April 23, 2018
I flew to Orlando on a afternoon flight and got to the boat around 11PM. Things looked good, the boat was dry inside except for one leak I found far forward in the far port bow cabin (the bow pulpit seat pole was leaking I believe). This is good news as it rained a great deal the previous 4 days, and the boat yard had a good amount of standing water.  Nice cool down at night for the first sleep over of the 2019 season :-)

April 24
I spent the first day trying to unclog a pipe inside the aluminum holding tank. In this weird design, the output from the head goes into a pipe at the bottom of the tank. This pipe runs inside the tank to near the top, and then overflows into the tank. It was the pipe inside the tank that was clogged solid. I tried to hammer a fiberglass rod up the pipe to no avail. The clog laughed at the router rooter, and so I tracked down  24 inch  drill bit.
 

The drill did get through the clog, and I could have sworn when I put the shop vac into the top of the tube (I could reach it through a access port on the top of the tank) I could feel air being sucked in. Of course when I hooked things back up, the pipe was still clogged.
Since it was time to make everything perfect, I put on a new base and a new motor. 



As with everything on this project, there was a nasty surprise as there was no way to get the hose on the base without removing the base one more time!
Once I got it all put together, the head still could not flush as the holding tank pipe was again clogged. I tried the drill again, and this time it fell out of the drill as I was removing it and fell into a deep corner of the bilge that would have taken me hours to get at due to the AC and plumbing mounted over the area. I decided it is a gift for the next people who own this boat! I finally gave up and created a plug for the hole, and will drill a new inlet spot near the top of tank, avoiding this tube issue. Basically a day near wasted, although I did rebuild the head and get it all mounted.

Since it was not going well, I took a break to attack the only leak I noticed when checking on the boat. I discovered it when moving boxes of spares to get to the electrical parts to wire up the head motor. The top box had a fair amount of water on it, which spilled onto my shirt as I moved the boxes..

The only issue was I could not reach the nut and the bolt head at the same time. Using a simple solution with the screw driver, I was able to hold things well enough to get the nut off, and mostly tight with the new caulk. I am sure it will leak less now as they did not seem to use a flexible caulk when this was last messed with.
 

April 25th
I focused on less frustrating projects today, including: putting the dingy under the boat, caulking the Starboard heads as well as the port side step down area that had a fairly large gap in the existing caulking along the head walls. I also experimented with the dehumidifier and discovered it uses about 35 amps or so when run off the inverter.  With the solar, I can get this down to a 10 amp draw, so with some voltage monitoring, I should be able to run the dehumidifier off solar with the proper software controls. A project is born, and the Pi will make it work.

In the mean time, I plugged the boat into the power pole right behind us, and hopefully that will stay plugged in for a while.



I also filled the propane tank that ran out the last few days of our trip, so now we have two full tanks heading into the 2019 adventures.

I also moved the dingy under the boat and tied it on all 4 corners. If the yard floods, the dingy should generally stay put until the cat floats foo the stands, at which point, I am not sure I would care what happened next !


I ran the dehimidifier some with the inverter and house batteries. When the sun is shining, I am generating 22 amps of Solar at 12 V. The dehumidifier draws 32 amps, so I should be able to run it for about 6 hours a day just using solar and my house batteries. I will set up a raspberry Pi to sense the battery voltage and when it is being charged by the sun, flip on a relay that will fire the dehumidifier. This should make things work pretty well. 
Although we have a convenient power pole behind us.
The yard does not promise things will stay plugged in, and using solar and the Pi should make things more dependable. What could go wrong :-)



Hopefully the dehumidifier, plus the hatch covers and new hatches should keep the boat a good deal drier than last summer.
I turned the hurricane straps in a little deeper. I left the yard gate opener on top of the shop vac in case they ask for it back. Doubled checked things, put the tarp covers on all the large hatches on deck and cloth covers on the smaller ones. It was time for a photo.




Well, that is the update. The weather was great, with daytime highs in the upper 70’s and night time lows in the 60’s for good sleeping.
It was time to head back to Orlando and catch a early flight home on April 26th

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