Day One Hundred and Thirty Eight...

First thing this morning I went to B+Q to pick up a file. This was the last tool I needed before attacking my kayak. I decided to install my fish finder today.

With everything I needed I wandered off to the garage and prepared everything. I was quite nervous for a couple of reasons. I was drilling holes in a boat. This doesn't ever sound like a good idea to me. Secondly, I was fitting a bloody expensive piece of electronic equipment and I had to get it right.

The first thing I had to do was build a battery housing to store a largish 12V lead acid battery. I also had to add fuses so that it wouldn't blow the circuits. Whilst doing it my watch shorted the battery leads and the sparks flew for about a second. That was a wake up call. It actually spot welded a few of the link in my watch strap and left a mark on the strap. My watch is an expensive Breitling, so it was a bit worrying for a second. There was no damage to the watch internals. However, where the strap actually melted it also burnt my skin. This was not a good start.

Once that was done I started to do the drilling and filling on the kayak. The first thing to do was drill holes for the mounting screws for the display and then drill and file out a larger hole for the cables. Once that was done I glued in the battery unit inside the kayak and mounted the transducer (sonar sensor). I then added plenty of silicone sealant around all my holes and screwed the display on.

I connected up the battery and lo and behold it worked straight away. Of course I will not know if the sonar works until I get it on the water, but the map showed me where I was, so the GPS works.

Here's the shot from sitting in the kayak.



I finished in good time to have a play on the computer and watch my team get hammered by New Zealand in the world cup. I'm now off to iron my shirts for the week and go to bed early with a movie.