Merry Christmas 2014!
Kasidah has been in the Bahamas for just over a month now.
We’ve settled into our winter and taken care of some boat chores. I have to
apologize about the last story’s editing. Some of the story got mixed up from
the copy to the posting or something and it really left some gaps while reading
it and it jumped all over the place. I’ve fix it so it makes a lot more sense
now.
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| Jon and Kevin chillin on Kasidah |
December will go down as the month of charger problems,…not
for us but fellow boaters. We met Dan and Judy this year and he posed a
question to me about battery voltage while running his engine. He has the same
kind of Alternator and 3 stage regulator that we have so I felt confident about
listening to his questions. He had us over for Rum and wine and shows me the voltage
reading while running the engine. 16 volts to the batteries!!….WOW slow it down!
That voltage will cook the batteries and kill them in no time. A few more
readings the next day, a bit less rum and we decided the regulator has to be
bad or at least programmed wrong. I read up on the programming and tried to get
it to a different battery setting but still had the voltage too high for the
batteries. He ordered the new one from Defenders and with $100 for shipping and
customs it was here in 3 days,…Thanks FED EX. The best part of the new regulator
is that it’s a lot easier to program and yes it did fix his high voltage
problem. They left a few weeks ago and are in Georgetown in the Exumas.
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| Jon helping out Raymond |
Our good friends Duncan and Cathy on 2 Scotts had a bad crossing
from the states. They have a good sized twin engine trawler and somewhere in
the crossing they had to shut down one of the engines when it over heated, no
big deal when you have a spare engine right. Then the voltage on the batteries
was dropping and he lost all of his instruments and running lights. He made it
into West End under celestial navigation, his
compass and some luck. He cleared the blocked intake which lead to the over
heating and got the engine running and batteries charged and made it to ORYC.
Once here he figured the alternator on the one engine that stayed running
wasn’t charging. Duncan
is a pretty clever guy and looked at it for a few days but could not get the
regulator powered up and he asked me to look at it. We found that the regulator
did not have power to it to start the whole process. The power for it comes through
a couple of safety switches on the engine. We found a wiring diagram for the
engine and worked through it figuring that the alternator was new, it was different
than the other one, and that it could never have worked. He tried to talk
himself into the fact that he’d seen it light up before, but all I could do was
go with the obvious,…..It Never Could Have Worked, not wired like this, and he
swears he didn’t move any wires. We move the wire to a better spot on that
engine circuit and now it’s charging.
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| Kate taking over the helm for our ride back to the marina |
Raymond on a power cat was having a problem with his gen-set
and inverter on his boat. The generator would start but quit when you took off
power to the glow plugs. Found the wiring diagram and a bit later figured it
was the remote start-stop control that was disabling the local controls on the
generator. His inverter was shutting down with what he thought was a high
voltage alarm, but that wasn’t the case. It had to have been over heating,
because it caught fire. He ordered a new one. We’ll see who’s paying attention
or reading our stories now. So all is good in the battery department for
friends here at ORYC.
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| Strawberry Grouper |
And finally I’ve met Mike, he is here for a week,..he flew
in on a single engine Cessna,…his batteries aren’t charging. Trying to figure
out how to make the jump from marine to aviation,….It’s got to pay more right?
Raymond took us and Kate, of Kate and Chris, Her husband
Chris went back to Australia
to work for a bit, out fishing. We trolled all morning and Kate had a bite for
a big Mahi Mahi and got it close to the boat. This was about a 4 or 5 ft fish
and put up a good fight, he got close enough to the boat for Raymond, Arline
and Kate to see it, I missed the sighting of it. Later that day we fished on
the bottom and the girls got some fish.
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| Blues new umbrella |
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| Thank you gifts from cruisers for Jons help |
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| Birthday party for Diane |
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| Dinner at the gazebo and one to many JD drinks |
A few days later Arline and I were out in our dinghy
fishing, one of our favorite things to do here, we were trying a couple of
different spots and depths. One spot was just around 90 ft of water and our
anchor wouldn’t hold so Arline pulled the anchor in and when it got to just
below the dinghy, like 3 or 4 ft in the water, Arline screams and says “Wholy
crap look at those fish!” I only saw one but it was about a 3 ft Mahi Mahi
circling our dinghy checking out the anchor, they travel together so I’m sure
they were there. I saw him circle again it was absolutely beautiful! He was
going so slow I was able to cast out in front of him and reeled it in hoping he’d
go for it but he wasn’t interested. We trolled around the rest of the day
looking for these guys. We were in the right area and depth but,…Nothing. Not
sure how we would have gotten the thing in the dingy, but we wouldn’t have
given up on it.
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| Spear fishing lands Jon 36 bucks |
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| This trigger fish decided to take a piece of Jon |
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| Jons new dive skin |
We’ve taken care of several chores on the boat; changed out
a locker hatch, rebuilt the dinghy motor mounting bracket on the back of
Kasidah, once again some of the conduit in the mast came lose during our
crossing. This requires a trip up the mast to each area that the conduit is
fastened. There are 2 small holes in the mast at each spot that you pass a wire
from one hole to the other around the conduit on the inside and install 2 pop-rivets
which you wrap this wire around to hold the conduit in place, simple right.
Nope. While sitting in the chair trying to get a solid wire around a conduit
and back out the other ¼inch hole, it’s harder than you think. But I have a
couple years of experience at fishing wire and got 6 or 7 places done in just a
½ day. We also re-bedded the deck snaps that hold the Dodger down, these had
been just screwed into the deck and a few had started to show signs of letting
water into the deck core. I drilled these out and then used my Dremel tool to
dig out any soft wood of the core. I was very happy to see that water hadn’t
traveled very far at all, also happy to find real plywood not Balsa wood near
the mast and the rail for the head sail cars. Filled these holes with G-Flex
epoxy and just as it was setting up pushed the snap screws into the epoxy for a
great looking finish, strong as could be and no leaks anymore, and the fittings
cover the hole so you can’t see the different color epoxy.
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| Dan.Judy,Raymond, Jon and I at the two dollar bar. |
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| Raymond and I heading out to fish near West End |
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| Wonderful fishing trip |
The routine here is pretty boring, Coffee and a dog walk
followed by tennis at 8 am with a group of people for close to 2 hours a couple
of times a week, then breakfast and internet checking of news, family and
friends and a stop at the free ice machine to fill the cooler for the day’s
needs. No need to check the weather here, upper 70’s in the day and 60’s at
night. If it’s blowing from the north we go fishing or snorkeling, exploring
with the dingy or head to a beach. Blue usually goes with us so we’ll always
stop at a beach for her to run and play. We sometimes bring a light lunch in
the cooler with enough ice for the fish bucket if we’re lucky. Once back at the
boat we wash off stuff and head to the pool and or hot tub, there’s never an
issue finding a chair by one of the pools or people in the tub, and good
conversation is always the rule. A small lunch means a good dinner and depending
what night it is there might be something happening on the resort side how ever
we find ourselves there less and less. Karaoke night is sometimes a fun night
to watch people sing, NO WE DON’T. The boaters here have their favorite songs
and are proud to sing them week after week after week,….Every once in a while a
resort person will come in and really nail something and surprise all. We might
also get together with another boaters for dinner or drinks and stories. If it
Blowing out of the south it’s too rough out there to get into the dingy so
we’ll get on the bikes and get groceries if we need them, or ride into either
Port Luyca or Freeport or if it’s really hot we’ll go to a beach with the
cooler and Blue. Once a week we’ll try and eat a late lunch out, we have a
couple of favorite places where the locals eat so they are priced right,
usually we get away with $20 or so. If we eat out or hit a beach we’ll again
still head back to the pool, but dinner is usually very light or some snacks
like cheese, popcorn and a movie on the boat. Sometimes we don’t go anywhere
but to the pool, we’ve got a couple of games we like, Backgammon, cribbage, for
get it, or some other card games, and we’ll take our music and drinks. If it’s
cooler and we haven’t played tennis in the morning we might play in the
afternoon. See I told you it was
boring,…of course boat needs supersedes all other activity.
I’m sure you’ve all seen on FB that Cal is getting bigger; Amy says he’s about
ready to take off crawling, and this is where the fun starts.
Christmas dinner is with all the boaters and I think there
will be about 45 of us. We hope everybody had a great Christmas and your New
Year is Prosperous.
Thank you all for following our adventures.
