Bimini is up

Thursday 16 Dec, Anchored Lake Worth FL, cruising day 19: Call with Mastervolt, sewing machine comes out, bimini and solar panels get rigged.

Alarm goes off at 3:45am because I have a call-in from Ivan of Azimut Electronics, Spain, where we purchased all our electrical upgrades from in 2017. Ivan will take a look at our Mastervolt system. Bang on 10am Spanish time (4am Florida) the phone rings and within half a minute he is logging into my PC via AnyDesk and is into the boat’s Mastervolt system via a USB connection to the Masterbus. It is always quite interesting to see an IT guru control your PC from the other side the world. The mouse cursor flies everywhere and various windows open and shut in split seconds. It makes my IT skills seem very slow and old.
He says the lithium batteries look in top shape (after 5 years). The cells are all nicely balanced and clearly we have maintained them well. He says the first MLi batteries Mastervolt installed were back in 2005 and still going strong after 16 years. Good to know. Ours show the equivalent of 266 cycles. He says they should do 2,500 cycles easily, with no deterioration. The whole system is good and very healthy except the firmware which is several years out of date now. In a flash he uploads the latest versions, bringing the system up to date.
Since first noticing the reduced charge amperage a few weeks ago, things have actually got better. The batteries now reach 75% charge before the amps start to drop off, and Ivan says this is normal, while the cells are balancing themselves.
So, while he did not find a smoking gun, it is good to be reassured the system is fine. And especially the batteries, which we rely so heavily on.

After just 20 minutes he is done and signs off, leaving me with the generator running. Despite the early hour, I decide to do a complete a full charge, which takes another 45 minutes. In that time, I clean up my maintenance file and to-do lists. And in doing that I see now that I actually did have “Loctite bolts on vang and goose neck plates” on my list. But for some reason I did not coloured red for critical. My bad.

In the morning Oana leaves me to sleep in after my disturbed night. I finally wake up at 10am!
Today’s task will be to install the bimini and associated 6 solar panels. But first job is with the sewing machine. The straps that hold the bimini bars have been bugging me ever since we bought the boat. They are white and are very badly rust stained. Hence I bought new webbing, but need to sew loops and the jammers onto it. It takes me about 2 hours to complete. Then the bimini comes out and onto its frame over the cockpit – giving us instant relief from the midday Florida sun.

I also need to re-sew the Kadar rails onto 2 solar panels. These were damaged when we had an accidental gybe and the mainsheet caught the panels as it whipped across the top of the bimini. There was a lot of other damage associated with that gybe, but these 2 solar panels are the last items that need fixing.
The 6 solar panels slide into place on the bimini, on their Kadar rails. Then it’s just a matter of wiring them in. This takes me till after dark, so we won’t see how the array works until we have sunlight tomorrow.

While the sewing machine is out, Oana also gets into the sewing mood. Modifying some of her clothing and adding elastic to my shorts! It seems sewing is a hobby that you can catch from others!

At sunset we both take a break and relax with a beer in the cockpit watching the sunset. And while doing that we receive photos and whatsapp messages from Catalin, the owner and skipper of Irony, the First 422 which I raced on all last summer. The crew are all having a Christmas gathering in Bucharest this evening. It’s certainly nice to know they were thinking of us too, at this festive time 😊

Our evening is pretty relaxed. We are definitely winding down and starting to enjoy taking it easy for once. Looks like we will be here in Lake Worth for a few more days. The wind is up and coming from SE. Which is not a good direction to continue our journey south. Maybe Monday.
We would like to call into Fort Lauderdale next and see some friends (Christian and Eva on SY Gale) whose Swan 66 is docked at Pier 66 Marina. Trouble is, anchoring in Lauderdale is very difficult for us. There is Lake Sylvie, but we are likely too deep to enter there, and it is probably packed full anyway. Then there is Las Olas anchorage, but that is very tidal affected, with a lot of wake from the ICW. There is also dockage everywhere, but all with huge price tags! What we need is some acquaintances like Delos had, who would allow us to dock in their back garden. Wouldn’t that be nice!