Yes, I'm back on the hard of the Yacht Haven, plugged in so that the heaters keep me warm and more importantly dry inside. Work continues, but whilst waxing and polishing is a bit daft whilst the Starlings look for high perches to gather before their evening murmuration and deposit their day's findings on my deck, the old analog radar has been removed together with its cable and a new plate made in readiness for the new Doplar Raymarine digital radar to be fitted to the existing bracket. Why Raymarine can't utilise the same bracket as the old beats me, a bit like no two phone chargers appears the same!
Still its off and a mouse line fed down the mast ready to draw the new cables down, this is something that the Skipper will do himself and call in the electronic Engineers to wire it to the boat's electronics. If the Axiom MFD's live up to their expectations then all the Skipper has to do is press a virtual button to link the two together, job done right! Yeah ok, your belief in electronics is the same as mine.
It is deemed that my ACU200 is undersized and I need a 400 instead, so shortly the old unit will be removed and sent back, and when the new one arrives be re-fitted. Now there's a fair price difference between the 200 & 400 so let's see how helpful Raymarine wants to be. I only hope that their expert had a decent conversation with Jeffa, the people that manufactured my steering gear to ascertain if the 15amps drawn during our 'exercise' was to be expected and that the 40amp fuse is indeed the correct size and hence the need for the 400 unit. Rather than upsizing but this doesn't deal with the problem of the autopilot wandering off when it feels like it.
The new satellite system is winging its way over from the States, once manufactured, the Skipper ordered it at the Southampton boat show back in September having seen a neat little grey box slightly larger than the size of a calculator. It should provide mps speeds faster than the fibre broadband installed at his home enabling fast downloads of Grib files, phone calls through existing mobile phones, and of course, cover him for work, down and uploading files, and making Teams meetings wherever in the world we are. All he needs to do is purchase a decent laptop that can handle all the programmes he uses, with the true sine wave inverter already fitted he can run the laptop with no issues.
We say farewell to a bleak 2021, although for the Skipper work has been quite buoyant, and look forward to taking some more and longer R&R time in 2022.
Have a good Christmas break and best wishes for the New Year.
