Looks like I didn’t follow a version of the old adage “measure twice, drill once”.  If we had of purchased the right dingy initially, we would not be going through replacing the dingy davit.  We are fortunate in that our Mainship broker, Don Ross of Heritage Yachts came to our rescue with the idea of replacing our Rosskelley ST-275 dingy hoist with a Sea Wise manual hoist (to be replaced by their electric model in January of 2010).  In its final form, the Admiral will be able to push a button and raise or lower the dingy without using any muscle.  We researched the Sea Wise Slim Line Hydraulic system which is a bit pricey and decided to go with the manual/upgrade to the Electric system at about half the cost.  We will try to sell the Rosskelley ST-275 to offset some of the new cost.  We meet with Don and his installer this week to take a hard look at the swimstep on the Makai to see how the new davit will be installed.

October 21, 2009

Met with Don and Don from Heritage Yachts at the slip and they took all of the necessary measurements required to install the  Sea Wise Davit.  Don Ross is now a distributor for Sea Wise.

What started out looking like a relatively easy task of replacing our Achilles soft bottom, boat in a bag with a Carib 9.6 C9 with a Honda 9.9HP 4 stroke turned ito somewhat of a mess.

Problem # 1, the Carib is a bit longer and much heavier than the Achilles so the length of line on the davit’s 2 wheel pulley system were sized for the Achilles and not the Caribe.  Solution# 1, add more line.  We bought 2 - 36 ft 3/8 inch lines and rerigged the pulley system.

Problem #2, Weight of the dingy plus outboard plus 12V battery plus 5 gallon gas tank (full) proved to be too much for the 2 pulley blocks to handle.  Solution #2, buy a set of 3 pulley blocks (expensive).

Problem #3, 36 ft of line not enough to feed 3 pulleys instead of two.  Solution # 3, Back to West Marine and buy 2 - 50 ft 3/8inch lines and another set of 3 pulley blocks.  I will rig the new blocks tonight and take them to the marina on the 22nd.,

Carib Dingy

The Makai was first polished in November, 2007.  Then she spent 4 months basking in the hot Ensenada Mexican sun and has been in Long Beach since April of 2008.  Last week, we noticed that the top of the pilot house and some of the foredeck surfaces were starting to lose the glossy shine provided by the polish. The shine lasted from  November , 2007 to August 2009 which is 22 months without any additional application of polish.  The shine is dull but water still beads up on the surface so the actual protection of the fiberglass gel coat is still there.  The sides of the Pilot house and the entire hull still have the glossy, look like new shine and water still beads up on both. We decided to have the only the dull sections polished so that we can see just how long the polish will last on the dark blue hull and the sides of the pilot house. Martin Chavez is doing the polish work.  He maintains the topside of the Makai with bi-weekly, water only wash downs and has experience applying our Marine Polish as he has used it on some of his other clients’ vessels.

We  had Jason from Jason’s Window Tint apply a dark tint to all of the salon windows in 2007.  The tint proved to be too dark to see through at night so we asked Jason to remove the tint from the 3 front windows early in 2008.  Initially in 2007 when Jason asked us if we cruised alot at night we said absolutely not so he applied the dark tint.  Turns out, we do cruise at night and that is why we had the tint on the front widows removed so that we could see.  The Makai sits facing east when in our home slip and catches the sun from sunrise to about 12:30.  It heats the salon to an  unconmfortable temperature.  So we called Jason again today and asked for his help.  Jason has a new product called Geoshield that will block a lot of the heat transfer plus block 99% of the  sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.  The Geoshield will not be as dark as the rest of the tint and also will allow you to see through the glass  alot better.  We will add comments to this entry regarding how well the Geoshield works later this week.

Derek from Alcom worked his magic again and replaced the Raymarine AIS250 receiver with the Raymarine  AIS500 Transceiver.  The hardest part of the install was pulling the cable from the required stand alone GPS antenna on the top of the pilot house down to the Electronics cabinet behind the helm.  After the install, our boat showed up on the AIS receiver of a 43 ft Nordhavn  down the gangway from our slip with all of our AIS data, Lat/long, MMSI #, etc.  So now we can be seen as a AIS transponder equipped vessel by other vessels so equipped.

We now consider the Electronics suite on the Makai complete.

The weatherman cooperated and gave us 80 degrees with a clear sky.  Even though we did not plan to go out, we are spending the week end on the Makai.  Perfect location for the fireworks off the Queen Mary.

After Alcom Marine completed the install of the Raymarine Digital radar last week, the AIS500 unit arrived at Alcom a day later so it will be installed during the week of July 6th.  Hopefully, it will be an easy install since it is a direct plug and play replacement for the existing /Raymarine AIS250 receive unit.

After messing around with the Achilles “boat in the bag” soft bottom dingy, The Admiral and I decided to go back to what we had prior to purchasing the MAKAI.

We called Ed at Trade Winds Inflatables and worked a trade whereby Ed (really a great guy) will take back the Achilles in trade for a Caribe C9 RIB with a Honda electric start 9.9 hp four stroke outboard like we had before we bought the Makai.  It should be on the davit ready for marina cruising by the end of next week.

Derek from Alcom Marine worked his magic over a period of two days replacing our Raymarine radom with the new Raymarine Digital radom.  The radar itself wasn’t the problem, it was trying to snake the radar cable from the mast atop the pilot house down through a very narrow raceway full of other cables that support the KVH M3 antenna, Flir Night Vision camera, DC cables for the mast light and the Spotlight control and power cables.   There are several 90 degree right turns that proved to be difficult to navigate.  After taking apart several parts of the ceiling, walls and door frame, he finally got the cable through the maze and connected to the NMEA 2000 bus.  Ergo, the new Digital Radar is up and working with all new Raymarine software upgrades installed.  We are still waiting for Raymarine to deliver the AIS500 transponder unit to  replace the existing receive only unit.  Raymarine claimed delivery in June so now we are hoping for July.  It baffles me why a manufacturer the size of Raymarine would advertise a unit for sale that they cannot provide within the time schedule that they set.Derek/Alcom also modified the 2 inch FloTron meter so that the meter and the NMEA sending units do not remain on with the engines off which was causing the need for a reset (Consists of opening the electronics cabinet behind the helm, disconnecting and reconnecting the 2 inch meter which initiates a software reset).   So after Derek’s modification the meter and the Floscan sending units power up and you have instant reading without any problem.  Things are looking up from a Electronics perspective and as soon as the Raymarine AIS transponder unit arrives and is installed, we will finally have the boat configured the way that we want it to be.

We will be on the boat for 2 days as part of the Memorial Day weekend.  All systems are in the go mode.  Had a visit from some old friends from AA dock, Kirk and Phyliss from the Scarbourgh Fair on Saturday.SundayFirst cup of joe at 7AM.  Breakfast was the standard Ham and  Eggs while watching Headline News.  Weather is overcast, wind at 10kts out of the south, temp is 67 degrees, presssure is 1025 MB.  the Marina office is flying a Small Craft Warning flag but here at the slip the water is calm and flat, overall, a nice day.We will fire up the outside grill and do some steaks for the mid day celebration and toast the military, past and present with a little wine.

The wiper on the center panel window in front of the helm ceased to operate so Heritage Yachts set out to replace it. The motor shaft for the wiper is mounted through the tempered glass and during the install, the glass shattered. Now we have a broken wiper and a broken window. Heritage got a new glass panel from Mainship and hired a glass installation expert to replace the broken window. The EXPERT installed the pane backwards and the holes for the wiper motor and retaining screws were in reverse. The wiper blade was now positioned to wipe the deck instead of the pane of glass. Fast forward to May 3, 2007 (a month after the initial wiper break) and we finally have the glass mounted and the wiper motor and blade in the right position. We will let the molding and gasket goo cure for a couple of days and then hit it with the hose to look for leaks.

Coming back from our last trip to Catalina we cleared Ship’s Rock and set a course for Angels Gate.  Once on course, we engaged the Raymarine autopilot and it functioned flawlessly.  We switched from Auto mode a mile from the gate and manually piloted back to our slip in Long Beach.  The next week we went to Wilmington for fuel and engaged the Autopilot for the short run across the flats.  On the return trip, We cleared the Wilmington “No Wake Zone” and engaged the Autopilot.  After about 2 minutes, I noticed that we were in a slow turn to starboard.  I set the Autopilot to manual and steered back to our previous course.  Back on course, I set the Autopilot to Auto again and after about 2 minutes, we were making the turn to starboard again.  The problem was reported to Raymarine Customer Service and their response was that the problem could be caused by me placing  something electrical or metal near the flux gate head.  We checked and there were not any power or communication cords nor any metal objects near the flux gate.  We went back and forth with Raymarine and finally called in the Customer Service people from our broker, Heritage Yacht Sales who verified my findings and they took over the interface with Raymarine.  Two weeks later, Raymarine admitted that they had a software glitch in their module that interfaced the Autopilot and Digital compass and that a factory upgrade to the software was required and were were to ship the module back for the upgrade. Three days for shipping to Raymarine, ten days for the software upgrade followed by three days of return shipping for a total of a minimum of 16 days without a Autopilot and digital compass.  Thankfully, after taking delivery of the boat, we had Alcom Marine Electronics install a magnetic compass at the helm.  

May 3, 2009      

Alcom Marine Electronics upgraded the Autopilot with the new Raymarine software and it appears to be working.  We will do a sea trial after the winds subside to make sure the autopilot still doesn’t turn to starboard all on its own.  The Electronic and magnetic compasses are reading within 5 degrees of each other with the boat at rest so will will swing the magnetic compass during the autopilot sea trial.