Maintenance - Telaga

New radar on the mast

The radar scanner  is finally installed and working. It only took me two days to complete the wiring – including updating wiring diagrams. As luck would have it the 10 metre cable that came with the Sitex radar scanner was half a meter too short. This meant finding suitable wires (9 wires) and joining them etc. The system is overly complicated as it is all interfaced with the Standard Horizon CP500 chart plotter, the GME VHF radio, the Comar AIS receiver, Tacktick wind/depth/boat speed and Raymarine Autopilot. Some of you are probably thinking; what if said marvellous, complicated, important, technology stops working, as is prone to happen - Murphy can defiantly swim. Well, we have a backup – actually several of them. Assuming that all the electronics don’t get completely fried by a direct hit by lightening, which has been known to happen, then the important stuff can be plugged into a computer. Failing that there is the sextant – Hmmm. This assumes, of course, that I’m able to tell the time accurately to determine longitude, which comes from an electronic clock. I do have a wrist watch.  

As you may well imagine I have an anxiety attack when I see lightening and hear thunder around, of which abound in these parts. Several weeks ago one yacht called “Mr Curley” out of Guernsey was apparently hit by lightening in the Telaga anchorage. Not to far from Sadiqi. The large yacht is made from aluminium and sustained damaged to most of it’s electronic equipment. Several other yachts nearby were said to have had some electronic equipment failure. One yacht, apparently, lost its masthead light. This brought a thought about the mast head light as it is the new LED technology with fragile electronics at the top of the mast. This may be a good plug for the old power hungry incandescent light bulbs. Then again it is rather a moot point that anything will survive a lightening strike when you are talking about tens of thousands of volts. As paranoid as I have become with this phenomena I have done a fair bit of reading on the subject. There is much contention as to fluffy or pointed lightening conductors at the very top of the mast, with thick copper cable running to the keel and the water (ground).  The consensus appears to opt for having good insurance so that all fried electronics can be replaced. Difficult to ague with that having spoken to a few yachties who have been hit by lightening. Maybe I should take up golf.

Work continues on the boat keeping me happily occupied - most of the time. Most of the manual bilge pump hoses have been replaced and one of the pumps relocated. There are still deck leaks, however the torrential leaks that used to prevail are now mere drips. The leaks have caused the headlining to part company in some places necessitate reglueing – not my favourite job. Cleaning the prolific and tenacious barnacles off the propeller, parts of the hull and the inflatable dingy is an ongoing task.

Pizza on the beach.

I had promised to make Rob and Wendy on Aja a pizza, as they had looked after Sadiqi when I had been away. The weather fortunately held and we congregated on one of the small man made islands off Telaga. I had prepared the pizza base and some toppings and asked others to bring along toppings of their choice. I fired up the COBB bbq, laid out the base then applied the toppings. Around 15 minutes later we had crispy pizza. The challenge was trying to stretch the dough to make enough pizza for the 10 people who turned up. 

• Rob and Wendy – Aja – Fremantle -  Aus
• Doug and Pam – Hely – Melbourne – Aus –37 foot wooden Sparkman and Stevens.
• Graham and Sue – Chandrika – Falmouth Maine – USA
• Nigel – Lemalou – Thailand – 55 foot Hartley
• Joseph and Marcie – Horizon – San Diego – USA – 38 foot Hans Christian
• Me – Sadiqi – Fremantle - Aus

The candidates

 It was a great night and a good way of meeting new people. The COBB bbq was a real winner – easy to use and relatively easy to clean.

Pizza Alla COBB

Jobs – installing a Radar Scanner.

Time to install the Radar scanner that I had bought back in March. I Motor sailed to Kuah Town to get supplies.I had already installed the scanner mount from Scanstrut with help from Toby while he was here.

I needed to run a new conduit inside the mast – to protect the cable and stop the cable slapping the mast when the boat rolled. I have listened to cable slapping against the mast on other boats at anchor to know I did not want to do listen to that all the time.
I tried to find a quiet anchorage to do the work on the mast and headed for the fiords – Langkawi’s south western islands.

Langkawi Fiords

Being able to lower the mast I was able to push the 5 metres of conduit up the mast. The trick was attaching the conduit to the mast, then running the cable down the conduit. The conduit was attached using aluminium pop rivets. At the top and bottom of the conduit I had sufficient access to be able to lever the conduit against the mast to drill and pop rivet it in place. In the centre I had to drill a second hole to the side and use a thin Hex or Allen Key to pull the conduit against the mast to drill and rivet it.
Running the cable down the mast was a mission requiring many trips up and down the mast to feed and pull the cable. The cables are yet to be connected.