Batteries Done- Another job checked off

Well, I finished the plumbing and Yes, Emily got a brand new faucet too. Also last week, I managed to wrestle (with the help of the deck winches and Kim) those six batteries in place in the engine room. Here’s a picture of the batteries all hooked up.

And here is a picture of what I built to hold them down. I understand that 800 pounds of batteries flying around inside the engine room because of heavy seas might be a bad thing. And the Plexiglas cover (that used to be part of Terry McGill’s desk (long story)) is to allow me to lay over them to reach hull valves and other critical things without having 1200 amps of current weld my belt buckle to the boat.

And the best part is when I finally threw the power switch, nothing caught on fire!

Next week, Kim holds garage sales and put the treasures that took us 28 years to accumulate up for sale for pennies on the dollar! You will have to wait, dear reader, until next week to find out how much we collected for all that STUFF!

Captain Tom

Finally Retired

Finally Retired-

Well, we’ve gone and done it. Walked away from a good paying jobs at age 50 to go boating. How cool is that? I still need to fight my way through a 60 item list before we leave the dock this summer, but we are on our way. Some of the items on the list are monumental…like sell the house and sell, give away or pack up 28 years of accumulated STUFF.

This week, the Admiral and I are replacing most of the fresh water plumbing in the boat because a few of the plastic fittings broke last year. When trying to fix them, a few more broke and a little internet research told me that these fittings were discontinued because they get brittle and crack…well DUH, that’s exactly what they did. I figure that having a fitting let go on a long passage and having our entire 350 gallons of precious water leak into the bilge and have it pumped overboard by our mighty bilge pumps would really be a bummer. I might even have to drink beer!

So we are snaking ½” PEX tubing through holes and around bulkheads that haven’t been explored since the teeny tiny Taiwanese team put this little ship together for Nordhavn 18 years ago. And that faucet in the master stateroom looks a little nasty so we might as well replace that too. A few more holes to allow an American Standard faucet to fit into the old spot and some upside down chiseling with the Naiad roll stabilizer digging in my back and we are good to go.

I managed to wrestle a couple of dead 8D batteries out of the engine room last week and am spending tomorrow’s rainy Friday getting the new ones. I think they got the name 8Ds, because you normally need about 8 Days to recuperate after lifting those heavy puppies! Anyway, I’m driving to Ray Battery in Berlin, CT and picking up six smaller 6 volt batteries that I somehow have figured out how to connect together to triple my battery capacity and magically get 12 volts out of them. For those non-boater readers out there, battery capacity is what lets you sit quietly, longer at anchor before you have to fire up that noisy generator to put the juice back into the battery bank.

I can hardly wait to see what joys await me next when I get to the plumbing in Emily’s stateroom. Unfortunately, dear reader, you will have to wait to find out how I do….

Captain Tom