On Friday afternoon I went alone to the V&A marina and paid a visit to Alice and her boat True Blue. What I had expected to be a short visit turned out to be 2 or 3 pleasant hours of conversation in the cockpit the entire crew - Alice, Ann, and Maryanne who recently joined the boat - over refreshments an finger food. We also got a visit from the chap on the next boat who had arrived that morning from Simonstown. It was a lot of fun talking about our common experiences in Hawaii, Port Townsend, and down the West Coast of the USA. Alice is waiting for favorable winds further up the coast before setting off for the Panama Canal via St Helena and the Caribbean. Their destination is Hawaii which will mark the end of their circumnavigation.
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| Port Cable from Mast to Keel Bolt |
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| Starboard Cable from Mast to Keel Bolt |
On Saturday and Sunday I pottered around the boat as I usually do and managed to do several small jobs that I never seemed to have time to do. One satisfying one was the cleaning up of the joint between the heavy cables joining the mast to keel bolts. I installed these cables to pass the electrical energy of a lightning strike to the mast straight through to the ocean below. I was informed in Fremantle that the solid lead keel has the mass and surface area to effectively dissipate the electrical energy.
Because the mast is of aluminum there is an inevitable galvanic corrosion between it and the more noble copper cabling. Periodically I clean up the interface to minimize the electrical resistance at the joints.
There are in fact two more similar cables, connecting the chain plates to other keel bolts. All of the shrouds are joined to these two chainplates so this lightning protection measure should be very effective. Because no aluminum is involved there is no corrosion issue with the chainplate cables
1 comment:
Hope Brenda is healthy by now. Seems you keep working hard Robert.
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