|
Edward IV posted:From the Raspberry Pi thread. It's nautical and there is certain degrees of insanity involved so I though of this thread. Oh hi, I was redirected to this thread from the spaceflight Megathread Is this mostly about boring rear end powerboats? I've been thinking about starting a sailing specific thread for ages. I do bay sailing and offshore costal racing. I could care less about soulless powerboats. Fight me.
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2019 05:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 21:06 |
|
|
Kesper North posted:Hey thread, if I wanted to tow a boat of 25 or fewer feet, what magnitude of truck/SUV/pullerthing must I contemplate? Is there is a sweet spot in price/performance in that category? I'm looking to buy a vehicle after some years of carlessness and I have no idea what's good, and "pulling a boat" is one of my requirements. Mainly you are concerned about stopping power, so electric brakes on the trailer = good, especially if you're in a hilly area. We towed a J/24 (24') all over relatively flat Texas each year as part of a racing circuit. Most owners had an F250 class truck. Not for the towing capacity, but the braking capacity. Plan for doing a panic stop at highway speeds in a length less than it takes a 747 to land. The truck we used in particular was a V8 2008 Dodge Durango. All up trailer + boat weight was 3400 lbs.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2019 20:06
|
|
|
n0tqu1tesane posted:What happens when it's the wife's idea to get the boat? Buying a sailboat together was a condition of mine for getting engaged/married This worked out well, we spent about 2 months searching for one and then pulled the trigger Wife was new to boats so her list was pretty short 1. Looked cool 2. Didn't look like a grandma's house inside (her words) We looked at a Catalina 36 and that's where the Grandmas house comment came from. She does not like Catalina style interiors, which basically removes anything built prior to 1995 We ended up with a J/105 (34') 1. Cool boat 2. Other than 5 interior trim pieces no wood on the interior 3. Flushing head with separate door 4. Running water in the "galley" and head Now that we've had the boat a couple of years she has added for our next boat 1. Beneteau 2. Head amidships, using the head in the bow in 8' seas is a recipe for sea sickness 3. Full galley 4. If it's going to have wood trim below it's gotta be light/white oak 5. Asymmetrical spinnaker 6. Diesel heater 7. No older than 10 years old 8. At least two cabins with physical doors 9. Preferably 2 heads Next boat is going to be a Beneteau 40 or hopefully Beneteau First 40, possibly a 45'. Beneteaus are cheap these days due to volume/economy of scale and efficient design. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Feb 21, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2020 02:46
|
|
|
Yeah buying a boat with a strong local one design fleet was critical for me. I had been racing J/24 for almost a decade before we got the 105. We've probably raced against you, I'll shoot you a PM In retrospect we maybe should have gotten an Express 27, they are trailerable without a wide load permit and 30' slips are dime a dozen, but it has symmetrical spinnaker as class legal only
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2020 03:03
|
|
|
Crunchy Black posted:I love the J24, its what I learned to sail on but goddamn is it a pain in the rear end to trailer and a bruise on my rear end to race. The night before my very first J/24 regatta the boats first mate asked me if I knew what the J stood for; "J-ah gonn-ah get bruised" M24 always looked like a hot boat, never been on one I got asked to do mast for J24 worlds back for the US east coast edition (2014?) they were campaigning an all Texan-born boat to represent Texas at worlds. Work would not let me off for the six days required  If you check out the J24 class Facebook page the cover photo is that boat at worlds with a ~20' tall Texas flag in place of the main sail
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2020 04:44
|
|
|
re: regatta We had a ~20 mile double-handed regatta... was expecting 17-20, gusting to 22 The opening start gun had some wind, 6-10 knots, then died, we managed to avoid a big hole that left a bunch of boats floating in a parking lot... set the 89^2m (990 sq ft) spinnaker, wind picked up to 15, then 18 knots.... got to the next mark, tried to douse the spinnaker, went shrimping... ALL of the spinnaker went into the water... somehow managed to not wrap the spinnaker or lines around the keel/rudder... ...Wind picked up to 25-28 knots, was doing a bunch of short tacks along the waterfront to avoid the ~2.5 knot incoming tide, had to crash tack back because we were out of phase with some of the other boats coming up the course with us.... shredded the leech line of our jib, also found out that the spin halyard was wrapped around the top batten of the main for about 10 minutes One club measured gusts of 35 knots. Pretty gnarly day. Rode boat hard, put away wet. Spinnaker was toast so we sailed downwind to the next mark under white sails and got stuck in a parking lot in the lee the island. Wind filled in about 30 minutes later and everyone sort of finished at the same time due to the parking lot pile up. Got a pretty good photo of the boat under spinnaker though:  Sailmaker is going to be very pleased about the bill to fix spinnaker + jib 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2020 01:43
|
|
|
Welp about 30% of all regattas this spring have been cancelled in my area J/22 Nationals got cancelled earlier today 2020 is cancelled, everybody
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2020 10:06
|
|
|
I'm thinking about making winch coozies, plus a main sheet cover Went to maintain/oil our winches, there's a piece of metal that needs to come out to pull the outer barrel off the winch body. Well that has basically permanently welded itself to the winch. Which reminds me, I need to order some penetrating oil to get that apart
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2020 21:56
|
|
|
Supposedly Yamars built after X (1995 maybe? guess) don't even have an anodeCrunchy Black posted:Especially if you're the real, special kind of unicorn boat owner that actually does annual maintenance you can add it to your list. That reminds me, it's year 4 of boat ownership, just rolled over 300+ hours on the engine, I should probably get around to replacing the oil, fuel filters, change the oil, replace the impeller.... also need to repack the stern gland I was hoping to get the boat hauled out this spring after we bought the house and have the yard do all that (plus a new coat of bottom paint) but then this pandemic thing happened.... probably should go ahead and do the impeller next time I'm at the dock... I try and run the engine for 10 minutes every time I'm down there to shake the rust off, at least once a month. Does anyone have one of those self-priming, power drill-powered oil pumps, so you just stick the line down the oil stick pipe and slurp out the old oil, rather than try and find the drain plug. Engine accessibility is not a strong suit for my boat.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2020 00:35
|
|
|
Half a centimeter seems like a lot but if you're just lake sailing and you have life jackets on then probably ok. Also depends on where the half a centimeter is
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2020 20:34
|
|
|
TheFluff posted:my native Swedish I generally understand it to be that the rudder/rudder-post constitute one unit, and the rudder's rudder-post is then inserted into the lower rudder bearing, which can sometimes have a rudder tube that extends up above the water line, possibly to the deck, where the second/upper rudder bearing is
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2020 01:18
|
|
|
Crunchy Black posted:Sail racing thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3923325 Ciao, powerboat thread
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2020 21:27
|
|
|
Karma Comedian posted:Talk me out of buying a forty foot trawler and moving onto it forever. A guy I sailed with once does this, his cost of living is so low he is a ski instructor in Vail five months out of the year and that covers the rest of his living expenses for the year. He posts a lot of pictures of him hanging out with cute coed ski students all the time so I don't think he hates his life decisions. Your dating pool is significantly reduced because the trawler is only one to 1.5 steps up from living in a van. 2 steps up if you can get the boat to leave the slip under it's own power.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2020 02:34
|
|
|
I heard a rumor you can rub just a tiny bit sunblock on your canvas snaps and it acts as a lubricant for about one season, any intel on if this is crazy talk? Seems possible
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2020 19:14
|
|
|
taqueso posted:Even as a non boat person, I'm pretty sure this isn't how boats work. Boat lifts are very common on inland areas, especially inland freshwater lakes.  This is a poo poo-garbage quality image but you can plainly see ten J/22 (22' keelboat sailboat) on boat lift/hydro hoists. In this case these are club-owned boats (at fwbc in texas) and they want to minimize total amount of maintenance required as that is a perpetual maintnenance cost. The water there is bathwater warm, at least 85F for 6+ months out of the year, especially in the shallow areas like the marina. As a result alge forms quickly partly due to agricultural run-off. For a $50,000 boat (new) and $3000 hydro-hoist has a ~4-6 year payoff period due to less bottom paint maintenance. A new bottom job on a sailboat ranges from $1200-3500 typically Hydro hoists are powered basically by the blower portion of a vacuum cleaner and then just float up and down so they don't have any moving parts, unless you run into it at high speed it ought to last 15-20 years with little to no maintenance. The privately owned J/24 I sailed on for 7+ years was always "dry sailed" from a hydro hoist. Boat lifts for bigger boats exist but they're rare once you get above ~26'. Most of the J/80s (26') at that club also had hydro hoists or some competing brand of boat lift. edit: not the boat or hoist we used, but yeah if you google "j/80 hydrohoist" lots of results. Ours was a little lower so you still had to brush the bottom 8" of the rudder and keel at the dock, but not having to scrub the bottom every week before a race was ahhhmazzzhing  
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 21:01 on May 26, 2020 |
|
#
¿
May 26, 2020 20:56
|
|
|
I will never get a boat license in protest, it's an abhorrence designed to keep tourists from killing themselves on houseboats, but are conveniently does not apply to them. Boating is/was one of the last major unregulated hobbies. Still is unregulated in most states, just not CA. The fine for not having one is $100 and I'm happy to pay that in perpetuity. That's $0 in boat dollars Yeah, though, knowing how to use your radio and to keep an eye out for shipping traffic is important on SF bay or any other major port. We learned very quickly to keep an eye out for commercial traffic our first time in the Houston Ship Channel.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2020 21:01
|
|
|
Karma Comedian posted:So I'm possibly purchasing a 36' center cockpit sloop. The only issue is that all of the deck paint is like... flaking? The whole deck will need to be stripped and repainted. So, my questions are: The problem with repainting your deck is that if you're gonna do it right, then aaaallllll your deck hardware has to come off before you sand, and then prime/paint, wait for it to cure, do the next 2-3 coats etc etc... Then you have to take your janky rear end looking, 35 year old hardware and mount it on your new deck. Which means you're going to want to polish and clean it all. Mostly it's the removal and reinstall of all the hardware that's a bitch and a half. Most of those fasteners haven't moved in three decades and you need a second person on the other side of the deck. Each thing is usually held down with 4 bolts, which is hundreds of bolts, some of which are stripped, or behind interior panels that are glued in place etc I'm not trying to dissuade you from this, it's widely known that repainting the deck (properly) is one of the most time consuming boat restoration jobs you can do Or you could just wrap tape around all the deck hardware and paint that way. It ends up looking super janky. It's why we haven't repainted the deck of my mom's boat yet Check out the YouTube series "sail life" where this Danish software developer nerd has been rebuilding his 38' boat for the last 3 years. He's using PPE sigmadur 550 two part paint and primer system with great results, and it's not too crazy expensive For nonskid, use kiwigrip. Find a friend who's used it before to get the correct amount of grippiness. In general when it dries it's usually 2x as grippy as you think it is when it's wet, especially as a first timer
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2020 04:29
|
|
|
Are you talking about an electric surfboard with a foil
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2020 08:16
|
|
|
There's a truckload of foiling surfboard videos on YouTube if anyone is interested I had to commute across SF Bay which is ~7 miles and I remember doing napkin math, crunching the payback time required because these things typically have a 14 mile one way range and it costs about $10 to cross the bay one way using public transit. There's a bunch of commercial options now for $5k. SF Bay is pretty rough with all the short chop but foiling kiteboarders seem to do ok here. Looks like these have a pretty steep learning curve if you've only been on a paddle board once or twice, but yeah looks pretty rad
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2020 17:51
|
|
|
Not sure if I should post this in the boats thread or regatta thread Has anyone looked at upgrading from a deep cycle lead acid battery to a lifepo4 (boat lithium) battery? Right now we have 2 x 65 amp hour lead acid batteries, which we replaced at a cost of $155 EA... $310 for both plus tax, and each one weighs 90 lbs 65ah 12v = 32ah usable etc etc You can buy a 100ah lifepo4 for $800 these days, which has ~95ah usable power, and weighs about 20 lbs, AND it has a 10-15 year life span, vs 3-4 for lead acid Weight is a premium on my boat, Knocking ~75lbs would be awesome, 150 lbs would offset all the "wife gear" weight penalty I'm seeing I guess, if you're going to have the boat for 5+ years the dollars add up to buy the lithium battery? Thoughts?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2020 05:38
|
|
|
Yeah it's definitely superior technology, no argument We want to get into more ocean racing, and a 19 hour race is capable of draining both batteries to 50%. 50% is the point where you start doing permanent damage to the battery. Since then I've added a second nav computer, plus two more (three if you count the replacement nema 0183 display that took a winch handle to the face) displays so looking for something that can handle 24 hrs. The big, big difference with lithium is that charging efficiency is ~98-99% from 2% all the way to 98%, whereas lead acid drops from 95% efficiency at 80% to about 40% efficiency when you get over 82% If you're on solar, the big big advantage is that you're gonna top off your batteries by 4pm, rather than constantly running at 88% forever Right now I just have a lovely tester 50w flexible panel to shake out the bugs in my solar system but looking to upgrade to a 200w panel at some point to do a Pacific/Hawaii crossing this next summer
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2020 06:00
|
|
|
You can get knockoff raycor 500fg fuel filters for about $40 on ebay, apparently they work quite good. I have an official one so I wouldn't know, but yeah those water separators are fuckin' money. I bleed off about 3 fl oz of water every 6-8 months from the separator.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2020 09:16
|
|
|
cosmin posted:Heya boat thread! 5. As long as you follow Rule Number One, don't fall off the boat, boat safety is no issue and a joke everywhere. Once you violate Rule Number One, things can go sideways very quickly. People laugh when I talk about Rule Number One because it's so obvious, but really it's Number One for a reason 6. Prepare yourself by realizing every trip to the boats parts store is going to cost you a minimum of $500 USD (€420 ?) and that's just part of owning a boat, 7. Things always happen on the water and weird poo poo happens, to quote some lady who had done two circumnavigations in a 50' boat with her husband, a pretty comfortable ride, "every time you go out on the water is an adventure" it's true, it's gonna happen, just roll with it, and by about the 100th time you'll probably have come across the 70th percentile of things that can go wrong*. The trick is ask yourself, "is anybody going to die of grevious injury in the next 30 minutes if we turn off the engine and take no action?" If the answer is no, consider turning off the engine, or at least put it in idle and figure out what the problem is. On a sailboat at least, I've found that with almost any issue, the boat is approx. 1000x stronger than the entire crew combined, so just wait for the weather to improve, go have a beer down below, maybe put the anchor out, and wait it out for a couple of hours. *Fun story, literally last night my new marina called me to tell me I had parked in the wrong slip, two slips over, so I went to move it at like 10pm in the fog and misy. We have a fin keel and giant rudder which makes backing into the slip a snap once you get going about 1.5kts. So I motor out of the slip single handed, motor down the way, and then throw it in reverse. Well, it turns out, we're right by the bay and there's a pretty sick half knot current in the marina perpendicular to the main docks so I start sliding into the boats to my left as I'm waiting for my folding prop to generate enough speed to regain steerage. Folding props are notoriously lousy in reverse. I'd been hugging the left side already as my new slip was on the right and wanted maximum turning radius. Ended up slamming** the transmission into forward and nosing to the right side, got clear of the boats without hitting them, then went in reverse again, again sliding more than halfway to the right again due to the current. Managed to get the boat into the slip ok and tied up without any new issues. Previous marina had no side currents, never ran into THAT particular problem before. Always an adventure, even just moving the boat over two slips in the same marina. ** As much as an experienced boat owner slams a 20 year old transmission
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2020 00:33
|
|
|
Did you weigh the new one, weigh the old one, then pick out the difference in weight, from your heat exchanger? Because the rest of your impeller is still in there, clogging things up
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Aug 30, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2020 04:01
|
|
|
Femtosecond posted:Is there some point in boat buying where the boat is so cheap that the seller will look at you like a moron if you want to do a survey? Or is it typically always done because the costs involved with having to correctly dispose of an unsafe and end of life boat are substantial? For lake/coastal cruising, yeah buying a boat less than $10,000 usd you're almost certainly going to be doing the repair work yourself (and just pick another hobby if you aren't) so you might as well trust your own eyes. I haven't looked at a checklist recently, but check all the through hulls, propshaft seal, lower rudder bearing, find where the soft spots are in the deck and wether you really need to repair them (hint: probably don't! Go sailing instead) and then make sure the standing rigging is in reasonable shape, C27 rigging isn't terribly expensive and you can order new rigging right out of the Catalina catalog which is nice (local rigger might be able to do it cheaper, get a quote first) Price of the sailboat ought to be something like (value of this boat in absolute brand new, fully rebuilt condition) - (all the things that need to be replaced) - (all the things that have been replaced, but are older than 2 years old) Just assume everything except the keel and rudder have exactly a 20 year lifespan, and you'll probably start wishing you'd replaced it after only 15 years. A $10,000 Catalina 27 probably has $8,000-$12,000 worth of deferred maintenance due at purchase, and you can probably go 3-4 more years before you absolutely have to spend money on it to keep sailing Rebuilding a boat can be a fun project, but boats are 100% you get what you pay for. If you buy a $5,000 Catalina 27, you're going to put a year and $16,000 into restoring it. If you buy the $10,000 Catalina, you can sail it for two years without maintenance, and make upgrades/repairs as you go We bought our boat in race ready condition third week of April and did our first regatta fourth week of April, and then did a 90 mile regatta a month after that. Basically bought the boat and started using it immediately. If you buy a boat that's in such poor repair that you're afraid to leave the dock, you're not going to get a lot of use out of your investment the first year Catalina 27 is a great starter boat, especially paired with an outboard
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2020 22:32
|
|
|
Catalinas were wildly popular back in the 70s and 80s, I don't know how many 27s they made, but they built over 5000 Catalina 30s, which for a keelboat, is a lot. I think they might have made double that many 27s. They also have solid fiberglass hull so there's not a lot to go wrong. Deck is cored, but like I said, try not to think about it too hard unless it's in a structural area
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2020 22:52
|
|
|
Yeah as a side note, if you live in the bay area, Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley is possibly the best value in the country for extracurricular activities, it's $90/quarter i.e. every three months, that's $1/day, or probably a third the cost of your gym membership That includes full use of any boats, sailing lessons/instruction etc etc. They have I dunno, at least 30 dinghies, 7 of which are pretty modern, plus two "cruisers" that are 25-30' long. Dinghies have regattas on Sunday mornings, first come first serve They also have a very not snooty culture, most of the senior members are retired, grizzled old salts, but there's a ton of younger people taking advantage of the clubs resources. A ten minute walk is berkeley yacht club which has a lively under 40 scene and $4 beers on tap
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2020 00:58
|
|
|
Was debating posting this in the house buying thread or the boat buying thread. This is actually about a house, but it's a ferrocement house, that's underground (or with dirt piled on top of it), in a very rainy area. On a hill. Sure sounds like they decided to live in a ferrocement boat, that's been turned upside down. If you just do a find-and-replace for the word "house" with "boat", "bathroom" with "head" and "living room" with "salon" you'd think this was a boat in the arkansas river, not a house overlooking it https://dengarden.com/misc/The-Pitfalls-of-an-Underground-House
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2020 03:16
|
|
|
I think you learn more crewing on a boat for a year than most cruisers do in five, particularly in a competitive fleet with spinnakers It's always amusing to tell crew "don't do that" and when they say "why?" you get to explain to them the one time that thing led to a chain of events led to a 5-figure repair Hadlock fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Oct 18, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2020 09:41
|
|
|
Offer $10 and don't go above $14 Better boats probably exist, if it had a diesel engine I'd probably say go for it. Gas will evaporate and sink and then explode, diesel won't hardly burn if it leaks, it's much safer in a bathtub than gas But yeah if you're gonna put a gas engine in a sailboat, atomic 4 is the way to go, great aftermarket support Rigging inspected in 2019, and last full survey in 2016 = expect to replace standing rigging that was probably installed in 2007, at a cost of about $$4200 all in. That's gonna be the next big job on that boat. That and maybe the rudder bearings. Buy a sewing machine and plan on reupholstering the entire interior, those v berth cushions/cover look original. Our '83 Catalina had the same pattern New upholstery and new standing rigging, with those two things probably worth $17. As is, pre covid market value probably $12k
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2020 13:40
|
|
|
Crunchy Black posted:Hadlock, I've literally never been on a boat that's had a rig failure and we beat the dogshit out of our J24s here. I've had wires fail in shroud wire rope both on a Catalina 30, and a Dufour 31 while we were sailing, both cruisers. Didn't cause a catastrophic failure, but definitely indicative of significant wear Russian Roulette lost a shroud on the final leg of rolex bbs 2019 (was not on that boat, but it is/was a sf boat), that was rod rigging though General rule of thumb is 15 years for 1x19, I'm not going to suggest the guy assume it's safe, although he could probably get another 5 years out of it, that's up to him. I personally don't trust any rigging that I don't know the age of, but that's just me Edit: that said, we did sail the Dufour 31 on what was probably the original 1974 rigging for three years before it physically started to wear out and I cut my hand, and then then one of the wires literally jumped off the boat (impressive pinging noise, it was blowing 18+, still heard it in the cockpit).... But we were ~5 miles offshore and it was not a lot of fun motor sailing the boat in 5' chop upwind back to Galveston. Would have been really nice if we'd replaced the rigging before, not after, $4500 is a lot for peace of mind, but at the same time, not Hadlock fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Oct 19, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2020 22:01
|
|
|
We had something come up recently and couldn't check on the boat for two weeks. My mom was in town and we went to show her the new boat slip Some sort of issue with the bilge pump wiring, looks like it happened between the battery and the bilge pump switch. Water about 2 inches above the floorboards. Marina let me borrow their emergency bilge pump, took an 1800 gph about 20 minutes to drain the boat back down below the floorboards; pumped another 100 gallons by hand Came back the next day and after everything had a chance to slosh around some more, pumped out another 100ish gallons by hand Moral of the story is you buy a 70 pint (8.75 gal) dehumidifier, have it drain out of the sink, not directly into the bilge There is a butt joint in the bilge for the pump just under the floorboards, and the west marine by my house is out of ancor 14-16ga heat shrink butt joint crimp connectors, so manually pumping poo poo out until the chandlery by my house opens and I can get some from them Boat needs it's packing gland tightened, slightly faster drip there than I would like Re: Boat rewiring chat Rewired a 1974 Dufour 31 (blue water french sailboat) , not terribly hard, just time consuming to trace every wire, and unfuck what the previous three owners did in the breaker panel. I think I still have a copy of the back of that breaker panel. Total rusty bird's-nest of wire. Previous owner removed the brass lights on the main bulkhead and twisted the wires together where they came out of the wall, must have been the heat, took us an hour to figure out they were shorting themselves
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2020 02:44
|
|
|
Trip report: Got tired of going to the boat every 24 hours to pump out 30 gallons of water by hand Wrapped a trash bag around the stuffing box and attacked the whole thing with an entire roll of electrical tape Came back 48 hours later, pumped out less than 8 gallons of water Sadly I have too much poo poo going on right now to properly deal with my extremely slowly sinking boat, will worry about this next weekend, and pump it out every two days until then Typical-boat-owner-problem.txt Edit: pro tip west marine sells two sizes of manual hand pumps, unless your boat is under 22', you need the larger size; consider it critical safety equipment and don't cheap out on getting the small one, it's really only designed for pumping out dinghies Hadlock fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Nov 21, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2020 11:33
|
|
|
Yeah the early Sam Holmes stuff is pretty good, especially pre florida. One episode halfway across the Pacific he runs out of things to do and re-engineers/rebuilds his solar arch with cordless power tools. Re: engine cooling, just as a sanity check, check your raw seawater filter, it should be near the seacock for cooling water ingress. If there's a plastic bag or shrimp colony in there, that will impact water flow. As mentioned before, impellers should be changed annually. If you need encouragement about learning to sail etc, a programmer in his early 20s bought the left over hulk of an engineless Pearson 30 sailboat with two girls and they put a second hand mast in it and bummed around the Bahamas for three summers in between semesters in college, it's a little over an hour, but demonstrates, if a bit haphazardly, an approachable view of sailing https://vimeo.com/15351476 Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Dec 8, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2020 19:39
|
|
|
Oh yeah we're getting close to King Tide season in SF bay Dec 13-15 has both the lowest and highest tides of the year There are a couple of wildly unsafe coal coastal mine tunnels near Baker Beach that you can explore for about 4 hours before they Mission @ Embarcadero in downtown ought to be half an inch under water as well There are some mid year "queen tides" and we were dragging bottom in the Emeryville channel leaving the marina at low tide; typically even at low tide that channel is 10' deep and we draw 6.5' with our keel Edit: Yeah both Dec 14/15 tidal range is -1.6 to +7.1 = 8.7' tidal range in 7 hours at golden gate bridge Normally it's more like +1.0 to +5.0 = 4.0' tidal range, give or take, low being +1.0 as the bay is technically an outflow of ~2-3 largish rivers, depending on how you count Hadlock fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Dec 9, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2020 01:06
|
|
|
Yeah I used to live south of Seattle and a 9' tidal swing was a normal day, and then later I lived in Texas where the tidal range is less than 9 inches and all of the docks are fixed, not floating. If the onshore breeze was too strong for too many days in a row the water would rise another 3" and would short out the electrics mounted under the docks. If a hurricane hit you boat would just float up and over the docks. My mom's boat still has a big gash on one side where it settled against the dock after hurricane... Ike? Rita? when the water finally receeded
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2020 03:02
|
|
|
We're currently having a wind storm, went down to the marina for the first time in almost two weeks to check on the lines. Wind is blowing about 36 knots out of the south. Southern most line had sawed itself about half way through, though the chafe guard and halfway into the soft polyester guts, when I went to check on it. Not visible damage unless you inspected where the line rubbed against the galvanized cleat. Line was nearly bar tight; grabbed a spare dock line from the rope locker, threw it over the same cleat on the boat, tied that secure to the same dock cleat. Didn't seem worth the risk to replace it and have the boat crash into the dock. Supposed to calm down the rest of the week, I'll change it out tomorrow after work or something. There's a 90% chance that original dock line survives the night, but not worth taking the chances TL;DR go inspect your dock lines
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2021 04:50
|
|
|
Just out of curiosity what do new piles cost relative to snap jackets
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2021 00:13
|
|
|
Went on our first sail of the year this weekend. It was about 70 and sunny and the wife was busy, perfect day. The plan was to go down to the dock, bleed the fuel system, start the engine and do a lap around alcatraz under main only. We have a 30' boat that's about a 30 minute trip give or take, pretty benign plan About the time we get to alcatraz the wind picks up and we decided to go all the way across to Sam's Cafe, as they had just reopened service on their sail up dock. Well it was low tide, managed to sort of dredge a channel to the dock with our keel, and then throw an anchor off the bow as a sort of crude med moore. Six oysters, a burger and two mai tai later we head back as sunset was fast approaching Engine fuel line has a small leak, or something, letting air into the line at full cruise and 15° heel angle, engine dies. Well, we have plenty of wind, we're plenty deep into the beers and mai tais at this point, plus I just sailed it into the slip last time this happened, so we sail home Well this time the wind completely dies about 1000' from shore, we're about 600' east of our marina with a ~2 knot flood tide pushing us further away. "Might as well bleed the fuel line now and go home". Five minutes later the crew is complaining that the ignition key is shocking them, the interior 12v lights are flickering off and on, and the alternator is shredding it's belt like they're going out of style. Turn off 12v system as a safety measure, which includes both vhf and nav lights. At this point we decide to take a break, have a beer, pull out the radio on 16 to let shipping know we're adrift within ~500 ft of a shipping lane and unlit and wait and see if the wind fills in. I figure we have enough beer to last us until then. This worked out well as we saw at least three freighters pass through the gate, looked like port traffic control was directing them to the other side of the way to give us plenty of clearance, nobody came within 2 miles of us Well out of the dark comes some retired old codger in his Pearson sailboat and offers to tow us to Aquatic Park, about a mile up tide of where we need to go. He declines to tow us into our marina, I forget why, probably because it was dark, but we figure we'll just raft up at the Aquatic Park anchorage and hang out, then sail home later or something. Sent out a radio blast to let traffic control know we were at anchor and clear of their traffic channels for the night Several rum and cokes later we decide it's not like we're in any rush to get home, and finally all pass out on our respective boats (rafting up is a pretty decent covid safe(ish?) activity, if everyone stays in their own cockpits, maybe) and then in the morning he tows us into our correct marina after some coffee Still haven't looked at why we had catastrophic battery failure, I replaced major parts of that system with no redesign just three years ago. I'll look at it next weekend. Battery switch and battery charger are set to off so it ought to be electrically isolated Hadlock fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Feb 9, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2021 07:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 21:06 |
|
|
We went to look at a boat today listed by a local broker, fairly racey cruiser, mid market pricing, 9 years old ready to do a pac cup or transpac race to Hawaii 1. Suprise it's an ex charter boat which wasn't disclosed before we drove all hour to see it 2. Owner appears to be camping on it whenever wife throws him in the doghouse. Apparently he would recover from chemo on the boat and is quite attached to it 3. Is teaching his daughter to sail on it 4. Owns two other boats, appears to not be in the mood to actually sell it 5. Weird creaky noise coming from the water fill port on deck, also near the chain plates, the under deck access is behind a built in cabinet i.e. No-go 6. Despite professional photos, boat interior cabinets are held together with painter's tape and about 50% of the latches are corroded shut. Ad says "meticulously maintained" Noped right the gently caress out of that transaction
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2021 07:24
|
|