Repairs and Upgrading

It’s taken Ten Years…

I have it all figured out – just in time for this information to be useless.

Port Townsend, WA 19-Feb-2026 – This is what I have learned about my Taylors Stove. (I still am not sure whether an apostrophe belongs between the r and the s. I think it might.)

In ten years†, I’ve learned what fuel to use, and no matter what fuel I use, the burner will clog up. But it can be recovered.

Electric Lights, Not City Lights, Part 2

The shunt with minimal wires on the load side, connected to the starting battery with one yellow wire and a small gray wire to get its voltage in the app. The 60A terminal fuse in under the red cap.

Point Hudson, 17-FEB-2026 – The last post should have been two parts. It ran on forever. I’m sorry. This is part two. We can mourn the fact that it is not part three. That would have made everything easier to read.

I finally finished the project by removing the wires from the shunt to a bus block. I also removed the mass of negative wires from the negative terminal to an existing bus block. Fusing is the reason why the positive was moved to a new block, and the negative was moved to an exisitng one.

Electric lights, not city lights

Port Townsend, 8-FEB-2026 – There is a lot to learn, and a lot of ways to learn it. I installed LiFePO4 batteries in Caro Babbo. The battery was $500. The electronics, another $500. A thousand all up, not bad.

Catsaway, Les Paul, Vesper, Les Paul once again Part 2

Port Townsend,WA, 17-JAN-2026 – I almost got what I wanted, and I can, if I want to use a phone app for anchor drag.

I have a number of things to talk about, the Predict Wind documentation and instructions along the way.

The lead-in diagram shows how the Raymarine NG is connected to the NMEA 2000 backbone. I’ll refer to NMEA 2000 as N2K.

Catsaway, Les Paul, Vesper, Les Paul once again

Port Townsend, WA, 13-JAN-2026 – As we add different electrical systems to Caro Babbo the number of WiFi networks we have climb. We find we have two sometimes three different WiFi networks running to access everything we want to use.

It looks like I ’ll have time for the optional stuff, meaning the 277 items on my to-do list.

Point Hudson Marina, Port Townsend, 22-FEB-2025 – Of course, much of what I work on doesn’t show on the to-do list because I didn’t know I needed to work on it, which brings us to the rudder post.

I don’t look at the rudder post much. It sits in a locker in the aft cabin, pretty much minding its own business. The last time I looked at it was in 2019 after we arrived in Hawaii. Someone in the Maxi 95 group correctly pointed out that the reason we had some water in our port locker was a leaking rudder post seal. I had sealed it the year before while on the hard in Boat Haven in Port Townsend. I don’t remember what I did to stop the leak. I expect I just tightened the nut which compressed the packing further.

Repair, don’t replace (when you can)

Point Hudson, WA 4-FEB-2025 – The steering wheel on Caro Babbo has wiggled since, perhaps since we got the boat. There were times when I thought it might come off in my hands, or worse still, Jennifer’s hands. I thought about how I could steer with the sails, or with a wrench attached to the rudder post. Eventually, I had an emergency tiller fabricated in Hawaii.

But, most of the time, I knew it was just a bushing that had worn through. I didn’t know what the inside of the steering mechanism looked like. Like most things, until you’ve seen one, which I hadn’t, you’re frightened by what might be there, or when taking it apart what might pop out never to be found or reassembled again.

Point Hudson: Caro Babbo is home for the winter

Port Townsend, WA, 15-OCT-2024 – We’re home, Jennifer, me, and Caro Babbo. Caro Babbo is floating higher on her waterline and will for the next bunch of months.

Floating Southward

Eagle Island, WA, 20-SEP-2024 – We’ve been floating southward with little urgency and less stress. Jennifer does not want to sail at all, but when there is wind I’ll set sail and we’ll sail for as long as it lasts.

Thirteen days in Seward

Puffin Cove, 60º 11’ N 148º 20 W, 27-JUN-2024 – Tom, who so nicely pulled our mast, told me not to rush things, I’ll be in Seward for three or more weeks and he hates guys who have a date in their mind and work hard to make it. Tom was very nice loaning his building jack to raise the deck, using his bucket truck to remove the mast, and bringing me the blank RectTube to build the new compression post, but I always have a date and I work hard to make my dates.