At somewhat long last, I received nearly all of the rigging I had ordered from Colligo. As I mentioned in a previous post, Colligo had delays sourcing some of the components needed for my rigging, and I cannot fault them for the delay given the pandemic circumstances.
The sturdy...
When I first bought my boat, the cockpit "dashboard" engine panel was something of a mystery. There were six little warning light windows, and none of the lights ever came on.
Mine is a "Type B" engine panel, and I did some internet reading and purchased a Chilton owner's guide for my 3GM30F...
Total hours: 12-15 hours, on multiple days
Cost, $50 for butyl tape. $40 for Debond cleaner (only a little used on this job)
Early July, 2020
It took some detective work, but after a careful review of the evidence, I suspected I had a leak or two in my cabin.
I looked around, here and...
After ordering, the Sailtrack, and installing it, the final step is to have the Sailtrack slides affixed to one's mainsail.
Any rational person would take this task to a sail loft and have them do the work. I bought a used sailboat, so I've already failed the rational person test.
The slides...
Another one from the University of YouTube. How about these nice women from Long Island?
I picture them traveling merrily around from marina to marina, removing and replacing boat names:
Easy-Off is the hot tip.
Old name
Apply Liberally, Wait 20-30 minutes
Some gentle scouring...
I’m replacing the standing rigging on my boat, and at a local workshop/seminar put on by a local sailing group with a presentation from a rigger, I became interested in the idea of synthetic (rope) rigging instead of wire. I presented some ideas for discussion in a forum post.
I vacillated...
Summary:
AIS transceivers are good - try to buy a 5 watt one. The Raymarine AIS700 will not, on its own, publish GPS location information to a Raymarine SeatalkNG network, and so any AIS avoidance alarms on the Raymarine SeatalkNG/NMEA 2000 network require an independent GPS input in addition...
This note like my other one on coaxial cables has been marinating since late May, 2020. As part of my boat network upgrade I wanted to add a remote microphone to my helm while moving the radio head unit below deck into my navigation system. The connectors for the remote mic cable were too...
Luke: Dang it Yoda, I didn't fly all the way to the swamps of Dagoba to learn about some Ham radio soldering baloney! I'm supposed to be out there having adventures! Reefing! Tacking! What about Han and Leia and -
Yoda: Mmmmm, so the electrons will surely conform their behavior to your...
Time dedicated: About 7 hours - two yesterday pulling wires and five today messing with fixtures.
Edit: 8/5/2020 - Costs:
$165 combined on two light fixtures from marinebeam.com.
$64 on new tinned wire from Amazon.
$81 on the LMR240 coaxial that the boatyard. (does not include the...
A recent forum thread about another member's struggle with his "stuffing box hell" encouraged me to review my own while I have recently had my boat out of the water.
As I have said many times, I don't know very much about sailboats and I'm learning everything as I go. A basic problem that...
So after cleaning and polishing my mast while it was out at the boatyard, today I was able to install the Tides Marine Sailtrack. I linked to this guy's video before - I really just followed his example:
This all took about 2.5 hours.
My first step was to open a new gate in the mast. At...
Pretty much everything I know at this point about cleaning gel-coat boats is from a week or so I spent last summer trying to bring back a positively chalky 1983 Coronado 15 dinghy. I'm trying to avoid worrying about turning my Ericson into a perfect princess of a boat, because I want to use it...
When you turned on your computer today, you were probably thinking, "Man, I sure hope I get something exciting to read about, like a guy writing about the condition of the through-hulls in his boat."
It's your lucky day. Here we go.
My 32-200 has four through-hulls in the head area on the...
Up into the slings she goes.
The underside was not exactly bright red:
Power-washed and placed on a cart:
Can you tell where the straps were for the power-washing?
The sacrificial anodes had been treated like Aztec teenagers before a big battle:
I didn't get a picture of the...
Arrived at the boatyard, patted myself on the back for the yard crew noting my earnest application of labels and turnbuckle markers to my shrouds in advance. It took about 15 minutes from the time I had tied up at the dock until we were able to remove the cotter pins from the stays toggles and...
1. I was helpfully told: Mark your hull where you want the the sling straps to go, so you won't damage any underwater appendages. Consult Saiboatdata.com if necessary for a model drawing.
2. My 'project manager' at KKMI, the boatyard at which I will haul out suggested pulling the cotter...
Given the very positive reviews from members of the site, I decided to install a Tides Marine SailTrack system.
The SailTrack is an extruded Ultra High Molecular Weight (UHMW) Plastic track that slides into your mast's internal luff groove and replaces the grooves functionality with its own...
"Dude, that Alex Honnold guy climbed up the face of El Capitan with no ropes and no help.
You just have to haul your behind 40 feet in the air with a couple of ropes."
After a certain amount of preparation, I made my first trip up the mast today. I haven't found any other pictures of...
I wrote about my plans to ascend my mast with a newly-purchased mast-climber on my wire rope halyards.
The feedback I received was not to climb my wire-rope halyards, and instead to replace them with all-rope lines.
One choice would have been to locate a local reliable rigger to make some...