Tuesday 30 Nov, Deltaville VA, cruising day 3: Departure aborted. Forums catchup, Mastervolt charging issues, fix gas locker hatch, have a movie night.
I’m up with a 5am alarm and straight to the PC to view the latest weather forecast. Nothing has changed for the next 48 hours since last evening. We are still good to go for a 6am departure. But wait a sec, I now see a new weather window later in the week, for a Thursday departure with much more flexible timing than the one we are prepared to go for this morning. My decision is quick. We abort this morning’s departure. And my warm bed happily accepts me back in, where we both sleep like logs till 8:30.
It is another glorious day outside, and slightly warmer today. Though Ray tells us there is snow on the ground in Maryland this morning. Most of the morning is abusing the marina internet, catching up on various forums I have been ignoring these last few weeks. I find the HR technical group on www.groups.io particularly interesting. There is a huge amount of useful information shared by other HR owners from around the world, from which I have learned lots of useful things. And of course, I like to help others with our experiences and lessons-learned too. The general format is that an owner asks a question and other owners, often with the same type of boat, chip-in with answers. And often the topics will go off-topic and get even more interesting. So, I like to sift through all the replies and capture the good parts.
By midday it is time to recharge the batteries. The generator fires into life with no problem and we are initially charging with our full 175amps (@25v) charging capacity. But after a few minutes I notice the amps are dropping, just like you might expect for lead acid batteries. Lithium batteries have zero resistance to charge, they should stay at the full 175amp right up to 99.5% full. I really cannot work out what is going on.
I try all sorts, even turning off the Combi and second charger to re-set them. But it’s just the same. After 30 minutes the charge current is a mere 110 amps and there it stabilizes. Not the end of the world, but still annoying if we cannot re-charge at full-whack. Bit like having a Ferrari that won’t go into its top 2 gears ☹
I send off an email to my Mastervolt guru in Barcelona. Let’s see what he will suggest. Maybe he will come on-line with me and take a look over the internet.
Then it’s outside for some fresh air to attend a small pending job. After I changed the gas solenoid valve in the gas locker, the latch no longer works. It now hits the top of the solenoid casing before it can get under the lip of the hatch. Trying to work out exactly what the problem is, is like working out if your fridge light goes off when you shut the door. With the door shut, you cannot see it!
So, I put a few lights into the locker and wedge the iphone with camera lens pointing up where the latch will go when the hatch door is closed. I then start the video, close the hatch and try to operate the latch. Viewing the recorded video I can now see the problem. Either I need to lower the position of the new solenoid or shorten the latch. I chose the latter because I absolutely don’t want to disturb the seal between the solenoid and the copper gas pipe. So out comes the trusty grinder and in my aft workshop (aka swim-platform) the latch is cut shorter. And once installed back on it works perfectly now, keeping the hatch door safely locked down.
It’s interesting, we bought this Makita grinder/cutter for emergency rig cutting, should the mast ever fall down (which it nearly did!). Yet after my drill/driver, it is probably my most used power tool. In fact, I love my whole suite of Makita tools, all of which run on LXT 18V batteries. These batteries last a long time and recharge super quick.
While I’m faffing around on deck, Oana is making the most amazing Indian soup (Mulligatawny soup) complete with roti. Perfect for a cold day. Her culinary skills seem to get better and better each day! Not bad for someone who had previously declared themselves as “not friends with any kitchen”. The other delight of the day was a delicious carrot cake made in the bread maker. In fact, it’s a rare day when she doesn’t bake either bread or a cake. And the smells that cooking creates, emanating from the cabin, are just divine 😊. Am I the lucky guy, or what? to be able to eat all these delights.
After dinner we talk about ending our Amazon Prime subscription. We usually only subscribe for a month or two while we are in one place. Once on the move, there is really no advantage. But before we shut it down, we decide to check if the marina internet is good enough for streaming. Normally there is no hope of this luxury. But what do you know … it works perfectly. And without hesitating we select a movie from Prime and make ourselves comfortable for a movie-night, using the big TV screen in the saloon. So there we are: cozy with heating on, hot wine in hand, legs up, and entertained. Oh, this is the life! Maybe we should stay in this duck pond for a few more days!
