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Well Dean spent last weekend polishing and scrubbing Awol so she is beginning to look pretty good now. Need to do one or two more jobs to get her A1 but well on the way. Looking forward to doing a shake down cruise/fish just to ensure everything works prior to the club trip over the channel. Doing a radar course this coming Sunday to try and learn how to use the on board kit properly. Following weeks it will be out and about playing on the boat....at last More updates later

Old Forum migration Had some real fun moving the topics and posts from the old 1.3 version of the IPB software to the latest version. was well pleased when I actually managed to get it all working. Anyone thinking of doing the same it is not too bad once you work it all out. I transferred the members table over, but every member will require to request a new password. Then I found that I could use the old passwords stored in the original database to authenticate. Works a treat The migrated the topics and posts over. The new IPB doesnt have categories, so I had to do some jiggerypockery with the SQL to create my own parent topics which were based upon the categories ( I wish I had saved all the steps as could write a convertor fairly easily now I have done the task once. ) The structure of the old 1,3 database and the latest database though has not changed that dramatically, therefore it is fairly straightforward. Once I had all my categories amended so that they were loaded as Topics with a parent = -1 and the topics within each category were amended so the parent = new topic created from the category. I loaded all the Posts and all seemed to work but profile lists werent showing posts made by the members. Then found this was related to the last_posted,last_visited dates ( I had neglected to copy these over ). Ran some more sql and copied over and members listings then worked. Then realised everyone had no post counts, so copied these over, only to find the tool that did the task for me. Still getting there. - Just need to set a date to switch over the old forum ( ie. Switch it off and make everyone use the new one )

Help. When I bought the boat, it came with a Lawrance Elite 5 chart plotter but no SD card. I contacted the guy I bought it from who said he would look to see if he could find it, but hasn't got back to me. So the question is, can I get a replacement card from somewhere? I assume buying a Navionics Gold card would be useless without the supplied basic card. OR do I just give up and save for a complete new one? Garmin looks good but expensive. OK just had a message from Lowrance in America. it doesn't come with an sd Card, so where do I buy charts on a card for southern England?

As it was a nice sunny day and completed a few jobs for FPO I thought it was about time I started up the engine on Sammy 2 Found that there was a bit of rain water in the bilge so got that emptied first. It has been over a year since it last started so I expected problems, however it fired up after a couple of seconds on the key! :-) The fuel is now 4+ years old and it still ran ok. I quickly noticed however that the water tell tail was not showing and water out of it. After checking that the hole & pipe was not blocked I started to look to wee if the intake was blocked. This was clear so I thought I better drop the leg off and check the impellor, this was replaced a while ago but has not run for any time since. It was a struggle to come off but it did in the end, I checked that water flowed through the housing with the hose and I could hear the impellor turning in the housing so there was no need to strip that down. I found a pipe of almost the right size to put over the pipe that runs from the pump to the engine and put the hose on this, sure enough out came water from the tell tale outlet so I knew water was getting around the engine so what to try next? I put the leg back on and tried it again, still no water so I tried the hose on the nipple on the engine and reversed flow of water, started it up and low and behold it all worked as it should. :-) Tried the engine a couple of times on and off and each time water came out as it should and no overheating. I suspect there was an air lock in the engine somewhere. Well this covered a few hours so I know the engine is still good, just got to finish of the painting inside the cabin and we might be ready to launch!

Well my eldest son said he was down here for a weeks holiday and could I get the boat ready to use! He did supply me a new fuel line and priming bulb so I installed this and tested out all the engines. All seemed good to go. Due to try out the launch on Sunday but due to various things it didn't happen but at least she is ready, just need to fill the tank with fresh fuel and oil (2-stroke) and have a quiet day down at Baiter. Still have to wire up the electrics on my car but both sons have 4x4 cars with tow-bars and working electrics so no problem in getting down to the water. Watch this space, she might get a bum wet in 2014 and may be catch a fish to get off 0 in the boat species comp!

Well having been out fishing on Sparky's boat on Friday, inspired me to get on with Sammy 2's VHF install. As I wanted to be able to remove the vhf I needed to buy a plug and socket so that it can easily connect to the GPS wiring to provide the DSC function. Found a good place to mount the radio and also the GPS plug I started drilling holes and fitting the radio. It took a while to work out which wires to use to get the feed from the GPS to the radio but it all worked first time. Connections were then all soldered up and a good listening test was carried out. I did think about calling the Coastguard for a radio check but they seemed busy with lifeboats and Jetski's, divers missing, boats running out of fuel breakdown just the usual sunny afternoon call outs, so I gave it a miss. Just got to wire up the trailer socket on the car and we should be ready for a launch. Oh went onto the Ofcom site and got my MMSI number straight away so just got to input that into the radio, whilst I was online I updated the CG66 form with the radio details. Next small job is to sort out the auxillary engine to make sure it runs ok.

Website linked to Facebook. I have managed to fix the problem I created by deleting the mobile skins, by reimporting the skin table. Working on catch report viewer although making logins using the old forum password next on my agenda, as I think I can see how todo this now. If only could work out an easy way of porting posts from old forum to the new site.