Any excuse for water time

It was a beautiful afternoon so working on the boat went to the top of the project list. The sailboat survived our winter sailing in pretty good shape. The repair list was a short one. A loose hatch cover needed the hinges remounted. While messing around in the compartments I decided to mount the replacement charge controller in a better spot. Eventually I'd like to move the main battery and all associated wiring. There's no hurry as everything is working right now.

I was concerned that the battery might not be getting a full charge from the solar panel. Either that or there was a voltage drop between the battery and motor. The motor has a built in charge meter on the control head. All that was visible was the red LEDs that indicated low charge. I was worried until my shadow happened to fall on the meter. There are green LEDs that just aren't very visible in bright sunlight. Once they were shaded by my hand it was easy to see it was at a full charge.

Since it was such a beautiful day I had to take the boat out for a sail. (as if that wasn't going to happen) It brought back memories. When I was a teenager one of my buddies had a nice powerboat. We did some crazy things, like diving from the boat with a big mushroom anchor in our hands to see how far down we could get. Only once did I made it all the way to the bottom. It seemed like a long long way back up through cold and dark waters. Today the depth gage on my boat showed that we were in about 50 feet of water. We are lucky we didn't kill ourselves back then.

-Sixbears