Sunday, December 21, 2014

Friday, Allegro and Dolci Vita came into the cove and so we immediately set up a happy hour on Regenero. We also had a progressive group snorkel in the after noon. Jim and I swam over to Dolci Vita and picked up Bill & Colleen, then we went on an octopus hunt, where we found two over along the wall…then we snorkeled up and thru the turtle gauntlet, and over to Allegro, where we dropped Bill and picked up Lee & Sharon, and went back to hunt octopus while Jim headed over to see Charles & Leslie. Bill eventually swam back home…after he warmed up, and then Colleen headed off. Lee and Sharon headed back to Allegro, but not before Lee met Jim and deep dive snorkeled to retrieve my swim bottoms that fell off the lifelines a day or so ago.

Since Jim and I were still in the water, we headed over to Pappy’s Packet and invited Pam & A.D. to join us for happy hour…we had a fun four hours laughing a lot and meeting two new people…plus devouring a huge plate of nachos that Colleen made for us…mmmmm!

Saturday we did a little visiting and spent some time with Colleen & Bill catching up, then went over there for dinner with just the four of us. It was wonderful to spend a quieter evening talking about all kinds of things and learning more about two friends we so enjoy.

So today, Sunday Charles came over to help us look at our solar charger issue and Bill volunteered to join him. So we had two very high priced consultants (one works for rum!) over to trouble shoot our system…and trouble it was! Turns out that our solar panels are charging…but they are old and tired, and not kicking out nearly enough power to charge our batteries..AND our alternators are woefully under sized…and our battery bank is also um, kind of weak….soo all in all, well…we have some work to do to get things up to snuff. The good news is these two amazing guys knew EVERYTHING there was to know about batteries, solar, and electrics, and managed to rig a power source so that our generator can plug into the boat and we can run the battery charger! Yahoo…and while they were at it, turns out we pretty much can use our 220 outlets as 110 outlets, as long as we have the converters! It may cost us in equipment…but we learned a ton today and it will definitely improve the things we can do on the boat…We are so thankful for our cruising friends.

After working so hard, Jim put everything away, and I swam over to collect Leslie for a snorkel…we headed off around the key and managed to see 5 southern rays, a big turtle, a pair of angel fish, 2 spotted eagle rays swimming together and two octopus. Amazing! Turns out C & L had a spotted Ray jump into their dingy last night, and they had to get in and flip the big boy out, as well as the two remora that were bugging him and probably making him jump in the first place!

We had an incredible green flash tonight, and as Jim is out on the foredeck he just let me know that he caught a spotted ray doing a double jump right in front of the boat…glad to see it…and glad we keep our dingy hoisted UP!