Today, as I sit in the coffee shop, the sun is shining and the winds are reducing and backing to NE.  There was a lot of rain.  I performed the usual preventive and recurring maintenence during the stormy time.  Barometric pressure was down to 29.21″ and is now rapidly rising. 

I forgot to download all the current website data from my business server so I am reduced to only writing blogs.  No development is happening right now.  I will have to make a trip back just to get the data.  I purchased the long range wifi unit that should allow D&D on the boat.  Soon life will be even better.

We started floating again on 21 April.  The launch was uneventful.  This year we use VC17M original again and it was heavily coated.  After that we re-coated the waterline green paint with the remaining epoxy anti-foul paint.  For some reason it looked darker this year. 

Prior to float, we equalized the batteries at 14VDC for 8 hours.  The 4 12VDC batteries are Deka Marine Master DC31DT type and are in two switched banks.  Mostly we run them in “both” position but sometimes it would be advantageous from a conservative point of view to only discharge one bank each day and alternate days.  We will probably install the wind generator this year – mostly we do not – because the Lake Michigan islands are beckoning us.

A long range wifi unit was purchased from RadioLabs so we can stay in touch with the internet.  Also, I just received the Belkin wifi pcmcia wireless N cards that are highly rated.  I am watching the great signal from my old dlink G router.  The new card works well.  With the N cards came the TP-Link wireless N router.  I probably will not get to have it operational with the TV computer until later this summer or maybe this winter but it was a great price so I just bought it.  Most of my TV has switched to Hulu watching.  I think cable TV is dead.

Later…………