Spencer
03/10/2010, Neuse River

I learned how to track other boats and set up alerts when boats or markers enter one of four rings that I can set around us. It is a very cool capability that reminds me of my days flying the AV-8B Harrier - pretty much the same. I just move the cursor over the target, lock on, and it tells me the heading that they are on and our closing speed... too cool! Goose would be jealous!

In this picture you can see two boats out ahead of us, heading our way.

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Spencer
03/10/2010, New Bern

And in the middle of the bilge storage project, I sold my truck today. It was bought by a dealer in Asheville. They drove 7 hours to take that great truck off my hands. They tell me that they can't keep them on their lot, since all the snow this past winter. I'm now driving a rental car, waiting for a cargo van to come in any day now at Enterprise Rental. It will be my rolling storage and workshop until we cast off.

Also, Stanley from Beta Marine came by and tightened up one of the clamps on a fuel line... not much else to do at this point. He says he'll change out all the fuel lines on the engine, if that doesn't fix it. The Racors and the fuel tank don't appear to be the culprit, since the filters were full to the top with fuel when I changed them last week.

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Spencer
03/10/2010, New Bern

Today's project was making use of the 4 inches of air space above the main water tank and under the cabin sole. I built a storage area that is about 4 feet x 2 feet and four inches high. Just right for wine bottles perhaps! We will probably use it for small bags of tools that I won't be using very often once we get cruising. The picture doesn't look to good, but the storage area is strongly suspended by the cross beams under the floor, not pressing on the water tank.

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Spencer
03/10/2010, New Bern

The big, good news of the day late yesterday was that I changed out the Xantrex Prosine 1000 for an 1800 and the Splendide Washer/Dryer works like a charm! I need to let the folks at Westland Sales know that this appears to be a great match for boat or RV installations. I disconnected shore power and the wash, rinse and spin cycles worked fine. I reconnected shore power for the dry cycle, since it was pulling about 100 AMPs DC, but all was well, running off of the Inverter, which is NOT connected to shore power.

I want to do a couple of tests still - run a full cycle while motoring and another while at anchor running the generator. I don't expect any problems and will let you all know.

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Spencer
03/10/2010, New Bern

All these fancy new electronics came with instructions that said not to hook them up to the same battery that starts the engine. Well, the electical system that I designed and installed a while back had one, 600 amp/hr AGM battery bank for everything except for the windlass. I felt that this was a simpler system and wouldn't be wasting any battery power.

So, I bought this Lifeline Group 31 starting battery online for about $250 and had to rewire the starters for both the engine and the generator. I only had to buy a few lug connectors, everything else was recycled or I had the parts in my spares kit. The install included using the Blue Sea Link that I've had for 3 years for charging the starting battery. Everything appears to be working properly.

I still need to test the radar while starting the engine... probably tomorrow... barely any time to catch my breath these days.

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