Back on Blossom

And I’m back!  It’s been over three weeks since the show ended. We're back on Blossom and on the move again, so I thought I should get back to blogging. 

My trip back to California was great.  I had an amazing time with my friends who came to visit from back east and tried to see as many people from home as I could. We fit a lot in, visiting San Francisco, Monterey Bay, Heart Castle and wine tasting in Paso Robles.  We all felt so lucky to have our week together. There’s something special about hanging out with friends you’ve known for 38+ years!

Exploring Pas Robles with Jeanne & Amy

It was also wonderful, however, to return to Martin and Blossom :). I arrived back on a Thursday and we spent the weekend provisioning and getting ready to head out. I also made good use of having a car to do some Christmas shopping.  After 3 months of training, guests and obligations, we’re so excited to take off, just the two of us, and experience the boat with no real agenda. We plan to head south towards North Palm Beach where we’ll anchor for a week or so.  We’ll have Thanksgiving on the boat at anchor.  We need to be in Key West by mid-December so we have a month to lazy our way down there.  Our friends Sean & Louise have finished up their work in Deltaville and are heading south at this very moment. We’ll watch their progress and are looking forward to meeting up with them again soon!

Boat Business:

While I was visiting and reconnecting with friends, Martin was hard at work on Blossom. I can’t believe how much got done!  There were three general categories of projects: warranty, maintenance and home improvement.

Warranty: Among the warranty items that were fixed were...

Prop. The big item and one we were most concerned about was the prop. We’ve very happy to say that the new prop is on and … no noise!  Martin was able to reach 100% load at 2200 rpm which is as it should it be.  The prop (diagnosing the problem) was a major factor in dragging out our commissioning process the last couple of months and we’re happy to have it resolved.

Hydraulics. Just after getting in to the dock at the commissioning office after the show, our hydraulics failed with a wailing “overheat” alarm. Luckily it happened just after the boat was secured to the dock and not while docking. The Stuart commissioning dock isn’t the easiest place to dock and without thrusters it would be very difficult indeed. The hydraulic raw water pump was the culprit and it was replaced.

Steering Pump. The leaking steering pump that had been isolated when we left Stuart in August was removed and replaced.

Headliners.  Some of our headliners (ceiling panels) were starting to sag all ready so they were removed and re-covered with the same color majilite.

Forward Hatch. After several attempts to caulk one of the three hatches in the guest state room it was decided that it was easier to just replace it. The new one, happily is water tight!

Coolant pump. We had a small coolant leak on the main engine. The pump on the engine was replaced.

IsoBoost transformer circuit board.  This boosts the voltage from the shore power when shore power is inadequate (<240 volts). It had been over-boosting, causing headaches with power management.

Maintenance: Wheelhouse checklist

Martin updated the information on our wheelhouse account (#hours on the engines and generators) and generated our report. There were approximately 60 items on our list and Martin got through the vast majority of them.  Routine maintenance items included changing the oil in main engine, changing air filters, checking steering system, raw water strainers, zincs, etc.

Home Improvement: While a couple of these were items that didn’t get addressed before we left in August, the majority were things that we decided we’d like to add after having lived on the boat for a couple of months.

Drip Rail. We have one of the first extended boat decks on an N60. Our deck doesn’t have a drain along the edge at the aft end. As a result, rain drips down around the settee in the cockpit rather than off to the side. We also have a lot of dripping above the pilot house doors. And lastly, if there’s heavy dew and we’re listing to port, there’s a slow drip from the fly bridge hard top that hits the side deck right above Martin’s head while he’s in bed. So…Martin bought drip rail and applied it to the aft boat deck, above the pilot house doors, and on the hard top.  It’s rained several times since he put it up and we’re happy to say that it works! In the cockpit it now drips off to the side. We may try adding one more strip to get to drain farther off but this is an improvement.

Drip Rail

Carpets in staterooms. After putting carpet up in the pilot house, we decided to put it down in both staterooms.  Originally I didn’t want to cover our beautiful floors. After two months of dropping things on those beautiful floors (especially the pilot house) we decided to cover them up. It’s also warm and comfortable on your feet.  They brighten up the staterooms quite a bit. 

State room carpets

Shave MSR doors.  One of the changes we made to the boat was to make the doors flush with the floor rather than have an elevated sill on the bottom. The original design is reminiscent of hard core, water proof doors but is only stylistic. My toes are happier with no raised edge to bash into.  Unfortunately, we didn’t think to specify the clearance from the floor and there was only about a ¼ inch, not enough to clear a rug or carpet. We had them shaved back another ¾ inch to clear the carpet and pad.

Blinds in Pilot House.  We added blinds to two windows, above the settee on the port side and directly across from the settee on the starboard side. We found that the afternoon sun can make pilot house really hot, especially on the port side which is the best place to sit.

Port Side Blinds

Port side rails. We didn’t have time to get them installed in August so we finished this up. The rails are for me to hang on to when putting on the outside mesh covers on the salon windows.

Hatch covers.  We asked Harvey to make up covers for the three hatches on the bow, above the guest stateroom. This will help cool the room and prevent sun damage to the hatches.

Guest stateroom tv. Since we don’t have a tv in the salon and would rather not put one there, we added a tv to the guest state room so visitors can relax and watch television when they feel like it.

Guest room tv

Anchor locker wall extension. We have two chambers in our anchor locker. Sometimes the chain falls into the adjacent space and can be loud. Martin built an extension out of starboard to prevent this from happening.

Anchor locker extension

Pilot House electronics inverter.  We lose our monitors when switching from shore to engine/inverter power. The inverter assures that we won’t lose our electronics when leaving the dock – a very good thing to fix.

Black tank sensor. We now know exactly how full of sh*! we are!  Seriously though, the sensors that came with the boat we way off and it’s tough not knowing when you need to pump out since all flushing stops if you fill up.  We learned that our black tank holds 160 gallons, much more than the 120 that we were told.

Fresh water tank. Martin calibrated the fresh water tank which is supposed to be 600 gallons and found it be more like 900. No military showers aboard Blossom!

Delta T. Martin worked with Delta T and turned both of our engine fans to intake fans. We think this will make a big difference in our engine rooms temps. We’ll test this out next week. They are also working up an air diverter for the port side fan to better direct air into the engine room.  UPDATE: Running down from Stuart to North Palm Beach we saw engine room temperatures approximately 30 degrees above ambient temperature. This is a big improvement from the original 45 degree difference in August.  We hope we’ll drop another 5 degrees or so once the diverter is in place.

Snubber. Martin put a new snubber on our bow. This is a work in progress, trying to get it just right. The snubber acts as a kind of shock absorber between the anchor chain and the boat and reduces the amount of scope we need because it’s attached to the tow eye low on the bow.

Black & Gray Tanks.  Martin converted the charcoal filters on the air vents to be refillable rather than having to replace them every 6 months.  These are filled with active charcoal to eliminate odor.

Day Shape Pole. Martin had to futz our day shape pole because it was too big to fit in the post holder on the bowsprit. He bought the correct size and reworked it and now it fits perfectly. (The day shape is to be put on the bowsprit to indicate to nearby/passing boats that the boat is at anchor and is not going to get out of their way!)

Day Shape

Follow-Ups:

Sonic barnacle buster. Martin installed 8 transducers throughout the hull while we were in Yorktown. This is a new technology and its true effectiveness isn’t really known. The boat was short hauled (a quick haul out where the boat is kept in the slings, not set down and blocked) to replace the prop so Martin got a good look at B’s bottom.  She was completely free of growth with just some minor barnacles in a few through hulls. This is to be expected as we recently had the bottom painted, but it gives us a good base for comparison over time.

9k Generator: Is working great, the new wavenet panel has resolved all of the issues we were having with the 9k.