On Tuesday, March 17, Christi woke up before dawn. She sat outside on the bow and stargazed for a few minutes. With no light pollution, the stars were luminous. Sitting there made her realize the sounds of the water in this spot were almost musical. The current hitting the boat sounded like gentle running water, and there was also the crashing of waves behind the barrier island. She wasn’t out there long before large, ominous clouds rolled in and blocked the view. We did have a little bit of color at dawn, but the dark clouds kept rolling in and blocked the sunrise.

As was forecast, it rained in hard in the morning, then slowed down to on-and-off rain for the rest of the day. Usually it was moderate showers, but a few hard showers did pass over us. We were happy about that since the boat really needed the wash down. The wind changed direction several times throughout the day, and we were glad we’d chosen an anchorage with the 360 protection as it was comfortable onboard despite the tumultuous winds.

Eric noticed an error message on dinghy motor’s display panel saying to recalibrate. He pushed the appropriate buttons and nothing happened. He unplugged battery and plugged it back in. Then when he pushed the buttons to recalibrate, it worked. He tested the motor. It worked. All seemed to be fine.

In the late afternoon, the boys from Clean Cup and Zimovia came over to play games. After they left, Eric looked at the dinghy motor panel again and saw it had the same error message. He figured he’d deal with it tomorrow. 

Wednesday was the full moon, which meant extra strong currents and extra big tide swings. After high tide had passed, Tiki, Zimovia and Clean Cup — all in catamarans — decided to move to Warderick Wells. But, since we could only move at high tide, we couldn’t go with them.

Like yesterday, it was very cloudy and rained all day. It didn’t rain as frequently or as hard as it had yesterday, but it was consistent. Being as we were alone in the anchorage, it was a very quiet day onboard. The most exciting event of the day was another plane landing and leaving from the anchorage.

Eric worked on the dinghy motor. Again, the buttons to recalibrate didn’t work when he pushed them. He cleaned the connectors with contact cleaner, hoping that would solve the problem. It did not. Then he unplugged and replugged the battery. It still didn’t work. He unplugged and replugged again. This time, the message said the motor was shutting down in 30 seconds and a timer started. He plugged it into the solar panel. The countdown stopped and he was able to recalibrate.

He decided to check to see if there was a firmware update. There was, so he created an account, turned on the bluetooth on the motor, and tried to connect. The update required that the motor was off, key was not in place and nothing was plugged in. It took a couple of tries, but he was able to connect and update the firmware. He plugged the battery back into the solar panel and all seemed to be fine. Until he unplugged it again — then the countdown to shutdown started again. Argh!

Wondering if the issue was the battery, Eric took the other (newer) battery and charged it up to full (via a wall outlet onboard). Then he swapped out the batteries. It still had the same problem — it would only stay on when plugged into the solar panel. Eric was baffled and speculated about potential causes: had moisture gotten inside from the heavy rains? Had the motor been hit and damaged?

Meanwhile, Christi and Keith did school, as usual. In the evening, we watched movies. In bad news, a mosquito managed to get inside and bit all of us up.