Gentrification and Jobs.

It seems there's been an effort to remove boats from the Eastney foreshore this week. There's a post about it on Facebook. 

Ostensibly to remove abandoned boats, but I feel sad for those that get caught up that have legitimate reasons for having a boat on the foreshore. 

By all means pick up boats that have never had a mooring, but there must be some leeway for those repairing damaged boats. 

For instance, in my case Sprite was on the shore after breaking her moorings and at the time I didn't have the money or the means to install a new mooring. It took a few months to get all the required bits together. 

Then I had my dinghy taken off the shore by the council. No arguments, the dinghy was gone. At that point, the sour taste made me give it up. 

One thing that Langstone harbour was, was a last chance for those of us with very little in the way of funds to be able to still own a boat and enjoy sailing. Sadly that seems to be being taken away. 

I note that the harbour mooring fee has almost doubled since I sold my boat and of course there's the relentless pressure not to put your boat on the shore for repairs.

And sadly that's what I saw coming when I sold Sprite. The last bastion of the Skint Sailor in the Solent appears to be pricing us out of the game. Sadly it looks like the poorer people don't have a voice on the Harbour board and the voices with money are calling all the shots. 

Sadly it seems that there isn't anywhere for a legitimately poor sailor to sail in the Solent. 

Surprisingly the same money issues are plaguing the top of the sailing tree. The problems surrounding the Americas Cup seem to stem from the amount of money it takes to host the event and the lack of money available at the moment around the world.

New Zealand has refused to pump public money into the next event, Jim Ratcliffe has pulled out the Ineos team, three-time winning skipper Peter Burling has left Emirates Team New Zealand.

It's like the end of an era.

Are we seeing big shifts in the sport of sailing across the board? 

I get that feeling. There is something in the wind and sailing will not be the same again. Companies involved in sailing need to prepare for the coming storm. Owners need to start preparing for hard times. 

The costs involved in sailing have got to the point they are practically unsustainable. Not just for the skint of pocket like me, but also the richer end of the sport. Marina fees, engineering work, even the price of equipment on the boat, all are unsustainable. 

A decent instrument package can run to many thousands of pounds. That's out of the reach on even mildly well-off sailors. 

I fear there are a lot of jobs in the sailing industry that are now poised on a knife-edge.

The money just isn't there to sustain them.

Americas Cup: Day 2.

Well, let's just say my predictions about the British boat are sadly accurate. Beefy boat and a crew that are not as sharp as the rest of the pack: two defeats in two days. Only the Orient Express inexperienced crew and bought-in boat launched months after the Brits are dead last. But no win for the Brits in two days with a crew that supposedly has experience in the AC75. I've said all I need to say about the boat. 

The two boats I predicted will be fast are up there in the top three. Exactly the same number of wins and losses shows they are pretty evenly matched.

Of course the master tacticians of New Zealand are at the top. Caution! Sharp crew. Stick that warning sticker on the back of the boat Kiwis, it makes an excellent bumper sticker!

Ineos need a "Dull Boat, Dull Crew" sticker on theirs. Sadly as with most things British these days, they talk the talk, but never deliver. The HS2 of sailing, then.

My money is still on American Magic to come out as top contestant, to go up against the Kiwis for the cup. 

Bayesian Sinking: Thoughts.

 I've commented way back about expensive yachts losing their keels when they shouldn't, now we have a supposedly (defined by the manufacturer) "unsinkable" super Yacht sinking.

Of course given extreme circumstances and a loss of displacement, anything can sink, but it seems strange that a super yacht of such a size can sink within seconds.

Surely there is enough buoyancy in such a large vessel to keep it afloat for at least a few minutes?

Well, it depends on how quickly the water was rushing in.

If, when the boat was knocked down there was a large enough opening that allowed the uncontrolled ingress of water, that would do it. Did the companionway not have a water tight door? Probably not. Was the companionway partially submerged when the boat was knocked down? If it was, isn't that a design flaw? Was there a garage door at the rear and was that left open? Were the internal doors to the garage left open? Were they even water-tight?

Any sailing ship can be knocked down in serious winds and the designer should account for that in the design.. Large open, unprotected spaces that allow the ingress of water should not be allowed. The ingress of water should be contained by water-tight doors and bulkheads. By all means have your grand entrance, but off that entrance everything should be ship-shape and closed off, so the vessel retains some buoyancy even if the grand saloon is flooded.

In the evening, when the watch is reduced, the ship should be dogged down tight and none of there garage/waterline access doors should be left open.

Emergency closing water tight doors should close when the vessel starts to flood.

There's lots of talk of the portlights being left open which caused the sinking. I doubt that very much as a portlight wouldn't be able to ship the amount of water to sink a vessel in seconds. 

And why would the portlights be left open? This is a multi-million dollar vessel, so I would assume it has climate control to keep the guests cool.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. The fact his co-defendant in their court case also dies at the same weekend is more than likely a coincidence. 

But there are questions to be asked about super-yacht design and their ability to withstand extreme weather conditions, no matter how freakish or how unannounced. We all know that the sea is a cruel mistress. It can turn on you at any second. I lost my buddy Mick in April, lost overboard. I know how dangerous the sea is. I always had duplicate systems if not triplicate in place. Navigation was covered by my chart plotter, phone and tablet. My lifejacket was a high buoyancy auto-inflating version. If push came to shove and it was rough, I attached a harness and line to the big D-ring in the cockpit. 

Just as with the spate of keel losses a few years ago, the designs of super-yachts need to be investigated. Their lack of survivability needs to be understood, so prospective buyers can understand the risks involved. Just like with any other nautical purchase, the buyer needs to be informed. 

And to be honest, if you're chucking several millions at a yacht, you'd want it to look nice AND be able to stay afloat whatever the conditions. Wouldn't you?

It's Americas Cup Time Again.

Well, all of the boats are now out and doing their thing.

All the boats are superficially similar, but when you get into the detail are surprisingly diverse.

I'm not that impressed by the British Boat. It looks heavy on the water and seems not to want to get on the foils as easily as other contenders. From the increased volume up front compared to the others, I assume they envisage sailing in heavier swells than the previous competition. The British boat's bow fulfils the volume requirements by having a broader skeg than most after the actual bow. Just aft of the bow there is quire a widening of the skeg area. The designer seems to have designed the skeg to cut off airflow under the hull. But not as drastically as the Swiss Alinghi/Red Bull boat. From the videos I've seen the British Ineos boat looks heavy and the skeg looks pretty much glued to the water. From videos it looks sadly as though the hull has an issue getting off the water. Did I say it looks heavy? Maybe it's nickname should be Beefy. Maybe this season's race foils will work better. Not sure why they put a skeg on it that finished almost half way down the boat towards the rudder, especially as the rudder area isn't close to the water. Instead the hull looks nose-heavy or runs in nose-down trim.

The most fair-weather design looks to be the American team. A very flat t-shape through most of the length of the hull, with a small skeg. They've fulfilled the volume required in the bow by the regulations by putting the volume up high but wide. In swells I assume they've gone for the option of getting on the foils quickly and riding the hull over the waves, rather than having part of the hull touching the waves. Certainly it already looks a light, fast boat. It certainly looks fast and light. Interestingly they've gone for recumbent cyclors I assume to get the height of the hull down. Did I say it's a very flat design? 

The Italians with Prada Pirelli, is a nice looking boat and again it looks fast and light. A deeper skeg than the American boat, but it seems to have some of the smoothest curves of the boats. I assume for aerodynamics. But nothing much aero-wise on the top of the hull. The depth of the hull is about average. Not much more to say. It seems to foil easily from videos I've seen.

The New Zealand boat seems to be in the bunch With Prada Pirelli and Ineos. However the Kiwis got the boat on the water in a matter of hours. No pussyfooting around, they were on the water and sailing straight away. Such was their confidence in the boat. And it worked pretty well. The advantage that boat has is definitely the crew. But will that be enough?

Now we get to the Swiss Alinghi/Red Bull boat. Probably the most radical in my eyes. It's not an iteration of a previous design, it's pretty much a one-off. Quite a deep design with a thin skeg, Possibly the skeg is there to block off the wind and give the hull lift. The top of the hull has had some aero work as well, with a hump under the jib. Nobody has yet figured out it's purpose yet, but as with most aero bits, it must be to change the wind speed in that area.

The differences on the boats is interesting. Most have similar lower forms to the hull as American Magic, but the upper decks are slightly different to accommodate the more upright grinders.

It saddens me that the Brit boat looks clumsy in videos I've seen. Maybe the proper foils will change that. 

American Magic looks to be the best of the contenders at the moment. But it depends on the wind and wave conditions they race in. 

I'll be watching them when they get their final race trim bolted on and dialled in. Then things might change.

Sadly Lost another Sailing Buddy Last Weekend.

As the title says, I lost another sailing buddy last weekend.

Mick had just started off on a solo Round-Britain adventure, but was lost overboard off Dover.

His lifejacket didn't inflate, I don't know whether that's because it was only a manual model, or if it was automatic and failed to activate. 

His family reported him overdue into Dover and his empty boat was found not far away. His body was recovered off Dover after a short search. 

He'll be missed, we used to discuss boaty stuff at work when he nipped in for a chat/advice. He was the person that gave me the Garmin chartplotter for Sprite.

I assume more details will come out over time, whether he died as a result of falling in the water or something happened before he left the boat. 

Those booms are always a risk, luckily I was never badly clouted by one.

I know I've been out in a gale (Force 6) just to see how Sprite performed, but I always made sure in conditions like that I was tethered to the boat. 

Mick was a really genuine, helpful and humorous guy. He always cheered you up when you talked to him. 

RIP Mick, you'll be missed and if your FaceBook profile is any judge, by a lot more people than me. 

First Yachtless Gales.

The past couple of days have been a bit blustery. It's still weird not having to worry about the boat after almost a decade of ownership. 

I hear the wind and then have to check myself thinking "I wonder how the boat is". 

I'm sure I'll get over it, but it's going to take time. 

I notice there are a few cheap boats on eBay going in Eastbourne. I really have to stop looking.

Sailing a Different Kind of Boat.

The Mrs booked us an AirBNB with a twist when we went up to Manchester last weekend to see my Mum.

I got to steer. I can't say the handling was that responsive, it took some getting used to!

Me at the Helm. Pic Courtesy of Chris from the WCBS.

Me at the Helm. Pic Courtesy of Chris from the WCBS.

Yes, we were on a historic narrowboat. On the Canal. In Winter. In below freezing temperatures.

Having a sense of adventure is a requirement!

Thanks to Chris of the Wooden Canal Boat Society for being our host. No thanks to Canal and River Trust who have forced him to make trips mandatory as part of the airBNB deal to comply with their CRT licence. 

Not easy when you have no engine, in winter, pulling/poling through ice! Yes, it's a historic Butty, an unpowered narrowboat, so no engine.

I thoroughly recommend a stay on board. But maybe not on the coldest night of the year so far. lol.

We stayed ay Portland Basin in Ashton-Under-Lyne. The area is pretty historic. 

The Museum is worth a visit and just a stroll round the area is pretty nice, The Museum has a restored canal-powered water wheel, one of the few in the country.

Water is drawn from the canal, drives the wheel and then exits via a tailrace into the river Tame, some 40ft below the level of the canal.

The WCBS have a few boats moored up at the museum, not all in good states of repair. Sadly, the charity isn't that well funded and could do with an injection of cash. If I win the lottery, they'd be the first charity I'd bung some money. They so desperately need it and they do good work with minimal funds.

The AirBNB money goes some way to helping out, mainly because the boat is already ready to use and any labour is from volunteers.

I chatted with Chris about my memories of the canal being restored. He sent me a link to a video he'd found which shows the basin and the efforts to dredge the canal in that area. 

The video is here:

Back then I was fascinated by the monorail tipper wagon they were pushing along the towpath. Being roughly 9 when the restoration was happening, sadly I didn't participate.

One gripe I have about the area is that Ashton has now seemed to turn its back on the canal. Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s there was a lot of publicity. First the restoration of the Peak Forest and Ashton canals as documented in the video above, and later the restoration of the Huddersfield Narrow canal that joins one of the three arms of the junction. There were yearly canal festivals that helped fund the HNC restoration. But once that was done in the early naughties, the canal has slipped back into some sort of quiet slumber. Just a few boats around and very few walkers.

Anyway, we braved the weather back home. Skirted the snow in London on the M25 but made it home about 11:30 at night. Straight to bed after all that driving.

Sprite Sold.

 Well, It's the end of an era. I sold Sprite 2 yesterday. In the spirit of the Skint Sailing ethos I sold her for the same price I bought her for almost 10 years ago. 

This is My last picture of her:

As you have probably noticed, I haven't been posting anywhere near as often as before. The past couple of years have been tough financially and this year has been especially tough. I'm struggling to run a car, let alone a boat on top of that. I'm just about scraping the £300 needed for mooring fees and insurance, let alone extra money for maintenance parts. The last thing I added was the new mooring block and chain back in May.

Since then I've hardly visited, just the occasional visit to pump out the bilges.

Also the previous post about the dinghy is indicative of a bigger problem down at Eastney: that the harbourmaster is removing every boat from the beach, one by one. 

There appears to be an effort to remove the cheaper end of the sailing community down at Eastney. I know some of the boats can be eyesores, but boats have been on the beach down there especially in Winter for decades and probably centuries. 

Sadly, I can't afford to run a boat now, so it's a moot point. 

Thank you to everyone that contributed comments and helped out when required. 

I'm now going to lie down in a dark room for a few days and have a good sob. lol. 

Dinghy Gone!

I went down to the boat last week, after a weekend away in Manchester celebrating my mother's 90th and my 60th birthday. Yep, I'm old!

Anyway, my dinghy had disappeared!

I noticed however, that the area where my dinghy was had been cleared. Of bushes as well as other dinghies. 

After a few emails to the Harbourmaster, I got the details of the local council clearance department.

It appears that the local council or their operatives have cleared tenders from the foreshore! 

To say I'm not happy is an understatement!

I'm currently looking for a replacement, but it's possible that this may be the final straw and I'll be looking to sell Sprite 2 in the near future.

It's a bit much to be paying a fee to the Harbourmaster which includes the ability to keep a tender on the foreshore, if the harbourmaster isn't able to prevent other agencies like the local council coming along and clearing the tenders away and destroying them. 

The icing on the cake is the local council not only won't talk to be specifically about my dinghy unless I prove ownership, but if I DO provide proof of ownership, then I may be liable for payment of the removal fees and may be open to be charged with an offence.

I don't think that the local council understand the difference between a hulk abandoned on the foreshore, and a tender that has a legitimate use.

Anyway, this has obviously left a bad taste in my mouth as I don't really have the funds to buy another dinghy. The cost of living crisis has hit hard and I don't have any spare cash to spend after bills. 

That's why I'm contemplating selling Sprite. I can't afford to maintain her and it's been bad enough over the past 12 months as I've found it hard to just pay for the mooring fee and the insurance, unlike previous years where I've had a bit of spare cash to spend. 

I'll keep you posted.

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. 

Almost Installed!

 So, I spent another couple of hours today running cables and fitting the rest of the boat electronics.

First in was the chartplotter, then running the multicore cable up to the vhf radio and back down to the GPS repeater.

The GPS repeater was next to be connected up.

Successful connection:

What that single picture doesn't show is the hour or so pulling wires up to the radio hutch, making up multiple power connections, etc. in order to get power to the Chartplotter and the data line back down to the GPS repeater.

The next step was refitting the VHF and connecting the NMEA Data line to the chartplotter. Surprisingly the data showed up on the screen almost immediately. I'm used to a bit of a delay.

Sorry for the blur, the boat was rocking a bit thanks to wake from another boat.

So that now leaves the NMEA data from the AIS/WiFi unit to the Chartplotter to connect up and get working. I know the AIS data is being received, as it's still being displayed on Navionics on my phone. In fact it works so good the proximity warning went off when a boat pulled into the moorings close by. That threw me for a second as I couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from at first. 

Nice to know it works!

So, for now feeding AIS date back to the chartplotter will have to wait: I'm grandkid-sitting tomorrow.

But I'm feeling pretty happy. The chartplotter came home with me as I need to clean it up a bit. 

Hopefully more next week.

 

I Did a Thing!

 Finally did something new on the boat, rather than reacting to stuff.

I've started fitting the electronics that I had on the conservatory table. 

Yesterday I fitted this little doohickey:

It's a Quark QK-A024 AIS receiver. But it doesn't just receive AIS signals and output the data using NMEA0183, it also takes any data input by NMEA0183 and broadcasts it in WiFi. So you can receive NMEA data on a mobile device.

It can also be used stand-alone, it doesn't need anything else other than an antenna to receive AIS signals. That's the mode I'm running in at the moment. It receives AIS data via WiFi. 

I log onto the unit's WiFi hotspot and then Navionics on my phone gets access to AIS data and displays AIS-equipped vessels on the Navionics map screen, including a pointer showing their current course:

You can interrogate the vessel data by putting the Navionics crosshairs over the vessel, as you can see here:

Hovering over the vessel will show their name, but in this case their MMSI was displayed.

Tapping the questionmark then shows more detail as it does with navigation marks.

Pretty neat.

One major downside of the Quark unit is the inability to run off a 12v supply directly. It is normally powered from the USB port you use to change software settings. Of course I wasn't happy buying Quark's special low-noise USB power supply (dodgy mobile phone supplies can create Radio Frequency noise and drown out the AIS signal). 

Instead I did a bit of electronic bodgery and fitted a 5V voltage regulator into the case of the Quark and fitted a power plug to the outside, hence the handwritten sticker on the case. NOW it runs directly from 12V! 

So, step one done. I now need to look at routing the multicore wiring for the Garmin Chart Plotter up to the radio and Quark unit. I think the trunking for the current wiring needs to be replaced for something bigger when i do that, so I need to get the trunking from Toolstation first.

Off-Water Skills.

This boating lark isn't just about sailing, there are other things you get to learn along that way, especially if you're lacking in the funds dept. 

The electronicy stuff in the previous blog illustrates one element of this. Although I'm lucky in that I've always been handy electrically and electronically, my first job at 16 was as an electronics test assistant. 

I then moved from electronics and analogue "computers" (anyone remember those: lovely feedback loops and servos) to digital electronics, networks and computing. Around the same time I did a Ham Radio course, so I know a bit about Radio too. 

I've always been handy with engines too, from an early age with 2-stroke mopeds as a teenager which then translated to 2-stroke outboards.

Fibreglassing is another skill I've picked up, although I'm still a bit reticent about repairs under the waterline. They've held up, but I still worry. :-)

Of course there's the usual woodworking and metalworking skills learned in school <gulp> 40 years ago.

So along the way I've picked up a few skills. Pretty necessary when you're a bit skint. 

Last weekend I was sewing. I learned that skill when I was about five or six, taught to me by my Mother. Albeit with a machine, but I re-stitched the spray hood for the boat. The old stitching had degraded and the panels were coming apart.

I know more about using that sewing machine than the Missus! All the different stiches, tensions and stich sizes. I've used the lot!

But looking back, it seems I've picked up the skillset required to do most things on a boat. Being skint has had a bit to do with it and because mechanics charge a lot more than I earn I also started out fixing cars once the family outgrew the bikes. I well remember I but my car into a garage for fixing, charging a substantial amount for something I thought I could do myself. After that first encounter I vowed to do as much as I could myself. 

When I had my powerboat I did all the work to make it CE compliant for the RCD. All I needed was a company to verify the work was compliant and issue the necessary paperwork. It's probably one of the few American powerboats out there in the UK that is fully RCD compliant. 

But I look back and think of all the things I've accomplished when I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in and it does fill me with a warm sense of satisfaction that I could do them. I guess most boaty people that do their own work get the same feeling too. 

But I do wonder at the generations coming up after us. There seems to be no instinct to repair or replace. I know over in America at the moment there is a battle over the right to repair various bits of equipment. Manufacturers seems ever more hostile when it comes to customers who have bought (and supposedly own) their products to have the ability or even the right to open them up and delve in to repair the fault. 

Just think if it applied to boats and you had a leaky hull fitting: "Sorry sir, you can't fix that even though your boat is at risk of sinking".  Well what about the Marina mechanic? "Sorry sir, he's not accredited with the manufacturer of your boat: he can't touch it either". "I'm afraid you are going to have to either get the manufacturer's mechanic out to you, or haul the boat out and transport it by road to the nearest registered repair facility, none of which are located on the coast". 

Yeah, I'll stay thankful that we are able to repair our old boats ourselves as long as we are able. 

I'll revel in the thought of using a lifetime of self-taught skills just as much as the use of a decades-old, familiar tool. 

Rats Nest - Indoor Boaty Stuff.

 I had originally intended to work on the window of the boat the weekend just gone. In fact I booked the following Monday and Tuesday off. But as usual events conspired against me....

So the first problem was that I had my second Covid jab on the Previous Friday which knocked me out on Saturday. Plus the booking for my car I had on Friday was also moved to the Saturday. So Neptune or the Almighty obviously didn't want me to work on the boat on Saturday. 

Sunday dawned miserable and wet. So no window-replacing action that day either. Okay, I get the hint.

So,, the plan was to indoorsy stuff for the boat instead. The electronics need to be rigged out and sorted so they can talk to each other. Yes, I delved into the intricacies of NMEA 0183. Considering I've had all the bits on hand for nearly a year, it's about time I did something with it all!

So, lets explain what I was about to do. I wanted to expand the existing basic setup to incorporate my freebie chartplotter along with my freebie GPS repeater and as a bonus add the Quark AIS unit with WiFi capability, which should pass AIS data to the chartplotter and also get NMEA info including AIS data on the Navionics app on my phone. A bit of an upgrade!

So lets explore each element in turn.

First is my old faithful Midland DSC VHF transceiver. This is the one I changed the MMSI on years ago.

Currently it's connected to a small GPS receiver to provide position information to the DSC side of things. It receives NMEA data at 4800 baud. 

Second is My Freebie Garmin Chartplotter. It receives GPS directly with an internal antenna. It also has the ability to input and output NMEA 0183 data on two ports at either 4800 or 38400 baud (fast or slow). 

So navigation data can be sent out from the chartplotter to other devices and it can receive other data from other devices.

Third is the NASA Clipper GPS repeater. It receives NMEA 0183 navigation data at 4800 baud. 

The Fourth and final unit is the Quark QK-A024 AIS receiver and BNMEA WiFi bridge. This unit receives AIS data and transmits it to the NMEA network. It also receives NMEA data from the network. It broadcasts the combined input and output NMEA data out via WiFi.  It receives and transmits data from the NMEA network at the faster 38400 baud. It does not support 4800 baud.

There are a couple of downsides to the Quark unit.  The first is that it only runs off a USB connection. You have to buy a unit to drop 12v down to the 5v the unit needs for it's USB connection. The second is it adheres to a "proper" implementation of the NMEA 0183 standard, which the other NMEA devices I have don't do. More about that as we go on. 

So, the first issue was the VHF wasn't talking to it's GPS receiver. I thought I'd keep that as a backup just in case, so I needed it to work to confirm the NMEA input worked before it started to get complicated.

Here's a little taste of how complicated it got:

Not quite Superyacht levels of tidiness and professionalism, but I'm the Skint Sailor and no-one's paying me so I don't care. 

So a bit of prodding with the multimeter showed a break in the power supply from the VHF to the GPS receiver. A bit of soldering later and the two were talking together. NMEA input on the VHF confirmed. Now it should receive NMEA data from another device.

So, fire up the chartplotter. Having two NMEA ports, this becomes the hub of the network. I set the first port as high speed (38400) and the second port to slow (4800 baud). The VHF only has a single wire input for NMEA. The second wire is connected to earth. So the 4800 baud TX output of the chartplotter was connected to the 4800 baud RX input of the VHF. The VHF then displayed NMEA data from the chartplotter. That was relatively easy, the only hard bit was soldering the wire to a new plug to connect to the back of the VHF.

Now the GPS repeater. That also just requires a single wire input, so it was connected to the same output wire from the chartplotter wire as the VHF. Another success! Position data appeared on the LCD screen. I'm sure course data will be displayed once the chartplotter has course info to broadcast on the network.

Next the biggie (although physically it's the smallest unit): the Quark AIS/WiFi unit. Now there are a few issues. The first is that the Garmin uses a different spec of NMEA interface to the Quark unit. The Quark uses a proper implementation of the physical or electrical properties of the standard requiring 4 wires to transmit and receive, whereas the Garmin unit only uses 2 to do the same thing. 

Being technical the Quark unit uses a differential or balanced interface, so you have IN +ve and IN -ve for the input and OUT +ve and OUT-ve for the output. The Garmin unit just has one TX wire for the output and one RX wire for the input. The other two wires are effectively connected to earth.

The difference requires an interface of some sort. Enter the QUARK QK-AS03 Protocol interface. 

The interface requires a 12v supply (easy). It has two input wires TX/RX. So the output (TX) wire of the chartplotter goes to the RX input of the interface. Similarly the input (RX) wire of the chartplotter goes to the TX output of the interface unit.

Now the four wires on the other side of the interface. The OUT +ve and -ve wires of the interface go to the IN -ve and +ve wires on the AIS unit. 

And obviously the IN -ve and +ve wire on the interface go to the OUT -ve and +ve wires on the AIS unit. 

The bad new is there is no display on the unit, so how do you know it's receiving and transmitting data? If you're close to the sea, then you hook up an AIS antenna to the unit and it should start pumping AIS data onto the NMEA network. The chartplotter, if it's set up for it should start displaying AIS targets on it's screen.

I'm situated a couple of miles away from the sea in a built up area. The Quark unit is only set up to receive very local AIS transmissions. It's pretty deaf as receivers go I assume deliberately because you're normally only interested in AIS signals within a mile or two.

The way I checked the functionality was over the wifi. The Quark unit acts like a WiFi router you have at home. You log onto it (no internet available). If you already have a WiFi router on board, you can change the setup to suit. 

Once logged onto the router, to see the raw NMEA data I use an app on the phone called NavMonitor. You tell the app the Quark unit's IP details (Host 192.168.1.100 Port 2000 and TCP protocol). You should then be able to select the log option and see NMEA data scrolling up the screen. Which, thankfully I did. 

So finally all the units were talking to each other. Success! All that was need was to start tidying the wiring a bit and in the case of the Quark WiFi unit, devise a way of powering it from 12v instead of USB 5v.

That was another days job.

The above is an over-simplification of all the steps. There was a bit of head scratching, lots of instruction reading and a few notes written out once I'd got things working. All told it was a couple of days work to get everything set up, solder up plugs where necessary and tinker until it all worked. 

Then I left it for a day to see if it could all interact reliably and repeatedly with a few switches off and losses of power to check how robust it all was. It seems it's all pretty solid - on the bench/conservatory table at least!

 So, that was most of my weekend, including Fathers day. Happily tinkering.

The next step is doing it all again whilst installing it all on the boat.....