Dave and I arrived last Saturday evening. We were pleased to see by the dim evening light that if there was mold, it wasn’t obvious; we could sleep aboard. We had dinner at the marina’s restaurant, watched a movie, and then had a good night’s rest. On Sunday (that’s a week ago) the work began and it hasn’t really stopped since.
I first describe the work and ongoing issues of our propulsion systems that Dave has been addressing, followed by what I’ve been doing this whole time plus my folks’ arrival. So scroll to the parts in which you’re most interested.
Here’s what Dave’s been up to:
Dave’s first task was to lift the starboard generator to remove the punctured oil pan and bring it to be welded. A lag bolt that attaches the generator platform to the hull was a little too close to the bottom of the oil pan and after bouncing around for a couple of years, really badly during that ill-fated offshore trip this past November, the bolt finally punctured the oil pan. Fortunately, the port pan was fine. Now we have a newly intact starboard oil pan and both generators are resting on shims that keep their oil pans safely above those lag bolts.
He then installed the battery interface boxes (BIBs) into which he had installed the new circuit boards while at home. With those plus fresh oil in the generators we had two functioning motors. Yay! But the story doesn’t end there, nor does the work.
Then the generator capacitor circuits arrived here at the marina and Dave installed those. These are intended to intercept and bleed down any large voltage spikes that tend to fry the diode and fuse in the generator controllers and BIBs.
Somewhere in all this, Dave discovered that our solar controllers had failed since he was here the first week of December, because they were functioning then. We do not know why they failed. Several diagnostic tests and phone calls later and we had two replacements overnighted to us. We shipped the failed ones back for diagnostics to determine if the failures qualify for a warranty claim, in which case they will refund us for the replacements. Dave installed the new solar controllers and tested the systems. He tested the starboard system by running the motors to drain the batteries a bit to verify that solar and generator would charge them. They did- yay! However, when he started the port system the BIB burned out its fuses- three times (three attempts). So he sent another email to the Swedish battery company, but it was Friday afternoon and their weekend had already started, so we knew we wouldn’t hear from them until Monday. Dave didn’t want to wait that long. He suspected the failure was due to an issue with the re-startup sequence. He will know for sure when he gets a response to his email, but his test this morning was successful and now our port system is functioning- hooray!
We’ve also learned that our current generator controllers cannot be be wired to the 12V system and are awaiting upgrades. Those will allow us to start the generators and run the motors should the BIBs ever fail again in the future. However, we can travel without them for now. Neither of our graphic interfaces reports state of battery charge and one does not report incoming solar, but we can work around that for now until the company can update their firmware.
Although it was a long, frustrating week for him, as of now both our systems are running and Dave is quite a happy camper. So we will likely depart the marina Tuesday or Wednesday.
Here’s what Lisa’s been up to:
My list is less impressive, but equally as frustrating initially and equally rewarding when it was done. I have spent 7 of the past 8 days cleaning, unpacking, (re)organizing and shopping. In the midst of organizing our provisions I had to unload one of our under seat storage areas in the salon to clean up the 1/3” of water in it (and Dave found and stopped the leak causing it). Then back in it all went. I did a lot of ordering from Amazon as well, for things I couldn’t find locally.
I also had to solve our sandfly problem. They were a problem because all our screens keep out mosquitoes and larger, but not insects that are sandfly/noseeum size and those are quite prevalent here. There was no place in the area to purchase noseeum screen or netting and no way to order it online and have it arrive in time to be useful. Fortunately, another cruiser I follow had posted about this very issue and included a hack- using tulle (bridal veil material) wrapped around existing screens. So I bought a bunch of tulle. A single layer did not work because the holes were still too large. So I cut two pieces per hatch and porthole, half in one direction of the fabric and half in the other. That way when I layered them the holes created an irregular pattern and were ultimately smaller. The tulle sticks to the velcro we use to adhere the screens to the hatches, but it can also be easily pulled off and stowed when we don’t need it (they do cut down airflow a bit). Works great!
The screen door for the slider was another problem. We have one of those things people hang on the doorways to their decks or patios, the kind that “zip” up magnetically once you pass through. This is also only good for mosquitoes or larger. I didn’t want to permanently attach tulle to that because of airflow reduction. Instead I sought out Picaridin insect repellent (which is not carried everywhere consistently). It’s safe for fabrics (unlike Deet). So I spray the screen with the Picaridin repellent and then hang it up. Nice!
How did we not go completely crazy with all this work?
We worked all day last Sunday, a mistake we swore not to make again because it left us not only exhausted, but also incredibly grumpy. So every afternoon from then on we stopped our work for an hour around 4:00/4:30, trotted up the dock to the outdoor section of the restaurant and had snacks and fancy drinks. It was a delight and our saving grace!
My folks arrived Wednesday evening. That gave Dave a helper for his projects and me help for all the errands and cleaning I needed to do. They were more than willing to join us for our afternoon jaunt to the restaurant also. Yesterday (Saturday), was a beautiful sunny day, so we opted to skip working entirely and see some of Savannah. We drove to the historic section, parked the car and bought tickets for one of the hop on/hop off all day trolleys. We got a great narrated tour, had lunch at a restaurant down near the river, popped into the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist for a quick look and did a little walking around some of the squares before heading back to the boat for a late dinner aboard.
So it hasn’t been all work and no play, but it’s been far more work than anything else, which has been frustrating. It’s warmer here than in NH, but several cool nights have resulted in wet walls and ceilings that need drying each morning. I am quite ready to head south to warmer climes! I hope that the next time I post it will be from a fully functioning boat somewhere in a warm part of Florida.
Life on Lady 