Today Dave fixed the leaking through hull strainer aboard Saltydog. Meanwhile, Melissa went looking for a replacement water pump. Alas the model aboard Saltydog is no longer manufactured. This means no hope of a drop in replacement - which means re-plumbing will be required. Unfortunately neither Apsaras nor Wanuskewin has enough plumbing fittings of the PEX parts needed since you can't buy those parts down here anywhere. So going to have to order up fittings from the states. So the water pump will have to wait till after we help Saltydog through the canal.
Meanwhile, as we were going in and out of the marina, the entertainment of the day was a big excavator that had sunk into the mud. Apparently workers have been trying for two days to get it out. Today's plan was to lay a bunch of pallets (you see them in this picture to the left of the excavator bucket) on top of the mud, and have the machine try to put the bucket on top of the pallets and lift itself out by pushing down on the pallets. Yeah. Ok, let's use our heads a bit here. You think some wimpy pallets are going to support the weight of a 10,000 pound machine? As predicted, the pallets were crushed and pushed deep into the mud. The excavator is still stuck. One of the guys on the dock was shaking his head at the workers and summed it up by saying, "they don't need more wood, they need more guys with brains". They did eventually get the excavator out - by getting another much bigger excavator to dig the little one out.
The canal inspector showed up around 10am and inspected Saltydog for the canal crossing. They gave Steve his bank paperwork. By that time the Citibank you have to pay your canal fees at had closed for lunch, so we all grabbed some lunch and then after a couple of minor fiascoes getting Saltydog's account numbers on the canal forms, and a small fiasco getting Luis the taxi driver to meet up with us, we were off to the bank. Fortunately, since Melissa had played the game once before, it went without a hitch this time, and we were able to get the bank all paid. Now we just need to get on the schedule!