Kaimusailing

The problem was that transferring photos required using a USB cable, which wasn’t a problem with the camera, but using the cell phone now was different. The camera had its one task, to transfer photos, so it communicated with the computer and even started up the Canon photo program that automatically stored all the photos by date in their own folders in the pictures folder on the computer. The cell phone, however, is more of a busy-body, it wants to be in a “charge only” mode, but the modes we want are “media transfer” or “internet tether”. It has trouble going along with our wants, so it ends up in a wrong mode and won’t switch to another mode no matter what we do. Then it WILL switch unexpectedly, so if it does go into a mode you can use, then take advantage before it changes its mind.
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I really needed to get back to a simple camera that stored pictures on an SD card. The card can be whipped out of the camera and slipped into the SD card slot on the computer, and photo transfer is then just a drag and drop.
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I searched on the internet for a cheap point and shoot camera and set my auction sniping program at a max of $35, which the product sold at, but not to me. Someone else had hit 35 before me, and if I had hit it first, they probably would have gone to 36. I tried again. There was a category of Bridge Cameras, which was a new term to me, and most of the cameras were in the hundreds of dollars range, but one was only about 50 bucks, it was a Canon, a good brand, and it used SD cards. I ended up getting it for $73, more than I wanted to spend. I did some research and Bridge Camera is what we used to call Prosumer, a camera that is professional looking, but made of cheaper materials and lacking in some of the professional functions. I would be paying about half of what I paid last year for a 30D and not getting interchangeable lens function, and having a smaller image chip. Of course it was not a professional camera, at that price, but it had a lot of nice features. Digital Photography Review did not review it in detail, which is an indication of how far below the professional standard it is. I’m expecting only to get better photos than the cell phone and an easier way to get them transferred to the computer.
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It was time to resume the restoration of the galley. The plywood piece of the sole had been cut out and shaped and I had already mistakenly stepped on it and fallen into the bilge. Now I had to make the parts that fit around it. The oak flooring that was overlaid on the sole had come apart and I had a large piece of it to fit over the outboard half of the galley sole. The stainless staples that fastened it now had to be cut off and the underside of the flooring lightly sanded to create a fresh surface to glue it down. The flooring is the same shape as the plywood that underlies the sole, additional pieces of 1X2 stock provide an edge or lip to support the deck plates that fit into the sole and allow access to the bilge spaces. These pieces of 1X2 were cut and clamped together with the plywood piece and the flooring and gradually it all came together, now it just needed gluing.
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In the pilothouse the hole in the sole that the freezer had sat in needed to be filled with a large deck plate, about 2 feet square. A piece was roughly cut slightly oversize, then marked for further cutting with the multitool with halfmoon blade. This takes longer than the circular saw, but it is much more precise. Additional pieces of 1X2 were cut to make stiffeners that would be glued to the bottom of the deck plate.
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Gluing would take forever in the now chilly temperatures. A cold front had brought a lot of rain, high winds, and chilly weather. It was just above freezing in the morning. The small propane space heater was put in the galley to warm it up, and the warm air would also drift into the pilothouse.
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The oak flooring in the pilothouse had warped when seawater inundated it and now it was sectioned a bit with the halfmoon blade, shaped with the flap disk, and then clamped down and tested for fit with the new deckplate. When all was ready for gluing, a first primer coat of raw epoxy was brushed onto gluing surfaces as well as any surfaces that would be inaccessible after gluing, like the underside of the plywood repair piece for the galley sole. There was a crack in the bilge in the galley that was vacuumed dry with the wet/dry vacuum, then flooded with alcohol to absorb any remaining moisture, then vacuumed dry again.
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A second primer coat was applied (recommended by Russell Brown) and the remaining epoxy was thickened with silica and applied to the gluing surfaces. The oak flooring in the pilothouse sole was clamped and a round plug with a flange was hammered into the hole left over from the Frigoboat keel cooler, which had been removed. The deck plate was glued up with its stiffener pieces, the galley plywood piece was glued in along with the 1X2 flanges for its deck plates. The keel crack got the same raw epoxy treatment followed by thickened epoxy. There was a little thickened epoxy left over, it was thickened further and scraped into the remaining voids of the galley planking repair on the outside of the hull.
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The gluing took longer than expected and was finishing up when the sun started to set. The next morning was very cold and I was surprised to see the deck plate which had been left outside had its epoxy set. It was not fully cured, but dry to the touch. A fingernail could make a dent in the surface. In the galley there was a mismatch where the plywood repair piece met the original plywood of the sole. It was a little high on one end and needed the epoxy seam to be cut with the multitool, then reglued. I was trying to pry it when it gave way and the whole thing had to be reglued.
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The young Russian was on board his vessel and holding up the seacock he had been waiting 23 days for thanks to the USPS. I asked if any of my shipments had come in and he replied that a someone brought his to him, so I set off to the boatyard office where mail and packages were received. I had two boxes there when I had only expected one.
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One was a compass shipped all the way from Maine taking about a week. Thanks, USPS. The other was a solar panel monitor from Chicago that arrived in just a few days. Thanks again, USPS. Sometimes they screw up badly and a lot of the time they deliver the mail with no delay, even with a Federal holiday.
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The compass was very nice, just a bit smaller than the original. It will go on the on deck helm station.
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The solar panel monitor was something that I caught a glimpse of while surfing eBay looking for solar charge controllers. I had looked for another of the simple and cheap Sunsei controllers that I was using and the monitor popped up, made for those Sunsei controllers, so I bought it for use with the existing controller in the port hull. The monitor gives battery voltage and solar charge current. I quickly looked at the installation instructions and realized I could use it with any charge controller.
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One of the contractors who was looking for work in the boatyard came over and said he was going to be working installing solar panels and using equipment like what I was holding in my hand. Oh, I said I had built a couple for my electrical panel and had the parts to build another one, but this one looked so nice and was only $23 bucks on eBay. He asked, “You built one of these?”, and I quickly drew a schematic on a page of my crossword puzzle book showing him how simple it was and how it worked. When I added an additional set of terminals on the switch I drew, for changing the scale of the meter, he was lost. He did not know simple current measurement.
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Next I was invited to go shopping with a couple from the yard along with the young Russian. I quickly changed from dirty dusty epoxy stained clothes to something more acceptable to Walmart. We brought our empty propane cylinders to be refilled. I used my cell phone to log onto eBay and ordered another of the solar monitors and replied to the seller how happy I was with them.
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At the end of the day I had restocked the larder, restocked the propane, but had made no progress regluing the galley.