Not surprisingly, the tasks for today were pretty much the same as yesterday. An early start to get the first layer of epoxy on the second case side and so on and so forth. Didn’t bother with photos for the second side, it’s all the same as the first.
The new ship’s battery arrived this morning, which was a bit of a surprise since it was due to arrive next Tuesday, not that this is a problem, just that I wasn’t expecting it today.
Here is the new battery on the bridge deck instead of the old one. I can tell that it makes a difference since when you turn on the cabin light, the battery voltage does not change whereas with the old battery, the voltage would drop by half a volt or so. The cabin light is a 5W bulb meaning that the bulb draws around 416 mA from a 12V supply and a battery in good condition should not show an appreciable voltage drop.
However, I might have made a slight mistake with the measurements.
I measured the gap as 320 mm as you can see here, although looking at the photo now, the real gap will be 340 mm since the inboard end of the battery will be sitting on the lower runner so that it is level (ish).
But, and this is a big but, I forgot that there will be a centerplate case support here that will reduce the width.
Holding the support in place I can see that I just have 310 mm, which is the width of the battery, so the battery will go through the gap…
…but only is I take the door off !
So, a mistake, yes, but not a bad one. I mean, how often will I be taking the battery in and out? Maybe twice a season, once at either end, but probably not even that.
The door had to come off
“All right,” said Fred, “Have to take the door off
Need more space to shift the so-and-so.”
Had bad twinges taking off the hinges
And it got us nowhere
And so, we had a cuppa tea
The door came off without too much bother, only one screw caused a problem as it sheared off in the jamb. Annoying since this means that I will need to move the hinge so that the new screw doesn’t try to screw down through the old one.
Door with all the fittings removed.
The fittings and fixings. All brass except two stainless screws. All the fixings bar the stainless ones went in the bin and I’ll replace them with A2 stainless. I did think of replacing the hinges and latch with stainless equivalents, but they are still good enough or will be after a bit of cleaning.
I’ll not replace the eye straps as these were for the bungee that restrained the Camping Gaz bottle when using the radiant heater and we don’t have that anymore, so the eye straps are redundant.
Anther small task was to run the power cable for the compass light. This would have been a total pain were it not for the fact that the centerplate case has been removed allowing me to lie on my back with my head under the bridge deck from whence I could hammer in the small cable clips to hold the cable.
As before, I used small bronze panel pins instead of the steel nails that come with the clips.
And this is the result. The round cable is the power cable to the starboard navigation light and the black and red cable is the one for the compass light. There are a lot of other unused clips in there. There are two possibilities. The first is that there used to be another cable possibly for a quarter berth light and the second is that the cable was put up by feel from the cabin and these are the clips that failed that exercise.
I put a lever connector on the end but left it dangling. This will be connected to the cable from the compass and I’ll have to find a way to stick it to the underside of the bridge deck but still accessible so that the compass may be removed from time to time. Not sure how to do that yet.
I used a carpet offcut over the keel to make things a little more comfortable.
Talking of the compass, I was not happy with the way in which the LED wires were dangling out of the bottom of the housing, they are thin and not strong, so I took the compass apart and extended the wires using two lever clips. The connector and the wires were held down with hot glue.
The new wires still hang out of the bottom of the housing, but they are longer and more robust.
Well, I think that is a good place to stop for the evening.
Time for a cup of tea.