Friday, April 15, 2016

St Augustine - Pulling wire without success and dinner with Gordon Johnson and Bill

The Bridge of Lions
So I had to drill a new hole in the binnacle base to make room for the new RAM 3, remove wire and then pulled it through all of the obstructions until I reached the bulkhead between the head and the nav station. After an hour of searching for the leading wire I finally located it and pulled it through. However, the great disappointment was that it was two feet short! Standard Horizon provided 23 ft of wire between the radio and the RAM 3 mike but I needed 25 ft! It was rather sad to see the two feet of distance between a successful installation and a failure. West Marine sells an extension for $25 for another 25 feet but it's a special order, days to get in. I called technical support at Standard Horizon to confirm that the wires to the mike only carried DC type voltages. With that it would be simple to cut the extension and use several feet of the old connection to the RAM mike to extend the wire to reach the VHF radio. I plan on doing that Saturday.

Local talent in blue
We had some rain but not to the level predicted. A small craft advisory is still in effect so we'll stay here another day but we do plan on leaving Sunday for Fernandina. We invited Gordon Johnson and Bill over for dinner tonight. He brought shrimp for an appetizer with a bottle of wine and Ann had dinner ready - but first we had to finish the wine! Gordon is selling his sailboat and buying a trawler, goodbye to a great sailor!

Hopefuly we'll be able to leave sometime in the future, Sunday looks okay so far.

0 comments: