Trashing the boat - electronically

The time had come. Correction, the eye-wateringly expensive time had come. We mentioned before that although our Furuno Navnet gear was still working well, the spares situation was getting tighter and if something critical failed, we might need to hunt down a spare unit from eBay. The kit is now just over 12 years old - amazing that Furuno can still supply any parts really. The B and G equipment was OK bar one screen that was failing. The challenge was - do we wait for a failure or jump early while the existing kit has some value to someone?

We had talked to Paul, the Maricom man and considered Simrad equipment but somehow it felt and reacted more like "leisure" equipment. We liked the better parts availability and backup that Furuno seem to provide and the fact that some of our original equipment would stay in place. After much agonising over which route to go, we decided that it was perhaps a little too early to go pure PC and so opted for a Furuno TZT2 setup with our PC running Time Zero alongside it. As it would take ages to explain why and you would all be very bored, message us if you want to know more!

The time came so..... Paul started taking the boat to pieces:

and then he really went big:

Yup. lots of wire in there and a nice pile of equipment to put on eBay:
.

That is less than half of it!

The pilothouse became a work zone:

with boxes of new kit everywhere.

For the marginally interested:

We had Navnet 1 equipment (fitted at about the end of that range, before Navnet 2 came in) and will be replacing the two open scanner radars, the three plotter / radar units and screens, one GPS, the depth, speed, wind sensors, adding an NMEA 2000 network, interfacing that to the existing NMEA 0183 kit, fitting a FLIR (forward looking infra-red camera) and updating our Maxsea PC software to the latest Time Zero offering. We will keep our Furuno AIS, Furuno satellite compass, the Simrad autopilots and lovely Icom radios plus the peripheral bits like the CCTV camera system.

For more normal folks:

We will have new radars, one of which will be digital. They will give us better definition, some sexy new features like better automatic target tracking and collision warnings etc. The new plotter setup is way more advanced, better screens and much faster / smarter than our old kit. The PC package is also a leap forward in function and will allow us to show the FLIR picture of what is happening in the darkness, move the FLIR to look at a specific place on the chart or show where the FLIR is pointing on the chart to help identify things at night. Great for entering strange harbours. If you have not seen one, it is a bit like watching an old black and white TV image of the area even in pitch darkness. A wildly simplified comment but you get the general idea.

More importantly, the new stuff will be under warranty, be supportable and have a reasonable future lifespan (we hope!!)

Luckily the Maricom guys have fitted out many Nordhavn boats and kind of know what they are up against. We will report on progress - a couple of weeks work for them /us looms.

Even less exciting maintenance stuff:

The captain  put some more wrap on the Webasto boiler exhaust as the original stuff was starting to fray. Roland from Proteum came to give the crane some surgery. It was suffering from droop - an age not alcohol related thing we think. Probably a leaking valve or seals on the ram letting the fluid pressure slowly drop. He replaced the valve - still droopy. Droopy means that the crane drops a few mm overnight, not whilst moving the RIB around luckily, although that could be how things develop! Ram seals on order, a job for next winter now.

The Maricom team looked a bit like a synchronised swimming outfit (but in mid air) when fitting the new radars - almost balletic:

Things progress....

When the Dutch / Belgians / Anne invaded

No, this is not a pro or anti Brexit post. Far too much is being written about that sad subject already. Instead this is about a visit from Alex and Gisele who have been mentioned in here before. Alex is yet another ex airline pilot person who fancies a slow old Nordhavn. There seem to be so many of the "Fly fast boat slow" people about. You've met the shortly to retire Captain Rae, the still in harness Capt (male) and Capt (female) Baggaley, Note the lack of comment on Capt Rae's gender - long time readers of this junk might recall some earlier questions that were raised and are still unanswered.

Now, Alex and Gisele are the guys with a beautiful Contest yacht. Anne is known simply as Izzy the spoodle's owner and someone who consumes copious amounts of gin. By the way, there is nothing wrong with that.

Anne came along first and left our goddog with us for a little holiday:

You can see how stressed she looks. Even the crew's penguin slippers didn't faze her.

Alex and Gisele arrived in style and left the same way. Wonderful registration plate for a Corvette:

and those drainpipe sized exhausts. Proper petrolhead stuff. In-between they slummed it on our elderly Nordhavn.

Now, we did a little boating, some eating and drinking and some Izzy grooming at which Gisele proved to be most adept:

Alex got the hang of Nordhavn boating after initially bringing along full wet weather and cold weather gear - not really needed in the pilothouse with the heating running. As you can see, he has mastered the critical art of coffee underway:

whilst remaining totally focused on the navigation bit. Impressive stuff, must be his air traffic control and flying background. So that our guests got a flavour of Nordhavn boating we pottered up to Cowes, then to Ocean Village. On the way, we were overtaken by a brand new N63 undergoing trials:

We have one very special picture of the boat that we cannot share with you for fear of inflaming female passions even more than an all male ballet could. Yes, Phil Roach the Nordhavn Europe man was on board waving to us, wearing a kilt. Kilt is not a typo. And he was waving his hands.

We left the crew in Ocean village who went off to get some culture in the form of an all male ballet at the theatre in Southampton. Well, she said it was culture. Alex, Gisele, Izzy and the captain brought the boat back to Lymington. Leaving Ocean Village with a good lookout:

Before you ask, the captain has not followed Capt Rae and taken to painting his nails. Gisele has way more elegant hands too. The boat was topless - no bimini which had been taken off for the winter:

Hope you noticed the lack of wake - Alex was being very good in the restricted areas. Izzy seemed happy sniffing the wind too:

all in all a very social and sociable time. Sadly it had to end as we waved bye to the "BYE" plate, drinking in the engine noise. Old petrolheads never die, they just end up with a Nordhavn and a Defender it seems.

A little run out (twice) and some almost springlike sun

Well, it seemed sad to let the lovely new coppercoat finish and all that cleaned up sterngear get grubby quickly, So, we gave the boat a very short run out. Short indeed as you can see:

More like short and confusing really, all that looping around stuff. the good news was that this warmed up the main engine oil so it could be changed when we got back. The bad news was that it was grey and gloomy for the trip. Still, it is the winter. The even worse news was that the vibration which we had noticed on our run back across the channel was worse. Much worse. No way was that just a shaft alignment issue - there had to be something around the prop or something serious going on down there. Most likely something around the prop as vibration was also evident on the steering arm. Something the rope cutter had not dealt with......

When we manoeuvred back onto the berth, plenty of chopped up fishing net was around us in the water. Could that be the cause?

Oil duly changed, a few other bits and bobs tinkered with, some time in the house sorting out a furniture fit for the toddlers and then it was time to give the boat another run to check. Fingers were firmly crossed that the fishing net was a) the cause and b) all gone. This time the sun was out and the world looked like a different place. The route was even more confusing:

Lots of loops round to check that the rudder was clear as well, then a wait for the Wightlink ferries to clear the (shallow) fairway. Lymington seems to be silting up badly now, some very shallow patches in the entrance channel. Either that or our sounder is teasing us.

The vibration - gone luckily. Still a little more movement than we would like at higher (well beyond normal cruise) rpm so the plan to get the shaft alignment checked still stands. At least we think we have avoided a lift out. Thank you spurs cutters:

At least this is how the manufacturers visualise them working. Frankly we don't care too much as long as they chop up the floating debris left by our best buddies the commercial fishing folks. If it isn't pot markers, it is discarded chunks of net.

Maintenance stuff has been progressing slowly, mainly as we've had visitors and also been doing some house things ready for the toddlers' return. We know that sounds like a pub name and whilst away in Tenerife they probably imbibe a fair quantity anyway. We did finish fitting and tidying up the wiring to a rather good current inrush limiter. Our soft start was working OK but in some marinas we can still trip the shorepower breakers when our isolation transformer fires up. The power spike it uses is enough to upset sensitive breakers on some shore systems.

So, the rather smart Norn Iron man Keith who is a proper HVAC engineer type found a suitable current inrush limiter for us. Duly fitted, it has been perfect since, in various locations and with 32 and 16 amp inlets. Thanks Keith:

The grey lump with stickers on at the bottom is part of the enormous transformer. Being electrically isolated from the shorepower and protected from all the nasty things that can happen like rapidly eroding sterngear etc is reassuring.

It was a good investment (not that expensive really) and protects the more sensitive new shorepower breakers which they are fitting, from the start-up demands of the isolation transformer. This AC power stuff is most confusing to normal mortals - the DC stuff makes much more sense. Root mean squared numbers and using calculus to work out what is happening in circuits - far too complex for our brains. As are many things now, senility must be setting in or just pure sloth. We hope it is the latter but fear the former.

Yet more maintenance catch up (and some Dylan time)

The catch up process on maintenance things continues. Another tedious post so time for more coffee / gin / substances that float your boat.

First of all, the fuel filters for the main engine and wing got swapped out. The main caused trouble - we always replace the standard plastic drain fitting on the bottom of a new filter with the metal one that was originally on the boat. The standards and safety folks like metal ones to prevent leakage in case there is an engine room fire.

Every other swap we've done (about 11 of them) has been fine. This time, despite using the new sealing ring, it leaked like crazy under pressure when the engine started. No idea why, we reverted to the plastic one and all was well:

Just lots of nice smelly diesel to clean up from the engine drip tray.

As part of the main engine filter swap we also fitted a new vacuum gauge to the Racor primary filters. This one is a special from Dent Marine https://dentmarine.com/ that works way better than the standard Racor offering. Nicely engineered bit of kit:

The wing engine also got some nice new fuel filters just so it did not feel left out.

What else? Well, the job from hell. Wait we hear you cry, there are plenty of jobs from hell on a boat. True, but this one is the job from hell that also involves the heads (toilet for the landlubbers reading this).

The offending item, ironically named a Joker Valve:

Looks kind of innocuous doesn't it? If only....  As anyone who has played with marine heads knows, they are the work of the devil. We needed to replace this nice little valve in our main cabin heads. I had asked the M and G guys in Guernsey to do so when the sanitation hose was being renewed but it was forgotten - mainly because the guys who do the work there get moved around from job to job before finishing the first one we think. So, instead of replacing the joker with the sanitation hose off, we had to try with it attached. The fitting had no desire at all to come off the pipe again. Yes, for the non boating people, the joker valve sits in the toilet outlet pipe with all that entails......

Getting the fitting bolted to the toilet assembly meant getting it parallel to it. Getting it parallel meant no space to get a hand in behind it let alone see anything. Whilst struggling to refit the  **** thing, the captain leaned over the toilet and managed to hit the flush lever. A second and less than clean shower ensued. The crew found it amusing....

Eventually after many bad words it was in place (both bolts had to be fitted by feel only and tightened up in the same way. Relieved (only not in that way) a flush cycle was attempted. It leaked mightily as the joker valve had become twisted in the flange fitting. So, it all had to come out again and the "refit by feel only" rerun. Together with all the bad language of course only more so this time. We are so happy that the M and G organisation gave us this fun challenge. So happy. Anyway, it was a wonderful way to waste a lovely blue sky, calm, crisp winter day. Much wine was consumed after a long long shower to remove any traces of the job.

Dylan sitting:

Andrew and Linda (the Zephyros folks who you should know well from earlier posts) had taken their daughter on a ski trip. That left Dylan the Welsh Terrier at home or in a kennel. Well, seemed like a harsh thing to do to such a cuddly cute dog. So, we offered to dog sit. Actually he sat or lay on us:

and enjoyed his new toy:

He kept us sane during "headsgate" (the joker valve job from hell) and other fun activities. The need to take him for long walks meant welcome breaks from work. Thanks Dylan Or Dyl (Dill) the dog as he is known, If you cannot remember the character, look at  Wikipedia, The Herbs

Dylan is a bit of a tart dog really. An actor friend arrived, sat down and had Dyl on his lap instantly. Captain Birdseye (a recent gig in Mark's career) meet Dylan:

Mark and Julia managed to stay over on the coldest night of the winter so far. The marina had ice on the surface and that made some interesting reflections:

Oh, and after they left us, the dredging started just opposite, that made some interesting noises: