Let There Be LED Light

Two more weddings since the last post. Whew! Congrats to Melissa and Gene and Steve and Jess!!! No more weddings in the near future so back to boat work. Darn ;)

To see all the wedding pics click here October 2010 Weddings

Joey has almost finished putting together the jerry can wood - the project I started in May but never finished. The boards are on but we need to apply a weather proof coat.



Let us not forget that last weekend was also the sailboat show in Annapolissss!!! We went this year with a shopping list and stuck to it for the most part. We bought one thing not on the list which we needed anyways which was a boat hammock, I cant wait to figure that thing out/put it to use. Other than that we got some LED's so soon it will be up the mast again for Joey. We replaced the running, stern, and masthead/anchor lights. We also replaced the cabin lights in our v-berth and main cabin. And we got an LED utility light that will be used to light up the cockpit when needed. This will all keep our energy down when we are anchored at night and have no solar power.

Oh yeah, here is a picture of some dumpster food we found. YUM!!!! Actually it's not dumpster food it's 'freecycle' food.... less than 80 days til blast off so beggers can't be choosers right, especially since Joey just purchased the $250 wirie and though he begged for a discount they wouldn't give us one. Sigh. Our current internet is poor at best now so this will immediatly help. And it will allow us to continue blogging while we are cruising!

Tommorrow is Joeys birthday. We are gonna play some golf!

-Christine

Back into Gear

Last weekend we attended 2 weddings and watched football on sunday. Congrats to Jordan and Sarah, and Mike and Angie! It was good times seeing friends and family.




This week we kicked back into gear. Our solar panels and dinghy davits came in so now I just gotta mess about with them. I also took on the task of changing all our lights to LED. We will only have 170 watts of solar panel power so we need to keep our energy usage as low as possible. The LED lights use 1/10 of the energy as our regular lights. This task hasnt been as easy as I thought. The LED light fixtures are way expensive, and if I just want the bulb I am having trouble finding the correct replacement. So far we have replaced the running lights and stern light with LED bulbs.

I think I found a bulb replacement for our Perko masthead/anchor light but the salesmen said that I could see the exact bulb at the Annapolis Sailboat Show so we will wait till then to make sure it fits. Our next problem is the amount of light produced by cabin LEDs. We put a nice one above our stove that will help with cooking at night, but the don't seem bright enough to read by. LEDs are bright to look at but they don't really light up the room. So we will look around at the Boat Show for options. We still want to replace both lights in our V-berth, our one halogen bulb in the cabin, our 12'' florescent kitchen light, and figure out a good light for the cockpit. Any advice is always welcome!

We also purchased a new main halyard. This was on our to do list since we got the boat surveyed and we kept putting it off. Well now is the time to complete the important to dos! It wasn't so hard of a project. We just took the distance of our "luff" (distance from boom to the top of the mast) and tripled it to account for going up, coming down and running to the helm. West Marine let us borrow a piece of line to make sure it matched out current line and fit through the blocks. However, West Marine was charging $1.14 per foot and at Bacon they had the same line on sale for $.80 per foot. So we got a good deal there and bought 120 feet. To run the new line in I sewed the ends of the new and old line together and then just pulled it through. It was quite easy and looks great. We are gonna take the old halyard and use it to replace our 4th halyard that is even worse condition but is only used to lift boat items like the dinghy.

We are also having bilge problems. I spent 3 days cleaning it out and getting the bilge pump to run but even now it is kinda faulty. i have to wiggle the switch on and off to get the bilge to really catch and suck water. Since the bilge can really be worrisome, we will be replacing that pretty soon before we leave.



We have a big weekend ahead of us with a boaters party, another wedding, football at a friends house, and the Boat Show to attend! One other item we just discoved is the TheWirie. It is a internet antenae for cruisers. We are gonna keep an eye out for it at the boat show. Does anyone have any experience with it?

84 days left!

-Joey

Small Sailing World

So Sunday while we're out sailing, there is this other sailboat next to us and the operator starts talking to us for awhile (made possible by incredibly slow boat moving speed), and as they veer away from us, they say 'keep up the good work on the blog'. !!!!!

Wow! So someone saw us and recognized us. that is an amazing feeling!

Then today, I am at work. We have a long-time vendor here, who's brother has gone cruising, and the vendor has shown us his brothers blog in the past. So his brother comes in today and we start excitedly talking about cruising. He of course is adamant that we need all this expensive stuff, and I tell him frankly, that we're not buying all that stuff, we're cruising with little money. He then proceeds to tell me in the Bahama's he met another young couple like us, and they were getting married the next day and his twin girls got to be their flower girls... sound familiar?

http://chadlawie.blogspot.com/2009/02/we-got-married.html

It was hobo sailors wedding!

Then I was starstruck because as you may know, I love hobo sailor.

Small small crazy crazy world.

-Christine