wires, cables, jar sweaters and more

I did not show you all my cute sweater jars. These are the prototypes, they will only get cuter and better as time goes by. Many people have tube socks but I thought it be more fun to make sweaters. These sweaters will keep the jars from banging and crashing while the boat rocks back and forth.

Today was really a day of electrical thinking. We have an old autohelm. (that is the thing that when you need a break from steering you can push a button right at the helm and the boat will stay on that course. This type needs electricity. We have a cape horn that does the same thing except that does not use electricity it uses mechanics, obvious we chose the cape horn but there are times when you need an auto helm NOW then you have it.) so that is an old system of wires. those wires and box do not connect to the new system, this we did not know. The verdict is still in on what we will do and where we will put the old system (cuz we did not buy a new autohelm cuz it works just fine.) Oh and the old system in right where we want to put the chart plotter. the chart plotter used to be down below but now it is where the autohelm is, so the auto helm needs a home. Oh my! the more we sit in the yard the braver we get. Next we are going to pull the old "backbone" that is the run of wires that start at the top of the mast and run all the way down the center of the boat along the belly and then up to the navigation station and out to the chart plotter. each of the systems also have a gps connected etc.... sing the song "them bones gonna rise again" (you know... you sang it in elementary school... the hip bone connected to the leg bone, the leg bone connected to the foot bone etc.... la la la the wind transducer connected to the garmin, the garmin connected to the gsp, the gsp connected to the backbone the backbone connects to the AIS, the AIS connected to the computer thru CAT5, the Auto helm connected to the 0183 NMEA wiring, the 0183 converts to the NMEA 2000 wiring, the VHS Radio connected by cable to the antenna... I could go on but I dont want to bore you and really the schematic I just recited is pretty close to the real thing. And everything interconnects through the NMEA 2000 cable wire that runs along the backbone! phew! of course there is a splitter in there to share cables and a converter box so the computer can read the data in the correct PGN (Perimeter Group Networking) sentence format. Hey Melissa how about my electrical/computer networking knowledge after this summer I can work on the server... nah! you can keep the server under your command. You can be the captain of the office server. smile.

Well that pretty much sums up my day! Humm I can add one of the yard workers, Tom, came and put in a new Triducer (that connects to the bottom of the hull and gives us readings about the speed, depth and temp (hence the word Tri-ducer not to get confused with the transducer at the top of the mast that reads direction and wind) Has anyone fallen asleep yet? I am! I'm even making myself sleepy! last night I could not sleep well so tonight is an early to bed night!

In the evening we were invited to Darrell and Nancy's boat, they got to put their boat in the water! a fun concept. We all shared food together and laughed at Nancy's "risky" story. Oh my, I can't tell it on-line, but I can say we laughed and laughed!