First Blackberries for 2014

I was awake at 5.30am and Jan was an even earlier riser.  Waiouru was facing due west and the blood red morning sun was on the horizon.  There was a mist on the surface of the canal.  Nothing could be heard apart from the sound of the birds.

For some time I have been concerned about a length of 12V cabling in the back cabin.  My preference is to have all wiring double insulated and this particular wiring was only single insulated.  It’s taken some time to acquire 5 metres of suitable double insulated cable but today I was able to pull out the old cabling and replace it.  The old cable was then used as a ‘draw wire’ to replace the cabling to the bow cameras.  Both camera cables had developed a break.  This was my fault as I installed the cables.  I obviously made one of the bends too tight which has resulted in a stress point and eventually a break.

I don’t want the cost of replacing all the cabling so I cut the plugs off the end of the existing cables and spliced the plugs back onto another cable.

You can see the wiring joins in the following photo.  Each join is offset from adjacent wires to avoid any ‘shorting out’.  The bare copper wires were each tied together rather than twisted to give additional strength.  The knots were then soldered before being wrapped in insulation tape.

Original plug and cable on the left with new cable on the right

A trip to Kings Lock Chandlery resulted in some heat shrink sleeving.  The plan was to use Jan’s hair dryer to heat shrink the sleeve but it couldn’t produce sufficient heat.  The alternative plan was to carefully pass the sleeve backwards and forwards over one of the gas hob burners.  This did the job.

The end of each old cable was attached to a length of the 12V wire I’d removed on the first job and then pulled back through the tubing.  The 12V wires then became draw wires for the new cables.  The individual wires were then all connected and the cameras tested.  Doing this in the middle of a very hot afternoon was quite exhausting.  Or am I getting old and fat?

Meanwhile Jan had baked a banana and walnut loaf before starting to pick the first of this year’s blackberries.  Eventually I recovered sufficiently to give her some help.

I guess I’ll have to do more than my fair share of eating that loaf!

We were just starting to relax when nb Pukeko went past with a loud yell to catch our attention.  Damned noisy Kiwi’s!