July 6, 2014 southern church

I didn’t expect to be here another Sunday.  But this gave me a chance to visit another church.  Today I took the trolly to a church in the central part of Charleston.  When I got off the trolly, I walked the wrong direction for a few blocks.  So I ended up being late.  This catholic church was the closest you could get to southern Baptist and still be a mass.  I was definitely in the minority.  What a great choir AND the whole congregation was singing.  They sang fun songs that had a lot more soul.  They asked visitors to stand and be welcomed.  They had anyone with a birthday in July stand and we sang Happy Birthday.  Their recessional hymn was “Soon and Very Soon”.  We sang that in SD but not the way it was meant to be sung.  It was so fun to sing it with spirit and clapping.  After mass, the man I sat behind brought me information about jointing their church.  Someone else invited me to their annual picnic on the 20th.  It was the most welcome I have felt in all the churches I have visited since leaving South Dakota.  What a fun way to start the week.

We figured out how to get free movies through Amazon.  So just hung out this afternoon watching the latest Star Trek movie.  But I refused to watch a second movie.  I got Dave to go for a walk to a restaurant we wanted to try for southern fried chicken.  We should have made a reservation.  We ended up walking to a Sticky Fingers BBQ restaurant.  Either our waiter was new, or he was ready to be done for the day.  The food was good but lousy service.  Any way, we had a nice walk in part of Charleston we hadn’t seen. 

Happy 40th Wedding Anniversary to Janice and Jim, sister and brother-in-law!

July 5, 2014 Soccer and water pumps

I joined the neighboring boaters at a local sports bar to watch the soccer game between the Netherlands and Costa Rica.  It was especially fun since Burt was from the Netherlands and he also picked up the tab after the Netherlands won. 

I walked back to the boat via the grocery store.  All we need to restock these days is milk, fruit, veggies and bread.  So I was OK with carrying those things about 8 blocks.  I also found out that we can take a shopping cart back to the marina and they collect them once a week.  May have to do that if we need to stock heavier items before we leave instead of taking a taxi.

Dave replace our water pump.  Ever since we had the water in the bilge, we have been trying to improve our water system.  It’s amazing how quiet this pump is.  When one of our water tanks empties, the water pump continues to run.  So we immediately shut it off so as not to burn out the pump and we switch tanks.  Now we are concerned that we won’t hear the pump continuing to run.  We will have to be more aware when we think a tank is getting low.  But with the water maker, we don’t usually let the tanks get too low anymore. 

July 4, 2014 Independence Day

After our late night last night, we were pretty lazy today.  We just hung out at the boat researching things on the computer and cooking. 

We regrouped with the neighbors to watch the fireworks.  They launch the fireworks from the USS Yorktown air craft carrier across the river from our marina.  Our neighbor that had lived here for 5 years told us that over a week ago.  But we never thought we’d still be here for the 4th. 

We put our cockpit cushions on the deck of the boat and had a great view.  I played my John Phillip Sousa CD of marches during the display.  Have to play that on the 4th every year.  There was a real patriotic feeling in the air when you think about how many battles had been fought in this harbor. 

After the fireworks, I joined the new neighbors from New York.  They have a 50 foot boat.  Wow, is it ever spacious compared to ours.  I shouldn’t  look at boats that are bigger than ours.  But we wouldn’t want to handle that large of a boat by ourselves. 

The owners bought the boat in the Baja area of Mexico.  They hired someone to take it through the Panama Canal and bring it to Florida.  They joined the captain and a crew member there and they all came here together,  along with a nephew.  Captain Kirk and crew, Burt, are from the Netherlands.  Kirk left a couple days ago, but Burt will be with them as they move the boat north. 

I had a great conversation asking them all about choosing a captain and crew AND how you become captain and crew.  Dave and I have thought about doing that as a supplemental income- move boats for people.  Of course we would need more training and experience, so it’s not going to happen soon.  But what I learned tonight was that you have to deal with a lot of mechanical issues.  Especially if a boat has been out of the water for several years and now you are taking it somewhere for the owner.  All kinds of things can show up once it’s in the water again.  You can also return boats for people after they have sailed it somewhere and don’t have the time to bring it back.  Then you would know that it was a working boat ( and you can still have mechanical issues).  So we'll see if we ever go that route.
Happy Fourth of July!

July 3, 2014 Hurricane Arthur

Well, this post is kind of anti climatic, but in a good way.  We made it through our first hurricane.  We subscribe to a weather service.  So we get weather updates usually once a day.  But Chris Parker steps it up during rough weather.  We were getting notices 2-3 times a day this week.  He gives us his predictions, then compares it to NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) and a couple other sources.  The TV stations get their info form these guys.  So we don't feel bad not having a TV to watch the weather.

Dave got up during the night to check the weather and how the boat was tied up.  He said there was an eerie feeling in the air, like before a tornado.  We thought we would wake up with high winds in the morning, but it was like any other morning.  We could see stormy clouds off the coast.  We even sat outside for awhile and watched the weather and other boats.  The cargo ships were still moving.

We watched a sailboat out playing in the strong winds.  Dave was missing his buddies from back home that would normally go play with him when the wind would come up.

About 5:00, it was beautiful and calm.  We were really lucky that it stayed off shore.  I guess that is why we stayed here.  We didn't notice if there was any surge involved with this.  It was predicted that Charleston would get 3 feet.

Well, about 8:00, the dock decided we needed a hurricane survival party.  We had 8 people in our cockpit until way past our bedtime.  It was fun getting to know the neighbors, where they are from and where they are going.

We were grateful for all the well wishes we had from people that were in land locked states.

we expected rougher seas

Dave would have liked to play in the wind

2:00 radar-strange to see the eye of the storm so close to us

4:00 radar-decided we were in the clear

what we could see of the sunset that night-calm waters

July 2, 2014 Hurricane preparation Charleston

We planned to spend the day preparing the boat for a hurricane.  But first Dave had to fix the circuit breaker.  He was about to beg our boat neighbor, Gary, for a ride for parts when he showed up at our boat.  He was more than happy to help us out.  The two of them took off to get parts.  Sounds like they ran back and forth between a few places.  Dave ended up getting a 25 amp circuit breaker for our 30 amp connection and he has to order the part we need.  So we are running one air conditioner until the part arrives on Tuesday.  Guess we'll be here a while longer.

I walked to the grocery store for a few items.  Then I spent the day tucking things away in case we really rock and roll through this storm.

Dave thinks the previous repair didn't cut back the damaged wire far enough and it caused it to over heat.  Otherwise the circuit breaker would have popped.  So when he places the new 30 amp circuit breaker, he will watch to see if it overheats.  If so, there may be a deeper problem with the connection to our air conditioners.

Late afternoon, we started retying fenders and adding spring lines from the boat to the dock.  We topped off our water tanks and put away the water hose.  We brought the cockpit cushions inside along with other small loose items in the cockpit.  We taped down covers and lids that could fly away or flop in the wind.  We taped over the engine and diesel blower vents to prevent water getting into them.  We made sure the dinghy was secure.

As we were doing this, so were the neighbors.  Everyone was helping each other.  The salty sailors were giving advice or letting you know you looked pretty good.  You want to make sure your neighbors boat isn't going to come loose and damage yours.  Then we just stood around and visited for a while, hearing stories about riding out hurricanes in the past. 

Tropical Storm Arthur is predicted to pass us off shore.  The worst prediction is 40pmh winds and 3 foot surge.  We are on a floating dock, so the surge shouldn't affect us.  We'll just move up as the water rises.  And I think we had 40mph winds in Mobile Bay.  So we feel pretty confident about our boat doing just fine.

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.  

June 30, 2014 Home maker-Charleston

When you have a change of plans, you feel like you just added a day to your weekend.  FREE DAY!!  I used the day for cooking.  We had some ripe bananas, so I made banana bread.  Since we still have a ton of prepared garlic, I decided to make hummus for the first time.  We recently found tahini in a deli and had to buy some.  We see it called for in recipes but I had no idea what it was-being from SD.  For those of you who are culinary impaired as I am, it is a paste of ground sesame seeds.  I had a pound of dry garbonzo beans that I had soaked over night.  So this morning I cooked them and put them in our Wonderbag for about 4 hours.  I looked up several recipes, then just used what I liked.  I added the minced garlic that we already had, more olive oil, more lemon juice, the tahini, salt and pepper.   Pretty good!  Sure glad I don’t have to worry about my breath with patients anymore.

Dave worked on down loading some world charts and books from another sailor. 
We watched the world cup games.  Then we watched a romantic comedy, Dan in Real Life.  Not too much common ground on movies we like to watch together.  Guess we’ll go back through the Harry Potter series.