Monday, December 16, 2013

Progress update after another week on the boat

Just got back from another week at Key West - time for a renovation update over the past month's progress.  First, the mast finally came down - and our rigger had some trouble busting the turn-buckles loose and also had difficulty finding the correct replacement parts on the cable ends - I'm not sure how that's going to work out yet, but hopefully it all goes back up ok.  A new anchor light was installed along with new wiring and a new "steaming" light.  


A new Raymarine Color HD radar was put in place with its own new hs wiring, and a closed-circuit-color video camera was installed at the top of the mast - it matches the other two cameras that are in each engine room - even in a completely darkened engine room, the infrared cam shows a beautiful, clear, black and white video image.


Closed circuit color camera with new anchor light



Nice, new, and shiny Raymarine HD Color Radar


We also decided to remove the old batteries since the original ones were full liquid acid and they were under the port aft cabin - not a good thing.  So they were replaced with four 6 volt 400 amp hour Mastervolt batteries at a hefty $589 each and will give us the same 800 ah battery bank that the original ones gave us after running in parallel and series.  The hardest part of the replacement (other than the cost) was getting the new ones up into the boat, and the old ones down out of the the boat in addition to wiring four batteries in series and parallel with size 4 ought wire - the largest that is sold anywhere.


Four 400ah 6volt Mastervolt AGM's




Our new Raymarine E90W chartplotter was also installed.  The area of the nav-station that houses the electronics is actually an aftermarket job that was probably done by a cabinet maker, but looks more like a home project.  It seems to be an area of the nav-station that I'm stuck with - its not that its horrible, but it isn't the best looking addition of woodworking I've ever seen.  So I took the easy way out for now, and cut a new piece of plywood very similar to the one that housed the original radar and chartplotter, and stained it to match (albeit, unintentially).  The final product doesn't look bad, and will keep the area as clean and neat as possible once complete. 

Raymarine E90W touchscreen chartplotter


Freshly scraped and cleaned engine room

Brandon is becoming quite the compound-buffing professional

The Soft-top that we scrounged out of the front locker

The Crew....man, they've got some pretty hair.





3 comments:

  1. I was just wondering how you guys were doing with the refit. Sounds like things are going fairly well. Looks like you are installing some pretty high tech stuff and that hull is looking nice.

    Right now I'm trying to figure out how the whole house versus boat schedule is going to work out. It's got to be rough to commute back and forth a lot.

    Good luck with refit. I should be up the coast from you pretty soon (way up the coast...the other end of FL).

    -Mike
    http://ThisRatSailed.bogspot.com

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  2. The commute is tough but I'm really not ready to live on it anyway. Our oldest son has said he is officially a Floridian and isn't coming back. He is really doing well with things in between my visits and our youngest son stays with him most of the time and has really helped out tremendously. We should be downsizing to our motorhome in the next month and I am going PRN (as needed) in my nursing career starting in January - so my week visits to Florida will turn into 3-4 week visits. We're just trying to get it as done as possible by March so we can move it to a better equipped boatyard that will strap down for hurricane season - we were actually looking up around you guys, maybe Jacksonville. But for some reason, the closer we get to splashing it, the more nervous I get - I'm used to seeing that boat on land, not the water.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, that downsizing thing is our issue right now. When we were supposed to be getting rid of stuff we acquired a project house instead. Now have two homes to sell as well as a bunch of stuff to get rid of. Going to require some long-range commuting on my part as well. Since I telecommute anyway, I can work from the boat, but will need to split time to help out with the liquidation of our house.

      Guess our mistake was not having kids. ;-)

      Let me know if you need help scouting out the northern FL area.

      -Mike
      http://ThisRatSailed.blogspot.com

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