The Balearan weather gods have been forgiving lately. But the day has come the they decided the island needs more water from above. Perhaps in an attempt to balance out all the water surrounding the island?
Author: rikv
Mast head unit
Our old mast head unit failed.
So we bought a new one which is backwards compatible. Sadly it was only compatible with the previous model in the B&G series. Not with the last century kit the we have fitted in the Ocean Wolf.
Ocean Wolf has a B&G H3000 cpu unit. Once upon a time that was a fancy piece of advanced technology, now its vintage and worthy of a place in the maritime history books as the successor of the sextant. I.e. the B&G H3000 works with the analog B&G MHU 213 wind sensor only. Not with the 508. Not with the 608. Its signals pre-date NMEA and require the H3000 to digitize them and to send them onwards the the rest of the instrumentation.
Hidden in the bowels of the navigators cabinet:
So the ‘wind sensor’ model 608 was returned to the shop although it looks remarkably similar to the old mast head unit model 213:
As luck has it the older model can still be found new. Although getting it delivered quickly proved to be a challenge. Our advanced google skills paid of: some emails and phone calls later we found a supplier on the island that managed to get it to us within a few days. (For reasons not fully understood the regular B&G dealer could only deliver in 14 days. Go figure).
The theory states that we merely need to connect our new cable to the MHU213 and hook up the color coded cables to the little patch panel beneath the mast foot. That should connect it to the H3000.
The Hamann is working!
After we stared at the wiring connected to the hamann pump we invited someone with secret hamann voodoo skills to have a look at it.
After some troubleshooting he found the problem. The sensor in the black water tank wasn’t giving a ‘tank full’ signal.
It turned out that it wasn’t wired correctly. Perhaps it never was?! We wonder if the previous owner ever had the hamann working in automatic mode.
After several days with the Hamann operational we confirmed that the float sensor gives the required signals:
- Tank getting full, time for Hamann to start.
- Tank level low, time for Hamann to take a break.
- Tank full
That last one is important in order to avoid overflowing the black water tank. We found out by forgetting to put the Hamann in the automatic mode such that it didn’t start when the sensor gave the signal. On the bright side we can confirm that the related alarm signal is loud and clear 🙂
Segatron autopilot
On a short motoring trip we managed to correct a 15 degree deviation that the trusty old segatron autopilot applied to the set course.
So now it does what it is supposed to and stears into the direction specified.
Prepwork for new rigging
The rigging is in the works and will be put in place soon.
That means Ocean Wolf needs a touch of paint here and there.
The awl grip system seems to be the best. Although to the novice it is also a mighty complicate layer cake of primers, anti rust, filler, top coat, etc. All are some sort of epoxy that needs to be mixed from two components in various ratios. Oh, and one layer of each flavour isn’t enough, so multiple need to be applied with sanding before each layer.
Our current marina has an ‘awl grip application center’. I imagine this is ran by experts in white lab coats that finished a doctorate in advanced paint mixing and application.
That said, once properly applied the awl grip promises to keep the ship protected against the elements for the foreseeable future.
Hamann under repair – Water treatment
The hamann should trigger the sewage pump to run, but it doesn’t.
I.e. the pump works, but not when instructed by the hamann. There is mysterious wiring via the hamann/off/manual switch and some relays that is causing us headaches. It might never have worked properly, so we try to reverse engineer what it should do.
