Thursday, February 7th

More progress. The never ending gas tank is almost finished.

Carter has completed reworking the sundeck to get the last 4 solar panels mouted.  The panels will lay flat on the deck during the day for collecting while we are underway and they will lift up to form handrails for the sundeck when we don't need the extra propulsion energy. We now have a total of over 5000W mounted on the boat. In the full sun that is about 100amps at 48V which we have learned will push the boat pretty good, even into a moderate headwind. Since it takes less than 1000Watts to meet our house power needs, we have more electricity than we know what to do with when we're not moving.

Carter is going to paint the deck for a nice finish.

Laying out the panels and checking to see that we can still get through the opening!

Carter can squeeze through but I'm betting this will be a job for the 1st Mate!

A view from the shore with the panels in side rail position.  Still just testing everything out with only the starboard side up. The deck seems to be sturdy enough to support everything but Carter is still going to beef things up a little with some additional columns on gunwale.

Below is a view from behind the panels up on the sundeck.

I thought I would add pictures of the finished head with all the handrails, towel racks, etc. back in.

I freshened up all the teak with teak oil and shined up the stainless railings.

The shower floor and seat.

 

The very nice teak shower cady that we lucked into at the flea market

 down in Fort Myers for $2..

We are loving the clean, bright white, freshly painted walls in the head!  :-)

And to finish off this post, here are a few pictures of our livaboard life at the marina.

 

The Captain and his dog...

Sittin on main deck under the solar canopy winding down after a hard days work.

There are always manatees in this basin sunning themselves. 

We counted over 60 of them last week. 

Here is a pretty good shot of a mamma and her calf.

The end of another day watching the sunset from sundeck with Radar on patrol!

Radar continues to amuse us with his antics. 

He has to bury his rawhide bones before chewing them.

We find them everywhere.  Poor guy...forgets where he's buried them! 

This pelican and his mate dive for fish all day by our boat.

It drives poor Radar into a frenzy sometimes.

I don't see many of these!!! 

Sunrise this morning taken from up on the sundeck.

And we are heading into another busy day.

January 29, 2013

We continue working on our projects and are making some serious progress.  Carter has installed all actuators on the main array.  It's REALLY COOL!  Now we can track the sun on our port, starboard, or directly overhead. This will more than double the amount of electricity we can collect while underway. I finally got the walls in the head prepped and ready for paint.  Carter immediately picked up the paint brush and layed on a first coat.  It looks good! 

He has to finish the work on the sundeck and then he'll come below and start working on the salon project.  Now that my part of the head is complete, except for putting it all back together, I will get back to my sewing projects.  I still need to finish the cover for the instrument panel in the cockpit and I am going to create new cushions and covers for the salon out of one of the beds we took out.  Repurpose the old mattress (which was foam btw).  From there the list goes on and on for sewing projects.  :-)

 

I really do hate paint prep but it sure does look nice when complete.

Talk about bright white!
 



Nice and clean.
(This next picture was taken before the bottom 1/2 of the wall was painted.)





Meanwhile ... outside...

A view from the cockpit underneith the sundeck.



  

Carter is getting ready to install the next actuator on the port side.

View from the bow to stern.  All actuators are installed.



And finally, a view looking at the center array tracking toward the starboard side and the forward array tracking to the port side.  There will be 4 more panels laying flat on the sundeck...in just a few more days now for the full 5 kW.

Another view of the center array tracking toward the starboard side.



Carter cleaning up after completing the installation!

Another milestone reached!

Work on the sundeck and remaining 4 panels begins today! 

January 23, 2013

It's been cold and windy which has slowed Carter's outdoor work.  It's not a good idea to mess with the panels in such windy conditions.  The cold front has moved through and we hope to get back to some serious work.  Carter continues getting set to install the remaining 4 panels onto the sundeck and I continue to work on the head.  Have I mentioned that I hate paint prep?    Grrrrr

Carter started by beefing up the center support with 3" structural channel.

 

Then reinstalled the linear actuators on the starboard side.

 

In the middle of all this, a bird came and parked himself on the bow line causing Radar to go nuts! 

 

 

Not only this bird but there was also a pelican that kept diving for fish just a couple feet off our port side.

 

 

And all the manatees!  We counted 40 that we could see in the other side of the marina basin.

There was only about 20 on our side.

 

 

 

 

 

A momma and her baby caught my eye.

 

 

Ok, back to the head for more scraping paint, sanding the walls and making a huge dusty mess ... everywhere.

 

 

So I decided to cover everything with sheets and towels.

 

By the time this nightmare is over...the walls in the head should look great and not have to be painted again for many years.

 

 

Is it safe to come back in yet?

 

The End Is In Site!

The holidays are over and we are back at the boat digging in again!  We are excited beyond words that we see the 'light at the end of this seemingly never ending tunnel' of construction.  Carter is busy completing his projects of repairing the sun deck and then install the last 4 solar panels for a total of 5 kw!  He also needs to install the remaining linear actuators, complete all terminations and finish the salon renovation. 

I will be busy completing my projects of repainting the head, finish sewing all covers including new cushion covers for the salon when Carter finishes that project.   Then everything will go back in its place.  Or more like...we'll have to find a place for everything....or get rid of it!

 

As always, this project is a work in progress and changes are made almost daily.  Here, you'll notice that the spindles forming the handrail on the sundeck have been removed.  The next kw of solar will be installed to lay on the sun deck during collection times and lift up to form a wall around the sun deck when we want to use the deck.  Can't wait to see how that turns out.  It should look pretty cool when in the up position. 

 

 

 

We are also going to install new flooring in the galley and stateroom! 

 We are in the process of picking out the style and color. 

Stay tuned.

The 2012 Fall Season Has Begun!

We've been trying to get a post up for a while but have run into problems with our substandard internet connection.  We have access but it always crashes when we try to upload pictures so...I'm behind.

Carter asked his friend Jimmy who lives near by if we could get on his high speed connection so I could try and get caught up.


We hit the ground running upon our return to the ship in November.  First, something we both have been waiting for...installing the actuators!  To test the system Carter installed the sample actuator he bought on the center post and gave it a test.  It worked great! 

Here is a shot of the main array, "close hauled on port track".  With the ability to track the sun now, we are able to collect more than enough power to run everything on the boat and went completely off grid the day before Thanksgiving!  The batteries are still a weak link in the system but we have plans to upgrade them in January, just before we head out.

We've left the masts and pully system in place for safety reasons while we test the actuators and tracking system but as soon as we get all the actuators installed and all the bracing and supports in place, Carter plans to cut the masts off at the array level. Right now we are losing some power from the partial shading they cause during part of the day but that will go away soon.

Panel Array going up....

Panel Array going down...

 

We got a little sidetracked with family, holidays,and an almost terminal case of the flu. But we got back on track this week and just finished installing the next killoWatt that has been sitting on the deck for the past several months. We now have a total of 4 killowatt and with the tracking mechanism, if the sun is shining we should be able to get 60-80 amps at 48V almost all day. Carter thinks this will be enough to travel up 30 miles a day, (with a good tail wind, lol), but we have plans for another kiloWatt over the sundeck anyway.

When you're dealing with a 30+ year old boat, it seems there's always something to fix. We have an ongoing list but some things are higher priority than others and when the head develops a problem,  it's time to drop everything for "Adventures in Marine Sanitation".  So when the floor seal started leaking, it was time to pull the toilet and install a new seal. Are we having fun yet?

In peparation for our upcoming cruise, we needed to get our dingy situation squared away. The Whaler is an awsome dink but it's simply too big to drag around Florida and we needed something smaller for cruising with so Carter pulled out an old inflatable he had and found a little kicker for it on Craigslist. 

   Then we constructed some davits  to raise it out of the water and we're set.

The marina we are at happens to be a favorite spot for manatees because of a fresh water spring in the basin.  There are always a few hanging around but today we counted 12 with 4 mother/calf pairs.  They say when the weather gets colder that so many show up it looks like you could walk across the basin on them but so far, this was the most we've seen at any one time.  

RADAR - New Addition to the Arc

We are pleased to announce a new additon to our family! 

Radar! 

 

Radar is a 2 year old Jack Russell Terrier that we found at the Brevard County Animal Rescue.

He's a natural boat dog and seems to love cruising out on the Banana River.

 

 

 

 

He's a great dog!  We love him already.