Fête de la Musique

It's that time of year again and I wish we were in Paris today...

What a great way to start off the summer :)

Enjoy!

Happy 75th

to Sir Paul McCartney

Powering electrical doo-dads

Today was an electrical odd-jobs day and I'm very happy.

Over the last year, I've been ripping our DVDs to store on hard drives. This is a more convenient storage method, plus we got rid of some weight, and recovered valuable shelf space.  Unfortunately, many of our DVDs had deteriorated. One damaged DVD could cause us to lose the entire series if we could not find a replacement for that particular season. When finished, we took all of our old DVDs to Gallows Bay Marine and put them on the free book exchange shelf for recycling.

We have SIX Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEB5000100) and TWO smaller Seagate Expansion 3TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEB3000100) as the 5TB drives were backordered at the time. The hard drives are duplicated for backup purposes.

These drives came with 110v transformer "wall wart" plugs with an output voltage of 12 volts. YES, TWELVE VOLTS! I bought some cables with appropriate-sized barrel plugs on one end and nothing on the other end to which Bob installed an Anderson plug today. The hard drives work just fine! Hurray, don't have to use the inverter to run the drives anymore.

Bob also installed our new Marinebeam LED tricolor/anchor/strobe masthead light. We're doing the happy dance!

Another tip is to check the output voltage on your 110v transformer plugs. When at ACE hardware, I check the different models of fans to check their power supply. We have three O2cool fans running directly off of 12 volts, as does our digital piano. If some item runs at approximately 5 volts, such as our AcuRite weather station which required 4 AA batteries, we would find a USB cable with the correct plug and give it a try.

Our Sony AM/FM/SW radio runs on 6 AA batteries which is 9 volts. When I have time, I'll see about using one of our power packs that outputs several voltages. Maybe it has different adaptors that might fit. If not, we can fit another socket with a standard plug. Pas de problème. I wonder where I put it :)

My next chore is printing out 2 pages to include in our boat papers. Fingers crossed...

1st day of June 2017

The first day of June is another one of those special days for me.

Pre-1996, it was a time of anticipation of the coming summer days with all of the fun stuff that it entails. But now, it is the mark of the first day of "H" season with its perennial question of "what's in store for us this summer?"

This year, we have the worry of impending windstorms but we also have joy of beginning a new chapter in our cruising life.

This morning I googled "2017 hurricane season" to see what has been predicted for this summer. Some of the results ranging from 5 to 45 days ago said that it would be higher than average. But the more recent articles of yesterday and today are saying lower... I'm going for lower :)

This one is from yesterday's AccuWeather - 2017 Atlantic hurricane forecast: Possible El Nino to limit development of storms. That sounds good.

Wunderground had a blog post I like from April 6th 

 The CSU team cited two main reasons why this may be a below-average hurricane season:

• A weak to moderate El Niño event is expected to develop by autumn
• The tropical Atlantic has cooled over the past month, and the far North Atlantic is currently colder than normal.

As always, the CSU team included this standard disclaimer: "Coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for them. They should prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted."

Got to finish coffee #3 and start doing stuff...

Have a good one!