SV Ostinato: Off To See The Wizard

We spent the last 3 days cooped up on the boat catching up on chores, so when King suggested an outing, I said YES without hesitation. The ruse used to get me out the door was to visit one of the English Heritage sites. Which we did. However, I was to find out soon enough that we were on a mission to finally address the satellite phone that had fallen into a permanent coma before we even got off the coast of Florida.

Now I will give King his due. He did attempt to locate assistance in Bermuda and the Azores. Not surprising, there are no Satellite phone dealers in either place. After we arrived in Ireland, the need wasn't as critical and unless one of us saw "The Brick", as it had been lovingly named, it was out of sight, out of mind. Our last try had been to chat with several retailers at the Southampton Boat Show, all of which recommended we chuck it and buy another brand. A bit self serving, we thought.

After 3 buses and the required amount of wandering around, we arrived at Immersat Global Headquarters with Sat phone in hand. As we walked through the door the two 6 ft model satellites in the reception area made it pretty clear this was not likely to be the place we were going to get our phone repaired. Of course, those of you that know King know that did not stop him from asking. The receptionist was not quite sure what to do with us but she had that "can do" attitude and was determined to help. She made numerous calls to folks around the building, with each, I'm sure, telling her they had no clue where we should take our phone, they worked on satellites, ...phones.....nope. But she persevered until she finally tracked down an engineer who reportedly loved challenges. Yep. He would be down to talk to us. I want this woman on my team.

Immersat Global lobby

By this time, I'm feeling a bit embarrassed that we are asking these people to look at "The Brick". King, on the other hand, was happy as a clam. As he should be. The engineers said they had never seen one go bad and took it up to their offices to see if it could be revived. They returned saying that "reliability was everything" and that the team was so intrigued with our phone that we left the Inmarsat World Headquarters with a brand new one! King is still smiling. : ) He and our neighbour David on Lazy Tern, whose phone just arrived the day before, have been thoroughly entertained for hours.

Feb 5: Realising that our time in London is rapidly disappearing, we are prioritising our "things to do" lists. One of those items on the list is the musical "Wicked". While King was working on choosing a supplier for our new boom, I spent several hours figuring out how I could get decent seats that didn't cost an entire monthly retirement check. Like several of the London theatres, the Appolo Victoria has a group of 25 or so tickets they keep for day of the show sale. For Wicked, the entire font row is kept for that purpose. The catch is they go on sale when the theatre opens at 9:00 a.m. After a bit of research to ensure we would not have to go to a chiropractor the next morning to get our necks realigned, I decided we would give it a try. King was less than enthusiastic about trekking out at 8:00 and standing in line in the cold until they opened. He was considerably less so when we arrived and learned that the time had changed to 10:00. The only thing that saved me was there was another person there ahead of us who had read the same announcement of the theatre's hours....and it was a guy! Time went by reasonably fast...as fast as it could in 35 degrees..... We were repaid for our efforts with front row centre seats. Yea! Spectacular evening! Worth every frozen toe.

Feb 8: We were invited for a visit with Mary Anne and Larry on Traversay III this morning. While we have been on a number of boats recently, I was especially looking forward to this visit as Traversay has a piano! You just don't see that every day. Mary Anne treated us to Chopin on a harpsichord and Debussy's Clair de Lune on the piano! Very cool!

Feb 10: Chinese New Year! So, of course there's a parade. I love parades. Lets go! It started off with high promise with lots of drums and a long dancing snake. It quickly went down hill from there. Did not pass go. Did not collect £200. The best part was it only lasted 30 minutes. I have no clue why the folks from Mexico and the Philippines were in the Chinese New Year Parade but there they were.....happy but looking a bit confused. Add a lot of rain and, well, you get the picture. Did we really miss breakfast for this?

Happy Valentines Day! King did good. The boat is filled with flowers. Only a week now till we leave for the States. Getting a bit excited. Kinda like going on a vacation.....from our vacation. Looking forward to seeing family and friends.....and the kitties!