Oceanus Adventures: Englewood and Venice....then turning south again

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Thug making the rounds on the foredeck

Hello friends and family! It's been an interesting and busy week (relatively speaking). We had some down time due to getting completely fogged in one day and some mechanical issues (see below), but we managed to put some more miles behind us this week. We were able to meet up with some new friends for a wonderful dinner - shout out to Bridgett and Johnny - hope we can get together again down the road!

We spent a few night anchored off of Englewood Beach, which is also next to Stump Pass State Park. We were able to walk around and enjoy the sights - even treated ourselves to dinner out complete with live music (it was a local band called the Gummy Sharks, but that still counts, right?).

At a city park in Englewood Beach (picture taken from the fishing pier)

Street sign of cottage/house names in Englewood Beach

Dinghy landing spot in Englewood Beach (only slightly sketchy)

Took the dinghy down to Stump Pass State Park

At Stump Pass State Park beach (Gulf side)

Took the dinghy to Englewood for provisions - legit dinghy tie up this time!

Bird on channel marker

We transited a few miles farther north to an anchorage just off the inland city of Englewood for a couple days (where we surprisingly got fogged in). My family from Bradenton drove down to meet us, and it was great to catch up and relax onboard for a while. Shout out to Aunt Nancy, Shawna, Katelyn, Kayla, Joanne and Kerry! : )

Englewood sunset - beautiful evening!

Waiting to meet family at Indian Mound Park in Englewood

Staying in the channel!

Mark had been noticing that the house battery bank on Oceanus was not holding a charge as well as it should. His initial plan was to simply limit any extraneous power usage, which sounded good to me until I realized the lifestyle limitations this created (I like being able to charge my phone whenever it needs it and to have fan running at night). In order to appease us both, we decided to take the financial hit and replace the batteries, which turned out to be WAY easier said than done.

The house battery bank consists of 5 monster batteries - actually, they are not all that large in size but are VERY HEAVY (about 130 pounds per battery!!!). The good news was that they did have handles on them (which helped), but the bad news was that they were located on the outside of the starboard engine (where we can't stand up or kneel to lift them).

We pulled into a wonderful marina called the Crow's Nest in Venice, and they set us up in a perfect slip where the new batteries could be delivered as conveniently as possible. Somehow, through some awesome teamwork and a whole lot of effort (mostly on Mark's part), we got all 5 batteries lifted out of the engine room and onto the dock. NAPA delivered the new batteries (which were equally as heavy), and we reversed our procedures to get the new batteries in their unbelievably awkward positions in the engine room. Mark worked his magic getting them hooked up and running - we are hoping this will mostly fix our severe power limitations (fingers crossed!).

We had a great one night stay at the Crow's Nest Marina in Venice

Pepe the Parrot at the marina

Colorful bikes to borrow at the marina; we rode into the quaint Historic District of Venice

The old batteries - arghhhh!

Mark adding water to one of the new batteries before it went down to the engine room

As I have a ticket to fly out of West Palm Beach next week (going home to take care of some stuff), it was time for us to turn around, as we had reached northernmost Gulf apex of our trip. We decided to make one last stop at my favorite island and park, Cayo Costa before heading eastward back across Florida. Once we get back to the East Coast, Mark will wait with the boat in West Palm Beach while I'm gone; he'll have time to tinker to his heart's content and do some provisioning. Once I return in early March, we'll be heading over to the Bahamas as soon as we get a good weather window. That's the current plan anyway!!!!