Sailing on Tuesday, if the current plan holds up.

The boat is ready to sail.

• All of the blocks have been set up and the sheets have been rove through and are ready to use.
• I finally set up the little bungee hangers (similar to these) to keep all the sheet-tails tidy (including the leeboard hauls).
• I re-assembled the Shipmate kerosene cabin heater (but was unable to re-mount it to the bulkhead; that’s a two-person job).

My car developed a coolant leak on the way home, but I made it to work and was able to get a ride home from there.
Update: The coolant leak was just a hole in a hose where the fan was hitting it (!). New hose (that will be more carefully installed) is on the way.

The new battery seems to do the job; the engine fired right up and ran fine (as long as the the engine cover was open; it will still choke on its own exhaust unless the cover is open or the boat is underway).

We bent the mizzen, so now we just have to run the sheets and safety the shrouds and we could go sailing.

The electrical system becomes more familiar with every hour spent puzzling over it. The only thing that doesn’t want to work right now is the adorable little engine fan, and it’s neither legally required nor terribly likely to help much.

We may end up using the old battery again as well. It’s a pretty fancy one (much nicer than what I replaced it with).

And it is still August, so that makes this the best effort we’ve ever made.

Here is a rough but accurate diagram (click to enlarge) of the Centennial’s electrical system.

The A/B/Both/Off selector can connect or disconnect the two batteries (A, engine, and B, house) to the switch panel.

Set to ‘A’, the engine battery would run everything, and would also be the only battery connected (for charging) to either the solar panel or the trickle charger. Note: those two charging methods will not be used at the same time.

Set to ‘B’, the house battery would be the only battery available to charge or use as a power source.

Set to ‘Both’, everything in the diagram is connected to everything else.

The electrical output of the engine (from its alternator) is only connected to the to the A (engine) battery. That means that the alternator will only charge the B (house) battery when the A/B/Both/Off selector is set to ‘Both’.

Currently, the engine battery is dead, and the wires that connect it to the A/B/Both/Off selector are broken (due to corrosion at the battery). I’ll have to get a new battery (easy) and spend some time crawling around in the storage space under the cockpit seats (a drag) to get everything hooked up again.

The shore-power hookup, by the way, was put in by me, and quite cheaply. The single most expensive part was the yellow cable that runs from the boat to the outlet on the dock.

This is the battery that is supposed to start the engine. It had died and gotten so badly corroded that it has lost its connection to the boat’s charging system (the wires just corroded right through and separated).

It will need to be replaced before the engine will start, and it will need its connection the ‘house’ electrical system sorted out. (That will allow us to charge it at the dock, and it will allow the engine to charge the ‘house’ battery.) This would all be dead easy, except that it is located in a pretty tight spot. Rats.

Centennial is back in the water. July 3rd, 2011. We’re all kinda tired, but the thing is done.

I didn’t see any problems from the big storm that came through the midwest recently. The cockpit tent was perhaps loosened a teensy bit, but that was it.

Being on the road right now meant that I didn’t have the key to the cabin in my pocket (I stow them in my computer bag when I’m away from home), so I couldn’t look around inside. I figure things are OK, though.

Ah, well. We didn’t get the boat in the water at all this year. After the way 2009 went, where we were free pretty much every weekend (and more than a few weekdays) to go down and work on her, we figured we’d have plenty of time to go sailing.

Our schedules didn’t work out that way this year, which is, I guess, a good thing (for our careers). Next year there will be actual planning.

I had thought that villains had taken two of the steering wheel handles, but we found the missing ones today in the footwell. Somebody unscrewed them, but at least they left them there for us.

There’s a red wing blackbird nest under the pilot’s seat, and, man was momma bird pissed at us today. Not sure how that one is going to work out.

We got the heater taken apart. It may just need some cleaning, but I have a replacement burner for it if that’s what it ends up needing.

We’ll be in the water early July if the current schedule holds up. Here’s hoping…

The mice had gotten to the Loy’s lovely mainsail cover, but they had some extra Sunbrella™ that matched them stashed away. I was able to sew some patches on with my trusty Kenmore 1946 Zig-Zag sewing machine. Not exactly beautiful, but it does the trick.

We got down to the marina on Sunday and were able to button the Centennial up for the winter.

The Loys had provided a nice tent sort of thing to cover the cockpit. It should keep snow and rain from causing too much trouble for us.

Barely pictured in the right of the above image is the catamaran “Recess” out of Ann Arbor (go figure). My parents figure that she’s probably owned by one of their teaching colleagues. She’s about the same length as Centennial, but over twenty feet wide (by my guess). Kind of intimidating, really.

It has a GPS receiver and runs SeaClear GPS chartplotter software well enough. I could easily add a USB DVD reader and some speakers, and that would turn it into the Centennial’s entertainment center as well.

We took the boat out of the water last Sunday, which went well. My parents came out to help, which was their first chance to see her in person. I think they liked her (they certainly said all sorts of nice things).

We only managed to take her out once all year, but that was OK. The real accomplishment was to get everything set up and tested in anticipation of lots of sailing next year (I now know that there is nothing important that needs to be fixed before next season, which is a great feeling).

That said, there is a lot I’d like to accomplish:

• Replace the tragic deck hatch with a small dog-house. This would allow one to stand up after using the biffy to pull one’s trousers up without banging one’s head.

The existing hatch was a very simply constructed one that was, I’m guessing, intended as a place-holder back in 1980. It was never replaced. A dog-house would also make a nice little seat on the deck while underway.

• Replace the porta-potty with a Lavac head — and plumb it in the Great Lakes-legal manner.

This would lower the head seat-height to a normal level, and the Lavac commodes have a reputation for not being smelly (they seal up completely when closed).

• Fix the Shipmate heater. Sadly, it clogged up the last time we used it (and, sadly, we needed it that night). Should be do-able.

Centennial spent all of its prior life on a mooring, which made shore power hook-ups semi-irrelevant. Slips (with power included) are remarkably affordable and convenient at Meinke’s on Lake Erie, so I added shore power. Pretty cheaply, I must add.

The inlet you see above was less than $60 from eBay, and the inside bits were all off-the-shelf home equipment that I got cheap at Stadium Hardware.

The main trick I pulled was to use a 20 amp GFCI outlet on the inside (the cord and the plug are rated for 30 amps, so I was conservative). Them are the outlets you see in people’s bathrooms, the ones with a circuit breaker built-in, which makes sense on a boat. I got the one with an LED light that indicates if the breaker has tripped, which should be nice.

We also got the shrouds (the wires that support the masts) all correctly tensioned and ‘safetied’ (meaning: I put clips on them so they don’t unwind themselves) as well.

The cord will arrive this week.

Jo and I went down to Meinke’s on Friday night. We checked out my wiring job (all the lights work correctly!) and sacked out on board.

This morning (Saturday) we got up, made breakfast, and motored out onto Lake Erie and hoisted sail. We were able to do all the things we tried. Neat-O!

We sailed up wind, we tacked back and forth on a beat, we sailed on a broad reach, we dropped the main and sailed some more, we put the main back up (with a reef), we sailed down wind (wing-and-wing, even, for a bit), we found the marina again, and we were able to dock! With a minimum of either drama or comedy, even.

There is a steep learning curve, what as the Centennial is not a member of the Tupperware™ Fleet, but we’re good enough at it already to, oh, escape from zombies anyway.

Good times. In my circle, we observe ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’ a little differently.

More pics here (from my camera) and here (Jo’s iPhone pics).

Click the above if you want to show Centennial Pride at the Stop&Shop. Or wherever it is that you buy your necessities. All profits go to CafePress.

We got the last sail — the main — on today, and we took a crack at hooking up the mast-head lights (won’t know if that worked until we are down there in the dark, but it feels correct).

Sailing next weekend? Looks like it.

There was light wind — and that right on the Centennial’s nose — so I was able to get the Mizzen put on (‘bent’) today. The lazy-jacks seemed to work OK, and the sail cover was easy to get on.

Don’t know if I’ll be sailing on Saturday, but we’re darn close.