Ready for the water

Well, King Malu is finally ready for the water. Friday morning 07:30 she returns to her natural environment.

Tim and I had taken three days leave from work to finish all the anti-fouling and electrical work and get her generally ready for the water.

The new Axiom propellor looks great. We have lashed it firmly in the engine room as the new electric drive doesn't arrive till Monday and we need a week of bench testing before installing in King Malu.

The nut is held in place with a 'tab washer', which is something new to Tim and me, but seems a vastly better way that the castle nut and split pin that many props are held in place with.

Because we don't have the electric drive working yet, we'll be using the Honda outboard for the first few weeks. Also keeping it ready for service because we will be extensively testing the new PropEL drive and running the battery systems down to empty to check range etc.

The Nav Station is now completely rewired and working. I'm very pleased with this. It's both more logical (for easier maintenance) and easier to see and use and just looks a lot smarter.

At it's heart is the new electrical panel, cut for us by Julian at thebeast.co.uk. Very pleased with that too.

 And finally... as they say on TV news... Tim remarked how the two holes for the bow thruster make King Malu look like a shark coming towards you!