Up early to get down to the Queensbay Mall and buy some power tools and food.
I took a new direction on the walk there and found a lovely spot where I saw some otters, at least I think that’s what they where, they ran from behind a tree and jumped into the sea when they heard me. I took a picture of the coast here and zoomed in so you can see the poor things trying to escape from me. I have that affect on all animals, in fact not just animals ….
At the Mall lots of kids were queuing with there parents to go into the Lego thing, I take an interest due to being the winner of a major lego competition back in 1965, (aged 7) where I won the biggest lego set you could imagine, I believe I won the prize because I named the competition lego town “OGEL town”, pretty clever eh!
So taxi back to the boat, I can tell you, you don’t need to visit no gym when your carry 5 litre jugs of water and a stack of other heavy goods up and down pontoons.
After a spot of lunch I started hacking at the mast lighting cables under the floor of the living room, or under the main cabin sole, for the more nautical of you.
As you can see from the pictures, these connecters were beyond redemption, as where all the cables going into them, most snapped off with a little flexing.
Fortunately there was enough slack in the cables to cut them back to useable ends. Now they are all connected up and looking good. All I had to do was wait for sunset, which wouldn’t be long and I could see what was working.
You probably know this, but being just a few degrees north of the equator the sun sets and rises at pretty much the same time every day, it sets at 7:28 PM and rises at 07:04 AM, 24 minutes longer than 12 hours for the day, I suppose in the middle of winter the day is 11:36 minutes long.
Anyway at 19:30 I popped out to see which lights I had working, and which switches they belonged on. I was very pleased to see I now have an anchor light on the top of the mast, with a tricolour below it. I also have a Spreader/Deck light on the port side, but the Starboard side is dead, along with the steaming light. I bet the steaming light is just a bad connection, as it was showing a low resistance when I measured it, but once I applied power it went open circuit. So it’s just the steaming light that needs fixing, this is a legal requirement, but I will look at the spreader as well when I go up the mast tomorrow. All in all not a bad days work.
I’m planning on having a play with the dinghy and outboard motor tomorrow, if possible I’m going to go out, anchor off the harbour at sunset and try to catch some dinner.
Paul C.