I spent the day crawling around the engine re-wiring the water heater, part of the bigger job of sorting out the boats shore supply, I chased the cable to a part of the boat I couldn’t reach, took some photos by shoving my camera around a blind corner and could see rope, wires and other things I couldn’t work out what they were. On the deck I found a screw cap blanking plate, I had wondered what it was for, and when I removed this I found it accessed quite a big void below. In this space was a hose pipe, wrecked, as it had melted, a massive big shore power cable extension, and a lot of chain and rope. The chain was about 10 metres long, attached to 100 Meters of multiplait rope. At first I thought this is for a stern anchor, for which it is perfect, but then I had a more chilling thought that this could be used for a drogue or similar to throw over the stern when in a major storm of the south atlantic type!
The re-wiring is almost done, more on that when it’s all up and running. Just to say I had to visit the local hardware store in the Mall, a small B&Q / Home Depot type place. It’s just amazing how they just don’t know how to run a store, they couldn’t tell me where anything was, the other day, an assistant was looking bewildered saying “well I thought it was here, but it’s not!” no attempt to find where it might be. Today I wanted 10 metres of mains cable, after a few attempts to find someone who could cut the cable, a member of staff turned up with a wooden metre rule, and carefully measured out 10 metres, then realised he didn’t bring anything to cut the cable, and as he was holding it at the ten metre mark he was very confused as to what to do. All worked out well in the end, and everything is a very reasonable price. The only problem is the quality often lacks, I bought a diet coke for the walk back, even though it came out of a fridge, it wasn’t really cold, and it also didn’t really have a lot of fizz. Also I bought some wire cutters, they look at first glance as if they’re a major brand, but a closer look shows the finishing to be very poor. Today I squeezed a dishwashing sponge and was jabbed by a spike of metal wire that was embedded inside the sponge. So you pays your money and ….
Tomorrow I’m going to finish the shore power and get into town to visit the chandlers and see what they have. Later in the day I will tackle the engine Electrics, now I understand the 12V wiring.
Paul C.