Captain's Blog

  TRAVEL DAY 33 - Mile Hammock Bay to Morehead City April 13, 2023 5.30 Hours/40.1 Miles     We left the anchorage early in an attempt to catch the Onslow Beach Bridge opening. We were too late, we saw the open bridge, radioed & asked if they would wait for us. "Capt'n, I'll open again at 8:30". Oh well. We eased up to the bridge just as the boat behind us called and asked what the current height was "Looks like 14 foot". Cool, we dropped the top and antennas and slid under by 2'.   Morehead City     We got another perfect day and all was good. I was fighting a small amount of water that kept showing up in the bilge for the past couple of days. My engine was telling me something and I had yet to figure it out. I had Beth at the helm while I went to the engine room to see if I could decipher where the drip was coming from. Beth practices her boat handling     When we reached Morehead City Transient Dock, I radioed the dockmaster but didn't incl...

     Vacuum Gauge      As our time left for departure is coming to an end, so is the time for any last-minute projects. There really isn't much more I can do. But one very simple project but pretty important has to do with one of the most likely engine failure issues. Fuel, more specifically, fuel filtering.      I blogged about this in  The Importance of Clean Fuel  when I was going over the engine early on. I now wanted to take it one step further. With a single engine, clean fuel is even more important. If an engine is going to fail, you can be sure it will happen at the most inopportune time, like in rough seas or during docking. I wanted one more level of security.      You cannot always tell if a fuel filter is ready to change just by looking at it or by the amount of time it has been installed. The surest way is with a vacuum gauge. Installing this gauge should pay for itself by not wasting money replacing filt...

  Blue Sea System 9001E Battery Switch Pau Hana never had a battery switch for the main engine. It just seems prudent to have one in case for instance the starter stuck and the power needed to be turned off. Another issue I had was that I had no way to charge the generator battery. I did run a wire to the battery charger but that only works if the battery charger is running.  My solution was to install a 3 position switch for the engine and move the generator battery next to the Engine battery and wire that to the switch as well. The new switch would do 4 things. Allow me to shut off the engine battery Start the engine from either battery Combine the batteries for starting Charge the generator battery  First I made a Starboard bracket for the battery switch that fastened to an upright next to the existing battery.  New Battery Switch & Backer                             Next I installed 2 new G...

  Battery Charger & Separator What you think you have might not be what you actually have. That's what a friend of mine told me when discussing the setup in my boat...and he was right. The Camano was built with a Battery Separator. Instead of a mechanical battery switch, the separator is tied to the engine battery and the house battery bank.  The unit does 2 things. 1. Assist in engine starting:  When the engine starter is activated, the separator compares the voltage of both battery banks. If the start/engine battery is lower than the house battery bank, the Battery Separator will engage allowing the house battery to "aid" in starting. 2. Protect the starting system: The Battery Separator monitors the battery system to determine if the batteries are being charged. When the engine or house batteries reach 13-13.5 volts, indicating that charging is taking place, the Battery Separator will engage, joining the two battery banks. If the drain on the charging system by ei...

 Pau Hana came with a very robust windlass, Royal by Lofrans. It is a manual windlass, uses no power, works flawlessly & has a warping drum. It is a very nice unit and pretty pricey. Here's the problem...It's a lot of dang work to pull the anchor even a short distance! To add to that, it is slow to retrieve, which can be a problem when you are boating single handed or need to get the "hook" up in a hurry. It is however, mostly a problem for my deckhand (wife) as she is the one usually doing the anchor dropping/retrieving. I just couldn't let her suffer anymore. I bit the bullet & purchased a Lewmar Pro-Series 1000  from West Marine as I have a Port Supply account which usually gives me a pretty good discount. In anticipation of receiving the windlass, I downloaded the manual & ran the power wires. I planned to use the Negative terminal at the Bow Thruster (located under the forward berth) since it has a wire run from the engine room using 2/0 AWG wire...