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Jazzmanic

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Ok, I'm done moving C-Dancer around. I trailered the boat back to our original and favorite storage facility, Twin Bridges Marina near Anacortes. After keeping C-Dancer in the water at the Edmonds marina all spring and summer, we decided to bring her back to Twin Bridges. The main reason being I really don't like keeping the boat in the water full-time, especially in the winter. We wanted to try Edmonds because it was much closer to our home in Seattle but as it turned out, all of our long trips this year we're in the San Juans or north in Canada and we ended up boating the whole way except for one trip. Go figure. The Edmonds Marina is also a great facility with a great staff plus it was right near my favorite fishing grounds but as I said the big drawback for me was the wet moorage and the inability to flush and clean the boat thoroughly. Just a personal preference.

Who said you can't go home again?
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Hey Mark. They have dry stack but won't take C-Dorys. The way their forklift system works, the up/down mechanism to put boats in the water and take them out is on a separate system and can't be done by the forklift. So the stationery bunks on the platform are set up for deep-V's and can't be adjusted for the flat bottom C-Dorys. Weird huh? That would have been a great solution.

Peter
 
Jazzmanic":1tsjxr7a said:
Hey Mark. They have dry stack but won't take C-Dorys. The way their forklift system works, the up/down mechanism to put boats in the water and take them out is on a separate system and can't be done by the forklift. So the stationery bunks on the platform are set up for deep-V's and can't be adjusted for the flat bottom C-Dorys. Weird huh? That would have been a great solution.

Peter
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Not happy to hear this. I was planning on using them for at least the first couple years. Would it be worth my time to drive up there (15 minutes away), and see what they could do for me?
 
RobLL":vjc2y0rc said:
Jazzmanic":vjc2y0rc said:
Hey Mark. They have dry stack but won't take C-Dorys. The way their forklift system works, the up/down mechanism to put boats in the water and take them out is on a separate system and can't be done by the forklift. So the stationery bunks on the platform are set up for deep-V's and can't be adjusted for the flat bottom C-Dorys. Weird huh? That would have been a great solution.

Peter
Click to expand...

Not happy to hear this. I was planning on using them for at least the first couple years. Would it be worth my time to drive up there (15 minutes away), and see what they could do for me?
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They seemed pretty firm on their policy regarding C-Dorys, (flat-bottomed boats). I talked to the supervisor of the dry stack and he confirmed that their system is not set-up for flat bottom boats. Besides, it's more expensive to dry store your boat rather than wet moorage. As I said, it's a well-run facility, I just prefer dry storage.

Peter
 
Peter,

Nice picture. The first time I ran A "power boat" was at Twin Bridges, when they were dealing Cape Cruisers. Dry Stack seemed like a good idea, but (and maybe I missed something somewhere) but what do you do about battery charging there? Especially if you are leaving thew boat for extended time periods?


Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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hardee":cpplcn43 said:
Peter,

Nice picture. The first time I ran A "power boat" was at Twin Bridges, when they were dealing Cape Cruisers. Dry Stack seemed like a good idea, but (and maybe I missed something somewhere) but what do you do about battery charging there? Especially if you are leaving thew boat for extended time periods?


Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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Hey Harvey,

We've probably kept the boat at Twin Bridges a total of 8 seasons out of 10 and for all but last year, battery discharge was not an issue. Last year, on 1-year old batteries, I could not start the boat the first time I tried in the spring. Big surprise to me but I discovered I left the automatic bilge switch on and that may have drained the batteries. The last thing I did the other day was to disconnect the batteries. Hopefully they will be ok without charging for 6 months.

Peter
 
Thanks Peter. I hope so too. I know batteries and electrical systems are really individual.

If I remember right, once the boat is in the stack you have no access, so a monthly battery charge would entail putting it out on the blocks and running a generator, or going boating. Kind of contra to fogging and anti-freezing the water system.

Is there any heat in their storage, as in at least keeping it above freezing? The web site says heated, but I guess you aren't going to be working in there anyway so as long as it is above freezing it is OK.

Harvey
SleepyC:moon
 
I'm not a battery expert, however...

1) AGM batteries have very low self-discharge from what I have read. So as long as you keep parasitic loads away, you are basically good.

2) Back in the midwest (very harsh winters) and before AGM were common, we used to make sure the flooded cell batteries were fully charged and that they had no loads on them at layup time. In this condition they would get through the winter. Sometimes we would bring them indoors, but not typically.

3) However on large/expensive banks, or on boats that could not eliminate all loads, we did a monthly battery care regimen on board.

I would think most C-Dorys would fall into categories #1 or #2

One "gotcha" I had: I have the boat set up so that when the battery switch is "off" there are no loads except the bilge pumps (and it's stored indoors so no water aboard). I even wired the ACR in a slightly different way to eliminate it being a load when the switch was off. BUT, guess which load I forgot about? The battery monitor! How ironic :wink: My AGM house battery seems to have recovered reasonably well from the trauma, but I won't be making that mistake again (only an issue over a fairly long time period, as it is a very small draw). Of course this means there is plenty of room for new mistakes :lol:

(Of course if I had removed the battery cables, this would have been eliminated, but that's somewhat of a pain in the cramped lazarette, which is one reason I had things wired so the switch turned everything off (or so I thought). Now I have easy access to the fuse on the battery monitor, and add that to my "put to bed for long time periods" checklist. For periods of a couple of months or less of indoor storage, I can just turn off the battery switch and keep the battery monitor data flowing - which I like to do when it's not a problem.)
 
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