Closed Captions (CC):
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he's up and i'm exhausted

that was a lot of work it's really hard

one of these days we're gonna get one of

those electric winches

until then i gotta really beef up a

little bit

[Music]

well here we are eureka california

been waiting for a few parts to command

so we thought we'd uh

attack a couple more projects one of

them is our ais

fun fact ais or automatic identification

system

is an automatic tracking system that

uses transceivers on ships

and is used by vessel trafficking

services or

vts ais is intended to assist vessels

watch standing and allow maritime

authorities to track

and monitor vessel movements

you know it's been working just

intermittently and

hasn't been real consistent now that

i've flown up the mast

i can see why we used an old vhf antenna

wasn't

i'm sure the not not the right frequency

and it worked when we tested it so we

ran with it

but over the past couple of weeks it's

been getting worse and worse

it's just been degrading down to no

signal at all

some people follow us on ais and that's

how we found out that we had a problem

because people would always comment

and like message us any way they could

on

instagram facebook patreon and even just

like email whenever we disappeared one

person

even called the coast guard to do a

wellness check on us

because we disappeared for so long so

i'm glad my dad is fixing this

so we just picked up a new ais antenna

and i'm gonna be replacing it

and here's why take a look at this one

this has seen its day it's done

looks like there was another one mounted

here at one point as well

it's real close to these uh spinnaker

leads

[Music]

snap that off i'll remove this at the

same time

we're here in uh the marina

and we had a sea wind 1160 light pulling

next to us

let's take a look at this thing

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they're heading down the coast as well

looks like we may be uh buddy button for

the next leg or two

we'll see okay let's get this thing uh

taken care of

i have my new antenna just hoisted it up

it's right here it's a 5215 ais

hopefully this works

so while teal's up there i'm trying to

get some movement

on these arms they feel like jello i can

barely pick up my beard

so while i hang out here teal's gonna

finish up that job and i might leave him

up there as punishment for making me

hoist him up

maybe when i finish the beer i'll let

him down

so i've been up here the better part of

our

just trying to fight these rusty

components out

i've got them let's take a look at it

so so here's the secondary one i'm gonna

leave this bracket here i think

uh for now it's pop riveted on i got the

other one

out of there and the new one put in

i also put a new connector

on this lead so we'll be able to make a

nice solid connection now

[Music]

oh that feels good

much happier that

well my work is done for today up here

now it's time to head down and run some

tests to see if i fix a problem

hopefully this fixed it if not the next

will be to replace all the coax and

won't be so bad but i'm pretty sure i

got it

we'll see

well now that i'm back down it's easy to

see why this wasn't working

i mean this thing looks like the

plastic cap deteriorated in the sun

uv just cracked it out and water

seeped to the inside came through the

fittings

and just deteriorated every bit of this

so that explains why it went

intermittent

and to no function at all okay the next

thing to do

is to see how the fix works

we have a vespa marine xp 8000

that is our ais transponder

and we've integrated it to our raymarine

axiom pro

[Music]

through nema 2000 so we'll fire those up

and hopefully we get some signal let's

check it out

well i just went inside to the nav

station fired up the chart plotter

and good news i'm seeing ais activity in

humboldt bay

that's that's a good thing that means

that we are receiving information from

other vessels

next thing i want to check is to make

sure we're putting out a signal

so it's easy to do i could just grab my

smartphone

i could walk over to somebody else's

boat or i could just check it here

i'll just log into an ais app

type in basic

and check the position

found our boat and we're in eureka

perfect everything's working so it was

us

you know as we were coming down the

coast we thought you know just

that these antennas were land-based and

that we were in some remote areas

and you know in initially we thought

that that was our problem

but as we got closer and closer to

bigger cities and we were still having

the same problem we knew that it was

probably us

i'm glad we got this fixed it was an

easy fix and i feel much safer now

good news the part

for the steering came in that little

stainless steel

five-eighths to half-inch reducer now

i'll be able to button up that project

bleed the system and do a test it's

early enough in the day

the fog's starting to roll in already

that happens seems like it's been

happening every day here

so let's get this

part in you know just thinking

god i hope this thing fits

ah doesn't fit oh come on

okay so here's my problem you see this

ball joint back here that is exactly

5 8 inch the sleeve i'm trying to fit in

there

is exactly 5 8 inch so

it's not fitting but that's okay

i have a plan

i took the sleeve and i put it in the

freezer

in ice for about an hour

i've got a heat gun i'm gonna heat up

the ball socket here and expand it

slightly

and hopefully that shrinks that slightly

and it'll slip right in

guess we'll find out

wow that worked perfectly

i thought i was gonna bind it up but

once i got it aligned it slid

right in like butter now as both

metals heat and cool back to

room temperature that's going to lock it

in it's not going

anywhere

okay now the next step is bleed out

the cylinder i need lynn's help for this

she'll be up top uh adding fluid

and moving the will back and forth and

i'll

start bleeding out so i have a little

confession

i'm not a fan of hydraulic steering just

yet

and there's a couple of reasons why

first off

on our last boat we had cable steering

and i loved that thing it was

bulletproof never had any issues

with it in the seven years that we

had her and i just love

feeling the rudder when we're coming off

of following seas and you can you know

exactly where

your rudder is at with this one you just

can't feel it there's no pressure

either way no matter if you're going to

port or starboard

so for that reason i'm not i'm not

sold on it just yet so i know lin's not

sold

on hydraulic steering you know i tried

to convince teal

to switch over to

cable if we could this boat was designed

to have hydraulic steering

it's what's been on it for its entire

life

and i think we probably could but it

would take away so much interior space

and he would have to re-engineer the

entire system and i don't even know how

long that would take so

for now we're going to be with hydraulic

and i'm going to have to learn

to love it she'll learn to love it

okay turn it to part

turning to port

okay turn it to starboard

turn into starboard

keep going

okay we're getting there getting this

bled

out it's time to put this back on

okay can you turn it to starboard a hair

okay there it goes

okay i feel real good about this

everything went in

smooth we bled the entire system i think

we worked all the air out of it

it's looking pretty good i feel pretty

comfortable with this setup

so now i'll head up and do a quick test

make sure everything's running smoothly

and i think we're good to go

[Music]

okay this feels good nice fluid motion

rudders are turning everything looks

great looks like that was a successful

installation

i checked the weather it looks really

good i've been watching it does that

mean we get to leave tomorrow

i don't see why not

feels good thanks for watching this

week's episode of

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so we have to end this now because we

have a lot to do before we head out of

port tomorrow morning

bright and early we'll see you guys next

week

[Music]

bye

[Music]

you