Take Two has gone viral, and not in a good way.  On the eve of a long-planned family vacation, the unthinkable happened: a stomach virus.  With half the crew already affected and the other half sure to follow, we had no choice but to cancel the trip.  It’s a huge bummer, but like I always say, a day spent on the bathroom floor is best spent at home.

Doctor Mom thinks she has the bug identified and of course there is no option but to let it run its course.  I like to play the “where did we get this” game.  I’m not looking to blame anyone for our misfortunes.  I just want to know who to avoid in the future.

One of the possibilities that I had to consider was that we got it from Take Two’s water supply.  This was easily ruled out, but it doesn’t seem all that unlikely.  Many people are shocked to learn that we drink Boot Key Harbor.  Yes, we really do.  No, we really don’t think that was it.

Apparently some cruisers only make water in lagoons of clear gin.  We don’t have that luxury.  Our water usage is such that we have to put water in the tanks daily, and ferrying it from shore in jugs isn’t practical.  So unless we’re tied to a dock we’re running the watermaker, and unfortunately the water under the boat isn’t always as clean as we could wish.

Although it sounds unsavory, I haven’t read anything that leads me to think it is unwise.  The watermaker is intended to remove salt, and those parts are smaller than most bacteria and viruses.  Our water is probably cleaner than city water.  In fact, I think the only health risk with drinking reverse-osmosis water is that it is effectively demineralized.  Like drinking distilled water.

In any case, a little extra caution couldn’t hurt.  Who knows what could be lurking in our tanks?  So I’m planning to equip Take Two’s drinking water tap with a WaterFixer ultraviolet water sterilizer.  It will cost $400, take 24Ah/day @ 12VDC, and need a $20 bulb replacement every year.  That’s a small price to pay if it helps avoid this kind of misery.  

Brb.

We may not always be models of quiet and decorum, but it absolutely astounds me the number of people who think that right before sunrise and right after sunset are perfect times to run their generators.  So I'd like to offer this rule of thumb for those who might be confused: If you look around the harbor and see that it is calm and peaceful and that a number of people are out enjoying the beginning or end of the day with a beverage and maybe a friend, that may not be the best time to run your @#$% generator!

We have a neighbor right now who for the last two days has fired up his very loud generator at around 7am and 7pm.  This morning I hopped in the dinghy to figure out who it was (I was leaving for work anyway) and found the culprit four boats away.  I thought for sure it would be an open frame gas generator being used under the cover of darkness.  To my surprise it was an inboard diesel generator.  But there was very little water in his exhaust, and there was a thin stream of water shooting out from higher up on the hull.  

This probably means that the water jacket on his exhaust elbow is clogged.  The stream of water is probably from a vent line to an anti-siphon loop in the raw water supply.  The water is supposed to mix with the exhaust gases to cool them and muffle the exhaust, but with the jacket clogged it has nowhere else to go.  In the meantime, his exhaust hoses are probably delaminating from the uncooled exhaust, and the engine is probably running very hot due to the restricted water flow.  If the generator is overheating, that may be why he runs it twice a day.

I now feel much more sympathetic toward this guy.  His generator shouldn't be that loud.  He probably doesn't know his exhaust is dry and he's pissing off half of the harbor.  I still maintain that it's better to run your generator during the day, but I suspect he's going to find out about his problem a whole lot faster this way.

A friend in the harbor brought over a Minifish sailboat for us to play with the other day.  A Minifish is just like a Sunfish, only a little smaller.

I was skeptical at first, but before I knew it two kids hopped aboard and took off.  No encouragement, no pointers, no sage advice from dear old dad.  Poof.  Gone.  Like ducks on a junebug.

These kids live on a sailboat and have been around boats most of their lives, so I was pretty sure they knew which end was the front.  And they’d been to a 2-week sailing camp a couple years ago, where they learned on Optimist prams, so I figured they knew the basics of sailing.  But I’d never actually seen them do it.  And I did not expect them to do it with so much confidence.  Watching them zip around the harbor in that little boat puffed me up like a proud papa.

Something I found remarkable about all this is that they sail intuitively.  Like most things we try to teach them from books, they have disdain for sailing theory.  They don’t give a rip about the points of sail.  They probably couldn’t tell you the difference between a sprit and lateen rig.  If you try to explain it, they’ll fidget and roll their eyes.  But with a tiller in one hand and a sheet in the other, off they go.

The electrical system is arguably the most important system on Take Two.  When docked at a marina, the electricity we use comes to us through a shore power cord just like it would in a house.  The power is virtually unlimited and we can run heavy loads like air conditioning without giving a thought to how much we’re using.  But away from the dock, the only constant supply of power we have is from batteries with a limited capacity, and we have to use intermittent sources like generators and solar panels to recharge them.  Thinking about power is part of our daily life.

Our current setup is four Lifeline 8D absorbed glass mat (AGM) lead-acid batteries providing a 510 amp-hour (theoretical) capacity at 24 volts.  We charge the batteries through a pair of Trace PS 2524 inverter/chargers with a combined charging current of 130A.  The chargers are supplied by a split-phase 12kW Northern Lights diesel generator burning 0.4 gallons/hour.  

The generator is set up to be controlled by a GSCM from Atkinson Electronics.  We send start and shutdown signals to the GSCM from a Flexcharge programmable timer.  Automating the generator this way allows us a degree of flexibility to leave the boat unattended, but also helps keep things on schedule in case we aren’t paying attention.

We can monitor the battery state of charge with a Victron battery monitor.  It measures the current flowing in and out of the batteries and attempts to calculate how much capacity remains, and how much time until we have to charge.  The monitor also has relay outputs that we can use to manage the GSCM.  

For a while, we had things set up so the battery monitor decided when to start and stop the generator based on battery state of charge, and we used the timer to institute quiet times when the generator wasn’t allowed to run.  Practice showed that generator runs were longer and more consistent than we anticipated, and the monitor did not remain accurate for more than a couple days without a full recharge to synchronize it.  The straight timer approach proved simpler and more predictable.  

When you live on a boat you get tuned in to every sound and motion.  It can be a little nerve-wracking to have a big generator starting and stopping at random times.  Besides, we like being able to plan activities like running the vacuum cleaner and clothes washer for times when the power is “free”.

For the health of the batteries, they should never be discharged below 50% and really should always be charged back up to 100%.  But due to internal resistance, all lead-acid batteries heat up and accept less current as they approach a full charge.  So recharging to 100% takes a lot of time, about six hours for us.  This isn’t a generally a concern when unlimited shore power is available, but is impractical to do with a generator.  

Instead, we stop the big generator after charging for an hour and a half.  Typically the current being accepted by the batteries is below 40A by that point, which is about 80% full.  This is not great for the batteries, and we’re probably significantly decreasing their advertised life span (measured in discharge cycles).

We had hoped when we installed our 750W solar panel array that they would provide enough power to top up the batteries after the generator does the bulk charging, but it doesn’t really work out that way.  After the refrigeration and water maker loads, there isn’t much left for the batteries.

We would like to add a pair of wind generators to help out with this.  We’ve observed other boats’ turbines spinning away on cloudy days and dark nights with envy (and irritation).  But wind generators are not subtle things, and we have yet to figure out how to mount them unobtrusively on Take Two.

Instead, about once a week we fire up our little Honda 1000 gas generator to get a full charge on the batteries.  The Honda is inverter-based, meaning it is a DC generator that uses an inverter to form its AC output.  The boat’s chargers then turn that AC back into DC for the batteries.  While there is some loss from all these conversions, a DC generator is able to reduce its engine speed when demand is low, which saves fuel and makes it perfect for finish charging a lead-acid battery during its low-acceptance phase.  

AC generators like our big diesel must run at a constant speed regardless of load in order to make the correct line frequency.  And diesels like heavy loads.  So a light load on an AC diesel generator wastes fuel and wears on the engine.

The dilemma we face now is what to do with this situation.  We don’t particularly want to bite off any huge projects, so the answer may simply be that we keep on as we have been.  By far the cheapest option is to continue burning diesel.  But we may not have that option for long.  The generator is 13 years old and the inverter/chargers are 10.  

So as we near the end of life on some of our more expensive pieces of equipment, we need to at least have a strategy in mind for how we’re going to manage our power needs in the future.  And it would be really nice to replace something before it fails.  If our big generator were to die today we’d be in a real pinch to replace the power it provides.

The primary focus of our next electrical system will be to reduce our dependency on diesel and the machines that convert it to electricity.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that we expect to be rid of diesel entirely, but we want to use less of our fuel capacity for daily power, and we never want the failure of a single device to be catastrophic.  If we’re going to depend on a diesel generator, it will need some kind of equivalent backup.

I think there are several aspects to a full solution:

*  We should reduce our daily power usage.  We have no desire (and little ability) to become misers.  If anything, our personal usage is only going to go up as our kids get bigger; more food, more laundry, and more showers.  Our best opportunity to use less power is probably to upgrade our current AC-powered refrigeration to more efficient DC-powered units.  This would also reduce our need to have an inverter powered up 24/7.

*  We should increase our ability to charge from alternative (non-diesel) sources.  We already have a decent amount of solar, so wind seems like a logical next step.  

*  When our current batteries die, we should change to batteries that we can charge on our own terms without risk of damaging them.  I want the bank to have enough capacity that we don’t have to charge them every day, and can afford to wait for the sun to shine or the wind to blow.  When a generator is running, I want those batteries to take max charge current until they’re full.  No more of this acceptance rate business.  I think Lithium-Ion (LiFePO4) makes this possible.  

*  Finally, any future generator should be sized (and the corresponding chargers also), so that the engine operates at a healthy load and uses fuel efficiently.

Hopefully we have a while yet to ponder all of this, and won't have to do it all at one time.

We had our rig inspected recently, something we try to have done every year.  The mast and standing rigging passed with flying colors.  The rigger was really impressed with how good they looked for their age, and said we might get five more years before having to re-rig the mast.

But the crossbeam bridle has a boo-boo.  This tiny little crack is a risk to the mast.

The crossbeam goes across our bows and keeps them pointed in the same direction.  It also creates a place to tack the forestay, which holds the mast up and carries the headsail.  To oppose the upward pull of the headstay, the crossbeam depends on a wire bridle raised in the center by a strut to create a big triangle.  The bridle is 5/8” wire with 1” forks on both ends and a turnbuckle to tighten it.  Pretty big stuff.  Replacing it is not going to be cheap.

But we really can’t ignore it.  Take Two’s mast fell down about 12 years ago when a minor fitting broke.  The problem probably showed up first as a little crack just like this one, but nobody noticed.  The rigger has seen two crossbeam failures in his career, and both resulted in the mast coming down.  For a variety of reasons, that is something we’d rather avoid.

Of course nothing is guaranteed, but we do what we can to mitigate risks like that.  We try not to push the boat (or ourselves) too hard, and we fix problems when they come to our attention.  So we'll have some rigging work done in the coming weeks.  The inner forestay chainplate has already been repaired, but not yet reinstalled.  After that is done and the crossbeam bridle is replaced, we'll give the rig a good static tune.  In the meantime, we'll replace the spare jib halyard and get the sail itself to the loft for a professional repair of the patch Tanya made in the Bahamas.

When I’m away, boat maintenance falls on Tanya’s shoulders — like she doesn’t have enough to do.  But sometimes things happen unexpectedly and just can’t wait for me to get back. 

Recently she had to diagnose an air conditioner problem and make a temporary repair.  I’m proud of her for that, but when I went back to make a more permanent fix, I had to laugh out loud. 

[flickr: 8054249296]

Purple electrical tape?  I don’t even know where she got that.  Maybe she has a toolbox somewhere with flowers painted on it.

Well, it’s over.  Take Two is safely back in the water and another epic haulout is behind us.  We shouldn’t have to worry about that again for a few years, and future haulouts should be much simpler.

We’re all eager to get back to life aboard now, probably none moreso than the cat.  Spice stayed in the boat for the duration, which was probably the least traumatic option for her.  But between swinging in the air, days on end of noisy power tools powering away beneath her, the thrice-a-day freight train passing by within 50 feet, and just plain loneliness, she got pretty tired of it toward the end.  I fed her out of guilt and I think she put on about a pound, so she didn’t have it all bad, but she’s definitely happy to have her family back.

We really enjoyed living ashore for a while, and more than once commented that we should remember this.  Living on a boat isn’t always sunsets and umbrella drinks, and maybe it’s good for us to take a break every once in a while.

We have anthems on Take Two.  Songs (and movies, stories, poems, etc.) that we identify with for one reason or another and give frequent airtime.  Today’s song is “Back in Black” by AC/DC.  While we play this one pretty often anyway, it has special importance today because we’ve finally finished the bottom job portion of this haulout.  Blasting, filling, fairing, four coats of epoxy barrier paint, and three coats of black bottom paint.  Twenty days of work.  Three hundred man-hours.  Twelve thousand dollars.  Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em, folks.  'Cause we’re back.  Yes, we’re back.  Well, we’re back.  Yes, we’re back.  We're back in black.

But we're still not finished, no.  We have yet to repair the damaged bridgedeck strake, finish drying the bridgedeck and fill all the holes we drilled, barrier coat, and paint it.  We're going red again.  Toreador Red.  Sounds awesome, doesn't it?  Olé!  We'll also repaint the bootstripe while we're at it.

Splash date is Day 27 when we'll give up our spot in the yard to the Tag 60 Tang.

Progress lately has been a lot like watching paint dry, with a daily thunderstorm thrown in just to keep it interesting.  The fairing is done and we’ve put on three barrier coats so far.  We’ll do one more, but the first coat of anti-fouling needs to be done on the same day and finding a weather window for that may be difficult.  Otherwise, we could be finished with the bottom paint as soon as Day 19.

We want the bridgedeck to dry out as much as possible before we begin painting it, but the damp weather plays havoc with our efforts.  Sometimes an area that was dry the day before is dripping wet again in the morning.  At first we thought it was weeping out of the wood itself, but that no longer seems likely since we can’t find a source.  Now we think it must be coming from the air, but don’t understand how that could be the case either.  Maybe it’s little green men.  We had a dead serious conversation about setting up a time lapse camera to record what happens in the boatyard overnight.  That’s where we are mentally.

The moisture meter isn’t helping things either.  It gives a lot of false positives.  It will say an area is wet and we’ll drill into it only to find it completely dry.  It will say an area is dry, except for a small spot about an inch square that is completely soaked.  Of course it isn’t.  We have a second meter that gives similar readings, so we can at least rule that out.  The meter helped initially and we were able to find many pockets of standing water, but at this point I think it’s just making us crazy.

As I stood beneath Take Two and surveyed the destruction around me, I happened to glance up, and my gaze fell upon the underside of our trusty dinghy, our waterborne SUV.  Frankly, it’s been carrying around a little bit of Marathon for about two years now.  Everybody else takes their dinghy to the beach every once in a while and flips it over for a good scrubbing.  Ours is a bit too large for flipping over on the beach, and I’m a bit too lazy for scrubbing underwater.  But standing underneath it I realized that if I just lowered it a little bit, I’d be at the perfect height to give it that good scrubbing.  Without flipping it over.  Without being underwater.  And the boatyard was the perfect place to use some nasty chemicals that you’re not supposed to get in your eyes.  So that’s what I did.  And now the dinghy is much cleaner.  And so are my eyes.

The barrier coating has begun!