Vanishing and sanding

Not much been happening lately that justifies a blog entry in its own right. Down at the boat a couple of times in the past week and the cabin bilge is now dry as a bone even after the rain we have had. The Starboard door has been offered up and fits a treat. Both doors and tops have had all the recesses for locks catches and hinges cut out and are now in the process of being thoroughly varnished before all the door furniture is fitted.

Each item is having 3 coats of varnish before assembly and will then be a final coat just to seal everything in. (possibly 2 if the weather holds) I don’t want the wood turning grey where the varnish has been missed as at present.

Clearing up after a sanding session I had to wonder if I’d got enough sanders - not to mention the final rub down is by hand.

Also spent a couple of days down at Woolsthorpe depot tidying up ready for the GCS discovery day. Popped down on Sunday whilst waiting for the varnish to dry yet again and was surprised by the number of people there. The boat trips were fully booked and there were plenty of activities for both kids and adults. Had a quick coffee and bought a good wide chisel that will be useful when cutting hinge rebates.

Going through the BMEA code of practice if found the following:-

3.11.3

An a.c. circuit shall not be contained in the same wiring system as a d.c. circuit,

unless one of the following methods of separation is used.

a) For a multicore cable or cord, the cores of the a.c. circuit are separated from the cores of

the d.c. circuit by an earthed metal screen of equivalent current-carrying capacity to that

of the largest core of the a.c. circuit.

b) The cables are insulated for their system voltage and installed in a separate compartment

of a cable ducting or trunking system.

c) The cables are installed on a tray or ladder where physical separation is provided by a

partition.

d) A separate conduit, sheathing or trunking system is used.

e) The a.c. and d.c. conductors are fixed directly to a surface and separated by at

least 100 mm.

It could be argued that using ‘arctic blue’ which is basically a flex complies with part d) but I am inclined to think it falls foul of part a). Anyway me being me and not wanting to fall foul of any regulation and to know in my own mind that everything is as safe as it can be, I have purchased 30m of flexible conduit, junction boxes, mountings etc. to run the 240V cable alongside the 12V and not all in the same loom as it is now.

Spent a few evenings working out what cable sizes I need for each item in the rewiring rather than just get a job lot of 65/30 (4.5mm) and also decided to upgrade the battery leads to 50mm as opposed to 35mm, that was a pain in the pocket because apart from the engine there is the bow thruster and winch to replace but they have got to go because they are all blue and brown as well. All cables ordered in red and black, with orange white and purple being used for gauge sensors.