We left St. Simon’s Island bright and early, wanting to get to our anchorage at a reasonable time. We had a series of three anchorages planned, with careful orchestration of location, tide tables, and length of day, trying to have the best possible runs through some pretty shallow and tricky spots in Georgia and the Carolinas.
The anchorage we’d originally planned wasn’t going to offer us much protection from the ever-present wind, so after checking it out and rejecting it, we backtracked a mile or so to an anchorage we’d passed that looked like it might have more trees for wind protection. We motored in, set the hook, and sat back and relaxed! I’d planned a supper of marinated pork chops, salad, and baked beans. The chops were marinating, so we had some time before we needed to cook.
When the time came to fire up the genny, she started right up. Then she stopped. Before I’d even flipped any switches – I was still letting her warm up! Must be an aberration. So, we fired her up again. She held a little longer this time, but conked out in short order, as soon as we started flipping switches. We tried her several more times, all to no avail. SHIT!
Well, the good news is that we’d purchased a one-burner butane stove, at the suggestion of our friends on Serenity, Pat and Kay, while we were traveling with them in the fall. Here was our chance to not let the generator ruin our time at anchor! Since we have brand new batteries, and we are smarter about managing power, charging the batteries isn’t an issue if we’re only out for one, and maybe even two nights at a time. And now we could cook, so THERE! Take that! Pretty smart, huh?!
I went upstairs to where we have the stove stored in the ice chest (the repository of all kinds of unlikely things, in addition to some drinks…), and brought that baby down to the galley. Set her up on the stove (makes a nice platform!), and fired her up. Perfect!
So, in spite of our dejection at having the generator not working AGAIN, we had a nice dinner. But we were dejected. And decided to make whatever changes to our plans necessary. Because the Onan headquarters is in Minnesota, and 2 hours behind us, Roy was able to call them and arrange to meet a mechanic the next day at our new next stop of Thunderbolt, GA, near Savannah.
Then next morning I boiled water for my tea in a pot on the stove, then got out the little red percolator that used to be Roy’s mother’s, which we’d brought to the boat with the Onan in mind…I loaded it up with coffee and water, went to set it on the burner, and discovered that the bottom of the pot is too small to fit on the burner arms. It tips and topples. So much for that brilliant idea! So I put a filter in the coffeemaker, put in the coffee, and poured boiling water through it, like an old-fashioned drip coffee maker. At least it was going into a thermal pot, so it would stay hot – a pet peeve of Roy’s.
Okay, beverages accomplished. We could both have cereal for breakfast, and be off with very little fuss. Roy used our stored hot water (now not so hot, thanks to the cool nights we were experiencing) to shower, and I saved the dishes (and those of the night before) and my shower for while we were underway, and the engine would be heating our water nicely.
We got to Thunderbolt, and who should we find there but our friends, Jim and Peg, on Sanctuary! We made arrangements to have dinner with them, and Roy got to work trying to hook up with the Onan mechanics. Our position, at this point, was that we didn’t care what was or wasn’t wrong with the generator, that at 62 hours, having been repaired three times already, it clearly wasn’t going to give us the reliability we were looking for, and that we wanted it off the boat. We wanted a generator that would work. Is that unreasonable? We didn’t think so.
We had a fun supper with Jim and Peg, whose paths I expect we’ll be crossing for a good portion of the summer, as they’re doing the loop, and so will be traveling many of the same routes as we, although not necessarily in the same order. Anyway, it was fun to see them and to catch up. They’re headed to the “Looper’s” Rendezvous in Charleston. We had carefully planned to be in and out of Charleston before the Rendezvous, but now that was in doubt. We were thinking we might have trouble getting dockage because of it. But I get ahead of myself.
Because our computer had been acting very strangely (the new HP that we bought in January), and seeming to cause our Maptech (navigation) program to crash, I decided that I needed to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. I’m sorry to say that I’m now really good at this, which is a sad indication of how many times I’ve had to do it! But it doesn’t get any more fun, and I now have to call to activate most of my installed programs, as you can only accomplish that via the internet a limited number of times, and I’m way over that number. After that, they think you’re just giving the program to all your friends to use for free, so you have to call to get them working. SO…I had my work cut out for me while we waited for the Onan mechanic.
And waited, and waited…lunchtime came and went, and still no sign of them. We had hoped that they’d be in and out in the morning, and that we’d be able to leave in the afternoon, at least for a short run, but no dice. Finally, two men arrived, and they began the testing. Fortunately, the genny did exactly for them what had happened to us, which was to conk out before any switches had been flipped. Then it died several other times, but after that, it ran like a top for the rest of the afternoon. Go figure.
It was a LONG day, and at the end of it, I finally had the computer up and running, with only a minimum of lost data. (I always seem to lose something when I have to go through this process!). Roy was talking to the Onan people in Minnesota, who wanted the mechanics to return to do some more tests the next day. I put my foot down. Since I wanted them to get their *%&&** generator off my boat, they could do all the tests they wanted when they got it to the home office. I didn’t want them on my boat anymore! We would be leaving the next day!! Period. Any questions?
We went to Beaufort, SC the next day, one of my favorite towns. The last time we were there, about a year and a half ago, they had the entire waterfront dug up, and there were piles of dirt everywhere, and it was really a mess! Well, they’ve finished the construction, and it’s really beautiful! They’ve build a big park area all along the waterfront, and people were out all over the place enjoying it. The weather was beautiful, and it was great.
I borrowed the courtesy car to make a grocery run, and came back heavy laden. Fortunately, I was able to find a cart to help me transport the very heavy bags, and a friendly gentleman helped me down the steep ramp (it was low tide, and I mean, this thing was probably at about a 65º angle!) He grabbed one side of the handle and I the other, and we each grabbed the rail with our other hand, and let the cart gently pull us down the ramp. Whew!
Roy was on the phone with our friends at Onan, and it seemed that they thought there was nothing wrong with the generator. They thought we must have something wrong with our fuel. They wanted to divorce the generator from our main fuel supply, and run a separate feed somehow, and then all our problems would be solved. I don’t think so!The other option was to remove the generator from the boat, and work out some kind of agreeable arrangement with us. Yes, folks, that’s what we want!!
Finally, it looked as if we might get what we’d been asking for! Someone from Onan headquarters was supposed to call on Monday (this was Friday, the 13, actually), so we put it to bed for the weekend, with high hopes for positive negotiations on Monday.
The weather was supposed to deteriorate as Saturday progressed, so we left Beaufort early and made the run to Charleston. We had been successful finding dockage, so got ourselves tucked in before the wind really picked up. Once it did, it BLEW! It blew hard all night then clocked around a bit and blew some more. We went out to dinner at our favorite Charleston restaurant, S.N.O.B., (Slightly North Of Broad), and weren’t disappointed. We each had wonderful meals, and fine service.
When we got back from dinner, we put out more fenders, double checked our lines, and went to bed. In the middle of the night, Roy got up and put out the rest of our fenders, so that all that we owned were in use. Thank goodness we’re well-equipped! Some of the other boats in the marina were having a tough time of it. We had even loaned the guy in front of us a couple of fenders until he was able to get to a store to get a couple more of his own.
The next day, the wind just blew and blew. I pretty much stayed in the boat and worked on the website, which I hadn’t had time to do with all else that had been going on. The wind direction switched so that now it was literally blowing water out of the marina, and in the middle of the night, when I woke up and noticed that the boat wasn’t slamming up against the dock any more, I looked out the window and saw only mud. No water anywhere! We were literally in the mud! It did make for a better ride in all the wind, and I knew that the water would be back as the tide came in, so there was no need to panic. But it was an amazing sight! It was repeated the next day at low tide, and here are a couple of photos:
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You don’t see that every day, in a marina!! The wind continued to blow all the next day as well, and with it came a pelting of black grit that was flying around in the air. Who needs to exfoliate? Just stand outside and face the wind, and let nature do her thing! Only kidding, it was actually horrible, and I stayed in the boat again all Monday, too.
Monday was the day that Onan was supposed to call to “negotiate” – but we heard nothing. Finally, at the end of the day, Roy initiated a call, and Dave from Onan called back within an hour. He reiterated that they don’t think there’s anything wrong with the generator, and Roy reiterated that we don’t want it on the boat any longer. He told Dave what we wanted them to do, which is to take the generator out at their expense and give us some money to buy another (non-Onan) generator and have it installed, and they went round and round for a while before Dave said he’d call back after he’d had a chance to meet with some other people who would be involved in making the final decision. There began the period of several days of waiting for them to get back to us, as we continued our cruise north.