6 days to go (we hope).
08 October 2009
• RNSYS, Halifax, NS
by Mike
Another wild and woolly night and I am really glad that I changed our orientation at the dock. As it is the wind is coming in over the port quarter and pushing us off the finger pier. We have the lines doubled up but if we were along the tender dock at 90 degrees angle difference from where we are now the wind would have been almost directly on our beam and we would have not been happy. Neither would the dock.
As it is last night was Wednesday Race night at the club and in spite of conditions they went out and raced anyway and racers being as competitive as they are we stuck our heads up in the twilight to see a J24 come in with their mast folded quite neatly in two. That's the photo on the blog today. I don't imaging that they were too happy, nor were they too comfortable trying to get back to the dock from the harbour. At least no one was hurt.
I have also discovered the requirement to keep some air circulation around certain types of electrical equipment. Note to self - if it has cooling fins it needs circulation. We put the new 24-12V converter in the same cupboard that the old one had lived quite happily for 30 years and tonight noticed some of that hot electric smell. On inspection we discovered that in the enclosed space it had managed to accumulate enough heat to be too hot to touch. We turned every 12 volt item off and even turned off the power to the converter to let it cool down. Today I added some circulation holes in the cupboard that it lives in and installed a small circulation fan. Given that is is smaller than the old converter with a much less heat sink mass, I expect that it will run warmer, but still it needs to be cooled off and that means that there has to be a free circulation of air around it. I have tracked down a 12VDC whisper fan that I installed to move the air around it and I drilled as many holes in the cupboard as I can so that the hot air will not accumulate. Hopefully that will resolve it.
This morning while working on the computer and trying to figure out the best way of keeping the converter cooled I made the mistake of looking at the bank account after the purchases yesterday. Yipe! (Whine! Snivel!) I sure wish that my pension from the military would kick in. I guess the best thing to do would be to simply not look at it any more. And by the way, if you were looking at that photo yesterday showing Barb and the provisions - that represents only about ¼ of the pile. Since the "pantry is on the port side of the boat if you look carefully there is a slight list favouring that side now.
Today is another windy and overcast day so I won't be getting too much done on deck other than a simply tidy up and stowing of extra lines etc. But below decks I should be able to get some wiring done as well as whatever I have to do to improve the circulation around the voltage converter.
As Barb said in her post yesterday we had the yard guys over for lunch. She outdid herself as usual and made a great homemade chicken soup which I'm sure went over well on a wet and cold day like today along with a skillet of cornbread and a tray of yummy brownies. It's a small gesture to make to the fellows that have been so great to us over the summer. I also added a 26 oz of "Old Sam's" for their Christmas Party.
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