finally, motion!

    The 24th rapidly approaches, as in forty five minutes from the time I started this sentence. With it, the end of my three week hiatus from the working world. For myself, I decided to spend a few days up at the lake one more time, get some quality time in, and try to relax before the stresses pile back up again. I remember after the first few days of time off, I was thinking goodness, how will I ever pass the time and not feel bored? I thought to myself, that retiring someday would be a nightmare if I felt that bored after only a few days - how would I manage YEARS of not working? Turns out, that feeling washes away pretty quick, and sure enough, now it feels like it was just months of weekends all rolled into one. Luckily that isn't the case, or the summer would be pretty much over by now.

    I had come home at the beginning of last week, yard work awaited and I felt like taking a little breather from my Netflix binging in the cabin. Admittedly, it does get lonelier when you're alone on a boat, even on a dock, which makes time drag on. I'm glad I came home for a few days though, as our elderly Golden Retriever, Zoey, had decided that her time had come, and passed peacefully in her sleep Tuesday night, or rather, very early Wednesday morning. I'm glad I got to be here for her goodbye. So after getting through Wednesday, I waited on one last delivery from the UPS guy on Thursday, and then headed up. Unfortunately, that meant arriving around 9 PM or so, just after dark. But at least I had a new toy to learn now.

    A few years back, I had purchased a couple of ActiveOn CX action cameras - cheap GoPro wannabe cameras that did ok for what they were, but cost a fraction of the price. Not surprisingly, I couldn't tell you where any of them had gone. Now don't get me wrong, I do believe that GoPro cameras are great quality, and worth the cost for what you get. But I'm also cheap. Plus, if I screw up and drop this thing, I'm only out sixty bucks, not three hundred. I picked this up on Amazon, it was Crosstour's middle of the road offering in their lineup, this being the CT9500. There's a 9700 that steps up to a touchscreen, and a 9900 that gives dual displays. Considering this was more an experiment than anything, I went with the CT9500 instead. It claims up to 4K video at 50 FPS, which I haven't fully tested. I have some doubts, but I did record plenty of footage in 1440p resolution at 60 FPS, and that looks just fine, even more so considering it was a very overcast day. But that's getting ahead of myself.

    I woke up to some bright sunshine on Friday morning, but no wind. Of course not, why would there be wind when there's sun. That's actually more common than it seems on the lake - The hotter and sunnier the day, the less wind there is. So instead of motoring out to float around and bake on the lake (sounds like a seafood extravaganza), I looked for something to occupy myself with. Since I had finally tracked down the paint I was looking for, I finally got around to painting the majority of the remaining cabin with white to cover the beige splotches. There's still a little area behind the chartplotter computer area that needs it, but it would've required removing all of the equipment to get to it, and well, it was already getting very, very warm. I was glad to finally have a single shade of color on the cabin sides however.

    It certainly isn't flawless, but it's miles above where it was. So that made me kind of happy. I also threw a few coats on the outside of the cockpit where I had finally gotten around to starting to fair the old openings that were there. Even though this is a finishing paint, I treated that section as more of a guide coat to better see where more sanding is needed. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my vacuum with me, so I skipped the sanding for now but again, at least it's now mostly a single color. Interestingly enough, the Semi-Gloss White color seems more grayed in comparison to the factory coat on the boat, but at a glance, it's fine. And at least it isn't rough fiberglass, or green blotches. This picture highlights the shade difference, but thankfully it's less noticeable in person. Either way, it's better than it was, and will only get better once I get real paint. You can also see that I threw a couple coats on the already-in-rough-shape companionway boards just to brighten them up too.

       It does highlight a need for new varnish though, so.. maybe this year is the year I finally do that. I spent most of the rest of Friday between walking around a bit, down the pier and back, while watching the paint dry. As it turns out, I was also getting a little bit sunburnt to start my summer tan off properly. I really didn't feel it until later Saturday, so I was ok with that. I did decide to run to the store (and Wendy's) Friday night, picking up some snacks, a pair of cheap sneakers in the event I wanted to do more walking on Saturday or Sunday if the weather wasn't cooperative, and a few other things. Then, returning to the boat, finished up a Netflix series, and passed out in bed.

    Saturday, what a change. For the first time this season, there was an actual breeze that wasn't being accompanied by either frigid temperatures, or rain and misery. For the second time this season, I forgot to relocated my spinnaker halyard from the toe rail and had to go do that after hoisting my headsail so it could actually fly out properly. Yes, that also implies that I went out and did actual sailing things. I've never been a good gauge of wind speed, or sea state. I haven't ever had a measurement to compare to what I feel, so until that happens, I just go with it. I do know that it wasn't brutal, I didn't need to be reefed, and was fine sailing with full main and jib. The wind was coming from the West, which gave me the chance to sail out of the channel, with only a brief moment where there was a lull due to cover, but recovered almost instantly into the breeze and glided out into the lake, action camera mounted to the stern rail and recording. Once I get the videos all sorted out, I'll probably make a YouTube video of it, but it looks at a glance to be decent enough footage. The wind stayed pretty steady but shifted slightly as I got further into the lake, so I just went out and back and forth a few hours, before deciding to call it a day, and was able to sail back in, too. I finally saw some others on their way out as I came in, and dropped my sails. There was just enough wind to screw up my first attempt at docking, which left me just a hair further from the finger as intended, but there was another gent standing right there who volunteered to grab the bow and save me the trouble of a re-do. Tied up, all spring lines attached, and bam, all tucked in again.

    One thing that I noticed Friday evening, was my Joytutus fridge had a couple instances where it completely powered off. This is not normal. In fact, in my original Amazon review I even mention that when it's plugged in, the display stays on 24/7, with no option to dim or darken it, even when the compressor isn't running. This has held true in all the hours of operation I've put into it, as well. At least, until Friday. I just happened to look over, and nope, totally blacked out, as if it were unplugged. It just plugs into a 12v receptacle, so I unplugged it, waited a few minutes, plugged it back in, and it came back on. Weird, I thought. An hour later, it did it again, but then after a couple more minutes it once again powered back on. At that point, I was on Amazon looking for my order history to see if I was still under warranty. Granted, I don't like the thought of buying something that only makes it a year, but I know things can happen. I also didn't remember spending as much on that as I did, which irked me even more that it was acting up. Saturday, it pulled it's trick again while out under sail, so when I was fully docked, I decided to look further. The plug itself doesn't have a fuse, because there's one on the cooler itself, a 15 Amp blade fuse. I checked it, and it was fine. Then, for some reason, I swapped my phone charger into the plug the fridge was plugged into, and wouldn't you know it, no power. Well then... I opened the engine (battery) compartment cover, and peeked at the wiring. The issue was immediately apparent.

    That is an inline fuse holder for the socket. It houses a mini-glass fuse, and as you can see, it be busted. I'm not sure how, or what happened to it honestly. But right after this photo was taken, I went to move it, and the upper section completely pulled away. The spring you can see is what contacts the top of the fuse, and since the housing had broken, there was nothing to hold that spring in place, so it was losing connection to the fuse and subsequently to power. The solution was simple enough - remove the fuse holder and just splice the wires together with a waterproof heatshrink butt connector. Both sockets are the same, but they are also fused at the main fuse block, so these inline ones are just extra. Since the line is fused, there's no reason not to just go direct, so I did, and power was restored instantly to the plug, and the fridge. No warranty claim for me, it seems. I'm just happy that when I get back up, maybe this upcoming weekend even, I'll still have cold water waiting for me. 

Like a bobber

    I woke up Friday at my usual time - five minutes before I needed to start work. Imagine my surprise when not only was my mast already stepped, but the boat was already in the slip. I also received at almost the same time, a text from the marina to let me know it was in place. I had hoped to get to watch over the glorious internet, but it was not to be. Oh well, I then went about my work day, the last before my slight vacation, and waited for the post office and UPS deliveries containing the few goodies to put to use on the boat. 

    Saturday, I put one of the items not meant for the boat, onto the deck of my riding mower to replace the broken tensioner spring. Turns out, it wasn't the same anyway, and as it was too wet to really mow as it was, I just left it with the new one just in case. I made a mental note though, to see if I could find anything at a hardware store that might work better. Finally, around 2 PM or so, I gathered up what I had, and a half hour later I headed out the door to begin the drive up. What surprised me was that it took me the better part of 5 hours to complete my journey, between stopping for lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse to use up a gift card, Lowes for some goodies like a spring, a couple of mixing buckets and sticks, and a couple crimp on lugs, Harbor Freight for a set of jumper cables and more lugs, and Wal-Mart for some food for the stay. 

    My plan was to make up a set of replacement battery cables for the outboard with the jumper cables, which warrants an explanation. I don't remember if I mentioned, but I had picked up a panel mount disconnect and a wiring plug, to then turn the outboard's existing cables into something more manageable. As it was, I couldn't hook up the motor to it's battery without removing the battery from the hatch and moving it closer. My original plan last year was just to make a small buss bar to jumper one end to the other, but then I had this brilliant idea strike me. Like many of them though, putting it into practice revealed weaknesses. Let me show you the two pieces and then see if you spot ahead of time, the issue. And no, it's not the wire gauge.

    At first glance, they look perfectly fine. I cut the existing battery cables from the outboard, lined up my positives and negatives and hooked everything together. I plugged the outboard line into the panel connector, and pressed the button. Nadda. Ok, I thought, battery is probably dead from winter. Eh, whatever. It wasn't until this week, that I decided to look closer. It's very hard to tell, but if you follow the pos/neg orientation on the panel connector, follow the wires and see which side each is on leading into the back, and then try to match up the pigtails with the same... well, they get their signals crossed. It quite literally reverses the polarities. Ok, fair enough, let me try reversing the battery connectors, to see if we can get somewhere. And nope. My guess, judging by a quick diagram scan, is that there's a fuse under the cowl tucked away that blew the moment I had it hooked up backwards. Anyway, I'll get back to that.

    I arrived Saturday evening, before the sun had fully set, but barely. First order of business was to empty the cabin, notably the boom, and the three pressure-treated 2x4s that I had stashed after abandoning my motivation last season to build a stern crutch for the mast. I could probably trade those for a full tank of gas on the way home... The boom went on relatively easily, and then I pulled my solar panel out, set it across the seats in the cockpit and hooked it in. Low as the light was getting, it didn't capture much, but, it did start trickling into the battery bank and assured me that the controller was still functioning fine. Right about then, the rain started yet again, so I retreated back into the cockpit.

    I will say, the battery life on a new iPad for video playback is impressive. I probably rolled through a good few hours of Netflix, without dipping under 50 percent. My phone had been spared any torture, as I wanted to keep that as well charged as I could for the overnight. I had decided that I could live with the iPad dying out, but until I got more juice in the tank, I didn't want to have to charge anything just yet. I also laid out some Spider pouches and sprayed some stuff I had found, to see if it would have any effect. Other than smelling pretty, I think the cold weather was doing far more than these remedies. Short of a flamethrower, I'm really not confident in a good extermination plan.

    Sunday was another overcast, rainy day. Actually, most days in the forecast were calling for that, because of course it would. In between drizzles though, I did manage to get the solar panel fully mounted, allowing for a little more angle control, and even through overcast skies, it was still capturing enough to keep a stream of atoms incoming. There wasn't much else to be done, so it was another afternoon of Netflix and Chill. Mostly because it had dipped down to the upper 30's overnight and the day really wasn't far into the 50s either. 

    Monday brought reprieve though. That would be today. We had mostly sunny skies for a good chunk of the morning until around 3 O'clock when the clouds started rolling in again. This gave me quite a few hundred watt hours into the battery bank, which was welcomed with open arms. The more, the merrier, I say. I took advantage of the slightly warmer weather and sunshine by replacing 5 of the clevis pins in my standing rigging, and giving it a good baseline dock tune. For some reason, every year this thing goes up, it has quite a Port-favoritism issue. I think I did pretty good keeping it in line this time though. But more importantly, now I have proper Stainless Steel clevis pins in place, instead of the generic multi-hole 2" long things that had been there before. They worked fine, but eventually I would've really started getting nervous about them. Now, I'm less nervous. I replaced the one on the forestay, the upper shrouds, and one of the two lowers. I still need two more for the other lower shrouds, and I need two additional ones for the split backstay. I hadn't ordered them yet, because they are a smaller diameter than the rest and I wasn't sure what size they were. I'll measure them before I head home and add them to my next order. I'd also like to replace the one that is tying the mainsheet to the traveller too, but again, measure twice, order once. 

    After taking an afternoon walk down the road and back, which was probably about a four mile round trip, I hopped over to the next town and grabbed some lunch, and a couple snacks for tomorrow. And now, I'm sitting in the guest house area, which has heat, and power, procrastinating before venturing through the rain and chilled air back to the boat. The rain is supposed to stick around until about 3 AM, pause for a couple hours, and then rain pretty much until Wednesday evening, including scattered thunderstorms tomorrow afternoon. To me, that seems rather boring. I've been stuck inside the boat enough already this week/weekend, and I have my second COVID shot on Thursday anyway. Tomorrow, I'll head home, refresh with a few good showers, and see what the weather for the following weekend looks like.

    It's weird having all this time ahead of me to look forward to. Today was the first day off, but looking ahead, I still have not only the rest of this week, but next week, AND the one after that. That seems like an eternity at the moment. I can't even begin to imagine how it would feel to be starting a chapter of retirement or casting off for long-term cruising. Guess we'll see when I get to that step.