July 21st - Hot time in the old town, tonight

So, now a few days later, we're correcting these electrical problems
before
trying to determine exactly what's up with various instruments. One
clue
about all this was found last night on the way back from the showers:

As I walked down the extremely long dock, I noticed what seemed to be
a
strobe light atop someone's mast.
That someone was me, and the wind speed instrument's cups were
interfering
with the view as they went around, making it flicker. Once I had that
figured out, as that phenomenon stopped as I got far enough along
to have the cups in front of (rather than obscuring) the view of the
lens,
I continued on. Then it looked as
though it was dimming/burning. I stepped back, and it stopped. Forward
and
it started again. WTF???

The way navigation lights work, in order for people who are looking at
your
boat at night, is to have certain lights visible from certain angles.
When
you get past that angle the visible light disappears. So, what I'd
been
seeing wasn't our anchor light - it was the green light showing from
the
right side of the top of the mast. I'd thought it looked a bit odd, as
the
white anchor light is very bright and sort of blue in color. No
wonder...


But, back to the story, as I got closer to the boat, I found the green
light
disappeared (which is how it's supposed to do) - but not before the
red
light started to show up and confuse the view. Being much lower than
the
mast and not off a half mile or more, the view was very small as
compared to
the output of the light. Thus it looked as though it was getting dim -
but
in reality, it was showing both red and green together, and as I got
closer,
red only. Because I was nearly directly under it, I didn't get much of
the
light by that time, making it difficult to determine what it was.
Walking
further down the dock allowed me to see more of the light, to the
point
where the red and white were visible at the same time. BRIGHT red
light...

So... The red light's lit - at least for now. I'd lit the nav light
when we
were powering everything we could touch in order to see how much the
alternator was putting out, and had forgotten to turn it off. If in
fact
it's not broken, I presume it to also be a voltage issue (most of our
instruments have been misbehaving - see the "how revolting" post - we
presume them to be under-supplied).

So... Perhaps all of our electronic glitches (the radio aside - one of
my
contacts has provided the link to the solution in our Ham and SSB
radio) can
be resolved merely with the application of adequate power.

Today has been somewhat of a lay-day, in boatyard terms, in that not a
great
deal has happened. I've restowed the maelstrom, which resulted when
Lydia
emptied our storage that hid the wiring I needed for final
installation on
the new charger. In the process, I uncovered the other spare
alternator.
It's got labeling on it saying it's 70A. I'll install that tomorrow,
along
with a new belt, as the one that was on it has pretty well been used
up.
There's also some possibility that the worn belt was a contributing
factor -
who knows? - maybe they are *all* 70A and we're just not able to pull
it out
of them?

I'll also be making the final wiring of the charger. It's been in a
temporary location as we were doing our testing. If the new alternator
and
belt *does* produce that higher amperage, then we'll keep it. If not,
we're
in for some higher output, new, charging on the engine.

Tonight we had a lovely evening aboard an Island Packet whose owners
have
been following our adventures on line. We find we're notorious (in the
definitive, not pejorative, sense of the word) as a result of the
internet.
Earlier today there were a half-dozen dock-walkers from other boats
who
stopped by and marveled at what we'd done and been through. They also
admired the burnt-out hulk of our old massive battery charger, sitting
on
the dock, waiting for removal...

I've also worked on pictures. I absolutely detest Shutterfly, but if
one has
only a dialup connection, those tiny thumbnails will be visible
without
waiting an entire day to see them. So, there are pix at
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/w...0CcN3DFqybMXNw.
However,
there's also pix at our gallery www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery -
click the
first picture, and follow the links. The thumbnails in those galleries
are
as big as the shutterfly full pix and can be clicked to see larger
detail if
you like. Getting those together and up kept us up late again, so I'll
try
to sleep late before I head back into the engine room!

As I write, it's now Sunday Morning, and I'm off to deliver the USB
hard
drive I copied 20Gigabytes of music onto for our Island Packet
friends,
coffee in hand. Then it's back into the engine room!

Having now exited the engine room, there's lots done there. It remains
to
test it all. However, the battery condition is now in the "charged"
zone for
each of the dozen cells, where none of them were there on our first
reading
a few days ago.

Unfortunately for me, the alternator which I put on (the one with the
70A
label) had a stripped mounting tab, and I had to come up with a bolt
which
would go through in order to put a nut on it on the other side. Dad's
Hardware Store (the name the kids used to give my supplies at my land-
based
home, cuz any time they needed something, it was available, in stock)
has
migrated to being Dad's Chandlery. While it's still being stocked, and
therefore we didn't have the truly proper bolt for the application, we
did,
indeed have a makeshift solution. That temporary fix will be resolved
as we
get confirmation of whether or not the alternator will actually keep
up with
our loads, and fill the batteries as well.

Now that our refrigeration (34.3 currently) and freezer (7.1
currently) is
no longer a concern, and we don't have to worry about a repair person
coming
aboard to work on it, we'll probably ditch the lovely electrical
supply
here, and anchor out to test out our ability to make power on the
hook.
We'll no longer be able to leave our laptops up all the time, but when
we're
cruising, we won't be able to do it then, either. So, we'll get into
our
cruising mode.

And, perhaps, tomorrow, we'll do our electrical loads test, recording
each
and every thing we use as to how much power it consumes. From that,
we'll be
able to develop a power budget, making sure we always have more power
coming
in (over the long haul) than we are spending. We have what, for most
boats
this size, is a massive battery bank, so our storage should be
sufficient to
handle low-power-generation days. We just need to be able to identify
our
loads, and utilize our power judiciously.

So, I'll leave you here, and we'll go get some dinner. Fortunately for
us,
it's moderated in heat recently, which makes being below in the engine
room
much more pleasant. That's the forecast for the next couple of days;
perhaps
we can get all of our heavy lifting done before it gets hot, and
concentrate
on some seatrialing to prove out what we've done.

Stay tuned :{))


L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog and/or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make
it
come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts."
(Richard Bach, in The Reluctant Messiah)

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog and/or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make
it
come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts."
(Richard Bach, in The Reluctant Messiah)