Big day today! We achieved the following:

Put the blades on the wind jennie
Drilled and fitted the mounts on tiller and boat for the autopilot
Got the autopilot working
Installed the masthead anemometer
Oiled the blocks
Bent on the sails, reeved the reefing lines and installed the sail ties.
Installed the trip lines on the sail poles
Tested the VHF installation (good: 8% loss)
Moused the shackles at the main masthead
Whipped the triatic lashing
Provisioning food for our journey

Yesterday we had drama with the cranking battery. It wouldn’t turn the engine over. We replaced the wiring to the start selection switch from both the house and cranking bank and the switch itself, no success. Matt Orbell from Green Marine took the battery away to be charged and load tested, while I fretted about the starting motor being the actual culprit. Matt returned this morning with a new Optima Blue Top spiral wound AGM battery. The old one was stuffed, and it was only 8 months old. Various theories were discussed as to why that might be the case, but it was a warranty job and the good lads at Autocraft replaced it.

Incidentally, replacing that wiring and switch means that ERIK now has no old wiring left in the engine room, apart from the wiring loom for the engine. Hopefully she’ll be good for another 25 years…. I must remember to write all the wiring stuff down.

Tomorrow we will venture back to Kings Pier, do our washing, have lunch with friends and family and tie up some loose ends. We’ll then set off for Bruny Island in the afternoon and overnight at the Duck Pond.

I have to find a way of lashing the new batteries down, finish sealing the foredeck now it has additional wiring through it and install the looming on the new wiring in the engine room.

As our youngest said, “Tomorrow we start our journey!”

The masts are back in!

In a rising gale as darkness fell, we managed to get masts back into position. We then tensioned them enough to stand on there own against the building storm conditions and went and enjoyed a steak dinner at the nearby pub.

Many thanks to Rod and Brenda of State of Mind, Adrian Baker (sailmaker) and a guy called Mark, a local liveaboard at the BYC marina. A special thanks to my Dad, who has been helping us throughout the week.

We put the top coat on the masts today!
White masts! No more red oxide primer making them look very second-hand.

Dad and I finished and tested all the electrical wiring on both masts today (tip for those that don’t know: festoon LED bulbs are polarity sensitive). We fitted the wind generator to its bracket and then cleared out so my beloved could get in there and paint. I’ll take some photos later and add them to this post. She has done a fine job varnishing the booms too (all three!), they look like they have been dipped in honey.

While she was hard at it, we came back here and pulled the wire for the boat side of all the new wiring. I fitted a junction box in the hanging locker to terminate the mast wiring for the main, and another in the engine room for the mizzen wiring. Tomorrow’s job is to terminate all the wiring in behind the switch panel, and punch it down on the termination strips in the junction boxes. I also have to put ends on the new VHF cable.

The BYC have been great in letting us use their huge dingy shed for this job. Yesterday it gusted 60kts as a storm front came through, and I shudder to think how long this would have taken if we had to do it outside in the weather.

The booms now have a few coats of thinned varnish and their first coat of unthinned.

All the wiring in the masts has been pulled through, and I even left the mouse in there as an endless loop. Not much room left in the 32mm conduit we riveted in there, though.

The wind generator mast is fitted. Done up tight it doesn’t budge with a couple of 11mm x 150mm bolts through it. Went into town today and got some nyloc nuts to replace all the old, peened over ones. Also bought replacement bolts for the mizzen cap and lower shroud tangs. The masthead crane bolts for both masts have also been replaced.

Just before it got too dark to see, I fitted the steaming light and forward flood light. I also, sadly, had to cut Matt Orbell’s fine effort for the masthead tricolour light. His wiring wouldn’t fit through the hole… And I only found this out after I had reeved the wire through the mast. Just as light faded I finished the staggered join and got them all connected up again (this time with brown as the earth, Matt)

Tomorrows effort will be to fit the aft flood lights to the mizzen spreaders, fit the new VHF anntenna base, anemometer and masthead trilight. Then I’ll give the masts a coarse sand ready for the undercoat. Then it’s two coats of top coat and they will be ready to go back on the boat.

I have fit the boat side of all this wiring, and terminate it all in a jiffy box, one for each mast. I also have to fit the tiller end of the autopilot fitting…

I’ll be glad when all this is done and we can go sailing!

And by 2pm on the second day, we most verily got all the crap out of the mast. Look at the pile of it!

Some if you know of the dramas I have had trying to run anything down the inside of the main mast.

The theory was that there was some two part foam in there. This was based on the crunching sound achieved when you dropped a lead weight, with a mousing line attached, down the mast.

Now the masts are out, the culprit has been found. Bloody rats!

There’s about 12 to 18 inches of rats nest in the mast, above the spreaders, completely filling the inside. We have had at it for about two hours now trying to get the bastard out, but gravity and a bit of moisture has done good job of packing the nest in there tightly.

The theory is that the masts were out for a period at some point, sitting with halyards and rigging all reeved at the back of some shed… And rats have got in there and made a nest.

Little bastards.

The picture above shows some of the pile of leaves, grass and bark we have pulled out so far… Still can’t see daylight through the mast centre.