Strange dayz

Man have I been busy!

I’ve been a electrician, mechanic, plumbing,  mammajamma!

These days with the girls gone have been difficult. I’ve been quite introverted, not saying much to anyone, and uber-focused on my work.

My goal is to get the little Kubota charging twelve volt and running the fridge. I don’t know if I’ll get the fridge working but I’ll get close. I’ve had to make allot of modifications to the little motor and engineer a bunch of parts. I’ve spent a bunch of time at the welders and machine shop. I hope to get to the point I just need to hire a refrigeration guy to do some plumbing (I don’t know how to do the copper stuff), and vacuum down, dry, and charge the system. I’m missing a few parts (Solenoid & Thermostat), and will have to hunt around a bit. I’m getting the fuel system buttoned up, and the raw water system but I don’t like my water pump. A friend told me to look into Iwaki (spelling) twelve volt water pumps, their are supposed to do continuous duty for a very long time. I’d put in a belt driven impellor pump but man are they craze expensive.

My batteries need to be equalized badly. I tried going the desulfator route and I’m not convinced it works. My Electromaax three stage charger doesn’t equalize but I have another three stage regulator that is going on the kubota which should do the trick. I’m brining in the alternator to a shop so they can disconnect the internal regulator and get it working with the external one. I’m also re-plumbing all of my fuel lines on my main engine and putting in a polishing system. Not to mention engendering a piece that will fit between my small tiller pilot and the wind vane allowing us to have an autopilot at a very low amp draw.

I swapped out our old 1000 watt inverter with a 1800 watt pure sign wave inverter that a friend gave me before we left the states. It works great and I put the little control panel on the 110 board and it looks really nice.

I plan on going to the San Blas in about three weeks and plan to stay for a good six months. If I cant pull off getting the fridge going it will have to go on the back burner. Once it is all working I need to find a twelve volt clutch for my cat pump and build a water maker. After that systems will slow down for a while. Eventually I’m going to put in a propane water heater and an extra diesel heater for colder weather cruising.

I’m in Panama city for a few days taking advantage of all the great shops. I found good spar varnish at twenty bucks a gallon and good two-part polyurethane for fifty.

One piece of bad news. My beautiful dysfunctional iphone is dead. My friend had it repaired for me and it worked (for the most part for the last two weeks. It had some strange and random keyboard clicks but it turned off for the last time yesterday, I’m truly sad, it was such a wonderful tool and I will miss it dearly. I will get another one at some point.

I’m spending the night at my friend Roger’s house. He used to own and build Bristol Channel cutters, man they are great sailing boats. I spent more money then expected on this trip as i had to buy a new alternator, but the good news is I’m putting a new 94 amp alternator on my little kubota.

iPeace, love, and tools.

Man it takes allot of work to live like this!

Alex