Odds and Ends

Originally posted at www.svsweetescape.com

Attentive readers will recall that back in Charleston in November we hired a diver to take a look at the bottom of the boat.  At the time we were concerned about any possible damage that might be lurking on Sweet Escape’s bottom following our trip down the Dismal Swamp Canal in North Carolina.  On the canal we hit what we believe to have been several submerged logs.  The diver gave us the “all clear” in terms of damage but did say that our sacrificial shaft zinc was nearing the end of it’s useful life and would soon have to be replaced.

Sacrificial zinc anodes attached to boats serve the same purpose as those in a residential water heater for instance.  They are a soft metal that corrodes first, thus protecting the harder metal of the boat from that same corrosion.

So, replacing the zinc on our prop shaft has been on Brian’s to do list since we arrived at Boot Key Harbor.   After talking to our friend Shannon from Sol Mate who had recently changed his zinc himself,  Brian decided to do ours.  We made a quick trip to West Marine on our folding bikes and purchased the needed zinc and on Friday we dove on the boat to put it on.  Not so fast mister.

First off lets get a couple things straight.  Shannon is (a) quite a bit younger and (b) in much better shape. 

Once in the water Brian found that getting under the boat in salt water was a lot more work than he had expected.  A person in salt water is much more buoyant than that same person would be in fresh water.  Brian discovered this the first few times that his head smacked the bottom of the hull.  

Once he managed to get under the boat where he could see and touch the prop shaft the next trick would be to stay there long enough to do the work.  On the plus side our old zinc was totally gone so there would be no removal of the old zinc necessary.  After fighting his way under the boat Brian found that he would quickly run out of breath and had to come back up.  He was able to lay half the zinc on the prop shaft but attaching the other half and then securing it with the allen screws was difficult and was going to in his judgement, result either in lost screws or the whole damn zinc.  Time to admit defeat and call in a professional.

Sunday night Shannon and Leigh of S/V Sol Mate came over for sundowners and Mexican Train Dominos.  We had a great time and are sad that they will be leaving this week to head north up the west coast of Florida for a while.

On Monday during the radio net we hooked up with Chris from S/V Reliant who is a diver and who dives on boats in the harbor everyday.  He came over and installed the zinc for us for $25 using a Hookah rig which is essentially an electric air compressor powered a Honda generator - with a regulator and hose attached to a diver’s mouthpiece.  Not a bad idea - we already have the generator, all we would need is the compressor and regulator, definitely something to think about as we move forward with our cruising plans.

We have been fighting the issue of dead batteries on our electronic devices like our computer and cell phone.  On a mooring you really only have two choices to recharge these devices.  The first involves running your generator which we are forced to do twice a day for 90 minutes each time to keep our house batteries topped up.  This results in our devices never really getting a full charge because we don’t run the genset long enough to fully recharge them.  The second option involves running our big 2500 watt inverter which because of how inefficient it is depletes our batteries quickly - and which provides a lot more power than is necessary to recharge a cell phone.  It would be like swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer.

Today while we were back at West Marine we purchased a small 150 watt inverter.   This can be used to charge up to two devices at a time and should allow us to keep everything fully charged without killing our battery bank.

Incidentally, the issue of our dependance on our generator while on the hook has been of some concern to us and we are in the process of investigating alternatives such as solar, wind or both.  SALT (Sea, Air, Land Technologies), a local company is sponsoring seminars for cruisers on Thursday and Friday of this week dealing with solar/wind power generation, water makers, and off-shore energy management   We have signed up to attend all three.  More on this in a future post.

We are also beginning to think about our plans for the next six months.  We have guests coming to visit us in Marathon in February and March.  In April, assuming we are able to have some things done to Sweet Escape including the addition of a water maker - we will head to the Bahamas for a month before returning to the United States and heading north for the summer.  In May we will leave the boat somewhere along the ICW and return to Wisconsin for Daughter Erin’s college graduation and Grandson Cameron’s first communion.  Once this is all firmed up we will update the “Our Plans” section of the website.