Friday October 24: Was It the Wrong Side of the Bed??

I'm not sure what happened today - I blame it on getting up on the wrong side of the bed ... whatever that means anyway. The plan is to leave here and head south Tuesday morning. Weather is looking good and our last month of paid dockage is up so it must be time to move on.

No issues, right? One would like to think so :-) And yesterday was such a good day ...

as we finally made the decision to just get a new fridge while we were someplace it was easy to do so. The old Isotherm - a 110/12 volt marine fridge was finally done. The good old glue gun fix from last spring lasted as long as it was going to! Again - it has been on the boat for the past 9 years so not surprising that it was time to be replaced.

Off to Home Depot for a regular 110 volt mini fridge. More energy efficient, way less $$ than something with "marine" in the name and a bit taller - making for a little more room. And it had a light!!! This is the first time we've had a fridge with a light :-) What a bonus - and who ever thought we could get so excited about such a mundane thing!!

Next on the list was to get the 5200 adhesive on the repaired cracks on the walk around deck. This was especially important to get done before it should rain and allow the open wood to get wet.

Easy enough to do - just don't get the stuff on your hands. It almost needs to be ground off.

Latex gloves were definitely in order. The hardest part is keeping the glove on the hand as this 5200 adhesive is really sticky. Total job time: less than one hour.

Next: get the new inverter actually hooked up and tested.

Because we moved from a 1000 watt inverter to a 2500 watt, the wires from the battery had to be several sizes larger: 1/0. Which is about the thickness of a normal pinky finger. The wires arrived yesterday.

12 volt power is nothing to be messed with - lots of potential opportunities for shocking results :-)

I was able to work from the aft cabin by reaching in through the fuel filter access door. A bit easier than trying to reach from the engine room. Job done.

The Jacksonville Naval Air Station is hosting the Blue Angels at the air show this weekend so it has been a delightful several days of watching practice runs as the jets fly over the marina.

Steve managed to catch a picture of one as it flew by the marina. I would suspect the waterways on the St. John's River outside the base will be a really busy place come tomorrow!

The planes definitely brought back memories of our days at East 55th St. Marina in Cleveland. Vivid memories of the many air shows we were able to watch right at the boat - with the jets flying over so closely the pilots could be seen!

And then we got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. Time to test the new inverter. Mmm... the microwave seems to sound funny. Not running right. Get out the "just happened to buy" Power Meter that could measure the power output from the inverter. Not good. Getting 110 volts but only 50 megahertz. Funny, I didn't even know what a megahertz was until this morning. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Turns out the ebay seller sent the wrong inverter. 110 volts but 50 megahertz. Electrical things designed to run on 60 mhz NEED 60 mhz. Back it will go - what a pain.

Otherwise the inverter was ok and the day got better. The top canvas (redone in May when in Cleveland) was finally getting put up.

Ooops. Tide is too high - the rest will have to wait until later!

No problem - at least the GPS is back and installed (it travels between Guppy and the trawler). Someday we may actually get a second one but then why do that??

The best surprise today happened when we went to swap cars. Our Alamo car was due in today at the airport (about 30 minutes away) so we were picking up a local Enterprise car for the weekend ($9.99 day + tax - can't beat the price, right?). Plan was to drive the Alamo car back to the airport and turn it in. This would give us a local rental and the Enterprise folks will bring us back to the boat. Beats having to take the bus back from the airport for sure.

Turns out Enterprise and Alamo are partners! We just "turned in" our Alamo car and "picked up" our Enterprise car - just by doing some paperwork. Never had to change cars. What a deal that was ........

And the day got even better - Steve's new microwave/convection oven came!

He's using it as I write to cook dinner tonight. We heard of it from Linda Murray (Symmetry II) who loves hers.

I'm hoping for more the the same great cooking to which I have become so accustomed .....


Guess we didn't get out of bed on the wrong side after all :-)