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Refit Part 4 – Some Assembly Required

by Matthew

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Kinship has been moved from the shop back to the marina.  Having spent about 6 weeks taking the boat apart, now we start the process of putting her back together. First up is reinstalling the holding tank and getting the floor back down.  Peggie Hall – The Headmistress strongly recommends putting holding tank vents on both sides of the boat to allow cross flow though the tank.  Our tank has dual vents but we had not installed the starboard vent.  Over the summer we noticed a bit of a wiff if you happened to be sitting in the cockpit when someone flushes, so we decided to install the second vent with the expectation this will solve this problem.  After a lot of struggling we got the hose in place and now we just to drill for the vent and connect everything up.

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Boat work is often two steps forward and one back.  The backwards step this time is a leaky starboard water tank.  It has dumped its contents into the bilge since the boat was moved and it needs to be replaced or repaired. Of course this means that we can’t connect the extra vent for the holding tank.  The tank is not really the right shape for the space, so I am looking at modified design with a better pick up location and perhaps a little more capacity.  Material choice is up in the air, my first sense is to use welded plastic, but the Saga hive mind is favouring stainless or aluminium, I need to do more research.

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We are making some progress, we got the wheel repainted, covered and a new turkshead tied and it is ready to go back on the boat.  We installed the new audio system, a Fusion MS-RA205 with a Bluetooth module and it works great.  I am the sort of person that thinks the first thing you do when you move into a new place is get the tunes working.  Listening to music or podcasts  while I work just improves my mood.

Progress is slow, the weather has not been great so far, today is -8C and we are at home updating the blog rather than working on the boat.  I am trying to accept that we will not be ready in early May.  We are going to be on the boat for a year, if we are ready in May or late June does not really matter.

 

 

An Iwasaki Sextant with a Bit of a Mystery

by Matthew

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Update:  I have managed to work out that the date of certification is August 16 1970.  The date on the certificate is a Showa date, Showa is part of a system of dates are based on the rule of Emperors, in this case Showa indicates a year is the reign of Emperor Showa or as we knew him Emperor Hirohito. 2016 is Heisei 28, after the current Emperor.

This date matches the condition of the box and sextant and is consistent with other Japanese sextants of a similar vintage.  It also matches the first to digits of the serial number.  This Yamatar sextant made by Taiyo & Co. LTD is almost identical, save that this has a brass scale and is lighted, it was for sale here at the time of writing.

I stumbled on a great deal on a sextant.  The person I bought it from had inherited it some time ago and had no information on its origin.  It is made by in Japan by Iwasaki & Co., Ltd, I have not found any reference to Iwasaki sextants on the internet other than the ad for this one.

The label, partly in English seems to state it was calibrated on August 16, 1945, the day after VJ day.  It is hard to imagine why a Japanese company would have English on a label at that point in history.

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Iwasaki seems to be a common name in Japan, the founding family of Mitsubishi is Iwasaki and this family controlled a huge segment of the Japanese commercial cargo fleet at the outset of the war.  It seems possible this might be an in-house instrument company.  Alternately the Iwasaki Electric Company seems to have the right type of history, but again no reference to sextants.  More research seems to point to a number of small companies building sextants in the Tokyo area in the 60s and 70s.

The sextant seems to be very well made, it came with a 4x main telescope and a 12x.  The 12x has an inverted image, but I imagine it will be great for star sights.

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The drum does not have a vernier, but it is large and easy to read and I think I can get about 0.2′ precision on readings. The clamp and drum work really nicely and very accurately set up.  The overall condition does not match an instrument that might be over 70 years old. is 46 years old.

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DSC00064The label on the case is just in English, could this be from 1945?

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I could not be happier with my purchase, but I would love to find some more history of this sextant.

It is a Small World – Jolly Harbour, Antigua Edition

by Matthew

Last week we went to Antigua for a skills and mile building course with Miramar Sailing. We booked at the last minute, with a choice of Antigua or Grenada, Miramar were faster to respond and got the business.  As we were in the process of packing I noticed a FB post from sailing friends Catherine and Henry on S/V Mowzer that they had just arrived in Jolly Harbour, home of Miramar Sailing.  We don’t know many people who are “out there” and it was a bit weird to think of the few people we do know in the Caribbean, some of them would be in the same port.  I contacted Catherine and we arranged to meet on the Sunday before our course.

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Catherine and Henry are about 2 years ahead of us.  They sold up and sailed in the fall of 2014 and spent the summer of 2015 in Grenada so they have a lot of cruising experience but still recall the transition.  After a tour of their lovely cat, a Fountaine-Pajot Mahe 36, we hung out for the afternoon in St John’s and we asked question after question about their experiences and recommendations.  Thanks to Catherine and Henry for the data dump!

It was great to catch up in person, blogs and Facebook are great but glimpsing the cruising life just for a few hours was wonderful.  I think we are going to love our time away.

Later in the week we were sailing close to Jolly Harbour and we heard Isbjorn hailing the marina.  Isbjorn is Andy Schell and Mia Karlsson’s Swan 48.  Andy, Mia and Andy’s dad, Dennis gave us the recommendation that directly lead to us buying Kinship.  We never did sight Isbjorn or track Andy down, it looks like they are in English Harbour preparing for the RORC Caribbean 600 race that starts in about a week from this post.

If we bump into people we know at this pace despite only knowing a handful of boats, I suspect our social life might be quite busy.