There are a lot of electrical system questions on the various forums and messages boards. I certainly do not have any new information but I thought perhaps stating what I know might help some folks. I’ve certainly listened to two people say the same thing and only understood one them. Let’s limit our discussion to… [Read More]
LED Lights #4
I’ve been playing with inexpensive LED lights for the sailboat for a while now. Specifically, the Festoon style bulbs. For the history; view post #1, post #2, post #3, and post #4. I think I have made progress this time. The current batch of LED lights are 18 SMD LED’s and are very bright. I took this… [Read More]
EarthNC Android App
There is a slick app available at the Android Market titled EarthNC. It is described as “seamless charts, user waypoints, and realtime navigation. …features seamless NOAA marine charts for US waters, user waypoints, and realtime navigation.” I downloaded it and have been playing with it for a couple of weeks (on my Samsung Galaxy S… [Read More]
Power Inverter Planning
At first glance, selecting an inverter to convert 12 Volt electricity in your battery bank to 110-115 volt “house” electricity is easy, right? Well, as with most things, nothing is easy. There are a lot of options and a lot of things to consider in your decision making/product selection. I certainly do not have all… [Read More]
Shoal Fin Keel
There are a bunch of strange terms in the boating world. One used in regards to sailboats is a shoal fin keel. There are lots of different types of keels and I thought some photos of the last haul out of my sailboat might help in understand what a shoal fin keel is. This is… [Read More]
Dinghy Concert
Beautiful video! You just have to love the song, the singer, and how relaxing it is! Fabulous! 4th Annual Clarkes Court Bay dinghy concert in Grenada. Grenada is part of the Windward islands in the Caribbean sea. North of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago; south of St. Lucia .
Garmin 441 GPS Chartplotter
I purchased the excellent Garmin 441s chartplotter in the spring of 2011. So far, I really like it. I would not claim to have fully utilized it or played with every feature – there are many! I agonized over where to mount it. I have seen a lot of installations with the unit inside the cabin… [Read More]
Port Light Seals
The port light seals (gasket) on my sailboat were becoming dried out and would stick when I opened the window. I do not have any leaks (that I know of) though. I had read that the best way to freshen/recondition these seals is to work some white Vaseline into them. This past week, I took… [Read More]
Fuel Pickup
I removed the pickup line from the diesel fuel tank of my Hunter 34 sailboat. I was hoping to find an obvious problem that would explain my recent “out of fuel” problem documented here. The fitting/assembly came out of the tank easily and I didn’t break or lose anything!! Yeah! Sadly, the “obvious” was missing. Even under… [Read More]
LED Cabin Light Testing
This is very un-scientific but is yet another data point for me. I installed the festoon LED cabin lights mentioned here and waiting til it was dark outside. The results were ok but not what I was hoping for. The cabin was not well lit. Rather, very dungeon like. From this test, it is clear… [Read More]