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.
I always look forward to climbing around on boats I will never be able to afford. My friend Bruce joined Kim and I for a visit to the Seattle Boat Show to do just that. The nice, or at least interesting, part of this year’s visit was the tour of the booths at Century Link field. This is the first year that I actually felt we didn’t need anything for the boat. I, of course, am a bit conflicted about that. I am always looking for new and nifty gizmos.
Some time ago I posted about my new Crocs boat shoes. You can find the original post here. Since that time they have become my favorite shoes for land and sea. These are the shoes I wear on the boat. I like them enough that I bought a pair for home.
Port Madison is a great place to anchor for an evening or overnight. Too bad our windlass decided to rebel the last time we were there. It all started well. Step on the button and the motor dutifully pays out chain. Then … it all went wrong. The windlass started to spin and chain was roaring out. The 50 foot mark, then the 100 foot mark flew by, and then the 150 foot mark. They were recently repainted and looked nice for the second or so I saw each one. We managed to get it stopped with about 175 feet of chain sitting on the bottom. We were only in 15 feet or so of water.
Well there’s your problem …
Our most recent acquisition for fun on the water is a pair of Hobie Revolution 11 kayaks. The Mirage drive is the appealing feature for us. Pedaling instead of paddling. Having both hands free is great for me. I like to take photographs of things while I kayak around.
As luck would have it, Hobiecat Northwest, the Seattle Hobie dealer is about 300 feet from our slip. Dan was very helpful getting what we needed. We looked at both the Hobie Revolution 11 and the Sport. At 9’7″ the Sport was a better fit on the boat, but just not as much fun to use. For me, it felt pretty small. The 11 is actually 11’6″ and kinda big on our our boat, but faster and more fun to peddle around.
Everywhere I look I find a loose end just lying around. I am trying to sweep them up as quickly as I can. It usually takes three or four tries to complete a project. I attribute this to my general lack of organization.
Truth be told, I get involved in the work and forget to take photos of the important stuff.
I posted recently about our video installation here. At the time, I thought I had taken a few photos that seemed important but could not find. I still can’t find them so I took a few more. I don’t know how interesting they are, but it seems like they should be posted to complete the story.
First, the video amplifiers with all the cabling installed.
Just wrapping up some loose ends here …
I posted something recently about the Maretron NMEA 2000 extender gizmo, but didn’t have a photo. Here it is on the right side of the lower helm station. It allows four devices to connect to the NMEA 2000 backbone through one “T” connector. I just noticed what looks like some kind of alarm buzzer in the lower right. I guess I’ll need to figure out what that is for. It’s probably important.
