Limbo Party

Cheri and I are now kinda in Limbo.  Not the Roman Catholic version where you're barred from Heaven for not being baptized.  I'm talking about the transitional place where we've left one lifestyle and are looking ahead to the next.

We closed on the house and officially became homeless on May 5th.  That night Cheri flew down to Florida to stay with her folks until the boat is ready.  I'm staying local with my job during the week and working on the boat over the weekend.  What few posessions we have left are in a shed down in Deale, Md. about a five minute drive from where we'll be keeping the boat.  That'll be real convenient then but for now we're kinda scattered all over the place.  When I'm not on the boat I'm staying with my sister and brother-in-law, Ellen and Ed, up in Reisterstown, just west of Baltimore.  These two have really stepped up to the plate for me and I owe them big-time.  I think I'll treat them to some McNuggets tonight.

So, this past weekend I stayed on the boat again in Rock Hall.  It's still "on the hard" at a gravel lot two blocks from the water, directly across the Bay from Baltimore.  Starting on Friday, and lasting all weekend, the wind blew constantly and I'm not talking mild breeze here either.  It was pretty much a constant gale force wind all 3 days, the kind of wind that you have to lean into just to keep from being blown over.  It made working outside almost impossible so I concentrated on doing stuff down below.  I kept the boat closed up as much as possible but the wind still managed to infiltrate and cover everything in a very fine, black dust.  Marvelous timing!  Now the boat needs a complete cleaning down below right before we move aboard.  I guess we're really gonna hafta earn this.

I did manage to get the propane regulator replaced without being blown overboard.  I went through the whole line again and replaced the white teflon tape I had used before with "special" yellow teflon tape used for gasses.  The yellow tape is heavier and provides a better seal than the white.  I used the 1/2" tape and applied it starting at the second thread down to prevent any tape from getting into the line where it could plug up the jets and small orifices in the burners of the stove.  It should be wound tightly in the direction of the threads.  To prevent myself from having to put too much thought into this I always hold the part up with the beginning of the threads at the top and then wind the tape in a clockwise fashion.  This ensures a good seal every time and is the "correct method", as documented in the May 1985 issue of Hot Rod magazine.

I spent all day Saturday working on the wiring connection at the bottom of the mast.  I wanted to have disconnects in this location for all the lines to prevent having to cut any wires the next time the mast is pulled.  The big clunky VHF radio cable already had a threaded connection.  The cable for the cell phone antenna is a coax wire made by Digital Antenna and turns out to use proprietary connections that are only available from them.  This way they can say they're "special" and charge more for their parts.  They also base their warranty on this, saying that use of anything else voids the warranty.  Of course they don't offer the parts you need to make a connection at the base of the mast.  I decided to forego the warranty and put in my own connection.  First I cut off the DA special connector.  I brought along three different styles of BNC connectors that we use at work and quickly found that none of them would fit either because the insulator was too thick or the center conductor was too large in diameter.  Looking it over I realized that these special DA connectors were very similar to the F connectors used for cable TV connections with the only difference being that the DA ones have a gold pin soldered over the conductor.  I just happened to have my handy dandy F connector parts and tools with me so I gave them a try.  These worked out perfectly and with the use of a female to female F connector I was able to make a proper disconnect at the base of the mast.  I then made a run of cable under the cabin sole up to the Nav Station.  I wanted to mount the amplifier in a location where I could easily see the indicator LED and also have access to the on/off switch.  Next to the Nav Station is a nice teak cabinet with a louvered door.  I drilled through the adjoining wall with a 5/8" hole saw and mounted the amp on the side wall of the cabinet.  I also pulled the wire for the Wi-Fi through and mounted the wireless router here too.  Since everything's mounted on the side wall of the cabinet it provides easy access to the controls and there's still plenty of space for other junk.  I tested the cell phone amp by checking the signal strength on my phone with the amp off.  Two bars, pretty crappy.  When I turned on the amp the signal jumped to 5 bars.  Woohooo!  Success!  This antenna and amp combo is supposed to be good out to five miles so we should have coverage almost anywhere on the Bay.  At least for now we have coverage in Rock Hall.

The Wi-Fi system is put together by a company called "Wi-Fi for Boats".  What they sell is a 4' antenna with a Wi-Fi radio mounted at the base and that attaches to a Cat 5e cable.  There's a unit called a power injector mounted inside the boat that puts 48 volts on the Cat 5e cable to provide power for the radio.  This can then send an amplified Wi-Fi signal to a splitter or router and provide internet access for our computer.  Pretty cool!  The only drawback is the 4' antenna.  I wanted to mount it at the top of the mast for best reception but my mast is 59' off the water and clearance for some bridges on the Intracoastal Waterway is 65'.  This is a rigid antenna and I don't want to take the chance of shattering it as I cruise under a bridge.  I decided to buy another antenna from Digital Antenna that's only 30" tall, which buys me a little more clearance.  The radio mounted to it with no problem and I was able to use the heavy duty antenna mount from DA too.  I connected a 75' length of Cat 5e cable which I ran down inside the mast.  To make a disconnect for this I wanted to use a simple coupler but was unable to locate one so I made my own.  I bought a Cat 5e socket at Home Depot that's supposed to be mounted in a J box in the wall of your home.  The wire from the mast plugs in on one side and a 25' cable is hard wired into the other side.  The wire for this thing is pretty small, maybe 22 or 24 gauge I think and there's 8 connections to be made on the back of the socket.  Everything is color coded and the connection is done with a simple press-fit crimping tool.  The 25' cable then snakes it's way under the cabin sole up through the Nav Station and into the cabinet next to the cell phone amp.  Here it gets connected to the POE (power over ethernet) injector which then gets connected by a short line to the router.  Simple.  I sold my computer to my brother-in-law so I don't have any way to test this set-up until Cheri gets back with her laptop.  If everything goes well then we're all set up for "working at home" on the boat.

The two remaining wires in the mast are for the cool-man LED tri/anchor light and the wind speed transducer.  The original light that was busted when the boat was trucked up from Florida had a four pin connector for a quick disconnect.  This connector was badly corroded from exposure to water running down the mast and I knew I needed a better solution.  The mast extends through the deck into the Salon where it goes into a small boxlike compartment beneath the cabin sole and is bolted to the keel.  Water can run down inside the mast into this box and then make it's way into the bilge where it gets pumped back out where it belongs.  Island Packet designed this boat to make use of every square inch and there's all kinds of storage cubbies.  To prevent corrosion I decided to make all the mast connections in the adjoining compartment under the floor in the forward stateroom.  Here I mounted two screw-type terminal strips and made all the necessary connections.  The next time the mast needs to be pulled it'll be a simple process to disconnect all the wires.

Sunday morning I woke up at 0530 to find that there was no power other than the batteries on the boat.  I made sure everything was turned off to prevent draining the batteries and wandered off to the marina bathroom to take a shower.  It was kinda dark in there, which was OK, but the hot water was provided by an electric "on demand" unit so I was kinda trepidatious about taking a shower.  I finally steeled up my nerve and got in.  Ice cold water made my toes and other extremities shrivel up for the first coupla minutes.  Then I started getting used to it, or so I thought.  Funny how you can fool yourself when your brain turns to ice.  There was actually some warm water starting to trickle through and it became almost bearable.  I guess there must be a hot water heater somewhere and they use the "on demand" stuff to shorten the wait.  Good deal!  The water was finally warming up by the time I finished.  After cleaning up I jumped in the car and drove into town for some breakfast only to find that the yellow flashing light at the only major intersection was not working.  This is not a good indication.  The entire town was without power so nothing was open.  I was getting pretty hungry at this point and seriously considered driving into Chestertown for breakfast when I remembered that we had some peanut butter crackers on the boat.  Mmm mmm mmmm, Breakfast of Champions.

While eating my crackers I hosed off the boat.  Did I mention that the wind had been blowing 90 mph all weekend and the boat was covered with dust?  I wanted to touch up the bottom paint where the yutes had run over the line while compounding but there was so much dust on everything I was concerned that if I didn't rinse it down the paint would just fall off.  The nearest hose connection is two football fields away but luckily Gratitude supplies enough hoses to reach our boat.  Just barely.  I rinsed off the boat, top and bottom, and while doing that I noticed that the generator for the water tower next to us had stopped running.  This could mean one of two things.  Either it ran out of gas or the power had come back on.  I verified that the power had returned and went back into town for some late breakfast while the boat dried off.  After wolfing down some really excellent blueberry pancakes I returned to the boat and completed the paint project.

My next job was to go through the boat and prepare it for it's first sail on the Bay next weekend.  This involved stashing away as much as I could and removing everything that wasn't necessary.  I ended up with a carload of stuff that needed to go into the shed in Deale, 90 minutes away.  The rest of my day was spent on the road between Rock Hall, Deale and, after crossing the Bay Bridge for the second time that day, Dover Deleware where I visited with Steve, Vickie and Brandon Ward.  Steve had bought my chop saw and I had it stored away in the shed.  I thought it would make a nice Mother's Day present for Vickie so I made the delivery.  I finally got back to the boat in time to catch five hours sleep before heading off to work with a bag of donuts and a cup of coffee for the two hour commute from Rock Hall to Greenbelt.  Over the Bay Bridge again.  Four times in three days.  Ugh.  Limbo is Hell.