Engine room hatch complete

Now we have the pieces of marine ply to fill around the hatch frame it will be easy.

So back into the engine room I go. Actually, I'm not feeling great today, having started a flu like cold overnight, but I'm determined to finish the job we started yesterday.

Everything screwed in place like it was designed to go. Well, I suppose nearly 35 years ago it was designed to have the pieces of marine ply where I was putting them back. I wonder how many years it has been in the kludged state.

With the hatch in place the saloon is beginning to look like a saloon again. If only we can get the old engine block out...

I tried removing the oil marks around the engine room hatch with Miracle Cleaner and sadly it didn't make any impression on it. So this will have to wait till next year to be rubbed down and re-varnished. The priority now is function rather than beauty, although we do want her to look neat and tidy for the season.

We have even started on the multitude of minor miscellaneous jobs, in this case fixing a clip for the safety torch just inside the main cabin.

Filling the hole... into the engine room

The engine room hatch is not a big issue in the scheme of things but the hole into the engine room makes the boat look very unfinished. So Chris and I decided today we would try to fix it.

We bought 2x1 timber and some long screws to fix the frame in place and spent quite some time working on it.

Alas we failed. At least we failed to complete it. We screwed the frame in place and it didn't look quite right and tried to make filler pieces of 2x1 and wedged the frame in place and then the hatch itself wouldn't fit and kept falling out.

Suddenly I noticed the holes through the frame were countersunk from the back, which meant the frame must have been fitted from the back.

OK, so we failed, but we now knew what we should do to fix it... tomorrow.

New battery now works

OK, so the reason the new battery didn't work yesterday to start the generator was easy. I like easy to fix problems: When I had changed the battery I had tightened up all the fixings except one of the earth cables. That one was making bad connection and so not getting enough current to the started motor. Fixed.

Sunset over Larnaca brought time to go to Tim's flat for a lovely evening of potatoes in the Webber, with crisps and dips, some great wine and even better fellowship.

Discussions range to sailing tomorrow... taking out the Wayfarer and the trimaran. Some real sailing to look forward to.

Electrical issues

Too much wind for a sail in the Wayfarer so it's down to the marina again to work on King Malu.

We have been having problems starting the generator - the engine battery is very old so it's not surprising. Starts fine when we use the domestic battery bank. So we bought a new engine battery today.

When we plugged in the new battery it started taking charge, unlike the old one. So we charged it up, but it still wouldn't start the generator. I am thinking that there wire is too long or there is something not good connection so higher resistance than allows enough current to flow for starting the generator. Chris and I will investigate more tomorrow.

It's possible that the wire from the battery, through the shunt, over to the isolation switch, back round the sail locker to the generator is too long for the very high current needed to start the generator. When we doubled up with the second battery bank we were halving the resistance too.

Later this afternoon I started updating the CAD drawing for the electrical schematic and (grrrr...) Windows lost it over dinner tonight, so will update tomorrow and remember to save since the 'autosave' on the CAD system obviously doesn't work.

We heard the PSUs for the electric drive are, or should be, on their way today... and that as soon as funds clear in Italy, the new electric drive itself will be on it's way. Hopefully tomorrow, so that it arrives early next week.

Generator starting... not!

Today was really windy, so Chris and I could not sail the Wayfarer, so we came down to King Malu to do some work on her. The electrical work seems interminable. The generator is refusing to start. Probably the old battery. How old? 8 years, maybe more...

Instruments working

We spent the morning doing the final NMEA wiring for the instruments and connecting the shunt on the navionics battery bank so we can monitor power use.

Everything came on and worked perfectly. Well... needed to check the connection for the depth sounder, but that was the only slight problem.

Now we have full navigation available.

NMEA, Seatalk and Bissel

Strange the mixture of things associated with a sailing boat.

We spent the morning wiring the autopilot - NMEA and Seatalk, power and clutch cables. Tim and Jacob fitted the autopilot control, making a facia in the process.

Tim's mum, Patricia, joined us for lunch. Having a good stable gangplank meant she could come aboard for the first time.

Then in the afternoon we went back to Tim's flat and used the Bissel to clean the cushions for the cabins and saloon. Tiring work, but productive.

Up the mast(s)

As I stood there preparing to go up the main mast, they were laying bets on how many times I would be going up and down the mast.

I'm not sure what the odds were on how many times I would be up and down, but my personal bets were not on how many times up and down it would be but how long it would take to catch the thread I had to drop as a tracer for the wind sensor wire. I was betting it would be pretty difficult to catch a tracer thread dropped down the mast!

Safety is paramount to both Tim and I, and Daniel as a professional seaman was overseeing even us.

As well as having a primary line on the bosuns chair and a secondary line on the lifejacket/harness, each of the shackles were moused so that they could not come undone.

Climbing the mast becomes easier the more you do it, and today I was much more confident and comfortable climbing the main mast.

It's still quite a climb and you feel strange with all the gear strapped to you and a bag tied to you with all your tools inside.

Nothing should drop to the deck, so each tool also has a safety line attached to the bosuns chair.

I think it was the hottest day so far this year. And I forgot to put on any sun protection cream, so although I didn't burn badly my arms were kind of glowing by the end of the day.

Daniel, who is fairer than I am, did get burnt a little.

I said I was concerned about catching the thread at the bottom of the mast... well, this is the hook, made out of an old coathanger that Tim had to try and catch it with.

What do you reckon his odds are on doing it first time?

Apart from Becky taking all these photos, there is Dan on deck watching as safety lookout, me at the top of the mast and Tim below decks fishing for the thread I dropped.

While Tim was fishing I was fixing the mount for the wind sensor in place. We had acquired a piece of box aluminium which we had mounted the sensor base to and cut two holes to fix to the two studs on the top of the mast.

The holes were approx 1-2 mm out so I had to lower the mount and have it modified to fix in place.

I then got the most amazing radio message from Tim....

He hooked the thread first time.

He just pushed the hook into the mast, waggled it about, twisted it to catch the thread and pulled it our with the tracer thread attached!

Never was a radio message so gratefully received. I had been reckoning on 30 minutes at least.

Coming down the mast is easier than going up.

I just allow myself to be lowered down by Daniel, and fend myself off the spreaders, steps and anything else designed to damage limbs.

The second time up the main mast I took the wind sensor with me and fixed that on. It was wonderful to see the wind sensor in place, spinning and pointing to the wind.

I look forward to seeing it connected and showing us sailing soon... there's hope for you.

Then it's down to the deck and not up the main mast again today.

I will have to go up again, since when I was drilling the holes for the self tapping screws to fix the gland for the wire for the wind sensor, the drill broke.

I will glue the gland in place with Sikaflex next time. It would have been more sensible to do this in the first place, but like many tasks on the boat, we are learning as we go along.

Next it's up the mizzen mast to fix the radar reflector. Or at least that was the plan.

Again we used two halyards, one for the bosun's chair and another for safety line. Before climbing I test the weight at deck level by sitting in the chair. As I do so so plastic from on high breaks off and falls on Tim's head.

Now where did that come from? Best bet is that it is part of the block at the top of the mast. So I very carefully climb the mast with the safety line being taken in by Tim.

It was indeed the block that had broken. When I saw it, I realised that there wasn't actually much left of the block. Glad that wasn't taking my weight.

When I got to the top I asked Tim to send up a rope to tie the bosun's chair to the top of the mast to I could release the block and replace it.

He did one better, sending up the webbing safety line with double cow hitches at one end. This was better than I had thought and will be what I use in the future. I used two of the cow hitches to attach the bosun's chair and that left the extra cow hitch to clip the tool bag to. It was very easy to work in that environment.

I then got them to send up one of the turning blocks from the vang for the mizzen boom and replaced the block with that one.

Meanwhile Daniel stitched a replacement 12 mm line to the 10mm line that ran up the mast through that block. I pulled the line through and tied on to the bosun's chair. Now I felt really safe working on the mizzen mast with new 12mm line.

In the old days (I mean wooden sailing boats 'of the line') sailors whistled to each other and had different whistle signals to mean different things with different ropes. When theatres started having rope lines to suspend lighting poles and sets they often employed sailors, since they knew about ropes and such like, to control all these ropes and pulleys and things. Theatres with those sorts of ropes were known as 'hemp houses' and theatre law said 'never whistle up stage'. Why? Well, the innocent whistle of an actor might be the signal to a sailor to drop the rope above his head!

Having hand held marine band radios really made communications over all this very much easier.

Sitting at the top of the mizzen mast, although shorter than the main mast, gave me a brilliant sight right across the marina.

While waiting for Daniel to stitch the two ropes together I had the chance to look around at the different yachts in the marina from an angle I had never seen them before.

The final task was to drill and rivet the mounts for the Echomax radar reflector in place and then bolt the radar reflector to the mounts.

The wind had come up a little by then and I kept being blown round the wrong side of the mast by the wind while trying to drill the holes for the pop rivets.

We finished 30 minutes later than we had hoped, having done one more task than anticipated. All in all a great morning's work.

The afternoon went well too: Tim and I ran some cables and Daniel connected in the car radio/CD player from our old car.

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.

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: