We're looking for the trash fence...

As I've been working on the website I've been able to add some new links to bring all the services we use together. The Follow Us! badge on the home page of  DeepPlaya.com connects you with all our public profiles. For those of you not so familiar with all this internet mojo her'es what those icons mean from left to right top to bottom:

Our Facebook Page, Flickr, You Tube, FourSquare\ ShipTrak (which is how we report our position over SSB), Crusiers Forum

UPDATE 2022: We no longer use Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare (later Swarm). We still do use Flickr.

I posted a few Craig's List ads today for some items that have been laying around far too long.

• Salon table from a Pearson 424
• 200 feet of rusted chain rode
• Furuno 1730 RADAR and Display
• Alpenglow CFL & Red LED Overhead Lights

Feel free to contact me through the blog or Craigslist if you're interested in any of this stuff.

Since I decided an electronic copy of every paper thing on the boat, that means living with PDFs. I’ve also managed to get all of the agents I deal with (CPA, insurance, etc.) to adapt to using online means of communicating instead of face to face or snail mail. The ones who still insist on mailing me things I send to Earth Class Mail and have the documents scanned that way. This means I end up with  a lot of forms to fill out in PDF form.

I had been using a different tool, but today I found a great free tool that lets you fill out PDFs (even if they are not special “PDF form” format). It’s called NitroPDF Reader (@Nitropdf). It also let’s you scan in an image of your signature so you can edit the PDF, sign it and save it. The signature can be password protected as well. Very nice!

Another cool feature of NitroPDF Reader is that you can save PDFs directly to Evernote which is where I do most of my documentation of boat systems. I have a premium account and that let’s me sync (aka backup) to the web as well which lets me see notes from everywhere I can get web access or use my smartphones.

Great tools!

Ever since I first setup the site for the boat I knew I wanted to tag everything with locations so we could see all the posts as we journey around. A blog for a sailboat pretty much begs for that. One of the main reasons to switch to Wordpress was to have more options for this. I've been trying a few different plugins for geotagging and finally found one called Geo Mashup that seem perfect.

I tagged a location for this post which you can see below, and I added a Map page where you can see all the geotagged posts. Both of these should give you some ideas of the kinds of coolness we'll have on the blog moving forward!

This is a Maretron FA-CF-90, it is a field installable right angle connector and it's what I need to finish the install of Maretron DSM250 the instrument display in my cockpit completing all the critical electronics systems.

NMEA 2000 connectors are keyed, which means when you're mating this right angle to a device, the angle might end up pointing up, down, left, right; who knows. The field installable connector can be rotated as you assemble it (or that's what support told me) so that YOU can choose which direction the cable leads off from the connector.

I still have two tank level meters to install and I want to upgrade the NMEA 0183 1980's depth transducr  to a combo Depth, Speed, Temp instrument and NMEA 2000, but when this bad boy arrives and I get the cockpit display installed we'll have reached a pretty major milestone and I will feel very cool!

God Speed USPS, bring my baby to me!!

While my clavicle has been healing Dawn has been busy as monkey working to convert the shelves along the port and starboard sides of the v-berth into cabinets. Along with that she's also been working on turning that v-berth seat that a lot of boats have into a cabinet as well. Here's a quick rundown on the progress thus far and the proces:

1. First she pulled the drip rail off the shelves so the new cabinet face can attach directly to it.
2. Directly above the shelf edge under the cabin top she screwed in two long 1"x1" boards to act as cleats to attach the top edge of the new cabinet face
3. With that done she  made all the templates out for both the port and starboard cabinet faces and the front of the cabinet at the head of the v-berth out of  3" wide strips 1/4" plywood. She takes the strips, clips them in place on the top and botom and then hot glues pieces to the fore and aft edges. This leaves us with a perfect template of the outer edges of the cabinet face.
4. The templates were then taken to the workshop and we cut out the plywood pieces to match the templates. These plywood pieces will make up the front of the new cabinets. The cabinet doors will attach to these boards as well.
5. The cabinet under the head end of the v-berth required one additional modification which was to route a 1/2" groove into the bottom of the normal removable seat board so it will slide over and help secure the new cabinet face.
6. With that done you would think the cabinet faces would just slide right in, not exactly. Not 100% sure exactly what we're not doing right but the final boards always require a lot of sanding to make them fit into place. I know for one we didn't account for the angles of the bulkheads at either end, so in effect the board is always a hair long. She handled that by using the angle grinder to sand back the high spots until the board slid into place without as much pushing and shoving.

We ended the weekend with one cabinet face  fit and two more to go. The next steps after the cabinet faces fit correctly is to determine where the cabinet doors will be placed exacltly, to cut out the holes, place the hinges and latches. With that done we will install the new cabinet fronts.

Many pics and more details to come, I just felt bad for not giving you all an update.

Panbo has a pointer to an Android App that shows tidal currents... it looks pretty good.

Finally...a cool Android app....

I migrated the web site to run on Wordpress. In the long run this will be easier to maintain and customize.

Be sure and come by the home page and take a look. You will also want to update your news feed URLs.

While at the Seattle Boat Show Dr. LED was showing some new under-cabinet LED lights. They have two models, one with white high & low and one with white & red LEDs. I bought one of the later and with the help of Dawn (since I only have one usable arm) we installed it. I had previously installed a Dr. LED MARS dome light over the nav station desk, but I was not happy with the brightness and directionality. The aft cabin is very dark and this light lit the desk in a spot, but did not provide much ambient light.

The light from the under-cabinet fixture is much more diffused and covers the entire nav desk very well. The dome light was much more directional and produced more of a spot.

We may use these lights throughout the headliner instead of the Alpen glow fluorescent lights.

A lot of folks go to the boat shows to buy whole boats or large systems like water makers from the local rep or direct from the manufacturer. They might also see lots of smaller items there on the floor to buy and take immediately home from chandleries like West Marine and Fisheries.

What I didn’t realize until this year is that those same chandleries offer deep discounts across pretty much everything. So if you have a list of smaller items you need, I’d print it out with West Marine’s and Fisheries part numbers and have them give you a quote.

We saved a lot money doing that this weekend!