Harboring in Palm Coast
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| Not quite what you expected to see, huh? Read on |
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| How to make Wayne feel loved - give him Cheetos for Valentine's Day |
We are stuck here in Palm Coast, FL awaiting a replacement inverter. The inverter converts 12 volt battery power to 110 volt AC power and charges our batteries at up to 100 amps. Without it we would need to run our generator for 4 hours or more each day when we are anchoring overnight on the St Johns River as we had planned. It was decided to wait right here until we solved our problem. We could have gone on but decided not. We had several conversations with the manufacturer of our inverter, Xantrex, as to whether they would repair or replace it. The first conversation was along the lines of "we no longer repair this unit, it was not as robust as we had wanted, and.. we will give you a good price of $1100 for the beefed-up new model, but we cannot ship for several weeks at least because ABYC (American Boat & Yacht Council) has not approved our labeling, and your unit is past the 24 month warranty". Playing my polite persistence mode I asked where that left us as a customer when we ordered a model that was on the market for about 20 years. How were we to know that the model we purchased in good faith was not exactly that 20 year old proven model but a new model? I further suggested that a sweetheart deal would have been $200 for a replacement. No Dice was the answer. Our inverter is twenty eight months old and was replaced by the factory at 4 months old. So, I disassembled the inverter to get access to the circuit boards to see what was burned out. I found two 25 cent resistors were scorched. 50 cents versus $1100!!! Of course I was back on the phone, this time to the guy who helped me 2 years ago on the first replacement. Result: Xantrex came through and I was offered a free replacement. Hurray Xantrex!! But again it would be a two week wait for the new model (I do not like new models for obvious reasons). I again offered to pay additional $$ to move up to the 3000 watt model from the 2000 watt model and get immediate shipment, but Xantrex offered a better model at 2000 watts. Now we are delayed as the new inverter crosses the country from California.
Back to Florida from NC
On the way back from North Carolina we detoured in Jacksonville to investigate marinas we might use to store the boat after this year's journey down the St John's River. We've found one that we like on Doctors Lake, about twenty miles south and six miles west of Jacksonville. Still not much closer to home but it has several features that appealed to us. And...the water in the marina is of a much lower salt content...so less barnacles trying to eat up our boat parts! We used another day to travel by car further south on the river, looking for other possible dockages. We had to stop in Welaka, near Palatka, to eat at one of our favorite shrimp joints. Shrimp R Us is a very unassuming restaurant but it features delicious seafood and even more delicious desserts, supplied by a local county fair winner. We know this because her ribbons are sitting in the bakery cooler next to her cakes and pies.
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| You can't see the cole slaw but it's good too. |
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| Yep, this is the sign, modestly advertising the Best Food on Southend |
Company's Coming
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| Joan at the helm |
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| Eggs Benedict, done perfectly! |
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| Departing so soon Jim and Joan - thanks for the visit. We look forward to seeing you again soon. |
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| Cook this in a crock pot. Unless you like it really hot, reduce the red pepper flakes to one teaspoon. |
Old friends from Merritt Island, Roger and Marcy, brought plans to spend Saturday geocaching with us. We've enjoyed this GPS game with them before, using coordinates to find "caches" that other people have left. We completely struck out this time, though, unsuccessfully searching for three sites. We did find a few more apps to add to the iphone, though, so we should never, ever get lost in the woods. We also stopped off at the Paul Baliker Gallery here in Palm Coast to enjoy Baliker's driftwood inspired bronze and wood sculptures (go to www.rvinginflorida.com/baliker.htm to see a few more of his interesting works) .
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| Roger and Marcy ready for geocaching adventure We loved it when Marcy declared that she was happy to be back on the boat again. |
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| Baliker finds natural animal forms in the curves of driftwood and carves so they seem to grow out of the wood.
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| Look closely for the face and the frog legs |
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| Cat napping in a $1500 bowl at Balikers |
Navy SEAL & UDT Museum
Wayne visited the SEAL and Underwater Demolition Team Museum in Ft Pierce.
The photos and captions speak for themselves. Really a great museum.
See the photos of the 82 foot long Jetski!!
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| SEALS arrive at the scene with multiple weapons capabilities |
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| Swift boat from Vietnam war era. |
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| The actual lifeboat in which three Somali kidnappers were killed by SEAL snipers and the captain rescued |
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| Model of Bin Laden's compound in which he was killed |
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| Small surveillance drone used by the SEALS |
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| 95 foot assault boat that just arrived at the museum after it was decommissioned. It was used in 2001 in the Iraqui Freedom campaign. 82 feet long weighs 52 tons 2 each 2250hp diesel jet drives |
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| The seats are made of Magnesium for weight reduction and looked like fighter jet seats but with a lot more padding. |
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| Jet drive discharges from 2200 hp diesel engines |
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| Museum got the truck and custom trailer along with the boat |
St. Augustine Lighthouse
Repairs
I upgraded all of the ceiling bulbs to LEDs. Each bulb is now 1.8 watts power draw. The original bulbs were 8 watts each. The power savings is over 75%. The main salon, master cabin, and aft head each have 4 fixtures. When the lights in any one of those cabins the savings is 32 watts before and 7.2 watts now. At anchor, this saves power and results in less generator run time.
More Bow Thruster Adventures
We hired an electrical expert to come aboard and help me determine why the battery in the forward compartment for the bow thruster would not charge as the engines ran. It turns out that that red knob in the photo was pulled out, shutting off the battery from the rest of the boat. DUH!!! This knob requires a very strong two-hand pull to disengage and that is only about a movement of 1/16 inch. I was afraid of breaking the switch when I previously tried to push or pull it. It took over an hour of testing by the electrician and me and discussions along the way combined with theory. Best $100 spent on the boat.
Water leak
We have been chasing a small water leak for over a year now. We have finally found it. It is at the back of the toilet and thankfully on the fresh water side of things. The anti-siphon valve for the fresh water flush was leaking slowly down the back outside of the bowl, getting to the floor and running underneath the shower and wetting woodwork 6 feet forward of the toilet. We were unable to find the leak until water finally leaked bad enough to make a puddle at the base of the toilet. A new valve is on the way and should arrive about the same time as the inverter.
Batteries
We ran an equalizing charge on the inverter batteries (those are the brown ones in the photo). In the process the batteries are overcharged to remove sulfated deposits from the battery cells and thus assuring a full charge in the future. It smelled so badly of battery fumes that the cabin had to be vacated until finished!
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| There is another battery in the forward compartment for a total of nine. Hey, we don't like to run the gen set any more than we have to. |
Signs We Like
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| Top points to Deland, FL, a small town in the middle of the state, the bottom points to the beach. It took us a few minutes to get the clever pun of this sign. |
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| Colleen captured herself and an innocent bystander in the window of the breakfast restaurant |
Interesting photos
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| I believe that this is a Bell P59 - the first US jet. A shame that it is deteriorating in a airfield in Palm Coast. |
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| This is the future of the utilites - tear down the oil powered power plant s and replace them with natural gas powered plants with gas turbines. |
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| There are turtle sculptures all over Vero Beach |
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| Another Vero turtle |
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| Colleen made this basket for her quilt guild's Red-And-White Challenge |
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| A perfect beach day |
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| Work crews had the waterway blocked. The barges moved within 20 minutes so that we could pass. |
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| A quilt-in-progress |
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| A parasailor crossing our path |
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| Something we like to find, a good used book store. Change Jar Books in Flagler Beach is well-stocked and well-organized, perfect for browsing. This edition of the blog is finished - I'm going to go read a good book. |
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