Jim's Funeral.

Went to Jim's funeral yesterday. 

One mention during the eulogy was the time his engine failed just outside Langstone Harbour and he had to be brought back in by the RNLI. As was the time his first boat sank. 

Not a lucky sailor then...

Anyway, we had a bit of a laugh at his expense, saw him off and then went down the boats to check on them. 

RIP Jim.

Now I'm helping the next generation of his family. I've been messaging online with details of how to get his boats off the beach. 

Clearance

Well, it's been noted in the local news that boat owners have been given 7 days to remove their vessels from the beach at Eastney. 

Row erupts after boat owners along shore at Eastney given seven days to move vessels the council claims are 'abandoned' or 'wrecked' | The News (portsmouth.co.uk)

So at the moment Jim's boats are at risk, although I did let the Harbour Master know we're attempting to move them as soon as we can.

I've talked to Jim's family about what's necessary to make a new mooring and get the boats moved. Hopefully we can work together to get Jim's boats moved.

There are rumours that the harbourmaster wants to install jetties, but I think that's more to do with Eastney Cruising Association wanting to expand the mooring jetties they've already installed. 

The usual story of gentrification pushing out the poor.

Well, It's been a While. Some Good News, Some Bad News.

 Well, that flew by!

It's been a bit of a busy start to the Year. Sadly my usually dependable Lexus started to show it's age and the gearbox started making all sorts of noises. I suspect several 300-mile journeys to Manchester and back after my Father passed away at the end of last year and in January for the funeral did for the poor beast.

So visits to the boat have been limited by how much mechanical sympathy I had for the car.

I re-established the Boat on it's mooring over the Easter Holiday Weekend. A truck tyre full of concrete and some fresh 10mm chain should provide security.

That's done, but the old sinker is about 12 inches away from the new one. I have to lift it at some point. I did say I'd donate it to the even skinter Jim so he could get his boat off the beach as well (the Harbourmaster has been calling regularly to get us to move our boats).

Sadly Jim passed away last week, so I don't know what's happening with his boats now. I'll still raise the sinker and put it in the place where Jim had his boat originally. I'll see if the family want me to move the boat off the beach for them.

It seems to be that as I reach 60 this year, the mortality of family and friends is coming to the fore. 

I will certainly miss Jim. His humour matched mine and we spent many happy hours just sat on the boats chatting about the state of the world and how we'd put it to rights.

Here he is in happier times aboard Sprite:

RIP Jim, you will be missed.

Anyway, more on the lack of boaty stuff. I bought a cheap, more economical replacement for the Lexus about 5 weeks ago. As an aside, how dear are used cars at the moment? Especially small petrol cars. Due to the various cities in the UK declaring Ultra Low Emission Zones around them, the price of older Diesel cars has started to wane and small, economical Petrol car are now worth 2-3 times more than they were probably a couple of years ago.

It was cheap for a reason: it had a few issues. But I thought it might last a while while I saved up and sorted the issues out at my leisure. So I duly bought my bus ticket up to Manchester (a quarter of the price of going by train!) And to be honest, it did get me half way down the country. and I did drive it to work the day after. But on the second day, coming back from work the gearbox died! Well, exploded would be a better description. The gears trying to make an exit out of the case.

So I spent the next 4 weeks removing all the bits to remove the gearbox, selling the Lexus to fund a new gearbox and then a couple of weeks re-installing the replacement gearbox and all the associated gubbins. 

See, I'm not just handy with Boats.

It's been a bit full on the past few weeks!

The "new" car continues to cause issues. The expansion tank was cracked, so I replaced that last weekend but now the pressure in the cooling system showed a weakness in one of the cooling hoses. Replacing that is tonight's job.

So you can see, it's just not been practical to get down to the boat for a number of reasons. 

Oh, and I had Covid again About 3 weeks ago.

In July I'm on holiday, on a cruise to Amsterdam. A freebie, for those wondering how a skint sailor can afford to get aboard P&O's finest. I may spend a couple of days on the balcony just watching the sea roll by. Just to recharge my emotional batteries. I've been close to spent both physically and emotionally over the past few months. 

So, apologies for the lack of blogging. I have not been sat at home vegetating in front of the telly. I've been busier than a man of my advanced age should be. 😀

This Sunday I hope, and I stress I hope, to be lifting the old sinker. I did try on the Easter Monday, but I didn't have enough tide to do the job. Hopefully this Sunday the tides are at a reasonable time (H.W. 11:30) to be able to get on the boat while it's still on the mud, shackle onto the old sinker and let the tide raise the boat and hopefully the sinker. 

Or Sprite may be doing an impression of a submarine doing a crash dive. I imagine the way my luck is at the moment it'll be the latter. We'll see. 

To leave on a more positive note, I've got the charging system working perfectly now! Two 10W 12v panels in parallel seemed to provide enough oomph over the winter months to keep the battery topped up. I think the lowest it dropped to was about 12.6v and that's with the panels fixed facing the wrong way while the boat was on the beach. Now on the mooring the panels should point mainly to the South due to prevailing winds. The battery was up to 13.9v during the day so the charge controller has been backing off the charge current. Happy days!

UPDATE: The car continues to exhibit more health issues. Now the water pump has decided to leak. Yet another job. Although I'm not wishing it upon myself  I'm sure the radiator will be next. That's just the way of these things, especially on a car that has been laid up for a while as I suspect this car has.

Trying to get it moving under it's own steam after a long slumber is proving a bit of a mission.

Costs for 2021 and Annual Review.

Okay, let's have a look at 2021. Not a lot done unfortunately in the great scheme of things. The first half of the year was dominated by me getting Covid in January/February and various other things put paid to regular visits to the boat. 2021's weather seemed a bit naff too, not allowing regular visits to the boat. The sun only really came out in the Autumn. I do remember a few unseasonal windy moments in the summer.

As usual first are the basic expenses.

£148      Mooring Fee

£170      Insurance.

Now the expenses for 2021:

£3.25        GRP Tape. For the dinghy, which was leaking. Again. 

£5.95        New Bailer as the old one had fallen to bits.

£3.94        GX12 Aviation Plug. The power plug and socket for the AIS 12v conversion.

£5.49        Surface mount 12v socket for the solar panel. 

£125         A Big one This: for some stainless anchor chain that won't hopefully rust into a solid ball.

£10.00      Anchor rope. Because I can't afford 20m metres of Stainless chain.

£6.25        Cork plugs for the floor drain holes.

£8.99        A New Solar Charge Controller 

£7.29        A charge monitor for the battery to complement the charge controller. 

£4.84        Replacement Tap with microswitch for pumped water

£5.49        New LPG Gas hose.

£8.18        Water hose for the tap

£12.95      Rule Slimline Submersible pump.

£10.49      Flexi hose for the Bilge pump.

£9.95        Twin core wire for the bilge pump and the water pump.

£20.00      Two 10 Litre water tanks for the fresh water.

£565.06    Is the Total for the year.

Now Let's Review the Year.

Well, at the beginning of the year I caught Covid and survived. Mark that as a positive. 

I scrubbed the bottom of the boat for the first time in a couple of years, and found Oysters! The first time I had them on the hull. I really need to antifoul if they are going to be a thing in Langstone harbour, because they are the devil to remove. They're welded on with nature's equivalent to superglue. I guess that's down to the university trying to grow oysters in the harbour. They have a new pontoon out in the middle of the Harbour. I guess the increased Oyster activity is seeding the whole harbour with little oysterlings that weld themselves to your hull.

The main task this year was to get the electronics installed. The chartplotter and the AIS receiver I got back in 2020. 

First the dry run electronically on the conservatory table to get them all talking together. Then mount them in the boat and wire them up. Now I have everything talking to each other, with the chartplotter and Navionics on my mobile receiving AIS data. Along with the GPS repeater and the VHF getting GPS data from the chartplotter.

That task completed, I sorted out the fresh water on board. Mainly because one day I was gagging for a brew and couldn't make one. But a few quid on the bits and I have pumped water. Sorted.

Just before Christmas Sprite broke her moorings during one of the storms and thankfully rather than floating off and being lost forever, ended up on the beach 100 yards away, albeit above the 5 metre mark. One of the local guys untied the anchor and set it while I got down to the boat. Luckily I was able to take a day off work and refloat her the day after so the tide was thankfully still as high. She's now tied on the beach near Jim's boats.

I've bought new chain for the mooring and I have a contact that will get me a lorry wheel for the sinker. The chain will be on 2022's list of expenses.

Sadly the car is a bit sick so that needs attention at the moment so the boat is taking a bit of a back-burner. Plus I've almost attended a wedding that got cancelled due to Covid the day before it was due to happen, attended a family funeral, and attended the rescheduled wedding all in the past fortnight, so it's been a bit hectic recently.

Anyway, happy New Year everyone, lets hope it's a better year weather-wise and virus-wise.

And I'll looking for things to be a bit more chilled out!

Tapped Out.

Okay, I have FINALLy finished the tap installation. Well, sort of, I just have some my gel coat to apply to fill in the hole left by the old tap.

But, I have running, pumped water. Not a mega-install, just a submersible pump in a water container under the sink, but the time it's taken shows how you have to do thing in little hourly bites and unfortunately the weather gets involved when you're on a half-tide mooring.

Here's how I started:

It's a manual pumped tap, that swivels over the sink. Sadly positioned such that when you step into the cabin, you can catch it with you foot. Which I've done a few times and had to glue the spout back on. 

There has to be a better way, so as in my last blog, I bought a used tap (£4.84 inc Postage), Some hose (£8.18 inc Postage) and a Submersible Pump (£12.95 inc Postage). So for just over £25 and a bit of work, I will have running (cold) water. 

First was to remove the old tap, and fit the new one. The old one came out easily because the wood it was on, just fell apart. I hate wood on boats. 

Then it was a case of positioning the new tap. I needed it under the companionway step out of the way, but needed to be in a position to pass the "Fill the kettle for a brew" test. Which it did. 

Here's the new tap fitted and the (huge) old hole filled with epoxy and fibreglass tape:

After that, I Connected the hose up to the pump and routed the electrics to join up with the supply to the other accessories behind the radio. I have a couple of spade junctions there, so adding power to an accessory is as easy as crimping a couple of insulated spade connectors on the ends of the wires and plugging them in.

Currently the gaping hole is on it's second layer of gel coat:

You can't see from the picture, but the gel is still lumpy and needs a smear to make it all level.

As you can see the tap is positioned well back under the companionway step, so it won't be crushed underfoot.

The neck of the tap swivels upwards out of the way:

So I now have electric water. It's a bit of a diversion from the windows that really, really need new seals now.

 

Onward...

 Okay, not much work done on the boat after being on Holiday, then up North and generally not being around at weekends.

But I have been busy boat-wise. A quick visit the other week shows that there is water in the bilges again. The nappies were overwhelmed. 

So I've dug out an old bilge pump from the shed and I've bought some wire and a length of hose. I'm going to use it as a portable powered bilge pump. 

I'm also electrifying the fresh water supply. I've bought a used tap, a pump and some hose. That's a step towards having a larger water tank (eventually).

I've also bough a cheap horn. No idea what it'll be like, but hey, as long as it makes a noise and I can finish the wiring... hopefully job done there soon too. 

At some point all the small jobs will be done and I'll have to attend to the big stuff... Windows and mast beam <gulp>.

UPDATE:

All the parts have arrived, ready for fitting. The Horn is huge. Sprite II will be punching above in the noise-making dept. :-)

Installed!

 Yep,

I spent a couple of hours this weekend finalising the installation of the electronics.

Success! Everything now talks to each other. 

I also got to use my new Birthday present: a rechargeable soldering iron! Not the most exciting of presents, but very, very handy. Straight away a lot better than the dodgy gas-powered things. Plus you can recharge it via USB, so it can be charged on the boat. 

Not cheap: it was about £70 for the boxed kit, but you get a selection of bits, a sponge, and a reel of solder. So a neat little kit. And the battery is supposed to last 40 minutes. Which is quite a long time considering it's only working when you press the button. When you put the soldering iron down, it switches off. But press the button and it's up to heat in 15 seconds.

Anyhoo, back to the case in hand: working electronics!

I connected port 1 of the chart plotter to the NMEA output of the Quark unit. I then changed the setting for high speed NMEA and also enabled the setting to show the AIS data on-screen.

And voila! Data appeared.

The icon for Laura J is red because it's closer than 500 Metres.

You can use the clunky left/right/up/down button to move the cursor over the AIS target to get more information:

Status: Dangerous! Only because it's within the 500m limit set on the Chartplotter.

You get the same info on Navionics:

No Dangerousness on Navionics. You get a red icon and it beeps instead.

That's page 1 of the info. 

I'm pretty happy now that everything is talking to everything else. It gives you a bit more security and more information is always useful. Of course on more advanced and integrated setups, the AIS information would be passed to the VHF and you'd be able to hail the danger vessel if it was getting a bit close. But that's a bit too advanced for an 18ft sailboat.

As an aside, I know that getting Navionincs to talk to the Quark unit was a bit of a mission. Mainly getting all the settings correct to get the two units talking.

So here's the settings screen for Navionics under "Paired Devices":

The Name of the item doesn't have to be the same as the WiFi device name for the Quark unit, but it does help for completeness. The important thing is that you connect your WiFi to the Quark unit and you have this entry under paired devices. 

Navionics on your phone or tablet should then automatically connect to the quark device. Once connected you'll start to see the AIS targets appear on the screen as they transmit data. 

And that's it. All done. 

All that is left is to tin the connections to keep the dreaded green copper oxidisation at bay on the connections. That's just a case of going round all the bare copper wire and tinning it with the soldering iron. 

I now have to take the boat out for a spin and see how it all works in practice. It's about time I hanked on the new-to-me mainsail and see how that performs.