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....