Vira - Sailboat rebuild, Irwin Citation 34

 Rudder position sensor Sensor is installed mainly to prevent autopilot mechanism to drive over hard stops. Decided to mount the sensor mechanism to rudder top  bearing cross member (102x40 steel "C" channel). Sensor itself was selected from aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806235144088.html For $11 you get 190R position sensor. For this money you have surprisingly well  designed sensor, Sensor made the way the sliding contact is contacting to silver stripes rather resistive material. This sensor must work much longer than just simple potentiometer. However signal will have smaller resolution. This sensor has ~60-80 steps, so accuracy is better than 2 degrees per step. I think it is good enough if i can get better reliability. I added 3-rd wire to make it voltage output sensor, not very hard to do on it. Sensor Bracket I designed to clip on the steel cross member. Ribs on side are to put zip ties to hold it on place. I printed this part on 3d printer, screw...

Autopilot  Finally, connected wires from autopilot drive to Raspberry.  looks it works well and able to turn rudder easy and fast. I did not installed end switches and rudder angle sensor, so no wild play now   Self turning wheel video - Dry test video. Rudder controlled from computer. On Video motor power set to 10% max. Can't wait to install safety switches to try to do full speed run test.  Deck  Still working on deck painting prep work. This day did sand between layers. This time wet sanding. I do not know what went wrong, but PrimeKote  did not self-leveled and as result i have pretty deep brush marks everywhere. and now i need to sand a lot to clean the mess. Second mistake, i wait for a 2 weeks before sanding and primer have got very hard to sand. Couple areas, where I forgot to tip primer and just roller texturing left was way easier to sand, so, likely no tipping any more on primer. After 10 hours of sanding I think i am pretty close to be ready t...

 Deck Spent a day to wipe all to clean, then de-greaser, then solvent, and then priming.  Surface area is not too big, but still be ~400 sq.ft.    I did wiping and cabin top at one day, cockpit and area next to toe rails in second one. Primed only area plan to paint glossy. non-skid paint does not require priming, just washing with detergent, but it will be later.  Observed two problems  first - rolling and tipping leaving brush marks  even when 25% solvent added. Second - (actually helps to maintain first) I need second layer because  one layer of primekote does not covering well. So, I plan one more gallon of primer and one mode day to of sanding and one more day of priming.   End of day1     End of day 2    

 Deck  Final sanding, 6 hours with 3 different sanders in hands and manual sanding in tight places. I would say - deck painting is not easy, a lot of tricky surfaces. I planned to paint  primer at the end of the day, but I was completely exhausted at 5PM and wrapped all and went home.   Some pictures from the end of the day No slides on companionway hatch, bag of sand helps to keep it :-) Several pictures from cockpit