Engineers love March 14, since the digits represent the value of Pi. We use Pi in all sorts of calculations here on the boat and for the robotics things that I build.

There are lots of radio calculations that use Pi, without Pi your cell phone (or marine VHF radio) wouldn’t work. Don’t even think about trying to get a GPS position without using Pi.

This year is special 3 / 14 / 15 is the first part of Pi: 3.1415 and this morning is a few extra digits to give you 3.141592653. For most things 4 decimal places (3.1415) lets us gauge things like the circumference of the earth to a few miles. The more precise 3.141592 gets you to within a mile of the moon. 3.141592653 puts you right on Mars.

So remember anything that is engineered most likely had Pi as part of it engineering math!

Happy Pi day (and feel free to celebrate by having a slice of Key Lime!)

This is the monthly status report. We have gone 3200 miles in 7 months. We are about a 10 days behind where I wanted to be, most of it due to bad weather in the last 3 weeks. We are in Apalachicola for a week now, and looks like we will get out in a few days.

We did take advantage of the weather days to do some side trips. In the last thiry days we did a three day trip to New Orleans and another three day trip to see my son and Susan’s parents.

For the last 30 days there has been lots of Loopers. From Midway Marina to Apalachicola there was only three nights that we were not anchored / docked with another set of Loopers. So we’ve had lots of opportunities to meet other people.

Susan is making good progress on her quilt. Everything is cut out and the small puffy squares are sewn and waiting final stitching. It looks like there is a good chance it will be done for Christmas.

I’ve been busy blogging, posting on the AGLCA forums, the Bayliner forums and of course chatting with the loopers. There have not been a lot of maintenance items on the boat. The bad fuel issue seems to have been reduced, I can go about 200 gallons between filter changes. I’ll change it before the big crossing and see how it makes out with all the extra sloshing around. If it’s clear then I’ll run as far as Sanibel Island and try to use what fuel is there. Still running about 1.4 miles to the gallon and my price is $4.17 a gallon. Fuel has been much cheaper here. With the next few fill ups I’ll be under $4 per gallon.

There is one minor problem the door that leads to the fly-bridge has a small tear in the gasket and it leaks when it rains. We’ve been doing a towel there to catch the drops, but I need to put something in place for the three weeks we will be gone.

We are both looking forward to being home for the Christmas holidays, hard to think there is only 28 days to go.

Hard to think we’ve been on the water for 180 days. It seems like yesterday that we were having dinner in Delaware City. We have covered 2564 nautical miles or 2949 statute miles, so from a distance standpoint we are at the ½ way point. Unlike our poky progress through Canada we’ve made some huge jumps. In the last three weeks four days were over 50 miles long, one was 96 nautical miles (110 statute miles) So we are getting close to being back on plan. There are some long days coming up, but we are also planning a three day trip to New Orleans.

So far we’ve been in 11 states (Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi)

We took a long break in Green Turtle Bay to go back to Pennsylvania for a funeral and a few extra days to rest up. We were able to see the most amazing grand daughter in the world. She is in that pre-walk stage, I’m going to guess as I post this she is now walking / running. She is also working on saying “Capt Pop-Pop”, she should have that down by Christmas

Susan and I are both doing fine. We will both be happy to get off the river system. It’s intense driving, needing to watch every minute for trash floating in the water. Our locking skills are pretty good, but the long waits for locks still aggravate me.

We continue to meet really nice people, both on the water and off. The week of travel down the Mississippi, Ohio, and Cumberland to Green Turtle Bay showed how much fun traveling in a group could be. At the marinas we’ve met some very nice people who work there and boat there. We get quick smiles, offers for beer and a few places where there wasn’t a loaner car, local people have offered to take us places.

Quo Vadimus continues to operate well. I’ve been doing the maintenance cycles of oil changes, fuel filter changes, checking fluids, etc. The time between fuel filter changes has gone up, so it looks like I’m getting most of the sludge out of the tank. Mostly the water has been calm, it will be interesting to see if the waves in Florida stir things back up again.

Still lamenting the loss of Belle. For a few days after we would catch glimpses of her and occasionally hear her. I’ve decided that we’ll keep flying the “Cat On Board” flag until we get back home.

We have also heard from many of you either by email or your comments on the blog. It’s always nice to hear from you. We are planning to be home in December, we will work on catching up with you then. Until that happens we will continue to toast “Family, old friends and new” at Docktails.

Mike asks I am interested in what you are using as navigation equipment, software and other electronics? We will be updating 14 year old gear in the coming months.

As an electrical engineer I learned long ago that water and electronics don’t mix. So I’ve kept the electronics at a low level.

The prior owner installed a very nice Garmin GPS unit. I use that for most of the travels so far. It has the charts from 2012 so it’s pretty current.

I’m a big fan of paper charts since they work under all sorts of adverse conditions. I have charts for the entire trip (hey Mike call me before you leave on the loop for a good price on gently used charts). that I use to plan.

For the US segments I have the Dozier’ Waterway Guides. They have where to go, what to see, etc in printed format. For Canada I have similar books published by PORTS. They have one for the Trent-Severn and for the North Passage. Great reading, gives some decent insight to the trip. You also get weekly email updates on things that are happening in the area.

I have an iPad that I run iSailor on. iSailor is super simple and fits my needs of being a chart plotter. There is better software from Garmin and Navtec that you might want to look at first. I also have an AIS app that will give me some info about traffic in my area. I don’t use it to navigate, but I do pull the ships name. I get better response when I go “Calling Godzilla, calling Godzilla” to the giant freighter vs “Hey you in the channel”

I belong to the America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association. It’s $40 a year and I’ve saved more than that on Dock fees the first two weeks. But for docking it’s great, there is a section for each part of the trip and places to stay (and stay away from).

I also have an Active Captain account to look at reviews. It could be better some reviews are dated, but hopefully as 2014 kicks off there will be current reviews posted. It’s a free service.

Membership in the Waterway Guide Cruisers Club may also be helpful. Presently membership is also free.

Last I have a compass. So that and the charts serve me well.

The boat came with RADAR which I can use, but seldom do. If it’s too foggy out, I stay at the dock. When we came through NYC harbor there was very little boat traffic so I relied on the Mark I eyeballs.

The only electronics that I’m really attached to is the autopilot. It makes the long periods of driving super easy. I still drive in the tight places, but in the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean, nice to set it to 29 degrees north and let it drive for the next hour.

Good luck on your purchase. As we get closer to you in Oct/November drop another note in and we’ll try to meet up.

The bottom paint was in pretty good shape, only one section had a major growth of barnacles on it.  They spent some time scraping the area to clean it to be painted.  The previous owner had put a great epoxy barrier coat down so the work went about as well as can be expected.

While the boat was out of the water we also did a propeller swap.  I had the spare propellers reconditioned at MR Props in North East MD.  They take the propeller and put it on a device that looks like a lathe.  They spin the propeller to make sure that it “tracks”, that all the blades have the same movement through the water.  They also check that the propeller is balanced, so that it does not vibrate the shaft and the boat.  Lastly they check the “cup” or internal curvature of the blade.  The cup is what scoops additional water up and pushes it off the blade adding some efficiency to the propeller.

Last thing to check is the zincs.  If you look at the picture, there are two rectangles at the bottom, these are the trim tabs.  Looking closer you can see round circles on them.  These are the zincs.  They are mounted on the boat to prevent corrosion of the shafts, trim tabs, motor components, etc.  You can see that the two on the tabs are pitted and chewed.  They have been dissolved by  the corrosive underwater activity.  Above the tabs is a much bigger zinc, it’s in pretty good shape, so it will last another year.

The propulsion system of the Quo Vadimus is twin 250HP Hino engines.  They are very similar to what you would find in a Japanese truck.  The biggest difference is how they are cooled.  In a boat we suck raw water from under the boat.  It then goes through a radiator that is called a Manicooler.  It is a 4″ brass tube that has about 20 1/4″ smaller tubes on the inside.   Raw sea water passes through the big tube, swirling around the smaller tubes cooling them.

The raw water continues into the metal devices shown above, they are called risers.  The hot exhaust from the cylinders comes into the big openings.  The water swirls around the outside cooling the exhaust. At the very end of the riser, the water is mixed with the exhaust gases to cool them even more, the final temperature is about 15 degrees higher than when it started.

The exhaust / water mixture then travels down a 8″ tube to the rear of the boat and is dumped overboard.   The water cooling allows the exhaust to travel through the aft compartment without burning anything.

The original risers were made of cast iron and were beginning to clog with sediment and had tinges of rust.   While they would have lasted another year, it was a good time to replace them.

So in 2013, we opted to take the exhaust out, clean the manicoolers, pressure test all the tubes and then powder coat the insides to reduce corrosion.   Earl, our Hino engine guru, had the two risers show above custom made.   The one on the port (left hand side) engine used to go at a diagonal across  the center of the lazarette, really taking up a lot of space.  The new one runs the exhaust hose across the back of the engine and then along the hull.  This freed up a ton of storage space.

And while Earl had everything opened up, he checked the adjustment of the valves to make sure things would run smoothly.   So at this point we are all set with major engine work.   I will need to do the easy things like oil and filter changes every 100 hours, etc.