After returning from a wonderful Memorial Day sail with our friends Brian & Patricia it was time for Annette and I to get to work on our girl. The first order of business was to get after the the Navigation Station, or has we call it, the Nav-Station. The Nav-Station is exactly what its names implies and is located right at the base ladder to the cockpit. From this location you can easily communicate with the helmsmen, manage the charts and stay connected with the boats surroundings. In Magnolia’s particular case, Admiral Annette does 90% of the driving, at dock and underway. I handle most of the navigation duties and along with the handling the lines. This system works best for us.

After removing the out of date LORAN units the station really needed a full rebuild and update. The face-plate had holes from old equipment and just needed a complete redesign.

The updated design needed to have wind; direction and speed water; temperature, depth along with Magnolia’s speed through the water. In addition there is an updated VHF Radio along with and updated stereo, have to have music right? In addition we needed to reserve space for a future Single Side Band (SSB) radio which is a type of HAM radio used to receive long range voice communication along with weather and email data. We also included a 12volt outlet for charging computers and phones. There was a lot time in the mockup to make sure the current and future planned equipment would fit.

Back on Magnolia the picture might show me (dorky electrical guy) attaching the last of the wires but the Admiral was in there stripping wire and crimping on connectors.

In the in end the behind the scenes wiring came out neat and well organized which is exactly what we wanted.

The final product came out better than we could have hoped though the picture really does not show it. I forgot we included the plaque celebrating Magnolia’s 1991 Biloxi, MS Challenge victory. Yup our girl is fast as well as being a comfortable cruiser.

While we redoing the nav-station we enclosed the cabinet just the right for additional storage. When we are living onboard for months at a time storage space is going to be king!

Now its time to go sailing!