The heat is on!

I drove from Kilmarnock Va to Brunswick Ga, about 602 miles. A fairly straight forward drive down interstate 95. It was 26 degrees when I left, burr, and 48 when I arrived at Brunswick Landing Marina at 2pm. http://www.brunswicklandingmarina.com/ Walking down the dock to the boat it seemed a bit nippier than the 48 degree would suggest due to a strong wind out of the NNE .

Once on board I brought online all of the boats systems one by one to be able to check on things separately. Most important was heat. We have a chiller system (http://www.cruisair.com/tempwater.html) . This system uses a heat exchange process like your home heat pump but instead of air it uses sea water to exchange heat or cold. This warmed water (reversed to chilled water in the summer) is then pumped to 7 different air handlers which are in different areas and are linked to individual room thermostats. The system is very efficient and runs great.  The system is located in the engine room pictured here above. 
As I brought the system on line I noticed the pilot house air handler was not tripping over to allow heated water to circulate. I thought initially I had a bad sensor, checking the pressures on the main system I noticed it would not hold pressure in the circulating system and would slowly decline. Oh Boy....a leak.

I found a leak in the ball valve on the supply side to the pilot house air handler coming from the main unit. These pipes are really well insulated so it appears this ball value just decided to leak in it's own.
I hustled out to West Marine and got the needed parts and replace the valve by 7pm that night. I was then able to turn the system back on and warm the boat up a bit. I was getting chilly.
To the left is the pilot house air handler and the new ball valve is installed, you can see it to the lower left. It was not hard to replace other than physically scrunching into a tight space to loosen and tighten the connections.

Now we are nice and toasty and thinking about waters farther south.