Outfitting - Radar

I already detailed the chartplotter installation which comprises the other half of the radar setup; the chartplotter provides power and viewing screen for the integrated 2Kw radar from Raymarine, so those bits were out of the way when we went to get the radar up and running, and all we really had left to do was mount the radome and route the cabling. Of course, those are the hard parts.

After eyeballing things a bit, I decided to mount the radome a couple of feet above our mid-mast steaming light, drop the cable down the interior of the mast, and out again just above the mast step, across the cabin-top to the port-side grab rail and then back to the plotter beneath the dodger. This isn't the perfect installation, but it will allow us to do it without unstepping the mast (ideally, you'd route the cable down into the cabin and back to the screen somewhere inside) which is outside our budget and timeframe right now. Additionally, it lets us do it while leaving our options open to go inside in the future... and without punching any additional holes in the boat.

A rudimentary inspection of the mast revealed that it was not one of those with conduit inside it--the existing wiring and halyards simply dangle freely inside. So we would have to drill carefully putting the holes in, and also figure some way of snaking the radar cable up from the base to the mounting point. My plan was to simply drop a nut on a string down, fish it out the bottom, and tape the connecting cable on to pull to the upper hole. The holes for the cable would have to be fairly sizeable, and we would need to use some sort of grommet or chafe guard to keep the cable from cutting itself on the metal.

I had picked up a Seaview mount for a reasonable price at the boatshow in January and their recommended method of attaching the mount to the mast is cold-riveting. I was initially planning to tap and screw it into place, but the more I thought about it, the better I liked the rivets. I'd never worked with them before but I went out and picked up a hand-riveter and it seemed pretty straightforward compared to screwing things in. This way, we only had to drill appropriate sized holes and then slap the mount points on, rather than messing about in the air with a tapping set.

Speaking of messing about up in the air, we (or I did, at least) realized early on that it was going to have to be Mandy doing so. She weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet, while I am almost double that; it's not too tough for me to winch her up but there is no way she'd be able to get me off the deck. The downside to this is that she doesn't have the upper body strength to run the riveter very easily.

We picked the nicest Saturday in early April to make the installation. It started off poorly; I forgot the radome, the toolkit, and the mount platform diagram. As it happened, none of that mattered, but it was a preview of things to come.

Mandy had to work in the morning, while I killed time at the Fisheries Supply annual swap meet, and then scrubbing the deck, and then helping shuffle boats around at the marina as they moved a big houseboat into the dock. She finally showed up around lunch time, and we got something to eat and called my friend Dave for a hand.

Dave and I used to go rock climbing, but Dave hates heights. I give him full credit for the few seasons of climbing that we put in, because he went up and did it time after time, never freezing up but always extremely deliberate and cautious. This is why I called him; I knew he'd be extremely safe even if I tended toward being cavalier about matters.

I've never heard of anyone else using a separate safety line while climbing the mast, but we had never done it before and I figured it might be difficult at this late date to find another partner to sail to Alaska with, so while I followed the conventional method of hooking Mandy to a halyard and winching her up, I also rigged a spare halyard as a safety line and had Dave run a belay on it as I hoisted her up. In addition to that, I sent her up with a loop of webbing to wrap around the mast and clip in to her harness... if all else failed, as far as she would drop would be the spreaders.

There were no problems getting her up to the right spot, and as soon as I got her tied off, I hoisted up a bucket with the necessary tools and materials. I tied some cord around the heavier bits of equipment and had her secure that to the bucket so that Dave and I didn't have to worry about wearing a drill on our heads. I had her tie the bucket off, then hoisted the assembled platform on the same line--that allowed me to take the weight off it while she positioned it against the mast and marked the drilling points for the holes. Then we lowered it back down again and Dave and I disassembled it and sent back up just the mount plates, which she could then tape in place and rivet in with nothing else in the way.

All that went pretty well. Things started going south as Mandy started drilling in. The mast is about a quarter inch thick, heavy aluminum, and she had almost no leverage. It took a long time to get a hole into it. Then, despite practicing on the ground, and having a riveter with better leverage (courtesy of our dock-mate Jack), she wasn't able to get the first rivet set. We dropped her back to the deck and went through the process again, and then hoisted her back up and she was able to get a total of three (out of six per mount plate, for a total of twelve) drilled and riveted. But after that, she was out of oomph, and we had to call it a day.

Based on that experience and time factors, we decided to complete the installation on the hard in Port Townsend. The stability of the mast improved and we also had sufficient help around to crank me up so I could handle the stuff which required significant grip strength (drilling and rivetting). Mandy and I switched off going up and down; I finished drilling and rivetting the mount points and drilling the hole for the cable. We abandoned the second safety line but continued to clip into webbing around the mast while we were up there, in case something happened like, say, accidentally drilling into our own halyard.

The process took most of the day Saturday. Mandy bolted the mount to the mount points, then I went up, had the radome hosted up, and bolted it onto the mount. Unfortunately, I was unable to fish down the messenger line for the cable, so we had to hoist Mandy up again, who got it down on the first try and pulled the cable up through. Then it was my turn again; I connected all the wiring, fitted a grommet to the cable where it passed through the mast, and put the cover on the radome. Getting the grommet in was a real fight--Seaview included one with the mount kit, but it turned out to be far larger than we needed, so I had to perform surgery aloft to get it to fit. By this time, the wind was kicking up and blowing me and the tool bucket around, so it took a while. Finally I got it cut, inserted around the cable in the hole, and glued in place.

After we got the boat back in the water and headed back to the moorage, I fired the Raymarine system up and after the five minutes it took me to figure out how to access the radar screen on the chartplotter, I got the radar turned on and it worked like a charm. There was a big transport at the pier of the Navy ammunition depot at the north end of Indian Island and it painted a huge return right where it should have. Additionally, I could see the Port Townsend Keystone ferry coming in, and a couple of the smaller sailboats cruising around on the bay. Next time we get caught out in the fog, we'll be ready.