Titusville - Getting Fleetwing ready for the trip south

 

Freshly cleaned - sort of 

No boat is never “ready” to depart on a long trip. It’s a matter of doing enough to make it usable. The basics include cleaning and other housekeeping chores but then there are the “systems” that need attending to. In my case, I need to breathe life into the Genset which refused to start the last time it was asked to do its duty (pretty please - didn’t help). I think the problem is related to the long cable run between the starter battery and the Genset, much longer than it should be (other side of the boat to “balance” weight) with the attendant voltage drop. My first attempt at a “fix” will be to shorten than run by putting the starter battery adjacent to the Genset. Wish me luck.

Typical stance - looking for food - he’s very patient

And what boat list of things to do would not be complete with work on a head? The forward head is fine, the aft head has problems. With visitors coming down in March, it has to be fixed. However, a bright spot is that the repair of the aft swim platform through hull did indeed fix the slow leak which pooled water in the  bilge - it’s dry as a bone now. So it is possible to fix things on a boat, sometimes I wonder - since that leak had been with me for the better part of 10 years. For boat chores, justly proud, I included a photo of a relatively clean Fleetwing - not perfectly clean - but much better than before.

As per our custom, we order groceries with the Walmart app for pickup at their local store. In the past, we ordered, got a time, parked in one of their designated slips and the groceries were loaded into the truck, no problem. However, everybody must have discovered the free service. We arrived and found a long line of cars waiting for a spot to pick up their order, some we were told was over an hour wait! With that, we begged off, cancelled our order, and went off to Publix.  Walmart could not keep up with the demand for pickup groceries - at least today. 

The weekend is upon us and we will take a trip over to Black Point tomorrow for birding photos although there’s lots of birds right around the marina. I haven’t seen any manatees around yet there are plenty of birds - which I try to keep away from Fleetwing since I just cleaned it. We’re trying to train Hoolie to keep the birds off the boat but not with much success so far.