Author: rebecca.childress@yahoo.com

Today I painted the FIRST full bottom coat of “Super ShipBottom” on Brick House. I had painted 2 waterline coats of the brown ( signal color) last weekend, and Monday, but now the boat is red on the entire bottom, except one side of the rudder! I ran out of that can with about 3 square feet to do. It takes about an hour to stir up this paint, even with the electric drill and mixer…the copper piles up on the bottom and becomes very solid…it takes a LOT of stirring. I wasn’t about to open and stir a can of paint for an hour for one 3 square foot area, so that rudder will just have to have one less coat on one side than on the other. If I have extra paint in the end, I will paint another coat on the port side of the rudder! I have 3 cans more to go- so about another 2 1/2 coats. I will have a 1/2 can for touchups, etc. Hopefully this paint will work as advertised and I will get about 3 years of steady cruising out of it before I need to haul lfor a full paint job. I really HOPE its as good as they say it is…

I also took out all the old wiring and transducers for the old speed and depth instruments. I sort of hate to see those instruments go…I knew them well- the speed never worked well, but I at least knew what it meant when it told me the wrong information..now I have to get used to a new set of quirks. My only hope is that they are consistant quirks. For example, the old depth meter would tell me we were in 5 feet of water, yet we have a 6 foot draft, and we wouldn’t touch bottom until we were at about 4 1/2 feet…I suppose I could have fooled around with the offset, or something, but I knew what she meant, and didn’t want to introduce a new set of quirks! The speed was consistantly quirky too, probably with an easy solution. The paddle wheel always stuck, and took about 3-4 knots of boat speed to get her spinning no matter how clean or dirty she was…SO under 3 knots, we were going 0. At 3 knots , we started instantly going 3 knots. It was OK…I lived with that just fine. If it didnt register, it was time to turn on the motor.

I hand-installed ( no glue yet), the new thruhulls what came with the wireless instruments we just got – TackTick Micronet. I wired them ( yes there are SOME wires), back to the hull transmitter. I wired in power to the hull transducer, installing an in-line fuse too. I need to double check the amperage on it- I put in a 3 amp fuse…maybe it needs to be a different size…I think I did a pretty darn good job of it though! I took the displays with me and stood under the boat, and spun the wheel on the outside of the hull. By god, it showed me going 2 knots! Well, I guess the under 3 knots quirk won’t be repeated in this one ( until a crab crawls on the wheel) I brought the wireless display to the bathroom with me, and it never lost the signal! That shows some promise! This is a fun toy! Maybe there really is hope for the wind indicator way at the top of the mast to actually reach all the way down to the deck! I really hope these instruments work well though, because we broke both of the orginal thru hulls getting them out of their holes, so there is no going back….and while speed I could do without (after all I have the GPS), I really like having depth…I Hope the depth works at least as well as the old dependable DataMarine unit did. Remind me to call Datamarine in the morning to see if they can send me a backup transducer that will fit in the new AirMar Thu-Hull. I left the old instruments wired, but disconnected from power and taped off, in case we want to switch back. Can you tell I have some reservations about the new instruments? I’ve had DataMarine instruments on every boat I’ve ever owned…As big of a gadget junky as I am…I’ve never played with any thing else but DataMarine, because I’ve never had any troubles that I couldn’t get used to, on any of the boats I owned. I hope these new wireless instruments will stand up as well! I am the most excited over the wind instrument. GO to the top of the mast, screw it down (well), and away you go- no snaking a wire through the entire mast!!! I’ve never had built-in wind speed on any boat I’ve owned…no more guessing how much wind we are in! I think I still may hold on to my handheld Meteos SkyWatch wind instrument though!

So 8 hours of nice sunny weather, and lots of captains working on their boowners working to get their boats in for Memorial Day! It was a wonderful day! We are 8 hours closer to being ready to splash her on June 15th!