18/06/10

Visited a very interesting Whaling Museum.  The town is very authentic, not the disneyesque  architecture we’ve seen other places.  There are very strict planning requirements and most of the houses are clad in White Cedar Shingles which turn silver with the weather.  Our friend from the Rally, Carolyn who we saw in Hampton, is the waterfront director of a  New Yacht Club here.  The entrance fee is $350,000 so I may not apply to join just yet.  The old yacht club has a much lower entrance fee but has a 15 year waiting list. John Kerry’s new yacht which was built in New Zealand at a yard where we had some work done on SPINDRIFT, and which shared a ride on Dockwise to Florida is moored across the pontoon from us.  The Kerry’s are very active here and have several boats and a large house. It’s definitely a playground for the rich and famous.

The new inverter/chargers arrived yesterday and we spent several hours with the installation which was supposed to be a straight swap but of course wasn’t quite.  Cable terminals in slightly different positions and very little slack to extend the existing ones.  Eventually Steve with a little help from John managed to connect everything up, except for two cables left over which have no terminations in the new boxes.  Victron are still scratching their heads about that one.  I spent some time trying to set them up on the computer using the wrong software.  I eventually figured this out and started again , finding one unit but not the other.  I gave up for the night and spoke at length then next morning with the Maine US agent who kept trying to talk me through but couldn’t get any farther than I could.  Then just to check I swapped out the network cable connecting the two units and presto everything started to work.

We are able to charge with shore power and generator power and it looks like everything is back to normal.

Late yesterday afternoon Carolyn gave us a harbour tour on a Yacht Club launch and we managed a lobster dinner.  I said managed because the night before we went to a lobster restaurant  but they didn’t have any.  She also drove us around the island and we had a look at another town.

Yesterday’s grey gloom has been replaced by bright sunshine.