Melbourne is actually where Jason and I went to college at the Florida Institute of Technology! In another fun twist of fate, it’s also where I learned how to sail! Kind of cool that I’m back here now with my own boat! 🙂

We stopped by the downtown area and took the dinghy into the marina area to run some quick errands.  Walked by the condo where my parents used to live and looked at all of the new restaurants and street art that has gone up since we were last here!

We ended up a little further south safely nestled behind one of the little spoil islands to (hopefully) shield us from wind and waves. It’s a nice little spot! We took the dinghy out to explore the island a little bit!

Since Peregrine looked so striking, I made Jason do another lap in the dinghy for a little video!

I was so worried about the cats being scared of the boat and moving around, but I shouldn’t have been.  They don’t care about the boat a all and spend most of their days sleeping on the sofa!

We stayed in Melbourne for a few days to meet up with friends.  We had ulterior motives though… we had some work that needed to get done on the boat.  Mostly, our solar panels are still zip tied to the frame.  We had Dan make us some fancy stainless brackets so we spent most of a morning taking the panels on and off while marking, drilling, and fitting up the brackets.  Our shoulders were tired, but we eventually got them all mounted properly! Don’t have to worry about them falling off in a wind storm now!

We also started to troubleshoot our electrical issues.  We have a new 170 amp alternator and we’re only getting 40 amps into the batteries.  To start, we measured all the voltages with the motor off and again with it running from the alternator to the batteries and every major piece of equipment in between.  There were a few places with more voltage drop than was reasonable. We took the dinghy a few miles up the river to a little boat supply store.  They couldn’t get the battery cable we needed, but we did get a new switch.  The switch was an easy install, but we still need to get new cables to replace 2 of the main ones running from the switch to the bus!

We still have a giant list of tasks to do on the boat.  Just have to keep checking them off every now and again!  Fixing the electrical system is the first priority though…especially since I have an electric coffee pot!