We initially aimed to get to Charleston by Tuesday, so that the boatyard could haul us out of the water on Wednesday. We’re waiting for them to give us a revised date.

1.24 – Thursday

Last night we endured incredibly rough weather, which was enough to remind us that we love Cooper River Marina…unless there’s a strong south wind. And when I say “rough weather,” I mean we were tied up to a dock and still didn’t bother trying to go to bed until things calmed down at 7am. And that’s how we kicked off my birthday.

All night, waves were regularly splashing up into the cockpit. This is kind of a big deal because when we were looking at the boat, our broker said waves should never enter the cockpit. He’s full of shit, this is not the first time it’s happened. It’s definitely the first time it’s happened at a dock.

After getting a little sleep, we tried to salvage our day of running errands. Sarah graciously lent us her car, so we’re ticking off boxes on our “Charleston” list. We finished up with my birthday treat: the big thrift store. Since we got such a late start today we only completed about half of our errands.

1.25 – Friday

We finally got in touch with the boat yard and Sean recommended we move the boat upriver on Saturday or Sunday so we could be ready right away on Monday for a haul out. It looks like either day will be fine for the trip, but since the boatyard doesn’t have shore power we’re staying at Cooper an extra night so we can run those sweet, sweet heaters.

We invited Randall, Chris and Sarah over for drinks and had a great time. They’ve been helping us out a lot so this was a small showing of our gratitude.

1.26 – Saturday

We sold the kayaks. I really wanted to keep them, but they took up so much space on the side decks and they blocked the salon windows. I want to use them, but I can’t stand them aesthetically. Now the decks have so much space!

Mid-afternoon the battery monitor had a red light kick on. The batteries were too hot and the whole locker smelled like battery acid. Kyle pointed the infrared thermometer at them and found one was over 150°F. That’s not good!

While we were mulling over the problem, Randall gave us a tour of the old casino boat. It’s been at Cooper since before we moved here in Oct 2017, and we’ve always been curious about what’s inside.

Turns out it’s kind of a mess! It’s a huge boat, and incredibly tall. It boasts not one, but TWO clawfoot tubs aboard!

It’s owned by a couple and they are in over their heads. The boat really needs a whole crew in order to keep up with maintenance and projects. We can barely keep up with our boat and it’s probably a tenth of the size.

We chatted with dock friends to see if anyone had a battery load tester we could borrow and fortunately, Randall was able to come up with one! We tested the batteries and found one bad, and the other three were borderline weak/good.

This is debatable, but common wisdom with batteries is that you don’t replace one, you replace them all. We talked about our options and decided it was better to replace them now, since we can’t guarantee how much longer they’ll last and this is the easiest time and place to take care of them.

So, instead of drinks on Randall’s boat, we made another trip to West Marine and spent $2000 upgrading our house battery bank to 6 AGMs instead of 4. They are much heavier than car batteries – just ask Kyle after he moved them all aboard! It sucks to have to replace them, but the ability to find the problem and solve it in a single day is a luxury we won’t always have.

Without any power, Kyle had to install them in the dark, but he got them hooked up before bed so we could run the heaters again (we can’t run shore power without batteries because our inverter is dumb). All the light in the photo below is from a spotlight on the table, which is pointing up and reflecting light off our new white hard top – amazing!

Tomorrow we’ll head upriver and hopefully Monday we’ll find out whether we’ve got a prop or not!