I intend to try to blog a little more often from now on – maybe not every day, but as often as I feel I got time for it. So bare with me!

Today I’ve begun tagging all the cables in the boat, just to keep me sane. And to bring order to the chaos, I guess. I’m happy to announce that all connections in the switch board is all tagged, and if they are long cables I also tagged them as they exit the locker in the starboard aft cabin. I really don’t like trying to figure out which cable goes where. I find joy in doing things like this. To bring order to chaos and to gain knowledge as I do it.

What was fixed today?

Another thing that I find great joy in is fixing things. So today I fixed two things, both battery related.

The first, and best one, is the battery monitor. It has been wonky and, well, misbehaved. It has shown the house banks voltage correctly, but it wouldn’t show the current (just a silly -0.1A all the time) and how many Ah (ampere hours) that I’ve been using. And the starter battery (for the engine) was not possible to see the voltage of either. It’s been irritating, but not enough for me to really care. I saw that the batteries had some charge, which is the most important, and that the charger pushed some more juice into them. Today I had enough, checked the wiring and… LOL! No wonder it was bonkers. Redid the wiring so that it was actually measuring the current AND connected it to the starter battery. Et Voilà! Now it works! So now I can track my power use, sweet!

The second thing that I fixed was also a voltmeter, even if this was the old analog one. I measured the battery voltages, and for the house bank it was correct (as correct as an analog dial can get any way – a smidge above 12V) but for the starter battery it was weirdly off. Since I’ve been tracking cables all day, so I started to follow it behind the walls (the cut-out I did under the chart table is just sooo awesome! It’s like night and day – no even better! – it was impossible to do this before I made my little inspection hatch) and found that it was connected… to a fuse in a fuse block used for the house bank. *face palm* Okay, good thing I’m checking things. Moved the cable to the correct terminal on the starter battery and now the correct values are shown, yay!

What broke today?

Well, nothing really. There is enough things broken already, haha! Anyway, after I had tagged all the cables in the switch panel and everything they were connected to I got a bit curious about that fuse block I mentioned earlier. It is obviously not made for marine environments, since I already have snapped off two screwheads earlier (actually, one just fell off as I touched the cable!). Two cables was still attached to it, and I checked one, it was going towards the bow, passing the switch panel all together, and I have decided to leave them alone for now. Mainly because they are under the seating area in the salon and it has to be dismantled to be able to follow the cables. It is not a fun undertaking.

The other cable though went aft and I dove into the teeny weeny hole into the back of the boat (no, no diving here, really. It would kill me. The edges are razor sharp and my head has the scars to prove it, damn it hurts to hit it!). What i found was the extractor fan for the engine bay. “Nice”, I thought, “this is good, I want to make sure it works properly so that the engine won’t overheat”. The weird part was though that there was no switch for it on the positive lead. Why would anyone put a switch on the negative lead? Odd. Anyway, I followed the black lead back to… not a switch. It was connected directly to a bus bar! What that means is that whenever the boat is used, the fan would run. 24/7. What a waste! I understand why the fan looked like it did. The motor axis had worn through and eventually the motor died. So I ordered a new one. This one will be connected so that it will be controlled by the engine room temperature.

So, that is what I managed to do today. Not bad really, it takes time to stick my head in behind the switch panel and figure out all the cabling, and then following it all the way to where the power is used. Now it’s time to make some food and continue to learn Spanish. Oh, yes, one more thing that I found broken today: the light to the compass. Have to order a new one.

Over and out!