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.
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