Yesterday had a nice start with breakfast at Georgie's Diner in St. Augustine. Very short bike ride for us but about a mile walk for Joe and Joy (they stayed on a mooring ball at the main marina - we were at a marina up the San Sebastian River).
Regardless, it was a nice sunny day - good to see the sun for all day!
Sunny day or not, it was pegged to be a work day. The goal was to find and repair the electrical problem with the outlets. Only the forward cabin had power to the outlets - which we could work around but it meant extension chords strung around the cabin.
To assist in the repairs (by seeing into small difficult places), we tried out our new USB camera. The camera is on a waterproof cable and has LED lights on the end of it, plugs into the computer and displays the camera view on the screen! Fun to play with regardless :-)
In the end, it was a positive wire that had a break in it somewhere in it's 20 foot length. It took 3 hours to figure that out (remember, boat repairs always take twice as long as you think it should). The solution was to run a new wire from front to back behind the freezer, stove, frig, etc. We made nice use of the cable stringer.
On to the second project: figuring out why the generator overheated. Steve cleaned out the raw water intake - so sea water is circulated around the generator to cool it - and found two small leaves. Didn't seem like that would make that much difference but we pinpointed the problem to be the impeller in the intake pump. That took about 10 minutes. But looking at a new impeller (left) and the old impeller (right), it didn't seem to be that bad, i.e. no broken off blades. Turns out the brass center had overheated so much that it melted the connection to the rubber outside. So the brass interior was turning just fine but the rubber impeller wasn't moving at all! Job completed in less than 1 hour :-)
That meant we had time for fun yesterday! A trip to the prirates museum was interesting, informative and fun. They had fake cannons that you could shoot and an excellent "audio" visit to a pirate ship (as a hostage!). Very realistic - including the British arriving and cutting off the head of the pirate ....
It wasn't quite dark yet when we left the museum so we rode our bikes around a bit longer We were waiting until it was at least somewhat dark as we had heard the Christmas lights were very nice.
It was definitely worth staying. We had flashlights for our bikes and I had on a reflective backpack so we were good to go to make it back to the boat.
Joe and Joy walked over to our marina (little over a mile) so we could watch the Browns WIN!!! Steve made his new eggplant casserole - again excellent.
Sadly the Euchre cards were horrid for the women. The guys beat us two games straight. Enough already ....
The fuel delivery truck arrived this morning about 8:15 so we were able to add 150 gallons of diesel. Enough (we think) to get us to Marathon. Once we arrived at our close destination (2 hours), the bikes came off and we rode to the Matanzas Inlet (which we passed on the boat). Very interesting wave patterns - only small boats go in and out here.
Steve found some blooming prickly pear cactus on the way to the inlet. Very sticky inside - looked like a pomegranate to me. Wonder if it tastes like one?
The marina we are at is at the old Marineland. Built in the 1950 as one of the first of it's kind. Not a lot left anymore but in it's day it must have been quite the showcase. The old "Sea Hunt" series (with Lloyd Bridges) was filmed here. Apparently a very happening place.
We also rode through an area that lies between the sea and the marshes that used to be a camping area. Very nice ride through old live oaks and many different kind of palm trees.
You could still see the old electrical pedestals and water hookups that would have been used by campers.
The beach area here is very unique to the east coast. I though we were back on the pacific sitting here watching the waves break! I don't recall seeing anything like the rocks that were scattered along the beach here.
As far as you could see.
Turns out they aren't really rocks but rather what is called Coquina rock.
It's actually a mixture of shells and sand that long ago formed a bond. This rock was used to build the fort in St. Augustine along with some of the other fortifications that are present along the coast in this area.
It seemed that I should just be able to break a piece off but it really WAS just like a rock!
And to end the day, another wonderful sunset.
Tomorrow we'll meet back up with High Spirits (they went on ahead to the Daytona area to meet up with a friend) and continue the journey south :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment