Day 359, Year 6: Visit to Fiddler’s Cove Marina
Date: Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Weather: Partly Sunny, Temp in the Upper-60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Our day was split between work on Windbird, taking care of Sam and Jonah, and a morning visit to Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina (latitude 41 38.808 N and longitude 070 38.160 W) that will be our winter home. I’ve been there before, a few years ago, and Mark was there last week, but he wanted me to see the place before we signed on the dotted line for the winter. It’s tiny as marinas go with 130 slips and most of the boats are motor boats outfitted for fishing with only a few sailboats scattered here and there. The entrance is narrow and can be a bit shallow at low tide, but it was dredged to seven feet mean low tide a couple of years ago and the manager, Fred Sorrento, says we should have no problem getting in. We’ll just make sure we don’t go in on a super low just in case. We’ll be docked close to the gray-shingled clubhouse that houses the laundry, multiple private bathrooms with showers, and a huge lounge with a fire place. The lounge side of the building will be closed in the winter, but the lounge and the bathrooms have to be kept heated so the sprinkler system won’t freeze up. We will be the only live-aboards, but there are houses all around, so we won’t be totally alone. It is located in a lovely area and I can see some wonderful, long walks exploring the area in our winter future.
Mark is working on wiring in a new system monitor so we can get accurate information on the state of our battery charging system. Our Link 2000 wasn’t giving us reliable information. And our Freedom 2000 inverter/charger is just not working. So we ordered a new inverter/charger today (a new Freedom SW 2000). The SW stands for sine wave and this means that we will get electricity that is the same as you get in your home. What we were getting previously was modified sine wave and some things that we would plug into an electrical socket would work and others would not. This was a special problem with AA, AAA, C, and D cell battery chargers. None of the standards like Eveready and Ray-o-Vac would work for us unless we were plugged into shore power. Only a Maxell charger that I bought in Panama has kept all of our rechargeable batteries charged for us for the past six years. Mark is not quite finished with the rewiring for the new system monitor, but he is already getting readings that show a more correct picture of our battery bank. Now we just have to wait for the new inverter/charger to arrive on the 25th. Our AGM batteries have lost some of their capacity because they are three years old and have been heavily used. Once the new inverter/charger is installed there is some chance that we might be able to bring some life back into them. If not, the next step will be to buy new batteries. The current battery bank cost us over $2,000 in Singapore. I don’t even want to think about what they will cost here.
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| 111018 Day 359 Cape Cod, USA–Brewer Fiddler's Cove Marina |
