North Myrtle Beach, SC

Friday November 2, 2012
33 48.082 N
78 44.718 W

The port engine would not start this morning (and it is usually the most cooperative of the two!). It simply would not crank, just no sign of life, even using the start switch on the engine. I was confident the battery was OK so it had to be (according to my  bookkeeper instincts) a loose connection. Of course the starter and associated equipment is all located between the engine and the forward gas tank so I crawled in and tried to figure out the starter circuits. This was way over my pay grade, but you never know....

Low and behold I found an in-line fuse that was obviously blown. I checked on the other engine, found the same device, and swapped out the fuses. The engine started! We had spare fuses some where so after some digging we had both engines running and we were on our way at about 9 AM. Our friends had passed our marina at about 7:45 AM so we were a little behind the pace.

Sunset

It was a long but relatively uneventful day's ride. There were some shallow spots and a couple of bridges, but the biggest problem was the sun. Most of our course were South West and that is exactly where the sun is at this time of year, or that is how it seemed. I had to watch the road but my eyes were so dulled by the sun I could not see the instruments. So Deidre and I had to team up and call courses back and forth.

This was made more difficult because the chart plotter seemed to be having a bad day also and we had to "compensate" for some obvious (like telling us we were ashore) and some less obvious errors. But we made it to our destination - Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach - without any scratches.