Periodontal recovery for the next few weeks. St. Augustine seems like a pretty nice place for that kind of thing.

The Commodore Says: "It's St. Augustine; everyone seems to stop here."

The weather will continue to hold in the 60's and 70's. Except for a few cold days.

17th. Monday.

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Periodontal surgery this morning.

Yes, CA rode her bicycle to yoga first. Then she rode to the dental surgeon's. Then back to the marina. No taxi for her.

I did a few small chores (washing bird crap off the deck, replacing a broken fiddle on a shelf.)

I started a small repair. The fan on the nature's head quit. Broken red wire at the fan itself. I fired off a crabby email to Nature's Head. Generally the product is great. The fan didn't last six months.

About six hours after my email to Nature's Head—two hours after I'd ordered three replacements from DigiKey—Nature's head offered to send two replacement fans. At their cost. Now I'm going to have a mountain of stupid 40mm fans. If the wires continue to rust out every six months, perhaps I'll need them.

Dinner was mac and cheese with tuna and peas. Soft and bland. I drenched mine in Worcestershire sauce.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

18th. Tuesday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Cleaned the forward cabin. Completely. Same treatment as the aft cabin that CA cleaned earlier.

Don Casey's This Old Boat has a recipe for cleaning and maintaining wood without too many harsh, complex chemical preparations.

1. Wash with a dilute clorox and laundry detergent mixture.

2. Rinse with fresh water.

3. Wipe down with Lemon Oil.

Casey claims that this will—for the most part—nuke the mildew you have and prevent mildew from taking root. You need to wipe down and wash from time to time: nothing stops mildew.

Another resource: http://www.goodoldboat.com/reader_services/articles/mildewwars.php

Installed a little (6W) solar panel. These are an interim solution until we rebuild the dodger. It's only 6W, so it doesn't do much. I'll put its twin on the locker door next to it, that will give us 12W. About 1A. We have 36W on the foredeck, so the whole package is all of 48W.

We'd like to have 180W total among the panels. These little panels are just an interim step until we build a proper hard dodger. The idea of a bunch of little panels is that some of them should be creating power, even if others are in shade.

Dinner was a squash risotto sort of thing. Lots of squash and cheese and garlic over pasta.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

19th. Wednesday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Cleaning out some more stuff from the boat. Going to drop a few things at Sailor's Exchange.

On the way into the dock, we meet the Eloane. This is a French family we met in Deltaville two years ago. They're patiently circumnavigating the globe. The spent last year in an RV circumnavigating America. Now they're heading south to the Caribbean.

I was amazed at seeing folks from Deltaville. CA was pleased, but not amazed. "It's St. Augustine; everyone seems to stop here." True. It's a very nice place to stop on the ICW.

We dropped a few things off at Sailor's Exchange. We now have store credit. Next time we need stuff, it's available at a discount.

We took a long dinghy ride across the inlet over to the floating dock at Vilano beach. It was all of 1.6 nm, 3.2 nm round trip. As a bike ride, not much. But it was the longest dingy trip we've taken. It was a beautiful day. Since Mr. Moore of Atlantic Sea Tech rebuilt our engine (and we bought fresh gasoline) the engine performed flawlessly. Delightful.

From the Vilano dock, it's a short walk to a large, well-stocked Publix market.

A bunch of our equipment upgrades had arrived by the time we got back:

1. A 40-gallon flexible water bladder.

2. A self-contained 12V washdown system that we're going to use (exclusively) for potable water from the 40-gallon bladder.

3. Three 40-mm "biscuit" fans to replace the broken fan in the Nature's Head. Apparently, the folks from Nature's Head will also send a replacement. We felt that spares were essential. The wires are teensy-tinsy, but a little soldering and a little tape will put us back in business.

4. Some new waterproof pants to prevent dinghy-butt.

For the washdown system, we need to convert from a ½″ hose-barb fitting on the tank to ¾″ NPT pipe thread (the ubiquitous "garden hose" size.) Either male or female will work because the pump has a ¾″ female and includes a short pipe nipple. We also need some ½″ hose that we'll use only for potable water.

And a 12V extension cord so that we can plug the washdown pump into the boat and use it from the dinghy. The pump has a 10′ cord, which is almost long enough to reach from the "spot light" outlet 6′-7′ to the bulwark and 4′ down to the dinghy.

The water bladder needs to be rinsed with a 5% vinegar solution. That's two gallons of vinegar. What do you do with 40 gallons of vinegar water? And a new washdown pump?

Answer.

Wash the entire topside of the boat. Remove every bit of saltwater and bird poop. 40 gallons of fresh water! w00t w00t!

Once we've got a water bladder, we can easily grab mountains of fresh water to fill up our boat's tanks.

Dinner was a Reuben made with veggie burger instead of corned beef.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

20th. Thursday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Installed a replacement biscuit fan on the Nature's Head. Now it's properly desiccating the waste again. Less smell indoors.

Went to Sailor's Exchange to get some parts for the new washdown pump. We had hose on board. We found several ¾″ NPT to ½″ hose fittings by patiently rooting through two large bins of similar-looking parts. We found a 12V extension cord that might work nicely. Plus a bunch of hose clamps and some electrical fittings. A mostly successful outing.

I also found a Loos cable tension gauge. Sadly, it is for smaller cable than we have on Red Ranger. So we'll have to return that to Sailor's Exchange. Since they don't give receipts, I'm not sure exactly how that will work.

Before charging the batteries, I tweaked the voltage on the regulator. I raised it from 14.6 to 14.8 for the bulk phase, and from 14.4 to 14.6 for the acceptance phase. Hopefully, this will put more Amperes into the battery. The measured voltages are higher, but still not ideal.

While charging,

I looked at our solar panels. Such as they are. We have two 18W SunForce panels, one of which I cracked. I'm pretty sure it's approximately useless at this point.

The "semi-flexible" panels with no glass in them seem to be (a) more expensive as well as (b) more durable. The Ganz GSP-30 and SunWize SC24 seem to be two to three times more expensive, but much more much appropriate to deck-level installation. If they last 2-3 years, we'll be ahead of the game.

The starboard deck location is about 15″×40″: a perfect fit for the (fragile) SunForce product. It may handle two of the SC24‘s. That's a whopping huge upgrade from 18W to 48W.

The port side is 30″×40″, allowing for a different configuration of panels.

Besides the possibility of dropping things on them deck-level panels get shaded by booms, dodgers and standing rigging. We have to limit our deck-level spending because the better solution is a new semi-hard dodger with 36 square feet of high-performance rigid panels.

Dinner was pasta with zucchini and pesto.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

21st. Friday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Laundry day.

It was cold outside (1°C,) so hanging around in the marina lounge is very warm and pleasant.

After laundry, we did a few chores around the boat. Some cleaning and some routing of wires for the next solar panel installation.

We took a walk around St. A. to look into the Christmas Even worship service at Grace UMC, some consignment clothing stores, and the Christmas Eve get-together at the JP Henley pub.

Dinner was a soup (for CA) and a sandwich for me at A1A Brewpub. Sadly, they're out of their black IPA.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

22nd. Saturday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

A quick run to Sailor's Exchange. Then on to the Old City Farmer's Market. Then we plopped down in the lounge to do some e-business. And failed.

After lunch, we did some walking around to find better Wi-Fi than the marina lounge. We failed. Even the coffee shop with "Free Wi-Fi" really meant "free to hotel guests staying at the adjacent hotel; not free to you boaters."

The AT&T Hotspot, however, worked much better than the marina lounge Wi-Fi. And the coffee was pretty good. So we've got some more solar panels on order to replace the one I cracked and expand our solar charging capability from almost nothing to slightly more than nothing.

Drinks on Alchemy last night. Their excellent, active Blog. Dave has a guitar. We need to make some time for a jam session.

Dinner was potato soup.

Another very cold night. Down to almost freezing.

Travel

Attribute	Value
Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

23rd. Sunday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Charged the batteries for 1:48 minutes (six 18-minute cycles). We got through three days since the last charging. Better than last week when we only lasted two days. I think the tweak in the charging voltages has helped push more current into the batteries.

Washed the aft head (with warm water!) Biked to the drug store for antibiotics. Showered.

In the afternoon, CA cleaned the entire cabin sole.

I added 6W to our laughable little solar array. The goal is 180W; two 6W panels is kind of silly. There's room for two more panels, on the locker doors, so that's my rationale: 24W is almost 13% of the budget, so it builds toward something.

One justification for these little bits and pieces is to have solar panels facing in a variety of directions so that some of the array is working.

Another justification is to provide an experiment-friendly setup so that I could re-rig panels as the technology changes and improves. For example, the glass-faced SunForce panels were too fragile; so I'm trying these Ganz panels out. I've ordered SunWize panels to see how durable they are.

Dinner was fried rice.

Not so cold; weather improving.

Now that it's a little warmer, we can start to think about rinsing the water bladders. We don't have enough hose fittings for two bladders. Even after shopping at Sailor's Exchange, we're still short a few pieces.

The issue is that we need to have some kind of plug or cap for each end. A bladder with a permanent installation (i.e., a water tank under the V-berth) doesn't need to be capped. For the ¾″ hose outlet, we may have one or two in the plumbing box. The filler, however is 1½″ hose. I doubt we have it.

Perhaps we'll be riding our bikes to Home Depot. Or perhaps this will be more mail-order. Since it's almost Christmas Eve, we may wait until after Boxing Day.

Travel

Attribute	Value
Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

This Week

Engine Hours: 3. Diesel Gallons: 0. ICW Miles: 0.

Books: finished The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Started The Constant Gardner.

Read Aloud: A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire (still; it will be a while).

Travel

Attribute	Value
Engine	3. h
Fuel	0. gal
Distance	0. mi