MV Dirona travel digest for Isle of Gigha 2020

Working on some upgrades to our custom router software. We jokingly call working at our laptops like this "boxing", imagining what Spitfire must think about his owners staring at those black boxes for hours.

3/29/2020: Fenders

Adding a little more air to our Polyform F-8 fenders. As part of our third approach to fendering Dirona, we purchased two Polyform F-8 fenders for use in the highest load point at the center of the boat. They seem near-indestructible and have worked out super-well in conjunction with inflatable fenders.

3/29/2020: Making Water

This is the first time we can remember that we've made water at anchor since installing the 240V inverter (A More Flexible Power System for Dirona). We're never at an anchorage long enough that we need to make water, and instead always make water underway where the water is cleaner. But it's been a week since we last filled in Portland, so we need to fill the tanks.

We'll run for a bit more than a week until we get down to below half tank (less than 200 gallons), at which point we'll run the watermaker during generator cycles. It makes water at 25 gallons/hour, so the tank will be back to full (415 gallons) in a couple of days. Then we'll freshwater-flush the watermaker until we need it again.

3/30/2020: Fluke Pro3000F60

Using a Fluke Networks Pro3000F60 tone generator and probe, we traced several unused wire in the pilot house to the engine room in minutes. The picture at left shows the tone generator attached to a wire inside a pilot house locker. The probe at right makes the sound generated by the toner audible when the matching wire in the engine room is touched. Without the probe, that might have taken hours, and we'd probably never do it. Now we know we have several unused wires that we can use for control systems.

3/30/2020: Spitfire

When James is working in the engine room, Spitfire often goes down to join him. Here he is getting a little frantic for attention and has climbed up on top of the engine. James put his hands out to form a platform and Spitfire climbed over for a head butt.

3/30/2020: Generator Coolant

A minor generator coolant leak. We initially blamed the radiator cap, but later discovered a very small leak at the overflow bottle lid. We found an appropriate-sized silicon washer to seal it up and pressure-tested the assembly underwater to confirm it doesn't leak.

3/31/2020: Food-Preserving Bags

Containers of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries from Portland inside food-preserving bags with layers of paper towel. These kept well for over two weeks before we consumed them all.

Food-preserving bags keep fruit and vegetables fresh longer (we use Debbie Meyer and Evert-Fresh). The bags work by allowing the escape of ethylene gas, generated in the ripening process. The higher the concentration of ethylene gas around the produce, the faster it ripens. Moisture also is the enemy of extending produce life—to absorb any, we also put lots of paper towel inside the bags, or wrapped around items such as lettuce, spring onions and celery. We replace the paper towel frequently, daily in some cases, to keep the produce dry (we dry the damp towels and re-use them). Berries will last 2-3 weeks and lettuce 6-8 weeks using these methods.

A high-quality fridge with good humidity control has a huge impact too. We really noticed this between the marine refrigerator on our previous boat and the SubZero on Dirona. With the marine refrigerator we had, the green bag treatment doubled or tripled produce shelf life, depending on the product. With the Sub-Zero, the shelf life is quadrupled or more. When ordering Dirona, we'd considered replacing the SubZero with a more power-efficient unit that wouldn't have had such good humidity control, and are really glad we didn't (see On Refrigeration).

4/2/2020: Automatic Repair

We had a major power event this morning when the shorter member of the team, intending to switch the ship's service selector from the 240V inverter to the generator, accidentally switched the charger service selector from Auto to Gen while the generator was running and charging at full load. The ensuing power event caused a momentary outage on the 120V inverter, but as far as we know didn't damage any equipment.

Unfortunately, the UPS protecting our nav computer dropped the load and when we tried to bring it back up, the system just sat at the Lenovo splash screen. We cycled the power and it sat there again for many minutes, eventually showing a spinning donut, but still on the Lenovo splash screen. After several minutes, Windows gave up the boot process and went to the Automatic Repair screen shown here. We selected Repair and the system went to work for 15 minutes before coming back up. Whew. We do have a spare computer, but recovering to it would be a big job.

We've just replaced the UPS protecting the nav computer, so it's a little disappointing that it dropped the load like that. These are among the most unreliable components in high-scale data centers, so it's no surprise that consumer products are unreliable too. In this case, we later learned that the UPS wasn't at fault.

4/2/2020: 43 knots

The barometer is falling as the first of several big systems rolls across Scotland, bringing gusts to 45 knots through the anchorage. The winds are from the west, and we have good protection in that direction from the Isle of Gigha. (The missing section of the wind graph was caused by the nav computer outage .)

4/3/2020: Spare UPS

After the navigation computer struggled to recover for more than 15 minutes following a power fault, you'd think the last thing we'd want to do is put it through that again and risk it failing completely. But the computer should be able to deal with a power fault better than that, and if the UPS really can't carry the load, we'd rather find out now than in the middle of a passage. So we tested the UPS by unplugging the power and it again dropped the load. Fortunately, this time the nav computer booted up without issue.

The UPS is new, and has more capacity than the previous one, so it should have had no problem with this outage. Here we are testing our spare UPS to make sure it can carry a high load. It did, so we plugged the current UPS into this one and the spare was able to carry the full load from the navigation computer and peripherals. So possibly the current one is defective.

Further investigation of the issue yielded two problems: 1) when cleaning up some wiring, we'd inadvertently plugged the navigation computer gear into a surge-protection-only outlet and 2) the NMEA200 data source for the navigation computer was not on the UPS, so even if the computer had stayed up, it would have lost NMEA2000 access for the duration of the outage.

After correctly installing the nav computer and the NMEA2000 multiplexers on the UPS, the whole system is able to ride through power failures without problem. You never can be sure a backup system will work unless you test it.

4/3/2020: Spitfire

Spitfire has taken to sleeping in the tray above the engine whenever the door is opened.

4/3/2020: 14 Days

Celebrating fourteen days of good health with a a special dinner of Moroccan-Spiced Chicken Brochettes and a bottle of one of our favourite red wines, a Barolo. We last were near other people two weeks ago at the Lidl grocery store in Portland. We've been pretty careful for the last month, so didn't really expect a problem.

4/5/2020: Grapefruit

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.47'W

It's been 16 days since we last shopped, so we just finished all the berries. But we're far from out of fresh fruit. Today we're having grapefruit with breakfast.

4/5/2020: Sunrise

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.47'W

Beautiful pink sunrise from the anchorage at the Isle of Gigha.

4/5/2020: Windy

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.47'W

We're expecting winds up to 41 knots overnight in our anchorage (white circle at center of image) as a storm system passes through (click image for a larger view).

4/5/2020: Pulled Back

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.46'W

With strong winds from the southeast, we've been pulled back all the way on the anchor chain and carving a small arc in the chartplotter display. (We didn't have the chartplotter on for the initial few days we were here, otherwise the path would show a lot more randomness as we drifted around at anchor.)

4/6/2020: 56 knots

We did get our big winds overnight. We saw 56 knots around midnight, well above the 41 we were expecting. The barometer is now way down at 985 mbar compared to the extreme high of 1046 a week ago.

4/6/2020: Muffins

Blueberry muffins for breakfast using a new recipe. They turned out wonderfully.

4/6/2020: Synology

The brief 120V inverter outage also knocked over the Synology DiskStation that we use as a file server on Dirona. When it came back up, it requested a file system check. This took over 2 hours, but it eventually came back up and has been working well since. Losing the Synology would be a real pain, so we're considering putting it on a UPS.

4/6/2020: Local Support

We're enjoying our anchorage at the Isle of Gigha and really appreciate the locals who have offered assistance. A few days ago, several islanders came out to make sure we were ok and didn't need anything. Today another group came out to let us know that the local grocery store would deliver anything we needed to the dock for us. Wow, impressively helpful.

4/7/2020: Moonset

A bright, near-full moon setting over the Isle of Gigha this morning.

4/8/2020: Custom Router

While at Gigha, we've made a few upgrades to our custom network router. Before the upgrades, the software would automatically switch between the primary connection, secondary connection, high-speed satellite and unlimited channel satellite (V7hts), depending on availablity and other settings. Or we could explicity request a given connection.

You would think that having the system automatically switch between four different connectivity methods would be more than adequate. But we've now added support for a fifth. The way we are using the system right now, is we have three different cellular options, and two satellite options, for a total of five. But we could also have primary on a Wifi station, still support the three cellular providers and the two satellite providers, for a total of six.

4/8/2020: Happy Hour

With the temperature at 52F (11C) and a boost from our Heatstrip patio heater, it was warm enough to have Happy Hour outside in the cockpit.

4/9/2020: Bergen

Position: 60°23.81'N, 5°19.37'E

Zoetermeer, Netherlands resident Hans Nieuwenhuis, who has been watching our YouTube videos, travelled through Bergen in 2018 on a motorcycle trip to North Cape in Norway. In going through his pictures recently, he realized he had some with Dirona in Bergen and forwarded them our way. They brought back some great memories of our time in Bergen.

4/9/2020: UPS

Our recent power event knocked over the Synology DiskStation that we use as a file server on Dirona. The Synology recovered after a multi-hour checkdisk, but losing it would be a real pain, so we decided to put it on a UPS. Here James is pulling out the surge protector we have use for the Synology and the stereo (foreground, right) and another power strip and will replace both with an APC BE850M2 UPS.

4/9/2020: Vacuum Sealing

Vacuum sealing the flour we bought in Ramsgate will allow it too keep, moisture-free, for months if not years. We also store extra staples such as salt and sugar in vaccum-seal canisters to keep moisture out and extend their life.

4/10/2020: Rear Main Oil Seal

Towards the end of the day after doing laundry, we found a light oil film on the generator cover. There's not enough oil to even drip but there is a patch of oil residue. It appears to be blowing out of the generator end cooling fan. Of course, there is no oil anywhere near there so we looked for leaks above, but there are non. The rocker cover remains bright white with no oil leaks in the area. There are no external leaks. The only source of oil we can think of in that area is the main engine rear main oil seal.

We talked to "Lugger Bob" Bob Senter of Northern Lights, who said a good check was to remove the plastic plug shown above (normally houses a magnetic RPM sensor on engines so equipped). Here you can see there is a some oil collecting. Not enough to drip below the engine but enough to confirm the rear main oil seal is just starting to leak slightly. We checked for excess crank case pressure, which can force oil through the seal and, unfortunately, found none. So we know the seal is becoming less supple through heat, or is wearing. More likely the former. It's a very large job to replace this seal, where the entire generator section has to be removed from the engine and pulled back. We're in no rush to take that one on, but it's rare that seals get better on their own.

4/10/2020: Dyed Fuel

The two fuel filters in use at the left show the red-dyed fuel we picked up in Portland. The backup filter on the right shows non-red fuel that we purchased in Helgoland, Germany.

4/10/2020: Corryvreckan

Corryvreckan, the demonstrator boat for the Redbay Boats Stormforce RIBs 1250 model, arriving into Gigha. These boats are designed for extreme conditions—Better Moments, the adventure company we went snowmobiling with 600 miles from the North Pole in Svalbard, owns three Stormforce RIBs.

4/10/2020: First Smell

Spitfire getting a "first smell" of Scotland. He doesn't like wind and cold weather, so hasn't been at all interested in going outside since we arrived. Well, he's been interested and hangs by the door, but as soon as we open it, he rears back when the wind and temperature hit him. We joke that he's hoping to find the "Bahamas door". The winds are now calm and it's warmed up enough that he's been finally been eager to spend some time outside.

4/11/2020: Anchor Ball

The result of 56 knots of wind: the anchor ball we secure between a bow cleat and the bow flagstaff nearly parted. We replaced the line.

4/12/2020: Happy Easter

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.43'W

James with his haul from the annual Hamilton Easter Egg hunt. The Easter Bunny apparently ignored the lockdown and found us here in Scotland.

4/13/2020: Bread Machine

We bought a Zojirushi Home Bakery Mini while in California back in 2013. We weren't sure how available bread would be as we travelled around the world, and at certain stages of the trip we wanted to be able to devote more freezer space to meats. It was one of the top-rated breadmakers on Amazon, and has a small footprint that fits conveniently in our appliance garage behind the stove top.

The loaf quality is good, and the size is nice for two people as well. We haven't ended up using it much, as we've found good fresh bread readily available in most locations. But now that we plan to stay on board and not shop for weeks, we've brought it back into service.

4/13/2020: Ingredients

Our Zojirushi Home Bakery Mini loaded and ready for action.

4/13/2020: V7HS Traffic

Another feature of our custom router software that we have been working on at Gigha is improving our network traffic reporting. In doing so, we discovered traffic going to the V7hts high-speed channel while the V7 is off. We traced it down to two devices in the network constantly contacting the address 3.122.127.144.

The two devices contacting were the newest video cameras recently installed. Tracing down the other address was more difficult. We could see immediately that it was an Amazon Web Services (AWS) server in Europe, but since AWS rents out servers, we didn't know who operates it. Someone on-line had traced the lineage back to Reolink, which makes sense, given the devices that were contacting it.

It appears that the newest cameras shipped by Reolink come with a rather dangerous feature. They ping off-boat every couple of minutes, which could get expensive quickly when we're running on our satellite system.

4/13/2020: Reolink Camera

Position: 55°41.41'N, -5°43.47'W

In digging deeper into the traffic from the two new Reolink cameras and the Reolink server running in AWS, we found that Reolink actually is implementing two dangerous features. The first is they are frequently pinging their servers and consuming network bandwidth, and probably also exporting data that we don't want exported.

The second feature is even more annoying, where they make the video feed from the camera available to anyone who has the UID. The UID is a Unique Identifier for the camera. If you can guess the UID on one of the newer Reolink cameras as they are shipped, then you can have access to the live feed. This has the potential to consume vast amounts of bandwidth, and since James isn't always dressed when he checks the engine, it's probably not the video feed we most want to export. :)

If you clear out the UID, it's supposedly no longer possibly to access the video feed, but the camera will still call home every few minutes, consuming network bandwidth. We cleared the UID to disable that security vulnerability. We also put a firewall rule in place preventing any of the 8 cameras from accessing the internet. And while we were at it, we also disabled access from our printer, stereo receiver and television. The firewall block is a simple off/on switch, so if we want to patch software or other administrative action that requires internet access, we can flick it on, do the work, and turn it back off.

4/13/2020: Loaf

The final product emerged from the bread machine after five hours of various noises, sometimes rumbling, sometimes beeping, but requiring no attention from us. The loaf has a bit of an odd shape, but is tasty, with a great crust.

4/14/2020: Creatorele Boat Remote

Blog reader and graphics designer Andre Verhoek sent is a mock-up of a much-improved labelling design for our Creatorele Boat Remote, showing the direction the boat is facing and coloring the button labels to represent port and starboard (red and green).

What makes this job more difficult is that the button pairings supported for a crane remote don't closely match what you'd want for a boat. Each opposing function, such as forward and back, needs to have an interlock preventing both from being picked at the same time.

Ideally we'd use the third row of buttons for forward thruster left and right, and the fourth row for rear thruster left and right, where you could put both left thrusters on together or both right thrusters, but not a left and a right. On the remote, however, the left buttons in rows three and four are paired and cannot be used together, as are the right buttons.

4/14/2020: Remote Labeling, Take Two

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.48'W

Inspired by Andre Verhoek's design, we relabeled the keys on the new boat remote. What makes this a bit challenging is the remote has interlocked pairs of buttons that need to implement opposing functions, like engine forward and back, in less-than-intuitive positions. So Andre and us are both constrained by this limitation. We're further limited by not having the color coded-options Andre proposed, but we think this labeling is easier to understand than our original and appreciate the suggestion from Andre.

4/15/2020: Dough Cycle

Our bread machine ready to go again, this time on a dough cycle to make cinnamon buns.

4/15/2020: Spitfire

Spitfire attempting to tear the jugular out of a piece of string. When inspired, he's lightening fast. Spitfire is doing amazingly well for an almost 17-year-old cat with chronic kidney disease. And he's really enjoying all the extra attention he's getting during the lockdown.

4/15/2020: Dough Ready

An hour and 45 minutes later, the bread machine produced a nicely risen ball of dough for cinnamon buns.

4/15/2020: Mooring

The work boat from the nearby fish farm returning to the mooring at Gigha. The mooring is attached to the seabed with a heavy chain, and has two smaller mooring chains dangling from it. The crew hooks up to the mooring by lifting it high with their crane, then attaching the lower ends of two mooring chains to the boat. Once attached, they drop the mooring back down in the water, put away the crane, and head ashore in the RIB.

4/15/2020: Cinnamon Buns

Delicious cinnamon buns topped with pecans, fresh from the oven, with dough made in our bread machine.

4/17/2020: Apples

We've finished the grapefruit and now are having fresh apples in the morning.

4/17/2020: Spare Cat

We found another "spare Spitfire" when we opened up the cabinet behind the TV. Whenever a new location is opened up, he immediately jumps in. In fact, it doesn't even have to be all that new.

4/17/2020: Spring Onions

With the green bag and paper-towel treatment, the spring onions are stilling doing well after four weeks.

4/18/2020: Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi that went into service back in 2015 on our Indian Ocean crossing needed replacement. It experienced the failure of a couple of channels. The rest of the system still works fine, but these systems are cheap so we just replaced it.

4/18/2020: 26 Days

"Celebrating" the longest time we've ever been aboard without going ashore. The last time we were off the boat was 26 days ago, on March 22, when we we departed Portland. Our prior record was 25 days, on the 3,689-mile run from St. Helena to Barbados. This one is for an entirely different purpose, but both were enjoyable. One big improvement though, is that we're not sleeping in shifts and the seas are calmer. :)

4/19/2020: Garbage

Whenever we access a storage area, particularly to stow something new, we inventory the contents to determine if we still need everything. Here we've decided to discard an old Dish satellite TV receiver and remote, along with a Roku media streamer and some computer speakers. The receiver and Roku are over a decade old and probably are incompatible with current infrastructure. It's very unlikely we'd ever sign up for a Dish contract again, as we had when we lived in Seattle and Hawaii. And were we to use a Roku again, we'd get a newer one. But even that is unlikely, as we've become pretty heavy users of the Amazon Fire TV Stick.

4/19/2020: Pole Star

The 169ft (51.5m) lighthouse tender NLV Pole Star heading south past the Isle of Gigha. This is perhaps only the second or third passing vessel we've seen since anchoring at Gigha a month ago. The waterways are really empty.

The ship, owned by the National Lighthouse Board, maintains the lighthouses in Scotland and the Isle of Man. We last saw the Pole Star off Cromarty Forth near Inverness Scotland in 2017.

4/19/2020: Signal Booster Test

Sometime back we bought a WeBost Cell Signal Booster and tested it carefully on the boat. We tried putting the phones in a low corner of the engine room to degrade the signal as much as possible and then tested the cell booster off and on. The signal booster made absolutely no difference across a wide variety of tests. Blog reader Chasm points out the issue is likely the device is only capable of handling North American cellular frequencies.

Read more ...

4/19/2020: Plug Replacement

The plug on our Karcher Power Washer has an RCD that always is tripping. The outdoor sockets we plug it into all have RCDs anyway (in fact all sockets indoor and out on Dirona have RCDs), so we removed the faulty power washer RCD. The hinged door on the outdoor socket weather covers gets in the way of both plugs fitting properly, so we use the small pigtail extension at left.

4/19/2020: Garbage Day

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.48'W

Emptying the trash compacter for the first time since we left Portland a month ago. Our normal operation is to discard most food packaging as we stow it, and use the in-sink garbage disposal (garburator for any Canadians in the audience) for food waste. We keep glass and other recylables separately, so end up producing a surprisingly small amount of actual garbage. We store the compressed trash in a bow locker until we next have access to shore-side garbage facilities.

We don't use the compacter when in port where we can easily get rid of garbage, but use it heavily when we are at sea or don't expect to be able to offload garbage for a while. The compacter is standard equipment on the Nordhavn 52, and not something we likely would have specified, but we're really glad to have it.

4/19/2020: Nessie

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.43'W

Throughout the parks of the world, wildlife populations are increasing now that the people are mostly absent. Blog reader Bob Heselberg sent us the Scottish version of this trend, with the Loch Ness Monster Nessie moving downtown.

4/19/2020: Evening Calm

A lovely calm evening looking southeast from our anchorage at the Isle of Gigha.

4/20/2020: Waves

Our anchorage at the Isle of Gigha has good protection in most directions, except from east to northeast. The winds generally haven't been in that direction since we arrived, but currently are blowing 20 knots from the northeast and are expected to pick up for the next couple of days. Yesterday's calm conditions are gone and today large waves are rolling through the anchorage. The boat is moving, but surprisingly little given the size of the waves.

4/20/2020: Deere 6068 Inspection

Today we performed an important annual service check of inspecting the accessory drive belt and bearings on our John Deer 6068AFM75. Click the image to watch the video.

4/20/2020: PSS

Our Packless Shaft Seal (PSS) has been leaking since it was replaced in early 2018. We just inspected it closely with a bright light and noticed that it's installed slightly crooked. The bellows on the left are tighter than those on the right.

4/20/2020: Adjusting PSS

When the PSS was replaced on the last haul out, the bellows appears to have been installed slightly crooked and the replacement propeller shaft is also slightly out of true. The two issues together conspire to wear the PSS seal aggressively.

We backed off the tension to reduce wear until the boat is next out of the water and the bigger issues can be dealt with, but backing it off seemed to make the wear worse due to increased vibration. And it definitely made the leakage worse. Here we're tightening it back up to see if that will help the system perform better under these adverse conditions.

4/21/2020: 38 knots

We're seeing big northeast winds through the anchorage today, with gusts as high as 38 knots.

4/21/2020: Waves

In the strong northeasterly winds, large and tight waves are rolling through the anchorage. The swimstep is frequently awash, with water shooting upwards, as the boat lifts on the crests and falls into the troughs. The waves are pretty steadily in the two-foot range and occasionally as large as three.

It's almost surprising that the anchor dragging never even crosses our minds in these situations. This always is a possibility, but having not dragged anchor in more than 20 years, we just don't seem to worry much about it. Most of the reason we don't see problems is we tend to anchor with large scope and test the set aggressively when anchoring.

For example, we arrived here on a beautiful sunny day without wind, but we anchored on nearly 8:1 scope (ratio of rode length to depth) and, although we wouldn't have guessed it at the time, we actually have seen some pretty big winds here. A couple of weeks ago we saw gusts to 56 knots.

4/21/2020: Pitch and Roll

The wind graph roughly at center (click image for a larger view), shows how the winds are blowing steadily into the 30s. The boat moves remarkably little in anchorages, in fact, so little that we only deploy the flopper-stopper once or twice a year as needed. But even though it rarely moves, the 2-3-footers rolling through the anchorage are starting to kick us around.

Right of the wind graph is the pitch and roll graphs, with the maximum pitch and roll in the past 5 minutes of 4.6° and 4.3° shown below and slightly to the right. This screen shot is from our underway display—we don't show pitch and roll in the moored display, as it's a pretty rare moorage that would warrant it.

4/22/2020: Salt Spray

Position: 55°41.41'N, -5°43.47'W

The winds have settled down a bit overnight, but still are blowing in the 20s at the Isle of Gigha. This morning, the pilothouse windows were covered in salt spray from yesterday's blow.

4/23/2020: Gigha

Golden sunrise lighting up the Isle of Gigha off our anchorage there.

4/23/2020: Bread Machine

The ingredients for another loaf ready for the bread machine.

4/23/2020: Gen Oil & Filter

Today we changed the oil and filter in our 12kW Northern Lights generator for the 29th time in its 10-year, 6,474-hour life.

4/23/2020: Entertainment

Jennifer enjoys monitoring the progress of the bread machine as it mixes, rises and bakes the loaf. Not only do we get a loaf out the other end, but we get some entertainment along the way. :)

4/23/2020: Local Support

The islanders come out to check on us every few days and to make sure we know that they are more than happy to bring us groceries if we need anything.

4/23/2020: Radishes

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.46'W

The last of the radishes from Antwerp. But we still have fresh carrots and lettuce. Our biggest risk right now is running out of BrewDog Punk IPA :). We're down to a three-week supply.

4/24/2020: Sunrise

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.47'W

Colorful sunrise over the Kintyre peninsula in mainland Scotland.

4/24/2020: Nav Computer CPU Load

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.47'W

The fan on our ThinkStation P320 Tiny navigation computer has been just wailing for the past couple of weeks, so we investigated it today. The CPU load was running a pretty steady 25% to 40% when it should be down in the 15% to 20% range.

We investigated the MariaDB database traffic and found that a few very common queries take 1/2 to 3/4 of a second to execute, when we expect them to be below 1/100th of a second. We addressed the long queries by changing a few and adding some database indexes.

The database, however, was still working harder than it used to due to increased load. It was still consuming 5% to 9% of the total available CPU. We tuned the database by adding a 100MB query cache and growing the buffer pool to 2GB with 16 partitions. The combination of both these changes took the database CPU load down to 0.5 to 1.0 percent of available. We've never seen it that good.

The computer fan was now fairly quiet but still emitting a slight hum as it slowly turned. Normally with the CPU load down below 10%, the fan would not turn at all. We then blew the computer fan and cooling fins out with compressed air. With this cleaning, the system can support it's normal load with passive cooling only and the fan doesn't turn.

4/24/2020: Stonewall Noise Orchestra

While in Stockholm last year we came across New Age, a song by the Swedish band Stonewall Noise Orchestra (SNO). The rest of that album was a little too Metal for our tastes, but we do like the song New Age.

Back then James had run a Google search to learn more about the band and, even though that was nearly a year ago, Google popped a mobile phone notification today that SNO had released a new album album, Deathtripper.

We elected to purchase the album on Amazon and, probably because of that activity, YouTube offered us the video for New Age. The video is unusual in that all shots of the band are from inches to only a few feet away, but it kind of works. Click the picture to see the video.

4/24/2020: Dusk

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.45'W

Dusk falling over Gigha on a windless and clear night.

4/25/2020: Lunch

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.48'W

Spitfire licking his chops after getting a small handout from our lunch of shrimp-salad pita pockets. He's turned into a real mooch recently. :)

4/25/2020: Fog Bank

A fog bank rolling north along the Kintyre peninsula.

4/25/2020: Barbecue

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.44'W

Cooking chicken wings on the barbecue on a beautiful calm evening. We've hardly had any rain since arriving here, and most days, even the windy ones, have been clear and sunny. It's probably some of the best weather that Scotland has ever seen, and everyone has to stay home.

4/26/2020: Grapefruit

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.44'W

We found one more grapefruit hidden behind the lemons.

4/27/2020: Anchor Ball

We replaced the anchor ball line a couple of weeks ago, and it parted again after the several days of big winds we recently had. It appears to have failed from twisting in the wind rather than chafing. The small fishing swivel between the leftmost white line and the anchor ball had seized (click in image for a larger view). Instead of the anchor ball spinning in the wind, it would twist the black bungee section around and around, eventually breaking it.

4/27/2020: Lettuce

The lettuce is holding up well after five weeks with the green bag and paper-towel treatment.

4/28/2020: Snubber

We noticed our snubber is nearly worn through at the bow roller and about to part due to the 56-knot winds and waves we've seen over the past few weeks. (A snubber is a length of line between the boat and the all-chain rode to give some elasticity to the rode. It also tends to make the boat quieter at anchorage by isolating the boat somewhat from the noise of chain scraping across rock on the bottom.)

We've lost two snubbers over the the last ten years due to high winds causing abrasion: once in Vanuatu in late 2013 and a second in Australia in 2015 the night we rolled to 69.1 degrees attempting to cross the Big Bay Bar.

4/28/2020: Anti-chafe

The length of anti-chafe we use on the snubber to protect the rope completely wore through, and the snubber line was soon to follow.

4/28/2020: New Snubber

We've been using an Ultra chain grab on our snubber for the past decade. They have performed well, but are expensive. While in Australia, we built two new spare snubbers using locally-available RWB chain claws, recommended by David Fincham, then owner of Nordhavn 57 Speedbird. The RWB chain claws are high quality, half the price of what we were using previously, and have a deeper chain link pocket. We've not had a snubber fail since building these spares, so this is our first time putting the RWB into use. So far we're happy with the product.

4/29/2020: Anchor Ball

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.48'W

We've rebuilt the broken anchor ball, replaced the seized swivel, and it's back in service. (An anchor ball is a day shape indicating a vessel is at anchor. At night, a white light is used.)

4/30/2020: 986 mb

The barometer has been parked below 990mb for past day or so. Normally we'd expect big winds to follow when the barometer shoots upward in a quickly-passing system. But the weather models show calm weather with a gradual rise in pressure as the system slowly moves away. Nice.

5/1/2020: Failed Ammeter

Ten years must be close to the lifetime of our power meters. All nine ran well for ten years but we just had the second failure in two months. On both of these failures, the display shows partial LED number segments and smells bad. Generally, with electrical gear, a bad smell is sign that there was excess heat that could possibly still be a problem. Having seen these gauges fail with overheated electronics, we immediately disconnect them when there's any symptom of fault.

5/1/2020: Gigha

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.42'W

As the weather models indicated, conditions are wonderfully calm at the Isle of Gigha this morning, while the barometer begins a slow rise.

5/1/2020: Vinaigrette

The lettuce is lasting well, but we're out of salad dressing. We have been making this delicious and easy-to-prepare French Vinaigrette since we were in Fiji in 2013. We were invited to dinner on the boat of two French brothers and offered to bring a salad. To go with it, we made our first-ever batch of homemade dressing using Felicity Cloake's perfect vinaigrette recipe.

It's a good thing we found a quality recipe—one of the brothers turned out to be a chef and the other owned a winery. When said they were "very surprised" about the dressing, we thought we'd messed it up somehow. But they went on to say it was delicious and asked if we'd made it with Dijon. Of course—who would dream of making French Vinaigrette without Dijon? :)

5/1/2020: Sunset

Golden sunset after a calm day at Gigha.

5/2/2020: Laundry Day

It's laundry day on Dirona—we usually do it every couple of weeks when we're away from civilization. Scotland is in a fairly strict lockdown, where marinas and fuel docks are closed for recreational boating and non-locals. We're lucky that Dirona is so self-sufficient, and that hasn't been the slightest inconvenience for us. We've got a couple of months worth of food, more than a half-year's worth of fuel, can do laundry on board, and can make water as we need it.

5/2/2020: Equalizing

Our operating conditions for the past five weeks have been quite unusual. We've been at anchor for the entire period, and haven't been moving the boat. This has never happened before for this long a period. Normally the batteries will be fully charged frequently, either by moving the boat or being plugged into shorepower. When charging with the generator, we turn start charging at 55% charge and stop at 85%. It's far better to fully charge lead acid batteries, but doing this daily is inefficient. They can be charged to 85% in around 2 hours but fully charging the batteries takes closer to 5 hours. Certainly, this can be done, but it's a long time with the generator at very low load and it would mean the generator is running half the time. A recommended compromise is to fully charge weekly, or at most every two weeks.

Short cycling degrades battery capacity. Most, but not all, of the capacity lost by short cycling can be restored with equalization (also called conditioning), a controlled overcharge that de-sulphates the battery plates. We've been watching the battery capacity degrade surprisingly rapidly over the past few weeks— it is down by 34% over the last five weeks. We should have fully charged far earlier than this, but we thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how fast and how far the battery capacity degraded and how much would be restored by equalization. Today is laundry day, so we decided to take that opportunity to fully charge and then equalize the batteries and see how much battery capacity is lost in 120 consecutive short cycles and how much is restored in equalization.

Pictured is a the MasterAdjust software used to control our two Mastervolt chargers. The battery manufacturer, Lifeline, recommends temperature-corrected equalization (conditioning), and at our current battery temperatures, we'll need 31.0V. To achieve that, we have increased the absorption and float voltage levels to 30.9 volts.

5/2/2020: DC-DC Converter

With the voltage higher than usual while we are equalizing the batteries, we got a warning that our 12-volt battery system was losing charge. It appears our 24-12V DC-DC Converter stopped charging the 12V battery. Its fairly common for electrical equipment to have sufficiently tight bounds on input voltage that period battery equalization might put them out of range. For example, our converter shuts off anytime the voltage is at 31 or above. Its best that any 24V equipment that's not needed immediately be shut off during equalization. Well-designed gear should be absolutely fine, but you really don't want to find out if your equipment is well-designed.

5/2/2020: Charging 12-Volt Battery

During equalization, our 12-volt battery for the navigation system isn't being charged by the 24v-to-12v converter, so we charged it externally. We only need to do this if the voltage is sufficiently high to cause the converter to shut down, and the load on the 12-volt system is sufficiently high to require charging.

5/2/2020: Long Gen Run

The Gen Amps graph (second from top at the right) shows generator output over the past 24 hours. Visible are the 8-hour equalization run and two more normal generator runs to the left (click image for a larger view).

5/3/2020: Sunrise

Sunrise over the Kintyre peninsula viewed from our anchorage at the Isle of Gigha.

5/3/2020: Post-Equalization

The long-term battery short-cycle test provided some really interesting results. Over 122 short cycles, our batteries lost 34% of capacity, which is far higher than we would have guessed. The equalization appears to have restored very close to all of that capacity. Our average time on battery for the past two days is identical to that of our first week at Gigha.

That shows us two things: 1) 122 consecutive short cycles will lead to rapid battery capacity reduction and 2) after equalization, the effective degradation of those 122 cycles (roughly 12% of the manufacturer's nominal cycle lifetime) is fully nearly zero.

This is pretty surprising, and demonstrates that the negative impact of consecutive short cycles is remarkably small. Its also pretty interesting that consuming 12% of the manufacturer's predicted lifetime of cycles shows almost no degradation at all. Closely related to this experiment, we will soon post a blog analyzing battery capacity over the lifetime of the bank.

5/3/2020: Sea Fog

Sea fog this morning at the Isle of Gigha.

5/5/2020: Dawn

Spectacular pink dawn looking toward the Kintyre peninsula from our anchorage at the Isle of Gigha.

5/5/2020: Moonset

A bright near-full moon setting over the Isle of Gigha. The full moon in two days' time is called the Flower Moon in the Northern Hemisphere because so many wildflowers bloom in the month of May.

5/5/2020: Glow Plugs

The generator continues to run well at 6,603 hours but currently has three minor issues that will eventually need some attention. The first is that the water seal on the sea water pump has started to seep slightly, so dried white dust is collecting underneath it. The issue is fairly minor, so we'll leave it in service, but that pump will need to be replaced. Probably not that soon but its time is coming. The second issue is the rear main oil seal has started to leak a bit of oil. These problems usually take years to become anything more than nuisance leaks and some never get worse. However, we're not so lucky on this one. In a month it's gone from a barely noticeable oil mist from the generator cooling section to now spreading oil drops around the generator enclosure. It's still not enough to actually drip but it seems to be worsening quickly. This one is really bad news since changing the rear main oil seal is a very big job requiring separating the generator section from the diesel engine to access the seal. The final issue is more minor. The engine takes a 3 to 4 seconds to start when it used to be 1 or 2 seconds faster. The last time this happened we found the fuel lift pump was loose and leaking air at the diaphragm.

The latest slower-than-normal to start issue is again very likely a fuel issue but, just to rule out the obvious stuff, James is checking the air filter and the glow plugs. Here he is testing the glow plugs by reading the current draw of the plugs. This circuit normally draws 16A or about 5.3A per glow plug. This quick test confirms that they are working normally so we'll have to chase down the fuel issue since it seems to be slowly getting worse and a healthy engine should start in a couple of seconds.

5/5/2020: Spitfire

Whenever James is working the the engine room, Spitfire soon follows him in. He'll sit on the engine room tray and call for attention whenever James walks past.

5/5/2020: Loaf

Another tasty loaf from our bread machine.

5/5/2020: Gigha

A wonderfully calm evening looking forward, aft, to starboard and to port (clockwise from upper left) around our anchorage at the Isle of Gigha.

5/5/2020: Dusk

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.42'W

Spitfire enjoying the last of the sun's rays shortly before sunset at the Isle of Gigha.

5/6/2020: More Bread

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.47'W

Yesterday's loaf was consumed by breakfast this morning, so we're making another.

5/7/2020: Media Filter

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.46'W

We have a media filter in front of our water maker prefilter. The media filter is essentially a small sand filter very siimilar to that used on swimming pools. It's super effective. In plankton rich waters, water maker prefilters can need to be replaced or cleaned weekly and sometimes as often as daily. With the media filter, we only change the prefilter annually when we change the carbon flush filter. The media filter has pressure guages showing when it needs to be cleaned, but we find it can go a very long time without building much back-pressure, so we just schedule the media filter for back-flushing monthly.

Cleaning the filter is quick and easy process. We reverse the valves, then run the booster pump, which runs seawater through the filter in the opposite direction, cleaning it. Here you can see the brown flush water coming out at the start of the flush cycle. We run the booster pump until the outflow water is clear, then shut it down and restore the valves to the forward flow.

5/7/2020: Celery

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.45'W

Making shrimp-salad pita pockets for lunch with the last of the celery bought in Portland seven weeks ago. Our produce has really lasted well with the green bag and paper towel treatment.

5/9/2020: Sunrise

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.46'W

We're enjoying some fabulous sunrises here at the Isle of Gigha.

5/9/2020: Boat Wash

James power-washing the boat while Jennifer follows behind with a bucket of soapy water washing and rinsing.

5/11/2020: PM Address

Watching Boris Johnson address the nation on the UK lockdown plans going forward. Although the UK is slightly easing its restrictions, Scotland remains in lockdown. We were hoping the situation would have improved a bit by now so that we could reprovision outside a full lockdown, but it looks like that won't happen until the end of May. Although it's been 7.5 weeks since we last provisioned in Portland on March 20th, we're still in good shape on most supplies. We're fine for now, but in a couple of weeks we'll start running out of things, beginning with produce. It's getting close to the time that we need to provision.

5/12/2020: Choc Chip Muffins

We really enjoyed the blueberry muffins we made using the recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction. This morning's breakfast was from her chocolate chip muffins recipe and were equally delicious.

5/12/2020: Contacter

Replacing the contacter in the power cabinet that had developed a noisy coil. This particular one is used to temporarily shed the microwave when we detect high load on the 120V inverter.

5/12/2020: Gen Start Issue

The generator has been slow to start recently. We tested the glow plugs a few days back, but they were in good shape. Today we did some further investigation and determined it was a problem with the starter. We tested the battery voltage and connection quality, and all checked out well. Here James is testing the RPM with an optical tachometer. Low RPM on a starter is not a particularly common failure mode, with low battery and poor connection being far more common. But it was so obvious there was a starter RPM problem that James stopped the problem determination at this point and just changed the starter. It's not that hard a job, and it solved the problem.

Watch the video of the job at https://youtu.be/NT4NGAVTN4g.

5/13/2020: Sunrise

Another spectacular sunrise at the Isle of Gigha in Scotland.

5/13/2020: Annual Engine Service

Performing the annual service on all our auxiliary gas engines. Pictures are our Honda 2.3HP motor for the micro-tender and our WH15X high-powered water pump for emergency water evacuation and fire-fighting. We annually test and lubricate them, and change their oil and fuel.

5/13/2020: Oil Filter

Performing the annual oil filter change on the Honda 50HP motor. We also changed the fuel filter, required every 2 years and our first change since we picked up our "new" tender two years ago in Harlingen, NL on our way to Norway.

5/13/2020: Steering

The tender steering system seized up due to grease failure. The grease hardened up into a thick coating that was hard as a rock. Even brake cleaner was slow to remove it. On the right is the portion of the steering rod that we have cleaned off, with some old hardened grease still visible at the left where James is pointing.

We worked a can of break cleaner in and got the steering as free as possible, removed as much of the old coating as we could, and then pumped in new grease. It feels nearly as good as new now.

5/14/2020: Otter

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.43'W

Several otters live in the area and we enjoy watching their antics. They always keep a safe distance from Dirona though, possibly having seen our fierce feline. :)

5/14/2020: Charging Backup Battery

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.42'W

Performing the semi-annual test and charge of the backup battery in our tender.

5/14/2020: Hydraulics Spares

We have spares stowed throughout the boat. Here Jennifer is getting two pencil zincs from the hydraulics spares under the floor at the foot of the master stateroom berth.

5/14/2020: Hydraulic Zincs

The hydraulic zincs have lasted well since we last changed them nine months ago.

5/14/2020: Salon Floor

Our salon floor has picked up a squeak at the engine room hatches, so we removed the carpet and under-padding to investigate. It's also a good time to give the floor a good clean. The hatches are designed to allow the engine to be removed from the boat without having to cut into the woodwork. We hope never to test this, but if those cross-beams are removed, the engine should lift up through the floor and out the door.

5/14/2020: Cutting To Size

Cutting strips of non-skid to size to fit underneath and between the floor hatches. That solved the squeak.

5/14/2020: Backing Up DSM410

We've installed a NMEA2000 system on our tender, with a Maretron DSM410 display. We annually backup this device, and the easiest way to do that is to another DSM410. This gives us both a backup of the original and a ready-to-go spare should the original fail.

5/14/2020: Charging UPS Battery

Completing the semi-annual test and charge of the backup batter for our UPS. That Schumacher portable charger gets a surprising amount of use and has lasted well since we purchased it way back in 2011.

5/14/2020: Maintenance Log

One of the projects we completed while here at the Isle of Gigha is to convert our Excel-based maintenance log to a database-backed system with a web interface. This automatically pulls in the hours from our various engines and give us a service history report. Here we are marking complete the task to test and charge the tender and UPS batteries. We'll blog the details of the new maintenance log system.

5/14/2020: Cinnamon Buns

Another batch of pecan-topped cinnamon buns just out of the oven.

5/14/2020: Corroded Tower Light

We have a warning light on the stack designed to attract attention if we suffer a shore power failure or fire and nobody is on board to clear the alarm. In these conditions, we automatically flash an external light high up the stack to attract attention to the boat. The hope is that the flashing light attracts attention and either causes someone to take action (like reseting the shore power breaker) or causes the marina to call us so we can correct the problem.

It's a simple configuration based upon our remote boat monitoring system. The only trouble we have had with this system is getting warning lights to last. Every year or two, we'll see storm force winds and these lights often end up filled with water even though they are outdoor-rated. This is the second failure and this one was particularly bad where the light was actually partly full of water and the insides have rusted away. Today, we'll install an improved waterproof warning lamp.

5/14/2020: Testing New Light

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.40'W

Testing out the new emergency light from our spares. Hopefully this different design will last better than the original.

5/14/2020: Light Installed

The new emergency light installed and being tested.

5/15/2020: Fresh Bread

Another tasty loaf from our Zojirushi Home Bakery Mini bread machine. We've used it more in the past few weeks than for the eight years that we've owned the machine. It's been wonderful having fresh bread available with little effort on our part.

5/16/2020: Checking for Oil

We have what looks to be a rear main oil seal leak, but before condemning it for sure, we looked for leaks higher up that are much easier to service. Here you can see the rocker arm gasket is sealed up nicely, and the back of the rocker shaft carrier and cylinder head are clean and white. We don't often "wish we had an oil leak at the top of the engine" but this is one of them :-). Changing the rear main oil seal is a big job that we're not looking forward to. Ron and Nancy Goldberg of Nordhavn 50 Duet sent us detailed instructions with pictures on how to do this job. We're still not looking forward to it, but the detailed instructions from Ron and Nancy will make it a lot easier when we take it on.

5/16/2020: Forward Pi

The Raspberry Pi mounted above the helm is the original one that was put into production on Dirona during our 2015 Indian Ocean crossing. Over the years, it picked up more features, more connections, and became a difficult-to-service mess of wires and discrete components. Today we removed most of the discrete components and wiring to the breadboard and replaced them all with with an i2c-to-8-pin digital I/O processor. In the picture, the job isn't quite complete as some resistors still need to come out of the breadboard. This now is a far simpler and easier-to-service approach compared to how it was before in this earlier photo.

5/17/2020: Air Filter

The generator is down on power. For its entire 6,600-hour life, it's reliably been able to produce 42 amps. It's nominally a 50-amp generator, but due to highly non-linear load on Dirona, the power factor often is less than 0.85, so its full output is 42 amps. Over the last day, the output has dropped down 4 more amps to 38 amps. Investigating why the generator has 8% less power, we started with checking the air filter for blockage. It's in good condition and not the source of any problems. We cleaned up the air filter and re-installed it.

5/17/2020: Secondary Fuel Filter

Continuing to investigate the generator output being 8% low, we next changed the primary and secondary fuel filters since they are both close to due to be changed and then need to be eliminated as a cause of the generator output power degradation. Here we're replacing the secondary fuel filter.

5/17/2020: Draining Filter

We're changing both fuel filters at part of our continued our investigation of the generator being 8% down on output. Here we're about to drain the fuel out of the housing for the primary fuel filter, a RACOR 500. Normally there's clearance to drain fuel out of the bottom of the fuel filter housing, but in this case, its directly above the wing/gen start batteries. So we screw in a temporary drain hose allowing us to drain it without making a mess. When we're done, we close the value, remove the temporary drain hose, and change the filter. In doing this job, you only need to drain the housing down a half-inch or so, just enough so it won't leak when the cap is removed.

5/17/2020: Primary Filter

Replacing the primary fuel filter. It looked fine, but was nearly due for a change anyway. In subsequent testing, the generator still is down on power. Since it's only an 8% reduction, the concern is not urgent. The next thing we'll likely check is the valve adjustment, since it can cause a reduction in power and the job is due to be done in 369 hours anyway. Another possible cause would be an exhaust restriction, but that doesn't seem very likely. Exhaust restrictions typically only show up on engines run with chronic low load or heavily corroded cast-iron exhaust elbows. Our average generator loads are quite high, and we're using a stainless steel elbow. We're also not exactly sure how to easily check exhaust back-pressure.

5/17/2020: Green Onions

We read today that green onions will regrow if the roots are put in a clear container of water in the sun. The few we had left were actually starting to sprout a bit already, so we put them in the galley window and we'll see what happens. James is planning to keep his job rather than go into full-time farming, but we're still happy with the potential. :)

5/17/2020: Company

When we looked outside this morning, we were surprised to see another boat at anchor. This is the first pleasure craft we've seen since we arrived at Gigha over eight weeks ago. The British-flagged vessel departed after spending a couple of nights here.

5/18/2020: Load Shedding

It's completely the wrong time to be making changes to the load-shedding system since the generator currently is operating 8-10% down on power. But we started the work on load-shedding before the generator started showing these symptoms. The load-shedding system allows the boat to operate more like an apartment without power limits. Normally, if a hair dryer is turned on when the microwave is on, the generator can be exposed to overload and will either let the voltage sag or it will stall. With load-shedding, the least critical devices are shed to make it appear to a user that the boat has unbounded power.

On Dirona, first the water heater is shut off, then charger #2, then charger #1, etc. This allows us to run the generator right near its peak output, which is both more efficient and better for the generator. But when running near the capacity of the generator, any new load coming in will be too much for the generator. With load-shedding, some non-critical loads are briefly taken off-line and then turned back on when the peak load passes.

Speed is the key with these load-shedding systems. Our system was put in place five years ago and James recently has made changes to allow sub-second response. The graph shows it's working well with known amperage draw spikes. It's smoothly and quickly capped near the max capacity of the generator. You can also see that the max capacity of the generator is significantly below where it should be. We'll need to get that problem understood and solved soon.

5/18/2020: Gen Run Profile

This graph shows the impact of load-shedding on generator operation. In this test of the new load-shedding system, we have the water maker, all chargers, water heater, dryer, and HVAC systems all running hard. This load is far above what our generator can deliver, so the challenge for the load-shed system is to keep the loads operating as much as possible, but not to allow spikes above the generator capacity. The graph shows two things clearly: 1) the new shed design is working very well and it's keeping all these loads on as much as possible but avoiding generator overload, and 2) the gen load-carrying capacity is way down. The good news is the shed code is working very well but the bad news is the generator has some serious problem. It's way down on power.

5/18/2020: Lettuce

Our lettuce is keeping well after nearly nine weeks, but our eight initial heads of Romaine are down to only small hearts now.

5/19/2020: Stanadyne

As part of our continuing investigation into the generator being 8-10% down on output, we're filling the fuel filter with Stanadyne fuel additive that we'll run through the system. We don't regularly use any fuel additives on Dirona, but have some Stanadyne on board to run through the fuel system when there is a fuel-related problem. Many report problems solved by this treatment, so it's a resource we keep on board.

Here we have taken off the fuel filter, dumped the diesel inside, and are filling the filter up with Stanadyne. We then put the fuel filter back on, bled the fuel system, and briefly ran the engine to move the additive into the fuel pump and injectors. We left it like that for an hour and then started the system and put it into load. In this case, this didn't solve the problem, but it's an easy thing to try. The generator continues to operate nearly 10% below normal power levels. It's looking more and more like this is going to be a tough one to track down.

5/19/2020: Removing Elbow

We're now checking the stainless-steel exhaust elbow for blockage as the next step in debugging the 8-10% reduced output issue with our generator. To remove the elbow, we took off the air filter at right, which is held in by two bolts and a hose clamp, removed the two hose clamps that hold the exhaust hose to the exhaust elbow, drained the engine coolant, removed the heat exchanger end cap and, finally, removed the four fasteners that hold the elbow in place. This picture shows the elbow detached from the engine (green circle above it) with the detached the air filter at right.

5/19/2020: Elbow Clean

The exhaust elbow looks perfect, with no evidence of blockage. This is a common trouble spot on generators that run at chronic low load levels. They coke up in this area, restricting the exhaust flow and reducing power. Another fault mode is that when cast-iron exhaust elbows are used, they can corrode at this point and restrict flow. This stainless steel elbow has been installed for three years and looks about as good as you get. There's no buildup at all inside this elbow—it looks almost new. This shows us that this generator is run at very high average loads. Earlier we talked about how the load-shedding system is good at keeping the generator running at nearly maximum load but not going over. This is one of the positive results of those systems.

We know we don't have an exhaust elbow obstruction, but we're still 8-10% down on power. Another trouble spot is marine growth at the exhaust outlet thru-hull. Our system was installed with wet exhaust air/water separator to quiet the exhaust. In this design, there is an underwater through hull where the generator cooling water leaves the boat and an above water through hull where the exhaust exits. If the lower one underwater plugged, water would flow out the upper one and the exhaust would not be blocked. Since water is not flowing out the upper opening, its clear that this part of the exhaust system is also flowing properly.

As we inspected the exhaust elbow, Spitfire arrived to do some additional troubleshooting.

5/19/2020: Broken Bulb

Space is tight between the top of the generator and the engine room light above it. While James was working across the generator, jammed in between the light and the generator housing and working to free the exhaust elbow from the exhaust hose, he bumped the light above him and broke the bulb. We carry lots of spare bulbs, so this was easily fixed.

5/19/2020: Valve Cover

We're still 8-10% down on power with the generator and continuing to chase the issue. It seems kind of amazing we haven't found it yet. The air filter is clear, the exhaust through-hull is clear, the exhaust elbow is clear, the primary fuel filter is new, the secondary fuel filter is new, and the valves were adjusted 640 hours ago. The valves only need adjusting every 1,000 hours, but poor adjustment could cause loss of power. This isn't very likely the problem, but we've checked just about everything else. We were debating whether to change the injectors or check the valve adjustment next, we were leaning towards changing the injectors since there are 6,658 hours on them, and valves aren't due for adjustment for another 360 hours.

James talked to Northern Lights expert Bob Senter (aka Lugger Bob) and he said the injectors can get pretty bad in these engines without having much impact. Bob is exceptional. He recommended to check the valve adjustment since the injectors really have to be in bad shape before they start causing problems. We're not seeing any smoke or other indications of injector problems so off comes the valve cover to check the valves. We'll need to move along without wasting too much time since we'll need the generator to start in another hour or so to charge the batteries.

5/19/2020: Adjusting Valves

James adjusting the valves. He found found both intake and exhaust valves were tight on cylinder #3. Usually valves clearances don't change much over time and, if they do, it's more common to get looser over time rather than tighter. In some ways, it's good to find a potential problem. It's not clear if this is A problem or THE problem causing the 8% to 10% power reduction, but certainly it is a problem.

5/19/2020: Generator at Full Power

The valve adjustment solved the problem! It's great to see the generator back to full power output and now comfortable running at 43A, exactly the same as when it was new. You might wonder why a 50A alternator is "running perfectly" at 43A. Most generators are rated at a power factor of 0.8 since most generators operate into a less-than-optimum power factor. Northern Lights follows suite and all of their three-phase generators are rated at a power factor of 0.8. Their single-phase generators, however, are rated at a power factor of 1.0, but our power factor is often as low as 0.84. This isn't a problem, but it does mean a 50A generator is actually a 40A producer at a power factor of 0.8. On our boat, we can reliably get 42A and typically run with a 42A limit. Here we are testing at 43A to ensure that there is engineering margin of safety and we will be able to run at 42A without issue.

5/20/2020: Gen Run Profile

A profile of our last 8 generator runs in the past 48 hours. The red lines show average load and the grey are peak. The first four on the left are before the valve adjustment,, where the average loads were barely 30 amps with brief peaks of up to 39 amps as the generator went into overload. The fifth run is testing right after adjusting the valves, where we are probing the limit of output the generator can produce. It's nice to see it back to being able to hold a steady state 43A with brief excursions above. The next two runs are back under generator autoshed control where we shed at 42A (some engineering safety margin off peak) and only provision charger loads to 41A, again to allow some safety margin. Those last two graphs are the generator 100% back to normal in our usual operating pattern of letting autostart start the generator when the batteries get down to 55% and then shut if off again at 85%. While charging, load-shedding keeps the generator load below 42A.

It's nice to see the generator able to produce exactly the same power it could produce when it was new 10 years and 6,658 hours back. It took a bit of work to find the problem that was reducing generator output by 8% to 10%. We're glad to have it behind us, but the question remains, how did the valves get so far out of adjustment in only 640 hours? The manufacturers valve adjustment recommendation is 1,000 hours so this is quite early and, normally, valve adjustments don't change much in well-maintained engines. We can only come up with two possible explanations and we don't like either of them: 1) "previous mechanic" error, and 2) valve or valve seat problems. On the former, we know the "previous mechanic" remarkably well and he's usually conscientious and reliable. We would hate to reach that conclusion but we would hate the thought of a deeper mechanical problem even more. The generator is running as new so mechanic error is the likely prognosis. If the system continues to operate well for 10 to 20 hours, that'll be a clear signal that there are no continuing mechanical issues.

5/20/2020: Running Hot

Our generator ran for years without any even interesting issues to work through. It just ran and that's the way we like it. Last summer we chased a running hot issue that proved a bit troublesome to resolve (Northern Lights 12kW Generator Overheating). Four weeks ago, we noticed as we completed an oil change that the generator was starting slightly slower, requiring just an extra 2 to 3 seconds of crank time. It's not much, but it normally starts in 1 to 2 seconds. We chased that down to a bad starter.

Just five days after resolving the slow start issue, the generator started to show an 8-10% degradation in power output, and this was declining fast. We isolated that to incorrectly adjusted valves and during testing the generator shows "as new" power output. That's a huge relief except for just one thing: it's producing full output at 198F when it should be done in the 186-188F range. Something still isn't right.

When a wet exhaust engine has a heating issue, the first check is to look at the raw water pump impeller. Here we have dropped off the cover on the raw water pump to check the impeller. Predictably, some of the impeller fins are missing.

5/20/2020: Heat Exchanger

The most important part of a raw water pump impeller change is to ensure that any broken fins are recovered. If you are lucky, the fins are cracked but only large fragments have broken free. And, if fin parts are missing, they always end up stuck against the inlet of the heat exchanger which will cause the overheating problem. Here we have drained the engine coolant and taken off the heat exchanger end cap. You can see that fin fragments are have fallen out upon removing the cap and, if you look carefully, you can see one of the heat exchanger tubes near the center actually has a rubber fragment in the tube. This is rare, but we were able to pick it out with a large needle

5/20/2020: Broken Fins

We put the old impeller and all fragments together on a rag to ensure that we've found them all. If any fragments are missing, you need to keep looking. Raw water pump impellers are a wear item and replacing them annually is pretty common. Most people change them annually but we've noticed that the shortest an impeller has lasted us is 1 day and the longest is 3+ years (and it didn't actually ever fail, we just ended the experiment early and changed it).

Because impeller lifetime varies over such a large range, we don't proactively change them. We just change them when needed. But, if you wait until the engine overheats, it's very likely that fin bits will come free and this makes the replacement job more lengthy. What we have noticed is that if the generator goes up over 192 to 194F, the impeller needs changing. So we set a yellow warning light and send email at this temperature. This often allows the impeller change to precede the fins breaking free. We also trigger a red warning light and an email message at 200F, and the system automatically shuts down at 205F.

5/20/2020: Heat Exchanger End Cap

The Northern Lights heat exchanger design is an unusual one that doesn't require an anti-corrosion anode. What they do is float the heat exchanger between rubber heat-exchanger end caps on each end. Since the bundle doesn't ground to the engine, it doesn't require a zinc anode. These end caps are heavily made and last very well through many reuses. Today we changed one after 10 years and 6,663 hours of use. It's getting stiff and starting to distort a bit, making it harder to get the clamp to engage properly with the heat exchanger bundle. The old one still works fine but a new one is easier to work with, so we changed it.

5/20/2020: Boat Garden

Sam Landsman, on seeing our project to regrow green onions, shared a photo of the boat garden on Nordhavn 50 Akeeva. It looks wonderful, and they even grew lettuce until it got too big.

5/20/2020: Apples

The last of the apples from Portland with breakfast. We now are out of fresh fruit, but we do have plenty of canned fruit to keep us going.

5/20/2020: Sprouting

The apples still were fresh, crispy and delicious after nine weeks, but the seeds inside had actually started to sprout. If we had a boat garden like on Akeeva, we might plant it for fun and see what happens. But self-sufficiency has its limits—we're not at all tempted to grow an apple tree on board. :)

5/20/2020: Our Hannah

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.46'W

Choppy conditions east of Gigha as Our Hannah heads south into the seas.

5/21/2020: Raspberry Pi

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.46'W

This afternoon one of our Raspberry Pis stopped functioning correctly. It's an easy job to replace. This is the third failure over the five we have installed on board, and the second failure this year. But, given five are in service on Dirona, it still seems like a reasonable lifetime and pretty good value for $42.99 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LPLPBS8/).

5/22/2020: Wind

The weather has mostly been reasonably calm the past couple of weeks at Gigha, but a storm system is coming. The barometer (upper left) has fallen 22mbar in the past 12 hours and we saw peak winds (upper right) overnight to 46 knots.

5/22/2020: Pineapple

Sweet canned pineapple with our breakfast this morning. We quite like it, and often open a can even when we have fresh fruit available on board.

5/22/2020: Storm

We're expecting today's winds to continue for the next few days, with gusts into the 40s, as a storm system approaches Ireland. Fortunately the winds will be from the west where we have reasonable protection.

5/22/2020: Joe & Hannah

Position: 55°40.60'N, -5°44.45'W

Joe Teale and Hannah Storie in the well-stocked Ardminish Stores on the Isle of Gigha. Joe was kind enough to contact us and ask if we needed supplies. We did! We placed an order on Tuesday and Joe had it all ready to go this morning. Special thanks to Duncan and the team working the fish farm for checking on us weekly, and bringing the supplies out to us today despite the rough conditions.

5/22/2020: Garbage

Two bags of garbage from the trash compacter ready for disposal ashore. Besides recyclables, this is pretty much all the garbage we've produced in the past nine weeks.

5/22/2020: Grocery Delivery

Position: 55°41.46'N, -5°43.45'W

The fish farm team delivering some groceries from Ardminish Stores in the Isle of Gigha. Conditions were quite rough in the high winds, and they did a great job in passing everything across without leaving even a smudge on Dirona. And they took away two bags of garbage for us. We still need fuel, but this reduces the urgency of our provisioning requirement considerably.

5/22/2020: Christmas in May

After nine weeks without provisioning, it felt like Christmas to receive all these groceries. Joe Teale of Ardminish Stores did a wonderful job of packing the groceries carefully in cardboard boxes and then in sturdy plastic bags for transport. Everything was in excellent condition despite the rough weather.

5/22/2020: Disinfecting

Before bringing anything inside, we disinfected it using antibacterial wipes. This reminded us of when we were in the South Pacific, where we washed all produce in a bleach-and-water bath to kill off any unwelcome critters before bringing it on board. We never expected to doing basically the same thing in the high latitudes though.

5/22/2020: Salmon Dip

Salmon dip for lunch made with delicious smoked salmon and green onions from Ardminish Stores on the Isle of Gigha. It's wonderful to have a fresh produce again.

5/22/2020: Winds Rising

The winds have been rising all day as the storm arrives. We're frequently seeing gusts into the mid 40-knot range.

5/22/2020: Scottish Carrot

The carrots grow really big here in Scotland!

5/22/2020: DCR100

Once every few days to a week, the generator gaps for 10-20 seconds before continuing. It makes no difference, since it continues without problem, but it's not the way it should be, so we're investigating it. Unfortunately, when investigating rare events, isolating the cause is hard and you end up having to either wait until it gets worse and the problem is more reproducible or approach it through trail-and-error. Because we have the spare parts we need, we are replacing the Maretron DCR100 (digital output) to see if that cures the problem. If that fails, we'll try replacing the relays at the Northern Lights Wavenet engine controller.

5/23/2020: 52 knots

The winds have been steady in the 20s and 30s since yesterday, and overnight we saw peak winds as high as 52 knots. With the winds from the southwest, where we have protection, Dirona heels heavily when the big gusts hit but otherwise is not moving much.

5/23/2020: Storm

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.41'W

That storm system is well upon us now as it hits the southern Scottish coast. We're expecting high winds the rest of the day that should start easing off around midnight, with calmer conditions two days from now on Monday.

5/23/2020: Berries

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.41'W

Fresh berries with our breakfast. We haven't had berries since we consumed them all in early April. We're so excited to have some fresh produce again.

5/23/2020: Water Leak

Saturday morning we lifted the floor covering in the master stateroom head to access stores and found the floor underneath soaked wall-to-wall. We opened up the storage area below and it also had a lot of water in it. The first task was to get everything out of the storage areas and all dried and cleaned. That didn't take long, and we were then looking for the source of the leak.

The shower drain area and the wood beams in front of the drain assembly were soaked, so it was pretty clear the water was coming in from above. We tested by running water in the shower, focusing on the door assembly and looking for leaks. That seemed by far the most likely, but in fairly aggressive testing, we were unable to reproduce the leak. The sealing around the drain assembly was central to the wet area and, after the shower door assembly, seemed like the most likely cause.

5/23/2020: Drain Assembly

Position: 55°41.45'N, -5°43.41'W

We removed the drain assembly by taking apart the pipes below and then applying rotating force on the drain to crack the 3M 5200 free. We then removed the drain assembly, removed all the old caulking, and wire brushed the area where the caulking is going to be applied until it was clean. Once all the parts were clean and residue-free, we reassembled the drain assembly and sealed it with white silicone caulking. We find the silicone sealer is far easier to service than 5200, and has a very similar lifetime to 5200 so we use it wherever we need a seal but not a strong mechanical bond.

We then cleaned up the drain piping, something we do every 3 to 4 years. The piping builds up a heavy slime inside due to insufficient drain angle and over the course of years, the effective open area of the pipe slowly constricts down. So we took this opportunity to clean everything up. Then we assembled it all again with all possible leaks rectified.

But we don't know for sure that this was the source of the leak. The shower door wasn't leaking, the drain might have been, but is fixed now. To avoid facing this mess again, we kept looking for possible leaks. There is a locker underneath the shower seat and it's another possible water ingress point.

5/23/2020: Shower Seat Locker

It's a long way from the leak, but we wanted to be thorough, so we opened up and unloaded the under seat shower locker. The locker had an inch of water in it. We cleaned the locker and all the goods stored in it and then vacuumed the locker out for inspection. We found it well-sealed on all seams except a particularly difficult to access seam that hadn't been caulked. It looked quite possible that this seam would leak, so we decided to test it.

For testing purposes, we planned to fill the locker with a few inches of water to provoke a leak if there is one from this location. You can see we have taped over the drain since it's freshly sealed with white silicone caulking and won't be cured for 24 hours. The tape will ensure no water gets into the drain as we work in the locker.

5/23/2020: Water Seepage

Once we had a filled the shower under-seat locker with a couple of inches of water, we saw drips down below around the beam supporting the shower but we also saw water coming up from between the shower base and the teak and holly floors. With the locker filled up 3 or 4 inches, the water was actually starting to flow up through the floor even though there was obvious seam there. This finding isn't great news but, as we think it through, it's better news than a leaking shower door from a repair complexity perspective.

5/23/2020: Silicone Sealing

The locker underneath the shower seat has no drain, so it's particularily important that water not get into it. The approach taken by the boat manufacture is to have a two-inch dam on the inside of the door with a half-inch lip so that water that gets past the locker door will flow in and pool in the damn area but not make it down to the locker and eventually just run out of the door and back into the shower. This looks like a fairly effective approach. What's happened over time is the sealant has aged and cracked and there was a very small water ingress path from the dam to the locker itself. Not much gets let in, but it's enough to build up over weeks and eventually flood the storage areas down below.

To rectify this problem we used a Dremel with sharp pointed rotary cutting tool to remove the caulking all around the dam. This both removed the old caulking but also opened up the seam to allow a thicker, more durable sealant bead. We resealed the door area, but also did the inside of the locker. Strictly speaking water shouldn't get into the locker area so it's less important that it not get out. But, since it really makes a big mess if water does get in, we sealed up all seams inside the locker to ensure that if water gets it to the locker, it'll stay there preventing mess elsewhere and making it easier to see the problem inside the locker.

At this points we have two lines of defense. First the locker door has a sealed-up water dam to exclude water from entering the locker. Then we have a sealed-up locker preventing water from getting any further if it does get past the dam. We added one additional level of defense by putting a weather strip along the top of the locker door to minimize the water that reaches the dam and further reduce the chance of leak.

With three levels of defense, we're pretty confident we'll not see problems here for another 10 years or so. This example shows how difficult water leaks can be to trace. The path the water took is long and circuitous in this case. Water on the shower seat leaked past the locker door to the dam, a small amount leaked through a crack in the dam to the locker below. The locker below was missing a caulk line at one seam so it leaked into the under-floor area. From there the water flowed along the under floor wood work from one side of the shower door to the other. From there is seeped out of the floor to shower enclosure interface to soak the floor under the floor covering, and ran down into the storage area below the floor. From there it flowed into the storage area at the engine room door which also needed to be emptied and cleaned. And from there if ran to the to the under-step area just inside the engine room which needed to be opened and cleaned. And from there it reached the bilge in front of the engine, then ran down below and along the keel to the central bilge behind the engine. Water can travel very long distances and leaks can be challenging to find and correct.

5/23/2020: Spitfire

Whenever we work in the engine room, Spitfire climbs up onto the shelf above the main engine to keep an eye on the job and inspect overall work quality. This shelf affords and excellent 360-degree view and is becoming a favorite of his.

5/24/2020: Rear Main Oil Seal

Our generator showed a light misting of oil around the generator cooling fan a month back. At just under 7,000 hours, it's a bit early to be leaking but it's not a huge issue since rear main oil seals don't fail catastrophically nor even quickly. It just means that in the next year or so, we're going to have to replace that seal. Unfortunately it's a big job and we don't currently have the needed parts but rear main oil seals don't fail fast so we're not particularly worried about.

A month ago it was hardly even an oil mist on the inside of the cabinet enclosure. But this one has gotten worse quite quickly and in 200 hours it's now spraying so much oil around the enclosure that it's running down the side of the engine and the enclosure sound deadening material. It's a real mess and getting worse fast.

To minimize the spread of oil, we now have a oil diaper taped on so that it rests against the sound enclosure. This allows the generator to still have full cooling air flow but keeps the worst of the oil spray down. If you look carefully you'll see that the oil running down the underneath the fuel filter and it was just cleaned 1.5 operating hours back. This leak has become serious one quite quickly.

5/24/2020: Oil Spray

Here you can see the the oil collector after 1.5 hours of operation. The oil diaper fills in 7 to 10 hours and needs to be replaced. This is both a mess and also makes working around the generator a dirty prospect.

5/24/2020: Manometer

Whenever an engine has a serious oil leak and, especially when the leak worsens quickly, the most likely cause is excess crank case pressure. This can be caused by excess blow-by due to failed rings or other internal engine problems, but the more common cause is faulty venting systems. It's easy to check for excessive flow by opening the lower oil fill when the engine is running at full load and checking for air flow. There should be very little.

We chose to use a manometer and measure internal crankcase pressure but the "by feel" is almost as good. In this measurement, we found the crankcase internal pressure is 1.17" of water. This is 0.042 PSI, so a very slight positive pressure. Northern Lights doesn't publish crankcase pressure specs for their engines, but the Deere Specification for our main engine is less than 2" of water. We know from past testing that the Deere runs in the 0.8" to 1.3" of water range so the Lugger is right in the middle at 1.17" of water. This is what we would expect from a healthy engine not showing any adverse signs of wear.

5/24/2020: Temperature

One of the most common causes of failed oil seals is excess temperature, but this engine has never been over-heated. It has a high temperature cut off at 205F and it's never been above that and, most of the time, it runs down in the 186 to 188F range. Seals generally run at engine temperature so we mostly focus on that. But enclosure air temperatures can be a problem as well, although these problems are usually voltage regulator and electrical components inside the hot enclosure. The hotter it gets the worse for those components. The oil seals are going to run at whatever temperature the engine itself is running at (in our case 186F to 188F and never over 205F).

But we still took the opportunity to check the enclosure air temperature and found 109F in a 88F engine room. Using the worst possible case, we put the generator at full load for an hour and it showed 117F in a 95F engine room. This tells us enclosure temperatures are fine and our voltage regulator is operating in acceptable conditions. If you are checking your own generator, ensure that the enclosure heat shielding is not pulling down or peeling back, blocking air flows, and make sure that you don't have spares up against the enclosure blocking air flow.

Having a rear main oil seal fail before 7,000 hours is a bit early in our opinion, but there is no evidence of environmental problems. There is no question, however, that the rear main oil seal needs to be changed.

5/24/2020: Crankcase Ventilation

The generator crankcase ventilation system used by Northern Lights is a simple design with little to go wrong. The crankcase vents directly to the engine intake through a small diaphragm that forms a valve. It has a light spring on the back that seals the crankcase until something nearing 1.00" of water develops in which case the diaphragm lifts against the spring and vents the crankcase into the engine air intake. We know from the manometer test earlier that we don't have excess crankcase pressure, but we still wanted to check that this diaphragm was working correctly and the metal mesh oil mist coalescing filter in front of it was clear. Both are in perfect operating condition and working as designed.

5/24/2020: Oil Coalescing Filter

Here we are checking the oil coalescing filter to ensure it's free of obstruction and that crankcase vapors can vent into the engine intake through the diaphragm valve without any resistance beyond the spring behind the diagram valve. All checked out correctly.

5/24/2020: Experiment

We've gone from a generator that leaks no oil for 6,600 hours, to a light oil misting around the generator cooling fan, to oil being thrown freely around the generator enclosure. From light misting to oil running everywhere was only 200 hours and it continues to worsen quickly. We know the engine temperature is fine, the oil level isn't high, the enclosure temperatures is fine, the crankcase ventilation system is working correctly, but the rear main oil seal is leaking a lot of oil. It appears to have failed both early but also uncharacteristically quickly.

Changing the rear main oil seal is a large job and, for what might be the first time ever, we don't have the parts we need nor a practical work-around. And because it's a single-generator boat, we need to keep the engine in use. So we decided to try a couple of experiments. In the first experiment, we decided to run with a neutral crankcase pressure and see if that reduced the oil leakage. In the second planned experiment, we'd run a slight negative pressure.

We implemented a zero pressure crankcase by folding a shop rag into fours and hose clamping it over the oil fill hole with the oil fill cap removed. This gives four layers of rag to prevent oil mist problems but, otherwise, to allow a neutral pressure crankcase.

5/24/2020: Conditions

The winds settled down overnight and the barometer is back up, at 1022mb. Looks like we have some nice weather coming.

5/24/2020: Sunset

Spectacular sunset with calm seas over the Isle of Gigha.

5/25/2020: 73.8 GB

One of our cellular data plan comes with a whopping 60GB a month, and rolls over unused data. For reduncancy, we maintain three cellular plans with a combined capacity of 115GB a month. We're big data users, but even we have trouble using all of this in a month. Combining the unused data from last month with the 60GB allocation for this month, this plan alone has 73.8GB available this month.

5/25/2020: Sunrise

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.44'W

Conditions were wonderfully calm this morning as the sun rose over the Kintyre Peninsula.

5/25/2020: Successful Experiment

Wow, the tiny difference between 1.17" of water and 0" made a massive difference to the oil leakage rate. Here's the engine with after 8 hours of operation at normal load. Where oil was thrown around everywhere in the enclosure, it's now back to a light misting with some light build up of oil on the grill that surrounds the generator cooling fan. This difference is remarkable.

It's still leaking but it's only 5 to 10% of what it was leaking before. It used to have oil running down the junction box and the Wavenet as far away as the top corner of the generator enclosure. It was a veritable oil shower in there. It still needs to a new rear main oil seal but we now have more time to get parts and do the job when we have time rather than as emergency service.

5/25/2020: Clock

Our Sony clock radio that sits on the shelf in front of the mirror at right failed recently. We went to the backup, which works fine, but we noticed is no longer for sale. We like to always have a spare of all 60Hz appliances on the boat, especially while we are in Europe where they can't be purchased locally. So we started shopping on Amazon for a new clock.

We decided instead to try a different approach where we installed a large clock app on a no-longer-used tablet. The digits are bigger and easier to read than our previous clock and it frees up counter space occupied by the clock. The positioning above the closet door is a bit unusual, but we like it because the clock is easy to read from anywhere in the room, including lying in bed.

5/25/2020: Bread

Another tasty loaf from our bread machine.

5/26/2020: Sunrise

Sunrise through approaching fog over the Kintyre Peninsula.

5/26/2020: Crankcase Pressure

We have a serious rear main oil seal problem that is covering the inside of the generator enclosure with oil and running down the block. It's a real mess. Clearly the seal needs to be changed, but it's both a big job and one that requires parts we don't currently have so we tried an experiment of running the crankcase at neutral pressure. We don't have a crankcase pressure or blow by problem on this engine. In normal operation the crankcase runs at 1.17" H2O, which is as designed. But, with the leaking oil seal, we wanted to see if it would leak less with neutral pressure in the crankcase rather than slightly positive.

Neutral pressure made a big difference to the amount of oil thrown around in the generator enclosure. We wanted to continue the experiment and have a look at what difference it would make to run slightly negative crankcase pressures. We don't expect it'll be much different from the successful neutral pressure test, but it's worth a try. On this test we replaced the oil fill cap that we had off during the neutral pressure test. Having the cap on there closes all vents to the crankcase except the crankcase ventilation system included in the valve covered. This ventilation system is a nice design where there is first an oil mist coalescing screen and then a diaphragm valve with a very light spring that holds the diaphragm closed. When slight pressure in the crankcase builds up, it's vented into the intake manifold to be burned by the engine. This is an nice system and yields an operating crankcase pressure of just over 1 inch H2O.

In this experiment, we removed the diaphragm and the spring which opens the crankcase to the intake. Since the diaphragm is both a valve and a gasket, we sealed the cap to the valve cover using a gasket (in this case, we chose to use Permatex Orange since it's effective on oil pans and other difficult seals). With the diaphragm and spring removed and the crankcase open to the intake, we measured -3.3" H2O.

Summarizing our finding in the testing so far: 1) the crankcase pressure in stock configuration: 1.17" H2O, 2) the pressure with oil cap replaced with an oil coalescing filter: 0" H2O, and 3) the pressure with diaphragm removed from the crankcase ventilation system: -3.3" H2O. We plan to run in this configuration for 10 to 20 generator hours and see how it does in limiting the oil flow past our failed rear main oil seal.

5/26/2020: Valve Adjustment

The bad news is in. It's been 39 engine hours and only 5 days since the last generator valve adjustment. There is just about no way we got that job wrong twice in a row. The engine has developed a serious valve problem. The valves have been adjusted and the generator is back in service, but we don't expect it to go longer than 20-40 hours without needing attention again.

5/27/2020: Common Eider

Handsome Common Eiders swimming across the anchorage on an ultra-calm morning. At 4.5lbs (2kg), the duck is the largest in the Northern Hemisphere and is a common sight here at the Isle of Gigha.

5/27/2020: Hebridian Isles

Position: 55°41.43'N, -5°43.44'W

The Caledonian MacBrayne ferry Hebridian Isles en route to West Loch Tarbert northeast of Gigha. We daily see the ferry passing in the distance to our north, and the "CalMac" ferries were a common sight on our 2017 Hebrides cruise.

5/27/2020: Waxing Stack

Position: 55°41.42'N, -5°43.44'W

The weather will be nice for a few days, so we decided to wax the topsides. Here Jennifer is at the top of the stack, secured with a climbing harness. In doing a couple of Via Ferrata climbs in Norway in 2018, we learned that our standard climbing equipment wasn't ideal for short-distance falls where the rapid deceleration can exceed the rating of normal climbing gear (in mountaineering terms this is called a high fall factor). So we purchased energy-absorbing lanyards to replace the standard climbing equipment we use for safety gear when clipped on to the stack. Besides being safer in a fall, the dual-lanyards means we never have to unclip entirely to reclip, and the automatic-locking carabiners are quick and easy to snap on.

5/27/2020: Waxing Brow

James waxing the brow, secured with an climbing harness attached to a line strung between the bimini attachment points.

5/28/2020: Meercat

The tug Meercat of Southampton arrived in the area today and has been working out at the nearby fish farm. We've seen hardly any non-local boats the entire time we've been at Gigha.

5/28/2020: Waxing Stack

James suspended from the crane in a climbing harness to wax the aft side of the stack.

5/28/2020: Visitors

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.44'W

Scotland is still in lockdown, but just announced a slight easing of restrictions. People are now allowed to range up to five miles from their homes and activities such as golf and fishing are now permitted. Some locals from Gigha stopped by to say hello today on their way out to go fishing. Other than the fish farm folks checking up on us regularly, these are the first people we've spoken with in person for ten weeks. The first thing they said was "Hello James" and we were a little surprised they knew us by name—turns out they've been reading our blog.

5/29/2020: Sunrise

Position: 55°41.44'N, -5°43.44'W

Another spectacular sunrise over the Kintyre peninsula.

5/29/2020: Green Onions

Our green onion farm is doing amazingly well. All we do is change the water daily. Each stalk has grown well over six inches since we first put them in water two weeks ago. We also dropped in a couple of bulbs that we'd used the leaves from recently, and they've each grown several inches in a week. We wouldn't base a retirement program in this, but it's successful and its nice to have fresh greens.

5/29/2020: Waxing

We've completed waxing the stack, the flybridge brow, the inside of the flybridge and around the boat deck. Today we are working on the walkway around the pilothouse.

5/29/2020: Polishing Stainless

Polishing the stainless steel staples on the boat deck. We use Flitz polish—it easily removes rust stains, gives the stainless a great shine and protects it for many months between applications.

5/30/2020: Waxing

Waxing the walkway alongside the house. We're using 3M Restorer and Wax, distributed from a one-gallon jug into conveniently-sized 32oz squeeze bottles. Waxing the boat is a big job and just the topsides alone takes the two of us four full days. Another two days are needed to wax the hull, but we'll likely save that until we're next on a dock where the job is a lot easier. If we ever are tempted to buy a bigger boat, this job or cleaning the bottom always cures us. :)

5/30/2020: Another Valve Adjustment

A few days ago, we concluded we had a failing exhaust valve or seat, and today confirms it. In 4 days and 27 engine hours, number 3 exhaust valve is again tight. Note in the picture that a couple more threads are showing on the number 3 exhaust valve (far left), when compared to the intake valve beside it. What's happening here is the valve stem is rising due to a worn valve, worn valve seat, or stretching valve stem. This causes the valve lash adjustment to tighten up.

The last three adjustments have put it back to the correct clearance each time. Those extra threads showing reflect the rapidly changing valve stem closed-position height. This engine needs a rebuilt cylinder head before it gets too many more hours.

5/30/2020: Pleasure Craft

The second pleasure craft we've seen in as many months, heading north along the east side of Gigha.

5/30/2020: Lettuce

The last of our lettuce from Antwerp and Ramsgate for a salad with dinner. The lettuce lasted amazingly well from eleven weeks since purchase. That's definitely a new record on board Dirona.

5/30/2020: Seal

A sleepy seal bobbed past the cockpit this evening as we were having dinner. Everyone was enjoying the calm and sunny weather.

5/30/2020: Sunset

Sunset looking west from our anchorage over the Ilse of Gigha.

5/31/2020: Main as Gen

This is our power control configuration web page. What we just changed on this page is visible in the third line, where autostart was changed from 'Gen' (normal) to 'Main' (backup).

If the generator ever failed during operation, wasn't able to produce power, or couldn't start, our autostart system would automatically switch over to the main to use it for charging the batteries and send us email so we know about the problem.

In this case, the generator actually still is working and able to produce full output, but it has a failing valve seat that is going to require a cylinder head rebuild. If we continue to operate it, the problems possibly could get more expensive.

5/31/2020: 6.8 kW