Great Loop Chronicles Part 15
Marine
- Sponsor
- OPTIMA Batteries
- Location
- Iuka, MS
The Great Loop Chronicles will be an ongoing series, following the travels of OPTIMA Batteries staffer, Jim McIlvaine, as he travels America's Great Loop, a 6000+ nautical mile journey around the Eastern United States.
In total, we spent more than a week at Safe Harbor Aqua Yacht, but the experience was a great one for us, made even greater by the friendship we made with the Dixons and the generosity of the Gardner family. The Garnders heard our reaction to the finish of the Duke/UConn game on the Dixon's boat from further down the dock and we met them as we walked back to our boat. The wives became fast friends and the next thing we knew, Shelia were offering us the use of their lake home, until we were ready to continue our journey.
While sleeping accommodations on the boat had become comfortable for all of us, we're still hiking to take a shower and trying to strategically plan other trips to the bathroom. Being able to spend nights in a well-appointed lake home was a very welcome treat, that we greatly appreciated. Additionally, Shelia connected us with her brother-in-law, Jeff Gardner, who is a professional captain and very familiar with the Tombigbee Waterway we would be taking to the Gulf. Jeff proved to be very insightful and helpful, when I had questions about places to stop along the way and other navigational concerns.
We've been taking full advantage of the courtesy cars and making regular runs into town to buy groceries and do laundry. While we have a combo washer/dryer on the boat, it's small and probably best used for emergencies...whatever those might be. Since the boat came with flooded lead-acid batteries with an unknown maintenance history, I decided to pick up a gallon of distilled water to top them off.
I was a bit surprised to see exposed cells as I opened the caps on the first battery and watched as it consumed almost the entire gallon of water. Another trip to Wal-Mart netted me four more gallons, which seemed to cover five of the other batteries, but I saw a lot of exposed cells and knew I was on borrowed time with these batteries. We were routinely hearing the low charge warning on the house batteries, when we weren't on shore power and had been running the generator regularly while underway, to ensure they were getting charged.
While I've swapped out plenty of batteries in my time, in a wide variety of applications, I've never done it on a larger boat, where I'd be wiring two starting batteries to replace a single starting battery and four 12V house batteries to replace four 6V house batteries. There are times to go into uncharted territory, but for me, those times don't include when my family is living aboard a boat where the batteries are being installed. I've also done plenty of maintenance work that took me all day, but would've taken a seasoned professional maybe an hour or two. I was able to get the name on the back of the boat changed out to Maver Marie II, but I'm sure a pro could've done it better and faster.
I decided we'd try to keep the batteries working down to the Gulf Coast and then have them swapped out at Pass Christian Yacht Works, when we finally arrived in Mississippi. The question remained as to whether or not we could make it there prior to the OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car series weekend in New Orleans. The comfortable cushion of time we had when we arrived at Iuka had diminished significantly, as we waited on the arrival of parts. The window was still open, but it was closing and we'd need to get on the water soon and make good time. After arriving on a Wednesday evening and washing bedding multiple times in anticipation of a departure the next day, we finally cast off again a week and a half later. See that part of the journey here.
In total, we spent more than a week at Safe Harbor Aqua Yacht, but the experience was a great one for us, made even greater by the friendship we made with the Dixons and the generosity of the Gardner family. The Garnders heard our reaction to the finish of the Duke/UConn game on the Dixon's boat from further down the dock and we met them as we walked back to our boat. The wives became fast friends and the next thing we knew, Shelia were offering us the use of their lake home, until we were ready to continue our journey.
While sleeping accommodations on the boat had become comfortable for all of us, we're still hiking to take a shower and trying to strategically plan other trips to the bathroom. Being able to spend nights in a well-appointed lake home was a very welcome treat, that we greatly appreciated. Additionally, Shelia connected us with her brother-in-law, Jeff Gardner, who is a professional captain and very familiar with the Tombigbee Waterway we would be taking to the Gulf. Jeff proved to be very insightful and helpful, when I had questions about places to stop along the way and other navigational concerns.
We've been taking full advantage of the courtesy cars and making regular runs into town to buy groceries and do laundry. While we have a combo washer/dryer on the boat, it's small and probably best used for emergencies...whatever those might be. Since the boat came with flooded lead-acid batteries with an unknown maintenance history, I decided to pick up a gallon of distilled water to top them off.
I was a bit surprised to see exposed cells as I opened the caps on the first battery and watched as it consumed almost the entire gallon of water. Another trip to Wal-Mart netted me four more gallons, which seemed to cover five of the other batteries, but I saw a lot of exposed cells and knew I was on borrowed time with these batteries. We were routinely hearing the low charge warning on the house batteries, when we weren't on shore power and had been running the generator regularly while underway, to ensure they were getting charged.
While I've swapped out plenty of batteries in my time, in a wide variety of applications, I've never done it on a larger boat, where I'd be wiring two starting batteries to replace a single starting battery and four 12V house batteries to replace four 6V house batteries. There are times to go into uncharted territory, but for me, those times don't include when my family is living aboard a boat where the batteries are being installed. I've also done plenty of maintenance work that took me all day, but would've taken a seasoned professional maybe an hour or two. I was able to get the name on the back of the boat changed out to Maver Marie II, but I'm sure a pro could've done it better and faster.
I decided we'd try to keep the batteries working down to the Gulf Coast and then have them swapped out at Pass Christian Yacht Works, when we finally arrived in Mississippi. The question remained as to whether or not we could make it there prior to the OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car series weekend in New Orleans. The comfortable cushion of time we had when we arrived at Iuka had diminished significantly, as we waited on the arrival of parts. The window was still open, but it was closing and we'd need to get on the water soon and make good time. After arriving on a Wednesday evening and washing bedding multiple times in anticipation of a departure the next day, we finally cast off again a week and a half later. See that part of the journey here.