Passage - Canoe Neck Creek Anchorage - Boathouse Marina, Colonial Beach
11:54 AM Underway
2:18 PM Docked port side to A Dock
16 miles

We had a rough ride back to Colonial Beach. Just a bad angle for quite sometime. We decided to come back to this nice marina and do some maintenance. My horn isn’t working. I don’t usually use sound signals. But today it didn’t make a sound. I kind of want a new horn anyhow. I’d like one that sounds like a train.

Anchoring out last night our battery house bank ran down faster than it should have. The 4 golf cart batteries are 4 years old and should still be fine. But maybe not. I’ve taken good care of them. But still they are 4 years old. They've been to the Bahamas and back and lots of other cruising. Also we are energy hogs and have lots of those chargers everywhere. And, you know most things these days aren’t really off ever. They are in some standby mode until you push a remote or a touchpad. I unplugged all of those things and still I could see the house bank dropping. Yes, I have an inverter, and it uses some energy when converting 12VDC to 120VAC. It’s pretty efficient and I’ve had it for about 9 years and it has never pulled the batteries downline they dropped last night. I started my little Honda while we fixed dinner and used the heavy load of the microwave. The inverter is also a really good battery charger and properly bulk charged the house bank and then fell back to 13.2V float. I shut the Honda down a while before bed. This morning the Batteries were at about 12V. I tried to make coffee with the Mr. Coffee and the voltage dropped to 11.2V. So, I cranked up the Honda to make coffee. Shaking my head as I write that factoid. Also our 90 amp alternator was cranking out 60 amps the 2 1/2 hour trip back to the marina. The alternator usually puts out about 15-20 amps when we are cruising. Ha, maybe the horn is defectively pulling the batteries down. Anyhow, that’s putting a cramp in our anchoring out and I’ll be crawling all through the battery & electrical parts of Liquid Therapy tomorrow.

Rain is in the forecast and the temperatures are starting to feel like fall. This afternoon we put most of the flybridge enclosure on for rain and chill protection. I still did not put the door panels on as that can really make it hot if the temperatures go back up.

Thanks to Donna Guzman I really have realized my engine hour meter is really off. The other day I used my watch and got 3.6 hours . The engine hour meter recorded 4.2 hours. Must be set on Mars time or something. Or it’s just 40 years old and getting a bit off. I’ll order another one when I get back home. Wonder if it’s been off the entire time I’ve owned the boat? I’ve guessed it was my fault a few times for sloppy log keeping.

Today’s picture is the boat parade for the Blessing Of The Fleet. The sailing ship ahead of me and Liquid Therapy by accident. I didn’t realize what was going on until I saw the shore parade of firetrucks and the lonely sailing ship that I was following through the channel. All the workboats and Buy Boats left! I’m not sure what boats got blessed at the noon ceremony as the weather got a bit windy and no one showed up.