Thursday May 12, 2016
When we woke up at our anchorage, the state of charge of our house battery bank was at 59%. Not too bad for an overnight at anchor with our anchor light and the refrigerator running. On a normal day, our state of charge would gradually increase to close to 100%. But not on this day. We had been motoring for about an hour when Jim checked the state of charge (SOC). It was 54%. Agh! I was really worried. We were going through lots of bridges. We needed to use our radio to call them. Having the chartplotter working would be very nice. Jim turned off the refrigerator, and we called our wonderful, fabulous, indispensable electrical guru, Bob Campbell. On Bob’s instructions, Jim checked the readout on our Magma. Clearly the batteries were not charging. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, the batteries started charging. Our SOC started rising. I did not want a repeat of Little Shark Island and not having any battery power!
The greatest tool on our boat that day was my cell phone. I googled marine engine repair shops, and finally found JAS Marine in West Palm Beach. Yes, they could help us, and yes, they could recommend a Marina, Riviera Beach Marina. A quick call to the Marina confirmed that they had a slip for us.
Phew!
But we still had 30 miles to go up the inter coastal waterway.
When we were just south of Boca Raton, we heard someone on the radio talking about the Flagler bridge, just south of Palm Beach, being closed until the weekend. Lucky that we found out then, rather than going north another 30 miles, then having to turn around, go back south 30 miles, head out to sea, and go north again.
I had read on Active Captain that the Boca Raton inlet was a dangerous inlet. I called BoatUS, and asked to speak with someone with local knowledge of the inlet. I was put through to a very nice man who runs a tow boat for BoatUS. What should I do?, I asked. He said that the seas were calm, the wind was light, and given our draft, he thought we could make it out the Boca Raton inlet, if we went slow and stayed in the middle of the channel.
We made it! Yeah!
The wind was against us, so we just motored north in the Atlantic Ocean up to the next inlet, the Palm Beach inlet. We had the Gulf Stream giving us a boost! 8 knots, even though the wind was against us!
We made it thru the inlet, around Peanut Island, and into our slip at Riviera Beach without incident. Nice municipal Marina. Dinghy ride to Peanut Island for s swim. We watched a huge cruise ship that was docked by our Marina slip away at 6pm for a 2 day cruise to Grand Bahama Island. Hmmm! That would be fun if our repairs took more than a day!
Stay tuned…..,