My Chronicle of fiddling to date

[CRF999]

So you may have seen my initial posts regarding Battery charging from the engine.
Well a LOT of water has passed under the hull since then and as the weather is not very good and I am suffering from a severe ear infection and can not get out I decided that I would document all of the work to date.
This is in the vain hope that I can inspire some ideas in others to make their boating experience better.
So in the beginning I have had many hobbies, jobs and friends moving house and I admit that I suffer from O.C.G.H Obsessive Compulsive Grabbing and Hoarding.
This means that the garage is full of
C reative
R ecreational
A daptive
P ieces

but at times like this it can come in very useful. As it helps augment the stuff from previous boats and kayaks.
In the earlier threads of mine you will note that I was waiting quite a while l, like many others, for my boat and engine to be in stock. So to kill time I decided to make a crab pot and prawn trap that I could lay out for the day whilst on fishing trips.

The first Item of CRAP to be repurposed was and old festival tent . The fiberglass poles were cut up to make the frame of a folding crab trap and the guy ropes were tied up into the outer netting. the entrance ramps were made from old but serviceable 30lb fishing line.
Resulting in

I also made the haul rope with main float , eye splices and bobber float line.

This was followed by said prawn trap out of a 5lt water bottle , a 1 lt pop bottle and a redundant piece of 16mm threaded bar.

so lets post and see how I got on before epistle 2.

[CRF999]

OK so the pictures are not quite in the right order but you get the idea and i think I have now.

[CRF999]

Epistle 2
I had ordered a 22lt fuel tank from somewhere, and started to debur and clean that as well as fit the old but new fuel line ( from CRAP stocks ) that had been briefly used for an RC aircraft refueling line attempt. To fit the boat I also had to add on an extra meter of fuel hose, EBAY for those as none in CRAP.
I remembered of old that the fuel connector is prone to getting clogged up with sand etc, So off to Tinkercad with the fuel connector and vernier. A few hours later that evening and I had printed a couple of protective covers which can be held in place by rubber bands.

Itching to do more I knew that at 39 kg ( same as my old Moken 12.5 kayak ) the Honwave was going to stress my dodgy back. So I repurposed my old floor skate by removing the location pins and I now have a flat dolly that the boat can be stood on end and easily shuffled around the workshop.

I also new a regain ladder may be required and prepared those parts as well.
Rungs from CRAP, spacers were printed. Although that is as far as I got and it has yet to be completed.

End of Epistle 2

[CRF999]

Hmm this photo insertion lark is not working very well, is it.

[CRF999]

Epistle 3
The day of boat and engine collection was close at hand and I was thinking about having to hump those heavy weights up and out of the boot of the car. I do NOT do well with heavy or awkward weights. So I thinks to myself hmmmmm a level floor to slide things in and out of the boot could be a good idea. I knew I had lots of profiled wood , MDF and cheep reclaimed Chinese ply sheet in the CRAP stocks.
So a couple of days measuring sawing, screwing, nailing, shaping, rethinking , adding more bits and general farting around gave me this.

It will only fit in the boot when the seats are collapsed and folded up ( it’s a C Max by the way ) . But that is OK cos the boat and engine take up way more space than I was expecting and will only just go in when the seats are in said position.
The good news is that I had planned for this to be a useful under space which will take the folded down crab trap . lifejackets and VHF radio under the left hand section. The right hand side takes the oars, tiller extension and original Honwave seat all kept neatly together in an unused awning pole bag which was in THAT stock.
“You see darling I told you it would come in useful one day “
Than about the beginning of May it was BC day and I finally got the boat and a number of extras. So whilst waiting for the weather to improve to allow first inspection and inflation I got on with splicing the thimbles to the 80m of 10mm anchor warp and attaching the 4m of 6mm chain to the 2 kg Bruce anchor with moused on D shackles.

[Oldman]

I would take more water with it when attempting to insert photo's

If you remove the c-max rear seats instead of flipping them, you gain SO much more room for boaty/fishy stuff. I know they are heavy but scout around the garage for stuff to make more dolly's then they are easy moved.

[CRF999]

That is so true but then I can not turn it into a normal car again at the other end.

[CRF999]

Epistle 4
The great blow up ! It all happened in June but I have no photos cos they have all been taken after the event. Battery and Bravo pump to the ready the new toy unraveled itself from its shriveled nest. OOOOO Shiney. After much stroking and smirking I decided I had better set to on the wheels as it was going nowhere quickly without them.
See one of my other threads about that. It proved to be a time consuming thought provoking process and after practical use the stand off spacers I made should have been longer still ( 18 – 20 mm ) or I should have taken more of a risk and put the lower bolts nearer to the transom edge, a 20 mm gap between tyre and hull would have been great.

Once done I turned my attention to a second seat, only one comes as standard. As they cost £100 from Honda and I am a tight arse and wanted mine to be more than just a seat I turned yet again to CRAP (SEE #1 ) stocks. This revealed I had just enough cheap Chinese 12mm ply to make a 3 layer seat and attached under slung storage shelf to keep stuff off the floor of the boat.
I did not have anything suitable to make the tube hooks from so I found a pair on EBAY for £5 delivered via china post so got those on order whilst I started making the seat.

First off create the 3 seat layers to exactly the same length as the one supplied with the boat but 10 mm narrower so I could get it out of my available material. That includes the 2 shelf droppers and the shelf itself. The 3 layers were just PVA glued together and then covered in many many clamps and the 6” vice to get it all well scrunched up.

48 hours later and it was just as strong as the original. All poor end grain edges were filled as appropriate, then given a coat of water based sealing resin before being given 2 coats of primer and a further 2 coats of top coat. I had purple so that’s what got used.

Whilst that was going on I could alternate onto the stainless metal work. I bet you can not guess where I found those suitable bits. It was already preformed as an angle so all I had to do was cut to length, mark , drill and countersink the 4 holes per side. Every thing was carefully radiused and deburred. It also reminded me why I detest working with stainless. Slow speeds, cutting oil and its still hard work and knackers the drill bits.

Worth it in the end though.
All the screws, nuts and self tappers used were stainless and had been reclaimed from the kayak storage hut that had been dropping to bits and was demolished when I sold the YAK. They had only been in CRAPsis (SEE #1 ) for a few weeks!

Assembled with liberal amounts of Sikaflex 291i at the joints I now had a custom built seat / shelf that could take my 26 Ahr GPS / FF battery, excess wire / volt meter box and tool box. Although being open front and back I was wondering how they would stay in place. A suitable point of irrelevant suspense that will be resolved later.

[CRF999]

Epistle 5
Its at this point that it is difficult to make sense of the story other than my power hungry Lowrance 5 HDI GPS / FF killed 7 Ahr gel batteries in no time. I never knew what state the battery was at and I wanted it on all the time for my fishing and mark finding.
Hence we get to a Honda 6hp with charge coil, 26 Ahr ex alarm battery from CRAP (SEE #1 ), an ex 7Ahr kayak battery box converted to take a switch , Volt meter, waterproof 2 pin power plug and fused power lead from said FF.

The gist of which is in the photos with the ideas clearly stolen from other peoples idea on this forum, thanks guys. So I did not want the Volt meter on all the time hence the switch. I could not think of a better way to keep the FF fuse holder dry ( it is splash proof as std ) and the excess wire out of the way other than to use this already rigged sandwich box. I did try a direct connection to the battery but trying to move both battery and box at the same time was like trying to juggle eels so I split the line and fitted the 2 pin waterproof plug socket. Note when you forget to disconnect from the battery BEFORE cutting the wire to fit the plug it gets very noisy, bright and smelly all at the same time, thank goodness the snip handles were insulated. Since then I have used the set up 4 times and it is not difficult but does take a few minutes. However I found and read the FF manual and blow me it can display the voltage on screen. So I have now removed the box and voltmeter etc and moved on to version 2 which will be explained later.
Breaking news at this point I had received the engine see next epistle for details.

[Tyger]

A great read.... should be completed for winter then you can put it all away again.
Do you bother with the required licence for the lobsster pot ? I had one last year for pots off the rocks, not sure if tp bother or not. I too have a new boat radio and everything I can think of but still another month for my 20hp to arrive.