Category Archives: Upgrade

Replacing Anchor Chain Markers and Exploring Fell’s Point, Baltimore, Maryland

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Monday, August 18 — Today there was no rain in forecast, but it was ominous outside. It was 73-degrees Fahrenheit, a strong, cool wind and very grey skies. Eric decided it was a good day to redo the chain markers. Over the years, we’ve tried an assortment of ways to try to mark the chain at every 50-feet so that we knew exactly how much chain was out. We started with paint, which flaked off quickly. We tried plastic inserts next, but they popped out pretty fast. We then tried colored zip ties and colored tapes, but they tended to break and fall off after a while.

A while ago, Eric had found some plastic inserts that screwed in, and he was hopeful that the screw would mean they would stay in place and not pop out. We hadn’t put them in yet because we needed the right kind of dock – one with a pole at the end that could handle the weight and one long enough to stretch the chain all the way out. This was the spot. We carefully lowered the anchor and placed it on the dock. Then we let out all the chain, winding it up and down the length of the finger.

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Waterman’s with Miss Roxy and Portsmouth with Bigger Boat

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Sunrise on Wednesday, July 9, 2025:

Eric’s morning chore was to grease the windlass. We’d replaced our windlass last year before we left San Diego with an updated version of the same model. Eric was pleased to find that the updated model was easier to service than the last one. It was easy to take apart — just one screw and 2-bolts. This model also doesn’t need the oil changed; our old one did. 

In the afternoon, we went to Virginia Beach to visit Miss Roxy. On the way, we stopped at West Marine to pick up some more parts. West Marine didn’t take as long as we’d anticipated, so we had some extra time to kill. We decided to visit the famous Oceanfront boardwalk. We parked at a public parking garage that Karen had told us was the cheapest parking garage/lot in the area.

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Dinner at The Blue Talon Bistro in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

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Monday, July 7, continued… As we stated earlier, we were confused about Colonial Williamsburg. It was apparently still an active town with restaurants and shops and other amenities… but apparently you needed to buy a ticket to go into the town? It looked like there was a small section of it called Merchant Square where people could see the historical buildings without buying a ticket. We decided to go there for an early dinner and try to get clarification on what exactly the sightseeing activities in Colonial Williamsburg entailed.

It was about a 10-mile scenic drive from Jamestown. As we neared the town, we drove through William and Mary College, which was founded in 1693. The old buildings were charming. We parked on Boundary Street, the street that separated the college from the edge of town. It was hot and we’d already done a lot of walking, so we didn’t do much exploring by foot. We picked the first open restaurant that looked good, a French restaurant called The Blue Talon Bistro which was around the corner on Prince George Street.

As short as our walk was, it was still pretty with all the mature trees and beautiful old buildings.

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Repairs and Errands in Norfolk, Virginia

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Sunrise on Tuesday, July 1

On Tuesday morning, Eric went back to the hydraulic store in Portsmouth to exchange the fittings. He found fittings with angles that would work better in the space we had. Upon return, he finished installing the transfer pump. Much to his aggravation, one of the fittings was leaking. It was too hot to keep working in the engine room, so he gave up for the day. 

On Wednesday morning, Eric took apart, tightened and resealed both fittings on the fuel transfer pump. Since the transfer pump had fuel in it, it was messy. He captured the majority of the fuel in a bucket and used the oil pads (AKA diapers) to suck up the rest. In great news, it wasn’t leaking anymore! He started the transfer pump and it worked! Woo hoo!

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Replacing The Alternator Regulator

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As you may recall, in Panama, we had a catastrophic failure of our ARCO Zeus alternator regulator. The summary was that there was a mandatory software update, and the update caused the unit to malfunction and over voltage our main 12-volt electrical system. This caused our battery manager, in an effort to protect the batteries, to disconnect 12v power from the boat. Without the 12v power we lost radar, charts, GPS, lights, and various other systems. We also had a fire suppression system that shut down the main engine because it thought the loss of power was due to fire. Ouch. Fortunately, the failure happened someplace where we were not in danger, but that was mostly luck. Had we been someplace else when the boat suddenly stopped operating, we likely would have crashed into something. We also had enough emergency and backup systems that we were able to quickly gain control of the boat (we literally had a back up propulsion engine, as well as three other batteries banks to power the boat).

To continue cruising, the temporary solution was running the generator to power the batteries instead of using the main engine alternator while underway.

The company who installed the upgraded battery system, including the alternator regulator, was Weber Marine. Even though we in no way blame Weber for the situation, they covered replacing the ARCO Zeus as part of their warranty on their work.

David from Weber Marine flew in on Sunday, June 8 so that he could start work on Monday morning. When we’d scheduled this trip, Kosmos was supposed to already be back in the water and thus the A/C working. Having to do this project on the hard with no A/C was painful. Also, the yard hours were limited, so Eric and David couldn’t come in early to work during the coolest part of the day.

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