Update
20 February 2009 | Tied up to Dottie's dock
Mark
Interim Update
I have not been good about keeping this log. We've been working on so many projects, many of them in parallel, so here is a summary of what we have accomplished:
Home theater I salon - no TV reception, just DVDs, but it fits in and works well.
SSB radio - had to wait for the welder to mount the antenna, but got everything else done ahead of time and have since made contact with folks in Belize, Honduras, and the Bahamas. Still have to set up email - it may mean changing our address yet again.
Shelves in forward berths - I cut them to fit and Deb stained and varnished them then I installed them. Look great and provide much needed storage in what was wasted space.
Workshop - I converted the starboard forward berth to a workshop, Removed the mattress (put it on top of the one in port) and fit plywood on ¾ of the space leaving a 'hole' to stand/sit in while using the rest as a workbench. With tools on the shelves, and spares under the plywood, it is very convenient. I cannot imagine attempting these projects without it.
Wine rack - since finding wine in Central America has proven to be a challenge, I installed a wine rack made of PVC tubes under one of the salon berths. We can carry about 3 cases of wine there.
Storage baskets for aft berths - Deb found great baskets that fit perfectly in the shelf space beside the aft berths and allow us to utilize all of that space for storage.
Remove life raft locker - We decided against buying a life raft (the boat will float even if holed and a floating wrecked catamaran is much easier for rescuers to find than a tiny life raft.) So I pulled out the locker that was made into the stern to utilize the space for a watermaker.
Water maker - Installed a Sea Recovery 15 gph watermaker. We had had the thru-hull put in while hauled in Guatemala, but I had to locate the intake pump and strainer next to it under the port aft berth and then plumb them to the watermaker in the port engine room. Then I had to run the product water line all the way forward to the starboard water tank - locate so very conveniently behind the shelves I had just installed (and which, of course, had to be remove to get at the water tank). While there, I installed a tank sending unit to measure how much water we had as there was only one in the port tank, not the starboard. We haven't tested it yet as the water here has a lot of particulate matter. We will take a brief cruise out into the Gulf to test it soon.
Installed the house battery bank - 10 Trojan 105+ batteries that I bought in Maine for a total of 1125 amp hours. Should be good for three to four days without sun.
Solar panels - 8 x 100 watts. Four on each side above bimini. I made a frame from aluminum pop riveted to the panels and then mounted that to some Starboard that I cut to fit over the tubing of the bimini. Wired everything up and ran it through conduit over the bimini and then down inside the upright pipe of the bimini, through the space above our berth and into the starboard engine room where I mounted the controller and wired it to the batteries. The controller is cool as it gives you all these stats about how much energy the panels are putting out and how it is feeding it to the batteries. So far I have seen 600+ watts nearly every day, but the batteries are usually filled back up by mid day so the controller starts limiting output before peak sun. Such a great problem to have!
I'm sure there are others and I will revise this list as I think of them, but this is at least a summary of what we have been up to. Add to that socializing with Larry & Dottie and some of their friends here, and we have certainly kept busy.