Since the last post I have joined the relatively new “Sea People” cruiser app. As well as being a tool for long distance cruisers to meet up world wide, this is intended for more local use as well. There are already almost 30 people signed up from within 5 miles of us here in Poole. If you are interested find this in your phone or tablet app store.
Tuesday 3rd I managed to go to the boat this morning and transiently got the bilge drier pump working for a brief moment but there is still a fairly persistent problem somewhere in the power feed for the relay board. I had soldered the grounding wire back onto the plug and it took quite a bit of fiddling with it to get a connection to the board. I still think there is some sort of problem on the interface board so next time I will be taking that off it’s mountings and checking for broken tracks or similar problems. With the system not working I am beginning to get water collecting in the engine compartment but so far none under the cabin floor or in the main locker. There is some evidence of condensation on the cabin ceiling and I had intended to buy some insulation for the ceiling but completely forgot to go to the club via B&Q so that will have to wait for another trip (Possibly tomorrow as Helen will be there for her wreath making evening). As I will be working with large areas of impact adhesive this is best done as a job where I wont be in the cabin afterwards trying to do other jobs among the solvent fumes.
I managed to attach some additional headlining mounting blocks using the rapid setting Araldite that I originally got for making a better protected connector on the relay power feed cable. There are some big gaps which ideally will be filled up a bit before use so I will get another pack of filler and some more fibreglass resin. Once all of this has set properly I should be able to add another 6 fixing screws to neaten up the edges of the headlining.
This morning’s other job was to replace the hatch cover mounting bolts with ones using A4 stainless washers. The original ones were obviously either A2 or mild steel as the washers have corroded quite a lot in the sea air. The new bolts have been given a bit of CT1 sealant under the washers, on their threads and also inside the cabin roof so there should be no leakage via that route from now onwards.
All of this had taken me almost exactly 3 hours so I set off for home at a little after 12. I had left my phone in the car charging so there are no photos of this yet – I will therefore add those next time and publish this a little late.
Thursday 5th I set off for the boat at about 11 and went via Screwfix and B&Q to get various bits for the house and boat. Despite rain for the last couple of days there was no obvious sign of water leaking in through the ceiling and only a couple of drops that looked like condensation.
When I went through the main board of the bilge drainer with the voltmeter there was still no success with getting it to work. I am now fairly convinced the voltmeter has one or more dodgy leads rather than there being a problem with the power supply as I don’t get a reliable 0 ohms resistance indication. I ended up re making all the connections on the relay output cable from the Arduino. This time I included heat shrink tube on each signal cable although they haven’t yet been shrunk. This got me the relay board power light and then the expected start-up sequence of pump runs when I connected the Arduino. During the re-soldering I have also fixed the long term problem with pumps 3 & 4 both running at the same time so there must have been a short between the two connections. Next steps with that are to shrink the tubing and repeat the exercise of potting the connector with Araldite.
I did a little more work on the headlining mounting blocks although I don’t currently have either the insulation that I want to install on the roof or the fibreglass to reinforce the mounting block attachment. I have measured for the insulation so can now get the right amount of insulation. I also measured so I can make the replacement fore-hatch closure mounting bracket. This one needs to be fiberglassed into place like the ones for the headlining so it would be good to do both sets of reinforcing at the same time.
I set off back home at 2:00 as it was starting to rain again.
Sat 7th My wife should have been playing today at the first “Carols at the cross” session 10:30 – 12:30 in Wareham. However she has been struggling with a cough and the ongoing sore throat so wont be participating. That meant I could go to the boat via B&Q where I bought two rolls of foil type bubble wrap insulation for the boat.
The first job today was to sort out the engine compartment drainage pump- It needed priming and then ran until the compartment was as dry as can be achieved with the current slightly stern down orientation which helps keep the decks draining properly. I still need to look at the sensor for compartment 2 as it stubbornly remains apparently full. Very likely the pull up resistor is too high a value to compensate for any water ingress into the heatshrink tubing. I need to find the heat gun and organise a power feed to the boat to run it next time I am there.
The second job was adding foam filler between the ceiling and the headlining mounting blocks. This is not really structural but does occupy the gap and save materials when I come to add the fibreglass reinforcing layer.
The third job was to make a start on fitting the insulation on the cabin roof and decks. Although it would ideally be glued directly to the roof over the whole area, the shape would make that very difficult to achieve without using a huge amount of glue and this would also interfere with access to fixing bolts and cables that go through the cabin roof. At present the insulation closest to the centre line is attached via two lines of glue that roughly correspond to the positions of the fixing battens for the headlining.
I have cut both ceiling pieces for the port side and glued on two layers at the more central location. The edge pieces will be finished off after the mounting blocks have been fiberglassed onto the roof. The starboard side only has one piece attached as I ran out of glue.
It has been really grey, windy and raining all morning so the lagoon has been rough and there is a lot of weed washed up – Not a good day for trying to get any mooring work done. As the hatch was shut to keep out the rain, I was still breathing in fumes from the glue so I set off for home at around 12:00. I need another tin of impact adhesive and a fibreglass kit to make progress next time I am at the boat.
First published 5th December. Updated 7th.