No photos today. I had another go at tracing the shore power. This time starting at the generator power control cabinet to see if I could track it back. Thanks to some clever design this is a physical impossibility. It looks very much like they ran the cabling down the walls and into a trench under the floor level of the room. The only part of the trench that was accessible was the top. They then took the blue power control cabinets and put them on top thus sealing in all the wiring. You can see the wires disappear through the hole in the bottom of the cabinet and you can see cables exit the trench at the back but as all the cables look the same there is no way to tell which cable entering exits at any given place. There is no way out of this predicament.
I started to explore (take a peek) at the underside of the generator room. Gulp. I am not sure that there is not a lot of dirty oily water down there. It is hard to see. Further investigation will be needed. There are 'coolant' tanks down there (I was wondering how the generators were cooled). The downside is there will be more pipes to trace. I did note that the underside of the engine room looked pretty rusty. This is not atypical apparently. The electric currents flowing around the generators in the hull can eat you hull really quickly. I have not doubt my hull is fine but this is the only place there is any rust at all in the boat. Just needs inspecting, cleaning of diesel and oil and water and rust proofing and painting.
There are now 5 options remaining. The first four are the same. Take the input power lead from one of the generators and exchange it for mains power. 4 generators, 4 options :-> The 5th, and probably more sensible one is to exchange what appears to be the shore power connections with a new mains feed. But before I do that I have to be really sure it is what I think it is. Standing on a 600 piece of metal containing diesel and sitting in water is probably not the right environment to start experimenting with connecting up mains voltage to various points.
Defeated I turned my hand to some honest labour. I removed all 11 remaining radiators (oil filled electric heater types) and their fireproof board. Labelled up the power sockets the were connected to so I could remember later what those sockets were for. The more unnecessary kit (especially electrical) I can remove the better.
The last job of the day was labeling water pipes. I manage to trace through all pipes in the cabins which were fed from the bathrooms and toilets as well as a number of floor drains. They are all accounted for now. Which means at some point I can start cutting. But probably not before I have planned the alternatives. The pipes cannot stay as they are in the ceiling of the cabins and look a frightful mess. All modern piping will go via a macerator (yet to be planned) and down into the grey water and black water tanks (also yet to be planned). A pipeless set of cabins (or at least smaller pipes that can be hidden in the ceilings I will be fitting) is desirable.
Did a bit of tidying. Mopped and cleaned the old cooker area (with the new porthole above it) to see if there is a leak. Its hard to tell as there was water there from washing the porthole last week. It should be clear if there is a leak now.
Can't wait to see the gangway up next week. No more ladder! Yeah!
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