December 16, 2011: Trying a different kind of cruising, boarded the Regatta (Oceana Line) for a repositioning cruise from Los Angeles to Papette via Hawaii and Christmas. I definitely need a bit of time at sea and the price was right so why not! The first day out we are definitely getting a bit of motion. It is hard to guess the sea state from higher up than I am used to but I would guess 8 foot seas with about 15 second period. Winds look to be in the 14 - 18 knot range. The second day at sea was glassy flat with a mild swell. Saw a whale spout from the aft dining deck at breakfast.

October/November 2011: The remodel of the aft head compartment has been the largest part of the work although a distraction of pulling the battery bank out to get access to the aft holding tank under the salon floor proved to take about 4 weekends! What started out as a simple task of replacing all of the hose to the holding tank (which is under 400lbs of golf cart batteries) turned into quite the project when I dropped a hose clamp into the bilge under the tank and could not retrieve it. In the end the tabbing holding the support holding the tank down had to be cut to remove the tank. In the end it was a good thing as the removal allowed cleaning the bilges completely and correcting some compromises of maintenance performed over the years.

Reinstallation of the battery bank allowed some time for re-wiring of the main battery bank. Dedicated 100 amp fuses were used in each of the two 24V strings. The size of the fuses were determined by the 1/0 wire from the batteries up to the main cutoff switch about 18" away. The fuses are internal to the battery box like those of the main engine and generator starting batteries.

The intention is to eventually enlarge the size of the wire on the main bank to to a large inverter which will need much larger cables and fuses.

While working on the installation of the new aft toilet I took to aggressively looking for the source of a small amount of water which shows up in the aft bilges from time to time. In the end it turned out to be a combination of a fresh water system leak and two areas which do not have limber holes and also are not easily accessable. The first of these was under the platform that the toilet is installed on. I was not sure if I could get into the area without damaging anything and so drilled into the compartment from under the shower seat to ensure the hoses could be routed. In the end I found that the moisture accumulated under the toilet had caused some deterioration of the mahogany plywood which the toilet sits and so after removing the Formica was able to remove the 6 screws which hold the plywood in place and remove it. The area was dry but had a significant amount of dried cleaning products (a couple of hand fulls). I have remade the sub floor and provided better support to avoid flexure. Additionally the toilet can now sit further back against the bulkhead which makes for a better installation. Fortunately, all of the permanant structure was well sealed with gelcoat and no other deterioration was found. I have not decided if I am going to cut air vents from the front to provide fresh air or provide a small tube for drainage perhaps using a vacuum cleaner,

The other area which did not have a limber hole and had no access was under the aft shower pan. The hose for the shower drain had come loose and was leaking so I tried taking as much fo the teak trim off as possible in hopes of pulling the pan up. Unfortunately I later determined that the pan is sealed into place and was not easily removed. After drilling a couple of small pilot holes I found that there was support structure under the edges and the corners which would have had structural implications I decided to use a hole saw to install an access port in the sloping part of the shower pan. This provided access to the underside of the pan and inspection in the future. There was definitely an accumulation of water under the shower stall most likely from the shower stall drain leak and the occasional fresh water leaks into the sump behind the shower stall. Like the other areas, use of teak structures, high quality plywood, and coating everything with gelcoat has avoided deterioration of the permanant structures. 

The plan is to install a new gulper Gully IC shower pump for the shower and a gulper IC two port manifold for the sink drain.

September 23: The second Raritan Marine Elegance Toilet ( Model #220HS024 ) arrived at my local West Marine store. Planning on getting it bolted down this weekend even if not hooked up to start building the new cabinetry and installing the electronics, pumps, and other parts required.

I also need to finish pulling up the shower pan to get access to the drain and either use the gulper for shower drains or use the same type as in the forward head and galley.

September 17 - September 18, 2011: Commodores Cruise! The trip over was mostly a motor sail with light winds on the nose. The return trip was almost all sailing. Hoped to see blue whales but none were to be found. Dinner at the cove was spectacular with fish and chicken grilled to perfection.

Tom and I managed to get the washer / dryer out of it's locker and out of the aft head. It will come out of the head without too much trouble if the head door is removed and all of the towel racks. Once the washer / dryer was on the aft bunk I setup a lifting harness using the boom to lift it out of the boat. The installed unit is 230V and 50 cycle. Thus far I have not found any washer / dryer which is not frequency sensitive. Most likely I will be shifting the generator to 60 cycles and replace the two sensitive pieces of electronics (i.e. the washer / dryer and the microwave). Removing the washer / dryer gives access to all of the head plumbing and so I am now working on replacing and replumbing the aft head.

Pulling the aft head and the removeable cabinetry shows that there should be room for an identical toilet to the forward head (Raritan Marine Elegance with Smartflush). By using an identical toilet in the forward and aft heads will aliviate most of the concerns of only having electric toilets. The first installation has been running well for about 6 months without any problems at all. Having two identical units results in having a second unit to cobble parts from if both were to have independent failures and the ability to carry some specific parts.

The the forward head installation the 26 gallon holding tank can handle 23 "full" flush cycles or 43 "saver" flush cycles before being relatively full (still probably 10% room).

Started removing the teak bungs in the aft shower sump to get access to the shower drain which I can't get access to any other way and is leaking (i.e. the source of the water I have been hunting ). About half of the bungs are out at this point.

September 2 - September 5, 2011: Labor Day Cruise! Had a nice ride over to the island and even saw a blue whale pass close behind Botany Bay!

Coming home from Cruise week I noticed that the extrusion in the mast for the in mast furler did not look right and on closer inspection was offset by about 30 degrees from what it should have been. This most likely explains why the furling gear has not been operating as smoothly as it has before. Troy hauled me up the rig with the mainsail off the furler when I got back to the slip and determined that the extrusion was not twisted, however, something did not feel right.I found that a screw had come out at the bottom of the extrusion where it goes into the mandrel which results in the extrusion being held down only by the clamping action of the other 4 screws. Over time the extrusion had lifted and then settled  back in the wrong position. By losening the turnbuckle below the extrusion I was able to get everything back into place. However, the system did not feel quite right so I loosened the turnbuckle until the hardware was flopping around a bit, then with a good shake the bearing set at the top of the mast settled back correctly (I think), and the system turned completely smoothly again. The missing screw is 1/4 x 20, countersunk, 1/2 inch long. Don't use too long of a screw or risk hitting the piece of rod rigging inside of the extrusion.

August 12 - August 14, 2011: End of Cruise Week!

July 1 - July 4, 2011: 4th of July at the Cove!

Two more small pieces of cabin sole needed to be varnished quickly. The two pieces which make up the steps down to the galley get more wear than much of the other pieces due to how you turn going down. The varnish was becoming very thin and I was concerned about moisture getting into the wood. These currently have 3 coats of gloss varnish and 3 coats of rubbed effect varnish. These two pieces need at least two more coats of rubbed effect varnish when I have time. 

Much of the rest of the sole will need to be completed this winter to prevent damage caused by the varnish getting too thin. There are 6 floorboards forward of the saloon to do, all of these are pretty good size. There are 10 floorboards aft of the saloon to do of which one is very small but the rest are all pretty good size.

In the saloon there is one remaining floorboard to finish, the one under the saloon table. This will require taking the table off and the pedistal to make sure the part which goes under the table gets a good coat.

June 18 - June 19, 2011: Ashbridge Cruise 

The varnish on the saloon table is starting to get thin enough that I am concerned about moisture getting into the teak. Learning to get an almost perfect finish on such a large surface required some additional work on my technique. Generally when varnishing floors I have applied varnish sectioning the floor at a convient strips of holly (the light wood). However, the table is basically square and trying to keep a wet edge across the table proved to be very difficult. In the end I found that short sections which brush into the previous varnish slightly resulted in a better final surface. After 5 coats of gloss varnish I applied the first coat of rubbed effect and it came out so well that I stopped for the time being as I expect there will be minor scratches by the end of the season. The rubbed effect varnish is harder and so the desire is to build up 4 to 5 coats of rubed effect this winter. The edge of the table is hardwood and so I am not as concerned about moisture getting in as I am on the veneer and so I am putting off the edges of the table until I have more time.

May 28 - May 30, 2011: Corsair Yacht Club Opening Day! 

The nav station is starting to come together, I installed the 19" Samsung flat panel TV along with a Lenovo dual core atom PC. Two USB to serial converters and Raymarine's Raytech software. The Lenovo PC consumes about 20 watts at full load which is very impressive and appears to have sufficient capability to run the Raytech software without any difficulty. I also installed a 350 watt 24V -> 110V sine wave inverter which has worked very nicely. It easily runs the Lenovo PC, two flat panels (the 22 inch and the 19 inch) which are being used as a two screen desktop, the network switch and the Netgear ReadyNAS with 6 2TB hard drives without any issues.

Integration of the Standard Horizon Matrix 2150 with the rest of the system has been very good. The Raytech software does import the AIS targets and displays them as an overlay on the chartplotter display. 

Overall the integration of an original Autohelm 1990 vintage autopilot (2 7000 series controller, very early autopilot brain), knot log, and wind point, 2007 wireless Raymarine Remote, 2010 vintage depth sounder (ST40 series), a 2011 AIS data source, the RC320 chart plotter I bought before leaving Kwajalien in 2001, and several repeaters are all working together quite well even with two different versions of the seatalk physical layer.

There have been a few quirks which I continue to sort out.
1) it appears that the order in which hardware comes up has an impact on which chartplotter thinks it "owns" the buss. The only thing which is impacted is from which device (the RC320 or the Raytech) can set waypoints to the autopilot. 
2) The RC320 occasionally spontaniously reboots. This behavior appears to be related to the GPS engine because when I disable the internal GPS the problem goes away. The plan to fix this is to provide an external GPS source to the SeaTalk bus and not us the internal GPS
3) When the Matrix 2150 looses the GPS signal it becomes very annoyed and sets off  a very loud alarm which the volume cannot be adjusted. Thus, forgetting to turn off the radio can result in a rude awakening when the GPS portion of the RC320 causes the unit to lock up.

The knotmeter appears to be somewhat intermittent, unfortunately I have not yet been able to find a mechanism for failing over to the GPS for speed for the various calculations.

April 30 - May 2, 2011: It is time for the first Corsair Yacht Club work party and I will be bringing a crew of 5 for the voyage (this is the largest overnight crew I have attempted). Being that I have room for a couple in the forward cabin, two bunk beds in the midship cabin and one more bunk in the saloon and a couple in the master stateroom aft the boat can accomodate a crew of 7 without significant inconvience and a crew of 6 without having to bed anyone down in the saloon. 

April 22-24, 2011: Easter cruise with the Corsair Yacht Club, the Easter Bunny was well received at Isthmus and many children collected over 1000 candy filled eggs which had been hidden! The trip over to Catalina was definitely "interesting" on the way over to the Island the entire boat went dark! I immediately started chasing DC electrical system problems and found that the battery system was fine as the bilge pumps worked just fine (Directly connected to batteries via a fuse) but the rest of the electrical system was not working. After a couple of minutes the problem went away and the boat rebooted. After happening twice more during the passage and tightening connections it appeared to be corrected. Then on Saturday evening I pressed the button for the forward electric head and the entire boat went dark AGAIN!!! With the boat stationary I was able to carefully work through the electrical system with a volt meter across each of the connections and rapidly determined that the primary battery disconnect switch had about 1.8V of drop with nominal amperate running through it. Later testing showed the switch to have about 10 ohms of resistance. Luckily I had a spare switch and heavy guage wire and was able to bypass the switch for the passage home. Even better I found a spare switch which fit perfectly when I got back home! The replacement does not look exactly the same on the backside but looks identical where exposed and is a "Hella Marine On/Off Switch P/N 002843011" switch, Interestingly this switch is rated at 50A continuous and 500A for 10 seconds at 24V. I would definitely not want to run serious current through this switch. It is fine for the main power panel but not for inverters and the like. The three additional switchs are used for the winches (intermittent), engine start (intermittent and 24V), and generator start (intermittent an 12V which has twice the surge capacity). I wonder what the rating of the original switches are but it is something to pay attention to. The diameter of the shaft going through the woodwork is the same size and is a snug fit which perfectly replaces the old switch! Since there are 3 more of these switches I will buy several spares to have around.

The sailing to and from Catalina Island was wonderful and we were able to sail the whole trip both ways. With the borrowed UK tape drive #1 the ability of the vessel to move in light air is positively amazing.

The first real use of the Standard Horizion Matrix AIS 2150 receive only AIS and VHF radio was very impressive. Comming back from Catalina there was a convergence of 3 container ships at high speed and two other sailboats. After a call from one of the container ships to talk to a sailboat which I thought was Botany Bay I was able to sort out that that he was referring to a different sailboat, contact the container ship to inform them that they had not talked to the vessel in question and then contact one of the other container ships to confirm if he desired I go in front or behind him. The result was a rapid response from a container ship in broken english but we were able quickly make a decision and keep going (he wanted me to maintain course and speed as he needed to make a turn in a couple of minutes. Overall AIS looks to be a very good system and I will be installing a transmit system shortly.

Leaving Isthmus we had over 20 knts true with mid 20's on deck under main and staysail. The boat was very comfortable and scooting along at between 7.8 and 8.1 knts going upwind! I was able to keep the boatspeed in the high 5's to low 6's as the winds lightened up and when the wind on deck got under 12 knts we rolled out the UK tape drive #1 and and the boat speed went from 5.5 knts up to 7.5 knts with both headsails up. We sailed all the way until just off the breakwater in Redondo Beach very much enjoying the sail and no further issues with the electrical system. 

Once home I immediately replaced the main DC power switch. The extra resistance is most likely caused by years of "hot switching" this switch. Basically there are DC to DC converters which were always connected to the bus as well as some other items and so the switch has probably been "hot switched" many times over the years resulting in contact problems.

April 2011: Completed installation of Whale IC based pump for the forward head to service both the sink and the shower drain. The result is really spectacular. All of the benefits of having a sump for the sink and shower to drain into but with the advantage of an integrated non-contact switch as well as a water-tight interconnection harness. I did wire up the existing manual switch for the old grey water pump to allow turning on the pump if  only a little bit of water is put down the drain.

Completed initial installation of the new Matrix AIS 2150 VHF radio, this is a receive only AIS system which is dependent on an external GPS signal being provided. I have hooked this up to the NMEA 183 output of the old Raymarine RC230 chartplotter which I moved over from Little Botany Bay.  I am still trying to determine why the chartplotter shuts down occasionally. It might be an electrical connection right where the cable connects to the chartplotter but it always comes back when I turn the unit back on. It might be worth trying to reflash the programming.

Completed initial installation of a Samsung UN22D5000 HD TV where the old weather fax machine was at the  back of the saloon above the Nav Station. This will be an ideal place for a "rear view mirror" which will use a camera looking out the aft transom. This will allow me to see when guests come knocking on the back of the hull. Also this will make it easier to keep an eye on things comming up from behind while down below checking the radar or the like.

Started initial rewiring of the nav station. I started trying to add in the Matrix AIS VHF radio and found that the electrical system was more of a mess than I thought. It took a couple of weekends to sort out all of the wiring behind the nav panel and then make a new panel out of plywood to mock up the new installation. I made two panels at the same time slightly oversized and then using a microplane to get it to fit correctly. The current plan is to install a new UN19D4000 HD TV as a computer monitor, using a Kill-A-Watt meter the TV consumes about 12 watts in "eco" mode and about 25 watts in full power mode. Interestingly the TV has a power factor of 0.6 which means that the inverter needs 12/0.6 = 20 VA when the TV is running in "eco" mode, when in full power mode the number is more like 45VA to keep the TV running. This is when running off of a nice sine wave source (like shore power), when running on an old "statpower" modified sine wave (read square wave) inverter the power factor is about .35 making running the TV off of a 50 VA inverter a bit marginal even on eco mode. The larger 22" HDTV uses about 18 watts in ECO mode and about 35 watts in full power mode. The power factor is about 0.6 when running off of shore power. I have run some tests of the larger Samsung HDTV systems at a friends house and found that the new UN55D6000 consumes about 103 watts and about 106 VA with a power factor of 0.99. It would appear that Samsung did not do as much to keep a reasonable power factor on the smaller monitors. Also interesting is that a Samsung 23" computer monitor (also LED) consumes about 45 watts and this appears to be relatively consistent, the HDTVs appear to have spent more time trying to make the units efficient.

As part of the re-wiring I added one of the new Blue Sea "SafetyHub 150" Fuse Blocks behind the master circuit breaker panel. This unit has 4 high power fuses and 6 ATO fuses. While I was rewiring the nav station I found that other than the master cutoff switch there were no fuses between the master power cutoff and the circuit breaker panels. Unfortunately, circuits need to be fused to the smallest unprotected wire in the circuit and this is not the case for this installation. So, Now there is a MIDI fuse which services each of the portions of the circuit breaker panel as well as seperate fuses for running the 24V DC -> 12V DC converters which were previously wired directly to the primary power bus. The result is a much safer installation. I will also be adding an additional distribution panel or two down by the primary power switch (most likely one directly connected to the battery for bilge pumps and the like and then a second for just after the master power switch)

So, the Nav station looks like it will have a 19" HDTV (which has lots of inputs for remote cameras, computers, USB, etc) and then a tablet like an iPAD or Android Tablet and the remaining space will be used for dedicated instruments. Currently I will reuse the existing instruments knowing that I will probably rework much of that over the next few months. There is in fact room for two of the 19" displays or two of the largest Raymarine E-Touch series display (15"?) or one display and one E-Touch display. I expect to run a low power PC in the nav station and I have ordered a 350VA - (300 watt) Victron 24V -> 110V 60hz since wave inverter which will be dedicated to running the nav station and basic computer infrastructure. The cost was about $148 and comes highly rated. Hopefully it will be ready to install after the first Corsair YC work party.

March 2011: Installed new propane system. An upgraded stove (Force 10 Three Burner with Thermostat Oven), Trident propane sensor and control, new 30' propane hose, two stage dual tank regulator, control solenoid, and fiberglass propane tank in the aft locker. The existing copper line was quite corroded (I never hooked it up because it looked bad) and had several compression fittings in the lines which made me nervous. The new system has the propane line run outside the cable chase and the control solenoid line running inside the cable chase.  

Completed the varnish of the saloon floors, in the end I applied three coats of gloss varnish and then 5 coats of rubbed effect varnish. The result appears to be very tough although I have continued to only walk on it barefoot or in socks (grin). The result is beautiful, I will have to complete the rest of the floors as soon as possible as there are definitely some thin spots in the rest of the boat.

I finally got around to installing new Non-Skid material on the companionway stairs. The result is beautiful!

I finally got the new Aqua Signal Series 34 LED Based Navigation lights installed on the bow. I still need to install the new stern light (I have the light it just will be a bit harder than the others to install as the existing mount is welded on!!! Rather than bolted)

Started looking into the problems with the existing 110V inverter from Trace. It is a 1500DR series from 1997 and unless it can be completely debugged I would not want to continue using it. After spending some time degugging the unit with an oscilloscope it is probably not worth trying to reuse. Time to consider at least a small inverter for the nav station.

February 2011: Varnishing saloon floors has begun! After all of the mast work and getting the new head installed it is time to get the floors sealed up before the sailing season to make sure that I end up with moisture in the floors. Based upon the recommendation from Epifanes I am applying 3 coats of gloss varnish and then at least 5 coats of rubbed effect varnish over the existing varnish. The goal is to sand the existing varnish enough to get to a clean surface but not sand all the way down to the underlying teak so that the color remains the same. 

January 2011: Finished installing the new Raritan Marine Elegance head. This version has the "smart flush" control and the salt/fresh water option. The "water saver" flush is approximately 1/2 gallon and the "normal flush" is about 1 gallon.