Solar Vents

You know how concerned I am about you’all thinkin’ Jim is just laying around…not enjoying his retirement…well, don’t worry, he’s not!

He spent two days working on the central air system. Cleaned all the ducts and replaced the flex duct. Should be a lot more efficient now.

The solar vents arrived yesterday. Today Jim got to drill holes in the boat.

We put one solar vent in the top. When the boat is closed up we get a lot of mold on the cockpit roof.

It’s located near the front., not quite over the stairway into the galley. We can leave the forward hatch board out,(odd shaped one) lay a screen over it, and lock the rear hatch board into place.This should create a chimney effect with the head port open. The solar vent will be in a position to pull the air on up thru the roof.

The second solar vent went into the sleeper berth.

Not only will it ventilate when we are gone, but will help when we have to keep the ports closed because of rain…Summer in FL means afternoon thunderstorms.

Now that we have the solar vents in we can clean up and start packing the food stuffs etc and launch on Mon., weather permitting.

So…is anyone else out there having as much fun with their boat as we are?

I hope my next post will be filled with gator shots and lots of “Woo hoos !!”..we’re having too much fun!

New Ignition Boxes for Model T

Didn’t want you to think Jim is just sitting around doing nothing. He got his new ignition boxes for the Model T today.

  Got them installed and took it for a test ride.

Ran very good. Now we can travel a bit farther for a show or two.

We have 2 solar vents for the boat on order…should be here Wed. After we get them installed we’ll be heading for the river.

5.23.09 It’s back together

Jim picked up the new injector tips. All installed. We just need to figure out when we want to launch and do a test run.

We’ve had a lot of rain and flooding, so it is going to depend on the St Johns River’s situation. If there is a flooding problem they usually ask you to stay off so as not to create wakes that could cause a homeowner some damage. We’ll be checking that situation out and working from there.

My sister gave us a folding bike. Jim has been getting that back into shape. Rode it a couple of miles and it is pretty comfortable. She has another one that we can have so we’ll be in good shape on a cruise, if we need to go for groceries, etc.

I’ve been chasing the little critters around with a camera for the other blog: http://wildlifearoundus.blogspot.com/

Windows are open…temperature is about 86 inside…nice breeze but it looks like it’s clouding up for another go. It was a good day to do some transplanting…nature is going to water for me.

Figured I should at least put 1 picture of the boat in.

engine update 5.20.09

Jim followed all the suggestions the fuel pump rebuilder gave him and nothing worked. When we reminded them he had bought the injector tips before they rebuilt the fuel pump..and there had been rust and water in the fuel pump..they said to bring the injectors in for a recheck. They were leaking where they joined the injectors and were not spraying right, or too much, or not at all or something, so they are going to re do them...Let's hope that is the problem.

We'll have them back in a few days. Then Jim will have to reassemble everything again and we'll hook up the water and see if she runs. We'll let you know, when we know.

Hope everyone is have fun with their boats...in or out of the water.

Friday….we are hauling out.

I got up early and rowed the dog in for a walk. I had my camera with me. As soon as I got back in the dingy I noticed a disturbance in the lily pads. A gator had caught a fish and was trying to swallow it by tossing his head in the air.

If you enlarge the picture you can just see the fish’s tail sticking out of the side of his mouth.

I took this last night. A beautiful sky after a long hard afternoon rain.  It turned out beautiful.

We had no problems either launching or loading. Guess we’re getting that part down pretty well. As soon as we have the smoking problem fixed we’ll be back on the water for another trial run.

Thursday…

Well…we had a good day, yesterday, with the improvement in the amount of smoke. It wasn’t bad..but I had to open my mouth and suggest another little “tweak” might make it go away completely… Boy was I ever wrong. We never did get the good combination back. 

We spent the night at G 109. We both watched a couple of gators fight. At least that’s what it looked like. One raised himself up out of the water and bellowed. About 4 more showed up and the next thing we knew…two of them were sure churning up a bunch of water. I grabbed the camera but only got a lot of splashing. Here are 3 of them. You can see the one on the L is still posturing.

On the L of the picture you can see the tail  and then to the R is the head of the same alligator. Pretty good sized. You can just see the back of another on the R and in the center there is another head. He’s a bit smaller. 

Makes you want to go right out and jump on a pair of water skis…..huuuummmmmm

Wednesday a.m. moonlight cruise

We had gone to bed early and I woke up around 1:30 a.m. Decided to make coffee and read for awhile. Jim woke up a bit later and we decided to head S. The moon was bright and the sky fairly clear. A nice night for a cruise. We rolled up the side curtains for better visibility. We had seen the ends of some logs on the outer edges of the river and wanted to be sure we stayed in the middle.

Around 6 a.m. we passed Ron and Karen’s boat and got a call on the cell a few minutes later. They were anchored on the side of the river  only a few miles from G 109 so we continued on down.  After a few hours sleep. Jim made another adjustment. MUCH less smoke, so we cruised back up to visit for awhile. 

After watching all the gators cruising around…you wouldn’t think anyone would want to water ski unless they could stay up.