Install bilge pump siren

Thursday 30-Dec, Marathon Key, cruising day 33: Decisions on moving. Phone dramas. Work inside pedestal. But mostly Covid patient is bored already.

Covid patient update: I’m fine, thanks! And Oana still not showing symptoms. I slept like a log, as usual, but did wake up feeling a bit groggier than normal. And after my first paracetamol Captain Glen is back to his old self.

Our first debate of the morning is when to move to West Palm. The anchorage here is secure with tranquil water but we are not overly enamored with our surroundings. Blue sky is nice, but our neighbors with non-stop generators and our other neighbors, the no-see-ums, are annoying us. Anchored in safe but open water in Key West sounds more appealing. But on a study of the anchorages there and reading all the comments on active captain, we conclude the holding is bad, the quality of neighbors will be no better, maybe even worse and the final nail is the weather front coming through on Monday. I just cannot see where we can be safely anchored there in consideration of the winds and how they will shift. So conclusion is to stay put here. Better the devil you know sometimes.

This morning we receive an expected, but not welcome, email from our UK phone provider, Three. For 5 years we have enjoyed their “feel at home” contract where for 2 months a year you can use the phone in up to 55 other countries and not get charged anything extra. In broad terms that meant we had 12 GB of data and free calls to the UK each month for just GBP 9.00 per month. Great deal. Officially, if out of the UK for more than 2 months, your phone line would get cut. But they never enforced it, until now. Now they say we have “exceeded their fair use Policy” and unless we return to the UK before 10th-January, the phone will be suspended. Damn.
Actually, it’s not a big deal because Mexico was not one of the “feel at home” countries. But, in this modern (frinking stupid) world of IT security, so many things now need “2-step verification”. Where they send you a text for login. Important things like banks, YouTube, Google etc. So if we lose our phone number we lose these kind of accesses. Clearly these institutions have no clue of the IT challenges facing poor people cruising on a yacht in paradise!
Anyway, I make a call to Three but they are totally inflexible. I’m prepared to pay for texts and calls but they are firm. The line will be cut January 10th. Oh … and I still will have to pay the monthly fee until the contract runs out in June 2023 ☹ We have screwed Three for 5 years, but now is clearly payback time. And I can feel them tugging hard on my short’n’curlies!

The rest of our morning goes pretty fast. Mostly reading in the cockpit in the lovely shade and light cooling breeze. But by the afternoon I’m getting itchy feet. Enough of lounging around pretending to be ill. I gotta do something. I decide that something is to complete my work on the pedestal electrics. During the yard refit I had completely rewired all the buttons on the steering pedestal and added a dimmer switch for the button back-lights and a USB outlet. And in the process, I discovered the emergency bilge pump siren, a tiny electronic device, had a terminal leg broken. So I had ordered a new one from HR-Parts at the massive cost of Euro 4. But, on shipment from Sweden it had escaped the package along with the new turnbuckles. I now have a replacement for the replacement that actually arrived OK this time. I just need to install it. Also, one of the furling buttons is no longer working and needed attention.

It’s a bit of a faff to get access into the pedestal. The wheel needs to come off and the Raymarine autohelms controls removed before I can actually open the panel. But having done this a few times it’s now all routine with no guesswork and I soon have the wires ready to solder onto the new alarm.
Now I always used to consider myself pretty good at soldering. But for some reason I just cannot make friends with these small soldering irons powered by lighter fuel. They seem to get hot enough to melt solder, but for some reason I always struggle to get good heat transfer to the wire. And usually, the wire insultation starts melting before I can get the solder to “take”. I have 3 such soldering irons and all seem to give me grief. I must buy myself a decent 240 VAC iron when next in Europe.
But after a bit of frustration, I do make the connections OK and the alarm bursts into life with the emergency pump switched on.
As for the furling button, a few good squirts of contact cleaner sorts that out. It does seem that since we have been using the remote control for furling and these pedestal buttons now get little use, they do have contact problems after a while. I guess like all buttons (even mine!) they need pressing once in a while to keep them on-their-toes!

This evening we are armed ready for the influx of no-see-ums. Just before sunset we light a coil in the cockpit and let the smoke gently drift through. And that did it. No buzzing in our ears and no nibbling. No even Oana, who is clearly more nibbleable than me 😊