21st March

Weather beautiful so went fishing with my buddy Steve.

Obviously heading in the right direction in the "stormy Mid Atlantic" with a commercial boat passing us on the way to our fishing spot selected.  Very carefully selected by throwing some sticks in the air and breathing in deeply.  Had great success and never waited more than a few seconds for a bite.  Fishing quite deep (170m to 200m) so takes a long time to drop down and reel up.  Took just over 2 hours of fishing to get our legal quota on my license so headed home. 

Spent ages cleaning fish and gave a bunch to our freezer and our neighbors.  Guess what is for dinner tomorrow.

Felt guilty at having fun so mixed some filler and screeded the deck this evening.  Tomorrow is another day and should mix some more filler.  I like the filler to go off for several days to get nice and cured before starting to sand.  It stops the sandpaper getting clogged and is much easier to sand.

re Raymarine autopilot conversion.  I did the experiment and it worked out perfectly.  I have a Raymarine St1000 plus that had issues from going to the stops at the end of the ram movement that bent up the supports and did damage to the ram infrastructure.  I also had an old St 2000 plus tiller pilot without any electronics.  I swapped out all the good bits from the 1000 (electronic board and motor) and fitted it to the 2000 ram.  The rams are very different.  1000 is just a threaded rod and the 2000 has a different thread system.  The 2000 is much faster.  (same motor).  From my doctor google searches it seems that the electronics are the same.  It also seems that the software built into the board supports both pilots.

I tried reprogramming the board and it worked perfectly.  Im sure every Raymarine agent has the instructions but why pay them.  This will work both ways - same board from 1000 to2000 and vice versa.

1. press minus 10 degrees and plus 1 degree until display shows 1000 or 2000 - about 5 secs.

2. press minus 10 degrees and plus 1 degree again till the number flashes - about 5 seconds.

3. select correct pilot number you want  by pressing plus 1 or minus 1.

4. save settings by pressing minus 10 and plus 1 till normal standby screen appears - about 2 seconds or a bit longer.

This works.  You just have to do the recalibration of the compass after the change.  (the slow turn in calibration mode)