Snakes and birds...

After we returned from our vacation and the boat sat a few days in its dock I noticed that the seagulls were thinking that our classic boat is a nice place to have a snack and crap all over it.. Time to take counter measures.

I thought about getting some bright strands of fabric or something similar, but instead remembered that birds are naturally afraid of snakes. So I got myself a snake.

So far it has worked, the boat is clean and no seagulls are hanging around there no more. Make sure that you attach the snake so that it doesn't runaway. Or rather, fly away...

Snap davits and how to install them totally against the manuals recommendations.

I ordered my parts that you are supposed to glue to the inflatable but sadly they were not delivered before the start of my summer vacation, even after that TNT messed the delivery so my package was delayed for one whole week. Because of the delay I was forced to do the gluing in water and naturally near sunset. 

Below is a snap of the stands that attach to small brackets in the main boat and in the dinghy. They are extremely handy and easy to use. 

Here we have the view from the top. The hinges are attached to the transom and the pads and stainless parts work nicely together. Unfortunately I needed to move the "horns" closer to each other, thus making excess holes to the transom. The larger rope is my lowering and raising rope. It extremely easy to maneuver the dinghy, one hand is enough.

On the lower left corner you can see that there is enough clearance for my anchor winch to work perfectly, so far I have used the dinghy once to re-position my anchor. Picked up the anchor roved to a better spot and dropped it, after small wait I used my anchor winch remote to pull the excess line and make my anchor nice and tight.. nice..

The added bonus of having the dinghy stationary when my daughters are climbing in and out of it is also nice. All it takes is a "snap" and you are secured.

The downside is below. It's not exactly pretty nor is it the most convenient when your buoy line goes from the cleat and rubs against the dinghy. So far I have I have just lowered the dinghy to the water after we have moored the boat, not that big of a job, but still...

Brand new VHF...

After I got my VHF license and my new MMSI number it was time to check if it would be possible to get the unit reprogrammed without sending it to Sweden... It wasn't.. So off to the shops.

After extensive googling and thinking what kind of unit I would need I decided to put all bets in safety. So I got the "new" model form Standard horizon that has the built in GPS. In the previous system we had the DSC gps signal coming from the plotter and this setup required both the VHF and plotter to be on and since the connection was with a very small wire (that had previously already detached itself) the inbuilt GPS seemed like a good bet.

The EXPLORER GPS (GX1700) 

The installation was a breeze, all that was needed was to cut the original hole slightly larger to get the new unit fit. It was good change to get my multitool out and do some creative cutting. Naturally it was again around 22:00 hours and the sound attracted some attention...

There we have it. New unit installed, no old NMEA spec wires to connect nothing but simplicity and the unit works like a charm. The biggest difference is that when compared to the old is that this unit does not feel like a toy...