She lives and breathes again, well almost

The first job this morning was to stick in the laminate infill pieces over the internal doors I gave the epoxy a quick sanding down and a clean with acetone before attaching the laminate with contact adhesive the joint lines will be covered with a timber trim once the hardwood frames have been fitted.

Aft door

Forward door

The laminate does need a little bit of final trimming around the arch and also some infill pieces adjacent to the mast compression post on the aft door just to level things up a bit before the trim pieces are fitted.

The new service battery arrived yesterday so the main aim for today was to get it on board and connected so that I could get an idea of what was going to work and what would need further investigation. The battery was quite a heavy lump and as there was nobody around to give me a hand I had to tie a line round it and heave it up to deck level with one of the genoa sheet winches it was not so much of a problem getting it below as it was all downhill. I was quietly confident of the new wiring which I had installed from scratch so I started working through beginning with the saloon lighting there is still some work to be completed here but it is dependant on completion of the various lockers etc.

Saloon lighting white mode

Saloon lighting in night vision mode

The VHF radio was next I used a temporary aerial as the mast has not been put up I entered the  number and everything worked a treat the temporary aerial even picked up the French channel safety broadcast.

The VHF works

I tried the original Stowe echo sounder which seems to work OK but I guess it will have to wait until the boat is afloat before finding out for sure.

The switch panel is working fine including the battery voltmeter which I had my suspicions as when I fitted it to the panel at home I tried to test it on a battery charger and it didn't show anything I can only assume that it did not like the output of the battery charger which could well have been half wave rectification.

Switch panel

I temporarily plugged in the chart plotter which works fine I have a small problem in that I have a tablet, donated by my youngest daughter, which should connect to the plotter via the plotters own WiFi network the tablet recognises the WiFi but is asking for its network password which I don't seem to be able to find I shall have to investigate further. The plotter will be installed in the forward cockpit bulkhead so that it can be seen from the wheel and the tablet will be used as a repeater at the chart table and as the plotter needs a hole cutting in the infill panel on the bulkhead I shall leave the final installation until just before launching.

Plotter up and running

After a fairly productive day and with every confidence I inserted the key into the engine panel, with the intention of trying to turn it over, turned the key and nothing but a deathly silence not even a click of the starter relay I had a brief look but could not find an obvious reason I expect that somewhere there will be a connection which I have missed or made wrongly that will be a job for next week I don't have a wiring diagram for this engine the one in the manual that I downloaded from the interweb is for an older version all I had was the photographs the previous owner took when the engine came out I will just have to go through it all from scratch.

I started the week by installing the heads washbasin I took the worktop home last weekend and cut out the hole for it and so on Monday I stuck the worktop down with some polyurethane adhesive I used Puraflex 40 from Toolstation, other adhesives are available, its less than half the price of the more well known 'marine' grade stuff.  

Worktop glued into place

Once the adhesive had cured I dropped the basin into position and put a ring of masking tape round to prevent the adhesive that would be squeezed out, when the basin was pressed down, from making a mess over the worktop. I then roughened up the underside of the basin flange to provide a key for the adhesive and then ran a generous fillet around the basin.

Basin ready to fit

The basin was then pressed into place I stood my toolbox on it to hold it down until the adhesive had cured after which I cut round the edge of the basin with a sharp Stanley knife and removed the masking tape which left very little of the adhesive to clean up just a quick wipe with some acetone and it was done.

Before cleaning up

After removing the masking tape

After cleaning up

The basin looks a bit on the small side but I guess it will be sufficient for its intended purpose and being on the small side it will be a good water saving measure just got to source the mixer taps with shower hose I expect that I will have to pay chandlery prices for these as Aldi are unlikely to have them in their special offers.