There was a break from the rain this afternoon, giving Jim enough time to get the new electric Superwinch mounted on our boom. Wiring comes next.
Superwinch Mounted
Image
Reply
Category Archives: Projects
Webasto Repair, Winch Replacement
A new cap on the Webasto expansion tank fixed most of the problems of leaking coolant.
The self-tailing manual winch mounted on the boom has been used for hoisting and lowering our dinghy.
Jim removed this manual winch from our boom, and will be installing the new electric winch in its place.
Yea! We are able to use the Webasto heater again. Heat is a good thing! But when the system got hot yesterday, some of the coolant leaked. Turns out that the pressure relief cap on the expansion tank has worn, so we replaced it with a new cap. That helped the bulk of the leaking, but today we noticed that there is still a bit of coolant overflow, which we will have to address by adding an overflow reservoir…another project!
The first step in installing the new electric winch on our boom is removing the existing manual winch. Jim got the manual winch off yesterday afternoon, but work time was cut short today due to rain. We’ll resume this project when we have a bit of dry weather.
New WiFi Bridge
Rosie checks out the new WiFi bridge mounted in the hanging locker in our forward stateroom. The bridge is the small white box held in place by a black velcro tie.
One of our first maintenance projects after getting settled on the boat was installing a replacement WiFi bridge so we can connect to the Internet. We access the Internet from our boat at the marina using a WiFi connection provided by an account we have with BroadbandXPress (BBX), a local provider of WiFi for the boating community in the Pacific Northwest.
Our previous wireless bridge died over the winter, so we bought a replacement and brought it with us. It is an Air802, model AP-G250, Ethernet to WiFi bridge with a 250 mW radio. Jim mounted it on a bulkhead in the hanging locker in our forward stateroom, and has run cables to a connection box in our main cabin where we use our computers. The bridge works through a previously installed marine antenna—an Air802 ANMA 2412, 12 dBi antenna—which is mounted on our flybridge.
Superwinch arrives!
Jim unpacking the Superwinch and battery charger
We now have gathered all the piece parts for replacing our manual dinghy-lifting winch with a new electric version. The Superwinch and battery charger that we ordered from Amazon arrived this week, and Jim bought the Optima battery at a local Bend auto supply store.
Superwinch package
We hooked up everything in our garage in a test mode to check that it works. It does! Now we can pack it up to take it to the boat next week when we head up to Anacortes. After we get settled on the boat, we will tackle the actual project of installing the new winch system.
Superwinch and charger
Testing the Superwinch, battery, and battery charger
Blog posts from 2011 added
One of my favorite photos from 2011: a quiet, calm evening at our anchorage in Claydon Bay, B.C.
I got brave yesterday and decided to go ahead and click the import function in WordPress to import the posts from our 2011 blog from Blogger into this new site. Looks like everything came in…but some revisions to the formatting will be needed. Some of the text formatting isn’t right and the photos all came in at a smaller size than I want! I will work on revising those previous posts, as time permits.
I’m getting closer to getting the theme and formatting set up on this new site. There still may be some changes, but I’m getting more comfortable with how it looks now and have given the site link to some of our friends. I’ve been able to get a few photos added and am working on adding more content.
Marine Servicenter called today to tell us they will be hauling out our boat by the end of this week, and plan to have her back in our slip by the middle of next week…in time to be ready for us when we get to Anacortes.
Early season preparations
Still working on selecting and styling a WordPress theme for this blog…but think I’m getting closer! I haven’t moved last year’s blog entries from blogger.com yet, but that’s on my list to do soon.
Phoenix is scheduled to be hauled out in Anacortes within the next couple of weeks. The boatyard people at Marine Servicenter have hauled our boat for us in years past and taken good care of her, so we have asked them to come get our boat from our slip at Anacortes Marina and haul her out for us while we are at home in Bend. It’s great that they’ll do that for us! They will put on a fresh coat of bottom paint, replace zincs and clean up the underwater metal…then they will return Phoenix to our slip. We plan to travel to Anacortes in about 3 weeks, and it will be nice to have that work done when we get there.
For now, we are focusing on getting house projects wrapped up and organizing the stuff we want to bring with us for the summer. It’s always a challenge! We’re also beginning on our first boat project…or at least gathering up the piece parts. We’ve decided it’s time to replace our hand-cranking operation for launching and hauling our dinghy on and off the aft deck. The manual winch is just getting to be too much! Jim has been researching electric winches that will fit on our boom, and has settled on a Superwinch Terra 25-SR that we can order from Amazon. He plans to set up the system to run on an Optima D34 55A battery that will be charged by a Noco Genius 10A marine battery charger.
Cruising With Phoenix 