department of Home Depot!

* For $10 extra a night we upgraded from a motel to a hotel and boy oh boy does it make a difference!  Much more comfy, significantly less sketchy and lots cleaner.  We are happy nomads again.

4 comments:

Mike McGuire said...

I'd love to know the tool listing of what you normally carry onboard. I'm putting together my lists right now and it'd be a huge help. Any chance? Thanks!

Mike

Carolyn Shearlock -TheBoatGalley said...

I bet you'll be amazed at how many people offer to loan tools! That's the cruiser way . . .

Paul & Terri said...

Okay, not the cruising aficionados you guys are but when I read about your life in a box being shipped to Ft. Lauderdale from Trinidad I was amazed that you were able to arrange a guaranteed delivery time frame. Having suffered the angst of dealing with shipping from a foreign country and it never ending well, or at least, as promised, I was truly impressed that you were able to ship you life’s belongings with such surety and confidence. When dealing with shipping of any kind, I’m always reminded of Tom Hanks in Castaway when he ships the digital clock to Russia. I can only imagine what the time would read had you done that with your packages. It’s also nice to see the “engineer” is human. It’s all just part of the adventure. And NEVER underestimate the versatility of duct tape!!

Windtraveler said...

@Carolyn - you are SO right!! We've got offers for tools in spades now! ;)
@Paul and Terri - there was never a guaranteed time frame, they just said the stuff would ship in "about a week" which is hardly exact, and we knew that. We just didn't think it'd take THIS long. We had organized a storage unit to store our things, but we obviously won't be needing that!! And we didn't have a choice but to trust the shipping - flying with all that stuff would have cost a FORTUNE!!!

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