Year: 2013

We are finally working on deck and sorting out the garage in some late spring sunshine                     And we are onboarding fuel conditioner for 20,000 litres of diesel, a large where’s-this-going tub of hydraulic oil, and Christmas decorations (we are allowing one box of Christmas bits and baubels)           And as part of the Christmas planning we are adding cockpit harness points with a 6 tonne / 15,000 lb working load which should hold a couple of crew with or without extra turkey (pictured with a swiftly

At long last the watermaker installation is over with the final fitting of the remote control at the chart table. Alongside the outrageously expensive and rather poorly manufactured remote (which was not even squared up on it’s faceplate so the body had to be cut in at a seriously bespoke angle to sit straight in the panel) with a basic 3 way switch. Where’s the remote pressure monitoring and production volume control? We could have made our own switches linked to an RJ45 plug for next to nothing and placed them within the right context on our main switch panel.

The crew were less than enthusiastic with the news that they were to share 27 injections between three of them during the month of June.Thoughts about the sun having brought out the nursing shark with razor teeth jumped to mind. Attempts to colour out the red zones along the route around the world ‘risks’ chart and hand it back to the nurse didn’t work so an alternative mitigation plan was hatched. The re-routing of our journey to avoid the red very high risk areas, the blue high risk areas and the grey definite risk areas left us with a limited

Initial plans for departure are taking shape with the current outlook being a re-launch into the water on the 5th July and at the earliest a departure date of 10th July heading for the Plymouth area. A route via Brest remains a plan B option depending upon the weather patterns.

Fortunately, as propellors get larger over the years, so too does the maintenance crew so perfect proportions are retained  

We fitted the water maker circuit breaker (25A at 24V) in it’s own housing alongside a pre-existing breaker panel. A flashing 24v red led will be mounted in our chart table control panel alongside the waterker remote panel so that anyone providing power to the water maker will be reminded to check on the seacocks before going to production; we need a small box to play ‘insane in the membrane’ as an audible alarm.         The pump platform which was conceived over a number of weekends, including a bit of shaping and epoxy coating, dropped in place

We had to design a circuit for the new tri-colour light whilst keeping true to the original design of our 23 year old switch panel which uses green Hella truck switches rather than the modern LED rocker breakers. New technology from ETA has combined a relay switch and circuit breaker which is operated and reset via a 12/24v control switch, or in our case the truck switch. Added to the control switch inputs the truck switch had to be wired to light up when in the ‘on’ position. Testing before fixing and going aloft           Fitted

Or as the ship’s cat says it’s the same as ‘chasing your tail’. Our thanks to Clare of s/v Suvi for helping to chase the tails and not only fix the bilge pump alarm which is linked to two sump areas, the engine room and mid-ships. Our bilges have always filled relatively quickly so the alarm is expected to sound too frequently. But perhaps by fitting the watermaker we have found the root of the problem; when an old watermaker was removed the freshwater feed line to the tank was severed but left open. Heeling to port this has possibly

Trying to think ahead to warmer climes is tricky but we hold out hope that we will see temperatures in the 20s and 30s!?! To that end much research has been done on the most appropriate footwear to suit all terrains, water types and weathers. A couple of blogs for cruisers waxed lyrical about Keen’s sandals. After some more research we decided on Venice H2 for the girls and Newport H2 for Paul. They have arrived and have a big thumbs up. Comfortable, practical and look alright for trekking sandals! The ship’s cat watched as Fran modelled the footwear. Sadly a thorough check

The latter part of fitting the watermaker lifting the cabin sole through the vessel from the stern to the water tank and then running the 8mm pneumatic tubing through all the formers. We struck gold when we found that the water tank had already been tapped for a watermaker so at this end it was just plug and play with a pnuematic air line connector. We are setting up a secondary fresh water feed line and pneumatic connectors in case we need to bypass the water tank at any stage. The connectors simply unclip/clip-in so redirection would take a few