It's often said that a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into. I prefer to think it's a hole in the water that you spend money and time to improve. And that's what I've been doing. During the first year I owned Yorkshire Rose, a number of improvements came to mind. Some were due to something I read that other owners had done and some due to my experience on the Rose.

Starter Battery

I decided I wanted a dedicated starter battery after two instances where weakened batteries were almost too drained to start the motor. I've read about several other boat owners installing dedicated starter batteries and/or additional battery banks. Time for me to do this also. Take a look and tell me what you think.

Battery Fuses

Read an article in Sailing Magazine about boat fires caused by electrical shorts in the main DC cables. These heavy gauge wires do not have fuses or circuit breakers at the source of the power (the batteries). The article highly recommended adding the fuses, so I did while working on the Starter Battery project.

New Stereo

The old one was on it's last legs and it required one of those "fake cassette tape" adapters to play the CD. So, when West Marine had a sale on stereos.... well, who could resist. The new stereo was smaller, so that meant a new teak face plate. And the old one's antenna was actually mounted immediately behind the radio. So it got replaced by a "splitter" box that lets the stereo use the VHF antenna at the top of the mast.

Stereo & VHF Wiring Access

I've needed access to the wiring space behind the stereo and VHF several times. The prior owners had a plywood shelf installed that separates the wiring space from the rest of the wet locker. That shelf was only 3 inches from the top of the original locker; I could barely squeeze one arm in there and couldn't do anything useful. Likewise, taking the shelf out required disassembling most of the lower locker -- something I had to learn the hard way, twice -- doooh! Time to put an access door into the shelf.

Darn fresh water pressure pump is cycling again. An accumulator should fix that. And the water tastes a little off. I'll add a filter while I'm at it.

The bilge pump does an adequate job of pumping water out. But when water level drops and float switch turns off the pump, there's a fair volume of water still in the exit hose. That water drains back down the hose, through the idle pumps impeller, back into the bilge. There's enough water now to trigger the float switch and start the pump again. A simple flapper type check valve doesn't totally prevent the backflow, but it sure slows it down while barely affecting the bilge pump output.

Better Galley Sink Drainage

I got the idea for this from other C-34 owners.  After experiencing the same frustration in the slow draining of the galley sinks, I move this up on the to-do list.  Sure am glad.  BTW, in pulling out the old drain hoses, I discovered the left sink had about 7 feet of 1/2" ID hose between the sink and the seacock -- no wonder it took so long.

Organizing the Rats Nest Behind the Electrical Panel

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