Tag Archives: projects

RAIN

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Anacortes Farmers Market vendors

Some of the vendors at the Saturday Anacortes Farmers Market a couple of weeks ago when it was sunny.

Anacortes Farmers Market, another view

Another view of some vendors at the Anacortes Farmers Market on a previous day when it was sunny.

Smoked salmon dinner

Smoked Copper River sockeye salmon on fresh salad greens made a wonderful dinner.

What a washout. Rain was forecast for today, and it pretty much rained all day. Not hard. Instead, the normal Seattle-style drizzle that kept things…and us…soggy all day long.

We got out our raincoats this morning and walked to the Saturday Anacortes Farmers Market, www.anacortesfarmersmarket.org. Fortunately, it wasn’t very windy, so all we had to contend with was the rain. We got cranberry and almond scones for breakfast, and fresh salad greens and olive bread for dinner tonight. We recently received a gift of smoked salmon from Ekhard, one of my friends from high school. He has a smoker and had smoked a bunch of freshly-caught Copper River sockeye salmon and was gracious enough to share some with us. So, dinner tonight will be smoked salmon pieces sprinkled on fresh greens tossed with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Yum.

Jim’s project today was to get AC power up to the flybridge for the battery charger for the Superwinch battery. However, the wire-way between the main deck and the flybridge is already chock-a-block full with existing wiring! Spent most of the day trying to figure out what to do. Finally identified a possible workaround that we will try tomorrow.

By early evening, the rain stopped, and the sun poked out for about a half hour around 1800, which warmed things up so quickly that dense fog is forming all around us, reducing the visibility between Anacortes Marina and Cap Sante, extending out into Fidalgo Bay. We can hear foghorns out there, and the fog is closing in and getting thicker. Should be a very foggy night.

Wiring and Teak

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Superwinch Battery

The Superwinch battery is stored inside a locker on our flybridge, and in a protective box that is tied down.

Solenoid with battery and winch wires attached

The Superwinch solenoid now has wires on the left side that connect to the battery…the wires on the right are the ones that connect to the winch.

Swimstep and boarding ladder before.

Teak swimstep and boarding ladder before cleaning. The boarding ladder is stored in a folded position, on the port side of our stern.

Swimstep and boarding ladder after.

Teak swimstep and boarding ladder after cleaning.

Connecting the battery and remote control to the solenoid is the next step of installing the Superwinch. We found a place to store the winch battery in the locker on the starboard forward end of the flybridge, then ran heavy battery cables inside the side wall of the flybridge to connect the battery to the solenoid.

Wiring the remote control to the solenoid required a little more effort. First we had to decide where to locate the plug-in for the remote so that the 10-foot cord will reach the places we want to be when we are using it. The best place seems to be near the base of the mast, close to where the dinghy is stored on the boat deck. However, we couldn’t find a convenient place where we could recess the plug-in connection. After many rejected ideas, we settled on buying a weather-tight electrical junction box that will be mounted near the stairs to the flybridge and painted white to match the cabin.

We had a dry day on Monday, so I was able to clean up the teak on the swim step and boarding ladder, using the same technique and product that I used on the teak decking a few days ago (see June 3 post). After some serious scrubbing, the dirty teak cleaned up pretty good and it was so nice to see the warm teak color return.

Webasto Repair, Winch Replacement

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Webasto Expansion Tank

A new cap on the Webasto expansion tank fixed most of the problems of leaking coolant.

Manual winch on boom for hoisting and lowering dinghy

The self-tailing manual winch mounted on the boom has been used for hoisting and lowering our dinghy.

Boom with mounted manual winch

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

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WiFi bridge mounted in hanging locker

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!

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Jim unpacking the Superwinch and battery charger

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

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

Superwinch and charger

Testing the Superwinch, battery, and battery charger

Testing the Superwinch, battery, and battery charger