So it's finally splash time. I figured I'd take the weekend, spend it on the boat, and tie up all the loose ends that needed tying, and then Monday would be launch day. Turns out Mother Nature had other plans - Cold and wet on Saturday when I went up, which negated doing much. It was SNOWING on Sunday morning when I woke up. And today, Monday, was more cold all morning, then the sun came out, but the wind never subsided. Hence, no launch today.
What I did get done though, was:
* Installed the Steaming/Deck combo light on the mast.
* Ran all new wire for the mast, including the VHF cable
* Ran new wire from the electrical panel to the mast step in the cabin
* Wired the bilge switch
* Sorted out the cabin wiring
* Installed the new Masthead Sheaves and re-ran the halyards
* Mounted the VHF antenna, and Anchor Light
* Other bits and things.
So it was three days on the boat, all of them cold, and windy, and I got little things done. So if you don't want to hear the long drawn-out version, feel free to head off to wherever you're off to next. For those who like self-imposed torture, you be warned.
Saturday:
I got up early, at least for me, and decided that before doing anything, I would replace the vacuum line to the brake booster on my car. The old one had split really bad, and though taping it up heavily with electrical tape sealed a good portion of the leak that was tripping codes on the reader, it still left me with manual brakes only. This had gone on way too long, so that was job one. I have slightly better brakes now! And must still have just enough of a leak where codes are staring to manifest again. Fix one thing, five break. One more year car.. one more.
Loading up for the lake was an adventure in and of itself. I drive a 2003 Jaguar XJR - right before Ford started bloating them up in '04, and is one of the last years they had that truly classic XJ-series look to them. Unfortunately, it also means a pretty small trunk when it really comes down to it. And in this wonderful (tempermental) car, I had to figure out how to fit an outboard, a ladder, the gas tank, an extra gas can, clothes, my laptop and camera, tool box, box full of epoxy, another box full of parts and pieces, and countless other things. Which, thank you very much, I succeeded in doing. So onward to the lake! I stopped in Cortland for some Wendy's, because by this point, it was near 1:30 or so. I left there a dry person, and quickly was glad to be in the car - a pretty hefty rainstorm passed through as I made my way up towards Syracuse, which slowed traffic on the highway a good bit. Soldiering on though, I arrived just after 3 PM. Matt had left the Sapphire Blue paint on the blocks by the keep, for the touch up that will eventually be done.
I unloaded the car, plugged my extension cord into the power at the building and ran it to the boat. Inside, I fired up my trusty little Walmart heater, and the Halogen work light - combined, they do a fair amount of heating in the cabin. It was certainly going to be better than the night it was fifteen degrees, but still would be appreciated. The problem I had, was that the majority of what I wanted to do was outside work. Mast work on the wiring, the sheaves, working on the deck fitting for the electrical, and so on. I wasn't exactly wearing survival gear, but it still was drizzling on and off long enough that it was miserable to try to do much for long outside. The object was to not become fully soaked to a degree that would make drying out a long process. I passed the time by running to the store for a few things, like a new clevis pin that would work with the new sheaves in the masthead. Apparently stores only stock 2" long pins in a 3/8 diameter. I should've measured... but I took a gamble, and it turned out to be just right. Too wet to mess with that, I did about the only other things I could - I got the old steaming light off the mast, which was basically just glued on. I also went to the masthead, and cut off the connectors up there which weren't even doing anything. A few more rain drops, then I went out again and pulled the existing wiring with some new taped to it, for the new combo light. That didn't go as planned - all it succeeded in doing was pulling a bird's nest from up inside the mast out and showering over my head, and the tape came undone anyway. I saved the egg and set it aside. Not my fault, don't build a house in another man's mast.
I finally gave up for the evening on Saturday and just buckled down inside. Fired up the laptop and watched some more Volvo Ocean race highlights, and tinkered with the bilge pump wiring. Which is to say, I ran the wire up to the ground block, the positive up, and temporarily mounted the bilge pump switch under the main location. I really do need a finished piece to mount everything to soon.
Doesn't look like much, but it's something to start with, and by weekend's end, it was pretty much all wired as far as the panel goes. That was it for Saturday, so I climbed into the port berth, turned off the halogen and slept with the quiet whir of the heater keeping up with the weather.
I woke up Sunday to being snowed on. Well, outside, the boat didn't have the hatch open or anything. I decided that I needed a few things from the store. One of the things I had done during my wiring fiasco was to notice a previous VHF cable hole near the masthead that someone had tried to fill in with what looked to be like JB weld. I tapped it with a screwdriver and it popped out easily, so that solved my dilemma of how to get the VHF cable through. But I needed some grommets for the hole. So a trip to Harbor Freight and that was solved. Except it wasn't - turns out the grommets in their assorted pack are for about 1/16" depths an the mast is easily double that in thickness. But between that and some extra taping and heat shrink, we should be fine. It just got to the point where it was cold and rainy enough, that I couldn't really get much done. I finally got the combo light riveted in place (crooked by 1/4 inch which I hate myself for but it was hard to gauge with the mast laying half crooked in a cradle). I had originally decided on launching on Monday, but the forecast for that day was going to be really windy so I knew I wouldn't be getting much of anywhere. So in between rain drops, I decided to run the rest of the wire up the mast. I have a fish tape, how hard can this be? As it turns out, there are foam inserts about every ten feet in the mast. The fish tape wasn't going to cut it. Another trip to Lowes for 40' of PVC pipe, and bingo. Push them through from one side to the other, run the fish tape down it, tape everything to the other end, and pull everrrrrything back out. This included the VHF cable and one pair of wires from end to and, and another pair of wire to the steaming light. The wire is Red and Yellow in the jacket. So I have Red #1, Yellow #1, Red #2, and Yellow #2. Yellow 1 is going to be a common ground. Red 1 is the anchor light, Red 2 is the steaming light, and red 3 is the Deck light. This is made a little easier by the combo light having a single shared ground lead feeding off it. By the time I got done running that, I was ready to duck back inside for the day. I was just tired of being cold. I watched a few more shows in between running new lengths of wire from the panel back to the feed up to where the mast plug would be. I couldn't really put the new plugs and socket in place, since it was still cold and wet, so I just left it all in place.
Monday came around, and it was quite blustery. I didn't do much when I got up, just moved some stuff inside. For some reason, I found myself really tired still, and laid down for another hour or so. I woke up to sunshine, and slightly better temperatures. By better, I mean over 40. I took the time to finally, FINALLY get the new masthead sheaves in. It was a fairly simple process, other than I tackled it a crazy way. Since the sheaves I needed to put in were on the narrower end of the masthead, I had to remove the old ones on the aft side, and lower the new ones down from that end on some string to hold in place, and get everything lined up. Which also required removing the backstay pins and all that, but went pretty smooth. It wasn't until afterwards that I realized that the plate on the top of the masthead was just bolted on, and I could've just popped that off for full access. Go figure. At least they were in. With the sun coming out finally, I also took the time to mount the deck plug in place after soldering the wire together. I drilled some pilot holes, put down a layer of 5200 over the opening and previous holes, and screwed everything down. These connectors are something else though. I'll do more on those later. The mast wiring went just the same, other than dangling off the ladder with a hot soldering iron to reach it all. I had pre-tinned and filled the backside of the connectors with solder so that I had a head start with the wiring, and it went smooth.
After all that, I went home, for a much needed shower and night's sleep.
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