Spend, spend and spend some more

Only a little order this time but one with important consequences for the blog... 

Along with some heat shrink tubing and, importantly, heat shrink crimp connectors, I've ordered a GPS data logger and photo tagger. This will solve the problem of the Raymarine plotter not recording track points with a date and time stamp (thus rendering them all but useless) and the tendency for smartphone apps to trip each other up

It also overcomes the lack of geo-tagging on the compact camera as the provided software will use the time stamp on a set of photos to geo-tag them using the track log from the logger.

 

It's a handy little widget that will sit quietly out of sight somewhere doing its thing and it also provides a GPS position source for the laptop as a backup chart plotter if the main plotter was to fail

I resisted the temptation to buy lots of other toys!

Seconds out ... spending round two

Actually, this was yesterday too but other things got in the way of blogging about it!

Having ordered the engine service bits when I got in from work, the next task was to order various items from the chandlers to go with several jobs on the "to do" list

One of the cheapest items I've ever bought is a hand crabbing line. Not that I particularly want to go crabbing, what I want is the spool! The line supplied will be removed and replaced with the line on the sounding lead which otherwise is virtually useless as it always manages to get itself into a tangle no matter how carefully it's stowed away.

Spreader caps

Item no. 2 was a pair of spreader boots. Having lost the starboard one at some point, Nick the previous owner had replaced it with a wheel type thingy pushed up the cap shroud with a length of shroud protector. The matching wheel type thingy is supposed to be on board somewhere but I've not found it yet! I'm not a fan of them anyway so one of the "send the monkey up the mast jobs" is to fit new matching spreader caps

The mast monkey

The other job I wanted to do on the rig which needed bits is to experiment with single line reefing. For that I want three lightweight plastic blocks with a lashing eye rather than a shackle eye e.g

These are not that easy to come by at a sensible price (the Harken version is silly money) but Force 4 do a Ronstan one at a less wallet smacking price and so I ordered three of them.

Unfortunately, they rang within minutes to advice they were out of stock so they've had to go on back order. Not the end of the world as it's a non-urgent job

One essential item for the servicing of the engine I still needed was 4 litres of premium grade oil. I could, of course, buy stock stuff off the shelf cheaper but for the sake of saving less than a tenner a year I'll pay the premium price for the premium marine grade stuff that's specifically formulated for seagoing engines

I added to the oil order a 1 litre bottle of Teak Oil - I don't intend to oil all the teak (and there are acres of the stuff when all's said and done) until the autumn but there are some small areas that want an oiling now

Now I moved on to buying some items to improve and enhance life on board ...

First up the first of, I suspect, a number of items from Blue Performance to wit a bag that mounts in the cockpit for putting stuff into ...

Large cockpit bag for ... stuff!

I rather suspect I'll be buying quite a few more items from their long list of useful thingys that nobody else makes. They're not cheap but they are good quality and made to last.

The next two items were to be a teak toilet roll holder for the heads and a matching teak kitchen roll holder for the galley. These too were out of stock and had to go on back-order. Ho hum.

And then it was on with my navigators hat to purchase Imray Chart C1 of the Thames Estuary. I've already got the C series charts covering from the Scottish Borders to just East of the Solent, this plugs the gap. Although we now have two complete sets of the Admiralty Leisure charts of the Estuary they are out of date and as my primary nav is the plotter with the laptop as backup and the smart phone as the backup to the backup, my need for paper charts is limited to being the backup to the backup for the backup and the C Series will get you to safety well enough whilst covering a large area in a single £18.00 chart

 And finally I indulged myself slightly with two items for my own use / amusement. The first was a Gill trifold wallet as I've been using the case for the Samsung Note as my wallet for the last couple of years but the new, slightly smaller, Sony Z1 doesn't give me that (not all that convenient anyway it has to be said) option.

The second item is entirely frivolous ..

Yep, I fancy trying a bit of trolling for mackerel, bass etc, as we go along. Of course, it does mean that if I catch it I'm gonna have to kill it and eat it but I like a bit of fresh fish!

If I get anywhere with it I may move up to something more sophisticated in due course!

I shall have to find a book on the Kindle about catching, preparing and cooking fishies ... I shall also have to convince the Purser that giving seafood a go is something she really ought to try!

And that was that for yesterday.

Today I have, between all too brief periods of sleep, been continuing my ongoing efforts to make sense of the terminal list and circuit diagrams. There's nothing wrong with them per-se, I'm redrawing it all to my own preferred format and standards and along the way really fixing what's what electrickerly in my head

And so the spending begins....

(again!)

Just ordered up the service kit for the engine, oil filter, fuel filter, air filter, heat exchanger anode,impeller and O rings

That's £70 odd I won't see again and I haven't bought the oil yet!

Still, less than a hundred quid to service the engine compares favourably with the £140 or so the outboard service cost us last year. On the hand, I have to do the work myself instead of dropping the engine off at the dealers in November and picking it up the following spring

Just Another Weekend Afloat - Day 3

Apart from being a bit breezy, it's been a glorious day weather wise, almost like summer!

The day started in a leisurely fashion with scrambled egg on toast after which we headed into Burnham to spend money at the chandlers and stock up with the ingredients for a decent evening meal at the co-op

Back aboard with the kettle on we set about ticking off some jobs from the to do list. Whilst Jane gave the saloon heading a good clean I tackled the stuck clutch on the anchor windlass. Starbright cleaner lived up to its name on the headlining and WD40 plus some gentle persuasion did the trick with the clutch

I then gave the steering compass a clean up with some perspex cleaner and whilst it doesn't look new at least it's readable now. 

That was followed by a damn good scrub and wash down of the decks followed by more of the same in the cockpit.

It was all systems go and the next job ticked off the list was sorting out the sticky bolt on the forehatch followed by drilling some holes in the bottom of the plastic container that we store the meths for the stove in so it doesn't fill up with rain water.

Satisfied with a day well spent, we set about preparing dinner.

Pork tenderloin braised in a cider and red onion sauce with apple, cabbage and leek plus baked potatoes made full use of our special pans ands turned out beautifully. Tiramisu for pudding came straight out of the individual plastic pots it came in which saved a bit of washing up.

We'll soon have finished off the left over cider and the hot water bottles are warming the v-berth as I write. It's home and back to work tomorrow.

Just Another Weekend Afloat - Day 2

I had an unusually disturbed night and gave up trying to sleep altogether before dawn. Whilst the distaff side of the crew slumbered on through the morning I drank copious quantities of coffee, nibbled a Hob Nob or two and amused myself trying to work out why the AIS signal isn't making it to the PC Plotter display on the laptop.

For the non-nautical readership (hello Mum!), AIS (Automatic Identification System) had to be fitted to all larger vessels and transmits their position, course and speed along with other interesting and sometimes useful information.

Whilst we don't have a transmitter ourselves (although we could fit one voluntarily and may do so at some point in the future) we do have a receiver. This is connected to the Raymarine chart plotter above the nav table and displays AIS targets as an overlay on the charts

The boat laptop has a program, PC Plotter, which uses the same Navionics charts as the plotter upon which I do our passage planning. With a backup GPS source (we've both a GPS dongle and an app on my phone which turns it into a GPS source for the laptop via USB) the laptop doubles as a backup chart plotter.

So it would be useful if the AIS info could be displayed on the laptop. The software can do it, the hardware can do it, it was all connected up, but it just wasn't working.

And ... it still isn't! I've checked the output from the AIS, I've checked the wiring between the NMEA connection block and the NMEA multiplexer and I've firtled around in the boondocks of the software configuration all to no avail. It ought to be working and it isn't.

To add to my annoyance, the not particularly cheap serial to USB adaptor that should allow me to disconnect the AIS receiver from the boat electrics and connect it directly to the laptop turned out to be a male plug (good) with a female casing (bad) thus ensuring it's complete and utter uselessness

Frustration reigned supreme aboard the good ship Erbas until the Purser emerged tousled and refreshed by more than twelve hours sleep to perk up her skipper with a bacon butty and a cheery wave as he departed towards the pub to watch the Italy v England rugby match.

Left to her own devices, Jane spent the afternoon sorting out the galley stores and tidying things up to her satisfaction and even remained cheerful in the face of the broken promise to be back after the first match! Eventually the wayward skipper was reunited with the crew at the bar as the Irish celebrated a deserved victory in the third match of the day

A meal and a couple of drinks then another early night. Nine hours in the pub was quite enough and neither of us felt like staying up late.

Just another weekend afloat - Day 1

Deja vu - finish work, get some sleep, hit the road down to Essex ahead of the Friday evening rush hour.

Well almost. A diversion through Huntingdon to avoid a hold up on the A14, interminable HGVs grinding past each other with a 1mph speed advantage on the M11 and general heavy traffic throughout made it closer to a three hour trip than the usual two hours or so.

Still, we made it by about four which suited my purposes very well as the first mission was to pop into the office to cough up a lot of money! We renewed our Summer Swing mooring deal for another 12 months and whilst we were at it rented a "Bosuns Store".

For not, frankly, a lot of money we've got an individual lockup within a locked store to which we have a key. It's not vast but it's big enough to store the stuff we're forever hauling backwards and forwards twixt Northants and Essex which doesn't actually need to be taken home.

That sorted, we repaired on board and examined the contents of the beer cellar. As I'd feared, the contents of the beer cellar were fit only for the skip. I might have risked the odd bottle if it was recently out of date but this stuff was well past it and worse had spent two years rolling around in Brigantias' less than clean bilges before being transshipped onto Erbas.

Some tins and packets in the galley met the same fate before we headed off to Morrison's to do some stocking up. By the time we'd completed that mission it was pub-o-clock. Jane was pleased to see lasagne on the specials board and judging by the way she hoovered it up it must have been good! I once again enjoyed a plate of scampi.

With dinner washed down with a couple of drinks, it was back to the boat in the moonlight. Hot water bottles having been filled and placed before heading to the pub meant a nice warm bed to crawl into. Within minutes sleep overtook us.