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Connecting the dots

Ocean Wolf has electronics from yesteryear. Let’s say it sports several generations of legacy navigation equipment.
Some of the legacy B&G kit has recently been upgraded. There is now a colorful multifunction display with a NMEA 2000 backbone.
Thus the next challenge was to make the Raymarine plotters work together with the new B&G kit.
One challenge was to figure out how to connect these physically into the NMEA 2000 network. The much larger challenge was to arrange for the required cable to make it all the way through the postal service and onto the ship. It turns out that it’s much easier for the local postal company to return items to sender once at smelling distance from its final destination than to actually deliver at the indicated birth.
Eventually it worked out.
The B&G now shows the course over ground and has an indicator for the direction of the nearest way point as received via the Ray Marine plotter.


Ray marine plotter view

This looks promising.

Pre-Xmas challenge

Shortly before xmas Ocean Wolf decided to throw its crew a little challenge. The toilet vacuum pumps demanded emergency maintenance.
The Dometic Sealand pump for the port cabin failed to keep vacuum. Given its location behind the pump for the port cabin we decided to give them both a clean and replace the duckbill valves and the ‘plungers’. It was a shitty job but turned out well.
It also inspired the creation of a detailed spares inventory such that it’ll be easier to find the required spares next time around.