After a quick delivery job this morning for Western Yacht Commissioning we broke free of the Silver Gate Yacht club that has been our home for the past three weeks. 

For a bit of a history here, we ran the engine numeroius times before leaving today.  We ran it in gear, in the slip and nothing bad happened.   Sure the shaft packing dripped a little more than I preffered,  but nothing major.  So everything was going well enroute to the Laurel Street mooring field.  I noticed a lot of water filling up the overflow bottle.  This fun fact means there is a hole in our heat exchanger. 

When there is a hole in the heat exchanger salt water and fresh water mix in the engine.  Niki was driving and doing a fine job as I walked around checking this and that.  Standing at the taff rail I noticed some steam mixed with our exhaust.

So down below I went to check our engine again.  Guess what I saw?  I'll tell you, I saw the end of a 1 1/4 inch oil cooler pumping sea water into our boat.  I bolted up to the helm and had Niki shut off the engine.  Now we were mid channel in the San Diego bay.

I tried to sort out a fix, but the only hose we had was some 1 1/2 inch hose that I'm using to re hose the cockpit drains.  It just wasn't going to work.  Our skiff was already in the water so I tied it off to our starboard quarter and away we wnt at 2.5 knots.

We called in Joe and Julie for some assistance onto our mooring.  The sketchy part, I felt was going to be stopping the boat.  We had a light tail wind and kept on trucking along at 1 knot well after I had shut the motor off in the skiff.

Now everything is calm and cool being in our element.   I guess I will have to attend to the engine sooner than later.

So here it is the journal lives again.  This time with new and improved stuff...... a new boat.......a baby on the way....... and the usual druggery.

Now that the battery system is in my next move was to replace the
breaker panel and start to rewire. Tearing wire and more rotten wire
is a blast. The new panel is in, I used 1/4 in ABS for a backing and
cut in an a/c source panel with four directive breakers, main/fridge,
aft, and fwd cabin. For the d/c I cut in a 13 and 8 position
directive with switches just inside of the engine room door one for
the engine and one for the house bank. It was just before dark that
I finished wiring the main cabin for lights and fans. I ran #8 to
each side of the aft main cabin. Then mounted a buss to distribute
power to the lights and fans. The lights are daisy chained, but the
fans run seperate. We have opted for three lights on either side of
the main cabin just as the boat came stock. The exception is that we
are getting rid of the flouresent lights. Not only do I spell
flouresent wrong, I think, but they give me a headache. So, the
center of the three are red/white LED and the fore and aft ones are
just white LED. Other than some painting in the engine room that is
where I left off.

Yesterday I pulled our shore power cord and ran the boat for 24 hours
with just our two flexable 35watt each panels(our 85watt rigid needs
a mount and regulator yet) and came out with a 33amp usage. That
included the fridge, minimal so far lights, water pump, and LPG
control. The other item that really burns our amps is the laptop and
or L.C.D T/V 4.6amps each. we run one or both for about 3 hours a day.