November 18-19 2015 Palatka

November 18 2015

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We woke up to an intense rain shower.   After I closed everything up, of course it stopped and the sun peeked out for a few minutes.  And then shortly after, dark heavy clouds rolled in with another intense but short-lived rain shower.  For the next 6 hours this was the pattern.  Bursts of intense rain, followed by sun.

We were effectively tied to the boat since taking the dinghy down and running it the mile or so to town while in a rain shower somehow missed our list of favorite things to do.

I also didn’t want to haul the anchor up and travel to Murphy’s Creek where we would have to re-anchor, most likely in driving rain.   Cajoling someone to stand in the rain to determine if the anchor  set is, well, fraught with risk of mutiny.  Besides at least here there is a town.   Murphy Creek has only critters which I think are hunkering down for the winter.

So we just stayed put.

In mid afternoon the sun came out for a few hours and it got hot.  Then, the clouds began to roll in again which is consistent with the forecast which did mention clouds.  The other details such as rain and temperature, not even close.

We are supposed to be drenched tomorrow during the day so we had planned on staying put again.  Seeing no reason to suspect an erroneous forecast, I’m looking to where we can anchor tomorrow if by chance there are forecast errors.

Meanwhile it’s another bottle of Pinot Noir for us tonight

November 19 2015

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It’s a gray, overcast day.  Winds clocked around to the south and will move through to the northwest tonight leaving us sort of unprotected.  But they aren’t strong so no worries unless we run into a heavy thunderstorm.

I changed the dinghy outboard oil and filter today.  It took twenty minutes.  Just have to start it up and check for leaks and maybe add additional oil.

Yellow Rescue Tape to the rescue

Also found two broken clamps on the port engine exhaust.  It’s a large diameter tube which carries engine exhaust and cooling water out the back of the boat.  I had two clamps on it and they both corroded through because of a small leak in the hose.  We’ve been in salt water most of the year and the leak was sufficient to rust away two big stainless steel clamps.  I used Rescue Tape to seal the leak until we can replace the hose in a few weeks.  And then used my last large clamp to replace the corroded ones.  It should hold together for the 100 miles or so we have to travel before we get to the boatyard.

We did fabricate a rough cover for the windlass.  We used some old, left over Sunbrella that was left on board and it worked great.

We were getting sporadic internet connections from Beef-O-Grady's across the river buts is glacially slow and tends to drop out quite a bit so its back to the cell phone.   We've used 6+ GB already.  Guess we are data hungry?

Otherwise we haven’t done much today.  Batteries are still weak, solar panels are struggling with the overcast skies.  Tomorrow we leave for somewhere.  Just not sure.  We have a slip reservation on the 24<sup>th at Ortega Landing Marina.  Maybe we'll head back to Jacksonville Landing.  Dont think we'll head south though because of that single clamp in the Port engine exhaust. 

There is a cold front that supposed to descend on us tomorrow and Saturday.  Temps will plummet to the 60's.  Frost on the windows maybe?</sup>