Again I have failed in updating my blog in a timely manor. Saying that I’ve been busy is kinda redundant at this point, regardless though here’s the much awaited update including more pictures including a few of the interior!
In case people are missing the title reference here’s the YouTube from “A Muppet Christmas Carol”
Anyways turns out that this heater is crazy efficient at creating, well, heat. I can actually make some rooms 30 Celcius easily. The cargo hold for instance can keep VERY warm with 1 heater (ok the HUGE one) going on low. Both Jeannie and myself can now effectively LAUGH in the face of cold! HA! HAAAAAA!!! Well until what happened yesterday happened. Thanks to a migraine we didn’t come back Sunday night from up north and we were only able to make it back yesterday thanks to Jeannie driving all the way down. When we got back after some shopping for some parts for the boat the Webasto was off (We knew this’d happen as a result of not enough fuel in the reserve tank since we didn’t top it off before we left on Sunday). When I went down to the engine room to rehook up the fuel pump (I had taken it off because I wanted to reseal it all and mount it on a shelf) I noticed that radiator fluid was everywhere, we had a new leak. Near the bottom of the entire system we have basically a T section so we can drain the entire system if we need to or want to, the fittings that were holding the valve in earlier were leaking a bit so I had tightened them, which apparently caused it to leak more. ALSO there was a leak in the connection between the Webasto and the T itself which was new. So while migrained up and now stoned on Tylenol 3 (I had taken it before I went to fix it thinking that I only had to top up the fuel, then I could take a nap) and with the help of Jeannie we drained the system, fixed the connections, recharged the system and got our heat back. FUN! But it wasn’t stressful really. Maybe I’m just now used to this sort of crisis happening or perhaps I’m just like “Meh. I can handle this biznitch!” So ya. THAT was yesterday.
Interior wise we’ve been busy doing stuff. I’ve literally worked in every section of the boat at some time or other over the past few months. We cut the last of the metal out of the bathroom for headroom in the shower area, I’ve started on the buttress on the port side (We have no other term for it really. Basically since a boats walls curve we built a section of wall straight out like a shelf 1/2 way down then from the front edge of the shelf we build straight to the floor. In the space behind there we can put things like electrical, plumbing, the heaters etc.), reorganized the bow area, worked on the galley a bit (we have a cabinet area in there that we just need to finish securing this week. Thanks Dad!), and electrical for all the fans etc.
The headache is coming back so I’ll leave you with these pictures.
The manifold system to distribute the heated glycol around the ship. Although this looks complicated it lets us isolate any problem areas really quickly and it’s saved my butt a few times already from wasting too much glycol.
This is where the Jackson Pollock art is on the wall there. The bottom pipe blew straight off and pumped it everywhere. Notice how it’s all double clamped now. The heater on the left is the big one and basically the only one we run on low to heat the cargo hold entirely.
The entrance to the head (bathroom). The toilet isn’t hooked up yet but it’ll have a push button computer beside it to operate the flushing. The grill there houses another small heater that we have yet to use at all. But it’s good to have spare heat right?
Inside the head. There’s the shower base and the toilet setup. We have to finish the ceiling first before this is hooked up but we wanted to see what the place would look like. The sink will be going where this photo was taken basically.
The ship straight across is Andy’s vessel one of our various neighbors living on board this winter as well.