Stay Over in St. Augustine FL

Nov 30 thru Dec 2

—Blogpost written by Bob

s/v Rainy Days will be in St. Augustine until December 7 when we proceed with our trip south on the ICW.  I will be publishing blogposts every three or four days throughout this stay over period.

Saturday, November 30

I woke up to bright sunshine and calm water.  Solar power was already in production and the house voltage was just above 12.50 volts--so, I felt confident that I found the answer to our electrical problem: (1) cloudy solar panels surfaces and (2) the fridge was set too cold.

Lola was in a playful mood this morning.  Overnight
she chewed through the wires for our fairy
lights and carried the battery pack
into the quarter berth.

The first thing on my agenda this morning was to cart one of our propane tanks into shore and then to the nearest Ace Hardware (about a mile and a half away) for a refill.

There's nothing quite like carrying a 10-pound
propane tank on a 27-pound folding bike!

After biking 1-1/2 miles there, Ace Hardware would not fill my propane tank because it was a couple months past its 5-year re-certification!  So, I rode 1-1/2 miles back to the marina with nothing accomplished except finding out that a local Suburban Propane dealer certifies tanks for free (but they are not open until Monday).  (If you recall we had the same problem in Charleston last season with a different tank--the one that is currently in use.)

TIP:  Get your propane tanks re-certified BEFORE leaving 

on a trip like this!  The re-certification is good for 5 years.

In the afternoon I watched the Ohio State-Michigan football game while I waited for the Penn State-Rutgers game to start.  Penn State won their last game of the season 27-6, making them 10-2 for the season.  (Their only losses came from Ohio State and Minnesota.)

This was my view of St. Augustine
tonight and on most nights.

Sunday, December 1

I slept in this morning until 8 AM!  When I finally got up it was foggy and damp outside and a heavy dew covered our boat's decks.  The day's weather forecast calls for a thunderstorm to roll through the area at about mid-day (but it never arrived) and cooler temperatures to follow it.  Since it is so wet outside I can't complete the task of cleaning and polishing the other solar panels today like I planned.

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Last night, I finished reading the recently released book A Warning by Anonymous.  I thought it was a good read, well organized and insightful.  It was not exactly light reading for a sailing trip.  This book is available on Amazon at this link.

This book was written by the same author (a Republican by the way) who penned an Op-ed in the New York Times about the people in the government who act as guard rails against Trump's worst impulses.  Now, those guard rails are disappearing because good, sensible people in the government are quitting.  In this book, the author made two excellent points (among many) that stuck with me--I'll use quotations from the book on these two points:

(1) With reference to Trump's inability to obtain consensus even on noncontroversial issues, "For instance there was the time we'd painstakingly sketched the broad outlines of a nearly $ 2 trillion agreement with the Democrats to repair America’s aging infrastructure. Fixing America’s roads and bridges is a popular, bipartisan policy and could have been a slam dunk for Donald Trump, who is an actual builder and understands the issue. Many of us in the administration cared about it. Trump claimed he did, too. Then the president, angry at what he’d seen on cable news, walked into a White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, threw away his talking points, and said he couldn’t work with them until they stopped investigating his administration. They didn’t get a word in edgewise. He stormed out to the Rose Garden after a few minutes and angrily told reporters that Democrats couldn’t “investigate and legislate simultaneously” and that they needed to “get these phony investigations over with” before he’d talk. Prospects for an infrastructure pact vanished in an instant. Next time you’re stuck in traffic or on a pothole-ridden federal highway, remember this episode."  

(2) "Instead of the resolve expressed by President Bush after the attacks of 9/11, now imagine the scenario played out differently. Bush expressed skepticism after 9/11. Imagine that, as smoke rose from the Twin Towers, he questioned whether al-Qaeda really orchestrated the attacks; he dismissed the intelligence community’s conclusions as “ridiculous”; he suggested the hijackers on Todd Beamer’s flight (United 93) could have been from “a lot of different groups”; he fanned the flames of conspiracy theory by calling the incident a “hoax” and a “ruse”; he declared at a press conference, “Osama bin Laden says it’s not al-Qaeda. I don’t see why it would be,” in response to increasingly irrefutable evidence of the terror group’s responsibility; and he urged Americans that it would be a mistake to go after al-Qaeda because the United States had the potential for a “great relationship” with them. If that’s what Bush had done, the political explosion would have torn the country to shreds."  (Let's count our blessings that we don't experience an international incident like 9/11 during Trump's remaining watch!)

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I decided to make a nice Sunday mid-morning breakfast of fried eggs.  I made 3 eggs--one was for Lola but she didn't know what to do with it.  She put her front paw in the egg and made a mess.

I made three eggs for this morning's
breakfast--one was for Lola.

At about 11 AM the sun came out and the wind picked up--it looked like a beautiful day!  I still wasn't interested in getting anything done though (and I don't have to).  I spent most of the afternoon watching NFL football.

Maggie comes back home tomorrow evening--I have to get this boat cleaned up!

Monday, December 2

Last night was very windy and the morning very cool (54 degrees) as a cold front came into northern Florida.  The line to our mooring kept contacting our anchor and making a clunking sound during the night--this made it difficult for me to sleep.  The forecasted high temperature for today was only 59 degrees!

After a light breakfast of cereal, I got to work on cleaning and polishing the forward solar panels.  Fortunately, I could do this with the solar panels in place.  It only took maybe 20 minutes or so.

I cleaned and polished the forward
solar panels with Novus #2.

Like previously, I noticed the increased solar power generation immediately after cleaning.  I also purchased some more Novus #2 since this will most likely have to be done regularly in the future while in the Bahamas.

The three boats in the foreground are tourist
boats that regularly ply the waters
around St. Augustine.

This morning I emptied the 5-gallon container of fresh water that is kept on deck into the forward water tank.  Later, I filled the 5-gallon jug at the fuel dock.

This reminds me: I need
a shower very badly.

I went into the marina, took a nice hot shower and got a bag of ice cubes.  At this point, I waited for Maggie to arrive...


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