New Toys

The last few days have been great...and very productive as we got quite a few of the new "toys" installed. Thursday we finally purchased the new (bigger) anchor and it fits perfectly and doesn't hang up like the other one did. Friday Chris got the ham radio installed and Patty changed out the old, dorky lights for pretty new brass ones. Not only do they look 100% better but they produce enough light that we'll actually be able to read! While they were doing that I was running for parts pretty much all day. Saturday Chris, Patty & I got the solar panels mounted and they look quite beautiful if I do say so myself. Makes "Faith" look like a "real" cruising boat. They still need to be wired but that is on the schedule for this week. Yesterday Chris & Michael installed 4 brand new batteries in the engine room. They aren't wired yet but once they are, we'll have two more banks to run the house so will have enough juice for all sorts of toys. A bit of history on the battery situation. Chris had installed a new bilge pump a couple months ago that malfunctioned and it appeared it had fried the current house batteries. When researching to find new ones that would actually fit in the same space we came up with 4 Rolls batteries that were smaller, lighter and would actually give us an extra bank and more power so ordered them. In the meantime we re-filled the fluid in the current batteries and attempted to charge them. Surprisingly, they charged right up and have continued to hold the charge nicely so, rather than replace them, we decided to just add the 4 new ones. "The boys" pondered on the options regarding placement, etc and from what they tell me it all went together perfectly. It's a beautiful thing. We're on our way!