Let the bitching continue...

 

... since that's all I seem to do these days.

Last weekend we motored out into the bay so we could spend the night at anchor. Everything went very well in that I got the boat out of the slip without scaring the bejusus out of our neighbors, our anchor dug in solidly, we enjoyed a peaceful breezy evening, played a few games of Yahtzee, slept like logs, had a huge breakfast including coffee with all the fixin's (a weekend tradition that involves hazelnut creamer, knock off Bailey's, and a lot of whipped cream), and executed a successful re-docking at our slip minus the drama of sucking trailing lines from our pilings into either one of our propellers.

 

For longer than I care to admit, we've used this green hulk as a one of our waypoints when anchoring in the bay. Only recently has it been brought to our attention that it's known for its frequent dragging.

 

Our systems played fair for a change; our solar panels soaked up the sunlight and our wind generator hummed in the breeze. We woke up to find our batteries still fully charged and Hans was then able to make our coffee thanks to our new (and cheap) RV inverter (remember, our marine inverter died awhile back).

So, what went wrong? Well, I hate to admit it, but I bragged on FaceBook about how much fun we'd had. Honest to God, I did. It was kind of like sending out that obnoxious annual Christmas Card letting everyone know our life is better than theirs. That's why I take full responsibility for the fact that when the electrician shows up at our boat tomorrow we will have been without electric for a week (but we did rig up a solution, explanation to follow).

What happened was, once we were back in our slip and fully hooked back up to shore power, I was down below taking a much needed shower when I heard an alarm go off. Of course this happened right when I had my hair completely full of shampoo. "Tell me I can rinse my hair!" I screamed out to Hans while keeping my eyes tightly closed. He told me I could and I did, but needless to say, we've been showering at the bath house ever since.

On a side note; Hans, who is first and foremost a scientist and believes if you can't see it, smell it, or touch it, it doesn't exist, is finally coming over to my side and is beginning to believe that there might just be something to my theory about an 'appliance union' wherein all the inner workings of the Knotty Cat are continually conspiring against us. Because (and this just blows my mind), our battery charger died on us. This was the remaining half of our inverter/charger that I posted about awhile back. When the inverter side died (it supplied us with AC power while at anchor) we were just thankful that the charger was still working.

And then it wasn't.

We (with my wet hair dripping down my back) sat it the cockpit and debated about what to do and decided to roll out our portable solar panels in hope that they could keep up with our daily demand. We didn't count on unseasonably cloudy and rainy weather moving in and the next day found me nervously monitoring our batteries like a mother hen and when they dipped down to 11.9 volts I ended up starting and idling our port engine two times. So we dragged our shore power cord into the boat and luckily we have an adapter and when Hans bought a battery charger on his way home from work we plugged it into our adapter and so far so good. And when I expressed my concern about what we would do if we were at anchor with no sun or wind, Hans reminded me that we have the Honda 2000 and it has an outlet we could plug the charger into.

However, on a positive note, our adapter has three outlets so we added a power strip and voila!! we have TV, a fan, and since it was ugly outside I was able to use my sewing machine all week long.

Our new battery charger fits perfectly under our companion way steps. A temporary fix until we get the boat repaired.

 

But even with all these wonderful solutions, I still don't have hot water. The only way to heat it is by running the engines and we're not going there. I now heat water on the stove for washing dishes and like I said before we have the bath house for showers.

 

Shore power cord on the left, adapter on the right.

Getting full use of the three outlets on the adapter.

And even more use thanks to this power strip. This all looks like something out of 'A Christmas Story' when Ralphie's dad overloaded the living room outlet with the tree lights.

An overview. Yes, that's our TV in the background.

 

Time to wash dishes.

 

And rinse them. I used our garden hose on day one because our water pump was draining the batteries. Now that we have the battery chargers I just rinse them with cold water.

Wilbur supervises from the stern while I repair our dodger.

Hanging up behind Wilbur is the quilt top I worked on all week. He thinks it's for him. It's not.

We originally replaced our inverter charger when we first moved on board in 2010 and I told Hans I feel like we've come full circle. Just when we felt like we had our ducks in a row, we're starting all over again. I'm just hoping and praying that our heads don't buy into the whole appliance union thing because I've spent more time on them than I ever dreamed I would.

 

Posted with Blogsy

New Boat Stuff

This has possibly turned into the most boring blog in, well, in the whole blogosphere.

It's not such a big deal since I obviously don't get paid for this thing and I know very few people read it, and it's not like it was ever very exciting but it still bugs the hell out of me how stale it's gotten. However, one of the reasons I post here is to keep track of the stuff we've done to the boat and it's also helped us settle some minor disputes like, "That's not at all what happened, don't you remember...?" "That happened the day before Wilbur jumped overboard" or "Before you fell overboard!" or "Before the sun pad flew overboard."

Dear god, a lot of stuff has gone overboard the Knotty Cat. Maybe I better shut up before...

Well anyway, on to yet one more boring blog post.

Our inverter died right around the time we installed our wind generator. This inverter both charged our batteries and allowed us to use our outlets while motoring with our Diesel engines. Luckily, the battery charging part works but without shore power or our Honda generator we could no longer use our outlets for charging phones, computers, etc... Damn, it's always something.

A new inverter would cost us around $1,000 so we decided we really didn't need one because at anchor we could always hook up the Honda on an as needed basis. And then Hans got the bright idea of buying an RV inverter (the outside of the box states: not designed for marine use, but since when do we follow the rules?) Actually, he bought two of them. A small DC one that can charge phones, computers, etc... and a bigger AC one that can actually allow us to make coffee and still keep our refrigerator running. Along with battery cables the bill came to around $140.00. We tested this system the other morning after disconnecting from shore power. After unfurling and connecting the solar panels we then accidently touched the inverter cables together resulting in a shocking and brilliant display in the galley. The fact that Hans' scheme worked almost paled in comparison.

The inverter mounted under the companionway steps.

 

A view from afar.

I forgot to take a picture before mounting it so here's a picture of the box.

This is the smaller DC unit. It can charge our computers and even (be-still my heart) run our TV. Talk about getting away from it all.

I put a pen beside it so you can see how small it is.

 

It has a USB outlet and an AC outlet for regular plugs.

 

Here are our solar panels, at the bow, atop our tarp covered dinghy (and, no, I don't need to be reminded that the tarp is wrong side out!).

Since they're portable, we can disconnect them, roll them up...

...and store them in a locker.

Of course these little gizmos will only work if we have 8 or more MPH of wind (wind generator) or sunshine (solar panels), but at least they now keep our batteries topped off so we can run our refrigerator and anchor light all night long.

We could continue to add layers of systems to the Knotty Cat but I think (except for regular maintenance required gy those who own boats) we're pretty much done.

Unless of course I talk Hans into a 'so easy even your wife can install it' water-maker.

Posted with Blogsy

New Boat Stuff

This has possibly turned into the most boring blog in, well, in the whole blogosphere.

It's not such a big deal since I obviously don't get paid for this thing and I know very few people read it, and it's not like it was ever very exciting but it still bugs the hell out of me how stale it's gotten. However, one of the reasons I post here is to keep track of the stuff we've done to the boat and it's also helped us settle some minor disputes like, "That's not at all what happened, don't you remember...?" "That happened the day before Wilbur jumped overboard" or "Before you fell overboard!" or "Before the sun pad flew overboard."

Dear god, a lot of stuff has gone overboard the Knotty Cat. Maybe I better shut up before...

Well anyway, on to yet one more boring blog post.

Our inverter died right around the time we installed our wind generator. This inverter both charged our batteries and allowed us to use our outlets while motoring with our Diesel engines. Luckily, the battery charging part works but without shore power or our Honda generator we could no longer use our outlets for charging phones, computers, etc... Damn, it's always something.

A new inverter would cost us around $1,000 so we decided we really didn't need one because at anchor we could always hook up the Honda on an as needed basis. And then Hans got the bright idea of buying an RV inverter (the outside of the box states: not designed for marine use, but since when do we follow the rules?) Actually, he bought two of them. A small DC one that can charge phones, computers, etc... and a bigger AC one that can actually allow us to make coffee and still keep our refrigerator running. Along with battery cables the bill came to around $140.00. We tested this system the other morning after disconnecting from shore power. After unfurling and connecting the solar panels we then accidently touched the inverter cables together and were treated to a shocking and brilliant display in the galley. We were so relieved that the batteries and inverter weren't fried, the fact that Hans' scheme worked almost paled in comparison.

The inverter mounted under the companionway steps.

A view from afar.

I forgot to take a picture before mounting it so here's a picture of the box.

This is the smaller DC unit. It can charge our computers and even (be-still my heart) run our TV. Talk about getting away from it all.

I put a pen beside it so you can see how small it is.

It has a USB outlet and an AC outlet for regular plugs.

Here are our solar panels at the bow atop our tarp covered dinghy (and, no, I don't need to be reminded that the tarp is wrong side out!)

Since they're portable, we can disconnect them, roll them up...

...and store them in a locker.

Of course these little gizmos will only work if we have 8 or more MPH of wind (wind generator) or sunshine (solar panels), but at least they now keep our batteries topped off so we can run our refrigerator and anchor light all night long.

We could continue to add layers of systems to the Knotty Cat but I think (except for regular maintenance required by those who own boats) we're pretty much done.

Unless of course I talk Hans into a 'so easy even your wife can install it' water-maker.

Posted with Blogsy

The Fine and Friendly Folks of Annapolis

My last post was on Sunday and we were stranded at anchor due to dead batteries. We were prepared to spend one last night in this manner but the weather was oppressively hot, we couldn't use our fans, and the dog was in distress.

Then a BoatUS tow boat zipped by us towing a little power boat and Hans said, "Let's just call them and get it over with."

And he did.

A few minutes later Cory from TowBoatUS pulled up to our boat and he may as well have been George Clooney I was so happy!

Wilbur (who has to be extremely bored with us by now) was happy too and welcomed Cory with wild leaping and tail wagging (we wish we could harness that energy). Thank God Cory is a dog lover too (he mentioned that he has two boxers) and didn't mind at all.

What a nice kid (I have no idea how old he is but I'm 50 and everyone is a kid to me!) and he couldn't have been friendlier or more helpful. He let the dog slobber all over him so that makes him okay in my book. Anyway we were soon limping our way to the dock where our electrician was due to meet us on Monday morning.

Cory, if you're reading this, once again we want to thank you! I used to be a waitress and I hated having to work on Sundays when it seemed like no one else had to!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with tying up to docks (where they have this wonderful thing called shore power which means I can use a hair dryer!!) and wonder why the hell we don't do this every night; it's like paying to stay at a hotel only without maid service. The charge is around $2.00/foot of boat length so it costs $70.00 or so per night. Not cheap.

Hmmm... I wonder what he's saying to the dispatcher? "OMG, they have a dog and a cat on board! Are they nuts?"

I think this will be our next venture.

Towing crazy people who think owning a boat is fun!!

The next day Peter, our electrician, spent a full eight hours on the Knotty Cat.


Here he is at the top of our mast replacing our spreader lights. He also rewired the spaghetti like mess under the mast in order to repair our radar, and made sense of the batteries for the first time since we've owned this boat! The previous owner did a lot of work to the boat, didn't document any of it, and then couldn't answer any questions we sent him!





I swear, we now watch the batteries more closely than I watched my kids when they were toddlers!








We gave Wilbur his own knotty play toy (he likes to chew knots and thinks the jib sheets are yummy).





Here is our little rescue pup and he's probably wondering if it's possible to be saved more than once because this trip has been completely insane!