Wind instruments

Now the boat being an ex charter was a bit bare on the wind instrument department, having a simple wind vane and not much else!

This I could almost live with, but since the most likely install of the solar panels will be on the bimini , it is going to blot out any direct view to the wind vane. To resolve this issue I bought an electronic wind instrument, a nasa marine clipper wind gauge and anemometer with digital display.

The nasa is a lower end wind instrument system, though works just fine, the problem came when trying to fit it, could we get the cable down the mast without it fouling on something?  I have no idea how the experts do this task, but I am getting to the stage where I may just buy a wireless system, It is looking more and more likely that the mast will have to be removed to fit the cable, this is one big expense.

The negative part is I jumped the gun and cut in the display on the table side, normally this would not be much of a problem, most manufacturers make roughly the same size square displays, but not the nasa clipper , theirs is rectangular, this is going to leave me with a rather odd sized  hole to fill.

So heed my lesson and I should have known better, don't go cutting holes till you have an up n working tested system. I was conned by the small inspection plate at the bottom of the mast, which allows me to see inside the mast which looked as if it had plenty of room, at the top of the mast however it was a different story, no access at all and after drilling a couple of holes and getting no where feeding the cable down, I did not want to pin cushion an important structural part of the boat.

The last option we have is to use the mast head anchor light cable , pull it out trailing a messenger line up the mast, then use the messenger line to pull the wind instrument cable and original anchor light cable back up, it is a kind of risky tactic as being as tight as it is, I might end up being unable to get the anchor light cable back up.

Update, I ended up fitting a tack tick mn30 wireless unit, luckily it filled the hole I made ok!

Wind attempt number 1

Powered up and running!

Wireless tack tick unit  finally fitted and working!

 Need to replace that 12v socket and redo the gelcoat around it!