The radar saga continues - Nelsons Dockyard, Antigua 7 - 15 Jan 202

Tashi Delek
Mike & Carol Kefford
Sun 15 Jan 2012 22:46

17:00.480N 061:45.851W

 

Just to recap......

 

Lanzarotte November.  New chartplotter card inserted.  Not only does it not have any of the charts on that it is supposed to but it bends two pins.  (Yes, of course we put it in carefully!)  Technician straightens pins successfully.  Plotter does not work.  Entire unit taken away so that card reader component can be replaced.  Replacement flown in from Spain.  Unit doesn’t work.  Unit opened and burnt out component on motherboard found.  This is what happens when pins touch.  New motherboard ordered from Spain.  We pay for express delivery.   It is not delivered.  It comes the following day.  We are ready to go and frustrated but have over two weeks of slack in our timetable so not too much of a problem.

 

New stuff fitted, chartplotter plugged back in, off we go.

 

Carol likes the radar a lot and enjoys having a ‘look’ over the horizon to see what is out there, plotting where ships are and what they are doing and looking out for squalls.  Radar on.  Nothing.  We had had a spot of trouble getting the radar cable to reconnect so assumed that was the problem and investigated.  It seemed properly on so we gave up and did without.

 

Morning of our arrival in the Cape Verdes we decide to put the engine on and motor for a few hours to ensure we arrived in daylight and didn’t have to wander about outside the harbour all night waiting for dawn.  Plus Kit, Moyra and Michael were already there and we were several days late anyway. 

 

Fishing net on propeller and the start of that palaver.

 

Broken pin found on radar connector.  Raymarine repair chap confident can fix within the day then vanishes for two days.  On return her refits it and breaks both the repaired pin and another one.

 

Radar not really essential for the crossing so we decide to go.  We go.  Loud judder as we leave the harbour, back in and damage to cutlass bearing found.  Several more days.

 

We had established contact with the Raymarine team in Antigua; the best there is according to the Raymarine technical help desk in Portsmouth.  They ordered the new part for the radar.

 

We arrived.  They book us in for Jan 3rd.  We move into the dockyard on the 2nd.  The technician reports in sick at 10am on the 3rd.  Call us cynical old has-beens but this being the first day back at work after New Year we are a tad suspicious and cross.  We go off to St Barts, we come back.

 

Cap Green, referred to in the pilot guide as ‘the legendary Cap Greene’ has been in Antigua repairing radars for 40 years.  He was our man this time so our spirits lifted.

 

He goes up the mast to take the lid off the radar dome and take a look.....

 

 

Lid refuses to come off.  Bolts apparently not greased correctly when radar fitted so have corroded.

 

Entire radar dome and fitting removed and brought down.  Taken to workshop along with the chartplotter unit.  All works perfectly.  Cable must be the problem.  That is the thick, inflexible cable that goes from the steering column where the chartplotter sits, along the inside of the boat and up the mast..........  Back up the mast to test the continuity of each of the wires that make up the cable.  All well, and so it went on for hours.  Eventually by slow process of elimination it seems that the problem is in the socket attached to the cable.  That is the socket that is factory fitted to the cable and has to be ordered, along with a new cable.  As part of the testing procedure Cap had put a junction box at the bottom of the mast so at least it is now only the bit from the mast to the steering column.

 

Cap was indeed a legend.  He spent hours up the mast in the heat, worked over a weekend and treated the problem as though it was happening on his own boat. 

 

 

 

We will return when the new cable arrives. 

 

So, the dud card caused a problem with the chartplotter.  Fixing that caused a problem with the radar connector with broken pins at the chartplotter end.  If we had left Lanzarotte on time we would not have picked up the fishing net.  So, it could be argued that the root cause of everything has been a dud card.  Aaaagh.