We can easily learn something new every day

I really do try to learn something new every day, and with a new boat and a bit of curiosity, it’s pretty easy to do. Today’s blog post came a bit later in the day as Rebecca and I decided to spend the morning doing a bit of interior cleanup and organization. Believe me, there’s still a lot of that to be done.

When, during our cleanup, I came across the little USB GPS “puck” that the previous owner left behind, I decided to give it one more try to see if I could make it work (I had tried unsuccessfully at some point in the past). This time I faired better. After finding out the manufacturer by looking at my system stats when the device was plugged in, I Googled the company to find their site’s address. Even though this particular product was not listed on it, I downloaded and installed their generic driver package for the Mac and voila, I could get Open CPN to recognize it, and show our boat’s position on the charts. Pretty cool. I’ve never really used the program before but I kept it running and visible on the nav table when we moved the boat a bit later. I may do this from now on.

Here’s another thing I learned the other day… the boat has both an intake and an exhaust blower for the engine room. I’ve written about blowers before and some commenters made mention of their value in keeping the engine temperature down, and supplying the engine with much needed fresh air. When we first were inspecting this boat I commented about the switches to the previous owner but what I thought he said was that he never used them. After we took delivery, I tried the switches myself and hearing no noise, assumed that the reason he didn’t use them was because they didn’t work (like the ones on that Leopard). As it turns out, they do work. They’re just so quiet that we can’t hear them when the engine is running. We now make it a point to run the blowers any time the engine or generator is operating, and also for a period of time after we shut them off. I’m sure it’ll make a positive difference in the engines’ efficiency.

Even though we set off from St. George’s today with plans to head to Prickly Bay where we’re scheduled to have some work done on Monday, after rounding Point Salines we changed our plan and decided to head to Clark’s Court Bay so that we’d be closer to the location of the dinghy concert which is scheduled for tomorrow. We dropped the hook in approx. 40′ of water just off Calivigny Island, the location of a super-luxury resort. While we won’t be exploring the island tonight, we will get to enjoy the same scenery as their guests, and sleep on a “water bed.”