Closed Captions (CC):
It's hot, we're sweaty and we don't
want to do this job. But we're doing the
job! Here's why
Those of you who've been
following us for quite some time, if
you cast your mind back you'll remember
that we had a bit of a saga with our
autopilot. The one that came with the
boats the orginal one, that gave up the
ghost and it was fairly old, so we got a
Raymarine guy in Turkey to replace
it with a Raymarine ST 6002 and it
all went well until we went on a
shakedown cruise and about halfway into
the shakedown cruise the autopilot died
That's what shakedown cruises are for really
Then we took it to Marmaris to
get it repaired and the nice guy Nail
repaired it fairly quickly and we
reinstalled it and sailed off into the
sunset and ended up in the Greek island
of Ios. Then we were anchor there for
maybe 10 days and just one day when I
switched on the systems just to transmit
our AIS signal the autopilot just died
all by itself, Well not the whole autopilot,
it's actually just the control
head. So we sent the autopilot control
head back to Marmaris with our friend
Jim and
Nail hooked it up and said "nothing
wrong with it mate, there you go"
So the autopilot then went from Marmaris back
to Kaş, then from Kaş Jim's son
came over from the UK and he took it
back to Scotland. From Scotland it was
mailed to Australia because we were
expecting the arrival of our son within
a few months for a holiday visit; he
couldn't make it, his plans changed quite
dramatically, so he then mailed the
autopilot from Australia to Greece
where we picked it up here
just before Christmas.
So the autopilot's actually been
around the world twice
So now is the time to hook it up
and see if it actually functions
So we've already emptied the locker as you
can see ... nice job to do on a hot day ... and
Baz is going to do an even nicer job
aren't you Baz? You're going in a hole. Again!
Well at least this hole is a bigger hole.
True!
What gets me about this whole wiring
system here it's that it's just been
MacGyvered to hell and to be honest with
you I don't know which bits go to which bit
All I know is that this bit goes up
there to that there
Which is that there
So I haven't really checked any cabling, all
I've done is plug the old cables back in
We're actually just gonna power up all of the
navigation systems the first time in
eight months, so let's see what happens
Right, get ready to put the chart plotter on
Okay. Can you see our position? Yes
That's the boatyard where we're at, not
far from Limni. That's a good sign
So the autopilot control head has
powered on. That's a good sign
GPS speed - well obviously you're not
moving. Depth might just come on. We have
a wind direction
which is the yellow line
We have a heading or a course which
is obviously not correct because it
keeps changing
I find it odd that we have no depth
343 magnetic. (AJ - Could it possibly know that we're not in the water?)
347 course over ground
Yeah maybe the maybe the
depth transducer needs to be in water
Let's see what happens when we push Auto
something engaged
Let's push one degree
[Soft mechanical sound]
hmm
[Soft mechanical sound]
[Each time Baz pushes a button,
there is a soft mechanical sound]
Back to stand-by
So it's disengaged
So let's just centre that rudder
And go back to Auto [Soft mechanical sound]
and let's go ten degrees [Soft mechanical sound]
and ten degrees back [Soft mechanical sound]
Well that is encouraging
Not sure why we're not
getting any depth reading at the moment
I don't know whether the transponder
needs to be in water to actually
function so if you know something about
depth transponders leave a message in
the comment down below and tell us
why we're not getting any depth
From this angle you get a better
perspective on some of the holes that
need filling here. There's one right here
and here and here and although they're
not very deep they're just another
purchase point for where sea life can
get ahold and grow on the keel so we're
gonna smooth these out as best as we can
with some filler today and
see what it looks like
The filler we're going to be
using is from the same manufacturer as
the epoxy primer and the anti foul paint
so we shouldn't have any issues with the
various liquids not talking nicely to
each other. This is a two part filler and
it's got a pot time around about thirty
minutes in the current temperature which
is around about 23 degrees Celsius
Never worked with this before like all of
these products I'm using, so we'll see
how we go. Oh and the mix on this one
is one to one
I mixed up 100 grams of component A
and 100 grams of component B for this
epoxy filler and it did say on the tin
that the life of it before it goes off
is about 30 minutes. I would suggest it's
probably a little bit less than 30
minutes so it's probably best to mix up
smaller amounts, use it and then mix a
fresh small amount and use it. I got most
of the holes I wanted filled filled to a
certain extent. This is our big one where
our bilge fiberglass area is behind here
and I've left that pretty rough looking
because I'm gonna have to sand that back
and then put another layer on there to
get it smooth with the surface of the
keel but all of the other little spots
are all quite nicely done and whited
This product says it's also ready for
sanding in about three to four hours
but just to be on the safe side I'm
going to leave the sanding until tomorrow
and then of course I will put a final
filling flattening coat
on this big section here
But yeah it's okay just mix
it up in small amounts and use it before
it goes off because once it starts going
off it gets really really tacky and it's
hard to smooth out
So that's another stage in getting the keel
prepared over and done with
It is the following day after using the
epoxy filler and it's time to break out
this bad boy onto the keel because we
need to smooth out the bits that were a
little bit rough by the time we got
close to the 30 minute mark where the stuff
started to go off and it was very
difficult to smooth out.
So lesson learned there let's see how
it goes with the sanding
A couple of days ago I put epoxy filler
into some of the more obvious and larger
holes on the rudder and I had some spare
epoxy primer over yesterday so I just
whacked it on the on the rudder and it's
exposed quite a lot more things that I
didn't initially see, there's lots of
little round holes here, there and
everywhere that obviously need a bit of
epoxy filler in them, so I'm gonna tackle
that today and also I'll be putting what
is hopefully the final coat of epoxy
filler on here and I'll let that dry
and then send it down so it's perfectly
smooth and then, then we can start adding
more layers of epoxy primer
Well now I've used the epoxy filler you
can get a better perspective of the
little round holes that I had to fill
on the rudder, obviously leave that to
dry overnight 24 hours and then come
tomorrow and give it a sand down and
then we can start with the epoxy primer
layers
And learning my lesson of how
quickly this epoxy filler goes off I
only mixed up half the amount that I did
last time so it was 50 grams of each and
once again it was a rush to the finish
line trying to get this last bit out of
the container and onto the keel before
it became so unmalleable that it
would be unworkable
anyway what we'll probably have to do is
mix up a very small amount and when it's
really liquid go over that and smooth
it off after we've sanded it tomorrow
Well here's an update on the cutlass
bearing saga. About a week ago I spoke to
the lady who runs the boat yard here
Evgenia, and asked her to call the Speedex
courier service head office in Athens
and she did and they said oh yes
okay we've got that package here the
reason why it couldn't be delivered was
because it didn't have a phone number
attached to it - which doesn't make sense
because other things have been delivered
and they've had no phone number
attached to them
Anyway moving on, they said well can
you give us your phone number - that's
Evgenia's phone number - and we'll
send it back out to Chalkida and they
will deliver it to Limni and they'll
phone you as soon as they're ready to deliver
So that was done.
Not 15 minutes later
Evgenia comes to the boat and says oh
there's something wrong, Speedex
don't have the package they sent it back
to DHL so we need to phone DHL
So we called DHL in Athens and they said
Oh yes it's been returned to us from Speedex
We have it here, it couldn't come
because it didn't have a phone number so
we now will take your phone number and
we'll send it back to Speedex and Speedex
will deliver it to Limni
So that was a week ago
and I was a bit surprised
when they didn't turn up last Thursday
or Friday which is the usual delivery
day for Speedex here and just half an
hour ago I got an email from Thomas at
Exalto UK, the bearings manufacturer
in the UK, he said he's just received a
return notification from DHL and the
bearing had actually already been sent
back to the UK. So Tom very kindly has
said look I'm going to get this out to
you either today or tomorrow at the
latest and we all send it at no cost to you
So he now has Evgenia's phone number
and that will it be applied to the
package so fingers crossed it should be
a couple of days before it comes to
Greece and then sometime in the next
week probably Thursday or Friday, fingers
crossed, Speedex will finally
deliver the cutlass
bearing to us in the boatyard
You can't make this stuff up can ya?
Anyway, I'm off for a beer now
Bye guys
Ah my friends go to Skiathos.
Skiathos is a beautiful place
Yeah. All is good!
Is that James Bond here? James Bond?
James Bond? Yeah. Yes!
We'd like to say a really big thank you to
everyone who watches and subscribes and
gives our video a thumbs up every time
you watch an episode
We really do appreciate your support
So until we see
you next week on Sailing A B Sea
stay safe and healthy
Barry's Blog #137 - Two well travelled items
Let's start off by talking about the cutlass bearing saga. We figured that while we were hauled out at the boat yard here on the…
Aannsha’s Blog #137 – We don’t want to do it!
When I suggested to Baz that we check the autopilot control head as it was on the list and we wanted time to troubleshoot it…