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November 3 - Plugging Right Along
November 3 - Plugging Right Along
Those of you who have been watching the weather are aware of what has come to be called Hurricane Noel. The recent activity of that storm has made the weather in the area where we're currently shivering a bit messy for running down the Chesapeake, so we didn't go when we thought we would. Instead, we're enjoying Solomons, such as we can. We've met another Morgan 46'er, rafting up for dinner with him and his wife and 4 children. Just another confirmation of how marvelous our boats are, we 5 adults and 4 kids fit comfortably, if cozily, into our salon, where we thoroughly enjoyed each other and comparing each other's similarities and differences over fried chicken and various salad side dishes. Their boat has a full complement of new sails and also the Strong Track System which we've ordered for ours, so I got a look at it installed on his boat. He'd been kind enough to scope out our eventual anchorage the day before we arrived, so we knew just where to hang out our hook. As we arrived, we chatted up some other sailboats in the anchorage, and they reported good holding, so we hooked firmly in Back Creek, just past Zaniser's Yacht Club, over about 12 feet of water. We'd left only a bit earlier, as our anchorage off Drum Point was only about 4 miles away. As is their custom, the ladies slept in, but when we upped our anchors, both were very clean, and they'd had a chance to shed the remains of the Cambridge and Oxford goo that had hardened on them. Having now deployed our "Shock and Awe" anchor (described by a knowledgeable fellow in St. Petersburg as huge overkill for our applications) and rode twice in the last few days, I am finding a bit better system for both retrieval and launch - both semi-hand-done - of the second one. Perhaps I'll use it often, now. In any event, it was nice to have a clean anchor, and chain, again! Our guide lives in the area, and had the ability to give me a ride around to several shopping-type places the next day, which was Halloween. One of the places was to try to find worming medicine for Portia, our rescued cat. I'll let Lydia fill you in on the details of all that, but we didn't succeed. Prescription, only. I also tried to get stainless steel rivets, to no avail. One of our projects will be to redo our rail system (replaced the lifelines) as I'm not satisfied that the setscrews will suffice when push comes to shove. I'll order those from a commercial supplier and have them sent to one of the places we're headed. However, the rest of our shopping was fruitful. I got yet more alternator belts as part of that, of which more anon. As is my wont whenever we're standing still, I got into various projects. One of them was to install the Icom M-802 SSB/Ham radio which had been returned from the factory where it had a refit to address voice clipping - a symptom which manifests as someone hearing only the very first part of a transmission I'd make. In the course of getting to that location, and getting a sliding panel out from behind a chain support, I dropped the main instrument hinged/drop-down panel. As it had the support chains, it only went a few inches before it stopped - but the same symptom as had been seen when we were on the way out of Barnegat Light reared its head again: the GPS would not power up. As we were just about to go on an overnight - in the place where the universal recommendation is to not sail at night - down the Chesapeake to Norfolk, in one jump, this was not a good sign. Those who have been following this adventure for a while will recall that the solution to the problem before was that the cable which powered the unit, the "plug," if you will, somehow wasn't making a good connection. The first time I'd encountered this, I'd cured it by repetitively connecting and disconnecting the plug - effectively, burnishing the contacts. That worked for quite a while. Then, in the Barnegat incident over a month ago, I'd not been able to make it self-repair on that basis. So, I took it apart and cleaned and burnished all the interior connections and put it back together. No joy. Conversation with the service and support folks at Raymarine led to our sending it back. On examination, it was "no problem found" - it powered up and found satellites and did all the other stuff asked of it. From that I concluded I must therefore have a power supply problem. Since I was seeing boat voltage at the plug end, my assumption was that it must have been a poor connection robbing it (the poor connection causing a voltage drop) of the required supply. So, I started at the control panel and went through each and every connection and either redid it or burnished, corrosion-controlled and reassembled them. Still no joy when I attached the plug to the unit. Hm. Well, if everything else is as good as it gets, the problem has to be in the plug itself. Shortening the story, I took my probe and modified the shape a bit. Bingo. Power up, and, until the latest drop, it performed flawlessly. Back to the present, however, no amount of cleaning or tweaking the plug made any difference. Talking, yet again, to Raymarine, had the support folks saying it was in the unit, not the boat, where the problem lay. Not satisfied with that answer, and very reluctant to send the unit back yet again, I asked about the cable itself. Oops. Too old. Can't even buy them any more. Hm. I just bought another fish finder. The old one uses a different power supply than the new one. Just maybe?? Sure enough, they're the same. Even better, when I powered up the fish finder (the old one - I've not yet installed the new one), it lit, of course. And... Taa Daaah! So did the GPS when I stuck it on that plug. Not surprisingly, the fish finder, when powered with the GPS cable, didn't power up. So... Plugging right along. I replaced the plug of the GPS with the one from the old fishfinder. I'd presumed that doing so would resolve the GPS problem. HAH! No such luck. You wouldn't believe the color of the air when I saw that it would not come up. I was just about to take the old plug upstairs and connect it temporarily to the line I'd cut in removing the plug to the fishfinder when I recalled my test unit. Connecting the OLD plug - the one I'd presumed bad - to these tiny wires (not capable of carrying nearly any current at all) resulted in a successful power-up of the unit. More blue air as I contemplated replacing the wire from the circuit breaker to the unit. Looking at it, it hit me. There's a fuse in the line! I'd inspected the fuse, and it was good, of course (else, how would I have the proper voltage at the end?), but not the terminals in the fuse holder. Sure enough, they were black. A quick dressing with some emery cloth and putting it back together resulted in instant power-on for the GPS. A couple of hours later, I've finally stopped kicking myself for overlooking that obvious potential for a voltage drop, but I sure wish I'd thought of it sooner!!! All is well with the GPS and all connected to it, including my laptop's navigation program. OY! I'll also install the new fishfinder, of course, but that will have to wait for another day, as we need to get out of here while it's still light. Happily, I've connected the new (well, new to us) Garmin replacement GPS at the helm as well. That Garmin supplies the feed to the VHF radio's panic button - but I'll also be able to feed that information to the new fishfinder - which, because the Garmin GPS has a mount from the previous Garmin GPS, it was also plug and play. Another project had to do with the engine room and its myriad of things to do. The first of them was to replace the belt I'd put on before with one of the new ones. The new ones were different than the ones which have been disintegrating, and so far, in our running of the main engine to make hot water, which, of course, also runs the alternator, the belt is very much cooler and gives some evidence that it might solve our problem. In the end, I think I'll wind up taking the main pulley off and having it resurfaced. That will not only clean up the groove but make it larger, to match the pulley on the alternator, which will lead to longer belt life and longer water pump life. Given that water pumps on these engines are unavailable as other than salvage from a removed engine, that's got a pretty high priority! While I was in there, I also changed the oil. Much to my surprise, the oil which went back in took another 2 quarts beyond what it had before, despite the same amount coming out as in the past. Research in my various mailing lists suggests I have the right length replacement dipstick (see a prior log about how I broke the last one), so that one has me scratching my head. In any event, the engine room is happier for my time in there! In the meantime, we've enjoyed the area, having a couple of dinghy rides to shore, done shopping and laundry and toured the museum. Like the one in St. Michaels, this is a transported, out-of-service lighthouse, and a local joy. In deference to the coming storm, a couple of nights ago we moved onto a mooring ball for the two nights before we left. In the end, I don't think it would have been any difficulty, but Lydia's mom was buying and was more comfortable with that, so who were we to argue?? With the ball came all the Zaniser's Yacht Club privileges - hot showers, laundry, bikes and the like. So, we behaved a little like more prosperous cruisers than we normally might. Truth be known, however, it was actually prompted by the entirety of the anchorage other than us making lots of dinghy-borne visitations between themselves with lots of loud conversations, and, then, suddenly, each and every one of the anchored boats pulling up their anchors and moving to mooring balls. That was enough to spook the ladyfolk, and off we went. I've not minded. Later today, we're off, overnight, to Hampton Roads, where we'll meet up with another Morgan fellow cruiser, the attorney who set up the trust fund for us when we had our wreck. From there we'll go to Norfolk, where we'll return the borrowed Gunkholer's Guide to the Chesapeake (we never got to use it) and the Washington Guide (same deal), and prepare for our jaunt down the ICW to miss Cape Hatteras. 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) |
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