13 Jun 19

I had a long, sleepless period of about 3 hours during the night, so I was not in the best mood upon awakening. We lazed around most of the morning and finally got underway about 11:45. It was a quick 8 mile motor across Puget Sound, and we tied up at Shilshole Bay Marina, in north Seattle, just after 13:10. After we got tied up, we did some more investigations into the nature of the issue with the engine alternator. We determined that with the engine running, the start battery is getting a full charge, but the house batteries are not receiving anything. This has apparently resulted from the electricians working on the boat to resolve an issue we had been having for a couple of years - i.e., if the instruments/electronics were on when the engine was started, they turned off for a couple of seconds and restarted. This was annoying, especially if one sailed up to the entry to a marina or small harbor, as it takes 3 or 4 minutes for the chart plotter to re-boot and warm up completely. Anyway, the techs found that the house and start batteries were connected by a (factory-installed?) jumper, so that the engine start current instantaneously dropped the voltage of all batteries below the cut-off voltage (~10.5 V) of the electronics. Removal of the jumper and separating batteries solved this problem. Unfortunately, as I have now discovered, that jumper was the only way by which current could be delivered to the house batteries. So, a resolution to the charging problem without compromising the electronics is required; more on this later. At least it does not appear that either the alternator or the batteries are bad. After this revelation, we went for a long walk along the Lake Washington canal to the Hiram Chittendam Locks and fish ladder. We watched a couple of boats lock through; this is not quite as interesting as doing it oneself, as we have experienced about 60 times in the past, but a lot less work. Then, we walked over to the fish ladder, where we saw 1 or 2 salmon (chinooks, I think) working their way upstream; it is a bit early in the season for the major salmon runs. Back to the boat for happy hour and dinner and early to bed.

47-40.803’N, 122-24.423’W; Log = 8.1, Sum (2019) = 156.4 N-m

14 Jun 19

We slept well last night. After breakfast, I applied a coat of much-needed varnish on the starboard toe-rail. After lunch, the Admiral caught an Uber to a local clinic to get her semi-annual booster shot for bone density; it took her nearly 2 months of begging and negotiating with her Houston GP and specialist and the Seattle clinic to get all the details sorted out so she can get this shot at exactly the 6-month-plus-1-day interval, and covered by insurance, without flying back to Houston. This is the only/primary reason we stopped back in Seattle on our way north on this particular date. I spent the afternoon on various boat chores that I have been deferring since we launched the boat 2 and 1/2 weeks ago. Having said that, we have spent every spare moment repairing refrigerators, AIS units, flushing out water tanks and chasing down electrical issues. Hopefully, most of this work is behind us, or at least not so concentrated time-wise. Well, I spoke too soon; serves me right. We have been searching for a leak in the forward fresh water tank for a couple of weeks now; you may recall that I repaired a pin-hole leak in the forward tank 3 or 4 years ago. The forward tank is a 100 gallon capacity tank consisting of a compartment between two bulkheads under the forward bunk, with a permanently glassed in lid. While filling the forward tank this afternoon, we were watching for the leak to present itself and it did, although it took a while to find it. Turns out, there is a ~2” hairline crack where the top of the tank meets the forward bulkhead; looks like a fatigue crack from the bulkhead working in head seas. It took so long to find it because the top of the tank is a big storage compartment under the bunk that is just full of stuff. So now, at some point in time in the future (we finally discovered this leak too late in the day to be able to finish a repair job, especially since we need to get going early tomorrow to make Anacortes by Sunday evening. The fun never stops. Dinner aboard and early to bed. At least the weather is fine. Long day ahead tomorrow.