Dawn Patrol
13 March 2012 | Doran Beach
Good morning boys and girls! And despite Bodega Bay’s well-earned reputation as “Blow-dega Bay”, not to mention the fog; there have been some spectacularly beautiful mornings. On those mornings, we tend to take the boys – Rusty & Rascal – over to Doran Beach (rather than our normal walks out of Spud Pt Marina). But this morning, 13 March, it’s blowing and raining, 15’ combined seas outside, and as you might imagine, they boys were not amused on their morning walk. Dot and I wore complete sets of foulies and boots. Rusty visibly hated it so much he never relaxed enough to take his morning poop. And now he’s hiding under a blanket.
Commercial crabbing out of Bodega Bay is winding down for this year. Many, but not all, of the boats have retrieved their pots and shipped them north for the season up there, or to storage for next year. Soon they will be trolling for salmon, which is anticipated to be a good season.
End of January, we drove up to Seattle for the recreation boat show, and several diesel classes at Northern Lights / Lugger. Good weather, great company, and an easy 2-day trip north.
The diesel classes were taught by Bob Senter at Northern Lights. Bob’s a great teacher, and his information was specific to my engine and genset. I even got to remove / replace the John Deere injection pump that ICE had such trouble with last year. I will type up my notes from the classes and post on Ducktalk.net for those of you who might be interested in specifics. At the recreation boat show, we saw lots of interesting gear – LEDs have really come of age for various types of lighting we have on / in the boat, and we picked up a couple of units to experiment with.
Last posting, I wrote about issues in the AC electrical system aboard. It turns out the isolation transformer had not failed, the electrical short occurred further back towards the shorepower. The actual electrical burn occurred at the shorepower cord receptacle into the boat; it may be that the heavy cord turned the plug, resulting in a poor connection, and therefore an arcing burn – which is common with this type of plug. I’ve been lusting after a new type of plug and receptacle – Smart Plug – which has much beefier contacts and a much more secure locking system. I’ve been waiting though, for the company to come out with the 50 amp version (30 amp now available), so I can make the changes I’m planning for the shorepower system, all at once.
But back to the isolation transformer: just before Christmas I’d taken the unit up to E&M electrical in Healdsburg (recommended by several of the commercial boat owners on the dock) to have it checked-out, possibly repaired. Pablo Serrano determined that there was nothing wrong with the transformer, then took the time to tutor me on the wiring and function. It’s now reinstalled, with labeling that I will be able to interpret, say 3 years from now.
The inverter-charger, a older Xantrex 2500, which is not pure sine wave (meaning a lot of appliances, particularly electronics, really hate the current coming out of it and will either not work, burn out and never work again, or work poorly and die early) died shortly after I took the isolation transformer out. And unlike the transformer, the inverter-charger is most sincerely dead. There’s a 50 cent size hole burned in the main circuit board. I’m happy to be replacing it (not happy about the money, but happy for the opportunity to replace it with a pure sine wave unit that is kinder to appliances and electronics, and also uses way less energy idling.) But also, even though it will cost double, I am replacing the single unit inverter-charger with two stand-alone units, to eliminate the single-point failure issue. It appears I may actually buy two identical inverter-chargers, but wire one unit for inverting (12VDC battery to 110-220VAC) and the other for charging (the batteries from shorepower or genset).
We’ve discussed cruising this coming summer, and had thought we might head down to the Santa Barbara Channel Islands for a couple of months; but we’re thinking now that we’re going to stay put for a while longer. Daughter Kate’s baby is due end of May, and Dorothy will want to be close for that and helping out in the months after. I’ve certainly got plenty to keep me busy… although I really am itching to be underway.
End of this week, I’m off to Hong Kong with our friend David. His new Diesel Duck is ready for final inspection and sea trials. We’ll spend time at the Seahorse boatyard in Doumen China, attend the HK Rugby Sevens tournament and hang out with our friends at Seahorse, and in Hong Kong. Very sorry Dorothy’s not coming too, but someone had to stay with the boys.