We made pretty good time sailing and moored right across from Sebastian marina in the ICW. This proved useful as in the morning, the battery decided it didn't want to have enough energy to turn on the engine. What a lovely surprise! We tried using the generator we just got and that didn't work. Wind was coming right out of the north so we definitely couldn't sail back. After all of that, we called in BoatUS and tried jumping it... Also no dice. Ended up being towed back to our marina. We called JT and he said he'd help us on Sunday morning.

So we spent Saturday night going back and forth between hardware stores and home trying to find a shackle that would fit the screacher (that's its name so sayeth the manual) since we left without it on initially. We eventually got desperate and put on a soft shackle. After furling it and everything we realized we put it on backwards. Oh well. That's a problem to fix later, it'll do for now.

Sunday we learn we're glad we didn't make the crossing. TWO of our three batteries, the two home ones, are dead and mostly dead. The generator was built with the polarities reversed, which rather than being a Sci fi plot point ("Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!") is a fire hazard and useless. It also runs at half capacity, and is why it didn't immediately ignite when we tried running it. Overnight we drained the starter battery and it just didn't have the juice to go. Thanks, JT for the wonderful analysis of our vessel! By removing the two garbage batteries from the circuit it should be able to go straight for the starter instead of trying the home battery first and failing. That's why jumping it didn't help.

We bought a lithium ion 1000A jump starter kit for the boat and decided to try our journey again. This time, we'll be conservative with our power usage at night and worst case jump it. We were being very flippant with the batteries that night (phone charging, lights, fans, water pressure) so this should fix the problem. Right now we've been blasting through the ICW and have already passed Friday night's mooring point.


We even found a stranded family fishing. While the powerboats blasted by, we putter by slowly enough to hear their little girl cry "Help! The engine won't start!" They were up the creek without a paddle! Quite literally. No VHF radio, no BoatUS...if we didn't come by they would've been kinda screwed. We motorsailed to our mooring spot for the night and Shawn dinghied them back to their flats launch (quite a long journey). We wouldn't have been able to fit!