Author: John

I am awaiting parts to finish many jobs, including the rewire but I am happy the major jobs needed before taking the boat out are now done. I have been doing a lot of odd jobs in the last couple of days, including putting up picture frames, cleaning, getting rid of a lot of stuff. I threw out a lot of clothes before coming down, I went through the rest today and got rid of about 1/3 of what I had left.

I plan to take the dinghy out for a run tomorrow and later Lady Cindy under motor. I only plan to run down the river and back but it will give me confidence in both the outboard and the main engine.

A big Atlantic storm has been blowing through the last few days but I am in a well protected spot here at the marina. I have been continuing with the rewire including the stern lights, interior lights and more work on the console.

I have decided to get a new radio as this will be one of the most important safety items on the boat. It came with a reasonably good marine radio but that got its GPS position from a separate garmin GPS, I also have an AIS receiver. I am replacing all three with a single radio with built in GPS and an AIS transceiver which can broadcast my position to other vessels. This will be an important safety improvement and reduce the chances of being run over by something big. The new radio has DSC which means I can press a distress button on the radio or nav station and it will automatically send out a radio message with my position and nature of the distress.

I have been looking at options for moving the boat next month. Swanwick have quoted me an eye watering £780 per month to stay here, no thank you. Most marinas are expensive and do not allow liveaboard so I am thinking about anchoring in Chichester Harbour to give me easy access to the Solent to give the boat a thorough work out before sailing around to New Quay for the summer.

Including.. led nav lights at the bow and associated cabling tidied, anchor winch wiring tidied and new circuit breaker installed, new cabin radio fitted, lots more surplus wires removed, nav instruments now sharing data over seatalkng and nmea 2k which are now linked, spare main and jib stowed in bow.

I still have a lot to do but I’m really starting to feel I’m getting on top of things and I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

I went for a walk with my daughter and grandsons yesterday which was a welcome break. I have about two weeks left to get the boat ready to sail. I am starting to look for an alternative and cheaper mooring for next month onward.

I have now got 10Mbs Internet on the boat. I am using a cheap Android mobile phone with a SIM on the 3 mobile network. It costs £20 per month for 50GB of data and if needed I can upgrade to unlimited data for another £12. This phone is set up as a mobile Wifi hotspot for the boat. The beauty of this system is I can get local SIMs in any country I visit.

The second luxury is an TV with built in Netflix, amazon, YouTube etc. It also has Alexa built in. It is on a ceiling mounted bracket so is easily stowed out of the way.

Apart from a two day break to return to New Quay, I have continued the boat rewire this week. Lots more old wires are out, the Bilge pumps nearly sorted (see below), nav and deck lights wired to the panels, all instruments are now in the new panel and radar and GPS powered and working. There is still a lot to do, including linking the instruments for data sharing.

The second hand bilge pump is out but I need to wait for a new hose to simplify the sink waste. The new automatic bilge pump is in but it has a sticky float switch, I can only use it manually at the moment. I may get a seperate float switch to resolve this.

Today I started rewiring the nav lights and found they have used 2.5mm domestic cable up the mast!! OK that will have to stay for now but I have put waterproof connectors at the mast step and run new marine cable from there to the switch panel. If the mast ever gets removed or I need to do work up top, the wires can be replaced then. Domestic cable has been used a lot on the boat, the reason why not to do this was seen on one cable where the copper was tarnished at least 2 feet back from the end cut. I also finished recovering a bit of headlining, I only did the worst bit, the rest of the headlining will be replaced in a future project.

Over the last few days I have been rewiring the power distribution and making a new nav station panel

I have ripped out a lot more old cables as I went along, the old battery ground circuits were like a spiders web with cables spliced in all over, plus many circuits had no fuses. Everything now goes through proper grounding points and fused switch panels. Later I will install a seperate ground for radio circuits. I have settled on two fused switch panels, an priginal one near the cockpit hatch for nav lights, winch, bilge etc, stuff needed on the move, and a new 12 way at the nav station for everything else. These panels plus more power hungry circuits such as autopilot go through a seperate fuse box behind the nav panel. 2 circuits are in so far, saloon lights and the fridge.

With lockdowns unlikely to ease significantly before April, I have had no choice but to move onto the boat and hope marina staff do not prevent me from sleeping aboard. Government covid restrictions are not a problem as I am moving home which is a permitted activity. The marina currently have a no overnight stay rule which I am hoping they will not enforce on me.

I spent yesterday rewiring the shore power, moving the shore battery charger to inside the fridge compressor locker and fitting an inverter to provide 240v when not on shore power. All that went well. I now have 240v wherever I am and switching is easy.

This morning I woke to find the bilge full of water to just below the battery tops 😳 time to get to know the bilge pumps. There are 3, two manual and one electric. One retro fitted manual pump does not cut it, the outlet it uses is the sink outlet which is far too small, the electric pump makes noises but pumps no water, it’s under the house batteries so cannot be serviced without taking out the batteries. I want to do this anyway as part of the rewire but not today. I used the trusty reliable original hand pump in the cockpit.

Where did the water come from? Its salty so not from the tank, I left some stop cocks open yesterday so it could have siphoned in, otherwise the boat has a very big hole. I closed as many cocks as I could and monitored through the day. No more water.. it must be siphoning and I strongly suspect the second retrograde fitted bilge pump in the engine bay. The outlet goes to the sink through hull below the waterline. Not a good design, this pump will be removed as soon as I can and I will get a new electric bilge pump. If the old one can be repaired it will serve as a backup.

Later in the day while laying a new starter battery charge cable I found water on the fresh water bladder, then I realised the whole section was full of water 😳. Now the water was obviously overspill from the next section which I had pumped out, so why had the water tank section not drained? I think this section is sealed, I can find no drain whole in the aft end of it, I did see water coming from the front through a drain while pumping and there is no water forward of the water tank, it looks like the bladder is inside what must have been an old tank. I will do some research but the solution is probably to drill a drain hole in this tank.

I need some parts to complete the starter battery charging but the house batteries are charging nicely from the shore charger.

Tomorrow I will be working on the master cut off switches. The engine and link switches will be replaced with a 4 position switch that can select off, starter, house or both batteries (link) and this will be installed in the engine compartment and the services (house) switch will be moved to the fridge compressor locker. This will leave the kitchen cupboard empty and free to store food.