On top of the mornings admin I did pickup the backing plates yesterday and popped round to see Jim on Bees Knees but not a lot else. In the evening we went out to De Big Fish for their happy hour and had a couple of beers and some chicken wings. We met and chatted to Mike from Cirque de Soleil. After that we walked round to True Blue and had a cheap and cheerful curry from a take-away.
Today we’ve been getting down to things. I’ve installed all but two of the backing plates. The six cleats on the sides of the boat are now strengthened which are the most important. The two at the rear will require some form of building up underneath as the underside surfaces at far from level. Given that these are less likely to take great strain finishing this job off is now a lower priority.
While I was down in the starboard transom I started looking at the solar panel rewiring job. Staring at where I would have to run the wires I noticed the thumb thick wires running up to the powered dinghy winch which we never use. We never ordered this but it came with the boat at no extra cost. I’ve always looked at it as spares. Well – there are these jumbo cables thick enough to take a heavy load running right where I need them back to exactly the right place. Ding !!!!
I’ve already tried using these for the solar power bodging my way around connector differences. Before trying this the delta between the amps my solar controller was putting out and the amps the charger control was measuring going into the batteries was about 20%. Now it’s under 10%. That’s a huge improvement and will probably get better when I connect everything properly. A quick bit of mental arithmetic suggests we’ll get another 20-25Ah out of the system every day.
Helen’s been busy too (she usually is even if I don’t write it up). Today she’s fixed a door latch (bit of a gluing job) and cut a sacrificial zinc down to the right size so we have an extra spare. She’s also been clearing up behind me where I expose or make a mess.
This afternoon I will focus on properly wiring up the new solar power cables. I want to leave it so they can be reconnected to the power winch if someone ever wants to reverse the change but that’s not much of a constraint.
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