Wroom wroom! (Patreon)

She's alive! I fixed the separation issue from last week and got everything except the raw water filter connected to the engine. After having bled the air out of the fule system, the engine started up immediately. I'm very pleased! I think (knock on wood) Athena's D2-40 will take good care of Ava and I for years to come. 

While the video was rendering, I made a mount for the X30 diesel heater. It's not bad right now, but soon we'll see temperatures dropping down to freezing, and it'll be nice to be able to heat the boat and also to keep it dry. As mentioned in the video, the first thing I'll do once Athena is back in the water is to install the heater :) 

I'll mention this in an upcoming video. Garmin reached out to see if I would be interested in using some of their products aboard Athena. Heck yes! I've got a Garmin chartplotter aboard Obelix, and it's worked flawlessly. Boxes of Garmin products have been arriving all week. It's crazy! I never expected anything like this to happen. This year Christmas came in October ;) 

The cement boat people are going to be bending pipe in the not too distant future. That's an excellent opportunity for me to build an arch for some solar panels. We can fit 720W on the arch. It might look a little crazy, but 720W will be a big help once we get further south. I doubt it'll be enough to cover our energy need 100%, but it'll cut WAY down on the hours on the generator :) I'm heading back up to the workshop now to try and figure out the arch.

I hope you've had a fantastic weekend :) Thank you so much for your support! Stay safe :)