wi fine

Rather than succumbing to the tyranny of BT (we tried to succumb to their tyranny but they didn't turn up to connect us so we cancelled them, ha! Damn the man!) we get our internet from wifi broadcast by the marina. We can't pick this up inside the boat so rather than carry on putting my laptop in the wheelhouse where it could see the signal and then bouncing it down into the office via an ethernet cable we bought an arial, a cable and a usb adaptor to plug the arial into my computer.

The first challenge was to get the arial down into the office. There was a hole already in the back wall which was JUST too small,

so i got out my big man drill and shredded the nut that was screwed into the hole,

making it big enough to pass the cable through.



Next i needed to mount the arial. Initially i used a clamp which was already attached to the post on the back deck, which worked ok,



but i wanted it higher so that it would get a better signal. SO, i got out the blowtorch and used it to help get the clamp thing off the post (along with a lot of thickly encrusted paint)

and then made a mast for the arial by taking a piece of scrap wood, drilling a big hole down through the top with a wood borer to take the mast itself (an IKEA curtain pole - £3.99!) and then drilling one hole through sideways for a bolt to hold the mast in the base and another the other way to act as a pivot and hold the whole thing in the top of the post. some metal brackets to stop it falling over one way and a line attached to the wheelhouse to hold it up the other way and it's solid as a rock!

We then clamped the arial to the top and ran the wire down it (taping it round at several points after this picture was taken) and it all works perfectly. Just needs a good coat of white hammerite over everything to stop it rusting and make it look a bit more like a proper mast and less like a homemade bodge job...