The Good and the Bad

Brenda working with the kids.

The Good;

The cruising community at Boot Key Harbor is an amazing group of people. Last year they donated enough money to purchase, assemble and distribute 26 bicycles and helmets to needy kids for Christmas. How cool was that? Well, this year they have outdone themselves and assembled over 30 new bicycles and helmets. Saturday was the harbor kids' Christmas Party. One couple decorated their boat to look like Santa's sleigh. Santa motored into the marina to greet all the kids during their party, much to the youngest ones' amazement.

Brenda was in her element helping the harbor kids decorate stockings and mooring balls. It may be 80 plus degrees here, but the feeling of Christmas is still in the air.

Brenda has been successfully pull starting the dinghy motor and is now a little more comfortable going on her own with the Ernie T. Doesn't she look cute in her little blue "car"? She always wanted a convertible.

The Bad;

Boat repairs, boat repairs and more boat repairs. Wrinkles has decided that she wants some extra attention lately so our goof off time has been reduced. Our battery banks aren't keeping up due to tired batteries and a refrigeration wiring issue causing high amperage draws. We purchased new batteries and found the corrosion issue in the refrigerator connections. Two days later the accessory fan providing additional fresh air to the condensing unit began to howl with bad bearings. Mike has removed the fan from the circuit until the replacement is received.

When Mike installed the new batteries he decided the ground wires from the batteries to the negative bus bars weren't sufficient. He will upgrade those wires tomorrow. We are adding a fourth solar panel to give us nearly 500 watts of power. Mike is just about done mounting this panel on top of the bimini. This, combined with the increased size of the new batteries, should help our power needs in the future. The bent davit still isn't back from the welding shop, so our largest solar panel continues to hang from straps on one side.

In the mean time our home looks like a hoarder's dream. Because our battery banks are under the quarter-berth, lovingly called "The Attic", everything stored there had to be moved. So, all that stuff is now filling up our cabin space. Wrinkles normally feels quite homey and comfortable. Right now it is just feels like an overstuffed storage unit.

Hopefully in the next couple of days we will get all our projects completed and get back to just the "good stuff".

 

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