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…