May 26, 2016
Patience 9
Thursday
To finish up the knotmeter patch, I lightly sanded the fairing compound, bring the area smooth and level with the adjacent surfaces. No further fairing was required, so after a solvent wash I applied a coat of plain epoxy over the fairing material as a sealer.
I sanded the primer on the cabin sole panels, and after final preparations applied the first of a couple coats of nonskid paint, which I mixed to a light gray color.
In the cabin, I finished up the new bilge pump wiring, leading four wires as needed to the new switch location, on the starboard bulkhead just beneath the electrical panel. I made connections in the battery compartment as required to connect the new wiring to the wires already leading to the bilge, and this completed the electrical side of the pump installation.
With the connections made, I could test-run the pump. These pumps have the idiosyncrasy, as it were, of running capably in either direction, and with two unmarked black wires leading from the motor, there’s no required–nor conveniently marked–polarity. So determining the pump inlet and outlet ports for the hoses requires operating the pump first, once wired, to determine which is the suction side. Both the manual switch and auto switch tested operational, and with the ports’ correct orientation determined, I could make up the inlet and outlet hoses as required. (The inlet has the strainer.)
This quickly pushed out the remaining water in the long hose leading to the transom, leftover from the old installation.
Total time billed on this job today: 3 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
55°, sunny. Forecast for the day: sunny, high near 80