It’s a bit foggy out today – which means warm temperatures again. We are back to some ground work until the moisture leaves the air so we can get back to polishing. By spring the yard should be looking pretty good. I often feel guilty about devoting working hours to non-income producing jobs but if we didn’t the yard would quickly become an eyesore. I wanted to show you what we did with the dinghy lifting winch on the mast job we just did. This was one of the older Warn Industry winches and was black. The winch still worked fine but the black paint had deteriorated pretty bad. Since we were painting the boom any way we just removed the casing and painted it at the same time – creating a seamless look to the rig. I was going to hold off on this photo but will show it any way. Since this mast was so nice now it was time to do something about the lights. The owner redid the mast head light and also wanted to install LED spreader lights. I will show you those installed next week but here is what he is replacing – talk about old school! There was actually something in the NavPod this morning. The hard part of the electronics job is running the wires where you need to go. Actually, the hard part is getting all the new instruments to communicate among themselves – but that’s tough to get a picture of! Products We are installing a Exhaust Temperature Alarm in this boat. The unit quickly detects loss or restriction of raw cooling water causing engine overheating. Easy to install and very basic – you gotta love that! The owner will report on this after he has actually had a chance to use it. My observation is that he probably didn’t want to see if it worked since that meant he had a problem – it’s sort of like paying for insurance that you hope you never have to use. Learn more about this product at the Borel Mfg website. Anything Can Happen Friday The owner of the boat we are working on is very capable – just like any boat owner should be. If you are not, spend a little time learning your boat and making tackling a few DYI projects. Just googling dyi boat projects I came up with a pretty good learning resource at the Boating Magazine website. If you just look at how the jobs are done you can learn a lot about how your boat works – even if you don’t actually do them (although hands on is the best learning tool). I also found a good resource page at Compass Marine. A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say ‘How to Build a Boat – Stephen Wright