Yay in the water!

After a long and frankly boring winter Amadeus finally hit the water. We had her hauled last year so we could get the masts down and replace the sheaves in the mastheads, for both the main and the mizzen. So that of course lead to other things:

• New Radar
• New Depth Sounder
• New Wind Instrument
• New Halyards for the mizzen
• New Top light
• New Wind-ex
• New Streaming light
• New Deck Light
• New LED's for all internal lighting.
• Replace Zinks
• Anti Fouling bottom paint
• New Packing for the prop gland

We had already purchased a Zeus multi-display unit and used it last season. I have to say it is superior to the iPad based navigation system we tried to use previously. Mainly this is due to our being able to see it in direct sun. We have no cover over the helm, so direct sun is what we have to deal with while sailing. We hope to deal with this lack of shade in the foreseeable future. 

Issues we have faced so far:

• OMG how do I contort myself into that shape to get to that wire? 
• OMG WTF is THIS? 
• OMG WTH does this do?
• OK really Previous Owner? Did you wire every single thing on the boat directly to the batteries? 
• Hey what is this giant bundle of wires that is cut and bound with old electrical tape?
• This batch of wires is not on the schematic, any clue what it does? 
• Hey this set of wires looks important... Oh wait the other end is just laying in the bilge. Huh?
• OMG this is a set of live wires just laying here, directly connected to the battery. Nice.

Yeah, while I am not the most knowledgeable marine electrician in the world even I know this isn't how stuff is supposed to be. I think we spent at least three days trying to find the routing and purpose of of a number of wires and frankly were only successful maybe 50% of the time.

Anyway while the masts were down we pulled all the old wiring out of the mast, replaced it with new, pulled through the internal conduits as designed. Replaced all the mounting gear for lights and what not and added the new sheaves. 

Working on the getting the navigation network installed. Have to add a NMEA 2000 network to the boat. First challenge was getting the new Depth Sounder/Temperature/Speed sensor installed in the hull. This requires that the old one be removed, a new thru-hull sleeve be glued in, then the sensor slips into that. Yeah had to get the boatyard guys to get the old one out. Then there was some controversy about the sensor I got, ended up they recommended the exact one I had. So I ended up installing the new sensor and thu-hull. And while you'd think that would be fairly straight forward, just put a good amount of 5200 on the flange and up the threads then screw the giant nut on, well no. The original hole was not drilled perpendicular to the hull. The PO had sanded down a piece of plywood, just regular old plywood mind you, into a bit of a wedge shape to accommodate the hole angle. I cut a chunk out of a old plastic cutting board and free-handed a wedge with my trusty Dremel tool. Really the 5200 seals the hole and attaches the thru-hull flange to the hull, the backing nut just keeps it from falling out the bottom till the 5200 sets up. Anyway no leaks, so that is successful so far. 

Once that was done I mounted my new rate compass in the same cabinet, right in line with my keel. Except it has a SimNet connector which is not exactly the same as a standard N2K connector. Cut that off and replaced with a field replaceable N2K connector. Found out I pulled my backbone cable through the boat backwards so my wind instrument wouldn't just connect and terminate the backbone. The backbone requires terminations on both ends. Yanked that out and reversed it, now the wind instrument works as advertised. Added an additional 6' drop cable and three wire to get power to the Display unit. Wanted to come up the steering pedestal and out the front under the compass. Yea, not today. This boat is seriously old and everything is so corroded. Broke the compass mount trying to get the screws off that, so boo. Now I'll have to figure out a replacement for that. So I drilled a hole in the laughably termed hanging locker, in the equally amusingly termed navigators berth and fed the lines through to the cockpit. So now I have wires under the floor slats in the cockpit, not exactly what I wanted, but workable for now. Betty crawled back in there and pinned everything up so we can go back to using it for storage bins. 

On a side note I love how they design and build these sail boats. They have us staffed up to 1800's Royal Navy standards. I have berthing for two in the V-berth, two in the sea berths in the salon, two more in the salon table area, one more across the way from that, one in the navigators berth, and finally two in the aft "Master Cabin". So yeah, berthing for ten. No way I can ever envision ten people trying to survive in this little thing. We'd be sitting in each others laps and murder would break out three days after leaving port.

Got the Radar cable back through the boat and back by the nav station, but another interconnection issue there. Have power, but no connection to the N2K network. The WiFi-1 unit to allow us to monitor stuff on our iPad is yet another SimNet connector, so ordered two SimNet to Micro C cables. Looks like I also have to run a new Ethernet connector to the back of the Main nav display. It'll get done eventually. 

Still need an AIS transponder and attendant wiring, but I'm really in no hurry for that.  

So we wanted to sail to Annapolis for our wedding anniversary but it just took too long to get everything else done. Plus I lost an afternoon to a wonderful migraine. Been having those since my car accident last December, yay. 10 to 20 a month, so very not fun. 

So we drove up instead.

And that's about all for now! Going to get the sails up tomorrow, depending on hangovers from tonight's bacchanal. And then some sailing finally this weekend.