Annapolis. They Must Have Batteries Here

Rogue Harbour to Annapolis – 14 nautical miles, 50 kilometres Uber’d

Pulling that rope on my generator at 8am was excruciating. It was a calm and magical morning. Silent. A cozy blanket of fog was slowly lifting over the tranquil reed banks and glass ocean waters. The temperature was low, but the morning was crisp, and the other sailboats moored in the harbour sat still in the waters. The duck hunters must have slept in as I heard no shots. But our batteries were dead, and we needed energy to make toast, warm the water, and heat the frozen boat. The generator fired, destroying the peace, and I slunk below, embarrassed, but enjoyed the warm air blowing on my feet from the diesel heater. Sorry folks.

 

We left around 10 for Annapolis, 14 miles, and it was an easy run. Ana and I talked a lot about the trip experience thus far. However glamorous a sailboat trip to the Caribbean may look, it is a lot of work. And pressure. And stress. Add to that leaving our kids at home, and our jobs, and our everyday routine, and there’s just no way it is ever going to be a seamless transition. We are at a funny stage of our lives. We are both changing physically, getting older, and it sucks ass, but it’s inevitable. I think we often imagine ourselves as our sexy, fit, and whip-smart 20-somethings, which we were, and we rocked that shit. We’re now in our 50’s. I still think of ourselves as sexy as hell, but I know deep down that’s probably not true (at least not the way it was when we first met…). I've been told men are often better able to handle the aging process, probably because we don’t have menopause to deal with, nor societal beauty expectations, and our nature is generally more accepting of body odour and shredded clothing and we tend to care less about our physical appearance, focusing instead on our perceived ability to wrestle crocodiles, subdue terrorists, do corporate acquisitions, invest funds for long term appreciation, and tell really funny jokes.

 

We got anchored on a mooring buoy in Annapolis and I stood on the deck for a while to appreciate where we were. This is where we bought our dear sweet Bella Blue sailboat so it holds a special significance for us. It is also the sailing capital of the east coast and is packed, and I mean packed with sailboats and the sailing culture pervades everything.

 

It was time to solve the battery problem so we headed out in the dinghy to find the Victron lithium battery dealer at the back end of Back Creek. Our original plan to order lithium batteries online and have them delivered here had completely fallen apart because of an incompetent online retailer, but since we were now here we could get them ourselves. We found the boss Peter at the Victron dealership, or I should say we accosted him, unannounced, in his small warehouse. And he spent 20 minutes baffling us with so much techno bullshit that we left in a daze. He recommended five grand worth of upgrades to make our boat lithium-ready and we just couldn’t get behind that. So instead, we Uber’d first to West Marine, then to Steven’s Battery Warehouse and found a set of four AGM batteries to replace our faulty lead-acid ones. And those suckers fit right into the space available…after doing a couple of small modifications on the wood strapping. I got my daily workout by humping those batteries from the store, to the Uber, to the dinghy, to the boat, to the battery space within the boat, and by the end of the day my hands were raw and cracked. All in day’s work. But it seemed we had finally solved our battery problem. But let’s see how they come up tomorrow.