Varnish and electrics

No more varnishing of the rubbing strip. I put on coat 5 today. I was going to put one more coat on tomorrow, but it's getting no better. I think the delay between the first two coats and the next three meant it didn't take properly. It looks OK, but not perfect sadly.

I put a second coat on the for'ard heads door. Now that did look great. I am pleased the way that is going.

Final task of the day (well afternoon and evening) was to get the generator electrics complete. It is... almost... just have to connect it to the auto-switch.

The electric drive has not arrived and I had an email this morning saying there would be a further 10 days to 2 weeks delay on it being ready.

About 18 years ago I was waiting in Lagos airport to fly to Côte d'Ivoire. Lagos airport is interesting. At that stage US airports displayed a list of airports that 'didn't reach international security and safety standards' and there was only one airport on the list... Lagos International airport! Anyhow we had a 5 hour delay and it was stifling; the air conditioning kept going on and off. One passenger remarked that the control tower was on the same electric feed and the control tower lost power whenever we did.

Over the tannoy, when we did actually have electricity, they announced a 'further one hour delay on the flight to London'. There was a near riot in the neighbouring waiting area. One of the other passengers went to investigate. The reason was this was the 26th 'further one hour delay' on the flight to London.

I feel the same about the electric drive. It should have been here around the 11/12th May. It's now the 15th June. It's 5 weeks late on a 2 week delivery schedule and they just emailed a 'further 2 week delay'.

To say I am unimpressed would be an understatement; I feel like rioting. We have friends coming out on Sunday for a week... to go sailing. We can sail in the Wayfarer but not the Nicholson and the reason is the total inefficiency of the electric drive supplier.

Varnishing...

This afternoon I put layer 4 varnish on the rubbing strip, first layer of stain/varnish on the for'ard heads door, plus some stain/varnish on other pieces of wood in the for'ard cabin.

The door looks really great!

Oh, and I did yet more cleaning and tidying.

Up the mast

I cannot remember what we did in the morning. I know it wasn't a whole lot. I guess after achieving so much yesterday today would be quieter. I soldered up the power cables for the Raymarine instruments.

I should have read the instructions! Seatalk carries power and NMEA data, so what I did was totally wrong. Oh well...

In the afternoon Tim ran the cable through for the speed indicator. It was non-trivial.

The main thing for the afternoon was to work out how to mount the wind speed/direction sensor. It needs to be at the top of the main mast.

We then need to run the sensor cable down the inside of the mast, back through the saloon to the control position.

Quite a run and one I was really concerned about, as dropping a tracer cord down the mast and trying to fish for it at the bottom was something I thought would be pretty difficult.

We had talked about using a 'cherry picker' - a crane with a bucket end on it - to do this, but after hauling Costas from the next door boat up his mast, we thought we would try today.

I cope with, but don't over like heights, and I really wanted to see how safe it was so I went up. I was wearing one of our lifejackets which double as a harness, and in the bosun's chair. Each had a separate halyard on in for safety.

We have steps up the mast, so I climbed and was held at the same time. One of the steps felt 'spongy' and I later found that it had broken. We will need to replace that sometime.

When I got to the top of the mast I had a really pleasant surprise. There was a cable from an old wind speed/direction sensor there and a mounting plate with a couple of bolts for the sensor.

Maybe for the first time on this boat the task would be easier rather than more difficult than anticipated.

The old cable could be used as a draw wire for the new cable and we could create a mounting plate for the new sensor that would simply bolt right in place.

So I descended the mast and put the photos onto my computer so that the others could look at them.

What we needed now was to find out the right size nuts to use and the distance between the bolts fot he mounting plate. Tim found a selection of nuts and I took the vernier calipers tied on with me for the second time up the mast.

From the top the sight down is spectacular. King Malu looks really beautiful.

Anyway I read out to Tim the sizes. The bolt measured 6mm but the outside measurement and the inside measurement didn't quite add up. And all of the nuts were too big. Oh well... at least we now know, or think we know, a 6mm nut will work.

I went down again. Tim found a 6mm nut and up I went again! Third time lucky? No, the 6mm nut didn't work at all. The bolts must be imperial rather than metric. Down to the deck again.

Tim finds an imperial equivalent nut and I climb the mast again. This time a perfect fit. Four times climbing the mast is tiring me so I am very glad this is the last climb of the day.

Lots of small jobs and getting closer to sailing

Here is the list of jobs for the weekend. The ones crossed through are those we completed today!

• Solder cables in for'ard locker
• Prattley glue muffler to engine room floor
• Finish fitting for'ard heads door
• Finish for'ard cabin woodwork
• Reinforce sail locker floor
• Step for sail locker
• Fit chain wash switch
• Fit danforth anchor cradle in sail locker
• Varnish for'ard cabin
• Buy & collect Raymarine equipment
• Varnish rubbing strip
• Varnish dashboard
• Cut outs for Raymarine equipment in dashboard
• Fit Raymarine wind sensor at top of mast
• Connect generator to domestic wiring system
• Make gangplank spreader
• Make stern locker storage
• Fit Raymarine electronic compass
• Run wiring for Raymarine speed sensor
• Buy plumbing parts for generator anti-siphon overflow
• Fit generator anti-siphon overflow

Seems like a big list but what was amazing was how many tasks we completed. It was very therapeutic - the week had been quite stressful, partly it was work, but the non-delivery of the electric drive chain was stressing me too. Tim kept saying 'Relax, it will all work out'. He was right. The Zivan battery charger finally arrived at EVE on Friday lunchtime. The flange was galvanized and if all works out correctly it will be dispatched on Monday and we will get it Wednesday or Thursday.

Today was a race day for one of the sailing clubs at the marina so we watched the yachts going out and coming back longingly. Soon, very soon, we should be sailing ourselves.

Making the sail locker step had not been on the original list for the weekend, but since we were re-inforcing of the floor I thought we might as well do so and we completed it! We cannot use it for a week or so as we have used epoxy glue to hold it in place. The Epidermix epoxy is mega-strong but takes a week to reach full strength.

Costas delivered all the Raymarine equipment to the boat. He wasn't at the shop this morning, and by the time he came I had forgotten that I wanted to ask about deck glands to bring the wires from the solar cells into the boat.

We had discussion again about the control unit for the autopilot. Tim and I are happy it should be in the location from the panel for the old diesel engine, but Costas thinks it should be mounted on the wheel pedestal. He may be right, but I think this year we will mount it in the old diesel engine panel and see how it goes. If it doesn't work there, then we'll move it to the pedestal.

We cut out the dashboard and the Raymarine equipment looks great mounted in it; although it's not actually there right now we took it out so that I could put an extra coat of varnish on the dashboard. I was going to make the dashboard mirror smooth and really smart, but we decided to have an A70 navigation system this year and put off the radar till 2011. Next year it will be a C90 with digital radar probably, which is wide screen, significantly larger and will need careful planning and probably a new dashboard. So... the dashboard will look great, but not 110%.

I was really pleased to reinforce the sail locker floor. The floor is paneled and one side is not supported as well as I thought it should, making the floor feel slightly spongy. So we added a couple of extra supports and it now feels really firm.

The rubbing strip varnishing wasn't as encouraging as I had hoped. We had been told we would need 5 to 7 coats of varnish. I did the first two a couple of months ago and it looked absolutely great. Then I went to the UK and had a gap of a month when no varnishing was done. I came back to see the cracks in the wood blistering from the varnish. It looked sad. 

Today Jacob lightly sanded down the rubbing strip and I put another coat on it. It looked better than it had done but sadly not great like it did originally. Maybe with another few coats it will look great again. We have enough varnish for about 3 more coats. Tomorrow I will do another coat and hopefully two more on Monday and Tuesday.

Three extra jobs we became aware of

• Fix binnacle light
• Make metal bracket for autopilot connection to rudder quadrant
• Fix autopilot drive (glassfibre)

Tomorrow the main priority will be getting the Raymarine wind sensor connected and doing as much of the navionics as possible. We have a lunch engagement, so don't have the full day, but after lunch Daniel will come to help and Becky to take photos. We helped hoist Costas from the next door boat to the top of his mast today - his wind sensor had stuck and he wanted to spray it with WD40. It was helping there that made us realize two things - firstly getting to the top of the mast was not so difficult and secondly having two guys on the deck is pretty much essential.

Generator ready (very nearly)

Today we spent most of the day fighting the exhaust pipe. It won. But we found another way to make it work!

Finally all the wires were connected... bar one, the earth connector (negative) for the 12 volt. The place that is supposed to be connected was attached way to hard to the starter motor for me to get it off and fix the wire. Even if I had been able to, we didn't really have the correct wire for that so need to get some tomorrow.

We also need to route the mains through a 'magneto thermic safety switch'. I'm not sure how different that is from a normal breaker, maybe its the correct name for that device. Obviously the wires need tidying up, they're still a bit untidy.

We also spent time looking for the alternator - there was supposed to be a 12 volt charging output. Eventually looking through the circuit diagram I realised that they were taking an extra winding in the generator as an alternator output to charge the 12 volt.  This means the charging cannot be neatly regulated using the Sterling Power controller we wanted to use... oh well.

Final job was to get the for'ard heads door fitted. Not 100% yet, but at least will be in place.

If all goes well, the next two weeks will be manic, but see King Malu actually sailing!

Connecting the generator

Tim and I spent the day trying to get the generator connected. First task was planning. Which in this case meant making a list of everything we would need: exhaust hose, hose adaptors, diesel hose, etc etc. We got it all right except for one adaptor, which we didn't write down the exact measurements and so remembered incorrectly. Yes, it's all in the detail for the planning.

Daniel came down and joined us for most of the morning. We had left King Malu in a terrible state after getting the generator on board, so even before planning we had to tidy a little. Nothing could go back in the sail locker, so we had to find temporary homes for all the ropes, extra sails, hose and other parts that seem to breed in the sail locker.

Then after making the list it was off to Andrieou Brothers and Comar Marine to find parts. Everything except 40mm exhaust pipe, but Costantinos says he will bring that down early Sunday morning as he has it in the Nicosia shop.

Then an important step - home for coffee. Daniel makes excellent coffee and it was a good break in the day. A quick lunch and on with the work. Ken joined us for most of the afternoon while I crawled in and around the generator connecting pipes and wires and bolts and... Erica also came down to see how we were doing. She found us having coffee. Is that all we do all day, sit and drink coffee?

Finally Costantinos came down to have a look and give us the number for Angelos who is his technician and will do the final inspection and commissioning before he turns it on for the first time.

Getting the new generator onboard

Costantinos from Comar Marine called to say our new Paguro 5000 generator would be delivered to their shop in Larnaca at lunchtime and we could collect it at 4pm. Including the packing it weighs about 110 kg. More than Tim and I could manage on our own so we hailed as much support from family and friends as we could.

My son, Daniel, with Becky, his fiancée came down to help and Tim roped in, so to speak, colleagues from the office. With their help, and Becky's photography, it proved easier than I anticipated.

We also loaded another 7 batteries, each about 27 kg. So the total weight on the trolley was just about 300 kg!

What was amazing was how it was done - Tim's colleagues suggested heaving the generator, still on the trolley, up and down the steps to get to King Malu. Yes, it worked!

Becky took a great number of photos and some video, so here's the YouTube version for your enjoyment: