Friday, November 10, 2017
Docked slip 7 Oriental Marina, Oriental, NC

Communication Breakdown - What we have is a failure to communicate! Or, The lady that took my order for the hot water heater is from Massachusetts and I speak Virginian. Anyhow I ordered a F-600 hot water heater and this afternoon a S-600. F or S what’s the difference. Well the F model had all connections on the front of it and the S has the connections to the engine on the back. So, what? Turn it sideways and just hook it up. Never is it that easy. I certainly didn’t want to return it and go through that hassle of waiting more days. I did have to go back and get some longer hoses and the guy gave me a break on those and I had to extend the wiring a bit. So, now we have a new hot water heater that doesn’t leak, Except for the drip that I see at a hose connection. I take all the water pressure off and put more pipe dope on the threads and tighten it up. Re-pressurize the water system and drip ——— drip.. Not bad. But we are leaving tomorrow with it dripping and heading to Swansboro, NC. They have Ace hardware there and that’s where I need to go to get this bypass kit hose.

Did I mention it rained two days straight. Light at times and heavier. Very dreary. We really didn’t accomplish much, I finally found a method to copy routes to a flash card and then install them into my Garmin Chart-plotter. Believe me that was not easy. Several hours of trial and error until I hit the magic solution. It is much easier to plan route on a computer than the actual chart plotter that runs the auto pilot. But my route is now loaded into the chart plotter for tomorrows passage.
Susan did the laundry. That’s pretty boring to mention here. But, we couldn’t get that to dry on the boat with the rain. So, she hiked it to the marina laundry. Home type chores take lots longer to do on a boat.
It finally stopped raining this afternoon. And our stuck in 60° temperatures the past few days have dropped to 40°s. Windy and cold tomorrow is the forecast. We have about a 3 mile diagonal crossing the Neuse River. It should be fine. After that we will be in protected waters the rest of our 46 mile trip to Swansboro.
Today’s picture was hard to pick. I often have multiple shots I want to use. But this picture sure sums up what it’s looked like the past two days. Dreary. The picture is the tops of two shrimp boats in the late afternoon haze and rain. JUST DREARY.