Falkor

2022-10-27 | Autopilot Game Plan

October 27th, 2022
Partly cloudy and cool.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

A beautiful sunrise with the light shading clouds pinky-purples and orangey-reds. I’ve narrowed the autopilot computer placement down to three locations. Still not sold on any of them, each with their own pluses and minuses. I decided to buy the wiring for the longest run of the three and have it on hand for when I make up my mind.

“Must be installed in a dry location” is my least favorite instruction that comes with any piece of equipment for a sailboat.

2022-10-26 | New Instruments

October 26th, 2022
Sunny and cool.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Getting a game plan going for the second dash where the sailing instruments live. Sometimes I don’t understand what the Canarian stores choose to import. From what I can tell, there is no black plexiglass on the island, only white and clear. I’m not sure either of those will look good. Thinking about wood painted black. We’ll see how the search progresses. I did find some shops that specialize in CNC and can cut plexi or wood to the shapes I want. Might be a way to go if they can get the right material for it.

2022-10-25 | Alternator Installed / Uninstalled

October 25th, 2022
Sunny and warm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

A comedy of errors. The new gauge and sender came in faster than I expected. The alternator fix was was received and easier than expected. At 9, the mechanic showed up just as I had emptied the sail locker to get back to work on the wiring. I quickly moved everything back in to the locker and the alternator was installed. The belt turned out to be too long and after a quick trip to the store, that was also installed.

Just one piece remaining. The temp sender… four hours later, the belt, alternator and water system had all been removed from the engine to pull the piece that the sender goes into. The old sender had corroded and tried to become one piece of metal with the engine. Drilled it out and saw that the threads are messed up. Sending the part off to get rethreaded. One step forward…

2022-10-24 | Push Buttons and Gauges

October 24th, 2022
Sunny and warm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Wasted a bunch of time today trying to source push buttons and gauges for the dash. 50% internet searching, 50% door to door looking… at least I’m seeing more of the island.  The sizes that I have were at one time a standard size… 25mm push buttons and 2-3/8” gauges. Neither are considered standard today. I’ll be sticking with the mechanical gauges that still work and trying to only replace the temp gauge that has gone bad. At least that one is the current standard size.

2022-10-21 | AC System

October 21st, 2022
Sunny and breezy… very warm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Working through the AC electrical system. Adding a waterproof box behind the main breakers and looking at re running some of the wires to separate the AC and DC systems in a better way.

Seems like they don’t sell the wires with the color codes that are on the boat in the gauges that I am looking for… I guess we can add Canary colors to British, US and the Netherlands that are already on the boat.

Going to be labeling everything to make this easier in the future.

2022-10-20 | Alternator / Battery Management Snag

October 20th, 2022
sunny and calm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

The new alternator is bolted to the engine, but it has a different pin out than what is needed for the Battery Management System. The mechanic has a call into the peninsula to see if they can explain how to bypass the internal regulator to allow the BMS to do its thing.

Emptied a sail locker to get at some wiring just in time to put it all back and go into the engine compartment again. It’s like playing musical chairs trying refit the boat with the kit still onboard.

2022-10-19 | Battery Box Plan

October 19th, 2022
Sunny and calm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Finally have a plan for the battery box. A few centimeters or millimeters too small in each direction to move up in size, but down in quantity, I’m opting for (6) 120 ah agm batteries. (5) for the house and one starter.

They should just fit if the dimensions Bosch has listed online are correct. I will have to move the positive and negative bus bars out of the battery box and install them in their own waterproof boxes on the aft wall of the sail locker. It’s something that should be done regardless and fingers crossed won’t open a can of worms.

2022-10-18 | Oiling the Deck and Organizing the Salon

October 18th, 2022
Sunny and calm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

The yard started piling the deck today. I’ll head to a hotel to let it soak in overnight at the end of the day. Too much teak to get done in one shift, parts of the deck will still be getting done a couple days from now.

Reorganizing the salon and continuing to pull old equipment that will be replaced. Falkor’s old heart came out today. A seven cable box; each cable with multiple wires. There must have been thirty connections to the relays inside. Absolutely old school.

It seems like there are still miles of wires and cables to sort and pull, but space is opening up.

2022-10-17 | New VHF Radio Installed

October 17th, 2022
Sunny and calm.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife

I got the new VHF installed. Connected the new antenna, installed the coax and power cables along with relocating the AIS and antenna splitter. Looks much cleaner now.

I’m really not liking the person who chose the location for the power connections. Crammed in a corner with my feet up on the side of the hull just to crimp and screw down some wires with the space between the fridge and the floor inviting each screw to fall into the abyss. Spoiler: I chose that location and it sure looks great, but man is it tough to work in there.

A new RAM mount will go in the cockpit and connect to the back of the radio, but that will wait until I get to the port sail locker

Job done. One thing less to do.

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