Mark is on his way to Dutch Harbor

 Mark got the call and had to leave a few hours later to head for Dutch Harbor.  The Reece Eagle picked up a couple of quick jobs and he had to fly out in a hurry to beat the bad weather hitting Dutch on New Year’s Day.  

Our New Heater

 As we said in an earlier post we gave up on our wood burning heater and ordered a new diesel burning heater.  That was in July.  It finally arrived on the 24th of November and Mark did most of the installation while he was recovering from Covid.  He had to wait until he got the all clear sign from the health department before he could finish the installation as he needed some additional parts.   So Sunday was the day that the heater was finally installed.  We test fired it and all looked good for a short while until a large whoosh sound happened and the heater went into superheat.  Luckily, one of the parts Mark was missing was an external valve and we quickly turned off the fuel supply and watched and waited nervously for the fuel to burn out.  Both the chimney and burner turned red hot.  We swear we could see through the metal!  Eventually it stopped and cooled down.  We talked with the technical department and found out what went wrong.  So today we again tried out the heater and are happy to say it has been running all day with no issues.   We have to run it a little lower than we thought to keep the surrounding area from getting too hot but heats the main salon up to 68 degrees on the lowest setting.

Mark Brought the COVID Home

 Well Mark got home on the 29th of November.  As he was passing through Anchorage he took a COVID test so he wouldn't need to quarantine too long.  But little did he know he had been exposed to COVID 19 in Kodiak.  The good news is the results came back quick enough and we were able to back trace and we exposed no one.  Everyone at Pauline's work tested negative and so did the two people Mark met in Seward.  Unfortunately his entire crew tested positive.  Pauline came down with symptoms five days after Mark arrived home and also tested positive.  We are on the mend and just waiting our time out to finish the quarantine period.  We have been told by the health officials that after the symptoms finish 10 days later we will not be contagious.  Mark has passed that stage but as Pauline is still finishing out her symptoms he is not seeing anyone yet.