November 3 - Plugging Right Along

[skipgundlach]

November 3 - Plugging Right Along

Those of you who have been watching the weather are aware of what
has come to be called Hurricane Noel. The recent activity of that
storm has made the weather in the area where we're currently
shivering a bit messy for running down the Chesapeake, so we
didn't go when we thought we would.

Instead, we're enjoying Solomons, such as we can. We've met
another Morgan 46'er, rafting up for dinner with him and his wife
and 4 children. Just another confirmation of how marvelous our
boats are, we 5 adults and 4 kids fit comfortably, if cozily,
into our salon, where we thoroughly enjoyed each other and
comparing each other's similarities and differences over fried
chicken and various salad side dishes.

Their boat has a full complement of new sails and also the Strong
Track System which we've ordered for ours, so I got a look at it
installed on his boat. He'd been kind enough to scope out our
eventual anchorage the day before we arrived, so we knew just
where to hang out our hook.

As we arrived, we chatted up some other sailboats in the
anchorage, and they reported good holding, so we hooked firmly in
Back Creek, just past Zaniser's Yacht Club, over about 12 feet of
water. We'd left only a bit earlier, as our anchorage off Drum
Point was only about 4 miles away. As is their custom, the ladies
slept in, but when we upped our anchors, both were very clean,
and they'd had a chance to shed the remains of the Cambridge and
Oxford goo that had hardened on them. Having now deployed our
"Shock and Awe" anchor (described by a knowledgeable fellow in
St. Petersburg as huge overkill for our applications) and rode
twice in the last few days, I am finding a bit better system for
both retrieval and launch - both semi-hand-done - of the second
one. Perhaps I'll use it often, now. In any event, it was nice to
have a clean anchor, and chain, again!

Our guide lives in the area, and had the ability to give me a
ride around to several shopping-type places the next day, which
was Halloween. One of the places was to try to find worming
medicine for Portia, our rescued cat. I'll let Lydia fill you in
on the details of all that, but we didn't succeed. Prescription,
only. I also tried to get stainless steel rivets, to no avail.
One of our projects will be to redo our rail system (replaced the
lifelines) as I'm not satisfied that the setscrews will suffice
when push comes to shove. I'll order those from a commercial
supplier and have them sent to one of the places we're headed.
However, the rest of our shopping was fruitful. I got yet more
alternator belts as part of that, of which more anon.

As is my wont whenever we're standing still, I got into various
projects. One of them was to install the Icom M-802 SSB/Ham radio
which had been returned from the factory where it had a refit to
address voice clipping - a symptom which manifests as someone
hearing only the very first part of a transmission I'd make. In
the course of getting to that location, and getting a sliding
panel out from behind a chain support, I dropped the main
instrument hinged/drop-down panel. As it had the support chains,
it only went a few inches before it stopped - but the same
symptom as had been seen when we were on the way out of Barnegat
Light reared its head again: the GPS would not power up.

As we were just about to go on an overnight - in the place where
the universal recommendation is to not sail at night - down the
Chesapeake to Norfolk, in one jump, this was not a good sign.
Those who have been following this adventure for a while will
recall that the solution to the problem before was that the cable
which powered the unit, the "plug," if you will, somehow wasn't
making a good connection.

The first time I'd encountered this, I'd cured it by repetitively
connecting and disconnecting the plug - effectively, burnishing
the contacts. That worked for quite a while. Then, in the
Barnegat incident over a month ago, I'd not been able to make it
self-repair on that basis. So, I took it apart and cleaned and
burnished all the interior connections and put it back together.
No joy.

Conversation with the service and support folks at Raymarine led
to our sending it back. On examination, it was "no problem
found" - it powered up and found satellites and did all the other
stuff asked of it. From that I concluded I must therefore have a
power supply problem. Since I was seeing boat voltage at the plug
end, my assumption was that it must have been a poor connection
robbing it (the poor connection causing a voltage drop) of the
required supply.

So, I started at the control panel and went through each and
every connection and either redid it or burnished,
corrosion-controlled and reassembled them. Still no joy when I
attached the plug to the unit. Hm.

Well, if everything else is as good as it gets, the problem has
to be in the plug itself. Shortening the story, I took my probe
and modified the shape a bit. Bingo. Power up, and, until the
latest drop, it performed flawlessly.

Back to the present, however, no amount of cleaning or tweaking
the plug made any difference. Talking, yet again, to Raymarine,
had the support folks saying it was in the unit, not the boat,
where the problem lay. Not satisfied with that answer, and very
reluctant to send the unit back yet again, I asked about the
cable itself. Oops. Too old. Can't even buy them any more.

Hm. I just bought another fish finder. The old one uses a
different power supply than the new one. Just maybe?? Sure
enough, they're the same. Even better, when I powered up the fish
finder (the old one - I've not yet installed the new one), it
lit, of course. And...

Taa Daaah! So did the GPS when I stuck it on that plug. Not
surprisingly, the fish finder, when powered with the GPS cable,
didn't power up. So...

Plugging right along.

I replaced the plug of the GPS with the one from the old
fishfinder. I'd presumed that doing so would resolve the GPS
problem. HAH! No such luck. You wouldn't believe the color of
the air when I saw that it would not come up. I was just about
to take the old plug upstairs and connect it temporarily to the
line I'd cut in removing the plug to the fishfinder when I
recalled my test unit.

Connecting the OLD plug - the one I'd presumed bad - to these
tiny wires (not capable of carrying nearly any current at all)
resulted in a successful power-up of the unit. More blue air as
I contemplated replacing the wire from the circuit breaker to the
unit. Looking at it, it hit me. There's a fuse in the line!
I'd inspected the fuse, and it was good, of course (else, how
would I have the proper voltage at the end?), but not the
terminals in the fuse holder.

Sure enough, they were black. A quick dressing with some emery
cloth and putting it back together resulted in instant power-on
for the GPS. A couple of hours later, I've finally stopped
kicking myself for overlooking that obvious potential for a
voltage drop, but I sure wish I'd thought of it sooner!!! All is
well with the GPS and all connected to it, including my laptop's
navigation program. OY!

I'll also install the new fishfinder, of course, but that will
have to wait for another day, as we need to get out of here while
it's still light. Happily, I've connected the new (well, new to
us) Garmin replacement GPS at the helm as well. That Garmin
supplies the feed to the VHF radio's panic button - but I'll also
be able to feed that information to the new fishfinder - which,
because the Garmin GPS has a mount from the previous Garmin GPS,
it was also plug and play.

Another project had to do with the engine room and its myriad of
things to do. The first of them was to replace the belt I'd put
on before with one of the new ones. The new ones were different
than the ones which have been disintegrating, and so far, in our
running of the main engine to make hot water, which, of course,
also runs the alternator, the belt is very much cooler and gives
some evidence that it might solve our problem. In the end, I
think I'll wind up taking the main pulley off and having it
resurfaced. That will not only clean up the groove but make it
larger, to match the pulley on the alternator, which will lead to
longer belt life and longer water pump life. Given that water
pumps on these engines are unavailable as other than salvage from
a removed engine, that's got a pretty high priority!

While I was in there, I also changed the oil. Much to my
surprise, the oil which went back in took another 2 quarts beyond
what it had before, despite the same amount coming out as in the
past. Research in my various mailing lists suggests I have the
right length replacement dipstick (see a prior log about how I
broke the last one), so that one has me scratching my head. In
any event, the engine room is happier for my time in there!

In the meantime, we've enjoyed the area, having a couple of
dinghy rides to shore, done shopping and laundry and toured the
museum. Like the one in St. Michaels, this is a transported,
out-of-service lighthouse, and a local joy.

In deference to the coming storm, a couple of nights ago we moved
onto a mooring ball for the two nights before we left. In the
end, I don't think it would have been any difficulty, but Lydia's
mom was buying and was more comfortable with that, so who were we
to argue?? With the ball came all the Zaniser's Yacht Club
privileges - hot showers, laundry, bikes and the like. So, we
behaved a little like more prosperous cruisers than we normally
might. Truth be known, however, it was actually prompted by the
entirety of the anchorage other than us making lots of
dinghy-borne visitations between themselves with lots of loud
conversations, and, then, suddenly, each and every one of the
anchored boats pulling up their anchors and moving to mooring
balls. That was enough to spook the ladyfolk, and off we went.
I've not minded.

Later today, we're off, overnight, to Hampton Roads, where we'll
meet up with another Morgan fellow cruiser, the attorney who set
up the trust fund for us when we had our wreck. From there we'll
go to Norfolk, where we'll return the borrowed Gunkholer's Guide
to the Chesapeake (we never got to use it) and the Washington
Guide (same deal), and prepare for our jaunt down the ICW to miss
Cape Hatteras.

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
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(and)
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