It’s been a minute since our last post, but we left off with Mark all alone in the sweltering Florida heat, on a mooring ball, out of freshwater and having electrical issues.

Let’s start with the water. Usually, it’s me that fills up the water tank. It takes a while to put 90 gallons in, but it’s really no big deal. We bought a water filter that fits onto the end of our hose and we just turn the water on at the dock and fill up. Now, our water gauge is broken, so I usually let the water overflow and that’s how I know the tank is full.

On this particular occasion Mark was filling up the tank and he thought he would be able to hear when the tank was full, and with practice, I’m sure he could. As it turns out, Mark misjudged and had not filled up the water tank all the way when we left the dock.

That was easy enough for him to remedy. We have two five-gallon jerry cans on deck that were already full of water, so he poured those into the water tank and then made a couple of water runs in the dinghy.

As soon as I got back to the boat we decided to turn one of our old beat-up sails into a boom tent, and that really helped with the heat. I’m not too proud of our craftsmanship, but it kept the sun from beating down on the deck and turning the interior of the boat into an oven.

The electrical was more complicated. It all started when we thought our fridge was broken. Mark called to tell me that the fridge wasn’t cold anymore, later that night Mark noticed the lights flickering. As total novices, we weren’t sure what this meant, but it couldn’t be good.

It wasn’t. Our wet cell house bank and our AGM starter could not hold a charge. They had been chronically undercharged for their entire lives. Thus, we found ourselves in dire need of a rather expensive upgrade.

Our batteries were in such bad shape, it was miraculous that we could start our engine and the first thing we did was order a new starter battery. Consulting with Cecilia Potts was enlightening and lead us to recalibrate our battery charger. We were particularly eager to chat with Cecilia, owner of Electric Marina because our ultimate goal is to repower our diesel engine with an electric motor.

St. Cecelia made a call to a distributor and we got a new starter battery quickly enough to leave on schedule. We also went ahead and ordered four new Battle Born lithium-ion batteries to replace our house bank. It would take those batteries a couple of weeks to ship from Nevada, but Cecilia had them shipped to her and agreed to meet us along the way.

In choosing to start our journey North with just the new starter and our old battery bank we knew that we would be roughing it for a couple of weeks. We had no idea what we were really getting into, but with our sights set on St. Augustine we prepped for our first passage. Boat cleaned and stocked with provisions we were ready to set sail.

As soon as I took that picture I ran around and turned off the lights to conserve power. The next morning we set sail.

If you want to know more about the kinds of batteries mentioned, or more about Electric Marina, click on the links in the article.