Spring is Breaking = Back to Boatwork!

 After a long, cold winter, it's finally time to get back to it on our boat!  John came back in February to check things out and get things organized.  I got here last week and we're going through the wiring to figure out what stays, what goes, and how to get the new wiring in place. 

It was totally gorgeous when I got here mid-week last week, I even did my last few meetings on Friday out on the marina picnic grounds,

and then a cold front blew through on the weekend.  And it was brrrrrr cold! 

But today is beautiful and sunny, it's still cool, while it is supposed to warm up all week.

Before he picked me up at the airport last week, John picked up some of the Victron equipment that we will need to manage our battery charging and to monitor our battery status.  Now comes the fun puzzle part of figuring out where everything is going to be mounted and how to get all the connections figured out.

One thing that is making it tricky for us, is that we haven't found anyone else who has wired a dual motor, dual helm situation with this equipment.  All the other dual motor systems we've seen for other catamarans have all been done with a single helm.  Because we have both a port and starboard helm, we want full monitoring and controls at each helm.  We can't trace all the wire paths from our old system because while we have two helms, our old system didn't have engine controls or monitors at the port helm.  It only had steering.  So, we have a lot of crawling around looking for pathways that can go between the two hulls and that can be accessible to new cabling.  Hopefully we will find adequate space without having to install all new conduit.  Fingers crossed!!  Oceanvolt has been super helpful in answering questions and getting us diagrams.  Same with our local vendor, Annapolis Hybrid Marine.

In the meantime, while it was cold, rainy, and snowy, we spent Saturday heading up to Pennsylvania early in the morning to go to the Philadelphia temple.

Our church believes that every person who has or will ever live on earth deserves the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and decide for themselves whether or not to partake in the blessings that following the teachings and ordinances can bring to them.  However, we know that no where near everyone will have that chance in their mortal life to hear about and access the gospel.  That is why genealogy is such an important subject for us.  We are committed to finding our ancestor's records of births, marriages, and deaths, and then performing, by proxy, the ordinances we believe are vital to progress in the gospel.  It starts with baptism, and goes on through other temple ordinances up to the sealing of marriages and of children to parents for time and all eternity.  It is a joyful experience to perform these ordinances on behalf of our ancestors who made the choices that ended up blessing our lives so that we have the freedom and ability to attend the church we do and conduct the ordinances we can.  Plus, performing these ordinances by proxy helps us recall and remember the covenants we made when we performed them for ourselves.  Still, remember, each soul has a choice of whether or not to accept the work we do on their behalf. 

After our temple work, we dashed out in the sleeting rain to take a picture or a few in front of the temple, laughing all along at how silly we were to do that for a picture - here you go!

Then we did a google search for the best Philly Cheesesteak.  Of course we would!  When in Philly . . . We found a place called Del Rossi's fairly near the temple that had great reviews and headed there.  Oh goodness in a bun, it was delish!  I got mine with grilled onions, mushrooms, and provolone.  John skipped the onions and mushrooms, but added green peppers.  And the fries were every bit as good!  So delicious and so much food!

 

We rounded out the drive back to our marina with a quick stop for a snap of the Rocky statue (NOT at the top of the stairs anymore and really doesn't look like him!),

some grocery shopping, and stopping in Wilmington to pick up a portable, folding workbench for John that he found from Facebook Marketplace.  That night the wind really picked up which had the boat swaying and rocking in the slip.  Evidently that was exactly what I needed because I slept like a log that night, not even waking up when John got up a couple of times to check on lines and our enclosure that were being battered by the wind.  Sunday was a stay in and stay warm day so we attended our Salt Lake church meeting via Zoom and really enjoyed the talks.  Then we ate the rest of our cheesesteaks and watched a couple of Netflix vids.  An altogether reasonable day on the first day of daylight savings - not my favorite thing to do, spring forward.  Luckily, hopping on to work here isn't until 10 am MD time so it's been a bit easier for me to adjust this time.

Finishing up this post with a couple of beautiful sunset shots from last night.  Loving it out here!