Today’s morning VHF network was quite short but my plans to breakfast ashore kept on being postponed by the rain showers coming over the hills and hitting the anchorage. I’d started up my notebook backup the night before, but it aborted because the notebook shut itself down due to insufficient battery power, so I started the generator up for an hour to recharge the main batteries and those of the notebook, plus to make some water. While this was going on, I used some water and started a quick wipe down of the cabins, since I’d noticed a bit of dust and also started sneezing so perhaps there is some causality there. Unfortunately, because of the showers I had the hatches shut and it got quite hot and stuffy rather quickly. After an hour the notebook’s batteries were only at 40% and no longer charging, probably because the power was going to the second backup attempt. This was only at 16% despite the main disk only using 200Gb (mainly pictures) so I let the generator run a bit longer so that I wouldn’t use too much power from the inverter after shutting it off.
I opened up the Victron charger to attach the cables for two ventilation fans I’d purchased so that the airflow around the inverter/charger would be enhanced. After looking at the way the ventilation was currently routed I realized that the fans weren’t necessary but before I closed up the system I saw that they had hooked up the temperature sensors but had not connected the voltage sensor. I hooked up the digital output from the Victron to my PC and saw that there was a voltage drop of 0.3V between the charger output and the battery bank so I decided that the voltage sensor would make a difference, but of course I didn’t have the right connectors or cable aboard so I couldn’t finish that job.
I ended up staying aboard until 16:00 and even then the backup only read 47% finished! I left the inverter on when I left an hoped that it would be finished before I returned later on. The trip across the lagoon was not too bad because I had the winds behind me but I knew that I was going to get soaked when I returned, unless I stayed late and came back when the winds had settled for the evening. I stopped by Mau to chat and pick up a piece of tubing which I could use as an extension handle to the dinghy, but overstayed and had to rush to complete my purchases in order to be at the 17:00 bridge opening at the Simpson Bay Yacht Club. I zipped to ELECTEC to get some wire connectors and then across to the dive shop to pick up my octopus with the new rubber instrument housing.
The ELECTEC part went quickly but at the dive shop I saw some serious expression they pulled me aside and asked me to sit down before breaking the bad news to me that the high-pressure gauge was broken and they had tried to remove the valve with no luck. But they did kindly offer to sell me a pressure gauge at their cost, an offer which I accepted and now I have a new gauge and a functioning system.
After that I went to the bridge opening and had a couple of drinks with Mark from Sea Life before we continued on to a couple more drinks at the Soggy Dollar and by that time it was 20:30 and I’d had no food but a lot to drink – so I headed off and skipped going to the Friday night Ribs at Lagoonies because their kitchen was probably closed and made it back to the boat very quickly – the winds and waves had died down after dark and the new fins did a good job.
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