Another day on the boat, pottering while at anchor

Tuesday 3 Dec, Charleston SC day 3: A day of working down the jobs list that we never got round to in Herrington Harbour.

First a call to my friend Christian at Empirbus Sweden. HR have updated our remote switching configuration file and I need to upload it to the boat system. But since getting the new PC I cannot connect through the usual USB route. Christian takes control of my PC using TeamViewer and in about 30 seconds of rapid mouse movement he has it fixed! Don’t you just hate it when IT fixes a problem in seconds that you’ve been pondering for days! But uploading the new configuration now, while at anchor, is a bit risky because it will restart the whole system shutting down total power on the boat while it does so. If there is a glitch, the power could stay off, and we would be a bit marooned.

Talking marinas, we call to Charleston City Marina which we are anchored next to and ask fuel rates. $3.29 a gallon. We curse we didn’t fuel in Beaufort where it was $2.99. A call ahead to St. Augustine and theirs is a whopping $3.50 a gallon! Shouldn’t fuel get cheaper as we get closer to Houston? Seems not.

Next: the leaky dinghy fuel tank connector. I have the smelly little thing in the saloon and trickily change its 2 tiny O-ring seals. However, the ones that came out looked ok. And when I again try a tank on it, fuel pisses out just the same as before. Another fitting is needed. That one is definitely condemned to the trash.

For the emergency “grab bag” (1 of 3) we had a soft case with a 12v motorcycle battery and a bunch of entangled leads to recharge Iridium, Delorme, iPhone, iPad, VHF etc whilst in life raft. But we just bought a nice waterproof Pelican case to replace this. We spend the morning cutting out the foam and making shorter simpler leads. It’s now all very neat. While we hope-to-god we will never need it, it’s better to be prepared than sorry.
We have 3 grab bags. One in the cockpit locker totally ready to grab and go, with all the basics and emergency rations; this new Pelican case and then a third which we would make up if we have time: food, clothes, water and anything else we can grab per our list. Of course, a lot of the essentials are actually in use every day, like Iridium, iPhone, iPad with charts etc. so we just have lists for these, ready to grab and throw in bag 3.

By midday the wind has died and it’s a beautiful if not rather chilly day outside. Time for fresh air. Our cockpit light consists of an LED strip in a slot under the boom. Our first attempt lasted only a year before 3/4 of the strip stopped working. So we bought a more robust one and today we fit it. Old one is pulled off. Surprisingly it’s sticky backed tape stuck pretty well. The new one is wired in by soldering and stuck in place. Sadly this more expensive strip seems to have cheaper sticky back. No sooner is it stuck up than it falls down! That won’t do. So it gets glued on with contact adhesive. That does the job, and we’ll worry about getting it off again when/if the time comes. Another bummer: we bought a dimmer with this strip but when wired in it doesn’t work :(. Another disgruntled email is sent to a supplier.

As the sun goes down, the cockpit quickly chills and we head inside with heaters on. Oana rustles up a delicious Red Thai Curry then it’s another snug evening reading books and pottering on PCs. We are getting back to a normal 40 hour working week. So nice!