Tackle furling buttons on the pedestal

Thursday 23 Apr, KY day 40: Busy day today…. relatively speaking. Lots to write about, so you readers won’t get my usual infill waffle today.
As forecast the wind is up again. It will be windy for next 3-4 days, so the over boom shade is reluctantly removed again. At least we are now completely enclosed with the new bimini side-shades. And we have the added bonus of re-exposing the new solar array on the bimini. Let the battery charging begin!

Then it’s a trip to the supermarket complete with 2 bags of laundry. We’ve found a place that is 5 mins walk away, where they wash and fold. Officially, they are only open to clean medical staff clothing but they agree to quickly do ours as long as we don’t tell any one! Today the supermarket queue line was the shortest yet, and by the time I get back from the laundry Oana is already half way around the shop. We really try to buy the minimum today in an effort to get below $100 for once. But again we fail at $111. I think even if we only buy milk and bread it will still be over $100! It’s kind of become a game for us now. Having said that, this month’s expenditure will be our lowest EVER, so we are not complaining. If this is repeating for all those on lock-down, it’s not difficult to gauge the overall commercial impact of this crisis.

Once back on the boat, it’s round 2 (ding-ding) with the coffee maker fight. Yes, I fixed the lower leak yesterday but now it’s pissing out the top of the machine! 🙁 Sadly, this time I’m beaten. It’s clearly a worn out seal deep in the mechanism that I can’t get to, so we resign to the fact that coffee needs to be made over the sink from now on… until Oana gets her new Dolce Gusto machine. Looks like I’m beaten on that one too!

At 1pm we get the awaited call from DHL. Oana’s beauty products (ordered a week ago) have arrived from UK. I’m convinced that she doesn’t need anything to further beautify her, but it’s a bit like her telling me I don’t need more spare parts for Cloudy! Just joking here – it’s so rare that she buys anything for herself, I actually love it when she does. I bet there won’t be many guys out there that say that eh?
DHL wants me to come to customs office to get the package. But at the same time I have to pick up the laundry before they close at 2:30pm. So it’s a mad rush ashore to get the laundry then back in the dinghy and zoom up to the port where customs is. I don’t think I’ve ever been so fast in the dinghy … oooh it gets a bit dangerously twitchy at that speed – or am I just getting old?
Mr. DHL is already waiting for me and asks for $18 clearance fees. What? I ask. We recently received UPS and FedEx packages with no such charges. Classic DHL if you ask me. They hardly ever deliver on time internationally and always seem to try to squeeze extra out of you. I reluctantly agree and we go inside to customs to clear it. But when they discover it’s beauty products and not ship (boat) parts, the usual “vessel in transit” doesn’t work and they say duty is due. So off drives Mr. DHL, along with the package, to calculate the duty. Unfortunately, Oana won’t be getting her treat today after all, and I feel bad returning empty handed.

Next project on the list of jobs is the button on the pedestal for “mainsail OUT” which stopped working several weeks ago. Luckily, now that we have the remote control furling system, this failure did not cause us any problem. Hence it got postponed till now. To get inside the pedestal is no easy task. It’s the one technical place on the boat where I have not yet ventured, so while I have trepidation to open it up, it’s also a place I want to conquer. Like a lot of things with Hallberg-Rassy, removing the panel screws does nothing. The panel is also very sealed watertight using their non-drying mastic. It takes a knife and a lot of gentle persuading to pry the delicately thin perspex panel away from the pedestal body. Once finally separated it’s a mess of gooey mastic which all needs to be cleaned off. White-spirit is the only substance that removes it with any ease. I’ll have to come up with a different method to reseal it because going forward I want to have much easier access to all the important electrics that are under this panel.

Once cleaned, I’m presented with a very neat but extensive bundle of wires and connections to the 18 switches and buttons that are mounted on the panel. And of course, the switch in question is right in the middle of it all! But once removed and tested, the damned switch works perfectly, so the problem was not this switch after all! It means it must be the connection in the EmpirBus switching box below. Why didn’t I try that first? I curse to myself. And sure enough, once I disconnect and reconnect the wire below decks, it all works perfectly!
Still, there is a silver lining to this exploration because I find 3 other switches in the panel where the wires are only just hanging on by 1 or 2 strands. So I take the opportunity to painstakingly go through them all and renew any weak looking connections.
I also discover several of the buttons rubber seals are failing. I will buy some new ones from HR-Parts. So far it looks like zero water has managed to get into the panel over 12 years of exposure, and I’m very keen to keep it like that.

By 9pm, head torch on, the panel and connections are all cleaned, checked and looking like new again. Tomorrow I’ll work out how I’m going to re-seal it.

No real news from shore-side today. No new Covid-19 results apparently. Even the police report didn’t have any juicy bits worth mentioning.