Time to provision for our trip south.

Enjoying the time being spent here, also. Here's a picture of all five Whitbys in St. Augustine. Thanks Creola!

21st. Monday.

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

Showers. Shopping. Planning. Playing with camera.

Our large propane tank finally went empty. Tomorrow, when the stores are open, we'll see how long a walk it is to the propane dealer. There appear to be two over by Sailor's Exchange, which isn't a long walk lugging a big propane cylinder. We'll find out tomorrow.

Dinner was macaroni with a cheese and avocado sauce.

Travel

22nd. Tuesday

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

Empty the Nature's head and refill with some peat moss. During the cleanup, the starboard water tank went empty. While we have a Profile tank monitor, we usually wait until the pump is sucking air (and running continuously) before we refill the tank.

Okay, empty water tank puts the kibosh on refilling the propane tank. Water beats propane.

We had hoped to make it through a few more weeks and fill all the water (and diesel) in one go at the fuel dock. That's not going to work out well. We'll be making several trips with the water bladder to refill the tanks.

We dropped a 40-gallon bladder in the dinghy and made two trips to the fuel dock. CA's still fighting a cold, so that was about her limit for sitting in the dinghy and holding a hose today. That filled the starboard tank about half way. The pump we use to transfer from bladder to deck uses about 2.5A and takes about 30 minutes per bladder. If it takes four trips to fill a tank, we're looking at 5 Ah out of our 225 Ah budget.

While not required,

Just to make life more complex, the generator wouldn't start.

It's a tiny two-stroke engine (63cc of tiny). It only needs fuel, air, spark and compression to run. I can open the float on the carb and see the fuel flowing. The air cleaner foam brick is new. The spark plug is new and I can feel the compression.

It appears that a premature flip of the choke can lead to flooding the cylinder. The internet suggests pulling the plug out and turning the engine over a dozen times to expel the excess fuel.

Since we're running low on daylight, more serious investigation will have to wait until tomorrow.

Just to make life really complex, the water pump won't prime. After putting in almost 80 gallons of water, it ran for over half an hour and never pressurized itself properly. This, too, will require investigation in daylight. With coffee.

Dinner was tortellini with broccoli and tomato sauce.

Two failures (generator and water pump) lead to a sleepless night. It's distressing when things don't work properly.

Travel

23rd. Wednesday

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

CA's feeling a little better today. How do I know?

The job list.

Job 1: Water Pressure. Last time we changed the filter, it primed almost instantly. Q: What did we do differently? A: We filled the filter bowl with water.

Let's try doing that again.

This morning, I unscrewed the filter bowl. Pressurized water sprayed everywhere. Oh. Spraying means the filter was totally full. Hm. Why won't the pump detect the pressure and stop running?

Screw the filter back on, hit the switch, and the system pressurizes within 10 seconds.

Oh. Hm. Weird. Theory: perhaps there was an air bubble in the filter and the little red bleed button hadn't bled it all the way out. Perhaps it was on the output side, after the filter element. Whatever the root cause, we think we have an approach.

Job 2: Generator. It is a cheap little piece of junk. But it's also brand new. A few pulls on the cord this morning and it started and ran for about 30 minutes. I plugged in the trickle charger and things were looking good.

Then it stalled out; after that, it steadfastly wouldn't start.

Fuel is sparkingly clean: it's brand new, from the dock just days ago, with 50:1 oil properly mixed in. Air is plentiful. Spark seems to be available. However, it's cold. And maybe the generator's little carburetor isn't really happy running when it's in the 50's?

What to do? Pull the plug (again) and see if it's still flooded? Wait for a warmer day? Drink Heavily and Drown my Sorrows?

A little on-line research on 2-stroke engines revealed nothing.

Job 3: More Water. There's no mysterious failure modes here. We just need to make a bunch of trips to the fuel dock to get water. It's a little cold and choppy this morning, so we'll do one load before lunch and a second load after lunch. By our count, that's 400L (120 gal.) of water. It appears that we're not getting the full 150L (40 gal.) in the bladder each time.

Tomorrow we can do four loads for the port tank.

Syd on Perfect Partner suggests that we get a 1″ to ½″ hose-barb-to-threaded reducer and put in a simple shut-off valve on the water bladder input. This allows simple filling from a dock hose without splashing all over trying to hold the hose into the hole in the top of the bladder.

Job 4: Rigging. Our new Garhauer blocks arrived to re-rig the mainsheet. A single with becket and a double give us the purchase we originally had; a turning block at deck level redirects the sheet to the winch.

Job 5: Food. After two trips in the dinghy—and the stress of things not working—it was time for a walk to Stewart's for flour and fruit and onions.

Job 2: Generator. Again. After a trip to the store, our mind is clear and we can address the generator problem some more. My initial reaction is to simply throw it into the river: not the best way to solve the problem. My second idea is to find someone to fix it. But for such a small, specialized and nearly new engine—that only cost $150—it doesn't seem sensible to pay $75/hr for repairs.

What's left is getting my hands dirty taking the thing apart. Years ago, I rebuilt a two-stroke outboard. There's nothing lost by trying to rebuild a not-working engine.

A shop manual would help. There are two carb adjustment screws. It might be good to have the proper procedure for tweaking those.

A careful re-read of the owner's manual uncovers the advice that the engine must be level or the low oil pressure sensor will kick the engine off. Level? On a boat? Get The Fleet Out Of Town!

Okay. Remain calm. Rotate the engine and shuffle it around the aft deck until it seems to be closer to level. And starts. And runs. And charges the batteries. Maybe I'll try chocking it with some scrap wood to achieve an even closer approximation to level.

Maybe I'll build a little frame with adjustable feet to get things perfectly level.

Or maybe I'll just a note of the golden working location.

Job 6: Upgrades. Ordered a Rocna 25 (55# of holding goodness) from the local West Marine. It appears that they're able to deliver to the marina. And apply a bunch of credits we'd earned. And they're happy to get the store sales credit for selling something big like that.

Job 7: Stowage. She spent time taking everything out of the clothing bins, identifying things she's never going to wear and restowing everything. The cast-off stuff is going to the local Rescue Mission.

What a busy day! Total success (eventually) at every job. What's important is that the jobs are small and simple enough that we (almost) understand what we're doing.

Dinner was tortellini with broccoli and tomato sauce. Again. One jar of sauce is too much for one meal.

Travel

24th. Thursday

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

Today's jobs:

• Showers and 40 gal. of water for the port tank.

• A trip to the bike store on Anastasia island to get lights for the bicycles and 40 gal. of water for the port tank.

• Some possibly billable work writing software. This means running the generator to run the computer and top off the batteries.

The St. Augustine cruisers held a Meetup to discuss "gadgets". We looked at the Heller butane soldering/line cutting tool, high-tech towels, the Hero 3, the Bad Elf BlueTooth GPS device that can be shared by computers and iPads.

Travel

25th. Friday

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

Laundry day.

Plus two trips with 40 gallons of water. According to our Profile tank meters, we're full up.

Took a bike ride around the island to look for the propane dealer. There's an old facility on Leonardi. But the retail office is on Riberia. It looks like it's 1 mile schlep dragging the hand cart with the 20# propane cylinder.

CA's bike chain developed a bad patina. It requires a great deal of love and care to lubricate it. Perhaps we should lube it more frequently than once every three months. Or perhaps we shouldn't leave it outdoors.

Talked with Billy from Bye Polar about crossing to the Bahamas. We'll bring are charts over to Bye Polar Saturday (late) or Sunday to get some additional details on the crossing. The big sweaty deal in getting to the Bahamas is crossing the Gulf Stream.

Since we're here in St. Augustine, it's interesting that Juan Ponce de Leon discovered the stream. Even more interesting was the British response to the Gulf Stream: they complained that the Americans always seemed to cross the Atlantic more quickly. The Brits studiously ignored it, while the Nantucket Whalers capitalized on it.

There are several consequences to crossing the stream.

1. You need wind from the South. Any other direction will lead to an unpleasant or possibly dangerous sea state. Wind from the north, specifically, is hazardous. This applies to all boats: power as well as sail.

2. You sail an "S" course, turning south to counter the current in the stream. It's 50 nm from Key Biscayne to Cat Cay in the Bahamas, about 10 hours. On the axis of the stream, we'll drift 3.3 nm N for while trying to make 5 nm heading E; this means steering about 127 M to arrive at a destination that's really 103 M from Key Biscayne. I think that one way to cope is to have a series of 10 intermediate waypoints with recommended steering offsets at each waypoint.

3. Folks suggest leaving at 4AM to get out into the stream around sunup: the breezes are lighter and the seas should be flatter.

I'm carefully working out the details of the course across the stream. This is, in a way, premature, since we're not even to Ft. Lauderdale yet.

Dinner was Pasta Cavlifora from the Moosewood Cookbook.

Travel

26th. Saturday

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

CA feeling strong enough to run. That leaves me time to drink cappuccino in The Kookaburra coffee shop. Yum.

We washed most of the bird crap off the deck. Sadly, we're using the salt water, so it leaves a rime of salt on the deck. But it gets rid of the bird crap. We're going to try and waggle the backstays before going to bed to try and drive the cormorants away.

We didn't wash the bimini. We're waiting for rain.

We picked up some geocaches in the Anastasia Island State Park. Basically spent the afternoon playing.

Dinner was another round of Pasta Cavlifora.

Travel

27th. Sunday

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

CA went to yoga with the crew of Joie de Vivre.

After yoga, we rode to the Lincolnville farmer's market for some fresh produce.

After a late lunch, we ran the generator for an hour to top up the batteries. One hour isn't really enough. Next time, I'll put in 48 oz. of gasoline (³⁄₈ gallon) so it can run for 2 hours.

Rendezvous with Perfect Partner for dinner at Pizzalley and then hear some local music at the No Name bar.

Travel

This Week

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

Books: Of Human Bondage, Gap Creek, This little piggy went to the liquor store.

Read Aloud: A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire.

Travel