Palm Cove Marina, Jacksonville, FL

Today was a work day. I changed the oil and Susan did laundry and defrosted the refrigerator.
If only it were that simple.

The washing machine is great as long as you don’t get too far behind on dirty clothes. We find if we do a load near bed time and then dry them all night that is a pretty easy way to knock out the laundry. But sometimes we just fall asleep. You can’t run the washing machine underway. Or, we don’t think we can and don’t want to break it.

The refrigerator is a really electric efficient model that does not defrost. Defrosting wastes energy. But, then a frosted up refrigerator is probably not too efficient either. So, about every two weeks Susan defrosts the refrigerator. she didn't have time to defrost our freezer. then, there’s always the next layover day.


Changing the oil in the engine is really a two part process. The injector pump has separate oil from the main engine oil pan. The injector pump is very messy to drain and refill. I always make a mess. The main engine sump holds 3 gallons of oil. I have a very nice electric pump mounted on a 5 gallon bucket that I usually bring from home and take back after an oil change. I didn’t want to take up the space with that contraption on our cruise and figured I’d just use the hand pump. Well the hand pump would not work, so off to West Marine, a 2.2 mile walking round trip. Got a drill pump that was nice and compact. I had to do go through lots of spare parts containers on the boat to find fittings to connect the drill pump to the engine. But success and the next time I change oil it should be a breeze. But today, it took pretty much all day with lots of getting up and down and oily rags.

I was glad to have someone that had been reading our blog drop by the boat! Rodney has been thinking of getting a Mainship trawler and has been following my blog. He lives here in Jacksonville and when he saw we were at Palm Cove he came over for a visit. We had a great conversation about expenses and logistics of getting food etc. I keep telling lots of people the expenses are just not that bad with the trade off of not spending money at home. Also, navigation, weather and operation of the boat is actually easy as the AICW is pretty much ‘calm rivers’. You can run with rather brisk winds and have no trouble. The largest open water we have encountered is the Chesapeake Bay. If you can get past the Bay you can do the AICW!

Susan and I were both exhausted at the end of the day and had been told the restaurant, just steps from Palm Cove Marina, Marker 32 was really good. We had the best meal of our trip! The place was packed and we were glad we had reservations. Susan had crab cakes and I had fish of the day, grouper, the best Caesar salad, and fried green tomatoes. Wow, it was all SO good!

Todays picture is the plumbing parts container where I found the correct parts to adapt the drill pump to the engine drain hose.