This month we anchored over night on Clouter Creek so we could enjoy a luau land side with the Charleston Cruising Club. Besides sailing around the harbor this is one of the closest destinations we have gone to. Unfortunately we had to motor there just no room or depth for a good sail, but that is ok as Walter says "any day on the water is a good day."
Because the cruise was so short we headed out about noon, were anchored about an hour later, put up our new multi chamber wind sock and then enjoyed a drink.
There seems to be a pattern with boaters no matter if it is motoring or sailing "drinking" not just drinking, but drinking rum. So in that spirit I created a rum drink that Walter has since named the "sloppy housewife." This drink is made with Goslings rum, 100% passion fruit juice, 7-up with a orange and lime wedge (squeezed) all I can say is "yum." During this relaxing time we also raised a new flag with the boats name on it (for the first time) that I had made a few months ago. Kind of felt like we were special.
It was time to get ready to go to the luau land side, so we put on our Hawaiian party clothes and headed ashore for a great time. We ate some terrific food all while being serenaded by Elvis Presley's "Blue Hawaii" tunes.
Everyone called it an evening and head back to there boats.
This was the first outing that Walter and I have been on since he updated our battery system. He put in two new 2 Deep
Cell Grp 31 (for the house bank) and a small 21 lb AGM (emergency starter battery) we were feeling very comfortable about the refrigerator running, using cabin lights and listen to the stereo. Even when it came to bed time we had a 12 volt fan to help keep us comfortable during the night, unfortunately the new wind sock did not provide much comfort, we had not wind which made for a very warm night.
Off to bed we go, we were still a little warm but grateful for this fan, the fan made it tolerable. So many times when sleeping on the boat I loose all sense of time, Walter woke up with a big "uh-oh" I looked at him and tried to figure out if I was supposed to panic or be calm. It was only an hour after we went to bed when he noticed that the fan had stopped working (it got hot). That is a big "uh-oh" is there a problem with the batteries, did we abuse all the juice they had to give us, were we dead in the water?
We got up to try and figure out what was going on. First thing Walter did was start the engine, it started like a champ. Next, off to check the batteries and see if they were the problem. After a lot of voltage checking, confusion and head scratching Walter realized that he had labeled the batteries wrong during the install and the whole time we were running everything off of the AGM battery (might I add awesome little battery). He then flipped the switch to the house battery bank and all was good, even our little fan was running great and we were able to go back to bed.
We ended up having a great night sleep. Morning came, coffee was brewing and bagels were toasting. We pulled up anchor about 9:00am and headed for home. I took a few picture's along the way.
Another adventure for the books, that all in all went very well and we had a good time with only a little hiccup that was easy to over come, this time!
