Up There Again

Hi All,
Once again I'm late in updating the blog and Facebook. So here's the story from this past weekend.

Friday, what did we do Friday? Not much but work and then spend some time with our neighbors Bryan and Cindy. Before I could ask Bryan what they were going to name their new boat, the name was on the side. Austintatious. You might be able to figure out their last name from that.

Saturday we really tried to be productive and were semi-effective. As I mentioned, last weekend our chart plotter lost its GPS fix. I did some research on Cruisers Forum ( http:\\www.cruisersforum.com) and found that the GPS receiver we have has a watch battery inside that causes some issues when it dies. It took a while but I managed to finally get the receiver apart only to find the battery was spot welded into place. The research I did forewarned me this was possible. Trying to pry the battery away from the contacts did more damage and now I'm waiting on a new GPS receiver that I've just ordered online. I'm still trying to convince myself the new receiver will be much better and more accurate because of the new technology it has that the previous one didn't. I'll let you know how my self delusion goes but at the moment I'm still feeling like a klutz for not being able to get away with fixing the thing with a $2 battery.

With the GPS receiver in pieces we began the job of figuring out how the cable got from the receiver to the chart plotter. Let me tell you, it takes a very interesting route. It took Susan and I a couple of hours to figure out the route and now the boat looks like it has been ransacked by someone looking for a stash of stolen diamonds hidden somewhere on board.

Somewhere along here we started having trouble with the shore power to the boat. There are two 30 amp lines and one of them was no longer supplying power. Just so happened the one that was no longer working is the one that was bad and had to be replaced the day we did the sea trial. You could say my confidence in the guy that was doing the maintenance work on the boat was slipping but that would imply it was higher at some point, which it was not.

After a trip to two different marine part stores we found out the power connections on our boat are actually made for RV's though some owners have converted their boats over to using them. The connections are called SmartPlug. We just made it to an RV shop at 1:30 on Saturday only to find out the parts department closed at 1. Oh well, let's just go to Galveston for the Mardi Gras festivities instead!

Bryan and Cindy had invited us to a late lunch / early dinner in Galveston with TMCA. I can't remember exactly what TMCA stands for but it's something like Texas Marine Cruisers Association. Not ones to refuse an opportunity to do something fun, we accepted. And it was fun. We met some interesting people but my favorite was Charlie. Charlie is currently the Vice Commodore of TMCA. Being the Vice Commodore he knows the four vices but is only fluent in two, Alcohol and Gambling. The conversation with him wasn't the only fun and interesting one but he topped my list.

Sunday we managed to get a fresh water line off of a connection we need to replace and managed to lose power on the other 30 amp line. More on that in just a minute. The highlight of the day was winching Susan up the mast again to put the new tractor headlight / deck light in its rightful place. Just before I sent Susan up the mast I sat in the bosun's chair and let her winch me up. It was more of a test to make sure if she needed to do that she could. OK, I went up 5 or 6 feet and knew I couldn't make it all the way to the deck light so we changed places and I winched her up. I admit it. Are you satisfied?

Back to shore power, or more accurately, having no shore power. This week I've been once again researching things on Cruisers Forum. It's a great place to ask questions and get answers. My goal was to find out what to use instead of the SmartPlugs that seemed to be causing so many problems. In my research I found that everyone that commented on SmartPlugs thought they were great. I read a review from a guy that critiqued the entire process of installing them. From that I pretty much figured out the guy that had installed them appears to have taken a shortcut or two. I'm now convinced the SmartPlug is the way to go, when it's installed properly. That goes to the top of the To Do list the next time we're at the boat.

That's it for this week. Take care.

Brian