29th July

Ticking along.  Been fiddling with the mast.  Bought some conduit  and cut all 7 meters length with a hacksaw blade held in my hand to split the tube and slide up the inside of the mast.

Was a bit of a mission but managed to push all the bits through. Conduit was in 3m lengths so 2 lenghts and a bit.  I dont want the wiring inside the mast to flop about so fitted 16mm diameter tube on the internal  aluminum T.  It is just wide enough to fit the VHF coax and a 3 core cable for the tricolour and anchor light. (common negative).  Bought a Navipro Led Tricolour and Anchor light.  Was expensive but very light in weight and low consumption. 1.2 watts so easy on the battery.

It is required by the Atlantic Challenge to have the mast foam filled.  I made a template and dug out my hot wire foam cutter.

It worked well and cut lots of 50mm thick sections to push down the inside of the mast.  Each piece displaces 250ml (I measured) so 4 bits gives 1kg of buoyancy.  The problem is that I can only push these tightly fitting foam pieces down for 2 meters to the forestay fitting as there are a bunch of pop rivets in the area.  

This gives about 10kg buoyancy in the top 2 meters of the mast and I can push up about another 20kg of buoyancy of looser fitting foam from the bottom.  That should give the whole mast positive foam  buoyancy.  I will weight the mast when finished to check.

Foam has been pushed in and the wires fed through the conduit.  Next job is to make the VHF antennae and Windex mount.  I tested the VHF antennae  (an old one I had) and the SWR was 1.2 on channel 16 and 1.6 on AIS frequency (around 162MHZ) with 50 ohms impedance.  That is good for those that understand that stuff.  I was listening to marina traffic from my home on the other side of the island with the antennae on a table outside my workshop.

A little bird told me my sails are on Faial.  Fingers crossed.