At the end of our last trip I had assembled a list of things I wanted to repair or replace on the boat. Since I enjoy doing projects I decided to tackle as many of these by myself, and hopefully save a little money along the way. So I started right away on the most difficult items with hopes that I could get most if not all of them finished by the time we set sail in the spring. Here…
One feature I like about our travel trailer is the solar setup. The system keeps the batteries charged all the time, even when stored. We have 450 watts of solar panels on top of the trailer, which is enough to recharge the battery bank fully in one day of full sun. The boat batteries are normally charged while underway, when running the generator, or when plugged into shore power. So for normal day to day use, I don’t have to…
Our departure from Isle of Hope was at 6:15 in the morning. It was right at low tide, so the water was calm and glassy smooth. We quietly idled out of the marina and out of the area before speeding up to our 8 knot cruising speed. As the tide came in we were headed into the current, so that meant that our speed was reduced to 7 knots much of the morning. It was a beautiful ride as we…
There are a few luxuries that make the difference between roughing it and living normally. Refrigeration is probably the most important to me, followed by running water. So it was increasingly annoying that the freshwater system on our boat would consistently stop working after being idle for a few minutes. I would then have to go to the power panel and recycle the breaker. In some cases we would need to wait several minutes before turning the breaker back on….
During my first training day on the boat I noticed an issue with the generator. Blue Sky has a fairly capable Cummins/Onan 5kw generator located under the starboard hatch in the cockpit. There is a remote switch located on the wall near the electrical panel that allows the generator to be started and stopped when needed. The problem was that the generator would not run for more than about 5 seconds. It started easily, and purred nicely…for 5 seconds. After…