The disorder of it all

This weekend I plan on going up and taking care of some things on the boat, weather permitting. I have more goodies coming in tomorrow that will help that process. Not the weather, but the working. And when looking over the list, my first thought was, wow, I sure do things in a sporadic nature. Certainly not how I watch other people do it. That's when I realized that since I'm not in the business of producing nice shiny videos for others to watch, it's not a big issue.

Now a normal person, for example, will look at a project and make a list of everything that's needed, purchase it all at once, and complete the project. Do I look normal to you? To be fair, there's a lot of little projects to be done. It's not as if I'm building a shed or something. This is why you'll see me talk about buying one piece here, then something completely unrelated the next week, and so on. See, it doesn't matter how one does a puzzle. Some ways might be more efficient, like doing the borders and corners first. But as long as the end result is still a completed picture, it matters little the process taken.

Another thing you might notice is that I'm a fan of Amazon. Partially because I have the Prime membership so shipping is quick and painless, and more than partially because the pricing on a lot of things is hard to beat. Don't get me wrong, I am a strong fan of Defender, and have used them for a lot in the past - and will do so again. But I also have found that for a lot of incidental things, the price is relatively close between the two, and shipping would be the same time frame. By the time you factor in paying the little extra shipping for Defender, it's mostly a wash on things anyway. And there's an added bonus.

Did you know that if you go to http://smile.amazon.com instead of the regular www link, you can pick a charity to have money donated to, because of your purchase? It doesn't cost you anything different, but Amazon donates a % of the purchase to them. They are small numbers to be sure, but if you look at the grand scheme of everyone? It really adds up, and is a really cool thing to have happen. For example, you might think you aren't having an impact. I've placed 25 qualifying orders through Amazon, and have managed a paltry $11 dollars of impact for the charity I had chosen (and which can be changed at any time). However, combined, this charity alone has seen just under 2 million dollars raised. That's million. And total charitable contributions through the Smile program have exceed seventy million dollars. All without any addition costs to us, the consumers. All without asking me to spare a dollar in a checkout line.

Go ahead, try it. I dare you.

Wiring Part 1. Unwiring?

This past weekend, my dad went along with me on a day trip up to the boat to do some preliminary assessing of my wiring mess. Well, I already knew it was a mess. Maybe I just wanted someone to go "Wow, you weren't kidding!"

Before heading up, I stopped at the Sam's Club near where I'd be meeting my dad to pick up a pair of golf cart 6v batteries. When I had my Excalibur, I had two GC2 batteries, fed by a Renogy Solar 100 watt solar panel and controller kit. While I had originally wanted to double that bank, I recently decided that if it worked on that boat, it can work on this one as well since I don't plan on doing anything differently as far as usage. Let's recap a little about these batteries though.

The 6 volt golf cart battery is a common house bank choice. The Trojan T105 battery has long been the standard for these, but a very well-recommended alternative is the GC2 from Sam's Club, branded by Duracell. I won't get into actual manufacturing and whatnot. The GC2 is a slight bit lower capacity but a good chunk less in price, and maintained properly will give a good result. They also sell an EGC2 battery which steps up the amp-hours a notch at a cost of an additional $30 per battery - the GC2 is rated at 215 amp-hours, the EGC2 is 230. Comparatively, the Trojan is rated at 225. Considering that you need at least two batteries to form a 12 volt bank, and the cheapest I've seen a Trojan listed was $170 dollars, and the GC2 is half that, well.. do the math. And it's exponentially more cost-effective as your bank grows larger.

Now that our battery lesson is out of the way, I'll tell you why I told you the story. As I mentioned, I went to Sam's to pick up my pair of batteries. The EGC2 battery is a gray casing, the standard GC2 is black. Now I had remembered that the higher capacity batteries were a few dollars more for a few more amps, but couldn't remember the exact pricing and differences. As I stare at the display, I see the GC8s sitting there at 99 bucks versus the $84 GC2 next to it. So to myself, I think well heck, for fifteen bucks, I'll go for the upgrade, and tossed them in my cart. Some of you see what I did there.

I checked out, and headed towards my dad. As I did, I decided to do a follow up to see just how many more amp hours I bought myself. Obviously in no way was I researching while driving, the search for my newly purchased GC8 battery revealed a very startling first line.

Go ahead. See if you can see my sudden realization. I'll wait. Yes, friends. I purchased two 8 volt batteries. And for having a 12 volt system on the boat, this presents a bit of a puzzle. So, picked dad up, went back, and exchanged for the correct GC2 batteries. Off to a good start.

The drive was as expected, on new wheel bearings in my car. Side note, jumping your car off the road into a snowy ditch for a couple hundred feet, doesn't work out well for those. But once there, we unloaded all the junk - er, gear - I brought with us, including my handy little mighty ladder to give us access. I gave the brief tour into the boat, and pointed out the mess we were going to tackle. Then we moved the mast aft about ten feet so that I could get an idea of the masthead sheave issue, and peek into the anchor locker. Note to self - new anchor and chain to be ordered.

Pointing into the rat's nest of wiring, I gave my dad an idea of what had baffled me earlier. Because we were both toying with yanking on wires, I didn't take many pictures. So suffice it to say, it was just ripping out most of everything.

 

Sadly, I can't even remember what direction this angle was even facing! But we also tackled into removing the AC wiring, everything this side of the shore power connector on the hull. Here, you can see the old-school style AC breaker box amidst the mess.

It took a bit over an hour or so to finally cut loose all the old wiring, the ties, untangle them, and then the hard part - removing the existing switches. If I can find a picture somewhere I'll add it, but basically they, and the fuseholders for those that were equipped, were just drilled in holes in the liner above the quarter berth. Very not cool. I found the easiest way to remove the nuts from the back of the fuse holders, was to simply grab the whole assembly with pliers, give a quick twist and just shatter the whole assembly which would then fall back out of the hole. The switches were mostly old style metal casings so they took some more effort but in the end, success. 

A neat little feature that most Newport 28 owners might have overlooked, is that if you remove the Atomic 4 from the engine compartment, it makes a great place to store a pair of batteries!

Obviously, these aren't locked down, or anything, but I wanted to see how well they would fit. I propped them up on some small wooden pieces laying around to keep them up off the hull itself for fear of condensation/freezing. But I think a pair fits quite nicely. The plan is to use some 3/8 plywood and make a box of sorts, that will look similar to an H, that will sit in there, allowing for space underneath, the batteries sit on the cross, and I can add anchors within the box to hold them down, as well as strap the box itself to the old engine mounts. Plenty of time to get there, but that's the plan. I managed to sort out which wire went to the stern light. That was as far as the tracing went before we called it a day and left for dinner on the way home.

We did, before we moved the mast back forward to eliminate the stern pressure, was to pull the two remaining masthead sheaves from it. They're the old style composites, measuring 2 3/4" in diameter, 1/2" thick (outside to outside) and with a 3/8" hole for the pin. So far, I've found some that were CLOSE that would work, but I finally found my way back to Ballanger Spars webpage. I had ordered my hinged mast step from them for my last boat, and knew he did mast work but I didn't think about sheaves. Sure enough, he has the exact size listed in his catalog, in aluminum for only $24 apiece. Since the two I have left are in fine shape, I'll place an order for two more, and get the masthead in shape within the next few weeks. 

I will say though, it was nice not having to lug those batteries back down the ladder afterwards. I didn't mention that above. Anyone planning on retrofitting some of these into a house bank, or replacing existing, and if you care about weight.. They're about 68 lbs each. Yes, my ladder held up as I carried each up to the top. 

Hopefully it'll only be a couple more weekends before I get up and start stringing new wire, with more pictures of that side of it. Really, taking things apart is pretty boring anyway.