There has been a small craft advisory for three days now and we have been stuck on a mooring in a very tiny harbor with no access to any civilization. I talked to a few locals by phone and they basically said don’t bother to come ashore unless you have a car.
When we were in Portland we visited Hamilton marine and got a new stereo. This one has an aux input, Bluetooth, satellite radio and will even answer your phone for you. It collapsed three sketchy devices into one that actually works well.
I also bought two external marine speakers as we could not hear the music without turning it up really loud in the cabin. I knew at the time that I would have to set aside at least a half day to actually install the speaker properly. I will describe the process of getting the speaker wire from where the radio is mounted on the starboard side to the port side outside position.
- Tie fishing weights on a piece of string to make a “fish” to get the wires down the inside of the slats on the starboard quarter berth. Toss the weights down behind and hope it finds its way to the bottom.
- Drill a whole (close to the hull) through the deck of the quarter-berth. The rule with drills and boats is that you must always to be aware if there is water on the other side of where you are drilling. This is to be avoided, especially below the waterline.
- Tie the speaker wires onto the string with the fishing weights and pull them down to the quarter-berth and then stuff them through the hole.
- Contine to pull the wires through the underside of the berth, past the battery, past the engine, up the port engine compartment bulkhead, and then eventually over to the space under the combing where access to the galley and the mount for the speaker will eventually go. (Outside)
- Drill a whole on the combing for the wire to be pulled through.
- Stuff a wire into the whole…. here is where it gets interesting. .. see pic 2. The only way to actuall see where the wire should come through is for me to lay on my back on top of the icebox and slide myself athartship, until my head reaches the hull on the port side… then in a semi sit-up stick my head through a 9 inch hole and look…. *&^%$#$%^& can’t see it.
- redrill the hole deeper.
- )(*&^%$%^&*((still can’t see it
- Redrill the hole at a different angle
- Success
- After this it was simply a matter of crimping the wires and now we have one nicely installed outside speaker with no visible wires.
time Required. 4 hours
I also installed a couple of hooks for kitchen stuff. Made a shelf for the portable VHF and charger.
The other speaker will be much easier as all I need to do is install the bracket!
The sail plan from here will be to leave early tomorrow and sail for Mystic River, bound eventually for Mystic Seaport, which is the largest Maritime Museum in the US. We will likely anchor tomorrow at Fisher island and make the run up the river first thing in the morning. They have a two for one promotion for the dock at the museum that includes the price of admission. We will do provisioning there as well.
See http://mysticseaport.org