January 1, 2017 DC block to improve SSB

Happy New Year!!
We planned to have a relaxing day.  We have had a bag of dried black eyed peas on board for awhile.  So we decided to make a pot of black eyed peas as a southern tradition for good luck in the new year.  We still had one bag of pork in the freezer from the Boston Butt we bought from the church in GA in October.  Time to clean out the freezer and make room for fish. 

pot of black eyed peas in the Wonderbag

Dave said he wasn’t going to work on anything today, but he made a DC block on the copper strapping.  It will grease the path for the interference to travel down to the Dyna plate.  Radio frequency noise will travel down to it, but it will block any DC current.  There is a DC loop that creates the noises.  No DC current can go through the capacitors.  Dave cut the strapping in two, then connected them with capacitors to increase the flow of the interference on the boat from the batteries and any other motor that runs.  One example, when we are listening to a weather report on the SSB, we will hear an interference when the refrigerator kicks in.  I helped him when it came to soldering because he needed 3 hands. 

soldering

And I  helped!!

This will also help focus the power of the SSB when it is on.  Otherwise it can shut down other systems or light other things up.  When we receive e-mail through our SSB, it lights up our 12 volt circuit breaker panel.  And it set off our new bilge alarm.  I don’t think we’ll ever sleep through that  one.  So we keep improving things, little by little.

Dave wanted to finalize all of this so we could put our Navigation station back together.  He had to remove the seat to be able to run the copper strapping to the SSB radio.  It’s crazy how you have to do so much in such small spaces. 

About 3:00, we decided to go for a dinghy ride around the harbor.  We had met the people on the two other boats in the harbor.  One was Surprise who checked in with Customs in Grand Cay when we did.  Dave also said hello to him in Marsh Harbor. Don was just returning to his boat, so we stopped to say hello.  We told us about the ruins on the island that you can explore. 

We met Gil and Charlene when we first arrived on First Love.  They were in their cockpit, so we went to their boat to visit.  We ended up tying our dinghy to their boat and visited for about an hour.  While we were there, another boat came into the anchorage.  So on the way back to our boat, we stopped to welcome them to the neighborhood.   We visited with Steve and Karen on Sol Mate for about 30 minutes.  By now the sun was setting, so we just headed back to the boat. 

We had our black eyed peas for dinner, which turned out pretty good.  Then we forced ourselves to stay up late enough to listen to the Green Bay Packers beat the Detroit Lions. We actually stayed up until midnight even though we didn’t on New Years Eve.

yummy black eyed peas