Shipyard shenanigans

We are anchored in a familiar spot in Manhasset Bay (map), near Port Washington, New York. It's been nearly a month since last I posted here; we've been busy, and now I'm going to try to catch the blog up. We're hunkered down for a big windstorm and trapped on the boat, so I finally have the time. As a reminder, we were westbound in the Sound and hoping to head for the yard that Monday, but we diverted here to Port Washington since the yard was not ready. We would end up staying a full week.

Vector sporting her new solar panels, nominally 1,180 watts. Easy to get pics at low tide.

We arrived to the harbor and had the hook down by 3:30 in our usual spot (map) and got settled in for a stay of unknown duration. We ended up putting more scope out the very next day, as the forecast called for more wind mid-week. While we don't mind biding our time like this in such a good anchorage, the lack of information from the yard about when they could take us was both frustrating and challenging.

Sunset over Manhasset Bay during our wait.

In order to make good use of the time by continuing to make progress on the solar project, I needed to order parts that I had originally intended to have delivered to us at the yard. I found an Amazon locker in Manhasset, a three and a half mile e-bike ride from the Port Washington town dock, and I stuck to items I could get on one-day delivery in case the yard called us to come in. Manhasset turns out to be a cute little town, but sadly there is no easy way for both of us to get there for, say, dinner.

Installing the solar controllers and breakers, I pre-wired this outside of the cabinet and then mounted it.

With what ended up being a full week on my hands, I got the solar controllers pre-wired and mounted, dressed the cables, and ran cabling to the battery compartment. I also pulled the signal wire for the new battery monitor, and while I had the ceiling open, pulled wire to relocate the buffer battery monitor and removed some abandoned heavy-gauge power cable.

And here's why I did the wiring outside first and mounted it as an assembly. It was a very tight squeeze.

The big project was changing out the shunt for the new meter. I had intended to do this at the yard while we had shore power, but the timing was right to just get it done, and I ran the generator an extra few hours instead. The whole project took close to five hours, wrestling with big cables and working in a tight space. I had to use my step bit to enlarge the holes in the lugs, as the Victron shunt uses larger terminals than the Xantrex model it replaced. I also had to fabricate a shim to get the new shunt to sit level.

I drilled this 6" hole, now finished with a Beckson plate, in the back of an upper cabinet to access the wall cavity to run the cables up to the flybridge. We can use this space as an auxiliary snack hole if needed (it's bigger than it looks in this photo).

With all the critical parts of the solar wiring in place, I turned my attention to an override relay for the water heater. This will allow us to run the water heater from the inverter at the push of a button in the pilothouse, for any days where we end up with excess solar power. Lately we've had some issues with the engine heating loop for the water heater, and this will also allow us to run it with excess alternator power underway.

Installing the shunt for the new SOC meter. White Cat-6 cable had to run downstairs, through the ceiling, and back up into the pilothouse.

Wrapping up the project list for that week was relocating the SOC meter for the 12-volt buffer battery, and adding a new circuit to get our low-battery alarm LED working with the new Victron SOC meter, which did not have a way to power the LED like the old Xantrex meter. Meter calibration issues had us waking Saturday morning to find the inverter off, our finely-tuned procedure having been disrupted by the changes. 

Helm panels opened up to wire in the new SOC meter, the relocated buffer battery meter, and the low battery alarm light.

We ended up having two visits during the course of the week. Tuesday we ran into long-time follower Ed Starboard, who was anchored near us on his sailboat Freedom. I was able to help him out with some copper crush washers for his fuel system, from an assortment box I bought for my own troubles some time back, and we met up for dinner at Amalfi's. We also connected with Roger Long and his partner Patsy aboard Gypsy Star, whom we've been just missing at numerous ports for a few years. Roger had his in-laws aboard, and we all went out for dinner at Finn McCools in town.

Enjoying a pint at Finn McCools. The stark white interior is not very pub-like, but the proprietors speak in a thick brogue and are definitely Irish.

We made the usual circuit of restaurants, including Amalfi's, Finn McCool's (despite the hokey name, run by genuine Irishmen), Pepe Rosso 24, Salvatore's, and Ayhan's Mediterranean Market (where we ended up when Palazzo Ristorante across the street was mysteriously closed ). We also availed ourselves of the Stop & Shop as well as the hardware store. When word came Friday that we "might" be able to head to the yard Monday, we had the pump-out boat visit us on Sunday.

Hauling out a landing craft. Yellow, blue, and red vessel at left is a new high-speed crew boat for offshore wind farms, with a hook on top for being lifted onto a mothership. This is the same crane that lifter our solar panels.

Monday morning the yard texted to say they were ready for us, and we weighed anchor just before lunch to have a favorable tide in Mamaroneck. We were tied to the dock (map) a little before 1 pm, and I picked up my Victron control unit that I had shipped to the yard, the final piece of hardware for the solar project apart from the panels themselves. We were a little surprised to find the sailboat Jolokia Expedition still on the next dock; those poor guys had arrived at the yard a year before we got painted for what was to be a six-month refit.

New Victron SOC meter (center) and buffer battery SOC meter (left) installed. I reused an existing, slightly larger, cutout for the latter, so I trimmed it with a gray outlet cover plate I had in my parts box. I will replace it with a black one at some point.

Arrival day turned out to be a bad allergy day for Louise, and she was in no shape to go out at dinner time, so I ended up reconnoitering town stag. I noted that both the Social Club and the "new" bagel joint, both of which were in progress on our first visit and newly opened last year, have already folded. The Venezuelan joint with the live music had also closed up shop. I picked up a nice Italian sandwich for us to share for dinner at the Pisano Brothers deli, and some cookies for desert at the Boiano Bakery next door before walking home.

The gouge where we were T-boned, already faired, sanded, and primered.

The yard started on the paint repairs first thing on Tuesday. Apart from the required waiting times and some weather, the painter worked straight through. He was able to get a good match on all the spots, and the place where the sailboat T-boned us in Hampton is invisible now unless you know exactly where to look.

Gap between two plates, revealed by a rust spot and discovered after grinding.

One of the rust spots tuned out to be not just a pinhole, but a place where a gap had opened up between two steel plates that meet at a corner, in the Portuguese Bridge area. So after all the other painting was already done, they had to grind that back to bare metal to see if the plates needed to be welded. In the end we decided on a filler system called Blue Seal, as welding might well have damaged things even further. The plates are mechanically joined by a welded-on angle which was still intact.

Last Saturday I took the train to NJ to visit my folks. I'm standing on track 3, the southbound side, but my train to Grand Central has been diverted to track 4, normally northbound. I did not have to hustle nearly as hard as the half dozen people who ignored the repeated announcements and were still on this side when the train arrived.

I always like Grand Central, and early on a Saturday morning it is blissfully quiet.

While we were still in Port Washington I had made a guestimate and put a stake in the sand for a rental truck to go get the solar panels. With painting well under control we stuck with our reserved date, and I hoofed it to Enterprise on Wednesday evening to get the full-size pickup truck, which turned out to be a high-end crew cab GMC Sierra. That meant a short bed, but the panels would fit with the gate down and only overhang it by an inch. It was a very comfortable truck, with Android Auto and all the bells and whistles, but we certainly did not need the six seats.

It is often said that Penn Station is dangerous. Unspoken: this is the reason. Just one of many shops selling loads of delicious carbs to hapless commuters. I resisted.

We did not offload the scooters on this visit, since the paint repairs had us docked starboard-side-to. So we took advantage of having wheels Wednesday night to drive to dinner at the Larchmont Tavern, one of our old stand-bys. On the way home we swung by the Stop & Shop to replenish a few items. We parked on the street in front of the yard for a quick getaway.

With time on my hands before my train to Metropark, I walked to the new Moynihan Train Hall in the courtyard of the historic post office. It's quite nice, with, of course, more carbs.

Thursday morning we were on the road by 7am. The yard opens at 6:30 and we wanted to be available first thing for any questions or issues. From Mamaroneck to Manhattan we were going with the commute and it was relatively slow going, but once we hit the George Washington Bridge we were against the commute and it was smooth sailing. Of course, Mr. femto-bladder here needed no fewer than three potty stops after our usual morning coffee, the second half of which we brought with us in the car.

The Greentech guys wrapping our measly two panels onto a skid for us. These are normally sold by the skid or the 20' container.

The solar panels were at Greentech Energy in Pennsauken, which is more or less a suburb of Philly. Before arriving we stopped at a nearby Lowe's to pick up two 4' x 8' sheets of OSB to protect the panels in the truck (I did not want to drive the whole way down with the gate open, or we would have picked them up the night before). And we stopped at a diner for brunch, not wanting to make a lunch stop with the panels in the truck. Between the traffic, the rest stops, brunch, and Lowe's, it was 11:30 by the time we were picking up panels.

Having them on a skid meant they could just forklift them into the back of our rental truck. We were expecting to have to load them, individually, ourselves.

I had expected them to just hand over naked panels, and we brought not only the OSB, but also a pair of moving blankets we bought on Amazon, lots of rope, and four ratchet straps. Much to my surprise they brought the two panels out on their own 8' long pallet, and offered to shrink-wrap the whole affair and forklift it into the truck for us. Perfect. We left one OSB on the truck bed to protect it, and put the other atop the panels before strapping it all down. The two 590-watt panels came to just $495, NJ tax included, and they were happy to take a credit card.

All loaded up, sandwiched between two sheets of OSB with some moving blankets, and ratchet-strapped in. Complete with two red long-load flags from the checkout at Lowes.

We had the truck until 5:30, and being halfway down NJ anyway, we made the 40-minute detour to check in on my folks on our way back. We only had time for a 20-minute visit, but it was good to see them and to see that all was OK there. We made it back to the shipyard by around 4:30, which gave us enough time to unwrap the panels and offload them one at a time (they are 75 lbs each) to drag them through the personnel gate, as the drive to the yard closes at 3. We had the truck fueled and back at Enterprise right on time and walked to dinner from there.

We had some spectacular sunsets from our deck in the boatyard.

With the panels actually in hand, the yard manager met with me the next week to turn my idea for the rack and my freehand sketch into something the yard could produce. We ended up agreeing on basically a full extra day of machining to make some beefy mounting stanchions, loosely patterned on the clamp-on mount that holds one of our VHF antennas to the same rail. That would be stronger, and less visually jarring, than the square tube with U-bolt arrangement I had envisioned. We also agreed on 1" square tubing for the rack, with a 3/16" wall.

Four custom-machined mounts, sitting top side down on the workbench.

By the time they had all the materials and enough availability in the machine shop it was the latter half of the week, and fabricating the rack itself got pushed into the next week. The had us drive the boat around and up to the bulkhead dock so they could use the whipline on the massive yard crane. The smaller rigging crane, a better choice for the job, had a boat in front of it, and also they would have had a tighter workspace to assemble the system.

Each October, Mamaroneck's main streets fill up with these scarecrows that I think are made each year by schoolchildren. I snapped this UCLA Bruin for our niece, a UCLA alum.

With the rack system committed to a specific part of the soft top frame, I spent much of last weekend drilling and tapping the hole and fishing the wiring through the soft top to just under the aft port panel mount. It took both of us to worry the four wires up and around the sharp bend where the upright meets the top rails. That let me trim the excess wiring so I could use those pieces to pre-wire the panel frame before they lowered it.

This stainless 1/2" npt pipe plug is the only evidence of the hour-long struggle to get the wires around the sharp corner from the near-vertical pipe to the horizontal one. I stuck with this size hole in case I needed to just mount the 1/2" cable gland here instead.

The crew had the rack completed and the panels bolted on by the end of the day Monday and they were ready to fly it in, but I needed to get all the wiring done first, so they set it on some yard stands with the crane still attached overnight. I spent a couple of hours getting the wiring in place. The stock pigtails on the port side panel both reached to where I planned to make my connections, but I had to make extension cables for the two wires from the starboard side panel.

The underside of the panels as I pre-wired them on the frame. These are bifacial panels, meaning the cells can get light from the bottom as well as the top. Not a lot of light will get in that way in our configuration, but that's just how the larger panels come now.

First thing Tuesday they hoisted the panels into position and got them bolted down. I spent the next two hours wearing a climbing harness and hanging off the starboard side of the flybridge to make and secure the four connections to the wires we had run over the weekend. As soon as I flipped all the switches on we started making power. We had turned the battery chargers off first thing in the morning so we could test. I will be writing up the entire solar project in a separate post.

Hoisting the assembly into place. The 9-ton whipline was overkill for ~220 lbs, but it sure made it easy.

With that done and the last of the paint touchup finally complete, we were pretty much done in the yard. At the very beginning of our visit I had asked the yard to procure us 400' of anchor chain; our is worn to the point where it is skipping in the chainwheel, even after four end-for-end swaps and a full regalvanizing in New Orleans. As of the end of Tuesday the supplier still had not committed delivery, and we agreed to spend one more day to see if they could find the errant chain and make it happen. When it still had not arrived by Thursday morning we agreed to wave it off; we will, instead, cut the last 50' or so of chain — the most badly worn section — off at our next dock stop, and just live with 350' of the stuff for a while.

I ordered this new Hammerlok connector in anticipation of new chain that never came. We will still use it when we shorten the chain we have.

In the nearly three weeks we were in the yard, as usual, I spent every day working on the boat. Unlike the yard guys, I did not take weekends off. Lots of that work related to the solar project, including installing the Victron Cerbo-GX gateway that lets us talk to the solar chargers and the new battery monitor, adding a separate monitor for the existing inverter/chargers, pulling wire as already mentioned, and finishing up wiring in the battery bay.

Best shot I could get of the connections, which I positioned to be protected from the weather by the panel itself. That's about a 2" gap I had to work inside.

As long as I was working on the batteries, and now with full-time shore power available, I cut the batteries out of the system and pulled them all out of the compartment, the first time they've been out in the full five years since I installed them. I needed to retrieve a screw I had dropped earlier in the project, and while I was in there I found another screw and a driver bit. While I was cleaning out the compartment, I top-balanced all six batteries with my benchtop power supply.

The part you see from the flybridge.

I have the three pairs of batteries paralleled with copper bus bars and attached at opposite corners, which is pretty balanced, but the center pair is ever so slightly out of balance with the other two when the current is high. So I "rotated" the six batteries, moving each battery one position clockwise when I reinstalled them, to even things out. I supposed I will do the same in another five years. Incidentally, this is the longest we've ever gone on a set of batteries, and while the capacity has dropped a tad, they still look brand new and are working well. I am very happy with the change to lithium, and we have already broken even on the price delta.

All six batteries out and getting top-balanced. They still look brand new. Blue tape indicates which position each battery held before removal.

Other projects included replacing the forward blinds in the pilothouse, replacing the hoses and barbs between the engine and the water heater with more correctly sized items (to help with the aforementioned problem), installing new downlights in the master stateroom, master head, and over the galley counter, relocating the anemometer and forward VHF antenna to make room for the solar panels, replacing a bad circuit breaker for the auxiliary charger, and changing the oil on the generator while we had used oil disposal readily available. I also installed Mint on Louise's Surface laptop, after her Win-10 installation bit the dust. It was a rather tiring three weeks.

Inside of battery compartment, under the settee, all cleaned up. I wrote up the original installation in the blog, here.

A couple of Saturdays ago I also went back down to see my folks, on a longer visit this time. My cousins we heading down from upstate NY by car, and so I took two trains and two subways to meet up with them in Metropark, NJ, about a two hour trip. The three of us spent a couple of hours helping them around the house and with bills and paperwork. They are in their 90s, and while generally healthy, they are definitely slowing down.

Our local pub, the Village Station. Always crowded when the Yankees are playing.

Mamaroneck is a very familiar place to us now, and we hit all of our favorite eateries. We were very happy to find Cindy still tending bar at the Village Station, and were delighted our friend Dave is back tending bar at Frankie & Fannuci's, as we had lamented his absence on our last visit. We hit each of those places three times, Pizza Gourmet just up Boston Post Road a couple of times, and Sal's Pizzeria a couple of times as well. We made it back to Herradura, Smoke House, Red Plum, and Mr. Chen's, all just as we remembered them. The diner right next door to the yard was good for a couple of brunches, and we made it down to what used to be a Sedona Tap House franchise, but has shed the brand and now goes by Barnstone. Similar menu, but they dropped from 50(!) tap handles down to just 10, and it's off our list since that was its main draw.

At the bar at F&F with the inimitable DJ Dave Ali.

The yard had our invoice ready Thursday morning, but the entire office staff then became wrapped up in getting ready for a launch party for the fancy crew boat they built for one of the offshore wind farm contractors. We agreed to come in on Friday morning to settle up. We got a couple of free beers as the big party wrapped up after closing time.

Battery bank all back together, with solar wiring connected.

When morning rolled around we hemmed and hawed about asking the yard if we could stay at the dock through the weekend. This storm just hitting now is a monster, and we'd have had lots of protection right where we were. On top of that, we'd still be able to get off the boat, as opposed to being trapped on board as we are now, and we'd have power to run the heaters — it's been cold here. But it had been nearly three weeks since we pumped out, in Port Washington, and the call we made to the East Norwalk Blue pump-out service never resulted in a visit in Mamaroneck. With the possibility the storm would not let us out until Tuesday morning, we did not want to risk running up against the limit of the tank.

Another sunset, this one over our new panels.

Instead we paid the bill and lingered at the dock until after lunch time, when we dropped lines and came right back here to Port Washington. We had the hook down a half hour before the pump-out boat finished for the day, and they were able to get to us just at closing time. We did not want to put it off, as the storm will make things challenging. In the evening we headed ashore for dinner at Bosphorous. We hit Target on the way home to stock up on provisions for our confinement.

This police boat, in for corrosion repairs, has gamma ray detectors on top, a common feature in the NYC area. They take the nuclear threat seriously here.

Yesterday was given over to cleaning everything up from the yard stay, and I actually got started on this post and uploading photos, but I ran out of day before I finished. We went ashore at dinner time for what is likely our final shoreside meal here, walking to Salvatore's Coal Fire Pizza. If the forecast holds. we'll be stuck on the boat until tomorrow night, and then Tuesday morning we will weigh anchor at 7:30 to have favorable tide to Manhattan.

My dad is 97 and no longer doing home repair. He keeps giving away tools to my cousins every visit. This Makita 6093 in mint condition is from the 80's; I remember it as the first cordless drill I owned, circa 1985. I think the pill bottle is full of bits.

One clue to the intensity of this storm is that the Coast Guard started making announcements yesterday that the drawbridges on the Harlem and Hackensack Rivers would be locked down from noon today until tomorrow morning. We are well-positioned in the anchorage and have extra chain out. So far the new solar mounts are doing great in winds up to 40 mph. It's been overcast, so we're only making a few watts of power.

I retired the last of the old bi-pin light fixtures, designed for halogen lamps, on this yard stay, leaving me with this box of drop-in replacement LEDs for those fixtures. All these different styles were from chasing the ever-elusive combination of brightness and color temperature to be an adequate replacement.

The North Atlantic will be miserable for at least another week, so we will enjoy the city and then start to look for our window to make Atlantic City. My next post here will likely be underway off the coast of NJ.