Thanks Solitude for organizing such a good meeting place and for all the hospitality. It was very exciting meeting up with all the local and not so local TugNut people. I just wish we had had more time for talking with more of you. We had to depart from the convoy en route to Poulsbo and returned via Agate Passage to Edmonds to make sure we were back home Sat evening for a family GTG.
This was our first long trip in our new R25 and we are of course still getting used to things -- boat handling on the open waters and all of the boats instruments etc. I now know where the engine hours display is.
😉 Someone had asked me how many hours we had and I was embarrassed to say I didn't know -- but maybe between 10 and 20 hours. Well it's 18.4 hours and I'd say about 10 of those were with the Ranger Factory testing things out on various sea trials and having to replace and checkout the Autopilot.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous for the GTG. We both enjoyed this trip and are now feeling more comfortable with the powered boating experience.
We look forward to next years Ranger GTG.
😀
I did take some photos while tooling about the Bremerton Marina. They are mainly of the Ranger Tugs...
Here's a link to the photo album -
http://gallery.me.com/barrysharp#100366
The album may take a while downloading as I did not compress the photos. You are welcomed to download any of them.
🙂
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Now onto a few technical non GTG items.
We (mostly me) did find a few other oddities during this trip.
1. The hot water seems to have a pinkish color to it! Is this normal? This was first time using the hot water system if that is significant. Pink dyed diesel fuel cannot be mixing with it surely.
😉
2. The taste of the cold water from our fresh water tank was awful. We are tea drinkers and after making some hot tea while moored at Bremerton Marina and drinking our first cuppa we had to spit it out. I had filled the 30 gallon fresh water tank at our Edmonds slip from the water spigot at our slip. I also topped it up at the Bremerton mooring as well. I wonder if that water supply is the cause of this. Is water supply at Marinas suitable for drinking is my question ? We plan on bringing our own drinking water to the boat until I can figure this one out.
3. Door to the head cannot be locked from inside as the latch does not extend fully enough into the jam's recess made for it. It needs to be deepened.
4. The Garmin Autopilot did it nasty trick on me again. It was holding a course and I wanted to alter this by 2 degs to starboard. I did this by pressing the proper adjustment button twice (each press adjusted the course setting by 1 deg). Immediately after the second press the Autopilot decided to abruptly turn the boat into a starboard direction circle and the steering wheel fought with me. You may recall I posted this situation a few weeks ago.
So this was a second occurrence this has now happened. I was ready this time and pressed the Autopilot STBY button and cut the throttle back quickly from its approx 2500 rpm. I was able to regain control but the boat had already performed almost a full half circle. This happened just as I was approaching the Agate Passage bridge. Lucky for me I was not under the bridge nor close to its concrete support at the time is all I can say. I sure wish I had met up with the Garmin rep at the Bremerton GTG as I would really like to discuss this anomaly that is quite unnerving for me and Gill.
5. Our first sleep on the boat has given rise to wanting to add some memory foam padding on top of the cushions. We found them kinda hard.
6. Our two Fox Terriers handled the boat ride very well. However, I felt they were both in survival mode for the most part. Teddy hunkered down under the dining table for most of the trip while Cholé was all over the place but found laying on the forward berth and facing into the boat where she could keep an eye on both of us was the best place. The sudden hull pounding at times caused her to leap up in surprise and insisted on sitting in the Navigator's seat next to Gill.
7. With large swells with maybe 20 to 30 feet between crests approaching us from behind (and at an angle of around 30 degs to the boat's course) while we were motoring at around 10 kts was quite disturbing to us. When the crest got underneath us the boat kinda surfed and slid sideways along with the swell for a few seconds while changing the boats direction significantly to port. Gill would ask "what are you doing...?".
🙂 I'm assuming this is all very normal for this type boat's hull shape. When sailing in large 70' sailboats in my earlier days I don't recall this kind of motion even in the open waters of the North Sea and English Channel.
8. Leaving the boat at the slip with Shore power ON and Refrigerator temp set at #7 will cause bottles of water in the door shelves to freeze solid.
😉