Friday March 2, 2018 - Rock Sound East to Rock Sound West

Today was my first time of running and hiding from the wind since I've been in the Bahamas.  The wind has shifted to the West and will veer to the NW and North for tomorrow and Sunday.  Seventeen other boats moved to the west side of the Sound last night and this morning.  When I came over at around noon, there were still 4 or 5 die hards still off the town docks.  There is nothing here on the west side so, except for dealing with the howling, it should be a relaxing weekend.  It is only about a mile across the sound so I can still see the town of Rock Sound nad can still get good reception from the BTC cell tower.  Monday it is supposed to let up for a couple days and then Part 2 of the front is scheduled to arrive.  It is supposed to make Part 1 seem mild.  Of course, that is when I'm supposed to pick up my friend Robert (Thursday).  Hopefully the forecast will change between now and then. 

This morning, I made a second attempt at uploading my videos.  It didn't go too well.  The Frigate's internet is sub 3G.   I got two small videos uploaded in two hours before giving up and heading back to the boat.  I'm not sure when my next chance will be but, in the mean time, I'm not taking a lot of new videos. 

I'm reluctant to mention this (for fear it will reverse) but I think I may have solved the problem with my two 50 watt solar panels.  About 2 weeks ago, I found a loose connection in a connector I use to disconnect the panels from the wire that runs into the boat.  It allows me to remove the panels and coil the wire up and stow it all below when I'm going to me sailing or motoring a lot.  Well, I fiddled with connector for 3 or 4 days and finally just replaced it with crimped butt connectors.  Ever since, I have not had a bit of trouble.  Another mystery solved?  So between that and the fact that the days are getting longer and the sun is getting higher, my solar is slowly doing a better job of meeting my energy needs.  Besides the fridge (that uses about 15 amp hours per day) the thing I'm currently typing on is the biggest energy hog.  It uses 3.3 amps which is more than the fridge.  But I gave up typing on phones and tablets 3 or 4 weeks ago and I'm glad I did.  It is sooo nice having the Honda generator to give the batteries a good charge every couple days.  I sometimes wonder how many times Ed has thought "I told you so" - and he did.