It's here! It's here!

After nearly 12 weeks of waiting, my depth/speed/temperature sensor has arrived!
The box contains:
- 1 bronze through-hull
- 1 plastic filler plug
- 1 tri-sensor module with 10m cable terminated with a 7-pin Furuno plug.

I ordered the Furuno 235DST-MSE which is the Airmar DST800 as sold by Furuno. Airmar has the wiring diagram online here:
http://airmartechnology.com/uploads/wiringdiagrams/91_592.pdf

I spoke with Airmar who assured me that even should I cut the Furuno end off and wire it directly to an NMEA listener device, they will still warrant their product. Try that in the world of IT!

And, I measured against the existing knot-meter through-hull hole and I will need to slightly enlarge the hole in the fiberglass to fit this new sensor. I prefer that to having to patch up the old hole completely. There was even an article in the latest issue of "Good Old Boat" that deals with exactly how to enlarge a hole in your hull. Here is my plug for them. It's an amazing magazine. Go out an buy a copy now. Heck, buy two.

Unfortunately, I cannot remove the old depth sounder since it is inconveniently located right over the forward cross-bar of the cradle and does not allow enough clearance to drop the old transducer. The yard has agreed to leave me hanging in the slings overnight the day before they launch me so I will have a marathon of installation to do that evening:
- remove the old depth transducer
- enlarge the hole to 2" (51mm for you metric types)
- clean up the hole
- install the new through hull with lots of sealant, make sure it is properly oriented.
- insert the plastic plug for launch

On top of all this, I have a raw water intake for my engine to re-bed. In that case, the through-hull is installed on a wooden pad that would appear to be completely oil saturated. To top things off, the collar for the through-hull is not a hex-nut but rather a round disk with 4 notches every 90 degrees -- picture an iron cross. They look to be about 5mm wide, big enough to put a flat-head screwdriver in there. I don't have this kind of tool so my two options are as follows:
- get a screwdriver in there and hit with a hammer tangential to the collar in an effort to rotate the collar.
- I should be able to fit the tips of a 1" crescent wrench held vertically in two notches opposite each other and then use some vice-grip pliers on the handle of the crescent wrench to turn the collar.

Keep in mind that nothing on a boat is flat and no two surfaces will meet at a right angle. OH, and the line that is used as the "origin" doesn't actually exist. It is on an invisible plane that goes through the centerline of the boat. Makes for lots of certainty when doing measurements!

Baby steps... baby steps....

Oh, that's truly foul.

So this weekend, I dug in to some interior projects. Mostly the kind of stuff that you want to get out of the before you have dock-neighbours. No one likes to get to their boat only to find a nice layer of dust is all over it because you were grinding and sanding stuff all day. you also don't want to extract a toilet and holding tank system while your dock-mates are trying to enjoy a beer on a nice spring afternoon. No, these things should be done in a boatyard where *everyone* is grinding and sanding and otherwise molesting their boats' hull.

So things I have done this weekend:

Main cabin
- removed knot-meter and through-hull from starboard side.
- removed instrument-head unit from nav-station.
- removed sea-hood instrument display cluster.
- removed all instrument wiring, from the base of the mast back to the nav station.
- could NOT remove depth-sounder since it is located right over the boat cradle's forward cross-bar and there is not enough clearance to drop it.
- removed main cabin speakers and wiring.

Head
- removed toilet. It was glued down to the wooden pad so a good chunk of that came up with it.
- removed wet-locker panel behind toilet, port side of head.
- removed vanity and mirror above sink, starboard side of head.
- removed holding tank vent hoses, port and starboard. eeeew.
- removed hose from toilet to holding tank.
- removed holding tank pump-out hose.
- removed foam-backed vinyl liner in wet-locker and vanity. It was falling down anyway sicne all the foam had long since disintegrated into orange dust.

Vee-berth
- removed holding tank.

I found a slow leak in the diesel tank valve, located in the wet-locker. This is a slow leak that has lost me perhaps 1 or two litres over the winter (since October). However this fuel has to have gone somewhere and that is into the bilge. The wet-locker foam-dust and vinyl liner soaked up a lot of it but I will have some serious cleanup to do before launch. I soaked up as much as I could and put down a pad to catch what is still leaking until I can drain the tank and fix the valve. Diesel smells. Some people call it that "bilgey, boaty smell" but frankly, I can do without it.

There is still a tonne of work to do, but this weekend gave me a great sense of accomplishment. Much preferable to compounding a featureless hull...

Wax on... Wax off...

The best part of owning a boat is cleaning the hull! Yay! I get to stand tip-toed on a ladder with a 10" buffer over my head and compound and wax my boat. All 30 feet of it. Needless to say, the going is a little slow. Doesn't really make a difference since my depth-sounder has yet to arrive. If you are going to order something, don't order from Raytech Electronics in Laval. Speed is not in their vocabulary.

In the mean time, I have a lot of other tasks to do, such as re-seat the engine water intake and replace the stuffing box tube. I have decided to not invest any more money in my engine and to instead save up for an electric repower using an E-Pod 3000 from Re-E-Power.com.

And, the compounding continues. I copied what many people in the yard are using, the reddish brown rubbing compound from Turtle Wax. And it is leaving a light pinkish residue on my hull. No idea what to do about that. Next, I will try to get a white compound and go over those areas again. However, it does vastly improve the smoothness of the hull. It is almost shiny and the water beads up on it when wet now. So all things considered, I am on the right track.