Busy morning

It's been a busy morning here on the mighty Hang 20. We had a little electrical glitch yesterday - the fuse for the instruments somehow stopped working, and we had trouble getting it re-inserted. All seemed ok until this morning when we got a low voltage warning from the instruments. Lori checked and the batteries were really really low. We turned everything off but let the solar charge the batteries back up. Even in clouds, we get a pretty steady trickle of power.

We isolated the problem to the instruments. For some reason a lawyer and a teacher can't confirm at this moment, the fuse problem we had caused the instruments to purge power. We turned everything off, and Lori drove for a few hours with the analog compasses and feel. We're both in the groove enough to do that, but want the instruments back before dark.

Anyway, I took a nap since I hadn't slept much last night. When I got up, we each had some ramen (Yum!), and I confirmed there was quite a bit of corrosion around the fuse for the instruments, and none of the other switches. I turned the batteries off and disconnected them. Then I opened the fuse box and confirmed everything underneath looked normal. I used a metal brush and file to clean the fuse cap and whatever you are supposed to call the fuse holder. I cleaned both off with rubbing alcohol and put everything back together. It seems to be working now, but we're watching the battery voltage quite carefully for a while here. If it fails again, we'll probably swap the wiring for the instruments with the autohelm. We don't quite trust that in these swells anyway, and the driving has gotten pretty fun. We are both in much higher spirits now that we are pointed (more or less directly) at Hawaii. Lori wants you to know we have 1753nm to the finish line, according to my iNavX app. (Mai tais, here we come!)

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, I have a confession. I looked up in the middle of the night and realized that when it is dark out and I am tired, the anemometer and wind vane look an awful lot like the feathers and beak of a booby. The booby never landed! I was very ashamed at first, but then I found the humor in the situation. Lori was also disappointed at first, but we're laughing pretty hard about it now.

No more writing for now! It's Lori's turn to sleep. We usually get four hours off during the day, once each, but today we're going to have to stick with threes to try to catch up up.

XOXO Gossip Girl

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