Brrrr

We woke up this morning to temperatures of 57 inside the cabin and 52 in the cockpit. It could have been worse, it was 43 outside the enclosure. Brrrrr. We fired up our little propane heater and warmed up the cabin. Later on the sun warmed the cockpit inside the enclosure to almost 80. We wanted to retain all of that heat to help keep us warm tonight. 

Yesterday morning we took the shuttle to the grocery store and picked up a few fresh foods. The casseroles I prepared and froze at home to be heated and consumed on passages thawed long ago. We have been eating them before they go bad. We picked up a few frozen entrees at the store that we hope will last until we do get the opportunity to cross over to the Bahamas. After the grocery store we rode the shuttle to downtown again. This time with our friends Jean and Michael. Jean bought a Charleston walking tour guide and we used that to explore on foot. It was a gorgeous day and we saw a lot more of this beautiful city. 

When we checked into Charleston Harbor Marina 5 days ago we opted not to hook up to shore power. We wanted to see how our new batteries and solar panels would do on their own. The first day the solar panels charged the batteries right up. The next 2 days were cloudy so the charge on the batteries dropped. By yesterday morning they were 25% charged. Since they are lithium ion batteries that isn’t a problem. Yesterday was a sunny day and the batteries charged up to 65%. This morning they had dropped to 45%. By late this afternoon (another sunny day) they were back up to 85%. Not bad!

The stiff NE winds that we have had for the past few days are supposed to ease up a bit by tomorrow morning. We decided to take the opportunity to make another coastal hop down to Brunswick, GA. The conditions will be more “gnarly” than we have had on our recent passages but not as bad as our passage to the Bahamas last fall.