Unless I am attacked by a severe case of yakity-tumbs, this will not be one of my longer posts.

As I have already posted Nelleke is safe up on the hard and we have spent the last several days removing the final items, provisions and outfittings, that we don’t want to leave aboard her over the winter. We are just about finished and all that is left are some of the seat cushions and bunk mattresses. Those we will take of on the next dry day.

I have been working on the electrics to determine what exactly was causing our problem on the abbreviated cruise. This has been the opportunity for me to try to remedy some of the problems that were self inflicted when I did some of the original installs. The bundling of wires behind the power panels is something that I am too embarrassed to photograph to show you, but this time one of my projects has been to clean that up as best I can. While I was doing it I discovered what was likely causing the problems with both the wind instruments, depth sounder and the VHF radio. Both battery banks are set up for 24V but some of the instrument, such as the radio and wind instruments run off 12V so I use an electrical step down transformer to reduce the voltage. I discovered that the ground connection for the 24V input, although it was a piece of number 8 wire was only hanging on by a couple of strands. In fact, when I took hold of it the whole thing came off in my hand. Clearly it was not able to pass on the full wattage to the transformer. This would explain a lot of the things we were seeing. Some of them were even giving me low battery warning beeps or even messages on the screen.

We are also taking this opportunity to send the wind generator back to eMarine for a long overdue servicing. When I called them to arrange shipment we also discovered that we should be bringing the power in from the two solar panels on two separate circuits through two separate controllers the good news is that the technology has improved and become much less expensive since we installed the old one so it won’t hurt the pocketbook all that much.

Once I have done these projects I will be finalizing the cabinet work under the mizzen step and the. We should be able to leave Nelleke to rest for the winter. We are already planning to launch as early as possible and a couple of shakedown cruises. Barb has asked for a trip up to the Eastern Shore to visit Liscomb Lodge. We both have enjoyed visiting there in the past, trout fishing in the river, going for walks in the woods, and treating ourselves to dinner at the lodge.

Ah planning. Almost as much fun as the doing.