This morning Holly and Melissa again dragged the sewing machine up to the cruisers lounge to finish the shade cover for Apsaras. Holly threaded the machine, but alas the machine wouldn't stich a decent stich no matter what we did. We feared that yesterday's fiasco with the thread getting wound around the motor had somehow broken something in the timing or tensioning system of the machine. And getting the thing fixed here in Panama is going to mean renting a car and driving into Panama City. After three hours of trying to diagnose the issue, we grabbed Mike and Dave. They spend another two hours and had no better luck than we did. At this point a woman wandered over and asked if we could use some help. Turned out she was a fashion student who knew all about industrial machines. Took her less than 5 minutes to find the problem which had to do with how the thread was coming into the unit. Then it took Melissa and Holly another 20 minute to undo all the tensioning changes we had been experimenting with. Sigh. The machine operational again, Melissa and Holly finished up the project in 90 minutes. But it was already time to head to dinner on Saltydog, so Holly didn't get to do any of her sewing projects done.
Meanwhile, Dave spent the day putting together the project for how to install all the new Saltydog navigation equipment. He hopes to begin the project tomorrow. With luck, he will be able to complete most of the work before he heads for Seattle in a week.
Saltydog decided to cook dinner for all of us in honor of Melissa's impending departure on Monday. Joan had made sea bass lasagna. None of us had been looking forward to this. Fish lassagna not sounding at all apealing. But, what an amazing surprise! It was amazing! We had to get the recipe from Joan - which is published below. Try it - we swear it was yummy.
