Moving On

 

To quote Michelle Franklin 'Cruising is just boat repair in exotic places'.  We've got the boat repair part covered, but I would never think to describe Annapolis as exotic. After a ten day layover completing repairs and unfinished projects while we waited for parts I was glad to say goodbye.

When we limped into Annapolis, we'd lost the Genny, the alternator, and the solar panels, I thought three different charging sources would be redundancy enough but alas.......I was wrong.  All the failures were unrelated but problematic, nonetheless.  One good thing about Annapolis is they have many marine parts stores; the bad thing however is everything is uphill and at opposite ends of the city.  Henry and I both brought our BMX bikes, great for a rip around the island but not as practical for lugging groceries, parts, or propane tanks.  Over the course of our time in Annapolis I must have biked a hundred miles uphill in both directions.  Henry bailed after the first couple of trips leaving me to ride solo around Annapolis on my bright yellow BMX.

Each day was a different adventure to the far corners of the city to forage for miscellaneous bits and bobs to get us back on track.  Bacon Sails had a used parts and consignment section for me to rummage through. I was fortunate to find the threaded barb I needed for the Genny.  From Bacon it was a bit of a ride to West Marine but worth the trip once I remembered that they price match.  Yep, price match on marine parts.... What a bad idea for them, I'd spent the morning scouring the web for the best deals on our required parts, which eventually translated into $300 in savings.

I was feeling pretty good when I got back to the boat after a long day of bargain hunting, but that was to be short lived.  The batteries had dropped below the programmed threshold after a sunny, cloud free day. With 1100w in solar power we should have been flush with power, but for some reason we were not.  The panels had voltage, but they weren't sharing the juice with the batteries, another conundrum we'd need to solve but for now the sun had gone down and diagnosis would have to wait.

I spent the rest of the night dwelling on the dilemma and planning the next day's course of action. We shut down all non-essential systems for the night to conserve what little power we had left.  Morning came early for me, so did the chores, I reviewed the solar panel concern first, knowing that they'd start producing power the moment they were fixed.  In the end it was a communication glitch between the battery monitoring system, that counts amps in and out across a 'shunt', A shunt is an electrical bridge with a turnstile at each end tracking power as it comes and goes. For some unknown reason I've yet to dive into, the monitor thought the batteries were full, so it reduced the output so as not to damage the batteries.  It took a minute of brain power to solve the problem, but once I disconnected the monitor from the network, the panels began operating independently and the power started to flow.  Now that the panels were charging, I focused on the generator, I'd done most of the prep in NY so all I had to do was remove the control box to spin the exhaust elbow into place.  By the end of the day the generator was up and running and we could start turning things back on.  

Although I'd installed the new propane solenoid, it was still giving us grief.  We had propane flow, but the solenoid wouldn't shut off the gas when we flipped the switch. Turns out we had put it in backwards.  Once we'd sorted that out, you'd think we'd be good to go but nope, it was not meant to be, the regulator wasn't allowing the gas to flow. Fortunately, we carry a spare 2 stage propane regulator on board, so I figured that was the next step.  While Henry retrieved the spare, I tried bleeding the regulator through a control valve, and low and behold that did it!  There would be hot food that night after all!!!

In between repairing all the freshly broken bits and pieces I managed to complete the repairs to our main water tank, increasing our tankage from 50 gallons to 150 gallons, I'm now looking forward to taking my first ever shower aboard Island Eclipse! 

Our AIS didn't need an urgent fix but I thought it best to get it done when parts were available, so we picked up a new VHF antenna from West Marine in our price match exploits.  Henry was keen to climb the forestay, so up he went with tools and antenna in tow, a job I was very relieved not to have to do.

Things were starting to finally come together and although the alternator we picked up in Albany was charging, the footprint of the alternator wasn't quite correct, so the misaligned pulleys were eating the belts.  Fortunately, I'm always looking out for a deal so we picked up a brand new Balmar alternator off Facebook Market Place for less than half the retail cost.  I had to switch the pulleys from our existing alternator to the new one so I hopped on the bike and headed to Pasco batteries to swap them over, but alas it wasn't so easy.  The shaft on the new alternator was bigger than the original, so we had to source a new double V pulley. Fortunately, Pasco had one, so we were in luck.   It didn't come with an external regulator so I figured the internal one would work just fine....or not!   Once I got it installed, I was excited to try it out, so I fired Fred up, the engine ran for a while, and nothing happened.  I referred to the installation manual and couldn't find any issues with the install.  I called a couple of friends who are much better at electrical than me and still we couldn't figure out what was wrong.  The next day I biked up to Bacon again to pick up a used external regulator I saw on their shelf during my last visit.  It was only $80 with wiring harness, so I grabbed it, with high hopes that we'd solve our dilemma once and for good.  Nope, yet again it wasn't meant to be, we still had no voltage coming out of the alternator, and I was starting to lose my mind. I called Balmar and they recommended I get it checked out by a shop, perhaps the shop I'd biked to the day before, sure why not, what's another 4 hours on a BMX with an alternator on my back.  Saied at Pasco was very helpful and quickly diagnosed the problem, both the internal regulator and the external regulator I just bought were toast, luckily they had a current, programable regulator in stock so he wired it up and sent me on my way.  I stopped by Bacon on the ride home and returned the faulty regulator.   Once we got things reassembled, I was quite relieved to see the voltmeter on the panel come to life, we could finally charge the batteries with the engine again.  Yeah.

Now that we'd solved all our problems, we moved to the open water side of the bridge for a quick escape the next day.  We picked up another mooring ball for that night and relaxed for the rest of the evening, excited about what tomorrow would bring..

What did the next day have in store for us.... more tough luck I'm afraid.  We fired up Barney first the next morning as the batteries were still teetering on the low side.  Deb was on the phone catching me up with things at home when I noticed smoke pouring out of the engine room vent.  I dropped the call immediately and ran down to investigate.  It wasn't smoke, the engine room was full of steam, it was like a sauna in there, hot with near zero visibility.  I stopped the generator and waited for the fan to clear the fog.  

The raw water pump pulley is secured on a slotted shaft with an Allan key screw that had come loose, and the pully shifted positions causing the belt to jump off.  Which meant another trip to Napa auto parts to pick up a new belt.  It didn't take Henry long to bike there and back so I was eager to get to it fixed... or not.  The belt he picked up was too short even though he'd taken the original to match it.  So once again our departure was delayed until we picked up the right belt.  That night Henry’s phone stopped working... well of course it did, why limit all these failures to the boat I thought, so instead of dispatching Henry to Napa once again we both went for a ride together the next day to the Apple store and the Napa.  Unlike the boat, his phone was a quick fix, he just needed to replace his charger, thirty minutes and fifty dollars later we were on our way, stopping at Napa on the return trip.

Now that we had all the parts, we needed we stopped off at the grocery store on the way back to the boat to pick up some odds and ends we'd missed.  Even after we stopped for groceries the day was still young, so we went out of our way to stop by the skateboard park and have some real fun on our BMX bikes.

The park was far, so it took us a while to find it and of course we had the place to ourselves.  I got to riding the ramps right away while Henry took a moment to survey the equipment.  I hit the quarter pipe first, taking advantage of the other equipment as I came off the ramp.  Henry tried to follow but it didn't go so well, his tires slid down the ramp and ass over tea kettle he went.  It wasn't a dramatic high-speed fall by any means but it's the little ones that often hurt the most.  He used his hands to break his fall bending the wrist on his right hand a little more than it was meant too, spraining it in the process.  I figured that was it for the day, so I decided to hit the launch ramp on the way out.  That proved to be a poor idea.  I didn't fly like the eagle I once did, instead my back wheel came down hard on the lip of the landing ramp bursting my back tire.   That was truly the end of our time at the skateboard park, we soon realized it would be a long, long, long walk back to the boat with an arm full of groceries and a flat tire.  

Three hours later we finally got back to Island Eclipse, and that was it for me.  I sat down in the cockpit relieved to be home and very much eager to get the heck out of dodge.  I didn't bother installing Barney’s belt that day, it would have to wait until our next stop because I was done with Annapolis.

The next morning, I was up and at ‘em early, we'd been underway for a good three hours before Herny made his way to the cockpit.  The plan was to head to the Potomac that day, but it was a way to go so we fell short about ten miles and tucked ourselves into a little bay for the night and called it a day.

I was up early the next morning keenly aware of the time limitations we’d soon be realizing.  The days are getting shorter and cooler, the sooner we head south the better, so we needed to expedite our trip to Washington.  The next two days would be long and tedious, although the Patomac was quite big it doesn't carry a lot of depth towards the shore line so the navigable channel was narrow and required constant attention.  It was 125 miles from Chesapeake to Washington DC which should have taken three days, but with a couple of early mornings and late nights we made it to the Washington Channel in two, arriving Saturday night just after dark.

The next adventure was about to begin!!!