It was a busy Saturday. While the yard is sort of closed--at least the office, boats went in and out all day. People were everywhere working on their boats. Sanding, painting, and grinding just to site a few I saw. One guy was working with a big blowtorch burning and scraping off the paint on the side of his old wood boat. As many of you have read, we have had a problem with the electrical systems. It used to be that when we were on shore power, all the systems worked fine. Then last Saturday(a week ago) after a power outage, the starboard outlets caused our circuit panels "reverse polarity" light to glow. In the past, that had only happened when we used the Honda generator since the ground on the generator wasn't hooked up to the system. We had the use of only half the outlets on Zephyr. I went in search of the problem, multi meter in hand.
I started with the newest outlet on Zephyr. I had installed a new 110 outlet in back the galley. I put the multi meter wands into the outlet and got a strange reading. Only 47 volts. Off with the cover(turned off the power first)to get to the wiring. I checked the connections--tight. Then the current. Still only 47 volts. I checked the connections in different configurations. As it turns out, the ground wire wasn't the ground wire. It completed the circuit. I'd been told how to wire the circuit by the folks at Sea Marine. They had even put tape on the bus bar as to where to attach exactly what wires. Ends up they got it wrong. I switched the white and green wires and the circuit was now fine. It read a nice 120 volts(after I turned on the circuit panel switch). The "reverse polarity" light was no longer on. Victory!!! We hoisted the Honda generator back on board. We'd kept it in the car since getting it fixed. We hooked up the wires to it and started it up. No "reverse polarity" on it now when we turned on the switches. Problem solved!! Now we don't need to have an electrician.
Lunch and on to the Hydrovane. That's our new wind driven autopilot that gets mounded to the the stern(back of the boat). I'd shaped teak pads to go between the brackets and hull as there are no flat surfaces on boats and the bracket(flat on the back) must be securely mounted to the stern. We drilled small holes through the hull to see how thick it was. Surprisingly, only about 1.75 inches. The thinnest section we have seen on Zephyr. We had a special stainless steel backing plate made on Friday afternoon to hold the bolts nice and secure. There will be a lot of stress on the bracket and bolts as it steers Zephyr.
Once we made sure it fit the backing plate, I drilled the first 3/8" hole and Tracy fit the plate and nut. Then the second pilot hole. The outside of Zephyr is rounded while where we are attaching the plate is flat so getting the outside hole to line up with the inside hole took some work.
Once the first was done, we started on the second hole. Again, a pilot hole was drilled. slightly off so I corrected the angle and drilled a second. Got it right this time so on with the 3/8" bit and in it went. Lined up fine so in went the second bolt. The first part was done. Everything hinges on it being installed straight on the stern. The top bracket gets it alignment from the bottom bracket. We started fitting the top bracket and found that the angle for it where it fits onto the hull needs a bigger piece of teak. So today's project is to cut and shape another piece of teak and laminate it to the bottom teak pad with epoxy to make the pad bit perfectly. I checked with the wood shop(ok to use their tools on Sunday) and borrowed the bent sander from Bottoms Up Marine Services(BUMS)again. Now I have the tools to do it properly and sort of easily. I've never been big on compound angles and wood.
We took the screen that fits the companion way door to have a new set of doors made. Panels
instead of swinging doors. They are pretty but if we took a lot of water on board could come off their hinges and get washed away. The new ones fit in the same slot in the door frame as the screen and allow us to close off below decks or with the second bottom board, allow some air flow as well as communicate with anyone below during a blow yet keep the amount of the opening relatively small. We also had a set of door panels made in clear Lexan so on cloudy days we can put them in and have the security yet have more light below decks. It can get dark down there. Now all we have to do is make bags to hold them so they don't get scratched.
Off for a nice shower and a great steak dinner. It started raining as we finished dinner and continued for several hours. It's the first rain we have seen in quite a while and first Port Townsend has had in over a month. The grass is quite brown around here. I expect today to be quite muggy as the temperature is set for the high 70's(hey, that's hot up here).
Well, it's off to the wood shop. I have work to do.
More tomorrow. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment