July 1, 2014 "Town Day" Charleston

Our boat neighbor, Gary, was heading out to run errands and offered to take us along or wherever we needed.  Making friends has its perks.  He works about 3 months off and on, so moves his boat and truck when he can. 

We headed to West Marine and Lowe’s.  We had lunch in a German themed local bar.  Of course we offered to pay, since he was driving.  You should have seen the look on his face when Dave’s two meals arrived.  He packed one up to take back to the boat.  He figured he wouldn’t get back there, so leftovers would be great.  I gave up on telling him how to order years ago.

We also stopped at a U-Haul to fill our propane tanks.  I never have asked why those two businesses are together.  We weren’t sure how we were going to get our tank refilled.  Most taxis and trollies don’t want you to take the tank in their vehicle.  Our plan was to put the tank in a rolling suitcase since they aren’t real big and take it aboard the trolly.  We’ll keep that in mind for the future. 

We watched the disappointing soccer game between the USA and Belgium. 

About 8:45 our air conditioner stopped (luxury when you are at a marina) and we had an electrical burning smell!!  The circuits inside were ok, so we checked where the power cords plug into the boat.  The circuit breaker over heated and melted.  Dave checked it all out and went online to see what he would have to do to repair things.  We have two 30 amp power cords coming into the boat.  One is for the 2 air conditioning units and one is for all other AC current.  There had been a problem with this connection when we bought the boat, but they assured us that it had been taken care of.  Well we have found other electrical problems, so Dave is going to see if it wasn’t fixed correctly, or if we have to go deeper to find the source of this problem. 

In the meantime, I opened all our hatches and put on the bug screens and turned on the fans.  We hope to have this fixed before the rains with the squalls hit us Thursday.  Sure would be nice to have air conditioning if we have to have all of our hatches closed. 

That being said, we still believe the storm will pass us off shore.  We will get wind and rain.  If it should unpredictably change course towards us, we will move our boat up the Cooper River or leave it.