I take full blame....

...for the extreme tardiness in posting recently.  It's not that we haven't been active.  This extended post will be in chronological order.

We met Jenny at Kelley's restaurant.  She's an Insurance broker who dropped by one afternoon to talk to us about health insurance options.

Although we go to Kelley's more than anywhere else we do venture elsewhere.  These folks were enjoying a snooze on the Atlantic beach by Mulligan's Bar in the late summer.

However, by Saturday it was back to Kelley's for the Saturday morning breakfast club organised by Art the bartender.  Yes, that's Jenny again and that avocado is a Florida variety that Jenny had grown and given to us.

Now that the weather has cooled down a bit we have been out on the bikes around the neighbourhood. Parts of Grand Harbor are like a nature preserve with small lakes and notice boards indicating what wildlife can be viewed.

Talking of wildlife, Spooky has taken to finishing off Jo's breakfast yoghurt for her.  Here she is trying Greek Blackcurrent I think.

I had asked Carroll from Miramare if he would take us along to the Remembrance Day ceremony on Veteran's Island.  We were very glad we did.  The location is beautiful.  It's a perfectly manicured island given over exclusively to veteran's of Vero Beach and surrounding area.  The affair itself was classy and quite moving.  These guys here know how to support their vets.

A couple of days later Spooky tried the Blackberry version:

The last Formula 1 Grand Prix race was a special event for us this year so I drove over to Jon's place to watch it on his 55 inch UHD TV and enjoy the local fine dining.  This is Blue Mangrove in Palmetto.

  It stocks my favourite beer, which, despite the plastic cup label is not Blue Lite but Sweetwater 420.

  Also, Lynne is a great bartender who, I am pretty certain, has the hots for Jon.

There have been other activities like trying to get a Cruising Permit without leaving the country (Successfully!! Yeah!) and having/doing routine maintenance.  I had some folks in to flush the heat exchangers on engines and generators.

Now, the rest of this post is about a couple of boat projects.  I designed and made a new boarding ladder and installed a solar power system.  So, if you want to leave now, feel free.

A few weeks ago I managed to destroy my boarding ladder that I had designed.  I had left the ladder attached to the boat when we moved to pump out our holding tank.  Naturally, as I backed into the slip, the boat tended to the side the ladder was on and caught the piling.  The ladder, as well as one of the mounts was ripped off and went into the harbour.  I hired a diver to retrieve it but it was beyond economic repair.  Some have complained that it was too elaborate anyway.

So, I used the knowledge I gained from that one and designed a new one.  This time, instead of having it welded I made it to be bolted together.  I used eMachineShop.com again.  They provide custom CAD software, you can price the job as you design the parts and then order directly from the CAD software.

The new one is half the weight and extends outwards making boarding easier.

I still have to attach non-slip pads to the rungs.

I have been thinking about solar power for a long time.  Sea Ray being the deep thinkers that they are put 110 volt only fridge and freezer on board rather than dual 110/12 volt that everyone with any common sense does.  This means that you have to run your generator when away from the dock unless you add some expensive gear to your boat.  That's ok for short periods but a droning generator does not make friends at anchorages or promote sound sleep on board.

I installed a large inverter and battery bank almost as soon as I bought the boat.  This permits us to overnight at anchor.  Recharging the inverter batteries requires a fairly long run on shore power or generator.  Adding solar panels reduces the time needed to recharge the batteries as they provide substantial power even on cloudy days.

I sourced two 140 watt panels and a solar controller at the Ft Lauderdale Boat Show in early October.

I bought the wire and other fittings elsewhere over the next few weeks.  Just to give an idea of what's involved, there are a couple of numbered pictures showing the route the wires had to take:

I decided to mount the Solar Controller on the back wall of the cupboard shown at location 1.  This allowed for the shortest charging cables to the battery bank at the inverter.  The inverter and battery bank are shown in the second picture below.  The wires to the solar panels were lighter but the route was tortuous.  Much swearing and the use of mirrors, flashlights, fish tapes and wire coat hangers was involved.  Routing above decks was easy in comparison.

Below is the Xantrex 3KW inverter and six Lifeline 220AH 6 volt AGM batteries that reside under the salon seat..

I used a Morningstar Trident 45 amp MPPT controller and meter display.  Here it is mounted on the back wall of the cupboard on a base of Starboard.

The junction box is under the meter display.  The light weight solar panel cables are at the left and the heavy battery cables are at the right.  The reason for the difference is that the panels run at about 20 volts so there's less current.

Above decks the cables run up through the hard top support and through the hard top to the panels at location 6 and 7.  I have run many cables through here so this was no issue.  I run the panels in parallel so I get least effect from shading.

 Here are the panels mounted and connected.  Not too bad.

The foreman signed off on the work after a few treats.

It's all up and running but I haven't had a chance to verify practical performance yet.  I plan to add two more panels when I figure out how.  Probably I will use flexible ones on the bimini top.

Ok.  That's it for now.  I promise not to leave it so long next time.  Mostly because it takes so long to catch up!