Hauling Blossom Ahead of the Storm

Blossom docked at River Forest

It’s hard to believe that we’re wrapping up our first season aboard. We certainly chose the right place to leave our floating home. The facility at River Forest is fantastic! We’ve been impressed with everything about it here - the docks, buildings and grounds are immaculate and well kept. The staff are incredible – experts at what they do, efficient and friendly.  The facility has two building to house boats, one is air conditioned, as well as a concrete yard with tie downs. We’re too tall for the buildings so we’re outside.

River Forest

We shared the basin this week with two other boats. I wish we could have spent more time with them but we were so busy and the boat was in such a state that we didn’t have much time for being social. Kathy & Terry and their pup Baylee were passing through, having some work done. Kathy gave us the low down on the marina and warned us about Arthur (see below). I hope we meet up with them again under more relaxed circumstances! The other boater, JJ, was also getting work done and he left once his boat was hauled for the storm.

The channel leading into River Forest (the dot in the middle is an alligator)

The first thing we realized is that River Forest is really far away from everything! We rented a car from the nearest rental in Lehigh, a 45 minute drive away. It was just as well as we didn’t have time for anything but working on the boat. The facility is just west of Lake Okeechobee. It’s 2 locks in from Ft. Myers so there’s no storm surge and it’s fresh water, so there’s little bottom growth to worry about. And there isn’t much around it so that means less debris in high winds. It’s a perfect place to store a boat during hurricane season. They even tie the boats down to the concrete when there’s an impending storm. The only downside is that it’s hotter than Hades, and humid, until autumn. So those are the factors to deal with when you’re shutting up the boat. There’s a bit of wildlife (other than insects) here as well – an alligator came calling every day into the basin. Martin named him Arthur.

Can you find Arthur?

Someone must have fed him at one point because he came around dinner time every day, except the day we cooked bacon for breakfast - he made an early appearance that day :) (We didn’t feed him - we feel that that only endangers wildlife – but I think he could smell what was cooking!)

A close up shot

We had hoped to have a solid week to prep Blossom for her 4 month rest on land. The weather, however, put a bit of a hitch in that plan. Erika was an erratic, rather fickle tropical storm that seemed to be heading right for us, so the manager at River Forest had to make a call – hurricane mode or not? And he had to do it in time to get all the boats that would be coming in hauled out and prepped. So on Wednesday he made the prudent decision and the yard went into double time. Of course, as we now know, the storm would dissipate over Cuba before reaching us, but we’re happy that it all went down the way it did. The irony was not lost on us that we rushed down to southern Florida to get to our hurricane hole and ran straight into the path of the first one to come close to Florida in 10 years!

Rather than haul out on Monday, we had to haul on Friday. I can honestly say that Martin and I have never worked so hard on Blossom as we did those 6 days.  We’ve been living away from our CA home for 19 months and aboard for 12. So this was the equivalent of moving away from home (again). We took the opportunity to thoroughly clean and declutter her. I was brutal – anything not used went: into the garbage, into a give-away pile or into a box to be shipped to CA.  This will probably be the most “difficult” storage experience simply because we’d never done it before, were learning as we went along, were rushed, and we’d been aboard for a year. In the future, we’ll know what we’re doing and will only have 6 months of living aboard to clean up after.

We wanted to finish the work while we were in the water so we’d have air conditioning, could use the bathrooms and wouldn’t have to move off the boat so soon. With the expedited schedule there was no way to do it in time. We were lucky enough to find a local woman who routinely works with boats at the facility. April was a God-send! She knew how to put everything up (contributing to my list) and she spent a full day with us on Friday cleaning and prepping, both before and after the haul out. We wouldn't have finished before Sunday (the guesstimated "arrival" date of what remained of Erika) without her. She’s going to check on the boat periodically while we’re away as well. And she works with a local charity so she could take our food and other items and make sure everything went to a very good cause.

By the time the daily torrential afternoon rainstorm hit on Saturday we had finished 98% of our work. We were just in time as the remnants of Erika are supposed to pass through this afternoon (Sunday). We expect no more than a big rain storm but it’ll be nice to be relaxing in the hotel knowing that the work is all but done.

 Steering into the “well” (Matt & Martin)

Entering the well to get hauled. Martin and April on the bow. The guy in the blue shirt, Ben, is driving the lift. Pretty cool eh?

Fitting the sling. This is serious business and John's an expert

Blossom weighed in at 76 tons with 1000 gallons of diesel and a bit of water. She's a heavy boat.

On Thursday we moved into a hotel in east Ft. Myers. It’s a 50 minute drive but it’s a decent hotel and there are places to eat nearby. One day on our way in we saw a huge turtle walking very, very slowly across the road. There was a fair amount of traffic so we stopped and I moved him to the ditch. Poor guy was terrified. Who knew turtles could hiss?

Relocating the big guy

We’ll go back to the yard Monday or Tuesday to finish up and then head to Ft. Lauderdale. We’ll visit with friends Tuesday and then we fly back to CA on Wednesday morning. Wow!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a terrible tendency to over think things, to death. And I love lists. So imagine how I went to town on this task! My “Storage Protocol” is still in progress and currently lists 85 tasks. All but 6 have been completed. I’m sure that many were not necessary for a 4 month break (I think that Blossom could easily rest on the hard for years the way we’ve left her!)  But we’ll see when come back in January how it all worked out and can determine if we should tweak the protocol. (Yes, I was a project manager in another life.) 

I’ll post at least one more blog entry before the end of this season. I need to get a photo of Blossom on blocks and tied down. I’ll put our latest draft of the storage protocol up as well.

Boat Business: (Storage prep will be the next blog)

• On Tuesday we met with a local contractor to discuss getting cockpit shades made. We have some now but they don’t work well. We took a chance using suction cups rather than snaps on all our window covers and the cockpit shades. They’ve worked wonderfully for the windows but not for the cockpit where there’s too much surface area and the wind blows them off. Next year we’ll have shades that slide along a track and tie down on the bottom. They’re very necessary at anchor in the Bahamas when you have your back to the afternoon and setting sun.
• We're going to have the yard place markers under the rub rail to indicate where the slings should be placed for future haul outs. Misplacing the slings can be a disaster...

Quilt Business:

I thought I’d also post a picture of what I’ve been working on this spring/summer. I keep talking about “my quilting” but I couldn’t show what I was doing because they were gifts. Now they’re finished and delivered!  My cousin and his wife had two gorgeous twin girls born this May. So I made them two baby quilts. (With some help, my Mom helped me piece the fish quilt when I had vertigo.) I'm really pleased with how they turned out. 

Blooms and Bugs applique quilt front

B&B back

Fishy Business front

Fishy Business back

Key West to River Forest Yachting Center

Drinks & Blues in Key West, this guy was really good!

We celebrated our last night in Key West by going into town. We had sunset drinks at Mallory Square and then dinner on Duval at La Trattoria. We scored a window seat and people-watched over dinner. Mostly we watched a local guy drumming up business with his tourist-kissing parrot.

Hanging out at Shrimp Road Grill

 Our last happy hour at Stock Island Marina Village

We enjoyed our stay at Stock Island, it was pretty quiet (some noise from the civilian and military planes), clean, and had very new facilities. Given the choice, however, I think we’d go back to the downtown area next time. We really like staying in the “bight”, where you can watch the boats coming and going all day, the tourists walking, and you can walk into town any time you’d like.   

Yet another lovely sunset over the Gulf

And the moon rising

We left on Wednesday for our last overnight off-shore passage of the year. The trip couldn’t have been much more mellow or serene. We had flat seas (2 feet or less the entire trip), clear skies and no one within radar sight the entire trip. We were traversing the gulf so we were in “deep” water (55ish feet), there was no channel to follow, no turns to make and Blossom ran straight as an arrow. We left the lobster pots behind in the daylight once we left the channel and entered the deeper water. We made excellent time running at about 7 knots. We ran the FLIR but there was nothing to see! Only one wildlife sighting - a massive turtle swimming along the surface in the evening.

                              View from the FLIR, not much to see

Florida skyline at sunrise

The only traffic we saw the entire trip was right as we arrived and the Key West Express blew past us. They’ll make it to Key West in 3.5 hours and it’ll cost you $89 one way. For us it was an 18 hour trip and cost us more than three times that on diesel – ouch! We can significantly cut down on costs by taking on passengers next time :)

Key West Expres

Anchored off Sanibel Island 

We arrived around 10 in the morning and anchored close to shore off Sanibel Island. There was no one else anchored nearby, it was overcast (which kept the heat a bit at bay) and it was calm – lovely! I spent the afternoon at anchor washing all of our lines and fenders. Martin made several arrangements for the upcoming week, ordering parts, renting a car, and contacting John Deere & ABT regarding some issues we had. (Yes, we did have a few technical issues that we’ll need to address at River Forest. I’ve listed them under Boat Business below. We’ve traveled over 750 miles in just over two weeks, so I guess it was time for something to need tending to!)

Enjoying the fly bridge view at Sanibel Island

And the sunset

Our evening at anchor was perfect. We sat on the fly bridge enjoying the view with an excellent bottle of wine and then Martin cooked a mean barbecue chicken dinner.

Friday morning we slept in a bit, which is the norm following an overnight passage. We pulled up the anchor and headed out to Colusa Jacks Marina just north of Ft. Meyer.  We turned on the main engine and the gauges died for good (see below).  I felt a bit melancholy leaving our last anchorage for the year.

 Heading inland – Cormorants and Pelicans, love them!

The trip through Ft. Myers was uneventful and scenic. We docked at Calusa Jacks on the Caloosahatchee River. We stayed there last February on our way across the state with our friends Sean & Louise. It’s a charming little marina and the folks that run it are so nice. It’s in the perfect place to stop between where we were anchored and River Forest. We can only fit on one end of the fuel dock so I called ahead and reserved our space for the night. That wasn’t a problem as it’s off season now and there’s little to no traffic this far up the river. Just like last time, we got fresh eggs from Joe & Shana’s chickens (and 1 duck egg!) and an offer for a ride into town. We had perfect weather from Key West to Ft. Myers and our timing was perfect. Right after we docked the weather changed…

The day started off so pretty

Then this came...

And this...

Which led to this...

And this.

And finally…

It was hot and stormy, and we’re trying to eat up the food on the boat, so we stayed aboard Blossom and barbecue’d for dinner. The storm was past before dinner time and foolishly, we thought we’d enjoy dinner on the aft deck. Then the plague of flying insects descended upon us and we enjoyed eating in our salon. Welcome to inland Florida! (I spent an hour trying to hose off the millions of dead and alive bugs the next day. Reminder to self – turn ALL lights off at night!) We woke up to an unpleasant surprise in the engine room on Saturday. With a heat index of over 100 we had to run the engine room blowers for hours and hours. And we sucked up a few hundred thousand insects in the process. The ER was looking like an insect graveyard. Yuck.

Cruising down the river

Saturday morning we left straight away. We had to go through 2 locks and 3 on-demand bridges. Luckily, there’d been a lot of rain recently and the locks had just switched from a two hour schedule to on-demand. Saturday was dead calm, the heat index was up to 105 and the sun was shining. Passing through the locks was hot business!

Approaching the lock

In the lock

We arrived at River Forest around 3, entering through a very skinny little canal. The first boat we saw, by virtue of it's magnificent height, was a fellow Nordhavn 55 that's being stored here. It feels good to be in the company of family! The facility is here looks fantastic, we'll be exploring over the next few days...

The next week or so is going to be crazy busy. We have at least 3 vendors coming to the boat and of course we have to pack up and ready her for 4 months on the hard. We're having a tough time wrapping our heads around the fact that this first year is over. Wow!

Blossom at River Forest

Boat Business: Blossom had a few hiccups on the trip from Key West to Sanibel.

• We got an error on the main engine saying “Tachometer gauge not responding”. Interestingly, the gauges were reading fine both on the main panel and the Maretron screen but we couldn’t get the error to clear. UPDATE: On Friday morning the RPM and oil pressure gauges gave it up. Martin had already called JD on Thursday so we’ll just update them on the situation.
•  I thought I heard a knocking coming from the starboard stabilizer (probably me being paranoid but…) so I went to take a look and found that there was a slow hydraulic fluid leak under the actuator. Martin cleaned it up and put a diaper under it so we could monitor it.
•  On my first ER check I did a visual of the main shaft and the area was covered in salt, with more salt sitting under the shaft. It appeared to be a slight leak, evaporating before it could run into the bilge which was dry.
• 9k gen overheating. We tried using it for ac at night but after 4 hours or so it overheats. We’re not sure if the cause is the 90+ degree ambient temp + 87 degree water + sound shield or if there’s something amiss…tbd.

Preparing to store Blossom

I’ve been fairly obsessed with what to do and how to put Blossom up so we don’t come back to a mildewed, cockroach-infested boat. Looking at all the boats here on the hard and under cover in the large storage sheds makes me feel more comfortable. I'm looking forward to talking with the manager and knowing what the game plan is. I’ve been communicating with other owners and I found a great list on a sailing blog. We'll be leaving the boat for half a year, every year, so I'm sure we'll get this down. I'm going to develop our "Storage Protocol" so we have it to refer to every year. I'll post it when we’re done.       

Passage from Ft. Lauderdale to Key West

Happy hour on the fly bridge at Stock Island Village Marina

After a couple of days in Ft. Lauderdale, we were rested, had visited Coconuts twice, and so were ready to take advantage of another calm weather forecast to head out to Key West. Before we left we had a pleasant surprise when we were visited by Bob & Fern. They’ve been reading our blog and when they saw that we were in Ft. Lauderdale they came to say hi.  It was great to meet them and give them a tour of Blossom. I hope we’ll see them again, maybe out on the water!

We headed out at noon. It was a gorgeous afternoon and the coast was busy with fishing boats and people playing. A couple of dolphins came by for a brief run at the bow.

Miami from the water

In the early evening there was a heck of a squall over Miami. Luckily it dissipated before it got to us.

Rather ominous sky (it was only about 5 o'clock!)

Rather lovely sunset

We changed the configuration of our helm screens and added a third window that can show our camera views or the FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red camera). We haven’t used the FLIR much this past year and this seemed like a good passage to see what it could do. Traveling down Hawk Channel there are buoys and markers all along the way as well as lobster pots. We figured it would be pretty cool if we could see in the dark. And with no moon, we knew it would be really dark.

We had mixed results with the FLIR this time. Previously, we used it while running on the ICW at night (long run and we couldn’t get to a marina or anchorage within daylight hours). It was very useful, showing the markers along the ditch. This time, at sea, it was much darker than on the ICW and the buoys and markers were much farther away. At times we would pass relatively closely by a buoy and I just couldn’t see it on the FLIR. A couple times I was able to see them when I knew where to look - the range is very narrow so you have to swing it back and forth to try to locate what you’re looking for.  As for lobster pots, we don’t think we could see them in the dark night. There were no pots around when the sun set and I never saw any on my watch with the FLIR (until 4:30). Martin didn’t see any on the FLIR until the sun began to rise. Then he saw lots, and they were much more visible on the screen than to the naked eye at dawn. When did they start showing up?  Not so sure. We’re just happy that we didn’t end up dragging any along with us or worse yet, tangled in our prop. We have a cutter on the prop and deflectors on the stabilizers and all’s well that ends well.

The FLIR, however, did prove very useful and I was very happy we had it on when a fishing boat made a beeline for us at 2am. I had been watching a dot on the radar that I assumed was a fishing boat sitting out in deeper water to the south (one of several actually). Suddenly it took off at 15 knots heading straight towards us. They had no lights on so I saw nothing visually. It’s pretty creepy when it’s pitch black and you know something/someone is speeding directly at you. I put on our spotlight so they would be sure to see us and know that I knew that they were there. Then I turned the FLIR towards them. I could see it was a very small boat with at least 2 people in it. Eventually they turned on their own lights and passed about 25 feet along our port side – close enough? I’m sure they were just curious to see who was cruising down Hawk Channel in the middle of the night but it was still creepy.

We arrived right when we expected, at about 11:00am. It wasn’t as mellow a night as we’d had coming down from Charleston. Our autopilot needing tweaking - she was wiggling for the first half of the trip. And we were in a bit of a channel so wiggling wasn’t appreciated. Once that got settled (Martin messed with the parameters on the autopilot), she behaved much better. Then, just after sunrise we found ourselves surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of lobster pots. I have never seen so many. There was no path through them, just line after line of pots going in all directions like an acid-trip inspired spider web. Guess when spiny lobster season started in Florida? August 6^th – oops! It only lasted about an hour and then there was a more (what I consider) “normal” amount and you could navigate through them.  What this meant though was that we had to be doubly alert while on watch, pulling her back on track as she meandered or trying to avoid the pots. It was a fine trip, but we were tired when we arrived.

The Stock Island Marina Village is tucked away about 5 miles south east of downtown Key West on the channel side of the island. It’s surrounded by working marinas so the view isn’t the best but the facilities themselves are all new with recently renovated docks, office, lounge and gym. There’s a fun little restaurant/bar - Shrimp Road Grill that’s an outdoor area with a food truck on one end and a little bar on the other. Ice tea is home brewed and served from a cooler. There’s even an open air pool table. It’s very “island style” and I can see how it would be a lot of fun during the high season when there are lots of cruisers here. They have a complementary shuttle that will take you either to a Publix or downtown three times a day too.

Shrimp Road Grill

The weather wasn’t looking too bad at any point in the next week so we took a few days to recuperate. We took the shuttle into town a couple times, once to mail off a package and another evening to go into town. We walked all the way down Duval and found a great restaurant, Nine One Five.

Martin enjoying our evening out

We were also very busy with boat tasks as we began planning, organizing and checking off some of the tasks we need to do to put Blossom up for the season. It seems hard to believe that we’ve been aboard for an entire year all ready.  Both Martin and I have conflicting feelings. We’ve been gone from CA for 18 months and we miss our home there and our friends. But Blossom has become our home now too and we’re reluctant to leave her. 

As for our future plans - our thought from the get-go was to live aboard for the “shake down” year to work through the kinks of a new boat. Then we’d become “bi-coastal” and live in CA for 6 months and aboard Blossom for 6 months. We began our shake-down year much later than we had anticipated so this year we’ll only be back in CA for 4 months, through December. Then we’ll head back to Blossom around New Year’s to start our second (6 month) season aboard.

Boat Business:

• Packing. We got some boxes and I’ve begun packing up some of my quilting supplies to take home. Wow, I have a lot of fabric on board!  We’ll have more space next winter J
• Clearing out the pantry. I began going through our cupboards and stores. We’re removing all food from the boat so I have a crate of canned goods that we’ll donate once we get to the mainland.
• Screens. I removed (it’s too hot for open windows) cleaned and polished the porthole screens.
• Engine support. Installed the upper bracket of the exhaust elbow support.
• Generators. Martin replaced the coolant hose from the heat exchanger cap to the expansion tank with heat resistant hose.
• Light in cockpit. Installed a footman’s loop above the barbecue so we can hang a Lucy light.

Quick stop in Ft. Lauderdale

We were as patient as we could be about picking our weather window for heading south. We really wanted to reach Ft. Lauderdale in one go. I was getting anxious about impending hurricanes but we ended up leaving at the perfect 3 day window.  We had been waiting for the severe squalls to dissipate off the northern coast of Florida and the wave state to calm down to a comfortable <4 feet, any direction-but-head-seas.  Why be uncomfortable?

Calculating our arrival time was a bit of an art. The weather was horrible the last time we came down the coast and we ran at about 5.5 knots as we beat our way south. We weren’t sure how much effect current and the gulf stream would have on us. So we planned for a long, as close to shore and as flat as possible route, guestimating that we’d run at about 7 knots. We would leave in the afternoon and plan to arrive at dawn 3 days later. 

As it turned out, we covered 442 miles over 66 hours, arriving at 10:30am. We averaged about 6.7 knots. We would have done much better if we hadn’t hit a wicked current that slowed us to 3.5 (yes – 3.5 knots – even I can jog faster than that…) just off shore of Lake Worth. That little trouble spot added 4 hours to our trip. (Our navigation software gives you an eta that updates as you go along and we were averaging 7.1 until mid-way down Florida). We were practically crawling up onto the shoreline but couldn’t get out of it. We watched two other boats putt-putting equally slowly much farther out. Could the gulf stream come that close to shore? Maybe it was tidal, but it seemed unavoidable either way. Interestingly, we’d done the Stuart to Ft. Lauderdale leg before, more than once, and never experienced a 3.5+ knot current.

We also hit a milestone on this trip - we passed our 5,000 mile mark!  Not bad for our “shake down” year.

Now we can fly a Nordhavn 5,000 mile pennant J

This was our longest passage yet, 66 hours including 3 overnights. It was good to see that we did fine (albeit in very calm conditions). It confirmed the notion that if nothing “exciting” and unexpected happens, passages are pretty wonderfully boring. We were happy with our 4 hours shifts and neither of us got sea sick. I cooked ahead of time – putting a crockpot lasagna on and making up a salad. It was so calm that I even sewed a bit and didn’t get sick. We both read quite a bit and watched some tv/movies. We made good use of our satellite radio too – it’s a must have when I’m alone at the helm at night. That’s pretty much all we did other than engine rooms checks. One of our training captains taught us a system that we really like – the person coming on watch does the ER check. This way, it wakes them up a bit and the person coming off watch doesn’t have to get hot and sweaty before they head off to bed. 

The weather was absolutely perfect. The seas were minimal in the beginning and then calm as glass off the coast of Florida. It was far more calm than had been forecast. This might be because we ran so close to shore (which is why we did it…) Though we could see squalls on the radar and on the horizon, we squeaked through them all. I was on the sunrise watch so you get a few morning photos this time...

A gorgeous sunrise with clouds in the distance

If you look carefully, it kind of looks like a water spout at the base of that cloud

Inky dark nights with just a sliver of a moon when it finally rose. This was a red sky in the morning.

Off the coast of south Georgia we had dolphins playing on the bow a few of times. And I think I might have seen a whale.  At first I thought it was a shark. It was a large fin, and it didn’t look like a dolphin – too big and too dark. And the animal didn’t move like a dolphin, it was kind of cruising lazily at the surface. It was choppy and I only saw the fin for a minute or less and then it disappeared and never saw it resurface. Shark? Small whale? I looked up whales on the internet and they aren’t supposed to be off the southern coast this time of year so maybe I was delusional, or it was a huge great white J 

Feathered guest along for the ride, he was polite and left no poop behind

We saw very little traffic, especially the first 48 hours.  Other than freighters coming and going from major ports like Savannah and Jacksonville, there were just a few fishing boats and one or two sailboats heading north.

Once we got as far south as Florida the radio came alive. I hate to hear the coast guard calls. We listened to one medical evacuation take place and then an exchange over a missing diver off the coast of Vero Beach. We marked the gps location so we could be on the lookout as we passed by – it was directly on our route. Luckily he was found, alive and well, somewhere nearby in the water.

We did have one scary moment that ultimately was nothing but my apparent PTSD from our fire in May.  I had the 12:30-4:30am shift off and went straight to bed. It was a bit cool with the air conditioning so I turned it up a degree. I rolled over and was almost asleep when I smelled something “not right”. I sat up, jumped up, ran to the pilot house yelling “smoke, I smell smoke”  AHHHHHH. A feeling of sheer terror. Martin came running down – the smell was only in the master state room and it was getting hot in there – and he quickly realized what I had done. In my semi-conscious state I had hit the control button for AUX HEAT. The smell was dust burning off the heating element (we've never used the auxiliary heat). Holy crap, I think I’m a bit over sensitized.  Well, I slept like a rock once the adrenaline wore off.

Ft. Lauderdale in the morning light

It was a stunning morning when we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale and slid into our slip at Bahia Mar Marina. We’ve been here so many times – via land for Trawler Fests and the Ft. Lauderdale boat shows, and in the marina aboard both Lucky in ’09 and at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show last November on Blossom. We thought this would be a good place to recuperate for a couple days and as a special bonus, we can visit one of our favorite restaurants – Coconuts - just a short walk down the street.

Sorry for the rambling, I wrote most of this blog while we were underway and I had lots of time and little sleep…

We’ve spent two nights here and the weather is looking amazingly calm for next couple of days so we’re heading out tomorrow around noon for Key West. It will be a (relatively) short passage, about 23 hours. We enjoyed our brief stay here and yup, we managed to eat dinner both nights at Coconuts.

“Scoobies”, the best appetizer in the world, or close to it…

We had really nice neighbors at the marina and enjoyed a couple of beautiful sunsets. Life is good.

Boat Business

Blossom ran like a champ. She got a little hot under the collar but nothing alarming.

Power Management and heat. This continues to be an issue on long, hot passages. We tried running the 9k which is slightly undersized for our boat (woulda coulda shoulda put in a 12k) for air conditioning. We got an over heat error on the inverter and it stopped in protest. This happened once before on a long hot passage. We got it back working and then the 9k yelled the same error and gave it up too. So we finished the trip on the 20k. As it turns out, fuel burn ends up being the same (the alternators stop generating a load, which reduces the fuel consumption about the same as the generator uses.) We thought about turning off the ac at night but with 100% humidity and barely a breeze we gave in to comfort – it’s challenging to get enough sleep in 3.5 hour doses. I didn’t want to add hot and sticky to the equation.