Tropical Storm Isaac

Hi Everyone: I haven't been updating as of late cause I think it may be a little boring to some people to read a sailing blog about a sailing vessel being upgraded or repaired but on the other hand when I do tell of things I've done I get some reasonable questions from a few readers like David's question about hooking the water system into the marina water which I ashamedly have never answered, so sorry David. Also I think it's a pretty fair record of what has been done to the boat should we ever have to sell it. I've done so many things to the boat and not documented them in any way and my age I'll never remember until it breaks again but once I start something I seem to forget about taking pictures of before and after, shame really.
To answer your question David. I cut what I recall to be about a 2 7/8 hole in the stern and caulked with Dow 5200 and mounted with stainless screws a pressure limiting water connection. Before this I mounted a carbon filter available in the RV section of Walmart on the spigot. Inside the boat I changed a few of the original water lines which were metric to new 1/2" line and tee'd this into the cold water line that runs to the shower mounted on the transom. I turned the water on and watched my water tanks to make sure that my 2 12 volt water pumps had check valves in them and didn't feed any water back to the tanks. They don't and now I'm thinking I will put a by-pass around the pumps with a valve in it so I can open this and fill my tanks while still hooked to supplied water through the carbon filter and maybe never have to open the deck fill fittings again. The whole operation was pretty easy and painless and so worth doing. The 35 psi that the marina water is regulated to is nice in that it doesn't create any leaks or faucet drips in the on board plumbing unlike the 65 psi that the onboard pumps provide.
With Isaac being hyped up so much on the news as being possibly a cat 2 hurricane and smashing it's way up the center of the state I thought I should have engines ready to run, water tanks full, freezer full, all the canvas off etc etc but as it was I was in California until Saturday evening with Isaac supposedly hitting us on Sunday evening or Monday by noon. Then I started thinking what if they cancelled flights into southern Florida and Traci was on the boat alone then I started to panic. I thought "the news likes to hype things up to keep you watching so calm down and check NOAA and Wind Guru and see what they say." As suspected, we were due to catch the edges and remain on tropical storm watch but I have to say that working on Friday in California took some concentration to keep my mind from wondering and thinking the worst and Saturday nothing flew fast enough to get me back there. Saturday evening I removed the solar panels on the Bimini top and the top and Traci pretty much had everything else lashed down or removed and the offers of help and calls of concern where above and beyond and I thank you Grady Chance and Paul Baynham, someday when you need me I'll make sure I'm there. I was more nervous than I'd ever let on but all for not. Wind got up to around 40 mph and probably gusted to 60 or so and it rained cats and dogs but when we thought about it, we've been caught sailing in similar weather and faired well so we missed the bulk of it and are thankfull.

Above are pics of the heat exchanger on one of the engines as I removed the end cover. I noticed 2 black fingers off of a raw water pump impeller and I cursed a wee bit as I just changed the raw water pump last year. The next one shows the exchanger plugged about 50% and the last one shows the cap and the left side or intake side plugged with the 2 rubber fingers and mussels. I cleaned the exchanger in a few minutes with 50% muiriatic acid and water and it looks like new again, shoulda took a picture. Got it back together and then hooked the engine cooling to the heat exchanger in the hot water tank so that when we run this engine it will circulate hot antifreeze through a radiator in the hot water tank and heat some water for showering and dishes without electicity. Filled it all back up with antifreeze and started to mount another new alternator and smart regulator. Not done yet as I have to take the alternator apart and by-pass the regulator.
On a great note, the marina bought a brand new house boat for live aboard folks to do laundry in. It has 2 brand new washers and dryers, a shower and bath room. They also gave us an efficiency to use during the storm as the short back and forth motion was making Traci a little motion sick. I offered to pay but they said no as I help him around here now and then and it was appreciated. Turns out we didn't need it but we did do some laundry in it and watched some tv.
Sorry for the boring update, promise lots of underwater pictures when we hit the Bahamas in January.
Dave