Saturday, December 12, 2009
06:30 in the morning and I started work. I found a device that is an active splitter for the VHF system and it seems to have a permanently “on” power switch, which explains some of the drain that I see when all the breakers are off. It also makes putting in the AIS antenna easier. Unfortunately, it turns out that the connector to the Raymarine Seatalk system is a different type so I need to go back to Island Waterworld yet again for another part. I moved stuff around the fridge, managed to break a beer bottle in the process and had to remove the whole contents in order to get rid of the shards – at the same time I put some water in the freezer and turned that on since I will go shopping today for meats that I would like to freeze. While taking out some water from the fridge I found a rather large glass sliver, but thankfully I still have Band-Aids. After shopping for meats and putting them in the freezer I started work on the AIS system and, after several hours of work, finally managed to get all the cables connected correctly and got my first AIS plot (a cruise ship) as shown above right. That was a great sensation after so much work. The fridge is still working despite my optimization attempts so, all in all, today seems to have been an exceptionally successful day. While enjoying my sun downer Carib beer I did the whipping work on the genoa furling line and installed that, hopefully the work that I did without glasses and at dusk will stand up to the light of day tomorrow.
I returned the rental car to Keith’s today, so am no longer fully mobile and that might help me focus on the work that needs to be done aboard the boat. If the generator is repaired on Monday then I’ll sail through the night and arrive in the BVI on Tuesday, and then I’ll finally be able to turn off and relax a bit.