Dec 6, 2007 - Win Some, Lose Some: Two Minuses and One Plus with New Equipment
by Beth & Al Liggett

I was going to say that we have had two strikes and one home run. But baseball is now over, and besides, I don't want to be expecting a third strike - we'd be OUT!

Last year, while sailing up to Thailand, all our navigation instruments went out. So when we were in the States this summer we purchased a whole new set of Raymarine instruments - wind, depth, and speed - and brought them back to the boat with us. We also had been having problems with our GPS, and the handwriting on the wall indicated that it would be the next item to bite the dust. So we bought a new GPS as well.

Following our return to the boat in Langkawi, we stayed at the Hole in the Wall for almost 3 weeks. One of the things we wanted to do before leaving the Hole was mount the new wind instrument apparatus at the top of the mast, run the cable, etc. Things just dragged along, we made a short trip to Penang by ferry, and had some complications that we hadn't expected. Plus the weather was very unsettled - showers, if not strong rains, just about every day. A few afternoons, or at night, we had some pretty good winds stomp through our very protected mooring site. Made us glad to still be safely tucked away and not battling the weather forces out in the main anchorage at Kuah.

There was a boat named Drifter up in the Hole with us. Terry from Drifter became a great help to us for a few days. Well, I can crank Al up the mast - it just takes a good while on the main halyard winch. So Terry kindly offered to be the grinder while I tailed. Sure saved me some soreness! And as it turned out, the wind instrument was the first big minus - a glitch that required MULTIPLE trips up the mast.

At least there was a nice view for Al at the top of the mast! String of moored boats and Rahmad's Fish Farm restaurant to the left.

It was one of those things that's half stupid on our part - Al never took the storage cap off the module that bolts to the mast to check to see if the wind vane arm would plug in. It's a new instrument, right? Should be plus perfect, right? As it turned out, it was more than half stupid on the part of the manufacturer - Raymarine - as the whole module had never been assembled! So after installation, nothing worked. Duhhhh...And no, it was NOT made in China - in Hungary! And here we thought that getting the cable down through the mast was going to be our main worry. It was not.

(Note: We have had a messenger string leading from the top of the mast through one of the cable tubes for years. Al attached the end of the new instrument wire to the string with heat-shrink electrical tubing - the type with a glue-like substance inside. Worked perfectly!)

The splice using heat shrink electrical tube to fuse the instrument wire and the messenger string together.

More trips up the mast. (Thanks, Terry!) Al was puzzled over an extra piece that came out of the module. Thank goodness he didn't drop it overboard! Emails and phone calls to Raymarine shed no light on this dilemma. More mast trips. Mind you, we were also stymied with the constant threat of showers through all this as some days we just couldn't do anything outside at all. Finally Al unbolted the whole thing off the mast, pulled all the cable back up through, and sorted it out. The extra piece worked out to be a lock nut type of thing that had never been put into the module. Actually, it had been put in backward, so there was no way the instrument was going to work. Al got it all together properly, went back up the mast, ran all the cable again, re-installed the module, and connected the wind vane arm firmly to the socket. We turned the set on - the wind angle was working, the wind speed was NOT!

The lock "nut" that was never installed in the mast module.

We were hopeful that this was merely a calibration problem, yet after finally managing an escape from the Hole, and doing the calibration maneuvers as per the manual instructions, the wind speed still did not work. Yet another phone call to Raymarine for advice. The upshot being that it appeared that the unit was defective. We have sent it back to Raymarine for replacement. And have crossed our fingers.

The third (or 4th? or 5th?) time that everything had to come out of this bin so Al could get inside to work. He is connecting the wires for the top of the mast to a junction box that lives in the space between my "supermarket" and the bulkhead.

Meanwhile, we had a new outboard to break in. The old one - a 7-1/2 year old Suzuki - was so totally frozen on our return that we decided to buy a new one. Shopping around, we found we could buy a 2HP Yamaha 2-stroke, or a 2.5HP Suzuki 4-stroke outboard. However, the Suzuki weighed 3Kgs more, was not in stock and would take 4 to 5 days for delivery, cost $100 more, and had all these extra buttons, levers, and cables which we perceived as potential sources for problems. So we bought the Yamaha.

Al mixed up the break-in gasoline/oil combo and did his initial servicing. Whenever we have had a new outboard he disassembles all the housing and such and puts anti-seize on all the screws and bolts. Otherwise, it doesn't take long for the salt water environment to corrode them into immobility. We joyfully put the new OB on the dinghy and went for a test ride. And found the second minus of our equipment problems - the motor cavitated. No matter how Al adjusted the orientation of the motor to dinghy, it cavitated. Even adding other wedges under the clamps didn't help.

Al found another Suzuki OB like our old one (we had given ours away already) and measured the length of the shaft. It was 1 and 1/2 inches longer than the new Yamaha. What to do? Surgery on the transom of the dinghy seemed the only course available. Out came saws and drills, fiberglass and resin, files and sandpaper. Al took a bit closer to 2 inches out of the back of the dinghy. It looks weird - but I know other dinghies have this cut out for motors, so I guess I'll get used to it. AND - the engine no longer cavitates, just purrs along as it should. Hooray! A minus turned into a plus!

The new cut out for the outboard on the transom of the dinghy. There are also 2 reflective patches on the back side of the transom that - because of this photo - we now see need replacing!

During the time we were boat bound with bad weather back in the Hole in the Wall, Al installed our new GPS. It's a Garmin 492. When we were shopping for a new GPS we were quite frustrated because all the machines seemed WAY more complicated, with WAY more features than we wanted. We didn't want fish finders or a sonar; we didn't want the street maps for every US city; we didn't want to go to the big chart plotter machines. And no - we didn't want to connect it to our radar, our computer, our auto pilot, our VHF radio, or our sewing machine! Call us old fashioned if you will, but we see far too many boats these days sailing from marina to marina so they can A) plug in, and B) try to get their electronic gear fixed. We wanted something simple. And user friendly. You can imagine my dismay when I asked a sales person to show me the Lat/Long display on the model HE had chosen for us. "The what?" was his reply. Then he had to call over another sales person to help him look through the thousand and one menus for the Latitude and Longitude window.

Even though we thought we had chosen a GPS that would serve our needs, we were a little apprehensive about getting used to its many functions. I mean, this is a SMART machine! We chose the first available weather window to leave Langkawi and head north to Thailand. Rainy days had turned to sunshine. Was this the change to the NE Monsoon? Yes - but the actual NE winds did not materialize with the sunshine. We had no wind at all - just dead flat calm and motoring. Actually a good thing, as during the long boring hours under power we could read the GPS manual and poke at the buttons on the new instrument to try to get where we wanted to be on the navigational scene. A decided learning curve that we are still climbing, but the basics of waypoints and routes and yes, Virginia, there really is a Latitude and Longitude in this machine! So the GPS rates the big PLUS of this discourse.

It's REALLY nice to be back aboard. It's nice to have our own things again. And I guess it is even nice to get a problem or two - as long as you can turn the minus into a plus. The verdict is still out on the wind instrument.

previous

highlights page

next