NZ Land Logs 39, Year 2: It’s Still Raining
Date: Thursday, March 29, 2007
Weather Today: Where’s the ark?
Location: Whangarei, New Zealand
We have had an unbelievable amount of rain here in the past 36 hours. The marina bathrooms are flooded, some streets in town are underwater, and the road to the airport is closed due to flooding. Since we have not been off the dock since an early trip to the marina showers this morning, we are not sure what other problems there might be. The marina owner, Ray, came by mid-afternoon to tell us that we would have to use our head on the boat since everything on land was flooded. Then Beth and Ken of Eagles Wings reported the road problems when they returned from a trip into town. Actually we are enjoying the excuse to slow down and chip slowly away at small jobs that need to be done aboard Windbird. I’m not a lover of rain, but I really did need a good excuse to slow down and the rain has given me that chance.
Mark’s job for the day was equalizing the batteries. We have six 112 amp-hour 12 volt batteries that provide the power for everything on this boat and today was the day to equalize them. This is the first chance we have had to do this since leaving Boston as equalizing requires plugging into shore power if you don’t have a generator. Well, we don’t have a generator and we haven’t been on a dock since Boston, so today was the day. Shore power here is 220 volts, but our boat is wired for 110 volts as is the standard in the US. So getting shore power meant using a transformer which we had to borrow from another boat. All of the available transformers were taken when we arrived in December, so we have been using a little trickle-charger to help keep things running. We also have our solar panels, but there has been no sun this week! Now, what is equalizing? Basically it is running a high voltage charge through your batteries causing them to get so hot that some of the sulfate that has built up on the plates dissolves back into the battery acid. This frees the plates so that they can take a better charge. Probably more than you wanted to know about batteries, but there you have it.
My job today was putting together a photo album “booklet” of our New Zealand travels for our grandson Sam. Grandmothers have to do these things you know. I also called Sam’s other grandparents to check in with them and talked to my good friend Linda Stuart and her son Garrett back in Concord, New Hampshire. Little by little, I’m answering emails that we received while traveling and I am getting the things we brought back from the US and things we collected on our land trip around New Zealand put away–new books, photographs, travel brochures, etc. On a boat, every little thing must have a home and it takes time to make sure every little thing is in its place.
