Early Fall in Baltimore
September 27 thru September 30
—Blogpost written by Bob
Friday, September 27
We drove to Annapolis this morning to accomplish a number of tasks. First we had to stop by our bank and transfer some funds to pay last year's taxes and make an estimated payment for this year's taxes.
We stopped by Fawcetts and tried the Dahon Mariner D8 bikes again--we like them even more than we did initially. We decided to buy the bikes next week when we will get a boat show discount (about $35 each).
During the week I had noticed that something was wrong with our deck wash down pump. The stream from the hose on deck was not continuous and the pump wouldn't shutoff when we closed the valve on deck. I figured that the diaphragm was punctured or cracked. So we replaced the pump with the spare pump we recently added to our onboard inventory. It took a couple hours to change out the pump because we had to empty out the quarter berth and then remove the aft half go the platform beneath the quarter berth.
In the above photo, I had top pull out a lot of my onboard spares to get access to the nuts on the bolts that mount the wash down pump. Besides carrying a spare transmission control cable (in the box), I also carry various pieces of hoses and wires. You never know what you are going to need!
While we had the quarter berth all apart, we reorganized the storage area before reassembling everything. (We even found our new sun shower in the quarter berth! Later, I had a concern about not mounting the pump a little higher--it meant changing the inlet hose. I have put this on my project list for the next time we disassemble the quarter berth.)
Late in the day, I heard from the Raymarine technician who was checking my chart plotter--everything worked fine! So, the difficulty reading the chart card must be due to the new chart card (or operator error). I will wait for the unit to be returned and try it again before addressing the chart card. I'm running out of time to fix things...
The sky was overcast when we got up and had a light breakfast in the boater's lounge (I think this will be the last one of the season). Today was completely uneventful. I watched several college football games on TV. (Penn State beat Maryland 59-0 last night in an unusual Friday night game.)
I would like to pass along another talented vocalist that I have found on YouTube, Jadyn Rylee. I think she is 12 years old and from Canada.
I particularly like her version of Simon and Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair which can be found at this link. She has nearly 300,000 subscribers on YouTube!
Today, I ordered lots of things that we will need on our trip to the Bahamas (on Amazon). Among the things I ordered were cans of cooked ground beef, cooked tuna fish in pouches, cooked chicken in pouches, and hot cocoa mix. We have used these items in previous seasons in the Bahamas.
The weather was beautiful this morning with a clear sky and bright sunshine. The early morning temperature was in the 70's and the afternoon high is expected to be in the low 80's, which is nice early Fall weather.
Today was another easy, relaxing day of watching football.
The day was overcast and cool--in the low 70's. We put the side windows of our cockpit enclosure in place so that I could replace the seals in the water maker, working outside in the cockpit. I started to disassemble the water maker at about 9:30 AM. I started out by following the instructions step by step but this proved to be very slow and cumbersome. Then Maggie decided to help by reading the instructions as I disassembled the water maker. This proved to be even slower. I ended the project by simply reassembling each piece as I remembered that they came apart and replaced every o-ring that I found. This is the way I should have done the entire task.
There was one check valve that was supposed to have the spring replaced which we could not remove. We skipped this step because of the difficulty in removal. We also had a number of seals leftover after the changeout but it appears that these are only needed for the replacement of the membrane.
I finished the re-assembly at about 1 PM and we went out for lunch before re-mounting the water maker. The we returned from lunch I re-mounted the water maker and we pickled the unit (circulated a mixture of sodium metabisulfite in water). We were completely finished by 3 PM (and not a single photograph to show for it!)
The seals should be changed every 1000 hours of operation--this means about every six months while in the Bahamas.
We decided to drive to Annapolis tomorrow and buy our folding bikes. Stay tuned...
Thanks for following our blog!
We stopped by Fawcetts and tried the Dahon Mariner D8 bikes again--we like them even more than we did initially. We decided to buy the bikes next week when we will get a boat show discount (about $35 each).
During the week I had noticed that something was wrong with our deck wash down pump. The stream from the hose on deck was not continuous and the pump wouldn't shutoff when we closed the valve on deck. I figured that the diaphragm was punctured or cracked. So we replaced the pump with the spare pump we recently added to our onboard inventory. It took a couple hours to change out the pump because we had to empty out the quarter berth and then remove the aft half go the platform beneath the quarter berth.
 |
| The pump is tucked into a small space near the forward edge of our port battery bank. |
 |
| It was necessary to remove the aft portion of the quarter berth platform for access to the wash down pump (which is in the lower left corner of this image). |
In the above photo, I had top pull out a lot of my onboard spares to get access to the nuts on the bolts that mount the wash down pump. Besides carrying a spare transmission control cable (in the box), I also carry various pieces of hoses and wires. You never know what you are going to need!
While we had the quarter berth all apart, we reorganized the storage area before reassembling everything. (We even found our new sun shower in the quarter berth! Later, I had a concern about not mounting the pump a little higher--it meant changing the inlet hose. I have put this on my project list for the next time we disassemble the quarter berth.)
Late in the day, I heard from the Raymarine technician who was checking my chart plotter--everything worked fine! So, the difficulty reading the chart card must be due to the new chart card (or operator error). I will wait for the unit to be returned and try it again before addressing the chart card. I'm running out of time to fix things...
Saturday, September 28
The sky was overcast when we got up and had a light breakfast in the boater's lounge (I think this will be the last one of the season). Today was completely uneventful. I watched several college football games on TV. (Penn State beat Maryland 59-0 last night in an unusual Friday night game.)
----------
I would like to pass along another talented vocalist that I have found on YouTube, Jadyn Rylee. I think she is 12 years old and from Canada.
 |
| A screen capture of Jadyn Rylee from her YouTube channel. |
I particularly like her version of Simon and Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair which can be found at this link. She has nearly 300,000 subscribers on YouTube!
----------
Today, I ordered lots of things that we will need on our trip to the Bahamas (on Amazon). Among the things I ordered were cans of cooked ground beef, cooked tuna fish in pouches, cooked chicken in pouches, and hot cocoa mix. We have used these items in previous seasons in the Bahamas.
Sunday, September 29
The weather was beautiful this morning with a clear sky and bright sunshine. The early morning temperature was in the 70's and the afternoon high is expected to be in the low 80's, which is nice early Fall weather.
 |
| Lola behind the helm seat during her morning outside time. |
Today was another easy, relaxing day of watching football.
Monday, September 30
The day was overcast and cool--in the low 70's. We put the side windows of our cockpit enclosure in place so that I could replace the seals in the water maker, working outside in the cockpit. I started to disassemble the water maker at about 9:30 AM. I started out by following the instructions step by step but this proved to be very slow and cumbersome. Then Maggie decided to help by reading the instructions as I disassembled the water maker. This proved to be even slower. I ended the project by simply reassembling each piece as I remembered that they came apart and replaced every o-ring that I found. This is the way I should have done the entire task.
There was one check valve that was supposed to have the spring replaced which we could not remove. We skipped this step because of the difficulty in removal. We also had a number of seals leftover after the changeout but it appears that these are only needed for the replacement of the membrane.
I finished the re-assembly at about 1 PM and we went out for lunch before re-mounting the water maker. The we returned from lunch I re-mounted the water maker and we pickled the unit (circulated a mixture of sodium metabisulfite in water). We were completely finished by 3 PM (and not a single photograph to show for it!)
The seals should be changed every 1000 hours of operation--this means about every six months while in the Bahamas.
----------
We decided to drive to Annapolis tomorrow and buy our folding bikes. Stay tuned...
Thanks for following our blog!
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