Solar Panel Installation

 

Preparing for the installation of a 300 Watt solar panel. On sunny days this should cover most of our electrical power needs.

EPIRB Registered and Installed

 

We are preparing for our next adventure! Stay tuned...

Flying Spa Creek

Flying around Spa Creek, Annapolis last week... follow the link for video.

https://youtu.be/jbCFj1sDEds

Honga River

 From our fall cruise around the Bay in 2019...

Flying Back Creek

Click the photo for video...

New Interior

Last summer we replaced the upholstery on Silence!

Nav Display, Mark II

I'm making progress on a new display for the nav station, using a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen.

St. Michael's, MD

Labor Day Weekend, 2015, at anchor in St. Michael's.

A good weekend...

It was nice to wakeup to this day.

Cooking with gas!

The real test!

WiFi Bridge

Just started working on my WiFi instrument bridge...

Propane Tank

New Batteries

With some help from Raul, I replaced our two house batteries yesterday. Man, these things are heavy.

Haulout Complete

 At the top, you can see the guys have lifted the boat to paint the centerboard. I took the opportunity to mark the lift cable so that I can tell where the board is when we sail.

Silence is back in her slip, and the stove installation was completed this week. Most projects are done, and the deck is scrubbed, so now it's time to sail!

Haulout

Time for bottom painting, and a laundry list of other maintenance items...

Doughnut

I made this teak trim ring, a.k.a., a doughnut, to finish out the entry of the pipe through the countertop. A couple of hours of carpentry in Raul's shop, and a little more time to sand and varnish. With this, I now have all of the pieces needed to finish the project!

Swinging Pipe

Kato Marine fabricated this curvy 1-1/4" stainless pipe to connect between the deck and the galley cabinet. The propane fuel line and the solenoid wiring will run through the pipe. This picture shows the "dry fit", to find the correct orientation for the backing plate at the top. The plate will be welded to the tube and then we can install. The other pipe is the path for the centerboard cable, from the deck through the water line.

Annapolis Yacht Club

This is AYC at sunset. Storm clouds were passing through the area... I took this with my iPhone and processed it with Pixlromatic.

Wireless Display

This is an Arduino WiFi shield. I'm planning to build a bridge from my instrument bus, set up a web service for the NMEA data, and display it on my iPhone. This will be very cool if I can make it work.

Propane Stove Retrofit Progress

 Above, you can see the PVC mock-up of the stainless steel pipe where the gas line will come through from the deck and go through the countertop.

 Here is what 30 years of cooking and no cleaning looks like! This is the area behind the stove, which is very hard to get to.

After a little cleanup! It's hard to believe the builder put such beautiful wood behind a stove where it would never be seen.

 The teak propane locker in it's place on deck.

The new stove, nice and shiny!

Propane Locker Complete!

The construction of the propane locker is complete. Over the weekend we trimmed the lid and rounded the corners with a router and then did final sanding down to 320 grit. The first coat of Armada has been applied in the bottom picture, bringing out the grain of the teak. More coats to come!

Adding the 5th Side!

The lid is built, now we are glueing it on with epoxy. The whole box will be attached to the deck with two draw latches, so that it can be removed for access to the propane tank, and I can take the whole box home for varnishing each winter...

It's three-dimensional!

It's taken a long while, but two weeks ago we finished the sides of the Propane Locker. Check out the joint that we used to get a nice clean corner on the box. This profile was produced with a specialized router bit. It took a bit of work to understand how to adjust the height and depth, but the results are worth all the work. Since these pictures were taken, we have constructed the panels for the top of the box, and begun crafting the wood parts that will go inside to support the propane tank.

Glue-Up Results

Propane Locker Construction

The first board glue-up was a success, so today we glued up the other three sides. I'm an expert at biscuit joints now!

Propane Locker

We have embarked on a project to switch our electric stove to propane. The first step is to build a locker on the deck, but we don't want one of the pre-fabbed fiberglass ones that you can buy. So, here is the beginning of a teak locker. We are working from rough lumber, and we have to build up the panels that will make the sides from 6" wide boards. Below, we are using biscuit joints to make the first panel. If you look closely, you can see one of the "biscuits" lying near the clamp.

Replacing the Old Head

We decided to replace the 29 year old head, but after removing it found the green patina left over from the bronze base after it mixed with salt water. The new head also came with different mounting holes, so something had to be done to prepare the pedestal. We decided to make a shim from Azek, a vinyl building material that can be worked just like wood, but it never rots. Many thanks go out to Raul for the use of his woodshop to make the strange shape needed.

Cockpit Table Finished!

Yesterday I installed the cockpit table. Fresh varnish always looks good!

It's Blowing!

We have NW winds at about 30 knots today. The water is 3 feet below normal low water, due to the wind blowing the water out of the Bay...

Fiddles

My current project is to add some fiddles to our cockpit table. The main reason is that by putting fiddles at the hinge joint, the leaves will have better support when the table is open. There is one set of fiddles on the outside of the leaves (which are seen here), and another set on the under side of the main part of the table. When the leaves are opened, the fiddles will rest against each other to give a larger supporting surface to the open leaves. And as a bonus, our stuff won't fall off the table when we heel. Thanks to Raul for letting me use his woodshop to make the fiddles and get them epoxied on.

Compass Complete

For Christmas Eve, I reinstalled the compass. Christopher Columbus would have killed for a compass this nice!

Compass Refill

Refilling the compass isn't too hard: position it so that the plug is at the top, unscrew the plug, and then use a syringe to push the compass fluid in. I used fluid that I bought from Ritchie. It's mineral oil, which you could buy anywhere, but to be sure you get the right viscosity it's easiest to go to the maker. (I once tried mineral oil from the drugstore, but it was so thick it would take the compass a few hours to find North!) The hardest thing is to get all of the air out, and you can see that I still have a small bubble here. I will let the compass sit for a week, to let any additional bubbles accumulate at the top, and then I'll try to push some more fluid in.

Another Project

I rebuilt our compass about 5 years ago, replacing a cracked dome, but it still has a slow leak. Fortunately, I still have plenty of compass fluid (mineral oil) left over from my earlier repair. Here you see the compass exposed with the binacle cover removed. I've taken the compass off the boat so that I can work on it over the winter. If you look closely, you can see an earlier project, where I replaced an incandescent compass light with two LEDs.

Boom

With some help from my friends Raul and Tom, we were able to re-attach the boom to the gooseneck on Saturday, so this project is now complete. Next up, a tune-up for our cockpit table. More details later...