I’m going a bit stir-crazy aboard here in Deep Bay! The winds have been whipping up the waters all day and the boat is swinging around quite a bit, but there’s no swell to make it really uncomfortable. I worked aboard with some minor tasks and then played around with my electronics – the Arduino processors and letting them collect data from the Xantrex and solar chargers. I spent half the day trying to get the little chip with a real time clock (RTC) working until I finally realized that I’d bricked the chip and that no amount of testing or coercion would bring it back to life again. Unfortunately, it was my only such chip and that builds the basis for the SD-Card data logging that I want to do. I crimped the special connector for the RJ12 connection to the Xantrex and managed to get a first version of the data logger running. It uses the RS232 TTL signal coming from the Xantrex Link Pro and interprets the messages being sent every second. So far, so good; tomorrow I’ll get the data logging to SD Card running and get my data collection going. After that I have to work on wiring the Hall-Effect ammeter to the solar battery panel in order to get (and calibrate) the energy coming from all six panels. Once that is done I will get the data from each panel in order to see which ones are working best and which ones need some some (most likely they are being shaded by the mast, boom or standing rigging and nothing can be done about that).
Sometime in the morning I heard a bang on deck and it turns out that the anchor-ball day shape line had chafed through. This is unfortunate, since the spinnaker halyard that held it up is now swinging about in the wind. I tied my two boat-hooks together in order to reach the swinging line and pull it further down, but the winds were so strong that I couldn’t reach it. I’ll have to wait for the winds to abate before attacking that project!
I did de-frost the freezer in the morning, a task that is much easier than de-frosting the fridge, since I can hose down the freezer with hot water to accelerate the process. The whole job took only about a half hour and now my freezer is going to run at peak efficiency for a while. I did find some frozen mince, which I’m thawing out right now in order to make a sauce for my dinner – spaghetti Bolognese, or “Spag Bo” as it is referred to in my circles of bachelor friends in the U.K.
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