Settled in to the anchorage for a few days as a big blow which is going to clock around the compass is forecast. This anchorage has pretty good protection from most directions and we're on a mooring ball so a lot more secure than on anchor, which could drag a bit if the direction of pull on the rode changes. The waterway in here is pretty tight with the blue channel being the deeper water, approx. 12' at high tide, with sand bars along the shoreline and in the middle so it's important to stay in the channel.

I did a dive to check out the boat bottom as we were not getting to the speed we should have under power. Larry had found some fishing line wrapped around his drive shafts and props so I thought we could have either the same thing or we had a lot of growth on the bottom from sitting in the marina for 2 months.

So I jump in and go under and the first thing I see are 2 fish roughly 3' in length beside our keel. My first reaction was sharks! But upon a second look they turned out to be remoras. These fish are freeloaders that usually attach themselves to larger fish like sharks and rays and clean up bay food scraps. Why they decided to attach to our hull is anyone's guess but they may have contributed to our slower speed.

https://youtu.be/yzDWWzDenZQ?si=4XWYc6eKwoOswzSO

So after getting over that surprise, I had a look at our prop and found that the sacrificial anodes on our propellor and drive shaft were virtually gone! These anodes are on the boats metal equipment and are designed to decay over time due to electrolysis between the water and the metal on the boat. These anodes were new in the spring when the boat was launched and I did buy units that were supposed to suitable for salt water. But, they're gone now. Anodes come in 3 different metals, aluminum, zinc and magnesium. Zinc is the proper metal for salt water, which was what I had bought from the supplier last spring.

The boats electrical system is all grounded and all metal components are bonded together including the rigging, mast, deck fill inlets, keel and engine. The thinking is that should the boat get struck by lightning there is a path to ground which is the water, But, if you read 1 of my earlier posts shore power in a marina can cause stray current to leak out into the water, which is a bad thing for both the boat and any live thing around that boat.

When we were at Ocean Reef and connected to shore power we had a few cases of our reverse polarity light coming on for no apparent reason. this means the positive and negative current flow as getting reversed. I found that if I unplugged and then re plugged in our shorepower cord the reversal was cleared. Not sure how this could happen, and intermittently at that, but I am thinking this may have a connection (pun intended) to our mysterious disappearing anode situation.

Larry carries a lot of spares for his boat as it is much bigger and has a lot of metal below the waterline. So he lent me a small zinc which I connected to the rigging via a copper wire and hung into the water. This is a temporary measure while I order and receive a set of new units from Florida. I have to have them flown in as there are very few marine suppliers in this part of the world. So they should be arriving by the 29th being flown into Staniel Cay, which is on our destination course.

Meanwhile, we were doing some boat cleaning as we were getting a build up of salt from the spray on the deck and our feet from being in the water when going to the beach. With high humidity the companionway steps and floors inside the boat were getting covered in salt which was sticky when dry and slick when damp. So we washed the cockpit and the steps and floors inside and now have a dunk bucket to clean our feet before going below. It seems to have really cut down on the problem. These are things nobody covers in their utopian Youtube episodes.

Sam did some inventory of food stashes as we will be in a place with a grocery store this coming week. She found that a bag of onions had started to go as they had been wet when they were purchase. Also the choice was thrown them out or salvage what we could and cook them up. Getting ride of garbage is a problem for boaters. Organic scan be thrown overboard if you are 3 miles offshore but not in anchorages so throwing them out was not our first option. So in efforts to avoid the 96 tears that goes along with onion peeling, we set up chopping station in the cockpit where there was plenty of ventilation, courtesy of the days old 20 knot wind blowing, and timed the bad parts and diced the reminder. Sam then fired them up and they're now in the refrigerator awaiting use in many of Sam's excellently creative recipes.

https://youtu.be/DE8ThaDaUdw?si=_XuvqdsJhf4cu9fo

Today's photo is looking at the mooring field and the different colours of water indicating both depth and bottom composition.