Cloth and copper

Lee cloths on sail. Also seen is the small but intense future forepeak vacuum.

Part of the preparation to move back aboard is in the attempt to make living aboard in actual sea conditions safer. That's why Mrs. Alchemy is sewing up lee cloths for our respective bunks. There's nothing dramatically difficult about this: you cut them, hem them and put in grommets for the light line to secure them overhead. They keep sleepers from rolling out of their berths in a seaway when the boat might heel enough to impart motion.

This was donated from the Genco Marine loft. A small boat owner never picked it up years ago and it was sitting in a bag, unloved and unused. Well, now it will (after the plague recedes) get to go on a nice trip snuggling sailors.

Mordor on the Lake.

The dark and stormy nature of the day didn't deter me, although snow down the forepeak hatch was a little chilly. I completed (for now) the paralleling of the two Group 27 batteries dedicated for the windlass on deck. They are now charging as one bigger battery, and it will therefore be easier to keep them healthier longer.

Wire of this gauge (2 ga.) is more than is strictly necessary for battery interconnects, but I have a fair bit of it and the rest of the forepeak windlass and battery bank setup is comprised of it. I can't abide line loss, I guess.

As previously discussed, paralleling similar batteries is pretty straightforward: link pos to pos and neg to neg with same-sized "patch cords", and then put the charging wires on the positive of one battery and the negative of the other.  Both batteries are pretty new and should charge similarly over time and taking care to keep the electrolyte monitored.

Not marine-grade, but a nice addition to the forepeak in that if I ever have a problem with inverting the main bank, I can run a power tool forward if I wish.

My late sister did not know much about sailing or the gear involved, but she did give us some thoughtful presents over the years, and I've finally installed this one. It's a 2000W inverter meant to allow a car (presumably with its engine running) to supply inverted AC power to, say, a small, intense vacuum cleaner or other tool or string of LED lights when a regular outlet is not available. I'm under no illusions that this is marine-grade gear; for one, it's a modified sine wave inverter and probably not super-efficient, like, for instance, our Victron inverter for the main bank. But it's comparatively sheltered and can use the windlass bank in a pinch to do quick jobs when we're on the hook and I don't care to fire up one of the Hondas. Besides, with three AC outlets and a USB slot, it's "nice to have".