What's in her name?

What's in her name (Salish Aire)?

Salish
from her new home the Salish Sea

Aire as in a melody of song.

Salish + Aire = The melody of the Salish Sea.

Salish Sea:
In the late 1700's Captain George Vancouver wandered around the waters of what are now known as British Columbia, Canada and Washington State, USA. He did the usual 1700's explorer thing and put names he chose on everything he saw. The names stuck and are recognized and used to this day.

New lines were added to Captain Vancouver's charts in 1872 (after a near war with Great Britain over a pig) which made waters on one side of the line Canadian and those on the other side of the line American.

It wasn't until 1988 (officiated in 2009) that someone finally realized that fish and various critters, (to say nothing of the water itself) were never involved in the boundary treaties and really ignored them completely. (This is best illustrated by the problems that Homeland Security has with Canadian Canada Geese and American Canadian Geese - it seems they refuse to carry passports and have been known to poop on the head of any border patrol person who tries to challenge their right to cross the border when and where they choose!) In reality the waters from Olympia to the well up the East side of Vancouver Island are pretty much one ecosystem.

The Coast Salish are the indigenous peoples who live in southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington state along the Salish Sea and share a common linguistic and cultural origin. The Salish Sea is named in honor of the earliest recorded peoples who plied her waters and learned to live in harmony with her.


Sunday, March 8, 2015

Helm Chair Installed

Our new helm chair is installed (and the old Captain's Plank removed).  This link will take you to the full story (Helm Chair ).

Friday, March 6, 2015

Batteries and The Boat Dog

Jarvis our dog apparently got tired of waiting for me to get his story written.  Please go to the learnings  section and you can read his version of life on the boat.

While the NorthEast is having record snowfall, here we are enjoying an early spring after one of the warmest winters on record.  We may get up to see the daffodil and tulip fields this weekend long before they are due to bloom for the annual tulip festival.  We did go back and visit our Daughter, Son in Law and Grandkids in Ontario and were delighted (well Et our grandson we took from Portland and I anyway, Clarice was a bit less enthusiastic) to experience a Midwest winter for a few days complete with a tour of a maple syrup forest/farm on a horse drawn sleigh through the falling snow.

To take advantage of the lovely weather we took Salish Aire on a 3 day run over the weekend and circumnavigated Whidbey Island.  Our moorage costs were zero as we were able to use yacht club reciprocal privileges (there isn't a lot of competition for the slips this time of year) and our diesel furnace for heat so we didn't need shore power. 

Having conquered the furnace gremlins, I have decided to take on getting an understanding of our DC systems.  Salish Aire came to us with solar panels, 2 heavy duty charger/inverters, and 2 heavy battery banks along with a plethora of instrumentation.  Being a true "I want to understand it so I can fix it person", it has been hard to ignore the system but I wanted to be able to focus without excessive distractions when I took on this task.  Since the system seems to function to the level of our present needs, we agreed to just accept that the black boxes are working up to now.

The first step has involved reading manuals then running down and looking at the equipment and then back to the manuals to make sure I have understood what I have read and know what it applies to.  Currently I'm trying to isolate the forward inverter and battery bank until I can understand them fully and make sure that the batteries are not beyond their natural life.  The front bank consists of a pair of 12 V Rolls brand batteries.  They are huge, industrial, and highly rated but don't seem to be accepting a full charge.  The first step in wet-cell batteryology in confirming the status in this case is to desulfate the batteries by charging them to a much higher voltage than normal - the goal of this is to drive the hardened sulfates from the surface of the lead plates and back into solution so that the lead under the surface is able to participate in the electricity making reactions.  We hope to run this process over the weekend.

Our other excitement is that our helm chair is finished and our son is bringing it up from Portland tonight - more on that later.