Deja vu...

...all over again. In Ft. Lauderdale, due to be in Gulfport in a couple of hours. Plane full of VIPs including VPs, people waiting, meetings all scheduled to keep the corporate world going around, reach for the #1 starter button...no ZoomZoom. The mechanic side of my brain shifts into top gear, fingers fly around the circuit panels and switches trying this and re-routing that; but I know it is a waste of time. Zee jet is Kaput.

I think the jet and Kintala have been talking with each other.

When you work as a mechanic broken things are good things, they keep the paychecks coming in, give a person a sense of place. Often people with letters like PhD behind their names are completely mystified by the magic that flows from a good mechanics fingers. But for every happy mechanic there is an unhappy operator. At least I don't have to pay for the parts.

We dragged the jet over to a good mechanic. I'm a good mechanic, but I don't fly around with a box full of tools. (Those are mostly at Kintala these days anyway.) Having had this problem just a few months ago there was a solid suspicion of where the problem lay; but it is always good to verify before ordering expensive bits. Plug in this for that, find a power cart...yep, another GPU bit the dust. (At better than a grand I'm really glad I don't have to pay for this part.)

The VIPs hopped an airliner home. They should be there by now. We are hunting an overhaul / exchange GPU and hope to be home sometime late tomorrow. The rest of the trip will be rescheduled for another day, another try. (For those curious we don't usually buy new parts for airplanes, particularly airplanes that are a couple of decades old. The parts just keep going around and around; off the jet - to the overhaul shop - back on another jet until it breaks again.)

My paychecks come from flying the jet, not working on it. And while working on Kintala is fun (most of the time anyway) sailing it is more fun, and living on it is the goal. For now though, I hope the jet gets fixed in time for me to spend the weekend working on the boat.