Painting

If nothing else in paradise there’s always work to do on the boat. Today’s project is to paint the top of the Biminy before the solar panels arrive and touch up the deck paint. I had been touching up the bad areas on the biminy for the last few days and yesterday I sanded the entire top in preparation for today’s paint job. This morning, I took a tack rag to the top and got out the paint. As it turned out, it was really difficult to paint the top of the biminy.
You see, you have to roll on a coat of paint and then tip the surface off with a brush before the surface of the paint begins to take its initial set and stops flowing. Normally this takes about 2-5 minutes (depending on the temperature and the wind. Today, it was down to about 45 sec. A bright sun and a strong wind were working against me. I didn’t get the beautiful smooth paint job that I had hoped for but, it is all white and looks a lot better than it did. Next… the solar panels!

Batteries 2

Now, with the brand new batteries in the cart all I had to do was reverse the procedure from yesterday. Of course this meant I had to run the batteries down to the dinghy, put them on the dock, lift them into the dinghy, motor out to the boat, lift them up on to the boat, over the cockpit and down into their hole. Once there, connect up all of the wires. No problem. On about the 4th battery, with sweat going into my eyes, I was wondering about the sanity of living on a boat. Each of these 6 volt golf cart batteries weigh around 63lbs and today was one of those rare warm and humid days. Now, the batteries had to be hooked up with both series and parallel connections to produce the required voltage and amperage. I of course, couldn’t have a simple hook up, no, I also had added to this wiring mess a temperature probe and another set of battery cables so that the starting battery could charge with the house batteries.
I even made a wiring schematic that is drawn onto the cover to the battery box just in case (as old age sets in) I start to forget where all those wires go. Finally, with a bit of cleaning up the battery hatch was closed and the cockpit grates went back into place. Turning the main switch on gave us the sound of the radio and the hum of the fridge as those little electrons again ran down the wires to do their work for us.

Batteries 1

One of the critical systems on Snow Goose is the storage of electricity. Many of the books that I read before starting on this boat project had the same mantra: “keep the boat small and your systems simple”. Needless to say I didn’t listen for we are neither small nor simple. In fact, at times I went a bit out of the way to make things more complicated. And so, our Achilles heel (so to speak) is electricity. The fridge is hungry for the stuff as is the computer, lighting, fans, pumps, coffee pot, toaster, Etc. All of them gobbling up those little electrons. This power is stored in a rather large set of ‘house’ batteries that I installed about 7 years ago. If you consider how long your car battery lasts then you know that after about 5 to 7 years, batteries start to go bad just as ours have. Today was the day to replace the old batteries with the new.
So, up came the cockpit grates and out of their hole the six, 60+lb batteries, went over the side and into the dinghy. The batteries, all 360+lb of them, and another 300+lb of people and gear headed into the docks. (Anna wouldn’t get into the dinghy until she had personally read the owner’s manual and saw what the max load of the dinghy was.) I was glad that we had the new motor. At the dock, I lifted them out of the dinghy, lifted them again into a dock cart. I then ran the batteries up the ramp and to the waiting truck. Half of the job done.

New outboard

The timing was almost perfect. We received a call from the marina telling us that a large box had arrived…the new outboard was finally here! The only problem was that it had been raining for the last 20 hours with no relief in sight. I didn’t care, I needed that outboard. So, on with the foul weather gear and into the dinghy I went. I fought with the old outboard and coaxed it to life (yet again) but I think that the old outboard knew this would be its last round trip for it didn't start easy and protested a lot on the way in.
In the rain, I walked up to the service station for gas and back to the marina where I unpacked the new outboard only to find there was no owner’s manual! A quick call and a promised to send it in tomorrow’s mail was secured. Then, in the rain, I carried my new motor down the docks and laid it into the bottom of the dinghy. With one pull, I started the old 12lb beast for its last trip to the boat! It ran all of 15 seconds before dying and no matter what I did it wouldn’t start again. In the end, I had to row the new motor over a 1/3 of a mile out to the boat… in the rain, against the wind. Afterwards, with a little bit of oil and gas the new outboard started right up and ran great! I think though, the old outboard got the last laugh.

Taxes

Taxes! Even on a boat you can’t escape taxes. OK,,,, this is going to be a rant!!! I just spent 5 hours working on them: Fed, State and local. This year it was a bit more complicated by the fact that I retired, had moved and I’m living in another state. Why we can’t have a simple system that takes, say, 10% off the top with no deductions or earned income credit, no special exemptions for electric car purchase or simplified verses standard method to calculate pay back integration of retirement contribution distributions… YUCK!.
We need no deductions at all just one dime out of every dollar for Uncle Sam that everyone and every business pays. It would be a nice simple way to support the Gov. Maybe what we need is an amendment to the constitution that would say 10% of any income no matter what the source is due in taxes. Enough rant for today

Refrigerator 2

Today things got a bit out of hand, imagine having a split-level house and you needed to removed the stairway to the upper level only, many of the things that you need to complete the job were still on the upper level. This is the situation that I faced. I had to remove the stairs to access the wiring runs under the floor and this made me climb like an ape into and out of the boat for stuff. Anna abandoned ship and went with some friends into town…I think she really had enough of my bad attitude.
After a lot of words that can’t be printed here; the components of the compressor unit finally slid into its new home and the assorted wiring was hooked up and ready to go. With the flick of a circuit breaker, the unit began to hum and the freezer compartment cooled down. Now, the clean up begins.
In a day or so we should have a photo album of the refrigerator replacement on the web site.

Refrigerator 1

What a mess, we live in about a 200 Sq ft area and I have taken over about ½ of this space replacing the fridge. The old components of the fridge came out kicking and screaming. Then I had to drill a hole the size of a fist through the inside of the fridge to the outside so that I could pass the tubing through to the compressor compartment. The trouble was that the hole had to be drilled at a steep compound angle.
I now have the kitchen covered with the residue of finely ground insulation and of wood dust. Anna and I carefully slid the evaporator tubes into the hole and I shot some foam into the hole. Then the waiting began for it takes 8 hours for the foam to cure. Tomorrow, more on the replacement.