Day 7 - Sat 4 Jun 2016
Moored - Port Washington (Manhasset Bay), NY

[photo: brief sunlit scene before the clouds rolled in]

Those of you who feel this blog gets too wordy will be happy today. There was not too much to relate. We got up before 0500 because it felt right and noted that it was not very cool outside. That was a harbinger of things to come later.

I have been concerned about the house battery bank discharging much faster than it should for the loads it is carrying, so I set about trying to check a number of things. One thing I wanted to do was independently measure the current draw from the batteries with our normal load of just the refrigerator and the inverter that keeps our devices charged (cell phones, kindles, DustBuster, etc.).

When I tried to do that, I kept getting no reading. I finally took apart the test meter to find that circuit had previously been 'blown' by some over-current condition and it wasn't going to work. I next thought a simple ammeter would suffice for my purposes, but my quest to find one was fruitless. Diane and I did, however, take the dinghy to the dock and then walked over a mile to and fro stopping at several places.

Our treasure included a 5 gallon bucket (bigger than I wanted, but the only strong one I could find), a wicker-like decorative organizer to hold all the various phones, Kindles, books, etc., and sundry other items on our list. At least we got some exercise.

By 1100 we were back at the boat and it was very still, humid, and quite hot. The thermometer we bought read 88F in the boat cabin, so on came the generator and the A/C. I haven't made any good estimates of the actual cost of running the generator besides the modest fuel burn, but using $6 in fuel over 5 hours of running is very cheap compared to being in a marina at sometimes over $100 per night (especially up here in the Northeast).

The leftover chili was quite satisfying, despite the hot afternoon. It wasn't until about 1800 that the sun was obscured by solid clouds, a little breeze had started, and the temperatures started dropping. By 2000, it was actually a bit chilly, but I was not complaining, nor was Diane, already snuggled in the berth.

Like I said, this has been a somewhat boring portion of the cruise, but we fully expected that based upon our goals and timing. It will likely get livelier in a few days.