The days fly by. We’ve enjoyed Southwest Harbor for over two weeks now and will likely stay a bit longer. Acadia National Park has been fun; of course it’s high season and millions of visitors stream through the park, clog the roads and trails, people everywhere. But the scenery is spectacular; a unique combination of low mountains (Cadillac, the highest, is only 1500 feet), ocean inlets with rocky pink granite shorelines, and freshwater lakes.
We rented a car and spent half a rainy day in Bar Harbor; bumper to bumper traffic, no parking to be found, countless shops selling chotchkies….not for us. We made a run down to Portland for a doctor appointment, another trip to Bangor, stops at grocery stores, outdoor shops (LL Bean of course), marine supply places, etc.
We have enjoyed the company of our old friends on Sea Dweller and Changing Course who are on mooring balls over in Northeast Harbor and new friends on Bluewater here at the dock at Southwest Harbor.
We’ve completed a number of small boat projects; had the hull waxed, a diver should stop by today to clean the bottom (a monthly task), we watered our batteries, etc. I’ve made some modifications to our battery monitoring capability by reinstalling a shunt-based monitoring system that works with our Magnum inverter controller. To make it work properly required extending a ground cable from the wing engine back to the lazarette to the location of the shunt so that all DC loads are properly attached to the shunt. Fun with heavy 2/0 AWG battery cables and terminals! But it was an opportunity to clean all terminals, coat with Kopr-Shield and generally spruce up the wiring. Still more to do but even this task took all day; time flies. The outcome is more data; can’t have enough data. Now we’ll see amp hours in, amp hours out, another source of state of charge in addition to our SmartGauge, etc. Got to keep those 8Ds happy.
We also finally got USCG approval to change the hailing port name on Tivoli to Palm Beach, FL. Such a simple thing has taken much paperwork and about 2 months time. So, I spent several hours removing the old hailing port graphic and replacing with the new, took half a day all in; time flies.
Milt Baker has been kind enough to share his expertise and cruising guides to Nova Scotia. We are looking at crossing the Bay of Fundy and spending a couple weeks exploring Lunenburg, Halifax and other stops along the way. Time is short for a proper cruise further north to the Bras d’ Or lakes and beyond; will have to save that for next time.
