Blossom's Out of the Shed and Ready to Cruise

A calm evening

It was wonderful being back on board! Our time back on Blossom began with a long weekend of storms. The temperature dropped 30 degrees and we had thunder and lightning with pouring down rain. It was awesome! The cool weather meant we could open the doors and windows and get down to business without sweating to death.

When we arrived, the boat was half washed. I wish I’d taken a picture of our swim platform. There was no fiberglass for want of bird poo. But they came and finished the job on Saturday and Blossom was looking spiffy again.

Our first night having happy hour on the flybridge, I insisted, though it was a tad cold 😊

A few nights later it was more comfortable

The first few days were spent doing the basics. Everything had to be cleaned – not only had she been sitting for months, but we had bug-bombed right after we left to get rid of our weevil infestation. (It still sounds weird and I have no clue how we managed to be infested by those things.) We had covered all openings to the boat with plastic sheeting so there was surprisingly little dust and no bugs aboard. I was grateful for this as we’re under a shed and spiders are plentiful here (spiders turn me into a shrieking hysterical mess.) And all systems, machines and appliances had to be started up and tested to make sure they still worked. I've elaborated upon our "spring commissioning list" below in "Boat Business".

We did a couple provisioning runs while we were here. The first was apparently too big – both Martin’s and my credit card were refused and we were issued Fraud Alerts. We got that cleared up and now the boat is well stocked with everything from salt and pepper to wine and beer. One must have the essentials!

Luna Moth

This gorgeous little creature got blown onto our boat deck while we were in the shed. I did some research and found that it’s a Luna Moth. Without a mouth, they live a short life - meant to love and die. I released him into the trees, I hope he got lucky!

While we were gone, we had some canvas work done. We were really happy to return and find that he did a great job, we’re really happy with it.

Storm Plate Cover

Center Console

Cover for the toys

The marina is incredibly busy right now because we’re in the midst of the “northern migration”. All the folks who spent the winter and spring down south, in Florida, Keys. Bahamas, and beyond are returning north as hurricane season approaches to get out of the insurance exclusion zone. There's also a 40th Anniversary bash for Krogen's up in RI so there have been tons of gorgeous Kady Krogen's heading through as well. The yard gets hit with a double whammy because they store a lot of the northern boats, who, like us, want to get out and start their season now that the weather is nice up here. 

 Heading north

Boats waiting for the bridge which opens on the hour

The Wednesday after we arrived there was room for us on the dock so we quickly moved the boat over – with so many boats passing through we grabbed the dock space when we could. It felt great to be out of the shed and into the sunshine and we were entertained all day long with the constant stream of boats coming up and station keeping as they await the bridge.

Martin felt a bit rusty after 8 months but he did great!

Blossom at the dock

The view our first night having happy hour on the flybridge at the dock

One afternoon I went to see if we had any packages waiting for us and I saw this mess piled in front of the store:

Our life raft

Later that afternoon we were told that that mess was our life raft! It had been sent to Winslow for recertification (life rafts have to be recertified every 2-3 years depending on the brand). What a shock to find out that ours somehow deployed while being shipped back. The shipper piled all the contents onto a pallet, shrink-wrapped it and delivered it that way :/  This is a big ticket item and we’ve been told we’ll be getting a new one free of charge. I sure hope so!

I took walks in the morning and have a few photos showing the area around AYB. 

 Goose with a heck of a lot of babies

Chesapeake Mosquito control - spraying along the roadside

View from a wooded walking path of the crowded dock with Blossom squeezed in there

I was thrilled to finish a quilting project while we were here too! I started it in 2013 - I'm a very slooow quilter. Here it is, hung in our stateroom but visible from the galley through the mirror.

"Seascape"

Although we were a bit isolated on this visit, sticking to the boat most of the time, we did enjoy a really lovely evening with a couple currently doing the "loop". We noticed a beautiful  trawler across the way one day and went to get a better look. She was a 43 foot red-hulled American Tug. Gorgeous! We shared a great evening with her fabulous owners whom we hope we'll meet again along our journey.

And so our 2 weeks flew by in a haze of cleaning, provisioning, commissioning, repairing, prepping and a bit of socializing. She's in the process of being detailed (polish all the stainless & waxed) and Ed came by the morning we left to clean the bottom and check our zincs so we should be good to go when we return in mid-May.

It felt wonderful to be back on the boat and it was hard to leave her again when it was time to head back to Florida. We're looking forward to returning and spending a little over 2 weeks slowly winding our way up north to Annapolis.

Boat Business:

Martin re-commissioning Petal & the davit

As expected, we found a few things that had gone awry over the past 8 months, some were no surprise, others were a bit perplexing. The big-ticket items that failed include: Sea-Fire, Wavenet units on both generators and the bilge pump. Our spring commissioning included testing all systems, equipment and appliances. A full list of re-commissioning is below with more details.

     

Systems & Equipment:

o  Fresh water system: Ran water to get rid of coolant used to winterize the boat

o  Black water system

o   Install new Seagull water filter in the kitchen sink

o   Wing engine

o   Hydraulics: thrusters, windlass and raw water pump

o   Main Engine. Had to by-pass the Sea Fire to start it and tightened a few clamps to put a small coolant leak off

o   High bilge pump - filled the bilge to it's tippy top to verify it would turn on

o   Dinghy engine and bilge pump

o   Davit

o   AC system - replaced air handler screens and added tablets

o   Sea Fire – Died over the winter. It was sent out, returned and Martin reinstalled it in the 2 weeks we were aboard

o   Bilge pump –It was rebuilt and reinstalled within a few days

o   Generators. Both gens started up no problem but both Wavenets (remote control panels) were blinking and had to be sent back for reprogramming. Martin will install them when they get returned to us

o   Ultrasonic hull cleaner. We have 2 units and one failed a few days ago. We’ll order a new one to be install later in the month

Appliances and gadgets:

o   Eartec Headsets - a necessity for us!

o   Replace batteries in fire & co2 alarms. One alarm broke and needs to be replaced

o   Sewing machines, running great!

o   Kitchen appliances: Replaced our toaster oven that had been acting up last season.

o   Clothes washer and dryer – swept the dryer vent as it'd been taking longer and longer to dry clothes last season

o   TV: Martin replaced the tv in the guest stateroom with a slightly larger smart tv. We got a smart tv in Florida and I love it – having access to Amazon and Netflix is wonderful!

Misc:

o  Sort through the Ditch bag and Medical bag and replace expired contents  

o  Polish screens

o   Clean lines 

o   Lube the flopper stopper tracks

o   Cockpit chairs have been bleeding rusty circles forever, we sealed them up with nail varnish and will replace the screws later this summer

o   Added felt pads to 9k gen pump. It “clicks” and drove me nuts, now we can’t hear it from the stateroom.

Repairs in North Palm Beach

We’ve been in North Palm Beach now for over 2 weeks, time flies!

To start where I left off in our last blog post… Jim came to Nassau three days after the fire and we arrived back in Florida on a Thursday morning. It was great to see him again and have him on board. The trip was uneventful and calm and took a little over 24 hours. It was a strange feeling to be heading “home”. We’ve spent so much time in south Florida over the years, especially the 7 months in Stuart, that it’s beginning to feel like a second home.

This blog entry is going to be exclusively about the boat and the engine room fire. I know a lot of people are interested in that and not our day to day life. I’ll resume my usual blogging in the next entry, coming soon!

Martin here. We've been asked several questions about the fire and how our boat is equipped that I’ll address here.

What caused the fire?

The fire was caused by a wiring issue at the starter motor that caused the wiring harness to catch fire. This is why the fire seemed so extensive when viewed from the ER door – there were flames encircling the engine. The smoke and flame was caused by wire sheaths and insulation burning. It was a surprising amount of smoke/flame to be coming from this alone. Luckily, the fire did not burn long or hot enough to catch anything else on fire.

Has it been repaired, what did this involve?

The engine has been repaired and tested and it’s working great. The guys from Nordhavn SE did a great job. The starter, alternator and wiring harness were replaced. Touchups were made to the engine paint and gelcoat on the engine mount.

Do you have a Seafire system? Why didn't the Seafire system activate?

Yes we do have Seafire. These systems rely on heat to activate. Despite all the smoke, there really wasn't much heat given off. Certainly not enough to raise the temperature up to the 175 degrees F required. This system can also be manually activated. We would have done this had we not been able to put the fire out with an extinguisher. This is a last resort as it also shuts down the main, leaving the boat without any form of propulsion.

What about a smoke alarm?

We do have one in the engine room. It's attached to our Maretron system and when it goes off everyone knows! We were getting so many false positives that I disabled it. I think the causes of the false positives have been resolved (leaky exhaust gasket, shedding exhaust blanket, overheated engine room) and it’s time to get it back on line.

We also have a smoke alarm in the salon (we have them in all rooms on the boat). The smoke was moving quickly through the salon (all windows, doors and hatches were open) and the smoke did not reach the alarm which is on the port side of the room. After seeing how the smoke moved through the boat, we’re installing another alarm above the stairs to the utility room/ER this week. 

Was there smoke damage?

None at all!  The smoke moved quickly through the salon and within a day there was no lingering smell. There’s nothing in the engine room to hold the smell (no soft goods) so that is back to normal as well.

Steph here again. There have been some important observations and lessons learned from our experience. We thought we'd share them with hopes that they could be useful for other boaters... 

• It was easier to grab a fire extinguisher from elsewhere on the boat rather than the one in the ER because it was so smoky in the ER. We used the extinguisher from the pilot house. We have several on board now and we’re adding another one to the utility room on the other side of the ER door.
• Know how to use a fire extinguisher. Even though it's "easy", you don’t want to be trying this for the first time when dealing with an actual fire – I've never used one and now I have a half used one to practiced with.
• We have smoke detectors in every room on the boat and are now adding another. Placement is critical as well as working out the kinks with "false alarms". We'll be testing the ER alarm on our way north. We don't want a "cry wolf" situation in the future.
• Having a window in the ER door is the best thing ever.
• We're getting at least one smoke/fire hood. It was amazing how much smoke filled the ER so quickly.

So that's the scoop. We're all repaired and no worse for wear. We have a few other maintenance issues we're attending to and we'll be heading to Charleston in early July.

Palm Cay Marina

View from the restaurant at the marina – showing the entrance channel on a windy day

We’re about to wrap up our week at Palm Cay - what a find!  We arrived last Tuesday after a calm ride up from Highbourne Cay, hoping to avoid two huge rainstorms that were behind and ahead of us. Luckily they blew to the east and we had a dry ride.

The entrance to the marina is bit tricky with a long, narrow dredged channel. There are lots of rocks in the channel but it’s supposed to be clear to 8 feet at low tide. It’s a bit disconcerting to be floating over so many corals and rocks in this clear water – they look much closer.

Blossom on her end tie

The marina was pretty full when we arrived. People were taking shelter from the westerly winds in this very protected area.  It has a nice restaurant, a beautiful beach side bar and pool and a courtesy car that you can sign up for and take out for 2 hours at a time for free.  The dockmaster and his assistant are incredibly friendly and accommodating. One the first things we did was to sign up for a car and visit a grocery store, liquor store and ATM. It was nice to provision at a large grocery store with everything you could want there.

Chess anyone?

Our first night at the marina we had cocktails and dinner at the marina restaurant, the Billfish Grill and met a couple living on their Nordy 47.  A few nights later when the rain stopped we had a dinner with Tim & Valerie at the restaurant again, it was “Pizza and Jazz” night. The pizza was tasty and the band and vocalist were very good. We sat on the porch eating pizza and drinking a nice rose, listening to a soulful rendition of a Sade classic. Yup, life is pretty darn good.

Friday afternoon we had watched a cat getting towed into the marina. We met the couple on the boat at happy hour that day and learned that they had hit a bommie on the way in to the marina. Through an unfortunate series of events, they had just lost a prop coming from Spanish Wells and then lost their second one while getting off the rocks. Talk about a bad day!  Saturday morning we helped them line their boat off the fuel dock into a slip. He said he hit a bommie in the channel and they only draw 4 feet. Even though it was low tide, that bommie would be just 7 feet under at high tide. We’re hoping that he was actually out of the channel!

A little squall blowing through :/

The weather was been less than stellar while we’ve been here (yes, that why we were here!) so we’ve really enjoyed being in a marina. On the rainy days we relaxed (sew & video games) and got some chores done. Blossom got a pretty thorough deep clean which was sorely needed. Somehow sand gets everywhere and there’s a coating of salt on everything – the windows, wall, mirrors… Blossom is looking spiffy again in time for my Mom!

We had a couple cool/overcast but dry days so we took advantage of it to take the bikes for a spin. The neighborhood is very nice and we enjoyed riding by the large houses with their manicured lawns. But with no shoulders on the road and lots of traffic it was a bit more exciting than I like. We enjoyed getting to know Tim & Val and had dinners at Billfish, aboard their boat and ours. They’re heading south from here but I hope that our paths will cross again! The week flew by in a blur of rain, wind and comfortable evenings chatting with our new friends. 

My Mom :)

And yesterday my Mom arrived! It’s wonderful to have her here with us. We also had a special dinner this evening with Sean & Louise who were able to make it to Nassau today from Eleuthera. We were so happy that they could get here and that we could have a goodbye dinner aboard Blossom. It feels so weird to be parting ways after over a year together. They’ll be hanging out for a few days in Nassau and then heading east to Bimini and continuing north from there. The cruising world is a small one and I’m sure we’ll be hanging out again soon, but it’s still sad to part ways!

Today we’re going to be heading south for Shroud Cay. It’s supposed to be calm and sunny (finally!) for the next few days and we’re looking forward to being back on the hook and able to explore and play in the water again.  This will be our first time underway with a guest (not a training or delivery captain guest). We’re excited for Mom to experience Blossom underway and to show her the beautiful sites. I can't wait for us to break out the SUPs, snorkels and fins!

Boat Business: A few maintenance items got done this week.

• Inside. I did a serious clean throughout the boat.
• Hull. We had B’s bottom power washed (Her green beard along the waterline was getting quite long.) We’ve never seen this technique done before – usually you scrape/scrub the bottom. The idea is that less paint gets scrubbed off with the power wash. We’ll be diving down and taking a look at the hull once we’re anchored to see how clean she is.
• Gens. Martin did an oil change on both gens.

Happy Holidays!

We’ve been having a great time in Key West!  We spent the first couple of days settling in, housekeeping and provisioning.  It felt great to walk and bike around the island.  

My Mom arrived on Saturday and so began the holiday season!  We started off her visit with a bang and went on a dolphin watch boat ride. We don’t have our dinghy down and even if we did, we don’t know where the local dolphins live and play. We went through a small operation so there were only 6 of us along with two guides. The day was perfect, sunny and gorgeous. In no time at all we found about 8 dolphins having a great time playing. There was a baby among them and he/she was leaping out of the water and then the adults would follow. Mom has never seen them up close and I was so happy that we went out.  I got very lucky and managed to get a decent photo. I think this was the baby!

Dolphin jumping

Saturday evening we went out for dinner at a great Cuban restaurant and ended up dining in an old cistern next to the old cigar factory. The ambience was great, like a big party, and we had a ball.

The boys

On Monday we went on a walking tour of Key West and in the evening we went on a Holly Trolly, a trolly tour of Christmas lights around the island. Tuesday we went to the Butterfly House which Martin and I had visited back in 09’.  It didn’t disappoint. Mom and I enjoyed the birds as much as we did the butterflies!

Christmas Eve my Mom and I walked around town in the morning. I made stuffing in the afternoon and we all went to Vector for dinner. Sean & Louise grilled an awesome dinner and we enjoyed the holiday evening together. Martin celebrated in true Key West style, with as many drinks as hands J

On Christmas day, Martin put together a traditional Christmas dinner including a turkey and brussels for the five of us.  After dinner we spent hours playing Cards Against Humanity. That made for a rather, um, untraditional holiday ;)  It was a day for feeling gratitude - spent with family and friends, sharing presents, eating, drinking and celebrating.

Feeling the holiday spirit J

Martin enjoying the day

My Mom is very talented, she made us this turtle wall hanging. We Love it!

The next few days were filled with walks around town, a ghost tour, visiting the Hemingway House, Nancy Forrester’s parrot sanctuary, the Little White House (where Truman often stayed), sunset drinks and a house tour organized by the Old Island Restoration Foundation. The house tour was amazing and one of the participating homes was the one that won the holiday lights show. I wish we could have taken pictures (not allowed as they are private residences). Here’s what the weekend looked like:

Ghosts and Ghouls

Blissed out at sunset

Another gorgeous Key West sunset

I swear he’s smiling for the camera!

My Mom left on Monday morning and I was missing her as soon I as I got back to the boat.  We had such a great visit and a wonderful holiday, it just went by way too fast.

We plan to be in Key West for about another week to experience a raucous New Year’s Eve (we’re really just hoping to stay awake until 12:05am)!  Then we’d like to visit the Dry Tortugas.  These are a group of islands about 70 miles west of Key West. There’s a national park there and we hear that it’s very beautiful. If I get the courage up, I may even jump in (72 is very cold for me!) and go for a snorkel J

Boat Business: We’ve been mostly relaxing though we have taken care of a few things, including...

Hydraulic Leak. Just before Christmas, a tech from Abt came out to take a look at our hydraulic leak.  He found that the fitting was leaking at the crimp and needs to be redone. This falls under warranty work so we’ll get that done the next time we’re in Old Port Cove. In the meantime, he said that we should be fine (no catastrophic failure seems imminent) and explained to Martin how to operate the hydraulics so that the least amount of pressure is being places on the hoses.

Gray tank smell.  I think we have this one figured out. Since Steve and Martin spent the day checking everything out and correcting the valve, we’ve had little to no smell. The other day we caught a whiff, just as the wind shifted back from the north. I think we’ve addressed all of the problems. Now we just need to relocate the exhaust so it doesn’t get blown back down into the boat. That should be easy to do.

Miami To Key West

This is a fairly long post but we've been on the move for the past few days and have arrived in Key West so there's a bit to tell and lots of photos!  

Last Thursday, our friends lent us their car so we got a few errands done. That evening, we had them over for dinner and had a great time hanging out. We left Delray on Friday morning after having coffee and catching up with Capt. George. So we’re off now on our Key West adventure!

The trip down the ICW to Hollywood, FL was fairly uneventful. It was slow going as we had several bridges to open. For those unfamiliar with how it works… We’re about 34’ high. So any bridge that is 35 feet or less, we have to have open. Some bridges open on request, those are the easy ones. The others have standard openings like on the hour and half hour. They may open once, twice or three times per hour and they may close for rush hour. If you arrive at a bridge far ahead of its scheduled opening, you have to “station keep” which is essentially treading water in place. But you can’t really stay in place on a boat, so you sit and wander and play around. It can be a bit stressful if there’s current and/or wind playing with the boat.  (Now that we're buddy boating, we're getting a lot of fun pictures of Blossom. Thank you Sean & Louise!)

Passing under a bridge

Unfortunately, I get a bit nervous on the ICW. It’s like driving in city traffic, I hate it. This leaves Martin to drive and I feel guilty. So I get a lot of cleaning done and I do the engine room checks. The highlight of the day cruise was seeing a pod of manatee swimming by a bridge. All you really see is a huge brown oval blob. But it’s cool just the same!

Vector in the South Lake anchorage

We met up with Sean & Louise in a pretty little anchorage called South Lake in Hollywood. They dropped their tender and we went to the boardwalk for dinner. We found a rather strange German brew house. The décor was odd but the food was good and we all considered it a celebration. It’s just the four of us, buddy boating and cruising to Key West. Very cool!

We left the next morning for Miami. It was an 18 mile trip with only about half a dozen bridges to open. Vector cranked it up a bit for us so we could get through a bridge or two that they can pass under. We had perfect timing and made it to Miami in the early afternoon. We had a couple hairy moments. One was a “pucker” moment passing under a bridge that was only half open. This bridge failed a few weeks ago and one half fell onto a huge boat. It’s not a big bridge so it felt a bit like squeezing through but Martin did great and it was no problem.

Thank you Louise for the pic!

The next bit of excitement was in the engine room. I went down to do an engine room check and peek at the hydraulic leak we have on the port side stabilizer area. I had just closed the cabinet door and was about to put my ear defenders on when I heard a really weird noise coming from the engine room. We have a window on our door and I looked in to see our alternator belt shredding and flying all over the place. Had I been a couple minutes earlier I would been covered in belt dust and probably more than a bit wigged out!  As it was I ran up to the pilot house and sent Martin down. About a minute later it totally evaporated.  More under “boat business” below.

Miami anchorage

We anchored just south of Fischer Island. I was surprised that no one was in the anchorage on a Saturday afternoon. Then a huge motor yacht (over 150 feet) came in an anchored 64 yards from us. Why do people do that?  It wasn’t the view we wanted from our cockpit!  Martin called the ship to ask what and why. The captain was polite enough and said there were only staying a few hours. Never did figure out way they wanted to be on top of us when they the whole anchorage to hang out in. Hurumph.

Let's anchor on top of that beautiful Nordy!

The weather was looking good for the next few days so we decided that we’d take off first thing Sunday morning.

Vector riding in the sunrise

It was a nice ride out through Government Cut and down into Hawk Channel. This driving is easy (like highway driving). We just followed our nav points (thank you Sean!) and the chart. There’s little traffic to deal with. Early in the day I started on a Christmas table topper that I’m hoping to finish by the weekend. I drove in the afternoon and drafted this blog entry while looking for crab pots and dolphin.  At one point we had 5 dolphins on the bow and one was a young juvenile!

We arrived at Rodriguez Key around 2:30 and anchored. It was pretty windy from the NE so we went to the southwest side of the key.  We stayed in 11 feet of water to be safe and it did offer some protection but we could ave been snugged up a bit closer.

On Monday we headed out to Marathon. The crab pots doubled so it wasn't as relaxing. Had to do a fair amount of dodging to miss them. The crab pots are little round buoys (often blue, I have no idea why anyone thinks that's a good idea) that are connected to the trap that sits on the bottom by a rope. If you run over it and the line gets tangled in your prop - you've lost the use of your prop til you can get the line off. Since we only have one main engine (our "get-home" would get us home but very, very slowly. We have a cutter on the prop that is supposed to slice the lines and deflectors on our stabilizer wings to prevent them from wrapping around the wing. We just don't really want to test these things!

We anchored outside the channel, on the west side of Boot Key, just south of the channel into Marathon.  It was a bit more calm in this anchorage. We dropped the dinghy and explored the area a little. Marathon is very well known as a popular place for cruisers to spend the winter. There are several marinas and lots of restaurants. We all went out to the Sunset Grille for dinner and had a great time.

Blossom at anchor

 Vector and Blossom at anchor off Boot Key

What a nice ride to the restaurant!

Tuesday morning we headed out to Key West. We were well ahead off schedule but the weather was nice, we decided to arrive early.  The Galleon could take us early so we went right in. Sean & Louise had to wait a day so they anchored out in the anchorage just outside the Marinas.

Vector at anchor in Key West 

And so, here we are! I love Key West. It's quirky and after living in Berkeley for 10 years, I have an affinity for quirky!  I loved our visit here in 09' aboard Lucky and it feels great to be back.

One of the many resident roosters 

What happens in Key West, stays in Key West!

The first thing we managed to do was find a way to extend our stay. Our slip is only available until the 1st. We really weren't looking forward to having to leave early on New Year's day to squeeze into a crowded anchorage or worse yet, take off on an overnight to the west coast of Florida. Sean asked at their marina and they have a side tie available the 1st and 2nd. I'm very relieved. We can enjoy New Years and even if we're not feeling 100% the next day, we can just slide over 500 yards and tie up behind Vector. Life is good!

Quilt Business:

Though I tend to be slow and not finish many pieces, I thought I’d add a new section to the blog posts called “Quilt Business”. Maybe it will push me to finish more “ufo’s” (UnFinished Objects). This is my Holiday Red Bird Quilt, begun in September 2013, finished this week. It's machine appliqued and quilted. I needed the year to learn how to free motion quilt adequately enough to wrap it up. And it's done in time for the holidays, yay! The pattern is Des Oiseaux de Noel from Metropolitan Quilts.

Holiday Red Bird

Boat Business:

• Hydraulic leak at fitting on port side. We have a slow drip coming from the hydraulic monoblock. It’s very small but seems to be steady. We’ll try to get someone from Abt to come look at it as soon as possible.
• Alternator Belt. We’ve had issues with this belt from the get go. We have two oversized alternators, 190amp. The boat arrived with an undersized belt that was destroyed right away. We replaced the belt but had excessive dust coming off of it. Rob found a burr on one of the pulleys and filed it out. This belt had been dropping a lot of dust. Then we had coolant pump fixed and some coolant leaked onto the belt. This made it slip a bit. So Martin was prepared to have it shred. I wasn’t, it was quite dramatic!  We had a spare belt (we had two but one was the wrong size as it turned out). Martin put a new belt on it and it seems to be working great with much less dust than we’ve ever had. We’ll get additional spares in Key West.

What remained of our alternator belt

• ER temp. With blowers on full we maintained about 31-32 degrees above ambient temperature. If the alternators are cranking, it’s a bit higher, at about 33 degrees above. We’d really like to get that down to well below 25. I forgot to post a pic of our conduit last time so here it is:

DeltaT conduit installed on port side.