Days 2-317 to 319 at Green Turtle Bay Marina

     After about 300 miles in three long days, we were definitely ready for some down time! We are at Green Turtle Bay Marina, which is a favorite among Loopers. The marina is mainly covered slips, but most of the transient boats are put in the less desirable open slips. Luckily for us, Lucky Us (sounds like some kind of funky play on words) was soooo big that they decided to put us in a covered slip. We docked with the bow pointed into the slip, which means that the stern, which is barely under the "roof",  is pointed more or less due south.  Therefore, we can put the satellite dish on the aft end of the flybridge, and in that location the dish should have an unobstructed view toward the appropriate satellite... Nothing like planning ahead!

     The picture at the left gives a partial overview of this huge complex. There is a sailboat dock (uncovered) on the right. At the far end of the sailboat dock is the (elevated) private yacht club where transients are "Temporary Members". Above the sailboats in the hillside is a row of one bedroom condos, and above them and scattered elsewhere are detached 2 story condo town houses. In the center you can see the sterns of about seven boats, and behind them is the office, bathrooms and laundry. Toward the left is a row of low buildings that house the marine store and several repair shops. This is one of the more complete full service marinas for many miles around. They also have a fitness center with an indoor pool, exercise room and spa. I am sure that I have missed a few things, but maybe you can begin to see why this is such a popular stop for Loopers.

      As we came up the Ohio River yesterday, we had the choice of two rivers to enter. The Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers enter the Ohio River 11.8 miles apart, but each has a lock and dam slightly up river. It turns out that the Kentucky Dam (Tennessee River) is only 2 miles in a straight line  from the Barkley Dam on the Cumberland River. On Day 2-316 we made the decision to take the longer route via the Cumberland River, since we knew that we would have had a minimum of a 2.5 hour wait for a lock through on the Tennessee River at the Kentucky Lock and Dam. Also, the lakes behind each dam are at (more or less) the same level so they are connected by Barkley Canal, which we will go through later on Day 2-320, since ultimately we want to go up the Tennessee River.

Day 2-317 First full day at Green Turtle Bay Marina
     We both slept (on/off) for nearly 12 hours! Whew! It was a sure sign that it had been a tiring trip the past 3 days when even the Admiral could sleep in so long. We headed to "Dockers", which was the café practically at the end of our covered pier. It is only open for breakfast and lunch, which seems to be typical of many small cafes lately. We both had salads, and of course, mine was a Caesar with grilled chicken. The Admiral had mixed green salad with grilled chicken and blue cheese dressing. After lunch we made reservations for a van from Patti's Restaurant to pick us up for dinner. Patti's is an 1880's style restored village built around the restaurant a little over a mile from the marina. Fortunately (?), the shops in the village were all closed when we arrived for dinner. It turned out that the driver was also a porter at the restaurant. They obviously get a lot of business from the marina and are quite accommodating. The restaurant had a number of rooms along with a large foyer. All were done in rough cut cedar, and they were all very heavily decorated. The foyer and one large dining room were already done for Christmas, and evidently they start this process as early as the first of August. There are ads on signs inviting people to the Lighting Celebration at the beginning of November. We ate in a dining room that was about 30 feet square, and the main theme was large (from 6 inches to over a foot) cloth and paper roses that were strung in a vine like network all over the room. Like I said, the decorations were really intense and almost overpowering. The Admiral had the thinner version of the house specialty two inch pork chop. I had a very tasty pork tenderloin. The food was really good, and we shared a dessert as if we were not already stuffed. We got back to Lucky Us about 8:30 pm and tried to stay awake for an hour before going to bed.

Day 2-318 Second full day at Green Turtle Bay Marina

     In the morning we took the marina courtesy van to Paducah, Kentucky about 25 miles away. The picture at the right shows the sign at the marina entrance. ...and yes we did see turtles on logs and rock sunning themselves. Our main goal was to purchase a new inverter for the house battery bank. This battery bank is what powers all of the 12 volt DC equipment on the boat, We also attach two inverters to it to convert 12 volt DC into 110 volt AC power. We use the smaller one of the inverters to power electronics like wifi, printer, TV, satellite dish, etc. This inverter produces current that is in the shape of a sign wave, which is the same as the power you get in your home/office. The inverter that we replaced has a much higher output (2,000 watts) but produces what is called a modified sine wave, which is really a "square" wave. It is perfectly acceptable to power AC motors like those in refrigerators as well as other appliances such as the coffee maker and the induction cooker. This is the inverter that we use whenever we are away from the dock to power the refrigerator. Without the inverters we would have to run the generator virtually all of the time that we are away from the dock. Running the generator is both expensive since it uses about 1 gallon of diesel fuel per hour, but the engine is also noisy.  It is also essential when we anchor out over night and do not want to run the generator. This system had not been performing at all well. There could only be two problems, which means either a bad inverter or a bad bank of batteries. We got back to the boat and installed the new inverter. It performed better than the old one, and the 110 volt Ac power output lasted longer than before. However, the battery bank is very powerful, and we should be able to run the refrigerator alone for perhaps 48+ hours without recharging the batteries. At this point, all evidence pointed to bad batteries. More to check tomorrow...
     While we were using the courtesy van, we also got groceries, and returned to the marina within the 2 hour time limit for the van. We had a leisurely lunch on board Lucky Us. By then it was nap time for me, and the Admiral headed off in time for an appointment for a pedicure and manicure at the spa. Duly pampered, we spent the rest of the day on the boat and even managed to stay awake until the 10 o'clock news...

Day 2-319 Third (and last) full day at Green Turtle Bay Marina

     The Admiral has been continuing her early morning walks, and she has seen quite a few deer on the marina property around sunrise (picture at left).
     I rode my electric bike over to see the marina service manager about 11:00 am. I had done all of the tests that I could do on the battery bank using our multimeter. The next step was to check each individual battery using a "load tester".  The service manager was very accommodating and insisted that he would personally come to the boat and do the tests. We arranged to meet at Lucky Us at 1:30 pm, as the Admiral was just arriving on her bike so that we could ride into town for lunch. We first went to the grocery store, which had just (today) re-opened after a 6 week renovation. One thing that they added was a café run from the deli counter. So, for lunch we had very good sandwiches made to order. We headed back to Lucky Us with a good sized load of groceries and full stomachs.
      The service manager was polite enough to call and say he would be 20 minutes late, but we were soon gathered around the batteries in the engine room. The load tester puts a load (i.e. draws power) on the battery for a few seconds and checks how the battery responds. The load lowers the voltage in the battery, but it should "bounce back" quickly to its original voltage. Of the 5 batteries one passed, one was marginal and three failed the test. This is good news, except these marine deep discharge batteries are more expensive than your normal car starting battery, of course.
     Fortunately, we had already reserved the courtesy van for a four hour period so that we could go to Paducah to see the movie "The Maze Runner". First we had to get the batteries up out of the engine room and off the boat. Then we loaded them onto a cart for the trip to shore. As if we had not worked hard enough already, the ramp from the dock to land was about 150 feet long and went up over 30 feet. Even taking just 2 batteries at a time, it was hard work pulling the cart up the ramp in the hot sun! After loading the batteries into the van, it was time to head to Paducah to see the movie and enjoy the popcorn. Then it was off to buy new batteries.
    We got back to the marina about 8:00 pm, and we had to reverse the process of getting the batteries back down into their battery box in the engine room. UGH! In out grand plan of things tomorrow is Saturday, and we had already made reservations at another marina only 20.5 miles away. Normally, we would have installed the batteries in the morning before we left on the short 2.5 hour trip. Unfortunately, we could not do that since we had to be all settled into the marina before the Aggie football game at 2:00 pm. So, we really needed to install the batteries that evening. It was hard physical work lifting the 60 pound batteries, etc. Then we had to reconnect all of the batteries to each other as well as to the boat, the two inverters and the battery charger. That amounts to a total of 38 different ends of wires. After checking all of the connections to make sure that we had all the pluses and minuses correct, we turned on the system and tested everything. So far so good, but now we would not know for sure until all of the batteries were fully charged over night. I turned on the battery charger, and we had to wait until the morning to see if we had actually fixed the system. Of course, by the time we finished the work it was 10:30 pm, and we were both very tired! Our 3 days at Green Turtle Bay were nice, but obviously, they were nowhere near as relaxing as we had planned...