Potential fire avoided!

It's been a little bit since I updated the blog and I know you are terribly curious what we are up to so.....

Last weekend we had a fun time on the boat. However, I noticed when I went to unplug our shore power chord from the boat that it was pretty darn hot to the touch. As soon as I unplugged I noticed the smell of burning rubber...NOT good! I looked at the end that plugs into the boat and I found it was turning black and beginning to melt:

Definitely not good! We have reworked most all the systems at this point but the shore power connection was area I had not really looked at. Originally, Living Light did not have air conditioning and nor did she have an electric cooktop (she was equipped with a propane galley). The previous owner had installed the 2 new HVAC units and as outlined earlier in my blog, we added the new cooktop when we redid the galley this winter. Add all of that to the electric hot water heater and you have a lot of power usage. Most boats the size of Living Light would be equipped with twin 30 amp shore power or possibly single 50 amp shore power. We simply were running too much off of a single 30 amp service. Not only that but we discovered that our main breaker on the boat was a 50 amp, not 30 amp, which it seems that is why we were never tripping breakers! Basically...a fire waiting to happen which is scary to say the least. As we looked through those issues it was also discovered that the wiring between the 8 KW generator and the panel was undersized so we had an issue there as well. Luckily none of these issues are something money can't fix, right? :)

This week the marina converted Living Light from single 30 amp shore power to a single 50 amp service. This will give us plenty of capacity and will eliminate the fire hazard. As well, we re-wired the service between the generator and the panel from 8 gauge to 6 gauge wire so that we can use the generator without concern. I am very grateful we discovered the issues before they were a real problem and Living Light is better for it. Bit by bit, she really is more like a new boat than old!

Here is a picture of what my Friday night looked like....running the wiring for the generator connection:

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Speaking of last weekend earlier, we finally got our teak/holly patterned carpet installed on the swim platform. The real teak platform has gaps between the boards that the kids and dog both kept getting their feet caught in. So to make it safer/easier for them we had Eddie Bell, "The Rug Pilot" make us up a custom carpet for the platform. It came out pretty nice I think:

I also could not resist taking some "glamor shots" of Living Light anchored out last weekend:

And last weekend was capped off with a beautiful sunset:

The big news for this week, beyond the major electrical work and changes, is that we moved our trawler to a new dock. We really liked our slip on Freedom Dock at Island Cove Marina but the roof was too low for our mast to fit under it by about 3 inches! Thus, every time we wanted to go out we had to lower and raise the mast...irritating and at times unsafe (i.e. if coming in at night I had to lower our light which is on the mast!). Our new slip is one dock over, has a great view out towards the main channel, and best of all...the roof is 2 feet taller so no more having to lower the mast! Our new dock neighbors are super nice (I've got a couple of boats listed for sale on the dock so I know some of them already). One slip has been partially filled in and tables and chairs set out for socializing. One of the liveaboards had just come back from a river cruise through Germany and the Czech Republic so they did a great slideshow of their trip so it made for a very fun evening talking about traveling with some new friends over a glass of wine.

ALSO!!! Since we converted Living Light to 50 amp shore power service, we now need to buy a 50 amp shore power chord! As my boating friends know, brand new ones are amazingly expensive (like $600-700!!) so if you have a used one laying around you don't need or know someone who does, email me via Anthony (at) BoatsAreFun (dot) com. The marina is loaning me one until I find one of my own so I need to get one in the next couple of weeks!!!