Arrived at the boat at about 11:00pm just enough time to unload the car and walk Freddie before turning in to bed.
Early start on Sat morning unpacked the new radar and Fran was then able to winch me up the mast and I started to drill the holes for the cable runs. This is quite a scary moment, no turning back from this point and it reminds me a little of cutting the branch your siting on! Before winching the radar up I thought it would be worth pulling the salon ceiling down in order to trace where the radar data cable and radar power cable would go. Again this is quite a big step as it feels like your ruining a really nice cosy cabin. and ending up with a mess of wires, mouse lines and sawdust everywhere.
But I keep telling myself it will be worth it and it will soon look nice neat and tidy again. Running the mouse lines through the mast took much, much longer than it should have. The mouse line is basically a very thin piece of string which, no matter how many times I routed it through the mast it kept slicing itself and falling apart. This dos'nt sound like much of a problem but off course evry time it happens I have to be lowered back down the mast and then hoisted back up the mast. No easy task considering I am at least fourteen and a half stone and Fran has to do the winching. Not to mention the climbing harness which i'm using is trying to cut me in half starting from the family jewels end! The answer was to use a thin line of electrical cable. This worked first time.
On Sunday morning after all the mouse lines I needed were in place it was time to winch the radar up and put it in its new position on the radar bracket. one slip and it could fall about eight metres to the deck of Morgen and be ruinned. Luckily everything went well and there was no slips ending with the radar ending up on the deck. The data leads and power supply lead was routed through the deck along the cieling and wound down to the control panel. very tricky and again time consuming.
But it does look good.
However after yet another very busy weekend it was still not fully installed. I now need to order another ten metres of radar data cable so I can connect this to the Garmin 750 chartplotter and then route this through to the control panel.
I have also organised the boat being lifted, jet washed and then placed in a cradle for anti-fouling on 07.04.2011 and then re-launched on 14.04.2011 a very tight schedule. Fingers crossed.
Oh and Freddie was sulking because he didn't get enough attention throughout the weekend. I will have to spoil him this week coming
Confirmation of the boat being lifted arrived today. The data cable has been ordered today and a friend is coming to dinner this evening and to help me with the blog. Thanks in advance Danny Duncan. A very good and successful day for once. Yesssssssss.
