It comes every year. This winter, Risa is on the hard, out of the water, for the winter. It has been 10 years since her last winter out.

On June 30, 2019 a severe squall pummeled our harbor. Many trees were ripped out of the ground. I saw one photo that looked like a twister. There were reports of 88 mph winds by one friend who rode the storm out with his boat on his mooring. Here are several pics that I pulled […]

One of the perks of being an Optimum Cable customer is the relatively easy to find wifi hot spots. Risa was able to have a connection not only on her mooring, but even while sailing in the bay! A high power bridge and large omnidirectional antenna combination made this possible. This spring the optimum SSID […]

Perhaps the most important battery measurement is its state of charge.  It can be inferred by the resting state voltage reading of the batteries, but more precise would be to track the amps as they move in and out of the bank. The most reliable way to do this is with a shunt. A shunt […]

August 27, 2018 at 11:35 am. Checked a camera view from the website this morning.  It showed me a picture taken at 7:50am.  It was nearly noon.  Did the Pi crash?  Tried logging in, fully expecting to be told that the connection was offline.  Nope, logged right in, no problem, so what’s up?  The shots […]

Two years ago, I purchased a Splash Drone – this quadrocoptor could take off and land in water, yes even salt water!  Trying it out at home, found that there were too many trees around to learn to fly.  Once the replacement parts were installed and a new case arrived, off to the boat it […]

Risa is experiencing a problem with the solar charge controller.  It began with values being reported via the web interface and modbus/tcp requests being clearly wrong.  It would sometimes show that the array was producing zero amps, even though the battery was receiving charges in excess of 10 amps.  Other times, it showed values orders […]

Battery voltage was being reported slightly lower each morning.  There was a trend occuring that would eventually lead to a problem. The refrigerator was working too hard.  It seemed to run constantly.  It used to get frosty, accumulating a layer of ice when we cruised.  That hadn’t happened the last several years, but it had been […]