June 1 to June 5

Again, I will lump my log for the week into one entry.  I have made great strides on the boat, and had some fun also.

On Friday Richard and Harriet from Perseverance, another Manta 42 that are friends of Clyde's, arrived for a stay.  Since we are still here in Clyde's slip, one of his neighbors was kind enough to let Perseverance use theirs.  The condo has two bedrooms, so there is plenty of room for all.  Perseverance came in at low tide, and ran aground just short of the slip.  Since the fairway was supposed to have just been dredged to a minimum of five feet at low tide, and they only draw 3'8", this was a surprise.  We got a line from their windlass to the dock, and after a lot of work, we got them off the hump and into the slip.

I finished the installation of the solar panels.  The hardest part of this was drilling the holes through the deck for the wires to go below.  Now, I have drilled many, many holes in the boat, but I have never drilled one in the hull or the deck.  It was hard to measure exactly where to put the holes.  The placement had to be where I could get to the wires inside, yet as close to the edge of the deck as possible to avoid tripping on them on deck.  If I could have drilled from the inside out, this would have been easy, but I couldn't get the drill to the proper place inside, so I had to guesstimate the place out on deck and then drill in.  To my delight, I got both sides right.  Once inside, it was remarkably easy to run the wires through lockers on both sides and to a central point under the bed.  There I installed a terminal block and then ran just one wire forward into the engine compartment.  I mounted the control panel right next to the wind generator control box and brought the wire there.  At this point I installed another terminal block so that the output of the solar panel control box could share the existing wires that run from the wind generator box to the batteries.  The whole job went relatively easy, and when I hooked the panels up, low and behold I was making free electricity.  My initial impression is great.  With only one panel tipped towards the sun, I was netting seven amps of charging with the shore power off, and the freezer and fridge on.

Another huge job completed was replacing the batteries.  For the technically inclined, I have four AGM batteries on board.  Two are 8D's and two are 4D's.  This gives me about nine hundred amp hours of power.  For the non technically inclined, I have four HUGE batteries, that weigh six hundred pounds combined.  To remove the old batteries, I was able to muscle the two smaller ones out by hand.  They only weigh about 140 pounds each.  Getting them up the stairs to the cockpit was the hardest part.  The other two weigh 165 pounds each, so I had to use my spare halyard to winch them up to the cockpit, where I then muscled them off the boat.  I used a borrowed 2-wheeler (thanks Vera) to take them one at a time up to the car.  I ordered the new batteries through a local auto repair shop owned by a friend of Clyde's.  Unfortunately, they were not able to get any kind of deal on the price.  But it will still be easier to get them delivered to the shop, since they come by freight truck, not UPS.  And, the shop can dispose of my old ones.  We had to make some calls to find out why they were taking so long, and it turned out the local trucking company that was to deliver them has had them in Jacksonville for a week, but didn't deliver them.  Once a few calls were made, they were delivered to the shop, and I swapped my old ones for the new ones.  I again used the 2-wheeler to get them to the boat, then was able to muscle them aboard and into the cockpit.  I used the halyard to lower all four of them down to the cabin sole, and then installed them.  Whereas the old ones would drop to 12.3 volts as soon as they were unplugged from the battery charger, the new ones stay at 13.2 when the charger is turned off. 

I also got the wind generator reinstalled.  It now pivots freely, doesn't vibrate, and no longer makes the ugly noise it did when it rotates.  I'm very happy about this.  We also now have spare blades in case we do ever play blender with a seagull, and spare bearings should they wear out again in some remote place.

I mentioned I had some fun too.  Friday I met up with my old friend Donna from Tallahassee, her brother and sister from here, and a few of their local friends.  We enjoyed several beers at happy hour, and then most of us went to dinner.  Saturday, Donna and her brother and another friend met me for a little pub crawl.  We hit St. George St. in downtown St. Augustine.  We went first to the Mill Top for drinks and appetizers, then hit six more bars for a drink at each.  Sunday, Donna came back to the boat and helped me with a couple things that I needed another hand for.

Barb gets back from Texas tonight.  Over the next few days, we will be getting organized and prepared to continue north.  If I haven't mentioned it before, the plan is to go from here to Charleston offshore in an overnight trip.  Then take about two weeks to go up the ICW to Norfolk by the 27th, stopping a few times to visit folks we met in the Bahamas.

GPS N 29-53.684 W 081-17.636  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 4747.