Thursday, October 16 — Dawn this morning.

Yesterday morning, Eric was busy with more boat maintenance. He changed the batteries in the refrigerator sensors. He unpacked the lazarette in order to access the wireless temperature sensor for the inverter blower and changed the batteries in it. Eric was relieved that the system remembered all the settings and he didn’t need to reprogram the settings.

We have two modes of operation: anchoring and marina. When we’re in a marina, some of the gear that we need for anchoring gets stowed in the dinghy. He unpacked the dinghy so that he could work on it. Then he tested the new dinghy motor battery that he’d bought at the boat show (it had arrived via UPS a couple of days ago) and confirmed it worked.

Next he tackled the handles. Our dinghy has 6 handles that were factory installed. As we’d already mentioned, two had broken. While we were in Norfolk, Eric had purchased special line specifically for the handle repair project. He installed the lines and the handles (the one he’d purchased and the hose). Much to his delight, the hose worked great as a handle — almost as good as the one we’d bought.

When he was done, he put all the stuff away that had come out of the dinghy and the lazarette, which was a significant task.  

At one point, we all took a break from chores/school so we could go say our goodbyes to Blue Heeler, who were leaving today to start heading south. Since we were going to the Eastern Caribbean and they were going to The Bahamas, we likely wouldn’t see them again. The hardest part about boating is leaving the friends that have been made.

After we finished chores/school, we went to The Market for lunch. Now that the boat show was over, the tents and other obstructions were being removed, and we were starting to see what the City Dock area actually looked like.