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.