Anchor light and stuff..

...and on the seventh day there was light, and the light was jolly bloody damn good, and Steve did a little dance round the boat...

...that'll do then...

Today was the day for removing the old mast head fitting.. my reader may remember that when Rod the Mod jumped on board last year with all the feline grace of a young Nureyev (not..) for the annual event that is the mast raising, he managed to dislodge the mast from the crutch, so that it fell and bounced on the transom board, which was enough to vibrate the fitting below and snap the lower left corner off - unfortunately the lower left corner was holding my brand new Windex, so the whole lot went to the bottom of the harbour (and no despite a lot of magnet fishing I never did get it back)

I first put that fitting together in 2015 (see here [clicky]) and while the initial idea that it would be corrosion proof, and an easier construction than metal is sound, what I hadn't accounted for is that HDPE simply wasn't strong enough...  so with new Windex bought, a stronger solution was required..

I originally bought a square of  aluminium plate for the job in 3mm, but the HDPE plate it was sitting on was very small, and I was thinking it could be smaller, to provide less of a resting spot for the local bird population, so in the end I found some aluminium bar in the spares box and used that..

Having disconnected and dismantled the old one I clamped old base to the bar in a vice, drilled the holes in the same places, added another for the windex on an extremity, and then basically just re-assembled...

It is on straight - trust me..  

...and then I thought, 'well I've done this much how about finishing off the wiring?'...  ha...  that took considerably longer...   first job was to get some power to the bottom of the mast where the deck plug for the light was, a long wire from the batter to the plug wasn't cutting the mustard - no light..

I need a proper socket I thought - I know I'll use the the one from the deck fitting - but nothing sold as "marine" is every truly marine proof, so first job was to disassemble completely the deck plug as the socket - this bit =>

...was very definitely not wanting to come out..  in the end a soft wood plug and two whacks from underneath with a big hammer got that out.  Wires connected and run back to the battery, plugged in to the plug on the mast, nothing...

Test voltage at the socket - good - disassemble the plug and test the voltage the other side of the plug - nothing...  gah...  clean up the verdigris off the prongs, plug in, test again, we have power... walk to the top of the mast, and tad dah...

Result...!

Feed wires through the deck from the cabin - double secure the wires in the socket fitting (I don't want to have to do this again for a while) - refit the socket within the metal housing (with a smear of grease to help removal in the event I need to do it again, refit the deck fitting, and then move to the cabin....  a long time ago I came up with what I hoped was a cunning plan to save wiring, which was to use the negative from the forward cabin light as a common negative...

The two holes are to the deck power fitting - the negative I used is on the cabin strip light....

...used one of these again for the negative.. (when it comes time to fit the deck level nav lights, I'll do the same again, but with three or four separate negatives I'll probably fit a small bus bar somewhere unobtrusive)

Female Spade Terminal with Piggy Back Male...  apparently...   

..so all I needed to do was run the positive through the cabin, connect into the switch box, flick the light and then go on deck to have a look-see...

...that'll do nicely.... 

At which point I had to break for the day in order to get to the supermarket before it closed...  just to finish this off, we need a little cable clean up, amalgamating tape for the joints, and I'm thinking I'll give the glass (plastic) on the light a clean as it's a little green, but otherwise job done...

Launch is in 5 weeks...  and I THINK I'm in control....