It took some effort, but we finally collected the wood needed to build the custom frame which we place on top of the lift here at Pangkor Marina in order to haul Tahina out of the water. Another two boards had been picked up and were being used as scaffolding planks in the boatyard. But, they are easy to recognize because they are very thick planks. Once we had them all, four of the marina staff helped me set it all up for a couple of hours. Later in the day, we moved the boat over and the operation to guide Tahina in the ramp, put the lift under, and lift Tahina went smoothly. Jaimie, Behan, and their son helped with lines on Tahina. We were soon out and in a good spot in the yard.
In the last few days, we have managed to get a lot done on the installation. The NMEA 2000 backbone was put in place, most of the Navico brains of the navigation system were installed including: autopilot, fishfinder, AIS, radar, and network components. We also installed the radar antenna and cable. Also, during this time, we got the new Maxwell windlass solenoid and remote panel installed and tested. Fully operational windlass again! Jamie installed the new rudder sensor which required a different configuration. He also built a custom mount to fit the new hailer on the mast.
Although we still have to install many of the transducers (speed/temp/depth, fishfinder, and wind/weather), and we need to install the new VHF antenna up the mast (we temporarily installed the VHF antenna at boat level), we decided to run some tests. So, we temporarily mounted the new Zeus Touch 12 chartplotter and hooked it up. We were very pleased with the results! Our NMEA network fired up and all of our new devices were registered on the network. We had one problem though, the new externally mounted GPS antenna was not functioning properly. But, the Zeus has it’s own GPS, so we used that instead. Meanwhile, the chartplotter came up, and we had AIS targets visible right away. We could see our GPS position, our heading, etc. The touch interface is intuitive if you use a table or phone, except for some reason you can’t zoom with pinching. We next fired up the new radar and it worked very nicely as expected! This is a digital radar with much better resolution at close ranges than our previous system, and we appeared to have very good far-distant range even though we are in a cluttered environment on shore in the middle of a boatyard.
It took us a few minutes to figure out some UI features, but with a little time and manual reading we should get all the basics down pretty well. It will take more time to get more fully familiar with the systems. We also can’t use a lot of the features until we get back in the water with the transducers installed and so we can calibrate the instruments properly. Calibration of things like the heading sensor and wind instruments require making turns in the water. We briefly considered asking the marina to put us on the lift and turn us around in circles in the boatyard. We got a chuckle out of that idea!
Although we are getting closer, there’s still a lot of work left. The chartplotter was inserted in the old Raymarine E-120 hole which is slightly bigger than our new chartplotter. So, we need to modify the hole to properly fit, while maintaining water-proof and cosmetic qualities. We still have the transducers and a few other items to install. Then all the wiring has to be properly mounted and bundled as we had to unwrap many of the bundles for the uninstall/install process. We also have a number of other projects to do while we are out of the water as well.
