Saturday, May 11, 2013

Navarre Beach

I spent the morning doing some re-wiring on my inverter and charging system. The port alternator was giving strange readings on the Link 1000, and I thought it was not performing properly. A call to Balmar, the manufacturer, confirmed the alternator was working fine. But the Link 1000 was  not displaying the full current the alternator was putting out. On their recommendation, I checked the wiring to the shunt on the negative side of the battery connection. Somehow, for the last eight years, this has been mis-wired!!  There was an extra connection on the battery side of the shunt that was connected to the negative bus bar on the port side, thus the Link 1000 was not seeing the full load. I am not sure how it worked all these years, but it was not working now. So I rewired the circuit to isolate the load from both port and starboard battery banks to go through the load side of the shunt. Everything works perfectly now. Thank you, Eldon at  Balmar!

Now that was done, we were ready to raise anchor and head east. We departed around 1pm and headed for Navarre. There is a Winn Dixie right at the bridge, and easy access to it from the public boat launch there. The Admiral had a list, and she was on a mission!

On the way there, I had to deal with issues with the electronic charting software I use. The newly released update to Furuno's MaxSea Time Zero, required in order to be able to run in Windows 8, has glitches.  It crashes periodically, at the worst possible moment. When it does, I lose radar, depth, and chart info. I do keep Coastal Explorer 2011 running in the background, so I can just switch over to that for chart display. MaxSea went wacky on me twice on the way to Navarre. I could get radar to display, but could not adjust range.

As we approached the Navarre Bridge, we noticed several work crews on barges around the bridge supports. We had to work around them to get off the ICW. We turned north along the bridge and anchored in about 8' of water, halfway to the public boat ramp from the ICW. As Paula and I were preparing to get into the dinghy, we had a surprise. Duke has decided that he likes dinghy rides, and nudged us out of the way as we were preparing to step down to the swim platform. He literally flew out of the stern boarding door and hopped into the dinghy. Paula and I looked at each other in astonishment. We had never seen this behavior before! Here he was, sitting in the dinghy wagging his tail.

Paula made her grocery run while I took Duke for his constitutional. She managed to leave her list behind, so did not get everything she needed. I think when she got to the wine aisle she got distracted. ;)

It was a short stop, and we were back aboard and underway an hour or so later. The wind has picked up a bit, out of the west. But the ride is still comfortable, and the next stop is only about an hour away. As we were heading out of Navarre, a Marine Corps Osprey aircraft buzzed us, twice. The second time around I managed to get a few seconds of video.

Osprey fly-by video

This was the highlight of our day. A short while later we arrived at Spectre Island and anchored behind it, protected from the wakes of boats passing by on the ICW.  It was perfect timing to have an adult beverage and watch the sunset. We sat on the top deck and grilled steaks and baked potatoes. After a fabulous meal we climbed into bed and slept like logs.

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