Saturday, April 27, 2013

Back in Marathon

We left Tavernier on Friday afternoon at about 4:20 pm. We traveled three hours and then anchored in Matacumbe bight. It was a good but windy night. We are still learning to trust this new Lewmar anchor, so we got up several times to make sure we were not dragging. All was fine till we got up and the motor would not turn over. The batteries were low. I don't think the alternator on the main engine is working. We had to start the generator and wait about an hour before we could start the main engine. That will be high on my priority list to fix. The rest of the day went well. We got into Boot Key Harbor about 2:20 pm. We picked up a mooring next to the one we had Morgan on last year. We put Rosie in the water and went in and paid for a month. It feels really good to be back. It actually feels like we are cruising again instead of just living aboard a boat.

Boot Key Harbor from the Flybridge.

Enjoying the day.

Getting ready to go under the Seven Mile Bridge.

Getting Rosie down from the trip.

Ah, time to sit and enjoy.

Friday, April 19, 2013

It's been awhile.

Boot Key Harbor from the top of Morgan's mast.


It has been awhile since I blogged. I have been in Indiana and New Orleans. It was good to see the family in Indiana. I got called to work an oil spill in New Orleans but it did not last long. I was happy about that as I am not a fan of N.O.

I got back to Island Queen last Monday. I stopped in Miami on the way here and picked up a new refrigerator. The one we had was only 120 volt AC. The new one is 120v ac and 12v dc. We are moving back to Boot Key Harbor in Marathon at the end of the month. We will be on a mooring, so the only ac power we will have will be from our Honda generator. So the 12v fridge was a must. I also order a bunch of LED replacement bulbs so I can change all the lights over to LED.

The last few days have been busy getting the boat ready for the trip and to live without a water and electric connection. We had an ancient Onan diesel generator on Queeny that still barely worked, but it was loud, stunk, and vibrated the whole boat. I took it out today. I had to almost totally disassemble it in order to get it out of the engine room and through the salon door. The other problem with it was that when it was installed they put it on the starboard side rather than in the middle so we could not put water in the starboard tank without making the boat list  to one side. It is a great relief to have it gone. Another project i completed this week was to clean the heat exchanger for the main engine. It was so clogged that I do not know how the engine did not overheat.

A couple more days of work and I think Island Queen will be ready for the move. We can't wait. Sharon and I really enjoyed being at Boot Key Harbor while living on Morgan. It should be even more enjoyable on Queen.

Weather permitting we will be underway Friday afternoon and arrive in Marathon on Saturday. We will post pics on the weekend.

Mike