Category: Maintenance

Do you have a problem with birds? Or…. “Am I in a Hitchcock Movie?”

I recently came a cross a product that holds a lot of promise for boats plagued by birds (and their little gifts they leave behind).  Bird-X, a sticky, non drying caulk that can be applied with a standard caulking gun in thin strips to your windex, mast top plate or any other surface where you have the unwelcome visitors..It stays tacky and apparently birds hate that sensation on their feet…This product is available at Home Depot or www.bird-x.com it retails for around $36.  I suppose the ultimate test will be time, since as it gets coated with dust or other airborne material, will it lose its “tackiness” and become less effective or will the birds making contact with it ablate the surface exposing new sticky material?

I recently applied some to our Windex and I will continue to monitor it but so far, so good.

image

 

 

Bird-X also makes a sonic and a laser repeller but we don’t have either one of those to test…..yet

Happy Sailing…..

 

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A house and starting battery mystery

On our boat, we have ten house batteries and one starting battery.  The house batteries are Trojan brand T-105 6V batteries paired to make what is essentially five 12V batteries.  They are divided into two battery banks one of 6 and one of 4.  Our starting battery is a Deka Group 31 deep cycle starting battery.  We recently replaced all the batteries which cost about $149 each if you can get them for a good price.  Our starting battery also runs our bilge pumps.

The evolving mystery is this….twice in the last year, our starting battery has been too low to start our diesel after being away from our boat for about 6 weeks.  We have 7 solar panels, a wind generator (this was turned off) and were plugged into shore power when this has happened.  We have three barrel switches that select the charging method for the batteries, the bank that the house operates on and one isolates or connects the house and starting batteries.  Normally the start battery is isolated.  According to Nigel Calder this setup is optimal for a larger boat with two battery banks.  The catch is that you need to use “Shottky” diodes to protect your batteries from discharge.  These diodes essentially act as a “one way” valve for current to flow into the batteries with a slight drop in voltage (between .15 and .65 by most accounts).  The simple fix has been to switch the batteries to “all” and let the house bank top off the starting battery.  After about five minutes all is back to normal.  I just don’t want to count on this when we are away from shore power.

I can’t imagine a circumstance where our bilge pump would run enough to discharge our starting battery and normal self discharge for this battery should be a much longer time than this. Even at 80 degrees ambient air temperature the discharge time according to many sources is well beyond 8 weeks.  Normally the self discharge rate is 4% to 6% per month.  I’ve checked most of the connections for excessive heat and found nothing yet.

I plan to do some more checking and troubleshooting or replacement of our diodes and I will post more as it develops…comment for suggestions are always welcome…..

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Example of our first six months of operating expenses

Occasionally,  I sit down and calculate what the total is for the last six months of owning, operating and maintaining our boat.  At times it is painful…. Keep in mind ours is an older, though upgraded, 44′ sailboat.  There have been a few things we added or upgraded which we probably could have lived without but we decided were essential.

Here’s what last winter cost us, (2014 into 2015) just for the boat and travel, not food or entertainment….

Transient or Seasonal Dockage: $1,700

Insurance: $100/month so $600

Fuel: $500

Equipment replacement or repairs: $5,000  (We had to replace a lot of items that the prior owner wanted to keep and we also added a Garmin 741XS chartplotter which has been fantastic)

Home slip: $150/month…$900

Travel to and from boat: $3,000 ( we have spent a lot of time helping a terminally ill family member over the last year so this will drop significantly)

Radio Licenses: $200

Haulout/Bottom Paint : $1600

Epirb recert: $300

So, we are at $13,700 for a six month period.  ($2,283.00 per month)  Some of these items won’t come around again for three years (bottom job, radio licenses, EPIRB) so the cost can be amortized over a longer period reducing the monthly cost.  Downside is when they need to be done you’d better have had the discipline to save your cash.  The good news is I cleaned our hull in December before we left Oriental, NC and it looked great after a year in the water.  The use of the Petit Ultima SR60 was a good choice.  The bottom looked like it had just been painted except for some growth on the intakes.  I have read a lot of varying opinions on how often to clean the bottom and many claim that the more often you clean it the faster your paint “ablates” and the sooner you have to reapply…this seems to be the case in this instance as ours is holding up very, very well with only two light cleanings a year.

The first six months, granted, will probably be the most expensive of the time periods during which you will own your boat.  Gear, cosmetic changes, upgrades and the inevitable mistakes that break or lose something will be factors that increase this number, so be ready.

This last December (2014), our house batteries decided that they needed to be replaced…(right after our engine starting battery needed replacement $150)…..we have ten….they are Trojan T-105’s that run about $150 a piece (after taxes)…..they typically last five years ….that works out to a manageable $25 per month over the life of the batteries but that sticker shock will keep you awake a few nights when they need replacement….

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An important note about attitude…..

While writing this blog, I hope to be honest about the occurrences and emotions we experience during the ups and downs of our journey.  Some of these, I understand, may not paint me in the best light or make me look like the most skilled or adaptable sailor…but what good is this blog of our journey without honesty?  It seems that, in this day and age, too many people are concerned about sharing their failures and foibles for fear that no one will take them seriously or respect their opinions. If anyone pretends to have never had a bad day, an oops moment, a low speed (or high speed) dock collision or a “duh” day….they, in my opinion, are more worried about their image or reputation than they are about making sure others are comfortable learning as we all do….by making mistakes.

When you own, or are living on a boat of any kind, backups to your systems are not the same as they are on land.  If your furnace at your house goes out, just grab a space heater at Home Depot, turn on the fireplace or stay with a neighbor for a day or two.  On a boat, you are extremely dependent on your hardware to keep you “afloat” both literally, figuratively and at times, more importantly, emotionally.   A failure of emotional confidence can end a cruising or boating dream as fast as any real failure of gear.

Your feelings and confidence in your floating home are as crucial as the reality of the condition of your boat.  If you don’t have a fair amount of confidence in your boat and your abilities to maintain and care for your systems you’ll be less likely to take that trip, venture into (or out of) that inlet, brave that rough sea or drop anchor in a rough or unfamiliar anchorage.  I, for one, have experienced the feeling of depression and failure that comes with a perceived breakage or ruination of a system or major on board component.  These feelings can be exacerbated when they happen in a series, potentially costing you a lot of money and time especially if you are on a tight cruising/boat budget.  Do not despair!!!

Recently, while performing some maintenance on our boat and patchwork on our dinghy (that’s another story about why the dinghy needed patching) and removing a damaged…(haha!! to call this sail “damaged” is an extreme understatement….let’s just call it a destroyed or shredded) sail….(yet another story)…. we had a power failure to our inverter and charging system.   I was caught completely off guard by this failure and after having recently replaced our house batteries (which set us back about $1500) I was literally inconsolable when I thought our $1800 inverter now needed to be replaced.  This was on top of not knowing if our $3500 dinghy was going to require replacement and losing a $1000 sail to a random windstorm.  Our particular inverter unit is an OLD Trace U2512SB inverter/charger (so old that I couldn’t find anyone at Trace/Xantrex tech support that worked there when this unit was being sold……it will probably need to be replaced in the next few years (fingers crossed that it lasts longer) but now is not a good time for that.  I started with the simple things…check the on/off switch, check the built in breaker, check the shore power connection at the boat and on shore, check the shore power breaker and yet nothing obvious presented itself.  I, mistakenly, began to assume the worst….a bad idea when dealing with boat systems.  Take my advice and don’t fall into this trap.

So, we went to dinner and had a good time, despite the fact we were Googling every inverter manual and troubleshooting guide we could find during our meal.  We found no answers that made me feel any better during dinner.  We returned to the boat and while I was taking a look at our dinghy patch job, I noticed the smallest gap in the shore power cord and the 110v pigtail connection that was plugged into the dock outlet…despite the fact that these components have locking tabs, a separate locking collar and the power indicating light was on….. they were loose….I reconnected them and all was functioning normally……duh.  So much for ruining our dinner by worrying about it.

The lesson I learned from what will forever be known as the dinghy/house battery/inverter debacle is that just because things look or feel like they are failing all around you does not mean that they are.  Don’t get discouraged.  Sure, at times, things might “pile on” and your dream will feel as if it has been skewered on the petard of abject failure and bad luck, but don’t assume the worst or give in to that mindset.  A little patience (and luck) will go a long way to making your dream a reality.  HANG IN THERE!!!

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