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.....

 

Scrub a Dub Dub... Barnacles and now Oysters??

 Hello everyone (delusions of grandeur there, I know there's probably only one person reading.. Hi Mum!).

 To be honest the issues over the past year have not only been physical (recovering from the Heart attack last year, then Covid back in February) but mental as well. I'm not quite "feeling" the boat yet. 

All I've manged to do over the past few months when I've been able to get on board is pump the bilges out. Storms, rodents chewing holes in my dinghy amongst other things has conspired to stop me doing much of anything to the boat over the past few months.

However, this weekend I finally stopped faffing around with the boat and got some proper stuff done.

In preparation towards getting the ol' tub out of the water and into a yard for some TLC and a bunch of anti-foul, I scraped the bottom last Saturday. 

It certainly needed it:

Plenty of weed and probably a double layer of Barnacles living on there and for the first time ever... Oysters! Yep, about a dozen of them tucked up under the keels, about a couple of inches across. So I don't know how old they were but it's obviously a sign I haven't scrubbed the bottom for a couple of years.

Oysters (I think, I'm no shellfish expert!):

First things first: Breakfast:

Then the scraping commenced.

Don't let anyone tell you sailing is glamorous; not at this end of the scale anyway. Lying on your back in the mud scraping barnacles off the hull and chiselling oysters off there as well (tenacious little blighters they are!) isn't pulling into a posh Marina in Monaco.

Anyway, mission accomplished although I had to pace myself lest I bring on the chest pain again.

This is what it looked like after an hour or two:

Not as thorough a job as previous years, but the amount of work to get a pristine white hull wasn't in me on Saturday.

Anyway, scrub done, I did a bit of modification to the solar charging circuit, adding a charge controller to moderate the charging current and moving the plug for the solar panel. No pictures of that yet as it's not complete, There are other things being done in the electric/electronic side of things that I've been wanting to get done for months, but not been able to do.

There will be more posts in the coming weeks. I'm now well, plus the Mrs is back working every other weekend like she used to so the weekends she's working will be boat weekends!

I really, really, really need to get the window rubbers replaced. It's been on the to-do list since I got Sprite 2! They are on their last legs and will not last more than a couple of months now. One of the font window rubbers now has a visible hole. So that will be the first to get sorted. I have enough rubber for one window. If I've bought the correct size and it works with the first window I'll get more ordered and get the whole lot sorted. 

I've booked the Monday 21st and Tuesday 22nd of June off work, which including the Weekend should give me four days to get the boat on the beach and do the dodgy window and some other jobs.

Other jobs include the mast beam. The oak sleeper has been drying out in our outhouse now for a year, so it really should be dry enough to use. I roughly measured up the beam and I should be able to make a hash of it at least once and still have spare wood to make another couple of beams if I have to. 

But to do that I need to drop the mast and if I've dropped the mast then I might as well replace the lights for LED units and their wiring. And change the coax cable for the VHF antenna while I'm at it. So the mast beam becomes a big job.

But for now getting the electronics sorted would be an easy job so that's what I'll try to get sorted in the meantime.

Cost for 2020 and Annual Review

Here's the yearly roundup of costs, which this time are pretty pathetic. I can count the number of time I visited the boat to less than double figures. Covid, Tiers, lockdowns, restrictions on transport and the rest put paid to the Sailing Season.

As usual first are the basic expenses.

£145      Mooring Fee

£160      Insurance.

Now the expenses for 2020:

£17.76    Tarpaulin 

£4.39       Plastic Project Box

£21.00     Clipper Duet

£13.14    Stainless Nuts

£10.99    Twin Wire

£18.50    Connector for Rear Nav Light

£30.00    Oak Sleeper (including Delivery)

£25.00    Dinghy Trolley

£2.29    Cable P-Clips

£0.99    Faulty Clipper Duet Number 2

£0.00    Garmin Chartplotter. (Gifted).

£0.00    (Birthday Present) AIS Wireless Receiver (Quark QK-A024)

£20.00    Quark QK-AS03 NMEA Bridge

£65.00     Mainsail

£20.15    AIS antenna

Total for the Year: £554.21 or thereabouts.

2020 Review:

A bit more than last year, but considering the amount of stuff bought, it's pretty bloody good.

This year was of course dominated by the pandemic. I had to visit the boat a couple of times to bail out, but that was it over the original lockdown. All that good weather over the lockdown period was a real kick in the teeth to most boaters. 

Once the lockdown had ended, we sadly saw a sinking in Langstone Harbour.

New Stuff included a few electronics, mainly to integrate with the Garmin Chart Plotter I was given earlier in the year. Thanks Mick!

So the Year started off with the Tarp to cover the cockpit, that I didn't get round to fitting until this winter. Then I noticed the Battery wasn't being charged by the Solar Panel: the connections on the back had corroded, so I bought a Box to seal the connections. 

I noticed someone had removed a couple of Nuts from the Outboard bracket and I needed a few more fastenings on the boat, so I spent a bit on Stainless nuts and bolts. But not a lot. 

I had to buy a couple of Clipper Duets to make a working one. Still worked out cheaper than most working ones on eBay. 

I also finally got round to fitting the LED Nav Light to the stern of the boat. I had to buy a new connector as part of the fitting as well as some more twin core wire and p-clips to support the wire.

With good intentions to do major stuff on the boat this year, I found a cheap source of Oak. I found Oak sleepers available on eBay for delivery. Only £30 delivered and the wood has spent most of the year  drying out in my outhouse.

I saw some cheap dinghy wheels going on eBay. I've yet to use them in anger as all of the visits to the boat have happened close to high tide and it's just easier to drag the dinghy up the few feet to tie up. Maybe once I start going on the boat at lower tides and I have to drag it further, I'll sort out and use the wheels.

Towards the end of the year I spent quite a bit of money of a replacement mainsail. The dimensions are good and it's in decent condition. More hopefully about that when I fit it to the boat. The old mainsail is baggy, dragging and is stretched so much I can't haul it tight on the mast even at full height on the main sheet and with the downhaul pulled tight as can be. The new sail is a little shorter, newer, stiffer... just hopefully it will drive the boat better.

The big news of the year was electronics. The Clipper Duet was one thing, but then one of the guys that works in the unit next door and has a yacht gifted a Garmin Chartplotter to me. He knows I'm always short of cash and I've helped him with some engine issues. So when another chap in his Marina was asking if he wanted a chartplotter, he grabbed it and passed it on to me. Thanks Mick.

Then I wanted the GPS data to be used by the VHF and also by my Mobile phone. I bought the Quark AIS unit to do two jobs. The first was to transmit the NMEA information on WiFi, and also to receive AIS information and promote it on the network(s). That way the Chartplotter gets AIS info and the GPS and AIS info get transmitted on WiFi so my tablet or phone can grab the data an display it on the Navionics Software. 

The Quark AIS unit was a Birthday Present. But I bought the unit to convert it's NMEA output to the Garmin NMEA standard. Finally I bought an antenna for receiving AIS over the Christmas period. 

The start of the year should hopefully see me wiring all the bits together and getting them to talk to each other. I have all the units at home to try it out before wiring it all up in the boat. Expect a post with pictures of boat electronics strewn over the dining table.

So, lots of changes in store for the Good Ship Sprite 2. If Covid and the weather allow visits for long enough.

If everything eases, I even have enough money now to put her on the hard for a week so I can scrape the bottom and get a coat of antifoul on her. I'd love to get the mast beam and the windows sorted at the same time too. But the antifoul has been waiting 4 years, so who knows!

Improved Cover

 No not insurance...

This is the new tarpaulin that I fitted this year. It covers a lot more of the cockpit and doesn't have gaps this time, so I shouldn't get birds nesting or dropping bits of other birds under it.

However, when I attended the boat this weekend the cvover had sagged and created two small swimming pools in the cockpit. The ever-present damp had also caused issues in the cabin.

Luckily I had already anticipated this and took with me some old fibreglass tent poles.

A bit of gaffer tape and two poles later:

It's very blue under there, but at least now I have sitting headroom and it should shed the water.

I can do some cockpit locker maintenance over the winter. Let's see how dry the cabin stays. I don't hold out much hope, I suspect the deck fittings are starting to leak and require rebedding.

Ah well, more work...

But at least I'll be dry.

Breaking Boats.

 No, this isn't a post about boat breakers and second hand parts, but a post about the broken boats of this season's Vendee Globe race.

We've had a dismasting, then Jeremie Beyou damaged his ruder and had to sail Charal back to France for repairs and restart the race, we had a mainsail tear, then we had Alex Thomson's structural failures in his bow, then he also broke a rudder and has effectively retired from the race.

But all of those pale into insignificance when you hear the tale of the past 24 hours and the sinking and rescue of Kevin Escoffier by Jean Le Cam. 

First the sinking: Yesterday morning Kevin was able to get a short message out to his team that he was taking on water and sinking. Immediately after his EPIRB was activated.

The authorities in charge instantly redirected the nearest Vendee competitor: Jean Le Cam to Kevin's predicted position. Luckily Jean was able to get Kevin about his boat last night.

Then this morning we heard the horror story of the sinking of Kevin's boat PRB.

Apparently the boat snapped in half. Kevin was on deck attending to the sails when the boat rode down one wave into another at 27 knots. He heard a crack and instantly the bow of the boat raised up at 90 degrees to the back end. 

Kevin went below and already what was left of the boat was full of water. His grab bag was 3 metres under water. He had time to send a message to his team before the electrics were overwhelmed by the inrushing sea water. He donned his survival suit, launched the life raft and climbed aboard. All of this happened within the sickeningly quick time of two minutes.

Personally I think Alex Thomson dodged a very serious bullet when he caught his structural failures in the bow. Hugo Boss could have been the first boat to lose a bow if Alex hadn't caught the cracks in his bow early. The question neds to be asked if the other Vendee skippers were asked to check they bow structure after Alex's issues, if they already do regular checks of if it was considered just limited to that boat.

This edition of the Vendee has been unique because of the boat-smashing gales encountered so early on in the race. Usually the boat-breaking happens in the Southern Ocean. One can only think that is a good thing, because as the race continues the boats get stretched out further and rescue becomes more lengthy and remote. At least in the southern Atlantic the boats were in such a position that three Vendee competitors could be diverted for the rescue. 

It just so happens that Jean Le Cam was closest, arrived first and was able to successfully find Kevin and recue him.

I'm sure several questions will be asked by the Vendee Globe authorities now on the designs of the new IMOCA boats and their ability to survive a full circumnavigation. It seems that there has been a paring away of the safety margin when it comes to structural rigidity. 

Hopefully orders will come out of race control for skippers to check their bow structure on a very regular basis and to immediately back off if any issues are detected. Especially on the newer boats that haven't been round a circumnavigation and haven't been able to put the time in at sea in rough conditions.

Best wishes to Kevin, I'm thankful that he's safe. Also the Legend of that man Le Cam grows. Not only was he sailing a non-foiling boat up with the fastest foilers, but he's been able to recue a fellow competitor as well. Payback of course for his own rescue, but still impressive seamanship all the same.

Upgrade Story Part1: A Tale of Two Duets.

 Ok, you've had the teaser, here's the first instalment of the upgrade story that will hopefully explain why i I was installing a new display board for my instruments.

So, There I was a few weeks ago, cruising eBay. Well actually checking my saved searches. I have a permanent search for NASA sailing products. Up popped a Duet display.  

The Duet is one of the most popular of NASA's Clipper displays because it combines a Depth and speed readout. Easily the two most popular readouts used by sailors. Even used Duet units can go for silly money, just because they are so popular.

This Duet unit was a bit worse for wear, missing digits on the LCD display.

Well, if it's dry solder joints I can sort that out and if it's something else..... well if it's cheap enough I won't lose much sleep. It's worth a punt.

It was cheap up until the last few seconds: there's always a sniper on eBay!. I duly won it for £21. Not that cheap. But cheap enough.

It took a few weeks to get around to testing it and unfortunately the problem was corrosion on the pins for the display itself:

Those discoloured pins were the cause. I assume the connection to the LCD in the glass had been destroyed. I tried a few remedies, but none worked. 

Consigned to the parts bin then.

For a month anyway.

Then another popped up on eBay. This one completely broken and described as such on eBay. No display but again, if it was cheap maybe I could repair or make two good 'uns out of the pair of bad 'uns.

I won it for the start price, 99p. No competition thanks to the honest description. So two NASA Clipper Duet units for £22 plus the postage (nobody counts postage on eBay bargains, right?).

So I set to for a second round with the latest unit. Dead as the proverbial dodo.

When I opened it I more or less knew why. 

All that furry stuff over the PCB is the guts of an exploded capacitor. Either over voltage or reverse voltage. But something catastrophic has happened to this unit. 

But no matter, I wasn't that interested in the electronics, the LCD display appeared flawless. No corrosion on the pins. So I dug the old faulty unit out and dismantled it.

The first thing to do was resolder the wires connecting the two PCBs of the unit together. This seems to be a weak spot of the Duet unit as both units had pretty weak connections where the wires are soldered to the PCB. Maybe NASA could put a bit of hot glue on the pcb over the wires to support them. It would help loads.

Here's the Wires, not looking good after a few years. Bad form NASA, you could fix this so easily:

So, two unit in peices, let's get them assembled hopefully into a single working unit.

Here's the creation of Franken-Duet in process:

Anyway, duly resoldered, the LCD displays were swapped over. Then the moment of truth, wuld there be missing digits?

Look here: 

Looks promising, let's wait.

Oh yeah! It works!

So with a bit of ingenuity I have a working NASA duet for £22. Not bad considering even used examples can go as high as £50 on eBay. Just needed some soldering skills and a bit of faith it would work out. Things you definitely need when on a very tight budget.

So, I can now combine the depth and speed sensors into one unit. Which is good, because the next instalment details how I needed to make some space on my instrument board. In actual fact I needed a bigger board.

Upgrades

Just a picture to show you what I've been working on this weekend. More info and a full article about it in the next few weeks once it's all done.