Tool of the Day …. Propane Solinoid

Remember back when we moved onto Sanitas in the Salt Creek Marina? And neither the stove nor the refrigerator worked? And I almost had a meltdown, and jumped on a plane back to Colorado?

Well after about two weeks of the inability to make coffee, and only eating picnic food (or, breaking down and going out to eat with the excuse that our stove doesn’t work) we finally received the solinoid in the mail and fixed our stove.

One of the biggest dangers on a sail boat is fire (much more dangerous and more likely to occur than capsizing, believe it or not!) An electric solinoid acts as a shutoff valve between the propane tank located way back in the cockpit stern locker, and the stove that’s conveniently located in the galley. When you aren’t using the stove, you shut off the solinoid switch. However, ours was corroded so badly, that it was permanently closed, therefore no gas and no heat!

Mike did a great job of figuring out all of the electrical work, and getting the new solinoid in place and working like a champ. And I was able to resume my place in a civilized society, with access to hot food and fresh coffee. (Though we still used that same excuse to eat out once in a while!)

St Pete Municipal Marina

Hooray! We finally got ourselves over to the St Pete marina. Now, don’t get me wrong. Salt Creek Marina is fantastic for what it is (a DIY boatyard, with excellent haul-out facilities, skilled paining crew, and super helpful management) and I highly recommend it. But it is not a particularly desirable place to live long term. So once we got our fuel tank installed and we’re mobile again, we were excited to make the short trip to the marina to experience the live-aboard life and to meet other sailors. Since it was our first time powering up the engine and actually moving the boat, we prepped and reviewed charts and discussed our plans as if we were going to cross the Atlantic.

After a quick 5nm cruise, dock master Doug helped us tie up the the transient dock, and we were in our new home for the month from December 19th to January 20th. That makes it sound very easy …. but being Christmas… and in a popular tourist town … with a massive NYE festival coming up, we only could reserve a spot until Christmas Eve. Then each time our departure day grew near, we had to cross our fingers and hope for a cancellation that would allow us to stay longer. We ended up moving to a new slip four times in that month.

The live-aboard sailors got into the Christmas spirit with an adorable nautical themed tree!

I live on a 37-foot sailboat

On December 17th our temporary lease ran out and we officially moved onto the boat. Still in the boat yard, since our motor didn’t work. And we soon discovered that the stove didn’t work either, the fridge didn’t get cold, and the mattress was damp and smelly. I may have had a little bit of a meltdown….

Launch Day !

After 8 weeks in the boat yard, we finally put our little sailboat back in the water. Talk about nerve wracking to watch a huge crane pick her up, and carry her across the yard swaying and swinging. I still can’t believe we actually splashed on December 14th – the day we just sort of threw out there months earlier when we first ordered our new fuel tank. Launching was complicated by the fact that we were waaaaaayyyy back in the corner of the boat yard, and Salt Creek needed to move several other boats around in order to get to us. Quite a complicated game of Tetris.

Speaking of fuel tanks, we finally got the new one from the Pacific Seacraft factory! Of course, nothing is ever easy, and we didn’t actually get the fittings to connect the tank to the motor. And, the tank is shaped a little bit differently than the old one, so some of the old hoses and wires don’t stretch to the new position. So it ended up a good news / bad news situation. We are in the water, but can’t actually go anywhere quite yet!

Tool of the Day … Prop Anode

When metals are placed in a conductive liquid, such as salt water, they create a battery. Current flows between the metals in the process of electrolysis and essentially eats away at one of the metals. The goal is to set things up so that electrolysis eats away at a piece of metal that we don’t really need, and doesn’t destroy the prop or the hull or the motor. So sailboats have small pieces of zinc on the hull and on the prop that are designed to crumble and fall apart over time keeping the important bits intact. One of the last things we did before putting our boat back in the water was to replace these zincs or sacrificial anodes. While we were at it, we greased the prop as well.

See how crumbly the old zincs are?

And a nice clean new one!

Mike loves his grease gun.