After having worked until 10:00 PM last night, the refrigeration guys were back at it this morning at about 8:00 AM. They finished welding the system together, then performed a pressure test.
They found a couple of leaks and fixed them, then it was time to put a vacuum on the system. Surprisingly, the system vacuumed down quickly and it was time for the refrigerant to be loaded into the system.
After a second round of checks, the system was left to run at noon. Since they were there with the refrigerant, we asked them to check the condenser unit for our port and starboard staterooms. We figured that it was simply low on refrigerant. Unfortunately, the system had a good charge; it was the stator motor that had sheared the piston! We are now down an air conditioner. Being that we were so close to leaving, we had the problem documented, since it is covered under warranty and decided to address the problem up north.
At 2:00 PM, our freezer crossed the freezing mark. We retrieved our food from the storage unit, and loaded it on the boat. At 3:00 PM, we talked with our yard supervisor and essentially checked out, then with a lull in the wind moved the boat out to anchor.
We spent the rest of the afternoon running our generator to completely cool the freezer and food down below zero and starting to get the boat in some semblance of order and ocean ready. We knew that there was a possibility of a window, so we also made sure to check the weather.
Just in case our weather window materialized, we pulled out our jacklines and harnesses and tossed them in the middle of the main saloon.
At 11:00 PM, we felt comfortable with the weather forecast, though unsure of how organized the boat was. We postponed making our decision to go or stay until morning.