Finally, the day has come

[Lexx]

Hey Rob, Pete will be okay, he is sailing with my mate Jeff on Whitehaven II. She is a 45 Roberts Ketch and a reasonable boat and Jeff isn't a bad cook. I have sailed with him in the past and except for a few little incidents along the way to add a little excitement it was a pretty good trip.

We should be within a few miles of them most of the time and anchoring close by each night so its all good.

Looking forward to it heaps.

Lexx

[haiqu]

Some pics of last night's work effort.

1. Bluetooth AIS/GPS sending electronics, 5v power from a homebrew supply. OpenCPN with no wires!
2. Volt / Amp monitor display, home made on Tuesday.
3. GPS receiver, mounted on an old CB antenna mount that happened to be available.

[haiqu]

Still busy here, trying to finish as much as possible before I head to Qld at the end of April. Last few days I've repaired and filled the galley hatches, installed a water filler inlet on the cabin top (previously I had to lift the matress in my bunk to get at the tank!), tidied up the wiring to GPS and HF antenna, attempted to install the bilge pump (it doesn't have enough pressure to get water out of the deepest parts of the bilges :-/ ), fitted a fourth solar panel and dual MPPT controllers, *finally* got a mooring inspection done (been waiting for one company since December) and started installing the outboard motor.

The mooring inspection happened this morning and the guy I used turned out to be a mine of information: told me where to find a water tap to fill tanks at a jetty close enough to row, gave me the name of someone to crane in the diesel and also mentioned a live-aboard community in Parramatta River that I should visit when I get mobile.

The outboard was going to be installed on Shenoa but I had second thoughts. Since it currently has no engine at all, the simplest way is to fit the diesel and gearbox to Shenoa and use the second engine on Keppelena with the existing gearbox. The outboard will therefore be needed meanwhile to get about, and to move to where craning operations will be done. Logical really.

I plan to fit the makeshift tiller supplied with Keppelena and at least run up and down the river a bit before leaving. Gotta have some fun for all this effort.

[pete_winning]

Well done mate. Keep at it. My trip hasn't exactly gone to plan but I'm learning that I need to get used that with boats. Long storey which I'll expand on at a later date. Good luck.

[haiqu]

Hang in there Pete!!

Couple of other items I forgot: planed the nameplates - which previously looked like old fence palings but now looks like actual nameplates - and finally got around to fixing the port side staunchion and wire damage from the small mishap with Chiara Stella back in early February.

Yesterday was a dead loss, rained heavily and I was tired enough to laze about all day. I did a little forward planning and ordered a heap of stuff for delivery at my brother's house, ready for when I arrive in Qld.

[Tim1945]

Hi Rob I hope the rain has stopped for you and you are progressing with your boat work program ...you are swinging on a great mooring ...some guy,s have all the luck Keep the water on the outside and you on the inside
Cheers Tim

[haiqu]

Thanks Tim, and great to catch up the other day. Hope your radio install goes to plan.

I just got some details from the engine vendor and looked up the specs. Evidently I bought two 40hp engines, not 20hp. I have a 5h1t-eating grin from ear to ear, even the linkages failing on the T4 Transporter van gearbox didn't faze me today.

[haiqu]

Here's a comparison of the specs for the new engine vs the existing Perkins. At 3000 rpm there's almost no difference at all. In fact if you were looking for a drop-in replacement you wouldn't find much better.

[Tim1945]

Hi Rob many thanks for the "update" on the two engines you really did have a win there ...Please keep in touch
Regards Tim

[haiqu]

Yesterday's work was frantic. Using the sabre saw I cut out a new 6mm perspex window for the port side, then started on the outboard mounting. Trying to drill holes in 25mm thick concrete while sitting in a dinghy is challenging to say the least, and I managed to either crack a rib or seriously damage a muscle in my upper chest. I noticed the drill go through plastic on one hole so started digging out bog, and ended up removing the first 6-10mm over half the transom before I was satisfied that all the loose material had been purged. Then painted a coat of Altex Altra-Lock 577 over the exposed surface to seal in any possible rust, by which time Del had arrived in Chiara Stella.

I hauled him up the mast so he could change out a broken Windex, all the while hoping that the old one might be rebuildable for use on Shenoa but it was a gonner, the bolt shearing when he tried to remove it. After a short chat I went back to work on Keppelena and soon after he motored away, waving. I gave myself a rest and applied some Goanna Cream - a bit like Deep Heat - to my aching chest, which even today is still hurting badly.

This morning I was up early. By 9am I had applied a layer of PVC glue to the transom and used the last of my Quick Set Cement to fill the area where the outboard mount should go. There's still a huge area to fill so I'm going to have to buy several more kilos of the stuff, but for now the main issue is getting the outboard on so I continued. Bag washed it, primed with paving paint and finally top coated, then made various timber pieces to go under the bolts so that vibration and/or pressure don't damage the cement. And finally the mounting was bolted on.

And guess what ... I can't lift the damned engine onto the mount, it weights 80lb and has a really weird weight distibution, totally top-heavy. Uhhh, didn't think of that now did I? Anyway, job done (mostly) and we move on to other tasks.

Next is the pilothouse roof repair, stay tuned.

[haiqu]

My brother tells me that the old crystal-controlled Wagner 829MR HF radio has arrived from Adelaide, ready to go into Shenoa when I get there. Scored that and a couple of tuners - and possible also an HF power/SWR meter - for the price of the postage. Nice.

[Tim1945]

Hi Rob greetings to you ...Gosh you have really strained yourself to the limit ...you need to take things a little easier and slower you might need to go seek some medical advice ..I have to admire your ability to untake "challenges" however it seems to me like you are making good progress on the boat ...I wish I was there to give you a hand but I,m with you in spirit ...keep moveing forward you will get there in the end ..Please keep me informed of your progress
Cheers Tim

[delatbabel]

Rob, the weather looks good this weekend so if you need a hand fitting the engine to the mount it can be done. It means rafting up (shudder) and using my main sheet as a handy billy to lift and lower the engine but I've done it before on a similar boat to yours and it made a tough job pretty easy. Let me know if you think this is worth doing -- only problem of course is then your outboard will be in the water while you're off in QLD.

[haiqu]

Originally Posted by Tim1945

Hi Rob greetings to you ...Gosh you have really strained yourself to the limit ...you need to take things a little easier and slower you might need to go seek some medical advice ..I have to admire your ability to untake "challenges" however it seems to me like you are making good progress on the boat ...I wish I was there to give you a hand but I,m with you in spirit ...keep moveing forward you will get there in the end ..Please keep me informed of your progress
Cheers Tim

That ain't the half of it, I still have to work on Shenoa when I get to Brisbane. Oh yeah, and there's this dishevelled but loveable 56 ft Samson C-Baron ketch on eBay that's just crying out for attention, starting price of $2k. I emailed the owner for more photos and details.

Am I mad? Quite possibly. :-)

[haiqu]

Originally Posted by delatbabel

Rob, the weather looks good this weekend so if you need a hand fitting the engine to the mount it can be done. It means rafting up (shudder) and using my main sheet as a handy billy to lift and lower the engine but I've done it before on a similar boat to yours and it made a tough job pretty easy. Let me know if you think this is worth doing -- only problem of course is then your outboard will be in the water while you're off in QLD.

Mate, that would be AWESOME. Not worried about leaving it on the mount at all, I'll be fitting one of those bolt-cutter proof chain locks to it. Besides, it would take some serious effort to lift it off again.

In the long run I'll have a solar panel frame out there that can be used to hoist it aboard, but for now a skyhook is the ticket. Let me know which day you're planning to come over.

[haiqu]

So, yesterday's effort. I took it fairly easy actually, just completed the routing of the VHF antenna cabling through the yacht to the appropriate place and terminated the cables with connectors. Now have both antennas operating.

The SWR on the radio antenna is a bit high, it's 3:1 across the whole band. May need to tweak that, but since it only represents a loss of 25% of the power I'm not overly concerned right now, as long as the radio can cope with the mismatch.

Did a quick test and I can key the channel 21 and 82 repeaters but Sydney Marine Rescue can't hear me on channel 16 at all, probably due to my being inland from them by several km and their antennas would naturally point out to sea.

I wanted to use the 12V wiring conduit but the cables wouldn't easily fit, so I did the sensible thing and ran the antenna cables external and parallel to the conduit so that additional electrical wiring can be installed without problems.

[haiqu]

Today I decided to investigate the chain locker, it's the only part of the boat I hadn't really investigated thoroughly. I was actually looking for a petrol container for the outboard, and had noticed one there some time ago.

Well, I found much more than I bargained for there. On top was the dinghy anchor I put there some weeks ago after finding it in a cupboard one night while cleaning. Then came not one but two full-sized anchors. Finally I found the 10L petrol canister I was looking for, and a smaller one which smelled somewhat of diesel.

But wait, what's this 10 gallon tin here? Nuplex Escon GP35?? Nevereardovit. A quick search on the internet tells me it's a fibreglass resin with a shelf life of 3 months. But there sure is a lot of it so I'll be testing small quantities out on non-critical areas. Hey, I've been paying $30 a litre for this crap off eBay so if it works I just found a fortune's worth. Just need a heap of MEKP to set it off.

[haiqu]

Trekked to the post office today, by bus. $4.40 and two hours wasted, must fix that van. I did, however, get what I was after ... a pair of new 120Gb SSD drives for the laptops.

0.15W power usage vs 2.5W for the rotating type, and they're screamingly fast too. I also bought Lenovo T60 UltraBay caddies for the old drives so they can be used as backups, just plug-n-play.

These drives are down to less than $1.00/Gb so quite the right time to pension off the ancient mechanical monsters. The Samsung cloning software is totally painless to use and I had both laptops done in about 90 minutes.

Also picked up the correct fuel adapter for the Evinrude outboard, without which it can't be connected to a tank ... about $23.00 or so posted. Don't have to worry about 2-stroke oil, found some of that in the chain locker yesterday too.

[haiqu]

One of those funny-looking catamarans I mentioned recently:

[haiqu]

Well we managed to get the outboard on yesterday, here's what she looks like. Dark section on the transom is where the old body filler was dug out in preparation for cement, the proper way to repair it.