Installing Raymarine navionics

Seems a strange afternoon, difficult to think what we have done, but we started at 2pm and worked solidly till 7pm, with no break:

We got the Raymarine navigation computer fixed in the stern locker... upright... very important it should be upright! We ran the Seatalk cables through from the cockpit to the navigation computer and calculated the extra Seatalk, NMEA and power cables we will need.

In the middle of running cables Tim exclaims, 'You know that small piece of very solid marine ply I wanted to throw out and you wanted to keep... well it's exactly the right size without any modification to fix the autopilot drive to the bulkhead!' We could do with a few more miracles like that, things that exactly fit right and help move things forward quickly.

We moved the location for the navigation battery bank from the starboard galley locker to the stern locker. We hope this will be correct for trim of the boat with the new electric drive and generator, but won't know for sure till we get the electric drive in place. It will give us more galley locker space.

Then we started work on fixing the autopilot drive in place: We drilled and fixed an extension plate to the rudder quadrant. Ken had got a couple of pieces of steel approx 5cm x 30cm and one of them bolted in place to extend the quadrant. That was hard work drilling and fixing the steel, but easier than I expected.

The next part was to temporarily fix the autopilot drive to the piece of marine plywood that Tim had found and check that (a) the distance between the drive and the centre of the quadrant was exactly right and (b) the angle up or down for the autopilot drive was no more than 5 degrees. The distance was within a centimetre or so of correct so that is within tolerance and the angle looks like being within the 5 degrees permitted... so we then found fixing bolts and cleaned up the area where it will be located, mixed Epidermix epoxy and glued and clamped the wood in place. Tomorrow we will remove the clamp, add two more bolts to the bulkhead and some Prattley's putty between the ply and the hull so that it is good and strong.

That was all for the day... well, not quite. Tim had acquired a piece of rectangular aluminium boxing from the company that did their patio windows and we came back and cut that to mount the wind sensor on top of the mast in the morning.

Wow... now I'm tired. Didn't get the extra coat of varnish on the door and front cabin as I had hoped, but the work surface in the front cabin looked great where I had wood filled it and put second layer of varnish on.