I drove up to the marina on Wednesday, amidst snowing blustery temperatures and aware of the near 40 knot gusts on the lake, trying to formulate the plan of attack, some sort of order in which to accomplish my goals. This could get interesting. Step one: LAUNCH THE BOAT! Ok, that seems easy enough. Short of mounting the outboard on the bracket, that's about it. I'd still like to stuff some foam up the bottom of the mast to silence the little bit of wiring that clang. The only other thing I need to do is to re-run the halyards. I completely removed them at the end of last year since I had sort of put them on backwards. Instead of my headsail halyard on the port side, I had them flipped. Oops. It was more an inconvenience, but I want to correct that for this season. They are new, at least, but I need to have them in the right place! But aside from that, the mast is ready to go. I wanted to make a mast base for some turning blocks and a boom vang, but that's something that can wait until next season, when I'll have more time to build a template and have one custom fabricated. After the halyards are installed, that's all the mast is needing. I'll get new pins for the shrouds and stays, I've meant to already but I don't have the diameters handy, so I'll use the ones I have to at least get the mast up and ready, and then order the more appropriate ones.
I'd like to get the battery box mounted before the boat goes in the water, but they won't go careening around causing havoc in the meantime unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong. I took another step towards that goal, and recently ordered a Ryobi cordless tool set consisting of a circular saw, drill, reciprocating saw, and a couple other bits.
I also ordered their multi-tool to go along with it. Being cordless should make it at least a little easier to not only transport, but also maneuver and not need to worry about the inverter. Don't get me wrong, my little Harbor Freight special inverter does show some good legs in running regular power tools. However if I can spare it some grief, I feel I should. Eventually I'd like to add a jigsaw and a cordless grinder to the arsenal but until then, a jigsaw off the inverter is fine. The primary purpose of the purchase is to make sure that anything I might need to trim from a store, be it the metal bars to support the new solar panel, or the plywood flooring for the battery compartment. It's easier to trim these down prior to loading into the car. And with the way the social distancing and precautions are taken in the stores right now, I'd rather not have to subject employees to doing the trimming for me. The kicker is I saw "delivery date: Tuesday" and my brain stopped reading. See, I placed the order Sunday and thought sweet, I'll be able to break them in! Turns out that it's next Tuesday. So in the car with me on the trip are my corded sawzall, jigsaw, and angle grinder. Say what you will about Harbor Freight tools, and goodness knows I have. I consider their Chicago Electric line at least to be disposable power tools. I find that if I start out with almost no expectations then I can't be too disappointed. That said, this angle grinder which cost me probably twenty five dollars, is still going. I don't know how. It spent this past winter outside sitting on a broken hammock. Snow, rain, you name it. Still going. And I bought it three or four years ago. I've never treated it nicely, but it just keeps going. And strangely all the power tools I have from there - a corded 1/2" impact gun, the sawzall, grinder - they all are generally neglected and yet still try to impress me. In that regard, I sort of am impressed. Just don't tell them that.
The sun finally broke the clouds as I neared Syracuse on the drive, and the first sight I saw was a strange one. In Syracuse, New York, there's a rather striking sight - the Carrier Dome.
Home to the Syracuse college sports teams, and hosting other events like state championships for high schools and whatnot, it opened in September of 1980. With a capacity of nearly 50,000 people, it remains the largest college dome and the largest domed stadium in the Northeast. So imagine my surprise when, after years of seeing that above site, I crest a hill and see this:
I had to run to the almighty internet and see just what was going on! Turns out that the original roof had a 20 year lifespan which coincides with a new roof project. They had just placed the last of those truss sections on Monday, and while I was trying to envision how the new roof would look when it's done, well... that's it. The picture above is the finished picture, and the only thing missing from my view was the actual roof nestled in the center. Supported by cables from those outside beams, they'll be more transparent for better lighting, more durable, and have a lifespan twice as long. And as the original dome was - and I'm not making this up - inflatable, this one isn't. Yes, the old one relied on constant air pressure to maintain shape. People even say that opening a door could blow a hat of your head. To illustrate my point, here's a clip from when they took it down recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADCm8DCzcCw
To me though, having an exposed skeleton seems like it loses some of the visual appeal. Who knows. Carry on to the marina.
Coming into the bay, I could see whitecaps. Viewing the lake? I saw a washing machine. My first thought was thank goodness the boat wasn't in already and I was out there trying to sail west. It's the kind of sea state and weather you encounter when you have to, not when you choose to. I set up the ladder, and set to work. Step one, re-run the halyards on the mast. The easiest way for me to do it is to remove the cover on the top of the mast head, and feed them through the sheaves that way. I had to secure the mast to the stern rail so it couldn't slide, and then lay the ladder up against the mast. It took only a few minutes - more time was spent running them down the length of the mast and securing them afterwards. Next, I reattached the spreaders. I had taken them off and detached the stanchions so that the tarp would form a better tent over the mast and shed snow easier. Two bolts, done. The last outdoor project was to try to shove some foam into the end of the mast. I tried. Pretty sure I didn't succeed. We'll see.
Down into the cabin we go. Time to get this new battery box in place! Conceptually, this should be relatively easy. I already have the four GC2 batteries. I just need to take them out of the location, put them in the box, and put the box back. The last time I was up, I had brought the 2nd pair of batteries and temporarily braced them in position. This was so I could get everything hooked up, make sure things were going right, and get the solar panel in the cockpit and charging. So when I opened the compartment, here they were, waiting.
In order to fit the box and plywood shelf for which it to sit, I needed to cut off the existing bolts from the non-existent motor mounts. You can see the front two in the picture. What you can't see from there is that between the two batteries in front, and the two in back, are two more bolts sticking up. They presented a headache to get the other batteries around the first time, and the idea of having to somehow lift or wrangle those rear batteries around them to remove was not appealing. Since I only have corded power tools and a hacksaw as backup, I decided that first, I could use the cutoff wheel on the grinder to nix the first two bolts easily enough. I plugged in the inverter, covered the batteries with some paper plates as a spark barrier (probably not needed) and made short work of those. The inverter, by the way, is simply a Harbor Freight (I know, right?) 750 watt continuous / 1500 watt peak model I found on sale a few years back. I'm sure it is far from the most efficient one out there, but it's served it's purpose well. Usually it's main job is to run my laptop and the TV when at anchor or in my slip. I do have shore power provided, but as I do not have an AC panel on the boat, nor working hookup, I don't use it. I suppose I could go buy an adapter to convert the shore power plug to a standard 110v outlet for an extension cord, but I've never had a problem with capacity, and I just doubled it this year. Pretty sure I'll be fine unless the sun stops working for a month. I unhooked and slid the front two batteries out and set them behind me, and then pondered the next two bolts. I could push the other batteries back further to gain clearance, and ended up hooking the two batteries on the floor back together into a 12v bank, and running the inverter off those two in order to cut the next bolts. Finally all four bolts out.
Next up, making a tray. This was going to be the easy part. I had spare plywood left over, and a jigsaw. I was even smart enough to bring a tape measure with me. Aside from the wind blowing the sawdust into my face, it was an easy cut. Adding a small support brace on the back to bring the panel up to a more level position, it took only a couple of minutes to cut and fix into place with a couple screws down into the old rails. All I had to do next, was to put my ratchet strap underneath and position it out of the way.
It was about this time that I realized that I had accidentally snagged the solar feeds coming into the Victron and pulled them free from the terminals. Luckily nothing touching or anything, but I then realized that I never had marked which was the positive lead. And since it all weaves through underneath the cockpit and along the hatch before disappearing up the transom to the deck gland, tracing out which was which proved to be very troublesome. So much so, that at one point in frustration I completely emptied the locker and ended up plunging headfirst into it, on my back with my feet hanging out the opening. And I still couldn't reach up around and determine which was which was which. Ultimately this led me to unintentionally unscrewing one of the fittings off the entry gland so I could get more play in the wire to figure it out. I was right annoyed at that point, but since I had the brilliant moment back when of "I can use 5200, I don't need to remove this EVER...", there's no one to blame but myself on that. With the wiring sorted though, I focused on the box itself. My first plan was to put two batteries in the rear of the box, propped up on the lip of the shelf, and then put two others in. The issue with that is that I had no way to prop up the box, and the moment I let it angle, the batteries would slide on the plastic anyway. So, all four went in the box as it sat ready.
It was at this point that I knew I had made a mistake. Looking at the box up in place, I realized that there were a few issues. I needed to cut an opening for the negative solar line, no big deal. But then how to I actually hook things up? The batteries are tied together, but I still need all the positive and negative feeds for the boat side, the charger, and the Schulink monitor hooked to the posts. The negative I managed to do while it was propped out. The positive would be interesting. Not to mention that it didn't get any lighter with all four batteries inside. Even with one end up, I still had to lift the other end while then pushing it back onto the tray. Luckily there are physics in the world that means I wasn't lifting a full 250 lbs. I don't even know what the math breaks down to. I do know that it still wasn't very light. Once in place though, and by feel and not sight, everything was once again wired up. I slid the top into place, got the strap on, and tightened it down. The only thing left to do now is to attach small blocks of wood on the front and back to keep it from sliding, but then it'll be very secure. I didn't hook the inverter up, I'm still working on the logistics of that part. That might be much better done when the boat is more emptied out and not so cramped.
I brought the new panel on board and set it inside. I also unhooked the existing panel and brought it below. It was just laying on the cockpit seats and when they go to launch the boat - this is being done without customers present as much as possible to limit risk - I didn't want anyone to have to clamber over it or anything like that. And with a fully topped off battery bank, no reason it can't be disconnected for a week. I also put labels on the outboard. This might be silly, but since I discovered a much easier way to start the motor, I thought it best to pass on the information to the yard guys at the marina. Whenever it sits, it seems to take longer and longer to pull-start, and I never have figured out why. I did though discover that if you just shoot a spray of gas into the carb, it fires right up and runs just fine. It's like it isn't priming on its own, but once running is ok. So I left a spray bottle with a little gas in it in a locker. Sticker on the outboard now reads
TO START: Spray a shot or two of gas from the spray bottle into the carb. May need to do twice.
Spray bottle located in starboard cockpit locker.
Hopefully it makes sense to anyone else reading it. I'm sure that if they can't get it started though, they'll just line-walk it or tow it with their yard boat to whatever slip I end up at. It dawned on me, that in every year I've been there, with both boats, I've always been on the eastern fingers on the docks, so I have always made a turn to port into my slip. Luckily my time on Cayuga lake was always the opposite, so let's hope if that happens this time, that I'm not rusty.
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