Compass Complete

For Christmas Eve, I reinstalled the compass. Christopher Columbus would have killed for a compass this nice!

Compass Refill

Refilling the compass isn't too hard: position it so that the plug is at the top, unscrew the plug, and then use a syringe to push the compass fluid in. I used fluid that I bought from Ritchie. It's mineral oil, which you could buy anywhere, but to be sure you get the right viscosity it's easiest to go to the maker. (I once tried mineral oil from the drugstore, but it was so thick it would take the compass a few hours to find North!) The hardest thing is to get all of the air out, and you can see that I still have a small bubble here. I will let the compass sit for a week, to let any additional bubbles accumulate at the top, and then I'll try to push some more fluid in.

Another Project

I rebuilt our compass about 5 years ago, replacing a cracked dome, but it still has a slow leak. Fortunately, I still have plenty of compass fluid (mineral oil) left over from my earlier repair. Here you see the compass exposed with the binacle cover removed. I've taken the compass off the boat so that I can work on it over the winter. If you look closely, you can see an earlier project, where I replaced an incandescent compass light with two LEDs.

Boom

With some help from my friends Raul and Tom, we were able to re-attach the boom to the gooseneck on Saturday, so this project is now complete. Next up, a tune-up for our cockpit table. More details later...