I was hoping to write about our new Solar panel and power monitoring system install, or our camping trip last weekend, but boat life had a different idea.
The weather here in Texas has only two states, too damn hot and too damn cold. Some time in Oct/November the temperature goes from 80 to 50, literally over night. We very rarely get any days where the AC/Heater gets a rest. That temp change happened 2 days ago. That first night I did not turn on the heater and it reached about 60 in the boat. Good sleeping, but not so good working. That morning I turned the heat on, and the beast of an AC/heat unit fired up, a few minutes later the warm air was flowing. Life is all good.
Or not.
This morning the heat had been running over night, but the boat was still cold. Turns out it is no longer heating. So much for my other work/boat work plans for today, Shannon’s comfort is priority. To the internet I went.
Most information I could find says that the reversing valve may be stuck. General advice was to take a soft mallet and tap it a few times. That seems easy enough. Well, Its not, but a few minutes later and some odd boat yoga later I had managed to get a few taps in. No luck. Other internet advice states that maybe a few heat -> cool -> heat cycles may free it. So even at 65 degrees I switch it to cool and fire it up. New problem. Its not even blowing cold air.
Some history here, When we were having our new fridge/freezer installed, the guy that does that is also an A/C guy. So given that this thing is who knows how old, we asked him to take a look. He opened up the cabinet, took one look and closed the cabinet.
“That thing is not in the circle of trust”
“How long de we have?”
“It will work until it doesnt”
At that point it was mid summer and working its ass off keeping us cool, and other than noise it was working perfectly. A/C is a busy job here in the summer, so we just asked to get on the list for a replacement. It seems we may need to jump up in priority now.
On the bright side, that is one of the last major upgrades/repairs we had planned on before we take off. We just finished phase 3 upgrade of our solar power system (more on that soon I promise). Our fridge/Freezer system is finally working perfectly. Hopefully come spring we can get ourselves out of here and get cruising!
