Dirty Stuff And Clean Stuff

The weather this weekend has been appalling, wind, rain and floods everywhere! It's a good job I've been working in the Shed protected from the elements and kept nice an warm by the number of HotVac patches stuck over the hull. The fibreglass is gradually drying out, most of the starboard side has a moisture reading that's below 5 now so the patches have been moved over to the port side.

The challenge this weekend was to clean out the engine compartment and sort out the cockpit locker, a really filthy job I wasn't looking forward to. In the end clearing out the old, oil sodden engine insulation wasn't too difficult but crawling into the compartment to clear out the old exhaust gear was more challenging. Reaching right up to the deck drains to clean up then de-grease the compartment was not my idea of fun but it was satisfying to see it look so much better afterwards. Draining the fuel tank was heartbreaking, over 40 litres of diesel thrown away! Fortunately it was relatively easy to disconnect everything, move the tank around, and get access to the top which was needed to fit new piping later on.

With most of the stripping down completed it's time to buy some new bits to put back and one of the first priorities is to sort out the electrics. With the DC stuff now on order so it's time to get the electronics so that James, the chippie, can re-build the navigation area. We'd decided on Garmin kit at the boat show because it looked nice, seemed to fit what was needed well enough and good value. The Marine mega store had a special sale on for GM10 instruments, the displays being at half price, so it was off to Port Solent to do a deal. Not being particularly interested in a plotter as I prefer paper charts I settled for a Garmin 551 model which is pretty basic but still better than a straight GPS. We'd already bought a ICOM M91D portable VHF so it was natural to buy a IC423 fixed VHF which has the same user interface.

After struggling home through the pouring rain with a pile of boxes a mile high I sat down to work out exactly where the NMEA 2000 network was to go, what shape it was to be and what additional bits were needed. It took most of the afternoon to fathom this out from the "manuals" which were not particularly helpful but after many trips to various sites on the internet it soon became clear that a backbone network from the mast back to the nav area and then on up to the instruments was required. By using field attachable connectors it was going to be possible to thread the micro cable up to the instrument housing, negating one of the earlier concerns about the rather tortuous cable run.

Now all we need to do is make it happen!