Day 395 Some rain and another job.

We woke to rain and it continued till late in the afternoon just as the weather folks had said it would. The wind they had forecasted--20 to 30 knots didn't materialize or if it did, we are so well protected that we didn't get even a wif of it in here. We've been calm all day. We listened to the VHF weather folks and they kept talking about all the horrible stuff happening around us--gale warnings etc that we just stayed exactly where we were and will until at least tomorrow(Friday) till we hear the weather at Attenbrook Light House. They are just out past the entrance to Kwakshua Channel where you enter to Pruth Bay just South of here. If it's calm or at least better, we will take off.

We pinpointed four places as stops along the way for tomorrow. Sea Otter Inlet, Kiltik Cove, or Long Point Cove, all on the West side of Hunter Island. If the weather is all right, we will pull into Codville Lagoon on King Island. That's on the East side of Fisher Channel which is just North of Fitz Hugh Sound. Don't ask me how a Sound suddenly becomes a Channel, but it does.

The tides tomorrow will keep us here till the afternoon before they turn to a "flood" tide. That's the kind we normally watch for as it pushes us North toward our goal. You try not to go against an ebb tide if you can avoid it. Now if you were going South, you would look for just the opposite. An ebb tide would carry you out. It all depends on which way you are planing on going. A year ago, I didn't know what a tide did let along how to use it to our advantage.

We spent a good bit of the afternoon ripping out some of the last of the old wiring left over from the refit. There was a bus bar under the starboard settee that needed removal. Jack, the electrician had told me that it was dead and could be removed. Afraid not!! It had wires that ran to the forward sump pump for the head. They were labeled as such and I back traced the wires right to the main wiring block. Two wires went in the bus bar(both on one screw) and five came out the opposite side with only one that was directly attached to the two wires going in. The other wire labels said they went to running lights and deck lights. I disconnected the two in coming wires and all the outside light were just fine. If the two wire that had gone into the bus bar were connected to each other, the sump pump worked fine. If split from each other, it would not work. So I took the two wires off the bus bar and moved them below the floor boards and butt spliced them together and then went after the bar and the other five wires.

I took out the bus bar and then started taking out the old wires tracing them back toward the stern. Under the settee on the starboard side past the battery box and down into the bilge over the diesel fuel tanks and water heater. They just kept on going. My hats off to the person that installed them. Code is for the wires to be supported by fasteners every 18 inches. These were screwed down inside rings every 10 inches. The bundles of wires were also wrapped in electrical tape inside the rings. So out with the screws and cut the tape and then pull the wires that I needed out. There were more than just the five wires in this bundle harness. By the time I got to where they went through the floor, I had five wires all about 8 feet long, so I cut them to make getting them out easier.

I got as far as under the galley floor and stopped for the evening as it was already 1800. If it is anything like the wires I've ripped out before, they will go inside the engine room and disappear into a tube that is full of old wires that used to go to the circuit board inside the engine room. This tube is so paced with wires that I've been unable to get a single strand out of it. I just cut them where they go into the tube and leave it at that. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to pull a strand up through the tube. If I can get at least one out, maybe I can get more. I see how it goes tomorrow.

Tracy took on the freezer today. It has been icing up for a while and while it freezes everything in the box to a solid chunk, she felt it was time to get the frost off the freezing unit. Out came the plastic scraper and the hammer and in she went. By the time she was done, most of the ice was gone and the unit has been running for most of the time since trying to get back to the 10-12 degrees it normally runs at. We'll see how it is tomorrow morning. With it running at 2.6 amps, it's not that big a draw on our systems. If we still had the old unit, we would be using almost 6 amps to cool a much smaller space. Tracy made a smart move getting the unit when we were at the Seattle Boat Show last January. It has made this cruise much easier having lots of frozen food to fall back on as time goes by out here.

We even took some time today to play some card games while it rained outside. It made for a nice break in the odd jobs we had to get done. Tonight, Tracy made a dish of hamburger, chopped onions and red bell peppers in a tomato sauce for dinner. It was great.