Help, Help, Our Batteries are Dying!

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We awake to find that “our fridge is not fridging”. The refrigerator runs off our “house batteries”, which consist of a couple of oversized car-type batteries that run our lights and several small pumps as well as the fridge. It is disappointing to find that the batteries have run down so soon. We fire up the engine for an hour to put a bit of life back in them.

The weather is glorious and is forecast to stay so for several days, so we plan to take advantage of this to begin our run East. We head out of the harbor and turn East under Mount Hope Bridge, then South at the North end of the Sakonnet River. (We debate how this stretch of water qualifies to be called a river; it looks like a “sound” to us because it is “open” at both ends!) We have timed it so that we pass through Tiverton Pool at low tide. The river is narrow here and tidal currents can be strong. We have a beautiful run down the river, crossing paths with a glorious wooden “harbor cruise boat” on the way.

We head for an anchorage off Third Beach, near the mouth of the river on the West side, just North of Flint Point. Here we are in fact just a few miles East of Newport. It is Sunday afternoon and Third Beach is crowded. Other boats are anchored off the beach but well South of our favorite spot. The weather is superb and the only disturbance to our peace and quiet is the large number of small power boats towing happy kids at speed on several types of high-tech “tubes” around the bay.

But a check of our batteries shows that our main “house bank” now has only half a volt. It should have 14 volts and should have been recharged on our trip. So this is distinctly worrying. We do have a third battery that we use primarily for starting the engine but if that battery too “goes bad” overnight, we will be unable to start the engine in the morning.

So The Captain (that is, me) gets antsy and we “up” the anchor and head back up the river lickety-split and turn into Brewers Sakonnet marina at 7pm, an hour after they close. Fortunately, we phoned them before we started our return trip and they gave us a slip assignment. They did not, however, ask for our beam. When we squeeze skilfully into the slip, we find that there is less than two inches to spare between us and the next boat. I guess that we could have “created” another few inches of space by using itsy-bitsy fenders ... :-)

So we are plugged in for the night and hopefully Brewers will provide an electrician in the morning to sort out our battery problems.

This blog has four photos. You may need to scroll down.

This is where we have been for the “next” few days ...
Monday, Aug 5 - Conanicut Marine, Jamestown
Tuesday, Aug 6 - Cuttyhunk Pond

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