Dog Days of August
August 15, 2016
August was a interesting month with a rash of repairs needing to be made both on the boat and at home. After this past spring's clean-up of the boat, Moyia and I decided to leave our two heat pumps in "De-humidifier Mode" over the summer to help keep the teak interior looking good (that and allows us to open all our drawers trouble free). After visiting Alex for a couple of days in Nashville we tooled up to Green Turtle Bay for a quick getaway. Once on board we set the thermostats to "Cool" but only the aft cabin unit cooled. I began to start troubleshooting the salon unit as it was morning and would only get hotter.
I won't say anything negative about the Hunter Marine engineers about the placement of all the creature comfort features as our 420 is an awesome liveaboard. I will say it can be hard to get to some areas of the boat for regular maintenance and, as now, to troubleshoot a problem. I found the unit was good but the controls were not working as they should. I jumped out the controls and got the cool air blowing on a manual basis.
Here's the control board for the Passport II as it sits on the unit (cover removed). Looks very well made and sealed against moisture---USA made capacitor is a plus as well as I haven't had good experiences with Chinese made capacitors over the years.
Here is the same board in hand.
I had tested some of the board while it was in the unit and powered up. I was going to further test the board but found the problem fairly readily when I turned it over. Note the burned out solder joint.
I did test the compressor relay that this joint is part of and it was good. I hadn't moved my solder station on board yet so I had to take the board home to clean it up and re-solder the joint.
Used a harder solder. Ready for the next trip to reinstall!
We had a nearby lightning strike which took out my treasured plasma television, our upstairs Nest thermostat and one of the rate-of-rise detectors for our alarm system.
The Nest was the easiest and by far the most urgent one in need of a fix---no AC upstairs in August is bad. Ran down to Lowe's and pick one up pronto!
Next up was my television. For some reason known only to the designers of the circuit board, it is very susceptible to lightning strikes as dozens of others had complained in the online forums. Mine only had the power connection which made it even more confusing. I finally found a used board on E-bay from a guy in Michigan who parted out old electronics. Replaced it and had it up and running in a week.
I did manage to finish the upper deck that started off as a simple replace a single, sagging joist and ended up replacing the entire deck, piece by piece.
Here's what's left of the old deck in a compact, convenient form. Literally just soggy chunks and pieces
I did break the screen on my iPhone when my level fell on it. I also stepped on and broke a blade on the fan that was hanging under the upper deck in the screened porch.
The boat's water heater started leaking. Fortunately, they still make the exact model. I would say it's a drop-in replacement but I have to take half the salon apart to get to the old one.
The raccoons raided my cantaloupe and melon patch. Pretty much ate anything that was close to ripe.
My trusty desk chair crumpled after many years of service.
It was a tough month!
Hard to complain though when you can wake up to this :)
