February 15th: Air conditioner success, floor project and snorkel trip

The new control panel for the air conditioner arrived. I connected everything and NOTHING! I again noticed that the new air conditioner had three more wires than the old one. Maybe they weren't for a wall thermometer and I really needed to hook them up. But two wires said 12 volt. There was no 12 volt power supplied to the old unit. Time to ask for help in the marina. I went to Jerry on No Agenda because we all know he knows a lot! He graciously came over to check it out. He determined that the new control panel operated on 12 volts, not 110. Too bad the person I talked to at tech services didn't know that. I ran a 12 volt power supply line and sure enough it worked! Great job Jerry.

So I needed to get a 12 volt supply line to the air conditioner. There is a ceiling light close by with access to the wires above the ceiling. Perfect. Except that power line was dead. So that's why the two ceiling lights on the port side didn't work. I found a cut supply wire, fixed it and added the new supply line to the air conditioner. Now everything works, the air conditioner and the two ceiling lights.

Well worn floor

Linda came down with a bad cold. Wasn't long before I also succumbed. We tried to stay away from everyone else and just hunkered down on the boat. I decided I might as well start working on refinishing the wood floors in the salon, (main section of the boat). I have been avoiding the project for a couple years because its a lot of work and difficult to do while living on the boat. But I was getting very tired of looking at a sad floor.



I got out the heat gun to see if it would work to remove the old finish. It worked even better than I had hoped. Other than crawling around on the floor it wasn't really labor intensive. After three days I had heat gunned and scraped everything.

Meanwhile, our colds were hanging on longer than expected. We kept thinking they would go away but so far the colds were winning.




I ordered a gallon of floor finish from Amazon Prime and the package arrived a few days later. Hmm, it was in a box that was in a plastic garbage bag. The bag was holding leaked floor finish! It was a mess. I couldn't believe they delivered it like that. The can had gotten crushed and the lid leaked. Fortunately there was still more than I would need still in the can.






I experimented on the main floor board that covers the engine compartment. I could take it on to the back deck to work on it. I wanted to see how it would go. After sanding and applying the floor finish I was very happy. I spent the next couple days sanding the whole floor and steps and then started applying the finish.








After 5 coats it looked great. Very happy with the final outcome.

Mystified at the dock

Our colds finally went away and we saw the weather forecast for Friday was wonderful. Very calm and sunny. I was thinking I'd go fishing but then Dennis and Lois on Mystified invited a group of us to go to Sombrero reef and snorkel. It's about 15 miles to the reef, a pretty lengthy ride for our trawler at 8 miles per hour.






Mystified is a very nice, 57 foot boat and cruises more than twice as fast as our trawler. As you look at the boat wake after we went under the 7 mile bridge, you can tell we were moving along nicely.


The boat has a great fly bridge, large enough for all aboard to ride on top.







We arrived at Sombrero Reef, the snorkel spot, and started looking for a mooring ball to tie up to. We knew it would be crowded and there were no empty mooring balls left that we could see. Dennis was maneuvering his 57 foot boat between moored boats and we were passing a small jet ski tied to a mooring ball. The owners waved and said they were just getting ready to leave! Very fortunate, and the mooring ball was even in one of the best spots. We tied up and were set for the afternoon.


We were in the water quickly and enjoyed a great snorkel day. The water was a little cloudy but lots of fish. After a lunch break we noticed the water cleared quite a bit. We went back in and had an even better snorkel.




We returned to the boat pretty worn out from a day at sea. It was Valentine's Day and I had planned a nice dinner, pork tenderloin. I also thought some Valentine's Day roses would be in order and they looked great with our newly finished floor. I pan fried the pork tenderloin in the cast iron skillet I got from Wendy and Matt for Christmas and it turned out great. I've used the skillet almost every day and really like it.

Speaking of Christmas gifts, Rebecca got me a very fun "Fish" that separates the yolk from an egg white. It's quite entertaining as you can see from the video!