September 4, 2018
I flew to Orlando on a 5pm flight and got to the hotel in St Augustine at 11:30
Decided it was too tough to come straight to boat.

September 5, 2018
Boat inside looked great. No water anywhere, all bunks and bilges dry, even my bucket under the leaking bow pulpit was dry.

The outside was a different story. Very dirty, and stained. It was a real mess, and changed my work plans right away. I think it is because I am close to the sand blasting area, but who knows. I like being close to water, but next year I will go for a spot in the back yard, away from the work areas.

The boat looked good from 30 feet away!

My Aurdino project seemed to work great. The inside of the boat was clean and dry, and the counter showed over 255 cycles, which means it was turning on and off roughly 4 times a day on average (3 months, 65 days it was able to run).
This means I was not banging the battery too hard, and I am happy with the results. With 200 Watts more solar, it will do even better. I spent some time modifying the code and now will turn it off even sooner, to put fewer cycles on the batteries.

The only storage issue I found in terms of what I had done is the port main cabin hatch cover had come off. I fixed that by moving the latch to the very far side and it should be good going forward.

I got the gate key sorted and and picked up my 2 new solar panels. They tested out well,  exactly to spec, and I should be set there. Just need to pull the wires and get a controller.
Since the deck was so dirty, and when I scrubbed, I got a white chalky run off, I figured I needed to clean things and get some protection on the deck. I spent around 5 hours scrubbing and woody waxing the deck, still have the port side and cockpit to do,  but at least it is started.

September 6th, 2018
Fired up both engines they started right away. Ran for a little while and then put in anti freeze. This was 5 months idle for Port engine and it fired right up. I think I am good to wait until December to fire them again.
I ran each head and shower and shower sumps, aft port head motor is very loud and leaks, so this is on the fix list for November. Everything else looked good. Shower poles are 26 inches tall (top of cap to bottom of cap). No mold or mildew I can spot.
There are some wasps trying to make a nest off one of the drain outlets. I keep killing them with my shoe, but they do not take the hints..
I was drying out the engine compartments when a nice rain came through. Oh Well.... It is very hot (85 to 92 with 85% humidity) so it is hard to get a ton done. Headstay is 42mm in diameter, round. Gap for feeder is 72mm.

I finished the deck scrubbing and put on more woody wax. I did some additional tests on the Aurdino and it seems to be working great. With modest sun shining, we are drawing 20 amps, if we were at full sun, we would only be drawing 15 or so. With the extra 200 watts, we will be close to break even when the sun shines. I have it turning on at 13.35 and off at 12.65 volts as shown on the Link meter. I get higher voltage readings from the solar controler, but either way, I am not hitting the batteries too hard.
Fixed the Starboard engine blower motor issue. A new relay did the trick. The slide on tabs were not very tight so I closed them with a pliers, seems very solid now.

Also used 5200 to glue back on the stern rail where it was loose, and spent some time working to clean the black off the  rails around the cockpit, and the stern rail. Very discolored, tried a few things to attack it.

Back to the 2018 Refit Logs

Back to the Paradigm Shift logs

Back to the Sailing Home page