Measured up

HotSocks was measured up at Shotley Marina last weekend, with a view to endorsing her IRC cerificate. This involved emptying absolutely everything from the boat bar the fixed systems, which to be honest was a great thing to do given all the unnecessary 'equipment' I appeared to have on board! The next task is to keep all the unnecessaries off the boat!

After an hour of watching Peter Cockayne, measurer, check overhangs and rig numbers (and assisting where appropriate of course) it was time for the load cell weighing.. This was done on the single point lift that had been designed into the boat, one which I had never yet utilised and as such was a tad nervous! Still after a couple of technical issues HotSocks was lifted clear of the water and onto the load cell. Success at last...!

Post measurement it was straight back onto the boat to finish our electrics installation and Raymarine swap over... More to follow in detail on each of those. Thanks go to a variety of people including Shotley for their unwavering help and understanding, Aquafax for the electrical wire (tinned for boat electrical purposes! 'if you scrimp you will forever crimp'), Matthew Lingley for the new chart table construction, and last but definitely not least, David Briggs for his help and enthusiasm through 20 hours of stripping (wires!!) heating shrinking, crimping, jig sawing and sealing!! We know how to live!!

Hotsocks in the snow causes Coldsocks!

Greetings and Happy New Year... it h

as been a while since I have posted and I will probably not apologise for this given that there was little to post about! HotSocks has been wintering in Shotley Marina, and now that budget has been confirmed for 2012 it is time to sort things out!

I am delighted to announce another year under the title sponsorship of International Paint, and we have an extensive calendar of solo, double and corporate sailing lined up!

So, it was a case of getting down to it on the jobs list, and with the help of good chum and 18ft skiff sailor Tom Kiddle we began the task of ticking of the "re wire" box on said list.

Typically, as is often found in boat maintenance, the allocated time to complete this task fell far short of the actual time required and was another lesson to myself with regard to time management and boats! For future reference the following equation should be used....

Actual Time required = (Anticipated time required to complete task*2)*1.5

You will probably have enough time to finish your task...just!

Anyway, the plan to remove the NKE instrumentation and fit a new Raymarine suite ended with removing all the wiring internally. This decision mostly came about due to the excessive amount of duplicate, obsolete and unknown wiring that was to be found, which frankly could equal weight saving. So starting off with an essentially blank canvas means that our new installation will be light, efficient, organised and easy to fault find.

So apart from a literally freezing weekend, cold digits, frequent defrosting trips to the car and a lot of stretching into cramped corners, lockers and engine compartents, it was an otherwise productive and, I am tempted to say, enjoyable! Still, I don't think Tom is in any rush to complicate the otherwise simple systems already available on his skiff!