Arrived 3:38

Docking was not embarrassing.

Reliable tracking contines to be an elusive goal.

Got underway at 07:45 and I promptly ran us aground as navionics lost its mind. Instinctively, while trying to figure it out I headed towards sailboats anchored nearby not realizing they were all on the bottom. Fortunately, I was going very slowly and was able to back us off /twice/. Oops.

We are now motoring at 6.5 kts down the ICW on a beautiful unseasonably warm morning.

It has been a largely uneventful motor down the ICW. We passed a mobile bridge akin to the kind I've seen used by the military.

Also, quite surprisingly, there are many porpoises swimming in the canal here. We've probably seen a dozen.

There's not much to look at. Trees. Marsh. More trees. The occasional house or other ICW traveler.

The boat continues to perform well beyond expectations or even hopes. We're finding a lot of little things that need to be addressed such as we can't figure out how to get power to the windlass, a leak under the sink, and the diesel hour meter doesn't work. The latter explains the low hour count. Now there's no knowing hiw many hours are on the engine, but it runs impressively well.

So far, so good. We're headed to Isl of Palms marina for the night and the next day we head to Charleston with its bery tricky dock.

pop orpoise

Finally got AquaMaps set up. So many features I'm seeing in these apps are things I've wanted to develop.

But all theses apps are written using native code. I'm not sure how a single developer would be able to accomplish that.

The hybrid approach, web pages wrapped in an embedded browser view has so many challenges I did not appreciate when starting this project so long ago.

Up promptly at 7. Motivated. Fluid checks done. Hour meter does not work.

Trying to get out by 8 am.

Dinner at the same Tavern we ate at before. I like this place.

The track of today's voyage has gaps. Wayne has a aeparate tracking app that has ni gaps so I presume it's another instance of that elusive bug.

Motoring down the ICW. Wayne at the helm. I'm taking a short break. All is going well so far.

underway 12:45

Long day. We got the emergency tiller access port opened. It involved cutting a groove and using a chisel and hammer to getnit to budge. The emergency tiller itself is a but fidley as there is this copper sheathing attached to the rudder with a hose clamp which has to be removed to attach the tiller. Awkward. Interestingly, the tiller screws into tge tusder I assume to prevent the helmsman from accidentally pulling it out.

We checked fluids and all were good.

Wayne had started to take thembinnacle apart but got stucks at a frozen set screw. We procured some fresh titanium nitride bits from Lowes and some cutting oil from Hime Depot along with some supplies from Autozone and Food Lion.

Drilling just wasn't working so I set about trying alternate approaches that all turned out to involve too many probkems. Ingave up trying to drill but Wayne soldiered on an manage to drill through the screw. This letnus see into the steering mechanism well enough to see the play we are encountering is between the ring gear and the shaft. Unfortunately with the tools we have there's no way to acertain for certain. Wayne believes a key hidden behind a retaining plate fot deformed. Since it did not look like an imminent failure we put it all back together again just as it was getting proper cold.

We depart tomorrow.

Food lion run

Autozone for antisieze

Success! The guy here was very helpful and said 50 weight oil could also be used.