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American Spirit II - Day 170; Another Slow Day in Denarau Marina; Tuesday, June 24, 2014



Up 7:10 AM. Overcast, looks like rain. Dropped off dodger windows at 8:00 AM at sail loft. One of the zippers to the center window had two broken teeth; and the zipper to the right side of the center window was a problem as the zipper was too tight. I had asked the sail loft to replace the two sides of the two zippers on each of two windows, and to make them 'less tight' when zippered. After breakfast I dingied in again and dropped off our propane tank, which was near empty. To be filled with butane again, even though its a propane tank. You can put butane in a propane tank and burn the butane in a 'propane ready' boat. But you can't put propane in a butane tank and burn propane in a 'butane ready' boat. Propane is a higher pressure gas and burns at a higher temperature, so its preferred by us to butane. While I was doing this Joel was fixing minor things needing repair on the boat.

Throughout the day Joel also loaded pictures onto the 2nd computer (the first computer is the navigation computer which we don't load pictures on it) so he could transfer them to his web page later once at a restaurant that had Wifi.

At 4:00 PM I dingied into the marina again and picked up the propane tank filled with butane (cost 24 Fijian dollars or $12.00 US); and the repaired and re zippered dodger windows, which along with other work we had done earlier in the week on the mainsail and three AIS pouches that needed sewing, the total cost came to 414 Fijian dollars or about $212.00 US.

At some point in the afternoon I took the navigation computer into the marina to send and receive emails and logs.

From 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM Joel was at a restaurant in the marina sending pictures from one of our computers to his web site, Heyne Family Travels. I remained on the boat to monitor the charging of the boat's house bank batteries (we had two large batteries). Instead of charging at 20%, as AGM batteries usually charge at, we were charging at 100% to speed up the process. At one point I got a high temperature battery alarm, so I reduced the charging to 20% again. Once the alarm stopped due to the batteries not being too hot, I changed the charge setting on our Xantrex monitor to 80%. The system accepted that level of charging without alarming. So henceforth when we charge with our generator, we'll use the 80% charging rate instead of the 20% AGM rate and the 100% rate. Why? Because we can re-charge our house bank batteries 4 times quicker at 80% versus 20%. That's also the advantage of being in a marina hooked to shore power. You can charge 24/7 so you can charge at the lower percentage rate. However, the last marina we could charge in was in Panama months ago. That being said, we're hoping to get a marina berth when we move to Musket Cove on July 2; maybe in Vanuatu, but certainly in Australia.

Joel returned to the boat at 11:00 PM after successfully sending a lot of pictures to his family blog web site.

Lights out at midnight.

Brian Fox

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