We've bitten the bullet and decided that now's the time to upgrade our 25-year-old Autohelm navigation instruments, the ones that show us speed, depth, wind speed and direction, and so on.
The old kit was still working fine, with the odd hiccup, but it operates on a different language than that used by the chart plotter and autopilot, so requires some electronic trickery to translate between the two systems. We had realised for a while that, at some stage, we'd need to upgrade and recent galloping inflation in the electronics supply-chain finally made up our minds for us - we needed to order the new Raymarine equipment before the 1st of September to beat price increases of up to 35% on some items!
The next challenge was getting someone to fit the kit. All the local experts were busy (and, of course, expensive) so we started to think about tackling the project as a DIY job. Luckily, one local marine electrician could spare us an hour to come aboard to go through the plans; an hour of his time was money well spent to be sure we were on the right track and he took Graham's hand-drawn diagram and uprated it to something much more professional!
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| Graham's sketch - the red dots are new bits of kit |
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| The professional version |
Having ordered all the components, it was simply a matter of removing the old instruments and wiring to be ready to fit the new. It wasn't simple, of course!
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| Which of these cables needs to be removed?! |
Here's a short video of the first stage of the process:
It was all a bit challenging but we are making progress. There'll be another update shortly as we start putting all the new kit into place.
Meanwhile, as a break from all the wiring, Graham has just been sailing on something altogether bigger - a 72' Global Challenge yacht of the type that we both raced around Britain. Scarily, it's 19 years since the Round Britain Challenge, so the opportunity to sail aboard the Challenge Wales yacht was something to jump at and Graham has now volunteered as a crew member for the charity, which focuses on delivering team working skills to 14-25 year olds. Sunday's sail was a chance to meet the team and enjoy some autumnal sunshine in the brown, tidal waters off Cardiff.
Here's a 2-minute video of the sail:
