The weekend was predicted to be inclement weather so we decided it would be impossible to get the next coat of paint on the deck areas. There are still plenty of things needing to be done to get King Malu ready for sailing so we set to...
Saturday morning was taken up visiting the Raymarine dealer and working out best way to power the new chart plotter and autopilot, buying plumbing parts for the boat and Tim's and my houses and repairing a drain problem for my home. Well... real life has to continue as well as boat life!
We also went and measured the length of pipe needed to sort out the bilge pumps. We had been using two pumps with one way valves prior to a single run to the sea cock. Easy to fit because the pipe up to the sea cock was already there, but bad news because the one way valves kept sticking. So we purchased and replaced the pipe with new pipe separately from each bilge pump up to a Y piece at the top of the loop prior to the sea cock. The height of the loop was enough to mean the back pressure didn't come down the other pipe.
What I hadn't realized was how much the one way valves restricted the water flow. Suddenly we are getting much better emptying of the bilge.
Final task of the day, we fitted the new lights into the starboard side of the galley. There had been two circular lights and one fluorescent. We had changed it to one circular and one LED strip light. The circular light had also been changed to be a LED bulb. The old ceiling piece was now a new marine ply board, stained and varnished match the wood paneling.
So what was there to do? The strip light needed a voltage regulator and we had decided to run all the starboard lights off the one switch. This involved quite a bit of wiring. We're using liquid insulating tape and soldered joints. They should be more reliable but takes quite a bit of time.
When we had finally fixed it in place it was obvious that not only was the galley very much brighter, but we were using much less current that with the previous system. All in all a win-win situation... until... the new strip light went out. I suspected the voltage regulator so got it out of the plastic box and put my hand on to feel the temperature. Bad mistake. Barbecued hand. But at least the water was working so I could run my hand under the tap.
Eventually with some digging around with a meter I found that the battery charger was putting out more than 14 volts and so the regulator was having to drop 2 volts and discharge about 1watt as heat. The heat built up till the regulator switched itself off. OK, so what's the solution? A more powerful regulator to power all, or some of the lights.
Following morning Tim showed me a DC-to-DC converter for TVs he had found that supplies up to 5 amps constant 12 volts. I think the answer is to split the lighting into two circuits with two regulators supplying the stabilized voltage needed.
Sunday's task was to start the gangplank or passerelle. Start, not finish because the epoxy needs time to set before the next stage. We need some pictures, but basically the construction is 9mm marine ply sandwiched with four strips of 2 x 1 (inches, that shows my english ambiguity on measuring both metric and imperial!) between them. First side done, leave to set and do second side Tuesday late afternoon.
There as a horrendous storm overnight so when we went to the boat today to get the old dashboard to make a new one we checked the bilges and the pump(s) had obviously been running overnight. How much water had they pumped out we wondered. We will get an hour counter to fit to the system so we can tell how much work they do while we are away and so get some idea of leaks into the boat.
It was good to see very little water in the saloon, obviously we are fixing most of the leaks now. Next weekend we decided to try to get the first of the Treadmaster down. That should reduce the leaks into the saloon even further and get the ceiling pieces out of the way in the aft cabin.
As we were walking to the boat Tim remarked that King Malu seemed to be lying askew. Strange. Eventually it appears that the whole floating dock has moved in the storm and all the boats are lying askew, it's just easier to see with a two masted ketch.
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