Friday March 6: Too Much Play Makes Me Lazy ......

Well, it seems that the 3 1/2 day trip last week made me want to just stop the projects list and keep playing :-)

But it was time to get going on the list of things that we want to complete before heading up the west coast of Florida in 3 weeks or so.

More Guppy things in particular as anything that needs a sewing machine I would like to have completed before we leave Banana Bay

So back to the rain cover for Guppy. This cover will basically provide a bridge between the back of the flybridge and the top of the canvas over the aft deck.

Right now, when it rains we have to keep the cabin door shut or the rain just comes right in. With the new cover we can easily put it up or down so the door can remain open. Definitely a winner!

Project completed!!

Next on the list: new shade covers for the side windows. The old ones did a great job of keeping the sun out - so good though that it was hard to see through the screens.

So Steve's solution was for me to make new ones that would provide more visibility yet still keep the heat from the sun out.

Project completed!!



Next was to check our electrical circuits. This is a maintenance thing - just lets us know that all is well in the AC and DC circuits on the boat.

First was to verify that no AC current is leaking - meaning power coming onto the boat that is not also going back out of the boat via the shore power plugs.

Easy to do: just use a clamp on ammeter which reads the amount of volts in the chord. Because the power entering is positive and the power leaving is negative, we expect a reading of zero: +120 - 120 = 0. Check - done!

To check the DC circuits (power provided by the batteries) and to check if the zincs are doing their job, we use a silver half-cell.

This hangs in the water outside the boat. Using this with the ammeter we can measure and verify that all of the DC grounds are hooked up and have a good connection.

All were good except one connection to the cutlass bearing on the shaft. Fixed.

Project done!


Back to the sewing. Time to work on the hardest project for Guppy - remake the flybridge cover.

I made the first cover in Campbellford on the Trent. Having the boat right there made it manageable - it was the first flybridge cover I ever made without a pattern to follow but it turned out reasonably well.

Sadly the material I had on hand to make it just lasted only a couple of summers. Time to make a REAL one from Sur-last (made by Sunbrella).

How many hands does it take to hold the old (white) cover down in the wind while trying to pin it to the new (blue) material? Apparently quite a few - and more by the time we finished! It was great having folks walking by stop and offer to help :-) A work in progress.

Last project: replace the rusted brass plated steel grommets in the forward cabin cover (keeps the sun and rain off the front cabin and the hatch can be left open with fear of that sudden rainstorm when we are away from the boat).

Somehow I thought brass plated was ok. Wrong. Either solid brass or nickel plated brass (the choice as a replacement).

Oops - bad material choice again. The cover needs replaced after being in the sun for an entire year and a half. No problem - material will be in Wednesday ......

It's a fishing Friday for Steve - he and Gary headed out just a few minutes ago to try their luck under the bridge. Let's hope for a good day at sea as Steve terms it :-)