Bright Yellow and Green

Our bright yellow dinghy is now a plug-in hybrid!  While it lacks the sophisticated control system of a modern hybrid automobile (switching from electric to fossil fuel motors involves physically swapping the engines from the back of the dinghy), we feel it is a giant step forward.  The new electric motor starts with simple twist of the throttle instead of repeated pulls of a recoil starter cord.  Our new electric motor, a Torqeedo 401L Travel, is super quiet and can move the dinghy as fast as our 2 horse power gas outboard.  At slightly slower speeds (3.5 knots instead of 4 knots), the electric motor will run for a couple of hours.  Since most of our dinghy trips are short trips from the boat to a nearby beach or dinghy dock, we will use the small electric motor quite often.  We will keep the gas motor on hand for longer trips or rougher conditions.

In addition, we replaced the pieces of the dinghy’s sailing rig that Gray dropped overboard last year.  Between the sailing rig and the electric motor, our dinghy should be quite green!

Cindy and Gray

Manatees!

Up close with a curious manatee

There are people who wonder what’s so great about manatees.

Here’s the answer: everything!

Living on Cindy’s Island, we have had a few manatee encounters.  Typically, we hear a “whoosh” as a manatee surfaces and exhales nearby.  We might be able to follow it in the water for a while as a dull gray hump that stays close to the surface.  Once we found one munching on the slime growing around the boat’s waterline.  But they go on their way quickly and don’t take notice of the observers on the surface world.  Even though we might only see one for a few seconds, it’s usually the highlight of our day (especially for Cindy).

So, when we found out that it was possible to swim with manatees every winter in Crystal River, Florida, we jumped at the chance.  We scheduled a tour with Fun 2 Dive Scuba, who only take small groups of 4 or less snorkelers for all-day excursions.  Crystal River is on the other side of the state from Titusville, and since the tour started early in the morning, we drove over the day before and spent the night in a motel.  Our host at Fun 2 Dive got in a fender bender on the way to meet us the next day, but quickly set us up to go on a private tour with Captain Wayne White.  Fun 2 Dive was great about the situation and we had a great day with our substitute tour guide.

Manatee playing with the anchor rode. Is that a smile?

Unless you are very close, a manatee seen from the surface generally looks like a mossy hump-shaped rock just breaking the water’s surface.  But seen from underwater, they transform into delightful characters.  Since they prefer warm, shallow water, the best way to see them is to snorkel.  Scuba diving creates bubbles that actually scare them away.

The first thing we noticed when we got to the snorkeling spot was the sheer number of manatees.  They love it there.  There are areas marked off as sanctuary where you are not allowed to swim, but there are almost too many animals to fit in the sanctuary area.  There were probably a hundred of them huddled together snoozing in the warm spring.   The water was quite shallow, probably only 3-4 feet deep.  We found that the manatees avoid interacting with people standing in the water.  But if you snorkel, they lose their inhibitions entirely.  As they wake up and wander out of the sanctuary, they will come up to you and investigate.  They like to be petted and scratched (that moss must get itchy).  We could observe them “walking” on the sandy bottom with their flippers.  Up close, you could look directly at their faces and notice all kinds of little details.  Their eyes do not have lids, but close in from all sides to a single center point.  They make little high-pitched squeaks once in a while, but mostly are quiet.  They only have molars, with no front teeth.  Their snouts are flexible sort of like short elephant trunks.  While we had planned on taking lots of great underwater pictures, we actually found it difficult to get far enough away from them to get them in the frame!

Manatee "walking" with his fins on the sandy bottom.

Sadly, most of the manatees were not just mossy, but had visible scars and deformities.  They are just too innocent and curious to coexist with modern man.  A curious manatee will sometimes surface when it hears the whir of an outboard motor, with predictable results.  Happily, we saw many mother and child pairs.  We also saw several animals with tracking tags that indicated that they had been previously rescued.

Since we took the trip to Crystal River, we have had a few local manatee encounters.  Gray had the best one, when he was working at the dock by himself.  He was hosing out the dinghy, which was suspended over the water on its davits.  As the water drained out the open drainhole, he noticed a manatee rolled onto its back positioned exactly so the fresh water onto its mouth.  The manatee slurped up each drop as it landed on its face.  Good at slurping – another awesome manatee feature.

Happy travels,

Cindy and Gray

Up close with a curious manatee

Manatee playing with the anchor rode. Is that a smile?

Manatee chewing on the anchor rode

Manatee “walking” with his fins on the sandy bottom.

Cindy pets a manatee

Small Victories

Table Pedestal Jack with Antenna, Stereo, and USB (for NMEA)

V-berth Stereo and Antenna Jack

TriMetric Battery Monitor

In the midst of the bigger, ongoing projects (and the copious distractions of land based living), Gray got a couple of the small tasks completed.

The first is wiring in the pedestal of the salon dining table.  We often watch movies on a laptop in the salon, but the laptop speakers are not loud enough to hear over the drone of the fans.  We had been running a line to the input on the stereo, but stringing cords around an already crowded space was pretty annoying.  Gray ran some wires to the dining table pedestal to clear up some of the strung cords.  He also ordered a custom made face plate to hold the following jacks:  a pair of composite audio connections that run to the stereo, a coaxial cable jack that runs to the TV antenna/cable and a USB jack that goes to a NMEA concentrator.

The NMEA concentrator takes data streams from our navigation instruments and combines (concentrates) them into a single stream with a USB connection.  This allows us to use a laptop for navigation and as an instrument repeater.  The concentrator also sends data and instructions from the laptop (via USB) to the NMEA network.

The next wiring project was a faceplate in the V-berth that contains stereo audio inputs and a coaxial TV antenna/cable jack.  Also in the V-berth are a couple of switches, one to switch between the TV antenna and dock side cable and another to switch between the two sets of stereo inputs.  This will allow us to watch TV in either the salon or the V-berth and place a laptop or iPod in the salon or V-berth to play music/movie audio through the stereo.

The final small completed small wiring project is the TriMetric Battery Monitor.  This unit is installed in the side of the galley facing the electrical panel.  It monitors the battery voltage and tracks the amperage flowing in and out of the battery bank.  The unit is not yet fully programmed – that will require a new battery charger capable of equalizing our new batteries (another project on the list).  For now, it is useful for monitoring the battery state and current usage.  Attaching the leads to the shunt on the battery box was an exercise in aggravation with many small parts disappearing into the black hole under the battery box.  Theoretically, the box could be moved to retrieve them, but that would involve moving hundreds of pounds of batteries, disconnecting many wires and removing several bolts.  In practice, we think of it as a black hole.

Gray and Cindy