Electronics Fixed, Painting Rutland Tail

Badly Damaged "Lifetag" Board

This morning Daniel showed up at 9 AM as planned and began putting the system together again.  The MOB system was still giving problems and I told him that because I am sailing alone I could do without it.  Nevertheless he opened up the sub panel containing the two MOB switches and found that the wire to one of the switches had corroded off.  That was enough to bring down the Seatalk network.  He said that the switch was bad too, but here was a spare switch on the panel and he proceeded to fix that problem.  While he was working I went to the cockpit and thought about all of the sea water dumped on the instrument panel above the companionway and recalled how the MOB base station was not very well sealed.  I suggested that we open up the base station and when we did we saw that its electronic card had been corroded beyond repair.  The amount of damage suggested that a lot of sea water must have found its way into the unit.  We left the base station mounted but disconnected and we threw the MOB switches at the panel in the cabin and found that it was still corrupting the Seatalk network, so I asked Daniel to disconnect all the wires to those switches because otherwise it would be a trap for the future. With the toggle switches and the base station isolated the Seatalk network functioned properly and the boat once again had its full instrumentation, including the autopilot ( but not the MOB system).

It's just as well that I didn't beat myself up all night about missing that MOB switch as the source of the problems.  Yes, it caused a waste of time, but at least we identified and neutralized a major problem that would have tripped me up sooner or later.

Regarding the Raymarine “Lifetag” MOB system, the unit that I've got has two limitations that working together present a major problem.  First, its range is limited.  We originally installed the base station inside the cabin near the mast trying to minimize the maximum distance that the signal would have to cover between our bracelets and the base station.  It is the loss of signal from a bracelet that triggers off the MOB alarm.  Unfortunately we found that anyone working at the bow would sooner or later set off the MOB alarm.  Similarly, occasionally someone steering the boat would set it off.  It was too disruptive to have sleepy crew regularly woken up with these false alarms.

I reluctantly moved the base station to the companionway instrument panel knowing that there was a second limitation: the base station was not in a waterproof case and was obviously not designed to be mounted above deck.  Nevertheless the base station held up OK and the system worked very well – until the wet run to the Horn. 

When I return to Australia I'll probably get another Lifetag system, without bracelets if possible because after all it could save a life.  I will fit a protective plastic cover over it, sealed with Silicone.

It was a clear and sunny day so in the afternoon I decided to bring down the tail of the Rutland wind charger so that I could wire brush the loose paint and rust, sand paper it, then put on a coat of white high gloss metal primer that I had purchased a few days earlier.  (The man at the paint shop insisted that the one paint served as primer and top coat.)  I set myself up at the barbecue area next to the shower rooms and after 2 hours I had the first coat laid.  The paint seemed to be very, very good.  I'll try to lay down 2 more coats (8 hours between coats) tomorrow, if possible.  I don't know if I'll ever get the Rutland working again, but I don't want to prejudice the outcome by allowing the tail to be destroyed by corrosion.

I plan to visit Carlos on Monday at 10 AM to settle the account for the repair work.  Tomorrow I'll have a good look at the weather forecast with a view to departing for Brazil on maybe Wednesday.