April 1, 2000 -- Gauges are the question of the day Joe came aboard this morning and started performing some tests on our gauges. We lost the 12 Volt power supply somewhere! He pulled our stepdown transformers and bench tested them. They came back good, this surprised us. He then ran a temporary wiring harness down the steps to check the gauges. He wired up both the port and starboard lower helm, and they worked flawlessly, so Mike and Joe set about running the new wiring harness for both engines. Anne and Henry came over and I went shopping with them while Mike stayed and played with wires and gauges. When I got back, the wiring harness was complete and the engine gauges were about to be tested. It was a complete success, we have lower helm gauges again! Joe then started exploring how to run the second wire harness. His first thought did not work, so we followed the path of the original wiring harness. It took all three of us to get the harness down through the electrical panel. He then ran it to the lower helm and wired it up. After that, he called it a day, cleaned everything up and split. We napped, then Anne and Henry came by. We wandered around the yard with them looking at the different boats here. We returned to the boat had dinner and napped again, intending to go out. We didn't make it, since we had slept half the night by the time we woke up it was 1:30 in the morning, we watched Dick Van Dyke on Nick-at-Nite. Then went back to bed

April 2, 2000 -- A Day of Rest We knew that we would need to get a new 24 volt buzzer alarm since the one in the pilot house did not work. We pulled out our catalogues, but could not find one. We called Boat Owners Warehouse, but they don't carry them in stock. We decided to check at the Rybovich store on Monday. Mike decided that we should do a limited amount of work today and enjoy a day off since we have been busting butt for the last 7 days. We remounted and rebedded the blocks on the pilot house then put additional mast boot tape around the mast in preparation for our new canvas mast boot, and Mike called it a day. I decided I wanted to continue working and sanded a section of teak rail and then I put armada on it. I also put armada on the other section of new toe rail, the windlass pad and the dinghy engine seat thing. In the evening, we headed to Henri and Anne's for dinner. It was a pleasant evening, as always

April 3-4, 2000 -- Gauges, Gopeds and Dinghy Joe came back this morning, and finished our gauges. Both the lower and upper helm gauges work! Henri and I took the Gopeds up to Boat Owners Warehouse and to Sea Chest since he wanted to check things out and I needed to get some stuff there. It was a pretty good trip, and only took about 25 minutes each way in travel time. In the evening, Henri & Anne came over for drinks, and then 2 guys from a boat on the end joined us and a guy from another sailboat also joined us. We had cocktail hour from 5:30 until 11:00 PM! All in all, it was a lot of fun! On April 4, we were notified that our dinghy would be delivered. They said they would be out sometime in the afternoon. In the morning, Florida Rigging came out to install our traveler. We helped by holding up the large backing plates for the traveler bridge. Then, the windless was delivered and we helped get that aboard the boat. We also contacted the maker of our life raft to find out what is in it. The Dinghy finally arrived around 3:30 PM. Instead of using a crane to splash the dinghy, we went to a local boat ramp and splashed the boat there. Unfortunately, there were several things wrong or missing! We had requested a tachometer and speedometer, neither had been installed. We did not request Doel-Fins, they were installed. On the trip back to the yard, we found that the tubes had not been attached correctly. Inflatable Experts really bombed on this boat! Finally, we arrived back at the yard, and headed over to Henri and Anne's for cocktails. We then decided to order pizza with them

April 5, 2000 -- It's Cool Enough For Electrical Work In the morning, since we knew we would be putting the Dinghy away, we topped its fuel tank, then took it for a quick spin. We headed back in, then put the dinghy on deck. Due to the central lifting point being different, we now have a pain of a time placing the dinghy in it's cradle! We thought about several different options, the best of which would be to reverse how the dinghy sits on deck. We saw another boat with the dinghy facing aft in the yard, so we went to talk with him about his thoughts on the subject. We didn't get much insight; however, we did see a good way to stow our boarding ladder! Which has been in the way ever since we got under way. Since it was cool out, we decided that it would be a good day to kill shore power and replace the panel circuit breakers for the inverter as well as replace our shore power plug. Mike took the electrical panel, while I took the shore power connection. Mike completed his work in fairly short order, making sure that each of the 30 amp breakers were on different legs. Mike did have one interruption, he had to help me get the thru bolts off the plug. After that was done, I started my work. I swapped out the plug pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the original screws were to large for the new outlet. I managed to get one side in, but not the other. It was certainly enough for us to reconnect shore power and test our work, which was a complete success. While I was working on the shore power, we met Paula and Bill on Wave Dancer. They are tied up across the finger pier from us. They went to pull e-mail and showed us one of them when they got back. It turns out that they know Eric and Susan on Ellysia. Eric and Susan recommended that they "look us up". As it turns out, they were indeed looking up at us (their exact words). We invited them to come over tomorrow morning for the net to contact Eric & Susan, and to have cocktails with us tomorrow evening as they are headed to Vermont by plane Friday morning

April 6, 2000 -- The Agony and The Ecstasy Bill and Paula from Wave Dancer came over to listen in on the Cruiseheimers net. We checked in, then called Eric and Susan on Ellysia. The group of us chatted for almost 30 minutes. It was a lot of fun. Mike and I discussed the teak situation for a bit, then we settled on the agreement that I would sand and Mike would tape and put armada on. I sanded 2 sections of rail, then Mike came behind me and put armada on. After we were done with that, we headed to the store to see if the rail hinge we ordered would actually fit the boat. I also picked up the 2 screws we needed for the shore power outlet and new bolts for the storm windows. Then we returned to the boat and finished bedding the shore power plug. Next we spent some time loading our dinghy with the stuff that had been in our old one. One of the technicians from Inflatable Experts came out to fix the tube attachment problem on the dinghy. The riggers came out and installed our main sheet line and our traveller. As we helped with the main sheet, we discovered that the main sheet winch was jammed. We did an emergency winch-ectomy and fixed it (well lubed it). It works better than it has in ages. We now will add winch servicing to the sailing hardware checks once a month. We were relaxing in the main saloon when the boat was rocked by a wake. The floor board in the port stateroom fell, and we discovered exactly where our breaking point was, and we had just crossed it. The floor board fell because the sonar black box (that is what the documentation calls it!) wasn't put back together yet. The freezer guys were supposed to be there, it was 3:00 PM and they still hadn't shown up, the brace for the big hatch in the main saloon still hadn't been reattached. We got on the phone with our service manager to let him know how irritated we had become. He sent someone out immediately to take care of the hatch. Unfortunately, a weld broke on the hatch so it will have to be removed, rewelded and reinstalled. Mare called from the Rybovich store so I headed up there. On the way, there, I ran into our service manager. We walked back to the boat. He told us what was going on with the freezer. The bottom line is that the freezer guy isn't coming until Monday, but we got $400 off the installed price. Finally, we headed to the store. Unfortunately, the replacement hinges weren't adequate. Tomorrow we will check Sea Chest for them. We had cocktails on the aft deck with Bill, Paula, Henry and Anne at 5:30. It was a lot of fun. Time really flew, it was 8:30 when things finally broke up

April 7-9, 2000 -- What a Bust! April 7 was a bust in the work department. The only positive thing that happened was that our main hatch was removed. Unfortunately, the hatch won't be back until Monday. After the hatch was removed, we started working on our winches. We greased approximately half of them before I had to leave to go grocery shopping. Mike stayed with the boat waiting for the rigger from Inflatable Experts while I headed off with Anne to do some grocery shopping. After we got back, Mike and I first fended off a boat from Wave Dancer, then Mike painted the dinghy engine cover while I went out with Anne again. We went to Sea Chest, but did not find the rail end, then to BOW to get 25 feet of 2/0 gauge wire to connect the negative pole of the alternator to our inverter controller. Then we went to Home Depot to get sand paper. Anne found the faucet repair kit she was looking for. Finally, we headed to publix to drop off film (Anne's) and to exchange a can of pineapple. I found Star Wars episode 1!!! We headed back to the yard. We arrived in time for CC Carter's retirement party. He was our service manager last year and really treated us right.. We finally heard from the rigger who left us voice mail that he would not be able to make it this evening. We tried to call Vicky at Inflatable experts. She wasn't there. We are unhappy campers! April 8, Joe came by to hook up our windlass and to start troubleshooting our hydraulic generator problem. The windlass was completed in short order. Unfortunately, he didn't feel terribly comfortable with the generator problem, so he borrowed documentation and left for the day. Later, I sanded the toe rail at the bow of the boat while Mike put another coat of armada on everything. We are now ready to perform a light sanding on 2 sections of rail before we continue. It was a pretty quiet day overall. April 9, I decided that we were going to take the day off. I wanted to sleep in. Mike woke me up at 8:30 AM. He barely got away with his life. The rest of the day was spent puttering around. Everyone needs puttering time!

After so long of having few or no workers onboard, we had a boatload today! It started out slowly, the freezer guys came out around 9:00 AM. They needed a carpenter to frame in the freezer box before they started foaming it in. I headed off to find our service manager. He found us a carpenter and the freezer guys were off and running. Just as the freezer guys got settled in, the rigger from Inflatable Experts came out to install our tachometer and speedometer. He set to work immediately. Next, guys from the machine shop came out to remove our windlass backing plate. They removed it pretty quickly, once again we had no windlass! Just when we thought we couldn't get any more people on the boat, the canvas guy came out with more canvas, including our dinghy cover. We couldn't do anything with it since the rigger was still working on the dinghy! Finally, things started settling down so we replaced our DC freshwater pump. It went pretty smoothly, though we had to switch mounting bases. As they changed the mounting bracket, on the new pump. We where glad the old bracket would still mount up to the pump. At the end of the day, we checked to see if the phone line had been installed. Celebration time! We have a phone line!!!

The freezer guys came out this morning to foam the freezer in since they had completed the line hookups. The machine shop guys came out to install our new backing plate. In order to do this, we had to pull all of the chain out of one side of our chain locker so the staysail stay backing plate could be loosened. This was quite a feat considering that it had to be done by hand! A total of 420 feet of chain had to be pull out by hand, it was not bad just time consuming. After the new backing plate was installed, Mike was looking around in the chain locker and decided that we needed something to protect the forward bilge pump hose from being crushed. It's had worked fine for 15 years, but he wanted to make sure we did not have any problem with it. So he glassed a board over the area where the bilge pump line runs, this will keep it from being crushed. While Mike worked on that, I did financial stuff, after which I sat down to write some logs. The sonar was finally put back together. The motor was reinstalled and hooked up to the sound dome. We tested it and once again, it went up and down! The worker then installed an inline fuse to help protect the motor. Joe, the electrician, came out to trouble shoot the hydraulic problem further, pulled the lid off the voltage regulator and found a wire arching! He didn't feel comfortable with going further. We called Merrill Stevens who will send someone up to resolve the electrical issues with the genset. Finally, we discovered that we are loosing voltage on our 24 volt system. We ordered a new battery to replace the dead one. We invited Henri and Anne over for dinner, and had pizza

Upon inspecting the freezer, we discovered that the sides had bulged in from the pour in foam. The freezer guys were hard at work again and had to pull out the foam and repour it. So much for having the aft stateroom back from the workers and getting it back together. This has been the last piece that needs to be done, so we can finish getting the boat back to normal, or at least what passes for normal. On the flip side, the lid came back and the top of the bunk came back. They are ready to be put on. They look really good! We did absolutely nothing on the boat. We both felt exhausted from trying to keep up with everyone for the past two days. We are still loosing voltage on our 24 volt battery bank so we ordered another new battery. Hopefully this will take care of it! Henri and Anne told us that they were planning to have dinner with Dave and De on Cherette. We suggested that they stop by at the end of the evening so that we could finally meet them. Sure enough, everyone stopped by for a drink around 9:00 PM, or so. It was great fun to finally match faces with the voices! We look forward to getting to know them better in the future

You know, I will say this for the freezer guys. When they work, they work fast! The freezer was refoamed today! Mike badgered me for a while about putting the anchor up. Finally, I relented and we raised it. The windlass is sweet! It worked quite well. There were no gears slipping and sweat pouring from nervousness as to whether this would be the time the windlass quit. Joe arrived with our second new battery for the 24 volt starting system. While he was down there, he checked the other batteries in the same compartment for water level. It appears that one of our furling batteries is potentially 'cooked'. We put water in. It appears to be working ok, but we will know for sure tomorrow

After putting a vacuum on the freezer system for the past 18 hours, a charge was put on the system, then powered up. Our freezer is slowly cooling down. I screwed up on the batteries. There is no other way to put it. Joe came out with our new 4D battery to replace our furling battery bank. We discovered that the battery cables were misconfigured, with a 4D and an 8D battery joined in series. So, the bottom line is that we probably replaced 2 good batteries. On the flip side, we discovered that the battery cables got crossed sometime in the boats prior use. This was more then likely why when we got the boat, you had to go through many gyrations to start it. We straightened out the starting problems, but somehow missed this! We now have everything hooked correctly. Unfortunately, it looks like our 2 8D batteries used for sail handling are toast, so we have to replace those as well. We also went to Ft Lauderdale today. We hit Sailorman, which has used and new gear, we were not impressed, and West Marine. We are looking for a Perko 180-2 hing; this hinge is no longer made. Perko makes a 180-1 today which is for smaller handrails, which is unusable on our handrails. Finally, we called Sailor's exchange in St. Augustine, they don't have the perko part either! The freezer got turned on at 3:15. It started cooling from 73 degrees. At 7:00 PM, it was at 48 degrees

So, one of these days, I will learn to write my logs daily. I did really well for a while writing notes, at least. But something happened, and nothing was noted. Here is my best recollection of what happened. There are a few things that I can definitely assign dates to; the rest is a blur. Between April 15 and 17, we performed the two different tests. We performed an inverter test and we performed our freezer test. We discovered that we can, indeed, go for 12 hours on our inverter battery bank! We also found that we can charge our batteries in approximately 3 hours. If our freezer compressor will freeze the plates in 3 hours, then we will only have to run our generator approximately 4 hours each day! Our freezer was capable of holding for 24 hours. We are officially set! On April 17, after spending many, long, long hours trying to find the battery drain, Joe came out to take a look. We discovered that because of the way our antenna is hooked up, it was discharging through the cable system! With that resolved, our 24 volt systems have held up since then! Also, the freezer guys came out and found that part of the anomalous issues with our freezer was because the freezer refrigerant was low. They topped it off, and everything was working great. On Wednesday, April 19, we had the food delivered that we ordered from Bush Brothers. We also discovered that the freezer compressor is too small for our system. After discussing this with the freezer guys, we decided to upgrade the compressor. On Sunday, April 23, the freezer died. We didn't know precisely what the problem was, but thankfully, our freezer holds very well, because we didn't discover the problem until Monday. On Tuesday, April 25, before the freezer went above freezing, we moved food into storage at the yard. On Wednesday, April 26, we found the reason that the system had died. There was a failure in the heat exchanger, and everything has to be replaced. The manufacturer has promised that we should get replacements in about a week. This is much better than the previous build! Hopefully they can stick to this. The rest of the time, we spent working on teak. It is starting to look pretty good. I know there are other things that we did, but I am hard pressed to remember them