Northport - At anchor

The pebble beach at Northport

Before leaving Manhasset, I tightened the fan belt (well, there's no fan belt on a marine engine since it's water cooled, not air cooled - but you know what I mean). I had installed a new belt thinking that the old belt was slipping, causing the erratic charging which in turned cause the erratic compass readings which in turn caused the autopilot to steer erratically (trying to follow the varying compass headings). The end result was that a slipping belt caused it all. Although the belt was new and replaced an old belt that was slipping, the new belt stretched (since it was new) and also slipped at first. Once it was worn in a little and I tightened it again this morning, all was fine. It's another illustration of following a root cause on a sailboat. It's not always what it seems. Something malfunctions and then you ask, "What caused that?" and asked the question again when you find the next cause until you come to the true root cause of it all.

Buried!

Well, that took care of the autopilot problem and the charging problem but the genset lack of good flow in the cooling water still remains to be solved. On top of that, the freezer seems to not be up to snuff, it's not keeping the freezer at our customary 18F but rather at 24F, that's a problem for another day.

Meanwhile, we made it to our Northport anchorage by Sand Island and the kids enjoyed the beach, although it's mostly small pebbles, not real sand. We saw some small box jelly fish off the back of the boat which is why we went to the beach. The anchorage area here is huge, not crowded at all. In fact, there's only one other boat in the anchorage. It's calm with what wind there is coming off the land so it ought to be a restful night. On Wednesday we're headed to Port Jefferson.