Sunday, 15 July 2018 - Something seems to be wrong with my battery charging system on the boat. I ran the generator for four hours today and the house batteries never topped off. I've never had to run the charging system that long before. The batteries cost over a thousand dollars and are less than two years old. They should last about four years or longer if you don't discharge them to too low a state, which I don't believe I've done.

Monday, 16 July - Not too long ago, I realized that the charger for my iPhone and MacBook would need replacing soon because the cord was fraying, so I purchased a backup replacement for when the time arrived. About a week ago, the old one totally quit working, so I confidently opened the new box and patted myself on the back for thinking ahead. Unfortunately, the new one wouldn't work. I contacted the supplier and they quickly replaced it. I got it Saturday and confidently plugged it in. A green light came on, then soon turned to red, indicating an error, then shortly thereafter, the circuit breaker tripped. Today I tried to troubleshoot the circuitry to see if there is something wrong on my boat. While removing one of the screws on the circuit breaker to clean the contacts, the housing on the breaker broke so I had to go get another at West Marine. Upon replacing the breaker, I seem to have cured the tripping problem, but the charger light still turns red as soon as I plug either my laptop or iPhone into it. It's hard to believe I received two defective chargers in a row, but I can find nowhere in the system that is faulty. I've emailed the company again and will see what they have to say this time.
                    This evening I ran the generator for four and a half hours and still couldn't get the batteries to indicate that they were topped off. This seems to portend another expenditure of cash.

Tuesday, 17 July - Much of today was spent removing all the connections from the house batteries and cleaning them up. I’ve been having to run the generator more lately and for the last two evenings, I have run it over 4 hours each evening without the batteries getting topped off, indicating that something is wrong somewhere. I disconnected all the connections on the House Batteries and cleaned the connectors. I then tested each battery with the Volt meter and all read the same Voltage, which is good. I probably should have tested them with the Load Tester, but forgot to do so when I had all the connectors off. Now, only hours later, the batteries are registering only 12.32V which should be about 50%, but the control paned says they are at 92%. Both can't be right. I'll fool with it tomorrow again and try to figure out what's wrong then.

Wednesday, 18 July - Good news today. I got an email from the maker of the phone/laptop charger that it is indeed working properly. I'm just not used to having a green light change to red indicating proper operation. From my experience, a red light usually means stop or danger or fault. I'm glad to find out that this time, it doesn't.
                    I contacted Xantrex, the maker of my charger/inverter on Island Time, made some minor adjustments to the settings on the charger, charged the batteries for about another four hours and will have to wait to see if this resolved my problems. We shall see.

Thursday, 19 July - After having priced new tubes for my dinghy at over $2000, I decided to renew my efforts, so today I tore off one of the big patches on my forward tube and undertook the process of cleaning all the previous adhesives off; a major project in itself. I, also, decided that in order to replace the patch I am going to need to be beside the boat, not in it, so tomorrow I'll put the dinghy on the foredeck of Island Time.

Friday, 20 July - We've had clear skies and almost no breeze all week with a forecast for more of the same until mid-week next week, so I started moving the dinghy onto the foredeck. I got the motor off and mounted on the aft rail, moved the boat forward, readied a halyard to raise it with and a snatch block and another line back to a winch on the mast to pull the dinghy forward, away from the mast as I raise it. Just then, I noticed a dark cloud to the east of the harbor with a large funnel cloud trailing below it. I went down below and got in the VHF radio and announced the sighting to the harbor, but by the time I went on deck again, it had dissipated, as if to simply make a liar out of me. I went back down and apologized, but got a "thank you" for the warning anyway.
                    Getting the dinghy on deck took a couple of hours or more. It seemed like it took longer than the last time. That's going the wrong way. I think I need to time jobs like that and take notes so that I'll know how much time to allocate next time. Otherwise, I always think it will "only take an hour or so." The dinghy now covers three out of the four large hatches that are used for ventilation, so it's going to be really warm in the saloon for the next couple of days. I think I'd better move the Honda generator that is sitting on top of the fourth hatch so I can get some air in here. I have several portholes on the sides of the cabin that open, but they aren't nearly as effective as the larger hatches that open forward and really scoop the wind in as it moves down the length of the boat.
                    I'm waiting for the dinghy, which is out of the water and sitting in the sun of the deck to cool down in the evening. Right now it's way too hot to apply the adhesive.