First thing after waking up was to look at the power supply / video problems for the new stereo. I didn’t want to lose any length on the wire so I had a tedious time picking away at the crimps with my wire cutters so I could release the wires intact. Once apart I tested an alternated idea with the positive wires to switch the unit on and off via an external switch. That idea worked but for the time being I left the wires simply twisted together. I then installed a relay which would ground the brake switch detector after the unit was switched on. That worked too. Now the unit will play videos and show pictures. Not essential functions but may as well have them.
Next I had a trial run with the dye penetrant. It’s a three stage process. First the stainless steel has to be cleaned. Then the dye has to be sprayed on and left for 10 minutes. After cleaning it off, a developer is sprayed on to draw the dye out of any cracks. When I sprayed the dye it went everywhere including all over the gelcoat nearby. So it ended up being a rapid clean up job. I got my lessons learned. Next time we need no wind and lots of protection for the nearby surfaces. As the weather was deteriorating rapidly, I postponed the rest of this work.
Through this time, Helen started cutting out paper templates for all the items that will be going onto the new nav station. This was to allow us to move them around and design an ideal layout. Helen did a good job of this and ended up with a pretty good solution I think. I dread cutting out all the holes as one mistake will require a restart. Don’t fancy that.
We’d promised Sam a new laptop while in the Uk and while chatting with him online we found a good candidate via the Dell refurb site – something we’ve used a couple of times before and have been very happy with the results. Being refurbs one has to pick from what’s available without customization and what’s available can change over time so if you see something you like, it’s worth ordering. So I did. Another item off the list. Or so I thought. This morning I found an email from Dell saying the order had been cancelled and not saying why. When I check on line there is no trace of the order. I called the customer support who couldn’t help. They put me onto someone else, who also couldn’t help. They put me through to sales to sort this out. Turned out this was accessories sales. At this point I was a bit pissed off and explained they were the third person I’d spoken to and I felt I was getting the run around. They promised to have someone call me back. We’ll see.
The French technicians, Joel and Bertrand, showed up in the morning. They had a walk through of the boat to check things out. They then needed to buy tools so I went as passenger taking them to the local Bunnings (big DIY store) to get the tools they needed. On the way back we popped into a marine store then we talked to the yard manager, Peter, to understand services available from the yard. Despite the late start the techs are still targeting a launch on Saturday, March 3rd. They’re going to be busy.
The next job for me was to fit the AIS transponder and antenna splitter. It took a while to decide where to put them but in the end I decided on behind the lounge seats where we currently have a fuse box. This meant moving the fuse box too. The fuse box used to have all six connections used up for various items at the nav station. Because I’ve now gone for fused switches on the nav station the fuse box behind the lounge seats now will only have a couple of connections – one going to the nav station switches. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a little out of the way.
In the end I got everything in and accessible. I needed a power source for the two AIS components and decided to wire up the new switches panel prior to installing on the as to be cut out panel (which Helen has been designing). That meant hooking up the inverter to the panel, the new radio (finishing that job off) and the two new components.
Next was testing. I first tried the AIS transponder on it’s own, connecting it to the VHF antenna without the splitter in the circuit. Using the provided s/w and connecting it to my PC I was able to detect one boat up in the Town Basin Marina. So I know it’s receiving which is good. But I don’t have a read on sensitivity as I don’t know how many boats I could/should be seeing. One disappointment was that on checking the configuration, I discovered the supplier has got the boat length wrong and the boat width set to zero. The configuration s/w says the unit can only be configured once so I’ve sent an email to the supplier asking for suggestions.
Next I tried the transponder in line with the splitter. That worked too. I then hooked up the VHF radio to the splitter and tried a radio check while the AIS was running. That came through loud and clear too. So all the vital functions are good. An annoyance with the boat spec to sort out. And I need to buy a longer cable to join the splitter to the VHF radio as the one we have isn’t quite long enough. Pity. I also need to get a cable that will join the splitter to the new stereo so we can also use the mast antenna to listen to the radio. I think Helen is getting fed up with my playlist.
By now it was getting close to 5pm so it was time to tidy up the immense amount of mess I’d created. As I reached the end of the tidying we cracked open a beer each to celebrate a good days work. At this point we were greeted by knocks on the boat. Dave and Elana had found us. We were due to meet in town but they’d decided it might be fun to scour the local boatyards and find us first. As it was now passable inside we invited them in to sit around on toolboxes and the like. We subsequently went out for a Thai meal in town and then went for a walk along the waterfront. It was nice to catch up with them, find out what they’ve been up to in the last three years and to share some of our experiences.
We were quite pooped when we returned to the boat. We did well avoiding opening a bottle of wine, our usual habit. Perhaps this is the first sign of our progress towards Helen’s target of four bottles per week.
I did get a response from the email that NZ Garmin Customer Support gave me. Turns out it’s for returns. I’m pretty sure I’m not still under warranty so this is a dead end.
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