Mea Culpa

So sorry that I have not updated the blog.  I kept holding out the rest of fall season hoping to restart the trip but it just didn't happen.  It just fizzled out and so my enthusiasm for the blog.

Well it was a very productive winter though.  When it was clear the trip wasn't happening this season I decided to reupholster all the cushions on the boat and build a new Bimini top from scratch.  Both very ambitious projects.  They went well and "ate up" a lot of my time this winter.  I learned a lot and became pretty proficient with my big ol Consew RB206 industrial sewing machine.  Man I bought that thing used back in 1995 and it is still going strong as ever.

A few weekends ago the Heat Pump in the Aft Stateroom died.  It is 24 years old so I decided to just replace it.  The old unit could't keep up on the hotest days so I decided to go bigger.  The old unit was a CruisAir was 7000  BTU and I installed a 9000BTU MarinAire unit.  I really like it but it took 3 weekends and many trips to a hardware store to make the bigger unit fit that old smaller space but I DID IT!!

Most of the effort was the usual trials and tribulations that you expect working any boat project.  However this last weekend was a DOOZY!!

We finally broke down and bought a new flat screen HD digital TV with built in DVD player for the boat.  This weekend we ran the wires to support it's new location -- above Nav Bench -- instead of the current location of the 13" Analog set with built in VCR which was located in the main cabin midway along the starboard wall.  This involved adding a 110V outlet and a multimedia outlet for the TV Antenna and a HDMI cable.

It took hours to run the cables and power cables through the wall and floor.  There was an outlet in the engine room that was served by the TV/VCR breaker for an old Analog  TV that was in the AFT Bedroom.  We threw it away and converted the cabinet to a linen cabinet but that outlet would be good to tie to.  The fun started when I pulled the utility box for the outlet off the wall top run my new wire into.  It had been mounted with 4 different screws of lengths ranging from 1/2" to 1 1/2" into 3/4" plywood.  Also 3 were philips head and a combination of pan head and flat head and one slot screw.  WOW just using what was at hand!  I straightened that out an\d got the new outlet hooked up.  Once it was all wired I tested the wiring and the TV worked fine through the existing Antenna and amplifier.  The amplifier was not mounted well.  It was in a space behind the service panel and you had to reach over the live 110v circuits to reach a slide switch to turn it on.  I didn't like that so I looked at how I could move that on/off switch out to a toggle switch on the instrument console and not have to go behind the circuit panel.  When I was looking at how it was currently wired I saw that the "on/off" switch was actually a selector switch for either AC or DC.  Huh currently it only worked when on DC.  I traced the AC wiring which was just grey lamp cord and it was routed to the breaker marked TV/VCR.  That was cool except one lead went to the breaker side of the switch and the other leg went to the buss side of the breaker and not the common neutral.  In other words both sides were wired to the HOT side.  No wonder it didn't work!

I then traced the 12V side and found that they had wanted to wire it to the Refrigeration breaker but its terminal was full so they wired it to the BUSS side of that breaker and thus the circuit was HOT all the time.  Unbelievable!

The fun wasn't over yet..  Last week I installed new speakers in the cockpit.  One of the old speakers had an open coil so I replaced both.  To get to the wiring while troubleshooting I pull down a ceiling panel over the galley.  It was held up with velcro tape.  Well at one end about 20 inches of tape had pulled loose from staples.  So this weekend I brought a staple gun and tried to reattach it.  Well while straightening the tape out and pulling it taunt to staple some "things" fell out of the ceiling and landed on the floor.  Oh my gosh they were THUMB TACKS and I was in bare feet!!!  Don't Move!  I picked them up and then noticed more thumb tacks in the velcro strip where it had pulled loose.  In the spirit of the 4 differnt screws found in the earlier outlet  these Thumb tacks were different too.  Some were white and others chrome!   I pulled all those out and then found about 6 inches of double stick foam tape behind a section of velcro ---  Again what a MESS -- just used what they had!!

I fixed all that up too and now she is right or so I believe.

So you see I have not been idle by any stretch of the imagination this winter/spring but now it is time to end all this work and start playing on the boat again.

We have a local Pamlico Sound  -Ocracoke - Cape Lookout- Atlantic Beach- Morehead City cruise planned for June.  Then just putter till October and then we be heading south to the Bahamas for this coming Winter Season.  We Gonna Dun Reach.

I'll do a better job with the blog now too.