April 14, 2000 -- We Have Freezer!

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