April 11, 2000 -- I Think They Want To Get Rid of Us

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