We made some more progress this week. It’s been hard to get super motivated since it’s been so hot. The portable AC unit barely keeps up with the heat outside so by late afternoon we get too hot and have to go home. Still, it’s better than not having it!
It’s been like a month since we bought the new exhaust tubing and it’s been sitting on the deck coiled up getting rained on and baking in the sun. This stuff is too expensive to do that, so we made it a priority to get it installed ASAP. Unfortunately this meant I had to first get the turbo cleaned, painted, and installed so that the exhaust elbow had something to bolt onto.
The designer of this engine thought it would be a fantastic idea to put the oil line underneath the turbo. Unless you have tiny hands there’s no way you’re going to get that line bolted on without a lot of fussing. I dropped the bolts into the bilge more than once. Lets just say it was a long morning.
Snaking this huge tubing through the boat and to the transom where it connects was a pain in the ass. It’s not very flexible at all, so it took both Jason and I to do it. We’re waiting on huge zip ties from Amazon, so we can’t actually secure the tubing to the boat yet, but it’s fully installed!
I also found a little time to keep working on my insulation in the engine room. I wanted to do a second layer, but the places where the old foam was glued on had gotten hard and crumbly. I decided to take a few precious square feet and just replace the insulation on the port side engine room door. I didn’t get it finished, but I did get the old glue and insulation removed!
While I was messing around with that, Jason installed our new ELCI breaker. It’s like a GFCI only it will protect people in the water around our boat from stray electrical current and getting electrocuted. We thought it would be a good idea since the people swimming around our boat would probably be us!
While digging around the boat I found a small blue tarp that I rigged up over the entry to the boat for a little bit of shade. This is functional, but not a permanent solution so we stopped by the storage shed to get the canvas that actually goes in that spot. (more on that later!) I also found a bag of other random canvas. This turned out to be a lot of small cut pieces for something the previous owner was making but didn’t finish. Maybe I can use the scraps for something… I don’t know what. The other thing I found was a huge tan canvas. I washed it because it smelled “boaty” and laid it out in the bedroom. Still not 100% sure what it’s for. It could be a shade that drapes over the boom, or just a generic rain cover for the off season.
Jason got a phone call and tells me that we have to hurry back to the apartment! UPS is going to be there with a delivery to sign… and it’s our batteries! Finally! We can really finish things up now! 🙂
These are lithium iron phosphate batteries and are 200 amp hours a piece! They’re so small and light compared to the old batteries. They take up half of the space and will be 600 usable amp hours of capacity! I can’t wait to get the entire system functional. It’s going to be very cool!