S/V Deep Playa - Pearson 424

I have and plan on reusing the Lofrans Progress that came with my boat. The motor is the same large one that comes with the Tigres.

You may remember that my windlass was originally mounted so far aft that the hawse pipe went through the v-berth and into the decommissioned water tank; basically rendering it impossible for use to sleep there comfortably. This winter I removed it had the the deck closed up and am now making my plans to place the windlass further forward on the deck and to run the chain through the shallow anchor locker and into the unused chain locker below.

Seems as though I have one of four choices:

1. Place the windlass forward of the locker and use a PVC hawse pipe to run the chain aft to achieve adequate fall. Meridian has this kind of setup as does Syringa.
2. Place the windlass motor and mount just aft of the locker and use a PVC pipe to run the chain foreward and through the locker. Parallax has this setup with a similar if not the same windlass.
3. Build a stand for the windlass in the anchor locker at the highest point of the chain fall and modify the door to go around the windlass. There are some horizontals which have been done that way.
4. Install the windlass on the door itself (or a beefed up hatch without hinges) and essentially leave the locker closed except for maintenance purposes. Another derivation of this is to bolt down a more permanent opening, possibly thicker and have it closed with a more bolt down fittings like they use on aircraft.

1 and 2 seem like the least work, but I’m worried about how well the chain will run. I don’t want to be having to deal with kinked up chain in the anchor locker all the time. Also #1 doesn’t really seem possible on our boat because we don’t have a bow sprit for our anchor and our anchor comes all the way back to the deck. I also plan to put a padeye on the deck just aft of the anchors for the solent stay so again #1 seems like a no-go. If I can alleviate my concerns about the flow of chain then #2 is probably the best idea.

#3 sounds a lot of work and I’m not sure how to make the door water tight once I cut into it. I also am not sure that the drive shaft of the windlass would be long enough to reach through the entire pad.

I think #4 would be a big upgrade. It would also close off the deck better than the door does today. It would however remove a storage spot from the foredeck, which is handy for wet  things like hoses and our folding anchors.

SO #2 and #4 seem like the most viable options at this point with #2 probably winning out based on the simplicity. If you have any thoughts please do chime in.

There’s a shot of my Maretron DSM250 (in red on block mode) displaying data from my NMEA 200 network I finished roughing in last night (or I guess this morning) about 0200. I’m calling it a rough-in because I still need to go back and secure all the wiring, mount the display and the GPS, etc. but I was to plug it all together, fire it up and it worked right out of the gate!

Here’s a shot of the a “T” installed showing the backbone in blue and the drop cable in grey. The black fitting is a field installed fitting whereas the other two are factory pre-installed fittings. The field installable connector has some pretty small screws and was a tad tricky to line everything up, but that is probably due to my large meat hooks. I was able to do it just fine. The waterproof fitting that goes over it all was very tight and I’m sure it has a great seal.

right now I have the following in my system:

• Color Display DSM250
• Weather Station WSO100
• Compass SSC200 (installed)
• GPS Antenna GPS200

I plan to add a depth\speed\temperature gauge to replace my Standard Horizon DS50 depth only unit, but I’m waiting for Airmar’s DST900 to come out (it’s a year late according to rumor) which has the D/S/T and no moving parts! That will be awesome! For now, I’m going to Magruber the DS50 onto the network and maybe if that works fine I’ll just live with that (hurry up Airmar!). We also want to add a rudder angle indicator. I just haven’t gotten to that yet.

Tonight I’ll secure all the wiring and figure out where the GPS will be placed.

Here’s a shot of Dawn at the masthead installing the stop on the sail track as the sun sets at Shilshole Bay Marina. You can see a close-up here.

I would have installed it when the mast was in the yard, but it was missing for awhile. Now it’s installed back where it belongs.

I’ve mostly been working on the rigging lately, but tonight I’m thinking about the NEMA 2000 powertap installation. The Maretron powertap looks like a normal NMEA 2000 T but it has MID\Micro cord coming out of T which you wire up to the DC power system in your boat along with a 4amp fuse (See yellow powertap in the picture). Maretron has a good knowledgebase article on how to do the install but in summary you wire a couple of wires to the 4amp fuse and DC +and the rest to DC –.

I have some other DC wiring I need to clean up that is wired directly off the batteries with no fuses and I don’t want to use a bunch of inline fuses, so I’m going to use a Blue Sea Fuse Block to fuse all these individual items, but do so in a way where I have a single spot to do troubleshooting and add-on future circuits.

I’m hoping to pick up the fuse block tomorrow so I can put in the T which is the first step to getting my NMEA2000 instruments online.

More checks from the 4thof July 3 day weekend:

• Dr LED Kevin spreader lights wired and functional. They need to be aimed to point at the proper deck area still.
• Cleaned up a lot of stuff. There has been a lot of extra tools and supplies on the boat. Some of it is extra gear we will sell at the next Fisheries Swap Meet, the rest of it was recycled, trashed, or now at the workshop. We have some ash lumber for doing battens if you’re interested in that let me know. We also have a not-straight 1-1/2” bronze prop shaft that could milled down into a smaller straight shaft I assume.
• Took a ride around the marina in the dinghy on oar power. Dawn loves to be rowed around like a princess.  

Checks from this week:

• Mainmast wiring completed !!!  Fly me to an aircraft carrier; Mission Accomplished!! This was huge. I can’t tell you how many WEEKS I’ve spent working on the wiring in the mainmast to have everything working feels awesome!!
• The following are now all functional: Aquasignal Foredeck & mastlight (aka steaming or masthead light, OGM LED TriAnchor (Tricolor, Anchor w\ photodiode & Strobe)
• The TriAnchor is absolutely awesomely bright. I walked around the dock and it was absolutely the brightest thing in the marina including all the lights on shore.
• The DC breaker board is labeled properly. I used white P-Touch labels for this, I eventually (read maybe never) want to pretty that up.
• Every DC (+) wire in the wiring closet is now properly labeled. I love my P-Touch (we call it a Pea-Touch) Industrial Labeler!!
• Chris Tutmark did the initial tune on the rig.
• Put the outboard on the dinghy and took the Dinghy Princess for a ride last night. The o\b fired up on the second pull after sitting on the stern pulpit all winter with no winterization. Yamaha is the awesome!!
• 2011 WA Vessel Registration sticker affixed
• Dawn painted the interior wood around the portholes in the head & shower and put the trim back up as well. Just need to re-attach the drip rails which she sanded and polyurethaned.

Lots and lots of stuff completed… many many pics to take and then some write-ups on some of the systems, how I installed things etc.