Melborne - at anchor

Melborne Anchorage

We had the diver come this morning at 8:00 am to replace the zinc on the propeller and to look at the screen covering the intake to the engine cooling water. The zinc was almost all gone (last replaced in June before the summer launch) but the intake screen was fine, no problems. The diver comes to the marina often and the manatees all know him now. He recognizes them by the scars they carry. He calls one "C" by the C shaped scrape on its back and he paid a visit this morning while the diver was underwater. One time he made the mistake of using the scraper he uses to remove barnacles off the hulls of boats on "C". Well, "C" loved it and presented his other side for the treatment. After a bit, he paddled off and the diver thought that was the end of that - but the manatee returned with the rest of his family and the diver had to scrape his "wife" and "son" but gave up when the rest of the resident herd appeared, all 20 of them!!

Flew right over us!

So I got my zinc replaced and the intake screen was fine. I am now battling why the charging system seems to be cutting out (and them coming back on intermittently) while motoring. It seems to be a loose wire somewhere but sometimes that's hard to trace, will keep trying.

We take Hoolie to the sandy beach at right

A front is expected to roll through tonight with winds to 20 kts out of the northwest around 1:00 am so we looked for an anchorage with protection from wave action from that direction and found a nice anchorage in Melbourne. It even has a sandy beach (no mud!) for Hoolie and it's part of the causeway to the bridge so it's lit at night. On Friday we'll weigh anchor and head for our week retreat at Vero Beach before heading into Stuart for boat storage for December.