St Lucia « Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Taxes and Internet (cracked at last perhaps)

by steve, on March 27th, 2009 (St Lucia)

I am not finished, by any means with our taxes, but at least we started today. And there’s yet time to do more work. However, fearing how gremlin prone declaring success can be, I think I have made big inroads into the quality of our internet access aboard.

Having spent 2-3 hours scanning documents, etc., to send to our CPA I decided it was time to send off three emails I had built up. This meant trying to get the internet going yet again without the wireless hub. As expected I ran into immediate problems which would only resolve if I first connected to the older XP machine. When trouble shooting I often have a ‘continuous ping’ running – this is a means by which I get a near real time read on connectivity.

This time, the screen was visible when I was messing about with the computers. I spotted an odd coincidence which I simply didn’t believe at first – putting it down to a freaky coincidence. What I saw was my Vista machine suddenly getting worse when the XP machine completed it’s shutdown. To add to this wierdness the Vista machine connection came back to life the moment I turned the XP machine back on. It was only luck I spotted this. I even pointed out the observation to Helen saying I didn’t believe it but would follow it through.

More tests later and I established that it was overall load on the A/C system while on the inverter that was the factor. If I ran the microwave, traffic would flow. With just a little load on it would not. When powered by the genset instead of the inverter there were no issues at all. This has been a real distraction as I’ve got used to the idea that the issues are sometimes resolved when I used the second laptop not realizing it was overall load on the house A/C that was affecting things. It wasn’t just that though. There was some Vista crap to work through and the wireless hub is still a bust.

Turns out I had a spare 400W inverter kicking around back from our Timeless days. I hot wired it to the forward fuse box to test things out and hey presto things are working. Each time. Every time. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone based on the levels of success I’m experiencing. I did try the wireless hub with the backup inverter but it still exhibited the same issues so I’m declaring it defunct and will look for a new one at a decent price.

I have now put proper ends on the wires to the second inverter and fused it properly. Now it’s permanently installed although I need to put longer wires on sometime and move it as it’s in an awkward place right now.

Note of thanks to the tech folks at Demarctec who are always quick to lend a hand with questions I have.

Now that I’ve written this I’m going to be touching a lot of wood to keep the luck running. So far, so good. Time outs are very few and far between – an improvement on prior best.

This afternoon – more tax work.
This evening – second attempt for local curry. Something to celebrate.

Another mixed day at the grindstone

by steve, on March 26th, 2009 (Hands Across the Sea, St Lucia)

What went well :

Helen partially fixed the stbd trampoline (need to buy some rope to complete)
Using pipe we bought yesterday I finally put back and lowered the grill to make passing easier
I raised the fuel filter so I can drain water without having to dismantle everything.
We filled up with fresh water from the water maker.

What didn’t go well :

Shortly after claiming partial victory against the internet this morning it all went kaput. More hours burned pulling my hair out. It’s going again but not entirely sure why.
I bought some more fishing lures (as well as a cheapo rod on sale) and dangled them off the back of the boat. Nothing lured onto the hooks.

Go to previous blog to see more pics.

Last night was a success. Helen cooked homemade pizza (one veg and one with ham) for TL and Harrier who came over for supper. They have a website : www.handsacrossthesea.net which lets you know what they’re up to with their schools.

Working the boat

by steve, on March 26th, 2009 (St Lucia)

We figured we’d share the photos of our working on the boat as we go. Check out the following pictures of hard labour. We’ll add to this album as we go.

Mixed news on the internet front. I have fixed the network port settings on my laptop and am able to use the internet without the wireless hub. The wireless hub has definitely gone dodgy so we no longer can use more than one laptop on the internet at once. On the upside we now have blindingly fast internet connection. I can download at over 300k/s which may not be great by broadband standards but is colossal based on recent performance. It’s been worth the effort troubleshooting and fixing the various weaknesses in the system. Pity it wasn’t working while our guests were here as they seemed a little in need of being connected.

Frustration in Exotic Places

by steve, on March 25th, 2009 (Hands Across the Sea, St Lucia)

Not everything goes to plan.

Job number 1 went ok. I replaced a breaker which was cracked but ok as a preventitive measure. No problems there.

Job number 2 was to permanently mount my wifi antenna. The place I chose was just below the radar dome as the box would be protected and it was pretty high. I also had to shorten and fix the cable that runs from the wifi box to the antenna. This involved heading into the marina to buy a couple of pipe clamps and some insulation tape.

The cable shortening went ok and I tested everything ok. Mounting the box up the mast went reasonably ok. I did drop a washer and a fastening bracket – the latter I was able to retreive by passing down the network cable to Helen who tied it on for me to pull back up.

The first problem was the network cable was too short. This involved temporarily running the too short cable down the outside of the mast and using a connector to extend it using one of the spare cables I have. The connector I used didn’t work so I tried the one that extends the radar cable. Everything worked following a test.

I then ran the extra cable in through the gooseneck into the cabin. At this point I ran into a wall of frustration. Nothing could I do to get the damn thing going with my laptop. I spent hours on it gradually undoing connectors, trying out different cables. I finally got onto the internet again by using our old XP laptop and bypassing our internal wireless hub.

Somethings definetly up with the wireless hub or I’ve done something to it in my attempts to get things going. At least we have working internet so I know I don’t have to go up the mast to bring down the box. Now I should tidy up as we have guests coming. Onto which ….

Last night we stopped by “Hands Across the Sea” and had more than a few drinks with Harriet and TL. They are on their second year of their second cruise and doing something worthwhile with their time. They are adopting a number of Caribbean schools and helping out – donating gear and their time. They say it’s not hard to find anyone who needs help. We left them agreeing to invite them over for dinner this evening.

After drinks helen and I headed off to our curry only to find the place closed. Darn. The only thing we found open was a KFC so we had another dose of greasy chicken. Not what we wanted.

Fixing your boat in exotic places

by steve, on March 24th, 2009 (Hands Across the Sea, St Lucia)

That’s a reasonable good phrase the sort of describes the mode we’re in. Fortunately there’s nothing really wrong but we’ve built up a few maintenance tasks that need to get done.

Cleaning the boat took the two of hours quite some time yesterday. Helen did most of it as I had to go ashore to clear in and do some shopping. We finished off the day with a good old English Breakfast of sausages, eggs and beans and watched the movie Mamma Mia. Boy was that movie cheesy. It kept us amused though.

Today has seen more hard work. I’ve topped up each of the six cells on all of the sixteen lead acid batteries aboard. With Helen’s help we ran the network cable from the Outback MPPT solar power controller to the console where I’ve fitted a remote display. We are now able to see what the MPPT is up to. Already, today, we were able to detect when the batteries has charged enough in bulk mode and were now in absorb/accept mode. This meant we had extra power available from the panels which wasn’t going to charge the batteries. At this point we turned on the laptop and continued to download some old british TV comedies and some US TV shows we want to catch up on.

We also went into the shopping mall for some additional provisions and Helen has been to the dentist to have a filling replaced. This cost less than US$100 which wouldn’t have covered the cost of the anesthetic back in the US.

We’ve also done two further loads of washing and moved the boat a little to satisfy Helen’s swellophobia.

We still have quite a few boat jobs ahead of us but they can wait till later days. We are taking pictures of ourselves doing the various jobs so we can provide a “fixing the boat” album once we’re done.

On our way into the mall we stopped by “Hands Across the Sea” a Dolphin 460 that we’ve seen on numerous occasions. We’ve found that our excess of bananas (oops, meant to say last nights banana flambee was delicious) makes a good excuse to go and say hello to people by way of handing over a bunch. This is their second time cruising and their second year this time around. To make their trip purposeful they are sponsoring and helping out at a number of schools in the Caribbean. We’ve been invited back for drinks this evening for sunset.

After drinks, depending on the state of Helen’s anesthesia, we may go and have our two remaining curry dishes at Razmataz.

Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Categories

Archives

A sample text widget

Taxes and Internet (cracked at last perhaps)

Another mixed day at the grindstone

Working the boat

Frustration in Exotic Places

Fixing your boat in exotic places