Fitting Wind Sensor

I have a depth gauge on Liza and the only other thing I really want in the instrument line is a wind sensor and indicator. Yes, I know a couple of strands of wool or torn sail cloth attached to the standing rigging goes a long way, but something a little better was needed. So I bought a Nasa Marine Target 2 system while I was visiting the UK in August.

It looked simple enough to fit. Masthead unit and a display unit!

All I need to do is use the bosuns chair, up the mast, four screws and I'm done!

Well, firstly, Liza is light so I thought I'd let Helen try it as she's a lot lighter than me and so would swing at the top of the mast less.

Drilling with the battery drill into the mast proved beyond her, so two days ago I went up…

Because Liza only displaces 1.2 tonnes and the twin keels of Liza are only 500kg combined, it's quite tricky I found at the top of the mast compared to larger boats (which I was more used to). Any slight movement and I swung around a lot!

Pulling myself up or using the winches seemed impossible (they're very small winches on the Kingfisher 20+) so I took down the main sheet which is 4:1 ratio and used that attached to the spinnaker halyard.

Only trouble was... with the blocks etc for the mainsheet I couldn't get to the top of the mast!

So I added a loop to the spinnaker halyard while I was at the top, then stood in that, and Sheila took in on the main halyard. Yes, I was now at the top of the mast and could drill the holes for the wind sensor.

It was hot. Very hot. And holding on to purchase for the drill into the mast was difficult. But got all four holes drilled eventually!

And the wind sensor was in place.

Except… the self tapping screws supplied were impossible to screw into the mast! I tried using a mole wrench attached to the screwdriver for more purchase, but no joy!

So another day... today… I went up again. This time I had bought a 5mm tap set and 5mm machine head bolts and some Loctite.

This meant removing each screw in turn, drilling out the block to take the tap, tapping the mast, and then putting a new 5mm bolt in place with Loctite to stop it coming undone.

Yes, it was slow... but it worked!

I still haven't put the wind sensor cable down the mast. That's for another day.

But the reward for all the help was to take Elisabeth, Katie and Helen for lunch and a swim. So having finished as much as I was going to do for the day... that's what we did!