Compass Rose

We towed Compass Rose up to Colins' house to prepare her for the 2008 season. The work that we did today was:

• Welded the skeg back on;
• Fitted the Forward Looking Sonar (FLS);
• Fitted the Chartplotter;
• Gleneral cleanup

Welding the skeg back on:

Ronnie straightened out the piece of skeg that had been bent at the end of last summer. We welded this back on using the MIG welder with alloy wire and CO2 gas. It was then ground down to the correct profile and painted with black smooth Hammerite paint.

Fitting the Forward Looking Sonar:

We had purchased an EchoPilot FLS Bronze forward looking sonar at the ExCel London boat show in January. Ronnie made some mahogany spacers that were profiled to the shape of the hull. These would be used to ensure that the transducer was held in the proper position.

We drilled a 45mm hole through the hull just in front of the engine. The spacers were well covered with sealant and the plastic through hull fitting attached. When then tried to fit the transducer we found that the plastic fitting was about 2mm short to the transducer would not tighten in fully. This was solved by sanding 2mm off the plastic fitting nut.

We then drilled a 74mm hole in the dashboard and fitted the display unit.

Fitting the Chartplotter:

At the boat show we also purchased a Garmin GPSMAP 450 chartplotter. This was to be fitted above the dashboard.

The top of the dashboard on Compass Rose has a number of curves, this meant that the bracket for the chartplotter would not fit properly. Ronnie made another spacer from mahogany, this time the bottom of the spacer was profiled to the curves of the dashboard and the top of the spacer was matched to the chartplotter bracket.

Ronnie then gave Compass Rose a good clean inside with warm soapy water.