20260227 Friday, February 27, 2026. Twin Harbors State Park Razor Clamming day 2

20260227 Friday, February 27, 2026.  Twin Harbors State Park Razor Clamming day 2

The sun began charging up our solar panels in the morning with the batteries down to between 50-60% charge state by 9am.  We ran the generator to make coffee and tea, and to charge up the batteries.  We have “smart” batteries with bluetooth monitoring which can show the actual charge state of each battery, and it is interesting to see how the battery management software regulates the charging current.  When the batteries are below 75%, they can charge at up to 32A for brief periods of time, alternating with slower charge rates of around 5A.  The peak charge rates then drop as the batteries absorb more charge so they can alternate between say 20A and 5A, and as they approach the 75% mark, they spend most of their time at 5A or less.  Our 300W solar panels can charge at 5-15A with full sunlight depending on how high the sun is overhead and how clear the skies are, so once the batteries get up to 75%, there’s no advantage of running the generator over solar if the sun is out in full.  

Before lunch, we took a walk to the beach from Twin Harbors State Park.  Many of trails in the park, and half the campground are flooded, so the most reliable way to get to the beach is along the road.  Although there was just a light wind, there did appear to be significant surf pounding the beach.  

Janet collecting Sand Dollars

We then took a quick trip into town so Ben could download email and upload yesterday’s blog entry.  The library’s wifi was actually connected to the internet today. It’s interesting to note they only advertise free wifi from 7am to 8pm.  They must shut it down to discourage homeless people from spending the night in their parking lot streaming movies.  

The low tide today was at 3:47pm, so we were on the beach at 3pm.  There was partly cloudy skies with a light wind, so we hoped there would be ideal conditions for us to quickly find our limits.  However, there were very few if any classic clam shows.

  

A lot of people had dug earlier at higher tide levels, as evidenced by a lot of holes. We would have thought getting there closer to the bottom of the low tide would be best, but it took us 2-1/2 hrs to get our limits today.  Actually, we miscounted and ended up one clam short.  The sun set pretty quickly as we were procesing the clams in the RV.  

After getting the clams processed and put away, we had instant noodles and Costco rotisserie chicken for a quick dinner. 

 
Tomorrow’s low tide will be at -0.3’ at 4:41pm.  We’ll head out earlier to try to take advantage of the daylight as much as possible.  Hopefully we’ll be able to find some clam shows tomorrow.