The boat work has been moving quickly this week. On Monday, we had breakfast with our new friend Ronnie Simpson. Ronnie has hordes of sailing experience, most of it single handed, and he's not afraid to share his experiences and extensive knowledge. Breakfast was a great learning experience for Carolyn and I. After we ate, the three of us headed back to the marina where Ronnie gave us some free advice on how to improve our reefing system.

Based on his recommendations, Carolyn and I removed the boom and walked it over to Rigworks. The boom is 11 feet long and weighs less than 30 pounds. We walked down the sidewalk with the boom tucked under our arms; me in front, Carolyn in back. We got some curious looks and even a "Nice boom" from a passing motorist. We're hoping to have three things addressed on the boom:

• Replace some frozen shivs at the aft end.
• Remove a frozen bolt at the gooseneck.
• Replace the reefing lines with new 5/16" line. Our previous lines were 3/8" and were a little too big for the channel in the end of the boom.

On Tuesday, we also took the sails to Ullman Sails for repairs. We're having a few things done to the sails.

• Convert the main to a loose foot. This will allow for easier reefing.
• Fix some chafing in the main and jib

On Wednesday, we hit the West Marine and the Shelter Island Marine Electronics. At West Marine, we picked up some new speakers. At Shelter Island Marine Electronics, we grabbed some new safety gear, an ACR EPIRB.

We bought speakers of the same make and model as our old ones so they would be a drop in replacement. It took less than 20 minutes to install them and they sound great. Ever since we bought the boat we've only had one working speaker. I replaced the stereo during our May boatwork sprint, but skipped the speakers because I figured we could do without. I was very wrong. The new stereo sounds much, much better with two working speakers. We've been listening to the World Series the last few nights and it sounds great!

The EPIRB is a simple gadget in principle. Pull the lever on top and help is on its way. In practice, it is much more complicated. The unit has a built in GPS, so when we activate the unit in a life-threatening situation, it sends our location and a unique code to a sattelite that alerts someone who might be able to help us. In the U.S. that "someone" is the Coast Guard. I'm not sure who it is in other parts of the world.

Also on Wednesday, our solar panels from Rob at Southbound Solar arrived in the mail. We're hoping to install those next week so we have a power source besides our engine's alternator.

I think we're still on track to leave on November 9th, but that could change depending on how quickly we get the boat put back together and provisioned.

This past week we were excited to welcome some visiting crew onto Crazy Love. My mom, my sister Michele, and our nephews Theo and Chaz took advantage of fall break to visit us during our stay in San Diego.

Theo could not believe we live on a boat so we had to show him around and of course take him out for a sail.

Theo liked the boat and the sailing but told me we should definitely do something about that smell (from the head). We do have a bit of plumbing to fix before we head to Mexico.

Theo I promise its on the list!!

Chaz took to the boat right away. Uncle Dave better watch out, competition for that Captain job.

It was a typical beautiful, sunny day on San Diego bay, light winds and since we could go during the week limited traffic.

Crazy Love with her crew made it back to the dock after a lovely sail (and most importantly no one took an unanticipated swim.)

We also had some fun at the world famous San Diego Zoo and Sea World.

It was a great family visit and a nice reprieve from the boat work. Now we get serious... just about 2 weeks till we head south!

We found the smoking gun!

Yesterday we replaced our batteries. Our old wet cells were installed by a previous owner. I've heard that replacing batteries is the first task for a new owner of a used boat, but Carolyn and I never did it. Before we head to Mexico, where we don't know if batteries are available, we wanted to make sure we had the good stuff installed. The hope was that replacing the batteries would fix our charging issues, but it didn't.

So, we dug a little deeper and found the issue:

The image above is of an 8 inch long wire connecting the alternator to the starter motor; the only thing holding it together is the insulation. I don't completely understand why the alternator's connection to the boat's electrical system is through the starter, but that's the way Yanmar says it should be done.

I replaced the previously red wire with a new green one (its the only color I had in 10ga). Rosie fired up the engine, revved it up to 2000 rpm and the battery monitor read 14.2 volts. Victory. Woohoo!

It was a great feeling to be able to solve our own electrical issues without having to hire professional help. On occasions like these, I am glad we have a small boat with simple systems. I did feel a little silly that I didn't find this problem when we were in Monterey, but the motto of our trip is "Everything works out the way it should."

In other news...On Monday evening, I ordered a Windpilot Pacific Light self steering gear. Peter, the proprietor of Windpilot, shipped the unit on Tuesday from Hamburg, Germany. It arrived Wednesday afternoon in San Diego on a British Airways flight. Today, Thursday, Carolyn and I cleared the unit through customs and picked up the very large package. I think its amazing I can order something from Europe at midnight in America on Monday and have it delivered to San Diego less than 48 hours later.

I'm hoping to get it installed in the next two weeks. I'll definitely have photos from the installation and maybe a video from the first sail.

S/V Crazy Love has two electrical panels: one on port, one on starboard. The starboard side panel was replaced by a previous owner and works well for us. It controls all the lights on the boat.

The port side panel controls all the instruments and radios on the boat including the depth sounder, stereo, VHF, and the all important tiller pilot. On the port side we also have a 12V cigarette lighter adapter to charge our phones and other gadgets. The panel on that side was original to the boat until I removed it last week. The old panel only had three circuit breakers, so several devices shared a single breaker (the stereo and VHF in particular). The old panel has been replaced with a brand new West Marine 6 circuit model.

In the photo at the top, the battery monitor is the square grey bit in the lower left of the photo. The idea behind the monitor is to tell us how much charge remains in the batteries. This is important to us for many of the same reasons that a cell phone user cares about how much charge is left in her batteries. For the boat batteries, it is even more important. The lead-acid batteries on a boat can't be drawn down to 0% charge like a phone battery without permanent damage. In the past, Carolyn and I have guessed about the state of charge. Since we're planning to get new batteries in the next few weeks, we want to know for sure how much charge is left so we don't destroy the batteries before our cruise is over.

While I was installing the battery monitor, I did a bunch of little things that hopefully will make the electrical system a little better.

• Rewired the tiller pilot with 14ga wire. Previously it was wired with 18ga. Hopefully this gives it a little more power for those big wave days.
• Paralled the batteries into a single larger bank and replaced the 1-2-both switch with a simple On-Off switch. This isn't ABYC approved, but we always had the battery selector switch in the Both position anyway.
• Replaced a handful of old cabling that was looking like it was falling apart. In particular, I replaced several negative battery cables, a few bonding system wires, and the wiring to both of the electrical panels.
• Added circuit protection in a few places where we've always needed it, but didn't have it. This is A Good Thing because it will prevent a fire in case of a short circuit.

Next on the upgrade list is solar panels and new batteries.

We've made it home safely! Carolyn and I arrived last Monday morning and have been hard at work on the boat ever since. We haven't seen most of our friends in a few months, so we've also spent quite a bit of time catching up.

We had planned to come home via Cat Harbor, but our charging issues re-appeared so we had to make another diversion. We tucked into King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach to charge up the batteries for the trip home. The entrance into King Harbor had a bunch of glow sticks floating in the water when we pulled in at 3am. We found out later that Saturday night at midnight was the opening of lobster season. Each of the glow sticks had a diver under it! Hope we didn't give anyone a haircut.

30 hours in Redondo Beach was more than enough time to charge the batteries and rest up for the 90 mile trip back to San Diego.

On Sunday morning we left Redondo Beach under power. When we got South to San Pedro (Long Beach) the wind picked up a little so we flew the spinnaker for a while. It was one of just a few times we've seen any beam reach winds on our trip (that's when the wind is hitting the boat at a 90 degree angle). The wind blew nicely until sunset and then it died completely. It was a miserable way to spend the evening, but we motored all night so we could get into San Diego at a decent hour on Monday.

The trip was unenventful - which is a good thing. We saw some big ships in the night, notably a cruise ship. In the morning, we saw a submarine leaving Ballast Point. When we see the Navy, it means we're nearly home!

We're staying at Half Moon Marina on Shelter Island and will be here until at least November 9th. After that we're hoping to be ready to head South to Mexico. There is a lot of work to do before we can leave. Here's just a sampling of the work we have to do:

1. Solve our charging issues
2. Install a battery monitor
3. Add a macerator so we can pump out at sea
4. Mexico paperwork for boat and crew including fishing licenses
5. Mexico Insurance
6. Figure out where we want to go!

That's not even 10% of the to-do list we've got. There are dozens of smaller tasks and more pop up every day. Fortunately we have access to everything we need on Shelter Island. I will try to keep the blog updated on the progress of our boat work.

Back to work for me.