Boat yard pictures

After my last photo class I have started watching videos on how to edit in Lightroom. I'm thinking of making one of my goals this year to carry a camera and shoot the environments that I'm in and maybe if I get brave the people I'm with. Maybe I can learn to develop some street photography skills? Last week I took my camera with me but unfortunately only picked it up evening while waiting for my batteries to charge at the boat yard. The photo of the abandoned American Dream boat is my favorate. The yard has a long history and a lot of stories in it. Up until about 20 years ago they used to build Dickerson sailboats there. Seems they were also one of the bigger Grand Banks dealers at one point before the company went bankrupt. Their newest endeavor is a plan to focus on catamarans which is how we found them. Walking around one can see a lot of the old tools, molds, and scraps from how they progressed from wooden boats to fiberglass.  I've added a few here that caught my eye as I skimmed through what I captured that evening.

Finally got my batteries charged and started the process of getting the boat ready for shrink-wrapping

I made the nine hour trek back to the boat this week in hopes of getting my house bank of batteries charged up for the boats winter rest. Its starting to feel like at this pace I should have everything winterized just in time for spring to roll around.

Following the directions from the Xquisite service manager I attempted to limit all of the power consumption on the boat so the charger/inverters would not have to worry about charging my starting batteries or doing much with the inverters. This turned out to be a bust. The hope here was maybe the chargers were not getting enough power to kick in. I called back and was then advised to keep pressing the remote switches every time they popped to bring the batteries back up ensuring that I did this within a few seconds of popping in an effort to to keep the battery chargers continually pushing power avoiding them spinning down. I did do this for about four hours and was making progress getting a couple of the batteries up to the 50% range but it was a lot of work and the chargers still were not kicking in to take over. This did not feel like the right solution.

During the drive to the boat I remembered a discussion I had when we first bought the boat that we thought the 50amp splitter that came with the boat might be messed up. I wondered might this be the issue so I pulled out my tester and sure enough one side of the 50amp 125v splitter was only getting about 60 volts. After calling around a bit I did not have much luck finding a new 50amp 125v end I could put on the cable but I did find a new adaptor cable that was only about an hour drive away. Long story short I made the trek, installed the new cable, and while I now had a constant 125volts per side this did not fix the problem.

I then decided to call in a Mastervolt Tech. The first one I called had no clue how to help me but provided me his service line directly with them. The actual Mastervolt tech on the other end was great. He told me what I had been doing was ok to get them out of the danger zone but it was a bad idea to continue forcibly charging the batteries. I was told if I could find a windows laptop with a USB type B cord to connect to the Mastervolt system he could remote in to reset the battery safety error for me. It seems this is an automatic safety Mastervolt builds in ensuring that a tech looks at the batteries to validate they are still safe after a discharge that takes the battery below 10% of capacity.

Somehow I was lucky enough to find a cheap windows laptop on sale at the local Walmart along with a USB type B cord that I had not seen used anywhere in the last 15 years. I had figured I might have to go to the Goodwill to find something like that. I brought it back to the boat, connected to the internet via my phone called Mastervolt back and sure enough the tech was able to remote into my PC connect to each of the batteries resetting the three that had gone below 10%. Seemed the fourth one was ok. Once he did that they were happy to talk with the chargers again and after about six hours were back to full charge. The other upside is that I now have the Mastervolt software and a password that will let me see more of what's going on with the batteries. One problem solved!

Time to move on to the next concern. Last time I was at the boat Trappe had got around 2-3 inches of snow. This time it appeared they recently got another couple inches. I'm starting to get concerned about water getting in to things and freezing then contracting all winter. I started thinking about how to get some tarps over the boat. After another 40 minute drive to a store for some wood I started building a brace that would allow the tarps to have an angle to them but seems the yard did not love my idea should a tarp break loose and start beating on my neighbors boat. Apparently this has been an issue in the past. So the new plan is to shrink wrap it and they will use my existing frame. I feel like the yard might have simply come up with a creative way to get more service work out of me but hopefully its not to late to avoid damage and I'm sure it will work better then my plan. Hopefully the stantions will hold up to the shrink-wrap.

Goals for next year

With the end of the year quickly approaching it seems the right time to start thinking about some goals for next year. This has to be one of the harder years to make goals for as in about 9 months we are probably going to be empty nesters. Is the goal to enjoy as much time with the boy as we can before he moves out and things start to change.. Yes. Is the goal to get some fun extended adventures in.. Yes. Is the goal to loose some weight, get in better shape, spend more time with the wife, learn to use the new boat, sell the tug, develop my photography skills, learn to play the guitar, get a Captains License, and get my Trap team to Nationals. Yep.  Will I have time to do all of those. Maybe.. While I may make progress on all of them I really need to pick three to focus on and I'm sure there are a few items I left off the list.

If it were up to me I would spend all my time on a boat. I would love to take the tug up to the North Channel this year and explore Lake Superior for a month or more. I would love the adventure of bringing the sail boat back to Lake Erie via the St Lawrence while possibly stopping by Newfoundland on the way. The question is will the boy be willing to do either of those adventures with us? Do we leave him at home while we do one or more of those? I think he would like the sailing trip but am not so convinced that he would leave his friends and girl friend for six weeks to do it. Is it fair to ask him to, for what might be his last summer at home? Should we just sell the tug and leave the sailboat where it is one more season.. maybe doing some long weekends and a week or so trips here and there exploring the Chesapeake Bay?

It seems the answer when we talk about it as a family right now is we just don't know. For now we are still marching towards the circumnavigation goal with the plan to leave with the World Arc in January of 2028. For the moment the boy still says he is coming with us and the girl is 100% sure that she will not be coming with us. For now it seems that we have a lot of options for adventures next year and while none of them are bad some do seem more exciting than others. I look forward to seeing what we choose!

Finally finished winterizing the sail boat

I got the call shortly before Thanksgiving that the yard had hauled the boat out of the water. Last time I had left it I had managed to get all of the sails down and everything but the AC units and water maker winterized. To winterize the water mater I needed a couple special hoses that had not come with the boat. Unfortunately the quick connect ends needed were not something I could buy just anywhere and with the boat being in a somewhat remote location I decided I would try to find what I needed at home or get it shipped to the house. To protect the water maker I left an electric heater running in the forward compartment. This was great while the boat had shore power but was less great without. Seems the yard remembered that I had left the heater running in it and had rigged up some shore power for me. Unfortunately it seems a squirrel decided to commit subside by nibbling the wiring and no one noticed the dead squirrel or the fact my boat was not getting power. To complicate things even more everything on my boat runs though the inverters/chargers this means the boat was trying to supply power to the heater and it seems with all the gray days the solar was not enough to keep up with it. Needless to say when I got to the boat my house bank was dead (Lithium Ion) as were my starting batteries(Lead Acid). Once the yard got ahold of the power company I got power back to the boat fairly quickly. I then spent the next few days trying to figure out why my batteries were not charging and why the starting batteries were dead.

It turns out I had left the ECU fuse on for the engines. This is the engine computer. It seems that it's always running and does eat some power which was enough to kill those batteries over the period of 13 days with no power. I've never had engines this new before so it was not even on my radar to know to turn those off when I left the boat. Lesson learned and I probably should be turning them off when I leave the boat for more than a week going forward.

The house bank was a different story and I'm still not sure I have that solved but after talking with the guy that designed the system for my boat I think I've got some good direction to try when I get back to MD. The first day I was there I went about winterizing the water maker. Once I was done with that I moved the heater into the main salon while I was doing other stuff (mainly reading up on the batteries and chargers) as it was about 35 degrees outside. The first thing I tried was to plug a normal battery charger in and attempt to bring the house bank up from 7 -12% depending on the battery to at least 15% thinking that they were below the min cutoff for the charger to recognize them for safe charging. For some reason one battery did charge but it only charged to 53% and quit. The rest just kept popping the remote battery switches. Well I got one of them as high as 20% the charger would attempt to kick on then then shut off and the safety switch would once again pop. What I've learned is that as everything on the boat runs though the chargers/inverters they were working to charge my starting batteries, managing the power the heater was drawing, as well as the power from the battery charger. The power was being provided by a 50amp cable that is then spilt to two 30amp outlets going into the boat. When I looked at the load I could not figure out why the units were showing 25% not thinking it was the heater/aux battery charger I had borrowed. His suggestion was to get more power to the boat thinking the chargers were starved of power thus unable to start the charging process. As I'm probably not going to be starting the generator while the boat is in the yard, though it is an interesting thought to run a garden hose into the sea strainer while somehow holding it there ensuring the generator gets the cooling water it needs. I think instead I'm going to try charging up one battery at a time with nothing else running on the boat. Hopefully the power provided will support this more limited method as I have seen the chargers pull almost 200amps while charging. 

I was pretty frustrated when I left on Friday having not had success with getting the house bank charged over the 3 days I had been at the yard. Then adding to that frustration as I was trying to just turn everything off with the intent of coming back one more time in two weeks to get the house bank charged up I could not even figure that out. Seems even when I flipped all of the breakers and the master power knob to the off position the boat still would not completely shut off. When I left I was more than mildly mad/frustrated.

Before leaving I thought about the training we had got on the boat and decided to reach out to those guys. They then put me in touch with the guy that designed the electrical system. I learned they had hid a 12v battery in one of the heads that is in place to ensure an even 12v power flow. Seems some of the CZone stuff would glitch from time to time without really consistent power and this was the solution. Thus no complete power cut off. Seems their thought was the boat would always have enough solar to keep the CZone and Mastervolt system running. They did not plan for folks winterizing boats, inside storage, or long gray winter days :(

On a good note as I was trying to devise a method to get my mainsail off the deck of the boat one of guys in the yard offered me use of their craine. At 35ft it was just long enough to reach the where the sail was sitting on the deck of the boat. With it I was able to lower it to one those airport type tugs the yard has then drive that over to my truck where it took three of use to slide it in. Next stop will be my favorite sailmaker in OH.. Hopefully he is equipped to deal with this big heavy thing!