Getting Wired - Done

Last weekends visit to the boat didn't go as planned. I ended up leaving my cordless drill AND the drill bits at the house. Still, I didn't waste the day. I decided to look at one of the two light fixtures by the galley. This one I looked at has a rocker switch that goes one way for white light, and the other way.... didn't work.

Took it apart to see little compact fluorescent lights. One, on the side that wasn't working, with a red cover over the light for night time viewing. When I took down the fixture, I saw on the circuit board what looked like a diode had burned up and melted part of the fixture housing. Now, this side of the light has not worked since I bought the boat, so someone somewhere was probably very lucky to not have an electrical fire on board.

I thought of replacing the whole fixture but then talking with someone about that possibility, it was suggested I do something with LED strips... then remembered I still had some left over from lighting up the head. So, I got right to work taking out the circuit board out, and putting in a couple strips of LEDs. So, like it was originally intended, one side is white, and the other side is red.

So that was last weekend. For this weekend, so far, I finished the last bit of wiring today. Since I had a breaker panel made for the nav desk, I still needed to get power to it. I took 4 gauge wire and with some drilled holes, routed it halfway down the boat to the nav desk.

So now, I have a working VHF radio. I still need to route new RF cable between the radio and the bottom of the compression post where the cable going up to the masthead antenna will be connected.

Progress is good. :-)

Plans

I may not have posted in a while, but believe me, I've been BUSY. Not going to go too far into it, but the current work on Rhapsody involves fiberglass and requires me having to wear this:

Now, it's warming up a lot lately. I put a small thermometer on the boat to see how warm it gets. The last couple visits have seen 84F/29C inside. Wearing that Tyvek suit and full face mask, and not having much of a breeze through the boat, it gets toasty. While I'd like to keep the boat from having too much "stuff" on board, I'm thinking an AC unit will be very handy. It's a consideration at least, to make it more comfortable while I continue my work on the boat.


By the way, things are a bit disorganized, but for good reason... Isn't that supposed to happen during a refit anyway?

I haven't used the dodger that came with the boat (yet). When I was looking at the frame and the spare hardware left by the previous owner, I didn't see anything that could be used to mount anything. So I took a piece of the frame that bolts together and the picture below, and went to West Marine to find the right size I needed. Got the sizes sorted out for what I needed and hope to put it all to use as the boat gets closer to splashing... (don't ask when, I don't know yet).

Sometimes, it helps to take a break on the foredeck and imagine how it would be anchored out somewhere away from it all.

Here, you can see I still haven't replaced the panels behind the nav. desk since replacing the chainplates. Oh well... Other priorities right now. Anyway, I am looking to move the VHF from the companionway to just above this desk. I got a new VHF, a GX1700 with internal GPS, along with a remote hand mic. The VHF will go to the nav desk, where the remote mic will go somewhere near the companionway or in the cockpit which has the same display as the radio itself. No chartplotter, for now, even though that's on the list. Just one less thing to mess around with for now.

Anyway, behind the nav desk, there's space behind it for storing some things. I decided to mount a barrel connector for attaching the RF cable from the radio. While more connectors between the radio and the antenna is not necessarily a good idea, I wanted to have a connector mounted somewhere in case electronics were to be swapped without having a huge cable pig-tail.

Plenty of other things being planned and I have been asked by several people if I'm looking at getting the boat in the water this year. Right now, I can't say that I'll be able to. It would be nice though. The work I'm doing now needs to be done right the first time. There's no do-over's here. I'm not expecting to be sailing this year, but if I can get the current project done this summer, then I'm sure I can get the other projects taken care of and on the water about middle of next year.


Don't hold me to it, but just an idea of what could happen.


Maybe after a while, I could turn this from a refit blog into a sailing blog, as it was intended. I'm happy I have the support and encouragement from others who are looking forward to seeing me out on the Chesapeake Bay.