Alarmed And Connected

I have now installed the alarm system.  Its a wireless setup which can take up to 16 sensors.  Currenlty I have 4 door break sensors and 4 passive PIR and a smoke detector.  The company is also devoloping a flood sensor which will be handy for the bilges and can be added to the system.

 This is the kit  As you can see it does a lot of clever stuff especially the GSM facilities.

Also installed is the 3G wireless router with exteral 9dBi aerial.  I hadnt planned on this when I put the lounge wall up.  I was rather chuffed with myself that I managed to find and dill into the 2" cavity from outside on the roof on the first attempt.  Once this was done it was simple a case of tracing the wire down.

See here for the full spec and Here for the aerial

Both of these devices will run directly from the 12v supply and draw a tiny amount of power.  The modem will only be on when we are at the boat, the alarm of course will be on all the time.  Standby draw is 0.5a

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Preperations

Preparations have started.

Mindful of the impact that hedge timing would have on nesting birds I have left getting the lane access trimmed back to the last possible moment.  2 weeks to go and I think any later would be detrimental to the local wildlife.  Hopefully this hasnt upset the Pheasants, Partridges, Rabbits and Muntjac Deer that live in the local scrub as well as the multitude of other bird species and feral pus cats, one of which is getting very curious of late and is ripe for adoption.

So this morning the hedge trimmer arrived, all 500hp of tractor and cutter.

This took an 8 lane to 14 of paint scraping free access for the cranes and truck.  

He managed to break some previous dodgy welding repair work on the cutter head before I re-welded it so he could finish the job.

Talking to the driver he told me this tractor has a GPS system on it that can auto pilot the tractor to an accuracy of 50mm (2") when he is spraying, plowing, etc. If you look on the top of the cab you can see a yellow dome.  Thats the GPS receiver.  Not only that but it logs where & what the tractor has done so that next time its on the same area it can suggest a better way of doing the task in hand. £15,000 GPS system makes a £100 TomTom look like the bargain of the century considering what th at can do.

The last time this was trimmed was 2 1/2 years ago.  Its amazing how much growth happens in that time.

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Frame tops

Sunday 16th December 07


I also managed to fit the backing strips to 4 roof tops for the forward cabins and fit them.
The frame dimensions here are critical as they make the final sizes of the sides of the boat up front. clamping and tecsioning the side frames to within 1mm of the correct dimension took some time but they are all perfect.



Front cabins roof.
Note the little slots all lining up perfect.


Im very happy with todays progress, and once the stringers are tacked in correct places the side walls are going on over christmas.

Tomorrow (Monday) aft frame stiffeners and more roof bits.

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France Here We Come

OK not quite yet but we have the necessary qualifications to go.  Sorry to get you all excited.

Over the last month we have both been studying for the necessary qualifications we need to be in charge of our boat when we take it to France.

To be legal unless you are on a hire boat in which case you need no training, knowledge, experience what so ever! the master of the vessel needs to have a VHF radio licence, to know the CEVNI rules and demonstrate your competence to handle a boat, in our case over 10m, this is the ICC part.

We did the VHF first about 3 weeks ago on a day course.  This we both found very interesting, I especially liked the DSC part, but this is pretty useless on inland waterways accept for group calling or calling a known MMSI of another boat, a bit like a phone number.

Once we had our license I bought a fixed radio and a handheld.  Two are recommended for France.  We chose models form Standard Horizon.  The fixed set also has GPS which is a bit of an overkill for inland waterways but it was only a small amount more and it gives speed and heading information as well as the time. The handheld is a just simple VHF only set.

This is the main set. But ours is in black

Full details 

This is the handheld.

 

Full details

 

Once we had the VHF set it was then necessary to apply for Ship Radio License to get an MMSI number.  This was easily done online on the Offcom website and resulted in our own MMSI number 350974?? and our UK call sign 2GHQ6.  Part of this registration my personal details so the MMSI is tied to a user in case of emergency and I suppose misuse.  Once we are in Europe I will programme in a the ATIS

Then it was down to studying the CEVNI signs.  Its a bit like learning the highway code but for the river, except it’s not as well organised as its (IMO) a bit of a dog’s dinner as its compiled by bits from all over Europe.  As well as the signs theres also lots of different signs on various types of boat by day and night and differing in the type of vessels and what it’s doing.

This is the full CEVNI and here is a set of flash cards I compiled (with permission) from the initial work done by Bryan Griffin.  In the end the multiple choice paper was passed by both of us simply because we drilled ourselves with the cards for a good couple of weeks off and on.

Meet our new crew member MOB.

 

The practical part for the ICC Involved us taking our boat our with our examiner for the afternoon and demonstrating MOB (Man Over Board) recovery procedures and other boat handling and mooring skills as well as questions about river  craft, safety, emergency procedures.  Most of the handling was simply demonstrating what we do each time we take the boat out, but we did have to practise the MOB as we had never done this so  a good few ours were spent pirouetting around retrieving our very own MOB, yep a  buoy tied to a bucket.   The bucket acts as the simulated weight and sea anchor. Each time we practised this MOB it really got the adrenalin going.  Even though it was only a buoy and bucket it becomes so real.

Anyway, after that the instructor / examiner showing me my boat WOULD go backwards under control despite my insistence it wouldn’t and a final few questions he told us we had both passed.

I have also registered Avalon on the SSR and now sport the Reg. No.SSR1535623

I do have a massive blog to do on the very complex subject or Generators batteries and charging. I will get this done ASAP as I have learnt a lot with the help of Clive one of my blog readers.

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Anodes

I fitted the anodes today amongst other jobs, 4 x 2.5Kg each side.  Another £200 done.

Im now making the steps for the bedroom doors, confirmed the curtain order, re-doing the plumbing to incorporate a large carbon filter in the water supply which meant draining the water tank.  I started this with the kitchen tap, but after about 1/2 hour no noticeable drop on the water gauge so I got out the mains submersible.  That soon shifted it.  So its good to know that the water will not run out too quickly with normal use.  The one thing we both hated on the NB was the care we had to take with water with such a small tank.

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The Nice Thing About Having A Boat Is

There is always something to do.  Always a problem to be solved, or a combining of my interests.

I arrived at the boat yesterday afternoon armed with necessary tools to sort out the grotty and dismal array of plants and mostly weeds on our mooring.  This is supposed to be done by the Environment agency who we rent from but there doesnt seem to be a schedule of maintenance but strangely there is a schedule of Direct Debits.  Anyway before I got on with the stuff I like I decided it was best to get this done and out of the way as the weather was reasonable and the forecast was poor.

 

About 2 hours saw the job done and all the dead nettles, thistles and sapling Elderberry trees were dispatched.  Hopefully this will allow some grass to grow.

I have been playing with  streaming CCTV for a while now and having bought a new Webcam decided I needed to run some new consealed wires to get the signal back to the laptop in the lounge and then out though the router to the interweb.  Knowing the limt for USB is 5m I saw an adaptor that extends USB over cat5e.  On my last visit to the boat I duly installed a length of cat5e cable in the bedroom ceiling down behind the wardrobes, under the bathroom cabinets and into the lounge drilling necessary holes as I went along all of which are out of general sight. All of this took several hours.

Once this was done I powered up the Webcam only to find for whatever reason that it would only send a 174 x 122 image not the 1280 x 1024 it was bought for.  A bit of digging on the canal forum as there are lots of very cleaver people there with a combined mass of knowledge on all subjects lead me to order a 15m powered USB cable.  Prior to installing the cable I tested it and all was good. 

How pleased was I that when I put the cat5e in the ceiling void I decided to put in an additional trace wire. The result was the new UBB cable was fitted in about 20 minutes.

The intention is to stream live video from the boat as we cruise along, or sometimes if we are just sat mooring.  This can be seen at the Vaughn site.  If you go over there you can become a follower and you will get an email when the camera goes live.  All of this is free and theres currently no adverts on the video feed.

Next up was to run some more cat5e (2 lots) so I can run the bedroom TV on an HDMI extender as this too has a 5m limit and get HD TV in the bedroom rather than just what comes down the coax feed.  While I had the carpet up to hide the cables I sorted out the creaky floor that has been anoying me on my seemingly evermore frequent visits to the loo at night.

This morning it was time to service the generator.  It has reached 2400 hours and the oil was looking decidedly black.  With the oil and filter changed and the diesel filter checked for water (none) and changed it was the turn of the impeller.  This as you can see was definitely in need of changing.

 

The fan belt was checked for wear and adjustment and both were found to be fine.

A while back I moved the Inverter to under the stairs See Here.  And having sorted out the charging so the charger works much harder it then got really hot which caused it to reduce its output so it remaind happy. Result back to square one after a while of running. See you solve one problem and another problem arises!  The only thing to do is to put some extraction fans in to dump the heat.  The easiest way to power these is from the inverters own fan power supply, that way they would only be on as required.  So this meant taking the inverter out again to gain access to the fan wiring.  I took no chances this time.  I photographed the wiring just to remind me not to wire it up wrong.

The fan on the Victron is 24v so I got 2 x 12v 5" fans and wired them in series, drilled 2 x 5" holes in the stair sides just next the the inverter, put in some wiring with an in line connector and hey presto it all worked.

 

I just need to get some nice covers for the outside of the stairs.

 

Its not too much of a problem as its very difficult to see them.  They are not in general sight.

The inverter now runs cold to the touch and is once again outputting maximum charge.

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50 Hour Service I got Gongoozled

I did the first 50 hour service today at 54.7 hours.  This required engine oil and filter change and three diesel filters. I havent needed to top up the engine oil in the first 50 hours so it seems its not using any. :-)

This was the water and gunk collected from the 2 pre-filters.

Not actually a great amount so thats pleasing.  The service book says to do it at 125 hours then every 125 hours but I think I will stick with doing it ever 50 hours.  Its easy to do anyway

The alternator belts needed adjusting the lower one more than the upper one.  I run out of time today and have still to do the tappets but the engine sounds pretty quiet, indeed more so after the oil and filter change. The oil was in very good condition just a very light charcol colour.

Engine mountings we checked and found to be tight and a general check of the engine found nothing loose.

I checked and toped up the oil in the generator.   This is using a bit of oil, but it runs a lot more than the engine and a lot faster, 3000rpm where as the engine seldom goes over 1200rpm.

All that done I needed to empty the toilet tank and fill with water so it was time to take the boat out solo.  A quick blast up the river to turn around and then off to the services area.

Avalon on the service point

Mission accomplished!  It takes a little over 2 hours to fill the tank, so I set it filling after doing the pump out which takes 10 minutes. 

I decided to moor on the town moorings instead of going back to the home mooring.  Inspired by my new found confidence I  decided to see if I could moor in between a NB and plastic cruiser a gap of about 70.  As usual this sort of manoeuvre attracts an audience.  A very slow and careful approach saw me in to a round of applause from the on lookers.  So now I have officially been Gongoozled.

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