Time for Some Boat Projects - Now in Real Time

 We have now been in Marathon 3 weeks and 4 days. We arrived on January 24th and I am writing this on Friday February 18th. It seems like a long time to be sitting in one place, but it feels like the time has gone by very quickly.

We started out at anchor in the west end of the harbor. We quickly met another couple that was on the boat next to us. They had been waiting for a mooring ball for over 2 weeks and were number 9 on the list when we arrived. We knew it was going to be a while. We started out at number 20. The problem is that many of the boats were planning to move on to the Bahamas, but the weather was not cooperating. 

After being in the harbor for 5 days, we had our first big blow. Which I wrote about in my last entry. Unfortunately, that was not the only northern we would have to deal with. We have had a series of them that each has lasted a few days. In between, we have seen some nice days. We have tried to take full advantage when the weather is good. We did have one nice night and I was playing with the night setting on the camera. These came out kind of cool.

I like the lines of colored lights under the boats

That one big sailboat has not taken his Christmas lights down yet.

I have met a number of other cruisers in the harbor. When I mention to them, that I am looking at doing this major battery upgrade, a couple of them have recommended a local company to assist me with the project. I decided to make contact with On-Board Rigging. The funny thing is that the Owner, Anthony has a boat that is anchored right next to us and his shop is about a quarter mile away. 

They sent over their best technical guy named Dan. He was very impressive. He spent 4 hours with me going over the project. He made a number of suggestions and corrected my thinking in a few areas. At the end of it all, I asked Dan if their company could do the work. He said sure! I asked for a proposal, which I had the next day. The next day, I went over to the shop and talked to Anthony. We put the deal together and I made a 50% down payment. Now we have to wait for the batteries and other components to be shipped to his shop. 

I really like the idea of working with a local shop for many reasons. I am not getting any younger and it would be better if an expert could do this work. I also like to help out a local company. So, I decided to buy all of the parts from them and have them do the work. The parts were scheduled to arrive yesterday. I am waiting to hear when the work will be done. 

Here is an overview of the work we are going to do:

1. We are going to install a 400ah Lithium battery bank from Battle Born

2. We will add a 400W panel over the dinghy davits

3. We will install two new solar chargers by Victron

4. We will rewire all of the battery compartments and chargers

5. We will install a Victron Multi-plus 2000W Inverter Charger

6. We will leave one AGM battery to serve as a starter battery and add a Victron DC to DC charger to charge the lithium batteries off of the alternator on the engine. 

I know this is all very technical, but the end result is that we should have a much larger battery bank, so that we can live longer between times we have to recharge our batteries. We will see how this all works out, I will report back. 

The big news this week is that we got the call! We were in the marina on Tuesday morning, when my phone rang and the girl on the other end said," This is the call you have been waiting for!". We  quickly paid the additional fees and headed back to the boat to get ready. The bad news is that the wind was blowing 10 knots then, but was expected to pick up to 20 knots before noon. 

The move did not go well. First we had problems getting the anchor up and on the bow. Kim finally decided to just leave it hanging off the bow. The wind then picked up while we were motoring the mile to the mooring ball. We were moving to almost the complete opposite end of the harbor. Our new home is ball C-15. 

The boats in the anchorage were swinging all over the place. As we approached our ball we had about 10 feet between our ball and the boat in front of us. At that point we slowly approached up wind. The other boat moved to starboard giving us some space to get to our ball. Kim did a great job capturing the pennant and threaded a line through. It was then that the boat swung back in our direction. We had overrun the ball about 10 feet, but because of the strong wind, the other boat was at the full extension of their mooring. The boats came together and our anchor put a small scratch in the port quarter of the very well maintained Morgan Out Island 41.  The accident was all my fault. I should have backed off more quickly. The owners were on board and come up to see what just happened. They were very nice and refused any compensation. We have since met Dana and Pam and they seem very nice. Hopefully we will get past this poor first meeting. 

Yesterday, we had to say good bye to our new friends, Bob and Sheila on "Sails Call". We had so much fun with you guys!

Bob and Sheila - I warned you you might just end up in the blog. I took this after our dinghy adventure and dinner at Overseas. 

Our social calendar has been stuffed since we have been here. We have played Pickleball, Dominos, attended Happy Hour and many other things. We really like it here. Hopefully I will update you on our project in my next entry.