Port Day at Green Turtle Bay Marina

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 172 - September 19, 2017

Here is the day's feature photo, since I wasted the great shot of the green turtle that belonged to today's blog post on yesterday's post! This happened because I always write each day's post the following day. So today's lead photo was not taken here, was not taken yesterday, and actually has nothing to do with today's blog post! It was taken back at the Little River Diversion Channel, but I still like it and wanted to share it!

Bringing Baxter back from boat ramp at Little River Diversion Channel.

Today was our day to attack our "to do" list! The first item was the house batteries. When we got here yesterday, even though we had been running from Paducah to Green Turtle Bay, something like 42 miles, the Victron showed the house battery bank, (two 6 volt East Penn deep cycle AGM batteries wired in series) at only 10.8 volts, and a direct read of the batteries confirmed that. I ran the "recondition" cycle on the West Marine battery charger all night, and by this morning the batteries were reading only 12.4 volts, and  that was no doubt the surface voltage, so they had not recovered sufficiently to continue to use them for the rest of our Loop.

I was ready to just replace the batteries, but I decided to consult with the person most of us turn to with C-Dory, indeed boating, related questions, Dr. Bob Austin. I also had a question for Bob about an ugly ding we had suffered at Hennepin when a wake from a passing tow caused Daydream to come crashing down on the metal edge of the slip before I had the spring line secured to keep the boat from moving forward. A great big chunk of the gel coat was simply gone.

Big ding in gel coat at bow from Hennepin

 On the ding, I was planning to slap some Marine Tex over it as a temporary repair until Jim at Sterling Kayaks in Bellingham could do a proper repair (Sterling Kayaks builds very high end expensive kayaks but also does general fiberglass repair). Bob urged us not to do that, since it would have to be ground out, making the proper repair more difficult. I ended up simply covering it with strapping tape, which should be good until we get home!

After talking with Bob on the phone about the batteries, he recommended a simple test to make sure that the cause of the low voltage did not lie upstream with either the alternator or the VSR (voltage sensing relay), specifically, to start the engine and then read the voltage directly at the battery terminals. Lots of charging voltage was present at the battery terminals, so I called the Green Turtle Bay Boat Works to arrange for delivery to our slip  of a new battery, a single NAPA Group 31 deep cycle flooded cell battery, and one of their guys to remove the old batteries and put the new one in. I paddled the kayak over to the Ship's Store to price the new battery and get its dimensions to make sure it would fit.

I could have done it all myself, but having struggled with putting those AGM batteries in last spring, I thought it was better to "call the man."  Randy from the Boat Works came over and did the job, and I was more than happy to pay for his time rather than getting down on my belly and wrestling those heavy buggers out and then dropping the new one in! Randy had the old batteries out, the new one dropped in, strapped down and wired up, and the old batteries loaded up for disposal in short order. So two of our "to do" list items were accomplished!

The Sea Eagle was covered in mud from multiple trips to shore on the Mississippi River. I had last cleaned it at Alton, and so I got the dishpan of Dawn and the "evil sponge" (we have this concept of the "good sponge," which we use for dishes, and the "evil sponge," which is too far gone to use for dishes but can be used for anything else!), and got the Sea Eagle reasonably well cleaned up, while Patty did the laundry. I did not do the thorough cleaning, which involves a product called "Kaboom" (the spray can that shoots out foam, not the bottled stuff, it is actually a toilet cleaning product, but works great on a variety of surfaces), because I am pretty sure that it will get muddy again down the line, and I will do the thorough cleaning back in Birch Bay!

We walked up to the breakfast / lunch cafe here called Dockers, and had a pretty good lunch! Then we walked down to visit our friends Dana and Dennis for a tour of their Selene 43, Pharm Life. The name is a play on words based on the fact that Dana and Dennis are not farmers but are both pharmacists who have recently sold their pharmacy business, Stadium Pharmacy, in Independence, MO, in the Kansas City area. Pharm Life is a 2000 Selene but looks new to us inside and out. It also is immense. The pilot house is bigger than our entire cabin. The main stateroom has a full walk-around bed. There are two heads, one with a full bathtub. The woodwork is all gorgeous. With a single Cummins diesel engine, it is not a fast boat, but is very economical to run, burning about 3.5 gallons per hour. With a 950 gallon fuel tank, it has an impressive range. Nice people with a nice boat!

There were green turtles swimming off Dennis and Dana's slip while we were there. The prior people in the slip had been feeding the turtles cat food, so we decided to try cat food at our slip! It was a great success, and very fun watching the turtles come right up to the boat. 

This is such a cool picture, I decided to post it again today, since it really belongs to this blog post!

We have been hauling a little Frigidaire portable air conditioner around since St. Augustine, but had not encountered any temperatures that seemed to require an air conditioner - until we got here! Today the temperatures hit the high 80s, and it was time to see what this little air conditioner could do! We set it in the cabin doorway, hung a shower curtain down behind it, turned it on, and adjusted the controls to "High cool"! Wow, in very short order, the cabin was no longer an oven! We are going to have a comfortable night despite the heat!

Our little portable air conditioner!