Since Optimum began its “upgrade” project, Risa’s internet was spotty. While moored during the boating season(s), connecting to the Club’s wireless generally worked, however there was no longer any connection from my winter storage locations in Huntington (where there had been an Optimum hotspot). A tethered cell phone that provided the link, generally ran out […]

Late in September 2022, Risa stopped updating her stats. The worst possible timing, with launch service hours reduced for fall, checking and servicing becomes more challenging. Perhaps the Raspberry Pi died? As luck would have it, the Pi was fine (they are currently almost impossible to get due to the chip shortage!). It turned out […]

  Several changes came to fruition this spring. The major one was the completion of the battery systems. Aslight redesign of the housing made the bank fit better in the boat’s moldedbattery box. I rewired the old battery switch to be only an on-off switch forthe engine-battery, which remains AGM (a 4D). Even though, my […]

The new LiFePO4 battery bank has been installed! In the space of two 4D batteries, which contained a total of about 400ah of energy, 840ah of LiFePO4 power now sit. That’s twice as much, but wait there’s more…Of the 840 ah, over 700 are usable without long term damaging effects to the batteries, verses a […]

New batteries are on the upcoming season’s want list. Lithium based batteries are showing up more and more in the world. Tesla brought the electrification of cars to the front burner. We’ve been using lithium batteries in all of our marine projects. I thought it may be time to move forward on Lithium for Risa. […]

I was finally able to obtain all the parts needed to rebuild the solar mount. On Saturday, I rebuilt it and installed the panel and activated the system. It picked up right where it left off. Besides adding lock nuts to every connection, an additional buttress (of 1″ stainless pipe) was added to the structure. […]

Suffolk county was allowed to enter phase three reopening in June and phase four in early July. We’ve had a few socially distant raft-ups this summer. Better than nothing and proving to be a welcome and fun diversion. Our boats, like our homes are considered a “safe space” so we do tend to be off […]

Risa is ready to be launched, but to what end. She would just sit on her mooring gathering algae – may as well stay on land! Seems like everything is postponed or canceled this year.

We had been using Optimum for our internet provider at home since it became available to us back in the 90’s. It always went down for a second here and there, but was tolerable until recently. The outages were growing. When we could no longer stream video without freezing, we began complaining. Of course, by […]

Risa’s solar panel is on her stern, she is parked bow to the south, which compounds the poor angle of solar radiation. Further reductions are caused by shadows of not only my backstay, but by those caused by the boats around me. With all these factors, I was down to about 4 hours of OK […]