I spent the day tricking out our dinghy for cruising guide survey duty. It has been a key start dinghy for some time, though the battery has been dead since Gizo. We were anchored in the harbor there for a while and the standard dinghy ride to the docks was less than a minute. This constant starting with no time to charge (and maybe leaving the lights on that one time) killed 'er.

The only battery I could find that I really wanted to own was one of those fancy spiral AGM deals sold at NAPA. It was painfully expensive and required a new battery box because it is way bigger than the old one. It cranks like crazy though.

After replacing the bat I had to hook up the new depth sounder (basic Garmin NEMA model) and mount the little GPSMap Chart plotter. There is a short somewhere in our lights and after fooling with them for a bit (and eating through a pack of fuses) I just unwired the lights and wired the GPS power and the Sounder power to the switched side.

It all worked out well and it is particularly nice to be able to go out recording tracks with depth without having to worry about the batterries running out.