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Surprise!

Oh my!!! Thanks Bob for finding this special Christmas card!!! The Hinckley on the card has so much details, WOW!

So I supposed to get new red & green sails now. Santa’s foulie must worked pretty well too.

Happy holidays everyone.

LOL!!!
 
Maybe Santa will let you keep the sails. You'll be stylin' next Summer in Hanalei Bay!
 
Last year we left you hanging with Surprise!'s electrical re-do. Update: Rob finished it in time for the New Year's raft-up at Clipper Cove.

And a fine job he did! We got rid of the house bank:

Wine Locker Before.jpg


And replaced it with a wine rack:

Wine Locker 2.JPG

Batteries? We don't need no steenkin' batteries!
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Oh, there was the listing problem. Three carbon foam Fireflies in the hanging locker leveled her out.
With their 80%+ possible depth of discharge, the Fireflies effectively double the house bank's capacity.
No worries - a rubber mat and a (to be completed) false floor cover them.

Batteries After.JPG


Now Surprise! is listless.

Listless Surprise!.JPG
 
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Some of the wiring - here's the other locker before:

Old Wiring.jpg


And after (on the right):

New Wiring.JPG


A close-up of the new charger, which replaced an old, heavy Freedom 10 in the back of the boat:

Charger.JPG


Rob says he really enjoyed seeing his vision for the components and wiring layout become reality.
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It's okay - that's not the bilge.

I just need to make sure the charger isn't working too hard or I'll get a call from Surprise!'s sommelier.
 
"It's all how you look at it." From the link:

Firefly G31: $0.17/kWh

Lifeline GPL 31T: $0.55/kWh

Also, I didn't pay retail.
 
BobJ said:
"It's all how you look at it." From the link:

Firefly G31: $0.17/kWh

Lifeline GPL 31T: $0.55/kWh

Also, I didn't pay retail.
Click to expand...

That helps!
If they last 3x as long as regular lead-acid batteries, then they're a bargain.
 
Gale warnings were posted yesterday so RYC cancelled its small boat midwinters. An intrepid Laser sailor went out anyway, but before long he was escorted back into the harbor by a watchful rib driver. Over in the normally placid waters of the Oakland Estuary, OYC's midwinter race was abandoned. It was gusting hard most of the day, causing Surprise! to bounce around in her slip out near the end of E dock. Sometimes she does that because she wants to go sailing, but not yesterday!

After checking Flicker's docklines over in Brickyard Cove, Ed Ruszel stopped by for a chat. Then as the day blustered on, I was able to finish a couple of projects.

If we took a wave wrong and Surprise!'s cockpit was filled with water, only two thin speaker cones would have kept green water out of the boat. I've never been a fan of cockpit speakers anyway so out they came. They were replaced with 6" inspection plates. Cockpit tunes are not forever banished - it's possible to install speakers in the inspection ports, to be replaced with the plates when desired.

Insp Plates.JPG

The bigger project, mentioned earlier in this thread, is a second NMEA 2000 backbone for the backup autopilot. This was installed in the lazarette to keep the cables shorter and connections easier. The backup AP computer, control head and heading sensor are Simrad components that came with the boat. The rudder sensor is shared with the primary B&G H5000, and the drive is one of Brian's Pelagic cockpit drives I saved from Ragtime! It all works but I only got through a dockside calibration before I ran out of day. I also need to decide where to mount the control head, since it would be hard to drive the boat from the lazarette!

The coiled wire is excess compass wire. I read somewhere that you should not shorten it. Does anyone know if that's true and if so, why?

Backup AP Backbone.JPG


The boxes in the upper left corner are the double-pole switch for the shore power, and a galvanic isolator. It bugs me that they aren't straight so I'll probably fix that the next time I'm camped out in Surprise!'s voluminous lazarette.
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Tunes in the cockpit, great! Speakers in the walls of the footwell in the cockpit? Um...UUuuuuuuuuummmmm.

NO.
 
Bob, What are the strings for that are tied to the seat locker latches?

Sorry, can't help with the AP compass wire question without just speculating.
 
Dazzler said:
What are the strings for that are tied to the seat locker latches?
Click to expand...

The latches are a bit loose and don't have holes in them for locks or clips. The strings cause them to bind enough that they won't flip open easily.

The string on the right also ties the bilge pump handle (kept in that propane locker) to the boat, as required in the SER.
 
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