Being away from our boat for 3 months was tough; leaving
Tami behind was even tougher. I felt bad for her, but we really need to get things done in Florida, so
she gave her blessing and away we went.
As she continues to grow skin at the LTAC, Brandon and I left for a
vacation full of work. And as things
usually go, its not all been smooth sailing since our arrival....
Things got off to a great start though, and it seems that
not one thing had been disturbed during our absence. To the contrary, we actually had "new" stuff in
places. New canvas on the windows, new
barrier paint on the hulls, and new rope on the traveler and mast. Everything
was dry and in its place; all the bilge areas were dry and it looks as though all are old hatches are keeping the water out. That was until we opened the bow port locker - seems to be a
little wet in there. Looks like we
might have to reseal that hatch before its all done. All things considered, I'd say that's pretty good.
After retrieving the shore-power cords from the locker, we
soon had power running to the boat - but setting up the inverter had us doing
some head-scratching. You see, Justin
is in Texas right now during this hiatus, and was unavailable during our
initial power-up, so Brandon and I found ourselves digging through the manual
to figure out where we were going wrong.
We had power to everything it seems, but our batteries weren't charging
very fast. The 12 volt panel had power,
water was running, fans were coming on, we even had the clock digits on the
microwave lit up, hmmmm.......
Flashback: prior to our departure, I turned everything off (and I mean,
everything) - battery isolators, every switch on the 12 volt panel, and every
breaker on the 110 volt panel. But the
good part was that either by accident or on purpose the one thing I left on was
the solar panel breaker and wa-do-ya-know? My batteries were perfectly topped
off.
But the inverter was a different story and after running out
of things that could be wrong, Brandon kept suggesting that the "Shore 1
& 2" breaker might need to be in the "on" position in the
110 volt panel. And that was the trick
- full charging power and all was right with the world. So our next task at hand was to install our
beautifully overhauled Groco Hydromatic Strainer - we need some tools. Ok...now what did I do with those keys? We were able to find a jigsaw that we used to
cut off the first of two locks in hopes that our 4" grinder was inside our
trailer so that cutting the second lock would be much easier. Problem solved (I just need two more locks now.)
Maybe Tami won't notice it's on the table like that
(FYI, the GoPro isn't "fish-eyeing", its actually the shape of our hard top)
Just a minor setback, now on to bigger and better things -
the Strainer. For $170, you just can't
beat the way this thing looks - its like brand new. I know I've said this a couple of times, but to this day, West
Marine still sells this unit for $2389.99. I mean, who in their right mind spends $2400 on a strainer? I posted a question about it on one of the
sailing forums awhile back, and it seems that a lot of people don't even know these units exist and others had never even seen one. There
is also a brand new control panel board still in the wrapper that I need to
install (right now its just on a toggle switch) - the guys at Groco told
me that it was a $400 control board. So
maybe I should be thankful that the previous owner didn't like to keep things
simple. But in addition to the
strainer, Groco sent back all the parts
that they removed during overhaul - most of the fittings looked to be in very good
shape except for two bad ones, so we cleaned up the good ones and re-installed them. We made a quick trip to the Ace
Hardware store for the two replacement fittings and were set for
install.
Two days later, we have a wonderfully installed
strainer.
Yes it took two days. I had actually told my wife prior to our arrival that the Groco would take two to three days - for some reason, I knew it was gonna be a bitch. The first problem that we encountered was that we could not
get the strainer to seat inside its bracket, and we tried everything. That problem, in and of itself, doesn't
sound that bad, but this thing is situated right under the hot water heater in
the back slot under the starboard aft mattress - it is not easy to get to. Our initial solution was to relocate it
forward into the same area as the watermaker which would only require extending
one hose - all the rest of the hoses and wires would actually have to be
shortened. But after taking
everything apart, we're thinking that
Justin must have turned the bracket around in an attempt to make installation
easier. That way, the mounting bolts
would go in from the other direction.
But he didn't realize that the strainer only fits into the bracket one way - at least that's what we're thinking anyway. Removing everything though, actually gave us
an opportunity to move the bracket over about 1" so that the lines coming
up would clear the water heater. Once we discovered this, it really didn't take that long to get it all back together again and we were pretty excited when we flipped the switch and heard the motor quietly spinning.
No comments:
Post a Comment