Remote control furling successfully installed

Thursday 12 December: St. Augustine FL day 6: Remote control furling installed and working, after a hiccup.

After our late and disturbed night we don’t wake up till 9am! I have an important call with our financial advisor at 10am, but first I can’t wait to try the new remote control. So out I go onto deck and press the “outhaul IN” button. Nothing. Press other buttons, also nothing. I try the backup remote control. Still nothing. Damn, bugger, blast! Below I do the same thing, but this time standing right next to the receivers which I installed yesterday. I can clearly hear relays clicking but no action in the hydraulics. Thankfully, without the remote control, the furling is still working via the buttons on the pedestal. At least that’s something. Hence a quick “WTF” email is sent to the supplier before my call to Dubai.

Later, I again get into the electrics with my multimeter and discover, I’m pretty sure, that the thing has been wired backwards. Not by me, but by the supplier. So I take one channel, the “outhaul IN” channel, and wire it as I believe to be correct. And hey-ho the remote controller works!
As a result, the rest of the day is again crouched below the mid cabin berth, re-wiring the installation … and gently cursing as I do. Boat maintenance: 2 steps forward, 1 step backwards every time, or so it seems. At 3pm I’m done (or rather, re-done) and I try the remotes again. This time things work perfectly as expected. Pffff, marine suppliers, who needs them, eh? On the other hand, what would we do without them?

Meanwhile Oana has made bread and gorges on yet another book. How does she read so fast I wonder? (I could do with putting a big resistor in her circuit, to slow her down!) And later she cooks another of her delightful dishes for dinner and we open a bottle of the red Italian wine to celebrate the apparent UK election result (thank goodness the country saw sense and didn’t vote for Mr. Corbyn). The wine is one of the 6 bottles we “found” in Herrington Harbour. This one is a 2006 vintage. The cork came out in bits but the wine tasted good. Not great, but good enough. Brilliant for a freebie!

More chilling in the evening. It’s damp and rainy outside so zero desire to go ashore. We instead enjoy nice hot showers after a generator recharge again today.
As we sit comfortably in the saloon discussing the election results, we hear a weird sound, like somebody threw a bucket of sand over the deck. When I poke my head out, I see a big splatter of bird poop all over the cockpit tent and the windscreen. When deck lights come on, the splatter is revealed in all its splendor: bird poop absolutely everywhere. Deck hose and deck flush on, and scrubbing starts again. It surely doesn’t come off easily. And just as I finish, I notice a huge bird sitting on the spreader. I shook it off, and as it flies off, it dumps another load of poop on the aft deck and all over the dinghy. Bugger! Just what do these birds eat? Scrub and more scrub till all is clean again. Bloody birds…

The rest of the evening is spent looking at charts and reading through the pilot books, making plans where to stop next.