Olympia

Saturday
Saturday was mostly a day of rest. We probably only worked on the boat a couple of hours. However, we did manage to explore Olympia for most of the days. Olympia is the Southern most part of Peugeot Sound and also the capitol of Washington.In recent years Olympia has bee fixing up their water front. There are multiple marinas, a boatyard, and grocery stores all within easy walking distance. Multiple restaurants line the water front and nearby 4th street. One of our favorite lunch spots is Pho Olympia (Vietnamese). Kathy and I shared a nice hot bowl of pho one cool day. Other spots of interest include the Spar (on 4th). They have wireless Internet access for about $3/hr. A block away on 5th, The Tea Lady, offers free WiFi access and a nice spot to have a cup of tea. Also check out Mercato a nice Italian spot near the farmers market.

Probably one of the nicest features of the waterfront area is Olympia's farmers market. They are open Thursday thru Sunday and are a great place to provision on vegetables, organic meats, fresh breads, pastries, and seafood. We picked up some fresh whole scallops for the evening meal. I had never had scallops in the shell, but kind of knew what to expect. They are amazingly disgusting! But after cleaning, they were delicious.

Sunday
Back to working on the boat. I decided to start up with some of the basic maintenance. I checked the raw water strainer and saw a bit of seaweed in it ... so I decided to clean it. Opened it up cleaned it and noticed corrosion on the brass around seal. I tried to put it back together, but was unable to seal it completely ... looks like it is time for a new strainer. Nothing is easy about this. The existing strainer is this tiny thing that was custom built in Taiwan. Replacement strainers won't fit into the existing strainers space. Time to reroute the water inlet!
So when I bought this boat it had a battery charger that was had been set to charge AGM batteries, the problem was that I had GEL batteries. Bank 2 has always seemed to be a bit weak. I started doing some load tests and concluded it was really hosed. I started trying some of the Nigel Cader tricks to revive it. Next week I'll try the more drastic measures and the replace it if I need too.