Having fun yet?
23 September 2014 | Bahia del Sol, El Salvador
Dan- hot and tropical
Some of the fun of cruising
Boat chores- the part of cruising that we all know is there, yet we keep trying to acknowledge with just a wink and a smile.
I have gone way past the wink, but I am still able to smile.
We always have a list running and the joke is that it never gets shorter- I hope that I am not jinxing things, but- it is shorter now. In the last few weeks I have been plugging steadily away, aiming for at least a chore a day.
That seems doable- right? Little nibbles and the list is gone? Nope, sometimes you have to take big bites of that s*&t sandwich and spend the entire day just getting through a chore so you can still live in your little space.
A couple of those in the last couple of weeks made for a much smaller poo torta (or is that torta de caca?).
Alternator rebuild- we had an alternator overheat problem on our last passage so I decided to not only rebuild the alternator, but also to replace the voltage regulator. Rebuilding an alternator really isn’t that hard, I have spare stators, rotors, diodes and the various parts to put together a new unit inside of the heavy duty case required for a high output alternator- but it does help when you have a workbench and vise to hold the case and I have neither belowdecks (it was pretty rainy day). This makes for a very sore arm as you end up holding the case in your hand while doing the work because you can’t really just set it anywhere. That was fun. Replacing the regulator was a lot easier but it did entail rewiring and laying in some awkward positions.
Another big one was the battery swap. This was very difficult, not in complexity, but in sheer effort. We have a somewhat ridiculous amount of capacity at a little over 1250ah@12V and this is actually down from the 1500ah we had before the changes. We have a total of 5 8D AGM batteries where we had 4 L16s and 3 8ds before. We swapped out the four L16s with two 8Ds while in La Cruz MX- the L16s we had before cooked off and were thus unusable and the size of battery was not available there. We hunted for a while and finally found two 8D AGMs to swap and we at least had those done. So we waited until we were here in El Salvador to swap out the rest of the batteries as we started seeing failures in the rest of the batteries. We got a great deal here and went for the swap.
This involves removing the galley stove to access an area under a cabinet to the side and down for two of the batteries- did I mention how much they weigh? 160 lbs. of lead- each! The third battery goes under the deck in the aft quarter cabin. About a two hour task to remove the stove etc. and we were ready for the battery move. I am still pretty stout when it comes to lifting and moving stuff, but I am also smart enough now to hire that ball busting work out to someone younger. So the batteries get moved in and out and I get to reconnect. This being a boat the terminals are different and I have to rework things, and this ends up with a little blood- well maybe more than a little, being spilt.
Wrestled the stove back (this is something I get to do), reconnected everything else and put away the tools- 6 hours, not bad at all.
The old batteries were still OK, just not OK enough for me to rely on as we cross oceans, and went to a small fishing village across the estuary from us. This will help with lighting at night so the kids can do homework!
Other little chores include rebedding chainplates, shaping wind generator blades, installing autopilot, rebuilding the head pump (that was fun), etc. etc. etc.
I actually feel a little lost when I don’t have one to do. It seems like the little ones keep piling on daily and that is enough to keep me up to my waist in “boat chores”.