I am going to try and get caught up. I am still a few days behind what’s going on. We left Spencer Spit late morning headed for Stuart Island. Still no rain, but plenty of clouds. We let Cindy do the driving.
Spencer Spit to Prevost Harbor
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Author Archives: Rusty
Seattle to Spencer Spit
I had an idea that I would more or less live blog the trip north to the San Juan Islands. Look! Passing Point No Point and so on. Instead I did nothing. That was five days ago now and I am just getting around to posting something. It’s probably good that I didn’t blog along the way. At eight knots it would not have made for exciting reading.
We left Seattle early Sunday morning and headed north on the outgoing tide. It was wet when we went through the locks.
Garmin xHD radar upgrade
I always have high hopes starting a project. They never turn out to be as straightforward as I want them to. My project for this weekend was to replace the Garmin 18″ HD radome with a new fancy and possibly amazing just released Garmin 24″ xHD radome. In addition to the new radar, I also bought a new Seaview mast mount. The best price I found on the radome was The GPS Store, the Seaview mount came from Fisheries Supply.
It should be a fairly simple swap. There is just a power cable and a CAT5 network cable out to the radar. The hardest part should be changing the mast mount. Right? That’s the way I figured it.
We have power!
I’m a little late posting here. The new generator is installed and working properly. 63 amps of glorious AC whenever we want it. We took the boat over to Blake Island for the weekend with our friend Bruce just to test it out and see how it worked. It’s pretty decadent to have power and hot water any time we want it.
Here’s the new generator installed in the aft part of the engine room. Gallery Marine did a great job. Thanks to Don and everyone who worked on our old boat! Gallery Marine has been added to our “Businesses We Like” list.
Dang it! Another week to wait …
We had planned to pick up the boat from Gallery Marine this Friday evening and take the new generator out for spin. But … a combination of a few people out sick, and us adding a bit of other work … and Gallery Marine finding a couple of items that need to be addressed, the process will extend the pick up until next weekend. Oh, well. Good things are worth the wait.
We will pickup the boat NEXT weekend and take the new generator for a test drive at Eagle Harbor or Blakely Harbor on Bainbridge Island. Our friend Bruce will be joining us. In the meantime, I’ll write a list of projects that need to be done when he gets there. 🙂
Progress on the generator installation
I’ll just pickup where I left off with the last post. Gallery Marine is installing an extra swell Westerbeke 7.6 kW generator for us. Here’s the big empty spot at the back of the engine room where the new generator will live. It will sit spanning the stringers between the fuel tanks.
Hot water
Our project this weekend was the water heater. The one we have seems to have served its purpose admirably, but has developed a small leak. It’s a Raritan R-12. I don’t see anything on it that helps me determine its age. All indications are that it has been there for some time. I figure I’ll just buy the exact same thing and all the connections will line up nicely, right? Easy.
You can barely see where the old tank is leaking. It’s the little line of rusty goo down where the arrow is. The tank is actually leaking from the back somewhere and then running down the floor of the engine room. I assume the rust around the bottom of the tank is a part of the leak problem.
