Only 16 days to wait

Tuesday May 8th, 2012

On her way home.

Deidre left for the airport 1 hour and 18 minutes ago. That means she will be back in about 16 days, 6 hours and 22 minutes.

One of our old neighbors was kind enough to give her a ride. I did not go with them to the AP because the neighbor was going shopping on the way home. Deidre just called, she was through security, her flight was going to be 5 minutes late. She sure has a long day ahead of her, starting on the East Coast just does not help. But all in a good cause.




A Quiet Week (and 2 more to come!)

The electrician came yesterday and confirmed that the "house" batteries are shot. One of thm even had a slip in its side! We plan to order 10 new 6 Volt 187 Amp Hour batteries this week. They are $251 each, and will cost "a few dollars" to install. On the one hand I am pleased that we have (probably) found the root cause of some of our power issues, but a bit bummed that the survey did not bring this issue to light in March. We have scheduled to install the batteries May 22. He also tested the two starting batteries, and they looked bad also.

I have about 2 pages of jobs to attend to while Deidre is away. Overall, I can see spending $10K on the boat, but when its all done I expect we will have resolved all the "issues" and the boat will be easier to manage and more convenient to live on. Some of the items are "important" (batteries, fuel, extending the davit) and some are just for comfort (Satellite TV aerial)

Apprentice Helmsperson

On Sunday we took the kids out on the boat for the day. We just went a few hours west through the harbor and a little up the Wando River. The weather was a bit "iffy" and we anchored for lunch in the lee of Danielle Island. Oliver came also, he was confined to the deck area (we do not want dog hair in the cabins) and he was a good boy.

When we came back to the Marina it was very low tide and a series of thunder clouds were blowing past. I was quite nervous backing the boat in, but all turned out OK.

I am installing new site gauges for the 4 fuel tanks. So far I have 3 installed with just the hard one remaining. It would appear that we need to buy 600 - 700 gallons of fuel, so I have been shopping around.

Shrimper in Charleston Harbor

My theory is that the shrimp boats buy a lot of fuel and they do not buy it at the marina. Looks like the best price I can get will be around $3.60 a gallon at one of the commercial docks, but I will have to "open an account".










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