Up early
The boat is still rolling around with very little wind, but either I’m getting accustomed to the motion, or it has settled down – most likely it is combination of both factors that makes it less uncomfortable aboard today. One more day of north swell and west or north wind, then life will settle back to normal in the anchorage and perhaps I’ll even find a spot inside the lagoon again.
I turned on the engine a little while ago and am charging the battery bank so that I get over 90% charge and the current will taper off. Because of the serial/parallel issue on my big new panels I’m going to get 4 smaller panel so that I can string up 2 in series to get the 28V I need, then parallel the 2 series to get the watts I’m looking for. The 2 big panels will get mounted on the bimini frame once I decide on a mounting system.
I’ll also head into Napa Auto parts to get a valve removal tool and cleaning components for the engine parts. I’ve got some acetone which I’ll use to get the carbon deposits cleaned up. It will be a mess; I’ll do that on the aft swim platform and use the packaging from the solar panels to protect my teak.
Shopping
I put two fuel canisters in the dinghy and headed into Island Waterworld for gasoline, diesel and for the solar panels. The fuelling process went quickly and now I don’t have to worry about running out of gas in the dinghy, it was getting a bit low.
I got my 4 90W solar panels, planning on making 2 parallel strings of 2 panels in series to generate enough voltage for the 24V chargers. Back aboard I put the two diesel jerry cans on the transom and proceeded to place the panels on deck and wire them up. I had to make some MC4 connection cables but by the time lunch rolled around I was finished, and the panels were producing some electricity for the batteries.
Ashore again
I went ashore a second time to see about sourcing some mounting hardware for the solar panels. I had seen some advertised at Budget Marine so that was my first stop. The hardware turned out to be much more massive than I had thought, and it is unusable for my purposes. I am going to have to see about ordering online or adapting some expensive stainless steel bimini mountings to fit.
The next stop was Napa, where I planned on getting some Brake cleaner for the engine, some valve lapping compound and a valve removal kit. They had the first two but didn’t stock a valve spring compression tool. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that, as I doubt that anyone else on the island sells these.
Back aboard
Once back on rolling Zanshin, I noticed that the two canisters of diesel on the aft transom had turned into just one. There were two possibilities that immediately came to mind. First was that it had fallen over into the water and drifted away, and secondly that someone had “liberated” it. I’m hoping it was the former, but since I had a small bag of refuse at the edge of the transom and the missing 20l jerry can was just inboard of that, I’m not so sure. I did a quick sweep of the area downwind of the boat to see if I could see a floating yellow container in the water, but there was nothing to be found.
I worked on the solar system setup and general maintenance for the rest of the day, then watched a movie along with some grilled BBQ hotdogs for dinner.
