1/23/15
Coconut Grove, Dinner Key FL
Posted by Bill
Last night I went to bed and I caught a fish while I was sleeping!
I got up today and looked out at the dinghy which was tied to the back of the boat, and there was this fish sitting right in the middle on it’s belly…lol! I have no idea why it decided to jump in here and have no idea what kind of fish it is. Pretty funny!
The last couple of days we have been exploring Coconut Grove and dealing with our boat batteries. I was able to isolate each battery one at a time and use the smart charger powered by our Honda generator, so we didn’t have to dock in the land of $3-7 per foot per night. I thought for sure the smart charger would find a culprit, but noooo, everything checked out. After talking to the electrician who installed our new inverter in South Carolina, the only thing it could be was the batteries. I got them at Walmart thinking that it would be easy to find a way to replace them if I ever needed to and where ever I needed to. So, I made a call to 6 different Walmarts in the Miami area. The people on the phone could barely speak english and did not understand what I was asking about. I called the Walmart in Ohio who understood me, and I understood them, and asked them how the warranty process worked, and it works like this: Bring the batteries in to Walmart, we will load test them, and if bad we will replace them. Ok…we live on a boat, with no car, the closest Walmart is 30 minutes away, and if we remove the batteries from the boat our refrigerator and freezer will not work and rot all of our food. How do we deal with that?! After much angst and research, we decided to push on to Marathon FL in the Keys, take a dock and have some local people there help us deal with the batteries. I also called Walmart customer support (central number) and they are trying to find a way for us to get a refund (just like Obamacare was going to reduce everyone’s medical expenses and you could keep your own DR). We’ll see. In the mean time, we are charging the batteries 2-3 times a day and praying they will support the electronics that run the boat as we move on to Marathon. The plan is to leave Sunday and arrive Monday, weather dependent.
Coconut Grove is a pretty good place to hang out. Most of the streets look pretty much like this:
There are some reasonable places to eat that we really liked, including this dive bar, Barracudas:
The mooring field is very uncomfortable in a wind with southerly components, but otherwise a good alternative and affordable. We had 15-17 knot winds last night and this morning, out of the southeast, and we were damn near seasick from the chop. Winds are supposed to move to the southwest tomorrow, which should help. Then, on to Marathon. The first night is a stop off Key Largo at Rodriguez Key, and then on to Harbour Cay Club where our dock is.