Back in about 1991 we bought a lot on Hat Island. In 1993 we build a cabin from the foundation up and then eventually sold it to help pay for our daughter's college education.
The cabin was used a LOT by its new owner for a number of years and then tragedy struck his family and he walked away from the building for about 10 years. We watched the bushes grow up around it and the moss cover the roof to a thickness of about 4 inches (literally with ferns growing in the moss). It was hard to watch the first house that Clarice and I had build on our own fall into such disrepair and we kept wondering if it would survive until it was sold. A couple of months ago we learned it had a new owner who is is planning to live in it full time. While we were on the island I went up and introduced myself and asked if the structure had held up. He pointed to some minor sheet rock damage from a water leak around the skylight but other than that indicated the only issue was that the insulation under the floor had been torn up by critters. I was pretty pleased that we had built the place well. As I was leaving he ran over and pulled out an old piece of driftwood he had found during his cleanup and presented it to me since it had our name carved into it as it was the original sign we had posted to mark our property back in the beginning.
One of our projects prior to going to the island was to check our forward battery bank and clean the vent from our washer/dryer. Both of these projects require that I remove a wall panel from inside of the guest berth / tool-work room. Its not hard to get the panel off, I just get tired of removing about 20 screws that hold it up and then working in the rather cramped space between the bed and the wall that is opened up. The batteries checked out fine. The vent clearly needed to be cleaned as it is quite a long run and the lint was fairly built up in the pipe. The first challenge was retrieving the brush I use which had come unscrewed from the 12' long fiberglass shaft someplace inside of the ducting. It was eventually recovered and the whole thing put together including driving the 20 screws back into the panel.
While we are in our slip at the marina we connect directly to the shore spigot and pressurize our water system from the city system. Once we reached Hat Island we needed to turn on our fresh water pump and draw from our on-board tanks. The pump ran fine but it sounded like we were inside of a big bass drum every time the diaphragm pump caused a pulse in the piping (about 120 pulses a minute). Thinking back I realized that I had moved the water supply lines to the washer / dryer about 1/2 inch to make it easier to clamp the dryer vent onto the machine. After removing the hated 20 screws again we were able to demonstrate that the noise was caused by the supply hose banging against the back of the washer / dryer machine and it was making a great drum head. Some foam pipe insulation fixed the problem and then we once again screwed in the 20 (well really 16 but it seems like a lot more) evil screws.
I see that back in April I wrote about our frustration with getting a reverse view camera to work correctly. I decided that part of my problem was likely that I was being too cheap in my choice of cameras so we bought a new one that specifically calls out being for marine use. We mounted it on the mast spreader and re-ran the wires down the mast and over the ceiling of the pilot house and plugged it in. Initially it worked much better then our interference gremlin showed up again. We finally traced at least the primary gremlin to his home in the forward (we have 2) power inverter / charger and the found a way to manage the problem. Coming back from the trip was the first time I have been able to direct myself backing into our slip (usually Clarice drives by directing me on how to maneuver through a headset). It is nice to have another option to see what is going on behind us rather than using radar or sticking our head out the door and to have another option for docking.
