Life and Stuff

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Boat Prep

I'm working pretty solid through the week to get the boat ready for leaving on Monday morning. I got a slow start and after allowing air into the fuel lines yesterday and having to bleed the air from the system (an hour long job - by yourself), I finally got back on track to get my list of items checked off.

So far I have:

• replaced my 5hp honda outboard on the dingy with a better (new) 4hp outboard and broken it in.
• installed a vacuum gauge on the fuel system -which allows you to diagnose when the filter needs replacing. (this is important because an engine stopping at the WRONG time is a very bad thing.) While installing this item is when I allowed the air into the fuel system by not completely sealing the filter properly. It turns out that it wasn't my fault - I called tech support for the vacuum gauge and they said I was sent the wrong adapter. It's too long - so it won't allow the gaskets to seal.
• I've dismantled the air conditioner discharge system where it sends water out the 'thru hull' fitting, in preparation to add a second bilge pump.

Here's what I have to do:

• Add a second bilge pump. I'm installing an 'emergency' electric bilge pump approx 8 inches higher than the regular bilge pump. This is so if the regular bilge pump fails for any reason,, the higher one will take over when the water gets higher than normal in the boat. This is a fairly standard thing - but my boat did not have this. To keep from having to drill another hole in the boat hull, I'm putting a Y fitting onto the A/C discharge with check valves on both feeds.

• Change the toilet water intake to the 'screened' water intake at the A/C. This will keep any grass etc out of the toilet system. It will pulll sea water out of a filter/screen.

• Figure out a better way to hold the main shower nozzle. The way the shower is set up on the boat is very efficient. It uses (on both showers) the faucet from the sink with a long 'pullout' hose (like your kitchen sink sprayer) to conver to a shower. A special nozzle allows it to instantly switch from normal 'faucet' stream to 'shower' stream. The original set up is not to my liking. It has the shower attachment at the 5 foot level on the bulkhead. I'm going to fix it 'overhead' in the hatch. It'll be a more enjoyable shower this way.

• Sew some canvas. I have a few spots of canvas covers that need some mending. They're not torn, but some stitching has come loose. I need to spend about 20 minutes and touch them up.

Optional Items (if I have enough time)

• Install some LED lights. I'm a bit of a energy miser when it comes to anchoring out. Currently, most of the lights on the boat are flourescent. They use anywhere from 1.5 amps to 3.5 amps each - depending on what array is on. I've found some 6-light LED fixtures that use much much less. I want to install a couple of these.

• New Anchor. I want (and will have at some point) a Delta anchor to go with my Bruce anchor. Currently, my 2 bow anchors are the Bruce and a Fortress. I want to take the fortress off the bow and use it as my 'back up' anchor and put a Delta 33# on the bow in it's place. We'll see.

Well, I'm not getting it done sitting here typing.

Monday, March 26, 2007

John Wayne wears Crocs

Here's a cut out of John Wayne at the CROC (those rubbery shoes) booth.

Each day when we came to the work, the valley was full of camp fire smoke from all the people camping out. After the day warmed up, the smoke would rise, but it was really thick in the mormings.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Bad Seats

I've heard it said by almost everyone who is familiar with the Bristol Track, that there's not a bad seat in the house. Well, today, I found some bad seats. I was working on camera 3 and noticed that behind the camera area was the supports for the 'skycam' and then noticed some seats behind that.

I took the time to go check it out and indeed - I found some bad seats. Photo above.

More Bristol

Thursday's set up went well enough. We had a bunch of dumb little technical problems that eventually worked themselves out. It was one of those days where a lot of very small things kept going wrong and taking your time.

The Bristol Raceway is really coming to life. With the small infield - it doesn't take much to fill it up. Bristol's racetrack is the size of a very large football stadium and seats 165,000 people. Unlike the other tracks that I've been to - there's no infield parking/camping for the spectators. If you're watching the race, you're either in a beacher seat or at home.

While working in the infield/pits on thursday, I was talking to one of the crew from Jeff Gordon's team about the "car of tomorrow' that they're using here. For non-Nascar fans, there's a new style car that being used here at Bristol called the "car of tomorrow" (COT). It has some enhancements that improve safety and make the the race a more level playing field. Anyway, what I didn't know (and most Nascar fans probably know this) is that every car out ther has the same body shape. There's not really an Impala SS shaped car or a Camry shaped car - they're all the same shape except for some contour lines in the hood. If they were all painted grey, you couldn't tell them apart. There seems to be some 'unhappiness' with some about this fact.

So, with this COT in place, they are able to measure each car more accurately to assure it conforms to the prescribed shape. They have a couple of stations set up here that each car must go through and be measured. I think the basic template measurement has been around for quite a while, but they have a new 3 dimensional template that they lower onto the car to make sure it's the right shape. It was interesting to watch them do this - but I couldn't believe how long it took. It took them basically all day to measure the cars.