Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

In the morning I reordered Sam’s PC. Perhaps someone was sabotaging our Dell order but in the end it gave us a breather to rethink things. As this is to help Sam improve his skills with graphic design while aboard and hopefully lead to work in that field we felt that given that the industry is so biased towards Apple we should go that way. An arm and a leg later, his laptop was ordered. That wasn’t the end of it as Apple divied up the order into lots of separate credit card charges which blew the security. A couple of Skype calls later we were sorted.

I’ve more or less finished the nav station work. The last few pieces I needed arrived in the marine store allowing me to wire up the two hand held GPS cables. These, along with the USB cable to the SSB and a serial cable all pass through a gromit that I’ve now placed around a newly drilled hole in the nav station. Previously these wires tucked around the side of the old nav station creating a bit of a mess. With all this done I can now use the rotary switch to select between four sources of GPS information: The main chart plotter, the new AIS unit and the two portable GPS units. The signals from whichever source is selected go to the two radios so our position will be communicated if we use the distress signal. The rotary switch also affects which source feeds the serial cable so I can receive GPS data into the computer from multiple sources. With the portable units stored in the microwave this gives us a lot of navigational redundancy.

I have left the placement of the GPS antenna attached to the AIS unit for a later date. It seems to work well inside but I want to see how this works over time.

Helen applied another coat of primer to the new patches on our underside and then finished helping to clear out the old sealant around the forward windows. The worker finished the job off by cleaning off the surfaces and apply new sealant. Hopefully no new inside wine spills will make their way outside.

Also finished by the yard workers is the polishing of the hulls and the gelcoat work where I removed the old AIS antenna.

After lunch I went into town with the French techs to buy starter batteries and anti-freeze. I did a lousy job of translating – at one point translating something one of the techs said in English into bad French.

Of minor note I had one propane tank filled and picked up a replacement connector for Helen’s laptop. It isn’t quite the right size but it may work. I’ve also contacted an alternate scrap yard to collect the unwanted motor. The first lot didn’t show and have been out of contact since Monday.

The sex change is flying along. The sail drives are now installed and a lot of the wiring put in. The throttles are in place at the helm. Today the new motors go in. The techs reckon they may be finished by Friday morning. They’ve agreed to change their schedule around a little allowing us to have our berth back this evening. Helen will be most happy as will I. Living in the salon with all our tools around us is losing it’s charm. This does mean that today I will have to push forward my planned work to redo the SSB ground plane which got a bit corroded from our shaft seal leaks.

It’s already been a week here in New Zealand. Time really flies. Apart from the first couple of days the weather has been pretty good. We’ve slowly adjusted to the new time zone and for the last 2-3 days have been waking with the dawn. That gives us a couple of hours to ourselves before the techs arrive.

We continue to keep ourselves busy.

Helen spent several hours yesterday repairing the front trampolines. They really need replacement but with repairs we think we can keep them going another year or so. She also applied anti rust to the light fittings around the boat to keep them nice and shiny.

I managed to whittle down the list of things to do a little further.

With the techs now confident of a Saturday launch I called the town basin marina to arrange a berth there. We’ll know exactly where we’ll go on Friday so we’ll need to pay them a visit to see where.

I did some additional testing on the AIS setup. This time I read the manual. I confirmed my suspicion that while stationary out position is only communicated infrequently, every three minutes in fact. So with the antenna splitter still in place I went back to the boat where we first tested so see if we were visible. After waiting five minutes we didn’t show. Bummer. I managed to find another boat, Oceans Dream, who also had an AIS receiver. Turned out they could see us. So I know we’re transmitting which makes me feel a bit better. It could be that the first boats antenna is low down and with mine up the mast, our proximity could be an issue. Something to discuss when I see them again.

I spoke to Peter to arrange a few bits of work on the boat. I’d removed our old AIS receiving antenna and needed the holes gelcoated. We also discovered the other day (by Helen flinging some wine over her shoulder) that the caulking around our front windows is degrading and there are gaps where fluids (red wine) can penetrate/escape. So we want that replaced. We also want our new props coated with prop speed before we launch. Finally we wanted to arrange a visit by a metallurgist to look at our bimini supports and the pictures of the tests we made.

When the metallurgist visited he agreed the forward supports were ok. He also said the back supports would be strengthened with some welding but that could be done in situ. So we’ve arranged for that to be done, more for peace of mind than anything. The bigger crack we knew about since August has not grown so it could be quite old and developing very slowly. However, now we know they are there it’s best to get it sorted. The main hastle with doing this is that the starboard support has wiring running up it which will need to be raised while the welding is being performed.

I updated the software on the main chart plotter. This is reported as fixing a really irritating bug that was introduced a few releases ago whereby the screen would sometimes rotate when set to show our course pointing upwards. I prefer this view but can’t stand the rotation so have not been using it for sometime. I’m looking forward to seeing this working properly.

The hybrid system had a circuit box where there were a whole bunch of breakers and relays controlling where the mains power was delivered. The box itself is a different configuration to that of the 220V boats. The chap who is buying our parts off us was therefore not interested in the box. However, the individual parts are common so I spent some time dismantling the box so we could include the individual parts.

On a trip out I visited the local scrap metal folks. They offered me $1.20 a kilo for the old battery cables. That’s a fraction of what they’re worth so I didn’t sell them. I may end up doing so but that is a last resort. They offered me $1 per kilo for the electric motor. We’re looking at sending one to Australia by freight. The second is scrap so at least we’ll get something for that. They should be over this morning to pick it up.

While out I spent some time running around town picking up various bits an pieces needed for additional projects. I also bought a new can of contact cleaner as I used up all my old cleaner last year on Fijian TVs and DVD players. I also bought myself a decent crimping tool. Using the cheapo one that I have has created a nasty burst blister on my little finger and it doesn’t really do effective crimps. So in more ways than one spending a bit of money on a decent tool was worth it.

Back on the boat I set about fixing the cable that I’d previously cut that joins the AIS transponder to the switch on our new navigation panel that allows us to disable transmission as well as sending a distress signal. I’d had to cut the wire to get it through a small hole. It also turned out to be too short so I needed to add an additional segment. As it was a six strand wire with a shield I needed to crimp 14 connectors. I was really happy I’d bought the new tool.

From my regular check list I managed to find time to test our EPIRB. The test is supposed to be performed within 5 minutes after each hour. A couple of times I was waiting for the hour to be reached and got distracted. The third time I sat there with the EPIRB in my hand so I wouldn’t forget.

Joel and Bertrand continue to march onwards with the conversion work. They’ve cut a lot of holes in the boat now for exhausts and for the sail drives to poke through. They’ve run a lot of wires around the boat and installed the engine gauges / controls. They’ve also painted the interior of the engine compartments so they’re looking all clean and new. They’re targeting installation of the engines for Thursday so the crane is now booked.