Vero Beach City Marina - Boat Projects

Hello from Vero Beach City Marina!

Today I rewired the +12v supply line to the regulator, not too exciting but necessary if you want to charge your batteries while underway. When the original regulator was installed back in 2004, the technician had cut a wire that was connected to the ignition switch and spliced in the connection to the three step regulator. Over the years, the splice had aged so I renewed it and hopefully fixed the problem of the regulator cutting out. You become an expert on many things on a boat.

Sort of intetesting clouds

Speaking of becoming familiar with things you really don't want to... I wanted the ability to look in at home from afar over the Internet. A webcam was an obvious solution and I found one for $79 at the time and one thing led to another and I wound up getting six of them spread around the house. One was focused on the oil furnace since I wanted to be sure it was working through the winter. So as luck would have it, I got a call one evening from my security system that the temperature in the house was dropping and was below 50F. I accessed the furnace camera via the Internet and saw that the furnace had turned off! I then called my oil supplier with whom I had a maintenance contract and said I wanted it fixed before the house froze up (it was February). Since it was late at night by that time and they were less than eager to roust someone out of bed, they were somewhat skeptical - perhaps it was a false alarm. I replied, "No it's not! I can see the furnace right now, it's not on!" Taken aback, they sent someone out right away and later that night I could see them working on the furnace via my webcam. The ignition cone had become clogged and would not pass fuel oil - no flame - no heat. I was up and heating later that night.

It's very comforting to look around your property and see how things are from your boat. There's even an app for the iPad2, one touch and I can see home. However, setting these webcams up is NOT simple. It's so complicated that I documented everything I did in a Word file here. By clicking on the link, you can download the instructions for setting up your own webcams for remote viewing. If you have a decent antivirus program, you will see all sorts of warnings that your personal data will be sent to someone in Siberia (or somewhere else equally undesirable). That is nonsense. The Word file contains links to websites you will need to access on the web for webcam setup - there's nothing manevolent  in the file!! I could have made it a pdf file but then you'd have to manually type in all the web addresses. If you use the Word file, let me know how your make out.

We had our first rain today in weeks  but it was still warm, a high of 80 today. Tomorrow is going to the beach day so we'll see the ocean for the first time since Surf City. The beach is on the free bus route which we'll take advantage of and have lunch with a view of the ocean surf.