Good Golly! I can't believe it has been 7 months since I had the gumption to get back to the blog. Apologies aside, this has been a most enjoyable summer season since arriving back in Key West.
Over the years we have had and worked on JonNe', I have had the opportunity to do a lot of recovery work on the electrical system. As the boat was hit by lightening before we bought her from the previous owner, as the need arose, I changed out wiring. Unfortunately, I am not the neatest person in the world, and some shortcuts were taken, although all repairs were to code.
This past week, I made the decision to rearrange the electrical wiring around the battery boxes. I have been gigged three times on our inspections as I did not have battery box covers installed; resulting in both a possible safety issue should some errant piece of gear hit one of the battery cables resulting in a short, and in the event of a knock down, the batteries might become dislodged and result in a loss of electrical power all together. In order to utilize a mounting panel I had installed for the automatic antenna tuner for the SSB, I had to relocate the tuner and freed up considerable space to install new terminal bus bars on the hull rather than attached to the battery boxes.
So after 5 days of very carefully lengthening all of the cables (2/0 down to 10 gauge) and rearranging and taking the time, it was finished and almost looks like a professional job.
I am looking at tearing into the navigation pod in the cockpit and see how I can make it more efficient.
Today, the 21st of September, we are in Tyler, Tx this morning, heading south to Houston. Will be back on the boat by October 3rd. We are beginning our next leg of our cruising schedule for February or March 2014. The plan is to head for Georgetown, The Bahamas again to meet our friends, Val and Ray Russenberger, then south from there, around Cuba to the Cayman's, and on to Belize and Guatamala. But right now, it is just a plan, and until we throw the lines off the dock, it is just a plan!
Meanwhile, we will be in Houston tonight, we look forward to a couple of evenings raising glasses with a lot of our friends. Come join us for Sundowners
Jon and Renne'
