Cruising is... Nov 14, '09-Feb 14,'10, Part II

As we left you, we'd arrived back in the Bahamas with over 125 pounds of
new, rebuilt or used gear to replace, make spares for or upgrade stuff we
already had aboard. Fortunately for us, we never had to prove the point that
all of this was destined for a boat in transit, and thus worthy of a pass
through Customs without incurring duty costs. That it cost us as much as
another ticket for the overweight charges was just another cost of doing
business, albeit one which, if the circumstances were ever to repeat
themselves, we'd not have again, being older (pardon the expression) but
wiser. Too soon old, too late smart, as the saying goes. Perhaps we won't be
quite so frazzled the next time, either.

Anyway, back to the boat we go.

The first order of business was the rebuilt injectors we'd bought for Perky,
our venerable but reliable auxiliary power (read: engine that pushes the
boat!). We'd already had a couple of spares (they'd come with the boat) in
our bins, so I ordered 6, so I'd have a full set of 4 in reserve, there
being no place we'd discovered in our travels who could service our
injectors. In they went, on went the fuel connections through the parts
which caused my 1-day diversion to obtain those missing from the injector
order when they arrived, bleeding and startup being very straightforward,
and he runs smoothly and purrs like a kitten. We presume we'll find a very
much better fuel burn rate when we've had some time to analyze it against
the last several hundred hours, but suffice to say we left the dock the next
day, and sailed back down to Marsh Harbour, where we've been for the last 4
weeks.

4 weeks??!! What, you ask, has kept you there that long???

Well, I'll tell ya...

A good rule of thumb in marine work is to take your worst estimate, dividing
the single components of a project to allow for more accuracy in
calculation, arrive at a time you think it couldn't possibly take longer
than, and then multiply by 3. That's usually a pretty fair estimate. Even
Don Casey, a very noted writer and craftsman on older boats, admits to
rarely beating that end result. So, even the simplest of things (or what we
thought would have been simple), usually wound up taking far more time than
we'd anticipated.

Of all the projects, the injectors were the closest to estimation. No
backtracking, no do-overs, all very straightforward. However, much of the
rest was extremely fiddly work, which took much more time than we'd have
thought. Along the way, we encountered snags we hadn't expected, either.

One of our first was to replace the galley (kitchen, to landsiders) fresh
water faucet. Our prior had broken off at the hose for the sprayer-nozzle
head (single-hole fixture). No problem; it's got a lifetime warranty from
Home Depot; I'll carry the old head back and get a new one.

Not so fast, Bucko. Warranty items have to be sent back to the manufacturer.
OY! A month of total time ashore, that's not (reliably) going to work,
particularly since my going to HD wasn't until I'd been ashore for a couple
of weeks. Meanwhile, what do folks who have to use that fixture in the
meantime do??? Anyway, I bought a new one. It was the only item that got a
second look during our security screenings, as it traveled in my carry-on;
even that very-odd-image-generator only needed identification for the
scanner to understand it; the bag wasn't opened.

So, back to the story, the old one took quite some effort, in extremely
contorted positions, to remove. However, it did come out, and the other go
in, and we very much like the new one, which is a different design, though
still a single-hole, single-spray/hose head. So much for THAT day!

The next project was to take that new, rather larger, antenna cable up to
the top of the mast, having first gotten all the old caulk out of the way at
the top, and, having first made a different path for its exit at the bottom,
attach it to the now-cut-off end of the old one (along with the new fish
line, the prior having broken inside the conduit), lubricate it with
Corrosion Block (a marvelous product for things electrical and electronic),
and stuff, while Lydia pulled from the other end, the new cable down the
mast. All went well. Well, except for the caulking-gun tube of caulk
exploding as I was caulking the hole at the top of the mast, requiring
troweling, rather than squirting, the caulk into the hole, and cleaning up
the mess in the caulking gun. Once that was finished, I Corrosion-Block-ed
and attached the factory-made-up end to the antenna, applied the rubber,
squishy tape to fully waterproof it, and returned to the boat from aloft.

The end we'd sent down the mast was raw, as the proper termination on the
end would not have fit down the hole at the top of the mast, and likely
might have gotten caught on the way down through the other wires in the
conduit. In my research for the proper cable, in one of the discussion
groups, a new thread developed on proper termination procedures to ensure
the best water-ingress prevention and signal assurance. The cable I'd chosen
was waterproof. That feature would prove to be my undoing in my initial
termination attempts.

I'll save you all the technical details of how one terminates cable, but it
involves soldering techniques. The recommended process wound up melting the
waterproofing, preventing me from removing a part of the outer shells of the
cable due to the waterproofing not only "gluing" one part to another, but
melting the inner core which protects the transmission line.

In the end, I attempted the "right" way three times before giving up.
Fortunately, I had plenty of cable, so the couple of inches I cut off at
each failure were of no significance. I eventually abandoned tinning the
braided shielding in the outer shell, a key step in assuring the last
soldering parts would be the best they could. That tinning of the outer
braided shell was the source of the melting of the waterproofing, and my
final attempt, using bare braided shielding was very straightforward, if
lengthy. It's sort of a rule of thumb that if it doesn't take you at least a
half-hour to make your termination, likely it's not the best. I took my time
and did it right...

I'm confident of the connection, and, once the new radio was plugged back
into the hole awaiting it, powered up and reconnected to all the various
plug-and-plays, our testing confirmed that all the problems we'd identified
previously were solved. We now have crystal-clear reception and transmission
at great distances. PHEW! You'd have to have seen all that went before that
to appreciate the depths of time and effort expended to get to this point,
but, we're very pleased with the end result.

Of course, these projects so far were relatively straightforward, as they
were somewhat plug-and-play, going right into where something either
identical or very similar had been. Since we're on the subject of VHF
radios, we'll move on to the one at the helm. Recall that the old one had
died...

One of my targets in replacing the helm radio was to have a unit that had a
dust/water cover. Nearly any marine VHF radio is "submersible" - in some
cases, literally, in other cases, meaning that it can take a dunk, or,
certainly, water spray. However, this prior unit had already been back to
the manufacturer for a defect (warranty replacement, no charge), and, I'd
noted, one time, when Lydia had been on one of her cleaning sprees, that the
speaker seemed to have water in it, as it sort of burbled and splashed after
a wash. Whether that contributed to its demise I can't say, but it was an
inexpensive unit to begin with.

So, my research had a knock-out specification requiring a cover. Many
radios, most very expensive, had them, but most didn't. Fortunately for me,
I stumbled on one, a Northstar 721, which not only had a cover, but, at
least from the price and the features (e.g. built in barometer and
thermometer, AIS connections, other whiz-bangs), looked to be a very robust
radio. That I found them at a couple of vendors at a price fully 2/3 less
than the least of all the other sellers led me to buy two of them, against
the day we might have to replace it. Much to my surprise, included in that
very inexpensive price (more than a third off of the cheapest other
fixed-mount radio, without a cover, of any sort/quality I could find) was a
remote microphone extension, normally an expensive option. As our navigation
station VHF already had a wireless extension unique to it (another reason
for going back with an identical replacement), we don't expect we'll need
those remotes. Likely they'll go to eBay on the next trip stateside. They
might even bring enough to cover the cost of the radios!

Back to the Northstar installation, some minor challenges. The mounting
holes aren't the same, for both the bracket and the microphone. In fact, the
mike has a special bracket which detects whether the mike is on-hook,
preventing some functions from working on-hook, enabling others when it's
off-hook, so it HAD to be installed differently. Natch, that left old holes
which had to be plugged. In addition, where the wires came out from the
pedestal, there was a water-shedding cover that had been installed cup-like,
rather than shed-like, by our previous installer. That was probably because
of the antenna cable run to the unit, but we didn't like the concept, and so
had to redo that as well, including rerouting the wire.

Combined with all this excitement/head-scratching (as to how to accomplish
everything given what we had to work with), we'd ordered an AIS system. AIS
allows us to identify ships at sea, providing much useful information about
them, including how to reach them directly and uniquely, rather than having
to guess at who and what, this monster ship bearing down on us is. That
system uses the same frequency band as the VHF radio, so most users have a
splitter which allows using the same antenna for both. That antenna
extension, from the splitter, was a very much smaller cable, and would go
through the hole easily, allowing for an easy clamshell installation in the
"shed" position.

Oops. Not so fast. All of our electronics are integrated, so as to talk to
each other and, in particular, to our chartplotter. Without getting into the
mind-numbing minutiae of the technicalities of how all that happens, suffice
to say it doesn't work seamlessly and easily. In the end, complicating that,
this particular AIS unit, unbeknownst to me, won't talk to our chartplotter.
More on that later, but, back to the drawing board. I came up with an
extension cable for the antenna that allowed the water-shedding cover to be
installed in the shed position, and, eventually, the radio was installed.

In the course of all our troubleshooting of these radios before we left,
we'd had some concern for the cable for the helm antenna being compromised.
This new installation proved to be perfect; we have essentially the same
clarity and distance as on the mast-top antenna, despite the helm antenna
being only on the top of our arch, 40 or so feet lower than the other. PHEW!
Saves me from having to either troubleshoot (a nuisance) or replace (a much
bigger nuisance, due to the nature of the run involved) that cable.

This seems like a good place to stop for now, as it's already too long, yet
again. The weather's fine, the breezes are gentle. I think we should go
ashore for a while. So, we'll leave you here.

See you next time - Stay Tuned!

L8R

Skip and crew

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to
make it come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in
its hand
(Richard Bach)

On 2/18/2010 4:56 AM, Flying Pig wrote:
Cruising is... Nov 14, '09-Feb 14,'10, Part II

As we left you, we'd arrived back in the Bahamas with over 125 pounds of
new, rebuilt or used gear to replace, make spares for or upgrade stuff we
already had aboard. Fortunately for us, we never had to prove the point that
all of this was destined for a boat in transit, and thus worthy of a pass
through Customs without incurring duty costs. That it cost us as much as
another ticket for the overweight charges was just another cost of doing
business, albeit one which, if the circumstances were ever to repeat
themselves, we'd not have again, being older (pardon the expression) but
wiser. Too soon old, too late smart, as the saying goes. Perhaps we won't be
quite so frazzled the next time, either.

Anyway, back to the boat we go.

The first order of business was the rebuilt injectors we'd bought for Perky,
our venerable but reliable auxiliary power (read: engine that pushes the
boat!). We'd already had a couple of spares (they'd come with the boat) in
our bins, so I ordered 6, so I'd have a full set of 4 in reserve, there
being no place we'd discovered in our travels who could service our
injectors. In they went, on went the fuel connections through the parts
which caused my 1-day diversion to obtain those missing from the injector
order when they arrived, bleeding and startup being very straightforward,
and he runs smoothly and purrs like a kitten. We presume we'll find a very
much better fuel burn rate when we've had some time to analyze it against
the last several hundred hours, but suffice to say we left the dock the next
day, and sailed back down to Marsh Harbour, where we've been for the last 4
weeks.

4 weeks??!! What, you ask, has kept you there that long???

Well, I'll tell ya...

A good rule of thumb in marine work is to take your worst estimate, dividing
the single components of a project to allow for more accuracy in
calculation, arrive at a time you think it couldn't possibly take longer
than, and then multiply by 3. That's usually a pretty fair estimate. Even
Don Casey, a very noted writer and craftsman on older boats, admits to
rarely beating that end result. So, even the simplest of things (or what we
thought would have been simple), usually wound up taking far more time than
we'd anticipated.

Of all the projects, the injectors were the closest to estimation. No
backtracking, no do-overs, all very straightforward. However, much of the
rest was extremely fiddly work, which took much more time than we'd have
thought. Along the way, we encountered snags we hadn't expected, either.

One of our first was to replace the galley (kitchen, to landsiders) fresh
water faucet. Our prior had broken off at the hose for the sprayer-nozzle
head (single-hole fixture). No problem; it's got a lifetime warranty from
Home Depot; I'll carry the old head back and get a new one.

Not so fast, Bucko. Warranty items have to be sent back to the manufacturer.
OY! A month of total time ashore, that's not (reliably) going to work,
particularly since my going to HD wasn't until I'd been ashore for a couple
of weeks. Meanwhile, what do folks who have to use that fixture in the
meantime do??? Anyway, I bought a new one. It was the only item that got a
second look during our security screenings, as it traveled in my carry-on;
even that very-odd-image-generator only needed identification for the
scanner to understand it; the bag wasn't opened.

So, back to the story, the old one took quite some effort, in extremely
contorted positions, to remove. However, it did come out, and the other go
in, and we very much like the new one, which is a different design, though
still a single-hole, single-spray/hose head. So much for THAT day!

The next project was to take that new, rather larger, antenna cable up to
the top of the mast, having first gotten all the old caulk out of the way at
the top, and, having first made a different path for its exit at the bottom,
attach it to the now-cut-off end of the old one (along with the new fish
line, the prior having broken inside the conduit), lubricate it with
Corrosion Block (a marvelous product for things electrical and electronic),
and stuff, while Lydia pulled from the other end, the new cable down the
mast. All went well. Well, except for the caulking-gun tube of caulk
exploding as I was caulking the hole at the top of the mast, requiring
troweling, rather than squirting, the caulk into the hole, and cleaning up
the mess in the caulking gun. Once that was finished, I Corrosion-Block-ed
and attached the factory-made-up end to the antenna, applied the rubber,
squishy tape to fully waterproof it, and returned to the boat from aloft.

The end we'd sent down the mast was raw, as the proper termination on the
end would not have fit down the hole at the top of the mast, and likely
might have gotten caught on the way down through the other wires in the
conduit. In my research for the proper cable, in one of the discussion
groups, a new thread developed on proper termination procedures to ensure
the best water-ingress prevention and signal assurance. The cable I'd chosen
was waterproof. That feature would prove to be my undoing in my initial
termination attempts.

I'll save you all the technical details of how one terminates cable, but it
involves soldering techniques. The recommended process wound up melting the
waterproofing, preventing me from removing a part of the outer shells of the
cable due to the waterproofing not only "gluing" one part to another, but
melting the inner core which protects the transmission line.

In the end, I attempted the "right" way three times before giving up.
Fortunately, I had plenty of cable, so the couple of inches I cut off at
each failure were of no significance. I eventually abandoned tinning the
braided shielding in the outer shell, a key step in assuring the last
soldering parts would be the best they could. That tinning of the outer
braided shell was the source of the melting of the waterproofing, and my
final attempt, using bare braided shielding was very straightforward, if
lengthy. It's sort of a rule of thumb that if it doesn't take you at least a
half-hour to make your termination, likely it's not the best. I took my time
and did it right...

I'm confident of the connection, and, once the new radio was plugged back
into the hole awaiting it, powered up and reconnected to all the various
plug-and-plays, our testing confirmed that all the problems we'd identified
previously were solved. We now have crystal-clear reception and transmission
at great distances. PHEW! You'd have to have seen all that went before that
to appreciate the depths of time and effort expended to get to this point,
but, we're very pleased with the end result.

Of course, these projects so far were relatively straightforward, as they
were somewhat plug-and-play, going right into where something either
identical or very similar had been. Since we're on the subject of VHF
radios, we'll move on to the one at the helm. Recall that the old one had
died...

One of my targets in replacing the helm radio was to have a unit that had a
dust/water cover. Nearly any marine VHF radio is "submersible" - in some
cases, literally, in other cases, meaning that it can take a dunk, or,
certainly, water spray. However, this prior unit had already been back to
the manufacturer for a defect (warranty replacement, no charge), and, I'd
noted, one time, when Lydia had been on one of her cleaning sprees, that the
speaker seemed to have water in it, as it sort of burbled and splashed after
a wash. Whether that contributed to its demise I can't say, but it was an
inexpensive unit to begin with.

So, my research had a knock-out specification requiring a cover. Many
radios, most very expensive, had them, but most didn't. Fortunately for me,
I stumbled on one, a Northstar 721, which not only had a cover, but, at
least from the price and the features (e.g. built in barometer and
thermometer, AIS connections, other whiz-bangs), looked to be a very robust
radio. That I found them at a couple of vendors at a price fully 2/3 less
than the least of all the other sellers led me to buy two of them, against
the day we might have to replace it. Much to my surprise, included in that
very inexpensive price (more than a third off of the cheapest other
fixed-mount radio, without a cover, of any sort/quality I could find) was a
remote microphone extension, normally an expensive option. As our navigation
station VHF already had a wireless extension unique to it (another reason
for going back with an identical replacement), we don't expect we'll need
those remotes. Likely they'll go to eBay on the next trip stateside. They
might even bring enough to cover the cost of the radios!

Back to the Northstar installation, some minor challenges. The mounting
holes aren't the same, for both the bracket and the microphone. In fact, the
mike has a special bracket which detects whether the mike is on-hook,
preventing some functions from working on-hook, enabling others when it's
off-hook, so it HAD to be installed differently. Natch, that left old holes
which had to be plugged. In addition, where the wires came out from the
pedestal, there was a water-shedding cover that had been installed cup-like,
rather than shed-like, by our previous installer. That was probably because
of the antenna cable run to the unit, but we didn't like the concept, and so
had to redo that as well, including rerouting the wire.

Combined with all this excitement/head-scratching (as to how to accomplish
everything given what we had to work with), we'd ordered an AIS system. AIS
allows us to identify ships at sea, providing much useful information about
them, including how to reach them directly and uniquely, rather than having
to guess at who and what, this monster ship bearing down on us is. That
system uses the same frequency band as the VHF radio, so most users have a
splitter which allows using the same antenna for both. That antenna
extension, from the splitter, was a very much smaller cable, and would go
through the hole easily, allowing for an easy clamshell installation in the
"shed" position.

Oops. Not so fast. All of our electronics are integrated, so as to talk to
each other and, in particular, to our chartplotter. Without getting into the
mind-numbing minutiae of the technicalities of how all that happens, suffice
to say it doesn't work seamlessly and easily. In the end, complicating that,
this particular AIS unit, unbeknownst to me, won't talk to our chartplotter.
More on that later, but, back to the drawing board. I came up with an
extension cable for the antenna that allowed the water-shedding cover to be
installed in the shed position, and, eventually, the radio was installed.

In the course of all our troubleshooting of these radios before we left,
we'd had some concern for the cable for the helm antenna being compromised.
This new installation proved to be perfect; we have essentially the same
clarity and distance as on the mast-top antenna, despite the helm antenna
being only on the top of our arch, 40 or so feet lower than the other. PHEW!
Saves me from having to either troubleshoot (a nuisance) or replace (a much
bigger nuisance, due to the nature of the run involved) that cable.

This seems like a good place to stop for now, as it's already too long, yet
again. The weather's fine, the breezes are gentle. I think we should go
ashore for a while. So, we'll leave you here.

See you next time - Stay Tuned!

L8R

Skip and crew

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to
make it come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in
its hand
(Richard Bach)



I enjoy your kind of cruising, even if some of your long times in ports
is due to equipment problems. What's the point of "cruising" if all you
are doing is racing from one marina to the next, without the time to
explore the countries you are visitng? I read someone else's cruise
report today, and it reminded me of "If this is Tuesday we must be in
Belgium."

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:51:30 -0500, Popeye
wrote:

I read someone else's cruise
report today, and it reminded me of "If this is Tuesday we must be in
Belgium."

Yes, it sometimes seems that way to us also, but we have a different
goal: Get to Grenada ASAP and then sloooowly work our way back north
taking more time to smell the roses along the way.

We have taken a few time outs however, primarily for weather and
equipment, but also to stop and enjoy a place we really like such as
the French side of St Martin. The risk of stopping too much at this
stage of our cruise is that we might lose sight of the goal and run
out of time since there is a clock ticking in the background that says
we have to be in, or north of, the Turks and Caicos by June 1, and
another clock that says we need to be back at our dock in Florida
before the hurricane season kicks into high gear in mid-June. So many
islands, so little time... :-)

Currently in St Barts, Antigua tomorrow.