Pensacola FL Sailing Blog – sailingnightwatch

Had to have been the easiest job I have ever done on top of the mast. Getting the wire connection loose from the antenna was a little difficult. I had the mast down about 11 years ago and rewired everything. I had tightened it quite well. The nut holding the antenna on the bracket was hand tight. There was an old rubber “O” ring between the base and the antenna. It had mostly rotted away. The part of the antenna that houses the coiled part of the antenna was mostly rusted away. It was still solid enough to hold the antenna together, but I doubt it could have stood up to a good tropical storm.

I must thank my dock lord and my neighbor for cranking me up the mast. My neighbor wants to add electric primary winches to my wish list. He has cranked me up the mast twice this month. First to untangle the Christmas decorations from a tang and now for the antenna. I need to ply him with more rum then I have been lately. It would be cheaper.

If you are a regular reader of this you will recall the near lightening strike of last summer. I had sent the radio off the Horizon to have it looked at. It turned out to be a fuse problem. While sailing to the New Years Eve activities, the radio started acting up. Cutting in and out, screen filling up all its pixels and various other symptoms. One important fact, it does work in low power. Back to the phone.

I talked with Horizon and after hearing my problem, they felt it was the antenna. When the tech asked how old the antenna was and I told him 30 years, his only comment was that he felt I got my moneys worth out of it.

Well thinking that nothing ever could be wrong with the original equipment on the boat, I went to my friend who is a Ham and knows more about this stuff then I will ever know. He also felt I was getting transmission back through the antenna. He loaned me a SWR meter and it showed that there was something amiss on my original equipment antenna. Off to order a new one. Know all I have to do is get the neighbors to crank my fat body up the mast.

Like anything else on the boat, the paint on the ports was done well. The ports were first undercoated with a very hard undercoat. Then several coats of paint were applied. 95% of the paint held. For some reason, the paint of the top of the ports and frames pealed. That was a good thing, because if you are removing the paint with the port light attached to the frame, the top of the frame is almost impossible to reach.

We have tried various types of paint remover, all to no avail. At best we get the pain to come off, but the undercoat is there in all its glory. Thank God for Dremels. I own two. One has the bearings about ready to fall out. The other is only a few years old. I had to recently replace the brushes in both units, but other than that they have ran perfectly. I am waiting for them to sell a bearing kit. The old one does rattle around when running.

To keep from totally covering the interior with dust, I hold the nozzle of a Shopvac right next to the place I am working on and very little dust escapes. It still is one of those projects I want to do without the wife being around. Thank God this project is almost done. I have to clean up a couple ports we did with paint remover and sand paper that do not meet my current quality standards.

This past year I have had 3 of the port light glass break. Then I make an observation. The most wonderful and honorable wife was tightening the ports one dog at a time (there are only two dogs per port) as tight as she could including using one of her rubber jar lid openers to protect her hand. Could I have found the problem? I myself, several years back, broke one by over tightening one dog.

I replaced the one I broke years ago and it broke again. I had used regular window glass, which is what was in the ports originally. This time I ordered tempered glass. That was a shock to the billfold. Plus you better do good on the pattern, because what you get is yours. No fine tuning.

Replacing the glass requires the removal of the gasket. Removing 12 SS screws that have spent 30 years seated in cast aluminum. After spending the better part of an afternoon doing that, you remove an inner frame and get the glass out of 30 year old calk. The calk is a little less hard then the fiberglass that hold this boat together. Then you reverse the process and shaasam a new port light.

I may have failed to mention that the hinges have a SS pin that is screwed into the hinges. It can take a good quantity of penetrating oil to loosen that pin. That allows you to take the port off the boat and work on in a possession that the human body finds tolerable. If you cannot get the pin out, you get the do the aforementioned process upside down while being bent over bookcases, settees and other built in parturiencies. A truly memorable experience.

All the ports on the boat are made by the same manufacturer. They are still in business and accept that they furnished the hatches in the fore and aft staterooms. They semi denie making the ports. After lengthy discussions with them, they admitted that they do custom contract work for manufacturers, but any problem is the problem of the boat manufacturer. No problem. The size is a little different then is available now days and I just wanted to know if they still made a similar port for anyone. The answer was no and if they did it was not my business.

My problem was that I had one port lights had a broken hinge. The ports are cast aluminum and I was concerned in finding a welder that had the equipment and was skilled enough to repair it where it was strong enough to handle going to sea. I believe I did find a welder and he did a good job. Just to be on the safe side I removed a good port that opens to the cockpit and put it on the hull where the welded one was and put the welded on in the cockpit.

I am so good at making decisions. I still think I will get the autopilot this year but now I am leaning toward Furuno. In fact I am leaning toward all the electronics being Furuno. I have also spent time researching wind generators, diesel generators and watermakers.

With wind generators there seems to be a big trade off between power and noise. Prices also vary considerably. Some of this is because of the value of the dollar.

Watermakers are more technologically driven. Certain makes of parts are of more value then others, and many of the units have similar parts. That does not seem to influence price.

All of these systems are further out for purchase. I do like to keep track of current pricing since my fix the boat fund does have a bottom. And that bottom has been negatively impacted by the stock market this year.

It will soon be time to time to revisit the prices for autopilots.