QuietDolphin

Spring has finally arrived and the temperature is around 10-15 degrees celsius, so we spent the weekend with installing the new skin fittings. Surface preparation takes a long time! First we sanded and cleaned everything with International Super Cleaner, then painted the areas with two layers of Danboline bilge paint to have it nice, clean and fresh. Then we sanded the skin fitting backing plates and the outside of the hull around the fittings, hoovered the dust, cleaned it with acetone, then rinsed with water and let it to dry. Unfortunately one of the transducers had a larger hole than 43mm and the previous owners filled the gap with silicone. We removed all the silicone and applied thickened epoxy around the edges of the hole to decrease it's diameter to 43mm, then sanded it. After reading countless of forums and articles on the topic we were hesitating between Sikaflex 291 and 3M's 4200FC as a sealant. As most of the material online are from US boaters, everyone use

The previous owner left us two uninstalled 200 Ah AGM batteries which he claimed to be almost new. We were hoping to install them and trying hard to find an adequate place for those big and heavy batteries. But before making the decision and starting the work, we decided to buy a battery analyzer and see if they're really in a good condition and worth to install. It turned out to be a good idea. The batteries are unfortunately almost dead and needs to be replaced. It's bad and good news at the same time. Bad because batteries are expensive to replace and good because now we can be more flexible with the size, capacity and placement. The new plan is to put a house bank of 3 x 100Ah batteries and a starter battery of 70Ah in the engine room and/or aft cabin right next to the engine room bulkhead. This would make the weight distribution more even, all batteries would be close to eachother, so we can use shorter cables.

The old Silva/Nexus instruments served well for the past 30+ years, but time has taken it's toll. Now the wind display's LCD is completely dead and the connection with the wind-sensor is also broken. The log and depth meter still works, but they lack all the bells and whistles of the newer systems. So it felt it's time for an upgrade. But what should we replace them with? It's not an easy decision to make. It costs tons of money and the various brands all have pros and cons. After careful consideration we decided to go for a Nexus compatible system from Garmin. As Garmin bought Nexus, they still offer a sail kit that uses the same 43mm transducers and exactly the same mounting bracket for the wind sensor as the old system on Ann-Riis. We hope to save some work this way, but most of all we liked the look and feel of the Garmin displays more than what Raymarine offers with the i50/i60. We also checked B&G's Triton kit, which was on sale for a little bit high