Saturday, January 8, 2011

Wind, Wind, Wind

SHIP'S LOG:

When you want wind, it never seems to be around. when you don't want it, you get more than you need or want. Today, it is the latter with winds 15 to 20m gusting to 25 to 30. It made going to get the batteries in Jerry's boat a rather "wet" procedure, as his boat doesn't have a lot of freeboard and wave, stirred up by the wind, kept climbing aboard. And this after I had just dried out from a couple of days before.

The batteries are all in place an working just find. It took a bit for me to figure out how to reboot the battery monitor, but Chuck, who knows seemingly everything, put me on the right path and BINGO, all is right with the world . . .except for the wind.

It is in the 70's and that's fine with me, except for the wind, and it will be so for the next few days . . . .and the wind is supposed to died down tonight.

Tomorrow Jerry and I will overdose on football at his place, no wind there, and hit a dive called "ARCHIE's" which supposedly sells more Bub than any other place around. Reported to have the greatest burgers and fries, and no wind to speak of. It is something like "The Seahorse" in Noank and "Hughie's" in New London used to be. Evidently the lady who owns it has an ongoing war with the City of Ft. Pierce over something, probably zoning or some such nonsense, especially since it is right in the beach, but hopefully it will survive intact and unchanged, at least until tomorrow.

It is great to be electrically back together. Before the new batteries were installed, I literally had to run the engine to run anything electrical that was part of the boat, like the propane system for cooking, or had to hook things up to my portable generator, like my laptop and charges for the phone and the handheld radio. It was a royal pain and noisy as well, and that meant I had to select the proper time to run stuff so as not to"dist rub the neighbors." Well, no more of that, the new batteries stay charged up and topped off by the wind generator and no one new has dropped a hook where I am. That will probably change before too long as it is getting to the time when people start looking for a place to spend the night at anchor. Of course, the wind may discourage most as it is right out of the West and that is the most exposed direction in this anchorage. It is fairly well protected on all sides except the West and when the wind dies down tonight, it will be a comfortable spot as it was last night. The wind is supposed to shift to the North/ North West over night and drop to 5-10 and be from the East tomorrow, again 5 to 10.

I'll be sticking for awhile, probably another week and then head off south, at least to Stuart and/or Port St. Lucie. I wonder what the wind will be like there?