Knock knock knockin' on heaven's door...

After Marelle was moved to Premier Swanwick Marina, we needed to charge up her batteries (and hope that they held their charge after having gone flat while she was on the mid-river mooring at Deacons). Martin spoke to Barden UK and they recommended the CTEK MXS10 8 stage charger. We connected the charger up, and were relieved to see that on both batteries it passed the stage that tests to see if the battery could hold a charge, and left each one on charge overnight.

Now the moment of truth, will the engine start. We dutifully followed the cold start procedure – Marelle has a Volvo Penta 2003 fitted, and has had numerous starting problems over the years according to the paperwork and bills we got with the boat. This involves putting the throttle in neutral and furthest forward, then operating the stop handle 5 or 6 times. A silent prayer, and then – click. Nothing else. Batteries read 12.8V, but no sign of the starter even trying to turn. We took the engine cover off, and peered at the engine while trying again. The click was definitely coming from the engine area, but still only a single click each time the ignition button was pressed. Same result with both batteries linked up to the ignition circuit.

Ben had left on board a boat manual he had made up, a mixture of excerpts from magazines and hand-written instructions. Looking in this, at the engine trouble section, the advice was that the solenoid could be the problem, and to check this by shorting it (connecting a screwdriver across the ports). This carried a warning that sparks might be generated(!) but unfortunately no hint as to the location of the solenoid or information or detail of how to do it. Martin phoned our friend Roy who has a motorboat, and he had the same advice, but we didn't try it as we still weren't sure exactly what to connect.

Dejected, we went home, and I spent some time trawling through internet forums to see if I could find any hints or tips, while Martin phoned round a few Volvo marine engineers.

Sometimes the power of the internet is truly brilliant.

In amongst all the shorting advice, and scary prices for starter motors, was a genius tip that the first thing you should try is hitting the solenoid with a hammer. To be honest, I thought it was bizarre advice and only read it out to Martin because I thought it was funny. We found some pictures of how to connect to the ports on the solenoid, charged up our portable battery jumpstarter (less worrying to use than holding a metal screwdriver!) and the next day Martin went back to the boat to try again.

He tapped the solenoid, lightly, a few times. Then tried the engine, and it started straight away!!! He hadn't even followed the cold start procedure, yet he said it started really well, better than it ever has! Maybe some of the previous starting problems were down to less than optimal batteries.

Just to be sure, Martin has started the engine a few times since, and had no more trouble. We were amazed that it worked, but quite relieved too – and it just goes to show that you can find some superb advice buried on internet forums.

Ouch!

Sadly, a couple of weeks before the BCYC Cowes Classic Regatta 2011, and only a few weeks after Marelle had been moved to Deacons Y pontoon, I had a phone-call from Deacons that all boat owners must dread. A neighbouring berth holder, in a Sigma, had collided with Marelle's stern while manoeuvring to moor up, and Deacons were calling to let us know, and to pass on his contact details.

I phoned Martin, and he spoke to Deacons and to the other berth holder. At this stage, the damage to Marelle was described as minor. Alas, when Martin dinghied out to her to have a look, it was clear that she had taken a massive hit, which had sprung the toe rail off the aft port quarter, and scraped the varnish down to the wood, through our carefully applied 20 coats.

This was heart-breaking.

We still attended the BCYC Classic Regatta, but felt like we had had the stuffing knocked out of us – on top of the problems left over by the work at Universal, we now had this to deal with. The other regatta entrants were polite and sympathetic, but Marelle looked very dilapidated, with no winches, sails, instruments, navigation lights, broken roller furling, and a smashed aft port quarter. Her saving grace (but also providing a stark contrast to the rest) was Martin's fantastic varnish on the topsides, and this was complimented widely, but I am sure I heard a few sniggers and comments behind our backs.

The insurance company asked for two quotes for the repair, so we asked Deacons to quote, and Fairlie Restorations. Fairlie visited Marelle to have a look while we were at the regatta, and gave us every impression that they would provide the second quote, including sending a statement of work, but a couple of months later refused to do it, saying they were 'too busy'. Too friendly with Universal Marina more like.

Despondent, time passed and we hardly visited Marelle. Then one weekend, Martin's brother and his family came down to visit, and they took Marelle down the river to spend the weekend at Port Hamble with some friends. Unfortunately, Martin hurt his back really badly while manoeuvring Marelle out of a tricky spot in the marina and shouting at me, and with his brother and a friend on board, still had to steer Marelle back up river and to her berth at Deacons while in a great deal of pain. He managed it, but for months afterwards would not visit Marelle and raged about everything that had happened, and talked regularly of selling her.

At the same time as all this was going on, Universal Yacht Care and Avia Willment decided to sue us for the outstanding bill for the work on Marelle, that had resulted in so many problems and breakages. This was all the more upsetting as we had worked so closely with the yard in the past, on Sarila's restoration, that Mike and Claire Barnes who run Universal Yacht Care were guests at our wedding at Chewton Glen, just the year before.

Martin blamed me for the situation with Universal Yacht Care, as despite him being there every day, requesting extra work from them and letting them give work on other boats priority, I was supposed to be managing the work they were doing, while working full time elsewhere. I had trusted our friends; too much it turns out – and now our dream of restoring Marelle to be our 'forever' boat was turning into a mess of arguments, solicitors' letters, and guilt over the half-finished state she was now in. I paid the outstanding bill and withdrew my defence of the claim – life is too short and leisure time too precious to squander like this.

Eventually, the time came to decide where to keep Marelle in 2012. With so many problems to sort out, access via dinghy (with the pontoon at Deacons being mid-river), and the nasty experience of being damaged by another boat, not to mention the strong tide in that part of the river and the proximity to the bridge which makes mooring up a game of russian roulette in a long-keeled boat, I decided that we should move Marelle to Premier Swanwick Marina. I hoped that with easier access to her, we could make some progress in the repairs and reassembly, and maybe start to enjoy some time on the boat.

The transfer across from Deacons to Premier did not work out quite as I had thought – due to Marelle lying idle for so long, we had to get her moved over by one of the marina workboats. Not realising this would be necessary, I had not booked this in advance, and in the end Martin had to plead for help from the marinas as we had to get moved over by April 1^st when the new berthing year started. Deacons were unable to help us, but Premier were fantastic and fitted us in after the end of their working day, and even refused any payment, for this move or for a subsequent one within Premier Swanwick Marina from the temporary berth to our permanent one for the year. Quite a shock to be the recipients of such kindness!

Martin called Berthons in Lymington and spoke to Sue, whom we'd met before while looking at boats in Berthons Marina, and who had always been very generous with her advice and time. Sue recommended that we ask the Elephant Boatyard, next to Deacons, to provide the second quote. Elephant are famous for their work on wooden boats, and Martin soon arranged for Tom from Elephant to visit Marelle. His quote came out at slightly less than the quote from Deacons, and we sent both off to our insurers.

Not cooking on gas

We decided early on to remove the gas installation from Marelle. Tony Head, our surveyor, had warned against using the hot water heater until we had got it checked over properly, and Martin and I are both wary of using gas on boats - especially classic boats with deep bilges - due to the risk of a leak causing an explosion. Marelle did have a reasonable installation with a couple of gas alarm sensors, and flame failure cut offs on the burners on the Plastimo cooker as she had been coded for sail training. Even so, for peace of mind and to free up space on the aft deck, we went ahead and removed the gas bottle locker in April.

Taylors 030 cooker

Looking at alternative cookers highlighted that Marelle seems to have the smallest cooker available installed - and with only just enough room for that! She originally had a Taylors 029 cooker, looking at her build plans, which is the 2 burner model with a warming oven. We both love the look of the Taylors cookers, but since they were bought by Blakes Lavac the prices are sky high for either new cookers or for parts. We were outbid on a second hand Taylors 030 on eBay, and in the end picked up an all brass Taylors 029 at Beaulieu boat jumble. In theory we should be able to run both the cooker and the Taylors heater already on Marelle from one paraffin tank. We have read about other installations that use two tanks, with a valve in between, so that one tank can be in the cockpit for easier filling, and the other inside the boat. This sounds like a good way of doing things.

While we were looking for Taylors cookers, I came across a German website hytta.de selling ex army Swedish Optimus cookers and spares at very reasonable prices. Optimus are the makers of the burners that Taylors use, and the Optimus 155 two burner self contained cooker seemed like a bargain at £185.10 including postage. The other advantage of this is that being self contained we could test the burners for the heater at home before refitting them on the boat, and in fact see if we could get used to lighting pressurised paraffin before committing a lot of money to a Taylors.

Optimus 155W cooker

The Optimus, being army kit I suppose, is not as good looking as the Taylors but is robust and straightforward to use.

We tried out the Optimus in the carport at home. There are two methods of pre-heating the burners - either by burning a small quantity of meths below the burner, or playing a blow torch over the burner legs for a minute or so. Some people say the blowtorch is better in a sea as there is a possibility that the meths could spill.

The meths worked fine, we let it burn for a couple of minutes till it had nearly used up the meths and then switched to the paraffin, which lit with a nice blue flame. Encouraged by this, we tried the blowtorch on the other burner. Instead of a nice controlled blue flame, we got yellow flames, and lots of them, as basically we hadn't used the blowtorch for long enough and the burner wasn't hot enough to vapourise the paraffin. The paraffin was coming out in liquid form, and burning with yellow flames shooting up a couple of feet above the cooker - not good! Switching it off at the control for the burner made no difference. We carefully released the pressure valve on the tank and waited at a safe distance for the flames to go out.

Origo 3000 cooker

Although we knew what had happened, this experience made us a bit cautious of having a paraffin cooker on board - we knew we could probably get used to it but we weren't sure if guests would be happy with it. On Sarila, we had used an Origo unpressurised alcohol cooker and been very pleased with it, so we decided to get one of these. Some people don't like alcohol cookers as if you burn meths in them it doesn't smell very nice, and it is hard to get industrial denatured alcohol in this country. However we have found a supplier of it in Lymington. Burning industrial denatured alcohol only smells a little, and the smell is like the alcohol hand cleaner you find in hospitals, so not unpleasant at all. Since it is unpressurised it is very safe and easy to use - to refill, the wadding containers are removed completely from the cooker and the alcohol poured in to them, then replaced in the cooker. The only minor issue we have had is that the alcohol can evaporate from the wadding when the cooker is not in use, if you forget to put the covers on the burners. Alcohol burns slightly cooler than gas, but we have not found this to be a problem - it takes I suppose, a couple more minutes to boil a kettle but on the boat we don't tend to be in a hurry.

Curiously, the cheapest source we found for the Origo cooker was again in Germany - www.hammerkauf.de - even including the postage they were between £40 and £70 cheaper than chandleries in the UK. Hammerkauf were very efficient and the cooker arrived in less than a week, in perfect condition.

We now have three cookers that won't fit on Marelle without some modifications to the galley, and one cooker (the original gas one) on board Marelle, that is disconnected...

Update June 2012:

Make that four cookers... finally got a second hand Taylors 030L on ebay, which is the biggest cooker that Taylors make. It will be fabulous when it is installed, but it is considerably bigger than the current cooker. Martin is keen to redo the galley cupboards and the wood that divides the saloon and the galley as well, as it is currently cheap stained plywood and does not look very good. A daunting prospect, redoing the whole galley, but exciting to plan. So now I am looking for pictures of other classic yachts' galleys for inspiration. We don't have a great deal of space to play with, but this just means we need to be cleverer with the design so we can fit everything in.

Home at last

Marelle was built at Deacons Boatyard in 1965, although she is a McGruer design (and McGruer had their own boatyard at the time in Scotland). So it is rather fitting that she should reside back at Deacons, at least for the moment. We are renting a berth on Y pontoon, which is not walk-ashore, but has the advantage of being relatively easy to get on and off.

Marelle is long-keeled as are most classic yachts, but also has her propellor situated above, aft and slightly offset from the rudder. This means of course that she will not steer unless under way, and due to her left handed propellor and slight offset has a mean kick to starboard in reverse. She is also a lot bigger and heavier than our previous yacht, so is going to take a bit of getting used to I suspect! Although even Ben Pester who owned Marelle for nearly 20 years said that she was not easy to maneouvre in marinas.

We timed moving Marelle up from Universal Marina to Deacons carefully, waiting for high tide as the current gets strong in the Hamble at Deacons - the river narrows and curves around a corner here and can get over 3 knots. We also enlisted Martin's brother and his friend Jason to help with lines.

Leaving the berth Universal Marina went smoothly - we reversed out, from being port side to, and the starboard kick kept us nicely away from the pontoon. A bit of indecision on my part meant we went a bit closer to a post than is ideal on the way out - Martin took over the steering at this point and we just squeezed past.

I tried a couple of turns before we moored up, and we had a dry run too. A couple of people from a neighbouring boat kindly offered to take our lines, which was helpful as even though there were no boats at the end of the pontoon, Marelle did not seem to want to make a tight turn, and we ended up with quite a steep angle of approach as a result. Martin said afterwards that I was being too hesitant and should have had Marelle going faster, but I was quite reluctant to do this as I was very conscious that it takes a while to stop her once she has momentum.

We have an Avon dinghy already, but Martin decided it would be more convenient if we could get a dinghy that we can leave at Deacons and just dedicate to getting to and from Y pontoon, so after some investigation I found a Navigator 400 on eBay, and with some tactical bidding - waiting right till the last 20 seconds - won it for £98!! Bargain. It duly arrived from Germany after a couple of days, and so far we are very impressed. It is nice and big, has an inflatable floor and seats, and oars, pump and pressure gauge are all included as well as a carry bag.

 

Launch

Marelle's launch was a bit of a scramble, and not at all like the romantic pictures you see on TV programmes and in films, with speeches and bubbly.

We had lifted her out at the beginning of March, and what followed was the driest spring on record. This combined with stripping her hull varnish with a heat gun, deliberately trying to get the wood as dry and degreased as possible so the varnish would bond effectively to the teak, and leaving her out of the water for much longer than was originally planned, for other jobs that materialised as if from nowhere, had resulted in her drying out too much.

Some of the splines Universal Metre Shed (now called Universal Yacht Care) had so carefully replaced in March started to move, and the beautiful varnish Martin had worked so hard on began to develop cracks.

It took a serendipitous visit from Scott Moody, of Moody Decking to warn us this was about to happen. We had invited him over to advise us on what should be done (later when we have saved up!) with Marelle's teak deck, which is looking very tired.

We immediately asked Universal Yacht Care for the earliest launch possible, but having told us a few days before that there was no shortage of slots, all of a sudden there was nothing available. After some negotiations with HYS they came back and offered us a launch the following Thursday, with the mast to be stepped the day before.

In the meantime we tried various methods of keeping Marelle as wet as possible - spraying the planks inside with river water, wetting the floor of the shed around the keel, and finally soaking rags and placing them against the hull inside the boat. Nothing seemed to prevent quite a few hairline cracks from forming in the varnish, along the new splines.

Due to the tortuous set up at Universal Marina for dealing with masts - see my earlier post - Marelle had to come out of the shed the day before her mast went back on rather than the same morning. Martin was worried about the direct sunshine making the situation with the splines even worse, so I fashioned a temporary cover for the hull out of old duvet covers. Meanwhile Universal Yacht Care ran around finishing jobs that had seemed to drag on for ages, like refitting the stanchions and the fairleads.

Martin painted Marelle's antifouling - we decided to try something new and went for Seajet Shogun, highly recommended on the YBW forum, having run out of our previous supply of International Micron 66. The waterline proved to be quite contentious - Martin wanted to lower it, as we had taken off a lot of weight from Marelle and the waterline had looked quite high originally. I had carefully measured the waterline right at the start, and used these measurements plus 5cm to mark up the new one. The professional painter at Universal then used a laser level on these marks, to mask up the line. Martin said this was done wrong, because as the hull curves 5cm measured against the hull at the midships point is not level with 5cm at the bow or stern, but he managed to sort it out and it looks quite smart in white. We used a thinner line than she had before, which sets off her lines better.

In total Marelle had been out of the water for 10 weeks. Looking back through the copious maintenance history, the longest she had been out before was for 7 weeks before Ben Pester sailed her to Cape Horn and back, and more usually was only out for 4 weeks per year. It was around now that I started to worry about the fact that Marelle only had manually operated bilge pumps... She has an electric bilge pump installed, but it was not operational before we bought her, and although I had looked at trying to get this fixed while she was out of the water, I had not managed it with everything else that had been going on.

I booked the launch day and the day after off work just in case, and asked Universal if we could borrow their salvage pump in case the worst happened.

Martin was working on the day Marelle was launched, so I was on my own. The plan is for me to do the steering for mooring up, while Martin does the ropes, but I drew the line at taking Marelle round to the marina berth on my own - the day was going to be stressful enough without adding this to it - and asked Universal to do it for me.

In the end the launch was uneventful - HYS were very careful and accommodating, letting us rest in the slings in the water for 10 minutes to make sure any water ingress was under control! - and the trip round to the berth was also fine.

The planks took up very quickly - initially there were 15 pumps every 10 minutes, but over a few hours this had gone to 15 pumps after an hour, then 2 hours, then overnight. And no leaks from the much smaller log hole either.

It's good that Marelle's back in the water, but just a shame that the circumstances aren't better.

Winch Wench

Now the decision here was whether to have a wife with big arm muscles, or whether to get bigger winches. Martin got some Andersen 52 winches.

These are lovely and shiny. We got the full stainless version, of course - well if you're going to do it, do it right! The plan is to use two of the Andersen 18s from Sarila (our previous yacht) as main sheet winches, at least for now.

That's the straightforward part over.

Here is a picture of the previous winches, which incidentally are incredibly heavy - and almost completely useless, as they don't grip the rope any more at all - even Martin said he couldn't use them.

The bases were very rusty, and really not nice. The wire winch, for the jib furling, just behind the primary winch in the picture, was particularly unstable, moving around just under slight hand pressure.

We decided to get them replaced. Cooney Fabrications, who had done work for us on Sarila before, were asked to quote. Now they did say they were busy and didn't really want the work, but their quote was more than the winches cost!

Plan B was to get a friend to make them. Unfortunately, although he came down from Warwickshire to measure the winch bases himself, and Universal Metre Shed (now Universal Yacht Care) helped with the design, they were made wrong - the holes are in the wrong place, and the angle of the top of the mainsheet winches does not match the primaries. This may be partly down to us asking him to prioritise some work for Cetewayo first - he made the new instrument panel for Cetewayo, as he has access to a laser cutting machine, and Martin wanted to help Universal Yacht Care, who couldn't find anyone to do this locally.

So frustratingly, even though Marelle is now back in the water, we still can't sail her as we are still sorting out the winch bases. Martin has asked Roy, a friend we met at Universal Marina, to take a look, and he is going to fix them for us.

I wanted to remove the wire winch altogether. I had read nasty stories about wire winches breaking people's arms, plus it did not look very nice. Martin didn't really share my opinion on this I don't think, and left it to me to find the equivalent Dyneema rope. I asked Universal Yacht Care for advice, and they said to make sure that the breaking strain was equivalent, but didn't give me any other guidance on size (diameter) of the rope. I checked the YBW forum for information, and found some posts talking about 8mm rope for jib furling, then on the ropelocker site found some Dyneema rope specially designed to replace wire winch wires, complete with a table that listed the breaking strains of wire and Dyneema. Based on this I ordered 24m of 8mm Dynaline rope. Big mistake. Apparently this is way over the top for jib furling rope, and won't fit on the furling drum. Who knew?

Martin took over, after pointing out how ridiculously useless I had been - several times, including to my Mum! - and went and got the right size and type of rope from a local chandlery. Well at least we have an emergency forestay should we ever need one, and the wire winch has gone.

Update May 2012:

At last... we have lovely new winches fitted!!! So exciting. Martin dry-fitted the first one, here it is in all its glory:

The bases had to have their holes filled in and re-drilled (or should that be milled) which Martin got done at a small engineering firm in Swanwick. Owen is fitting them for us, and this involves some teak padding for the mainsheet winches, as those bases don't quite fit against the cockpit sides as snugly as they should, and copious amounts of Sikaflex to stop any water getting underneath. Of course, nothing is ever straightforward, and with the new winch bases' metal being a lot thicker than the previous ones, now the original bolts are too short. We have used temporary ones in some places, but want to get the original bolts lengthened (or at least reuse the heads) as they are lovely and shiny, and unusual in that they have no thread or allen key slot cut into them.

Here comes the 21st century

I wanna dance with Harry Dean

Drive through Texas in a black limousine.

I want a piece of heaven before I die.

I wanna a pair of high heels that catch the lights up on the Ferris wheel, but what I really want I just can't buy.

Here comes the twenty-first century. It's gonna be much better for a girl like me.

- Debbie Harry: I Want That Man

Despite Ben Pester's protestations in his book “Through the Land of Fire” that Marelle was better without too much modern technology, we couldn't resist upgrading her instruments to a full set of Tack Tick, and I got a bit carried away and added a Digital Yacht iAIS to link everything up to my iPad.

To be fair she did already have a Furuno GPS and Icom VHF on board, which we have kept, along with a broken Navtex, and a Seafarer depth sounder and repeater (an ancient thing that beeped incessantly and needed “re-tuning” every 10 seconds it seemed) which we have definitely not kept. Then of course we still have the Electrawind and Electravane wind instruments.

The Tack Tick instruments have a couple of advantages for classic yachts - they are wireless, and believe me there are already enough wires on Marelle, I think she still has wires from every generation of instruments she has carried, including her original B&G instruments - and they are solar powered, sparing the battery power that we think is in a delicate condition, at least on the domestic battery. Another job, another day...

However there is no dedicated package for classic yachts from Tack Tick. The cruising package is not right, as it doesn't include the triducer (combined log/depth/temperature), sensible to minimise the number of holes in your boat, or the bronze housing, essential for wooden hulls. And the racing package is too over the top, at least for Marelle. Martin tried to persuade the Tack Tick people at the London boat show that they should offer a package for the classic yacht fraternity, but to no avail. Too small a market, apparently.

What we ended up with, was the bronze housing, the triducer and wind vane with analogue and dual digital displays, the remote display and NMEA interface, and for fun mainly, and so I can see how well Martin is sailing Marelle, the race compass.

I now know much more than I should about wiring and NMEA.

As ever, nothing is straightforward, and for some reason the hole for the previous log, that we wanted to reuse for the Tack Tick (actually an Airmar) triducer, was mahoosive. No bother, Universal fixed it, very nicely too, and then we discovered it was also at the wrong angle.

Deadrise, or how much the hull slopes at the point where the triducer goes through, is it turns out, quite important for accurate depth readings. Makes sense when you think about it, but why did we have to tell Universal Metre Shed (now called Universal Yacht Care) this, rather than them telling us?

We ended up with a nicely streamlined protrusion on the hull, so that we could be as close to vertical as possible with the triducer.

The triducer has to be connected to the hull transmitter, which needs to be powered, although it does have a battery for back up purposes. It also has to be mounted at least 50cm above the waterline, and not in a cupboard or surrounded by any metal - although with Marelle I did want to put it somewhere reasonably unobtrusive. A further restriction is the length of the cable from the triducer - 3m sounds like a lot, until you have to route it behind and around all sorts of things. I ended up putting the hull transmitter at the forward end of the shelf in the saloon on the starboard side. This has the advantage of being partially hidden by the shelf, and is an easy cable run to the triducer, which is under the saloon table. Running a power cable across to it without taking the interior apart was more challenging. We ended up using a coax cable that was already in place, connected to a B&G(!) wiring box. At some point the wiring on Marelle is going to need serious attention I think.

Next up was the NMEA interface - more requirements here - connect to power, mount on a transverse bulkhead. I have put it next to the switch panel on the chart table, although with this and the hull transmitter I have not screwed them on yet just in case they need to be moved.

Finally the iAIS from Digital Yacht. I connected the power for this to the GPS power output on the Tack Tick NMEA interface, mainly because there was no spare power on the switch panel and I didn't want to disturb too much wiring. I then connected the NMEA input wires to the output from the Tack Tick NMEA interface. Must find some labels at some point, because currently the “Depth” switches on the Tack Tick hull transmitter, and the “Navtex” switches on the Tack Tick NMEA interface and the iAIS.

After a bit of research, I figured out that the Furuno GPS that was already on the boat, contained an NMEA output in the power cable. Checking where this power cable went into the switch panel, sure enough there were two extra wires there. Very carefully, I opened the power cable up where it passed the Tack Tick NMEA interface and pulled out the NMEA cables, and connected them to the GPS inputs on the NMEA interface.

So far, so good.

Everything switches on, and I managed to get the iPad connected to the wifi network created by the Digital Yacht iAIS easily - just going to Settings, Wi-Fi and highlighting the DY... network. There's no security on the network - guess it doesn't need it for the AIS information, but this has interesting implications with connected wireless devices (computers, ipads etc) in a marina.

Even better, using the Digital Yachts free app I can see AIS signals!!! Exciting stuff. I also splashed out on the iNavX chartplotter app, with associated UK charts from X Traverse. Got this to connect up to the iAIS too - after a bit of fiddling - but so far I haven't been able to see the instrument data from Tack Tick in either of the apps.

Really not sure why this is. I guess I need to check the connections and investigate further when I'm next on board - I'll update this post after further testing!

Update

Finally got around to re-testing this, switching everything on carefully and in sequence - first the Tack Tick hull transmitter power, then the Tack Tick NMEA interface power, then the Furuno GPS, then the iAIS, then switching on the Tack Tick instruments themselves via the remote display (you only have to switch one instrument on and it wakes all the rest up). Lastly the iPad - went to Settings, Wi-Fi and highlighted the DY... network. Started up the iNavX app, looked in the TCPIP NMEA screen and woohoo! - here is a lot more NMEA data than before.

 

So far so good. Next to the instruments screen, and hey presto! - here is all the data!!!

For reference here is the NMEA interface with the connections I made. The blue and white wire come from the Furuno GPS, and the green and yellow, and thin red and black, go to the iAIS.

Next I tried seeing what happens if I switched off various things, e.g. the Tack Tick instruments - all performed as expected, i.e. the iNavX just displayed the remaining position and AIS data.

The only thing I can think of that could perhaps have been causing the problems before, is the Location Services setting, which I now have switched off in the iNavX TCPIP NMEA client.

Now off to learn how to use the iNavX plotter!

 

Update June 2012:

After a long period of not using the instruments, I switched on the power to the hull transmitter, and nothing happened – no depth or log reading. I did have a nasty feeling this might happen, as I remembered reading that the hull transmitter contains an internal battery. The Tack Tick website claims that the hull transmitter will power off before its internal battery completely dies, so that it remains rechargable when power is applied later, and recommends to “connect it to volts” for 12 – 24 hours to allow it to recharge. Fingers crossed...