Day 24 staying in Carabelle while T.S. Andrea passes

Tropical storm Andrea made landfall about 4:00 pm today about 150 miles south of us.  Most of the rain was on the east and south sides of the storm.  The only real effect here was some on/off rain and an extra high high tide this afternoon.  We are now on the backside of the storm so the winds are out of the North but only 10-15 mph here.  It looks like we will be here until Saturday or Sunday. So, you will just have to wait to find out which route we are going to take.  The first picture is of the house bank of 12 volt batteries.

There are a total of 5 large batteries with  about 500 amp hours, which is a lot. We need this capacity to run the boat at night when at anchor, e.g. lights, TV, head, fans, etc.  We also use it duing the day with an inverter to convert 12 volt into 115 volt for the refridgerator. We have 3 other battery banks, including one with three batteries to start the main diesel engines. The other 2 banks are to start the generator and run the anchor windlass. So, part of my day was spent checking the water level in some 11 batteries.  Boring - yes, but necessary on a regular basis.

The other "routine" maintenance was to clean out the raw water strainers that provide cool sea water to cool the three diesels, heat pumps, and raw water wash down to provide high pressure water to clean the anchor and its chain as they are being retrieved. Altogether there are 5 strainers with wire baskets to catch the larger stones, algae, etc. The raw water for each strainer enters the hull though a seacock, which is essentially a large (1 1/2 inch diamerter) ball valve. The second picture shows 2 of the strainers (round top with light colored center), one seacock (with an arm to open/close the valve). Also, you can see one of the propellor shafts where it exits the hull through a stuffing box that allows the shaft to turn but keeps the water out.  All of the 5 seacocks, the 2 propellor shafts and two rudder shafts exit the boat below the water line, and  if any of them were to "break", it would mean big trouble.  Just one 1 1/2 inch hole in the bottom would allow over 2,100 gallons of water per hour to enter the boat, and we have 9 holes that size or larger. To put that in perspective our swimming pool back in Bryan only held 16,000 gallons... So, yes it was not a very exciting day, but these and many other systems on the boat need some tender loving care on a regular basis.

    We had dinner out again tonight at a different restaurant. Both of us had a Grouper Salad. The grouper (salt water fish) was broiled and an excellent topping for the salad. I eat a lot of Chicken Caesar and Taco Salads so this was a wonderful change/treat for me.

The next picture shows a view across the harbor over the bow of Lucky Us.  The harbor looks wide, but the shiny areas to the left of the burgee are actually tidal flats that are about to be dry land as the tide goes down. 

      I will close with one humorous note about the town of Carabelle as seen in the final picture.

The city actually advertises that they have the "World's Smallest Police Station".  We actually visited it and took this photo as proof...