sv Bella Rose

Ahoy!

Happy Valentine's Day.

Yesterday morning I shot a little video of the frosty dock. Our normal low temerature for this time of year here on the gulf coast is 45 degrees and our normal high is 64 degrees.

That is 45 low and 64 high...

On Friday our high temp was 38! Geesh, it has been a cold winter. I know this sounds whiney to all you people in the colder climates. But we have been below normal by 20 degrees or so for weeks on end. We often get a day or two here and there below normal, but not 10-14 days 20 degrees below normal.

Anyway, Saturday morning it was 28 degrees at 8:00 am.  So I grabbed my video camera and walked down the dock filming the thick frost covering.

Also, when I got up Saturday morning and was making a pot of coffee, I noticed the fan on the refrigerator was running loud. After you live on a boat for a while you become very familiar with all the various sounds and readily notice when something sounds different. I added one of those computer fans available at Radio Shack to the compressor compartment to add additional airflow over the compressor. I attached the fan to the inside of the slotted door with a switch, but I keep it running all the time, so it moves the air through the area.

So I noticed the fan was much louder than it should be. My first thought was the bearing must be going, or something like hair was caught in the fan. I took a quick look at the fan and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, it seemed to be running in "high-gear." Hmmmmm

Next, I went to the Link monitor and pressed "Battery Bank 2" to check the batteries. We are currently dockside (obviously with the attached video), and connected to shore power. Well, when I woke up the Link, the display indicated 14.45 volts. Aha!! No wonder the fan sounded so loud. Normally the Xantrex charger maintains the voltage at 13.30 or so depending on the temperature. With the higher voltage the fan was running much faster. Question answered! Thankfully no problem to fix. Yippy!!

Rob