Why is it?
Why is it that with every boat project getting to 90% complete is fairly easy and straightforward and the last 10% ALWAYS involves something stuck, something new broken, or you are missing a critical part and have to run to the marine store or hardware store? That was certainly our theme for the nearly 3 weeks we were with Shearwater. EVERY project was almost completed before some small unforeseen obstacle completely stopped the project.
Take a look at the swanky new galley and head faucets.
Aren’t they sweet? And a gi-normous improvement over the original faucets.
See? For whatever reason manufacturers love to put crappy faucets on their boats. I don’t know why.
Anyway, this project started out very smoothly. The old faucets came off without a hitch and while it would have been nice if the plumbing in the boat already had ½” male NPT fittings that would screw directly into the new faucet hoses I knew that wasn’t going to happen, so I was satisfied there was just bare hose that I could shove a hose barb to NPT adapter into. Piece of cake! And off to Home Depot we went to collect the needed adapters. Smartly, we examined both faucets and noticed that one of the hoses on the head faucet actually had a male connector. No problem. 3 males and 1 female adapter to go please. Back on the boat the galley faucet goes on without argument. Project 234A complete! Onto to project 234B in the head. Pull the parts out of the box. Hey! Why are there 3 hoses? Oh schizzle! The head faucet has a shower hose too. Damn. And the odd-ball hose with the male connector connects to the female connector on the shower hose. Oh, and there is second hose with the female connector right here. Shit. Back to Home Depot. Return 1 female adapter, buy a 4th male adapter. Project complete… almost. Let’s put the fitting on the wall to hold the shower head. Hmmm… Why is it so loose? The shower head just flops around inside the holder. WTF? These parts are meant to go together. They are the same brand and everything. Crap. Forget it. Let’s go do 90% of some other project…
And so we did. We installed 3 new Mastervolt AGM batteries. One is a little Group 24 12-volt that will serve only as an emergency backup starting battery. I hope to never actually use this battery, but if something goes wrong and we kill or drain the house batteries this little baby will be right there waiting to kick the diesel starter into action. I’m counting on you little battery. DON’T let me down. Please?
The house batteries are two 400 amp-hour 6-volt monsters. Each battery weighs 120 pounds. And here I pat myself on the back for spending the last 5 months at the little gym at the pool lifting weights. Seriously. No, seriously. I saw this coming. Really.
So imagine a normal “big” battery or a Group 27 for you know it alls. Now imagine that same battery only twice as tall. That’s what each of our 6-volt batteries looks like. Now, I dare you to imagine where two of those batteries are going to fit. Nope, not there. Not there either. Or there, or there. Running out of places aren’t you? Yeah, me too. And right here is the little secret, super special thing about AGM batteries that saves the day. Because they are completely sealed they don’t have to sit upright. They can me mounted in any direction, except upside down, and I suspect that limitation is only because some numchuck would set the batteries on the posts and do some damage to either the batteries or whatever they were resting on. Anyway, with the ability to lay down these super tall batteries our problem is quickly solved. We put them right where the old batteries were. Hah! Didn’t think of that one did you? Under the aft half of the port settee. A great place in terms of weight placement and with these batteries there is a lot of weight to place. Nice and low and near the center of the boat. Ballast I’ll call it and nicely offset by the 37 gallon water tank under the starboard settee (1 gallon = 8.34 pounds, so 309 pounds). In fact, I’ll go one better and put approximately 100 feet of anchor chain weighing in at a svelte 110 pounds just in front of the batteries. From under the port-side settee weighing in at a solid 350 pounds we have Batteries and Chain. On the starboard-side weighing in at a fluid 309 pounds we have Water… I like it. Please, totally ignore the fact that the water tank only weighs that much when it is full and it is only full until we start using it. Also ignore the fact that under the port settee is where we were going to put the second water tank. Pffft. Don’t bother me with the details. We’ll figure that one out later. Right after we figure out how to hold up the shower head so we can quickly drain the not-very-big water tank.
The 90% factor? Yes, this one too. The helpful guy at the marine store (I don’t remember which, we went to several) sold us 2/0 awg terminal connectors four our 2 awg wire. No bueno. So the jumper between the two 6-volts is currently an electrically safe workaround compromising the two old jumpers connected together, because of course, each of the old jumpers was approximately 1.5″ too short for the new configuration. You have to laugh or else you would cry. I laughed a lot.
On the bright side all of the AlpenGlow cabin lights went on easy-peasy. Well, we didn’t have exactly the right size connectors (again), so like all those before them, this project is 90% complete and somedaywe’ll get around to putting on the correct size connectors along with heat shrink tubing to minimize the effects of corrosion. And when we pulled down the headliner to replace the lights, at least we discovered that we need to replace the rusting stainless steel tube that holds the sprit pole extender line…
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