4 Oct 13

Another beautiful morning. We moved a couple of miles over to Bull Creek. We went about two miles further up the creek than either of the anchorages recommended in Active Captain; still plenty of water and the anchor grabbed immediately. Just after we got hooked, we spied an alligator swimming around and watched him stalk a number of turtles, without success, for nearly 2 hours. During the last half hour of this watch, another alligator joined the hunt, although I do not think they were cooperating.  

I made a reservation at Osprey Marina, about 7 miles from here, for Sunday night. We will go there for a pumpout, laundry and groceries and may decide to sit out the remnants of TS Karen, depending upon where it finally heads.

5 Oct 13

Foggy this morning, so we slept in (again). I had laid awake about half the night trying to figure out why my new (in May) battery meter is not telling the truth. It finally dawned on me that I must have wired it up backwards. So, today, I disassembled the after cabin and traced all the wires to/from the batteries to the switches, common ground and to the 500A shunt associated with the Victron meter. Sure enough, I had wired it up showing the engine starter battery as the primary and the house batteries as secondary; should have been the other way around. Now, everything makes sense. We can still run about 48 hours without charging, but the total current and amp-hours consumption now makes sense and seems reasonable. After lunch, we read and knitted and napped away the afternoon.  

We were awaken at 01:30 in the morning by a couple of guys in a john-boat moving slowly along the far bank of the river with a spot-light. I guess they were hunting turtles or gators or frogs. Terri was sure they were up to no-good and I started to practice squealing like a pig, but the “Deliverance” theme never started playing and they finally moved along. Actually, I did unlimber the flare pistol to defend us, but fortunately, it never came to that.