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Big Taint posted:There are more variables at play. Trailer length is a factor, my trailer is relatively short so a lot of it has to go in. Launching is easier because I can just stick the rear end of the boat in and drive it off the trailer.
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Apr 29, 2018 15:27
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Ya the ramp curves down as you go out, but I can’t always wait for low tide. I got rid of the BMW wagon and got a big Chevy van, anyway. No more tears when I dunk that thing.
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Apr 29, 2018 15:39
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 Hello it's that time of year again. Boat (finally) launched. Daughter approves. This year's big improvement is all the faux leather reupholstered. I'll try to post some pics of that later.
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May 28, 2018 19:43
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Neslepaks posted:
Good stuff. New upholstery makes such a big difference. The boating project this spring has been trying to fix the engine turning over slowly or not starting at all. It would previously need jumper cables from the consumption bank to the starter battery to start when cold. I first thought the 100Ah AGM battery was bad or perhaps undersized since it "only" outputs 720 CCA, but i found a 4 volt drop across the starter circuit. I measured the current to be at about 400 Amps at 6 volts at the starter. In my mind, that was consistent with the 2,5 kw rating of the starter. I relocated the start battery much closer to the engine, cleaned up some bad grounds, and rewired it with massive 95mm² wire (between 000 and 0000 AWG). Now the boat starts fine on the single battery, but i measure the starting current to be more than 1000A peak and around 700A continuous. That seems like too much for a 3.5L diesel to me. It seems the starter motor is shagged, but since replacing it is an engine out operation, i'm hoping it will last the season at least. Does anyone have any experience with a starter that works but pulls too much current? I'm guessing the battery isn't too happy to be essentially shorted every time i start the boat either. Humbug fucked around with this message at 22:52 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 22:41
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Old crusty battery cables are a more likely culprit, how do they look? Corroded lugs with weak crimps and no heat shrink, cable that’s very stiff and makes crackly noises when it is flexed are good signs that it’s toast.
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May 29, 2018 02:06
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I got my hull sanded, and the sides and bottom painted this weekend. I also got my sail put up. 64 square feet of sail dwarfs a 8' boat... So, why i'm really posting. How do they do shaft seals on big boats? Submarines? I know on "normal" boats, it's a stuffing box. Is it just the same thing scaled up to 1/8' of a mile standards, or they start doing other things to keep the water out? ARe they adjusted frequently?
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May 29, 2018 03:52
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Stuffing boxes, they leak continually. Also the shaft tubes are a wee bit fancier.
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May 29, 2018 03:53
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All those cliche's about learning more in a day of racing are totally true. I spent most of the last week as movable ballast/downwind trimmer on a Catalina 22 and had a ton of fun. We raced back-to-back a club regatta and the Catalina 22 Nationals. The skipper has a rep as the LFG, and he had a friend out from back east to serve as tactician/trimmer. That guy turned out to be a total head and one of the smartest people I've met in a while. He mentioned a couple of things regarding sail trim that really clicked for me, and was calling puffs the whole time and that really helped me learn to read the wind on the water. Before this I didn't have much interest in racing, but now I'm scouring the web looking for regattas within driving distance to nudge the skipper towards so we can get semi-serious about mounting a campaign next year. It also has me giving some serious thought to upgrading my rigging (all of it, unfortunately) which is fine for cruising but probably not up to snuff for racing.
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Jun 10, 2018 01:31
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Boys who love boys
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Speaking of racing. Dan and I painted our puddle ducks today.
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Jun 10, 2018 10:20
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Here's the new upholstry. I had to have the backrests go back for some adjustments, but I'm finally happy now. The light brown stripes used to be a very 1980s dark red. 
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Jun 30, 2018 23:18
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Looks good!
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Jul 1, 2018 02:19
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I sailed my puddle duck yesterday. ... seeing as i'm posting this, obviously I survived. It was sailed from Montrose Harbor. And, we even went out on the lake a bit. The water was very confused, and it was very wet.
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Jul 5, 2018 17:05
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I'm happy your puddle duck is coming together! I got some time on a boat the other week.  They were doing a little bit of engine work.  vvv Video vvv  ^^^ Video ^^^ I tried to talk them into letting me take it for a spin, but they weren't having it. 
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Jul 6, 2018 01:02
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Did you ask them what happened to their old steam boat?
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Jul 6, 2018 06:25
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Bah, my image host is broken. I'll get pictures for you later.
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Jul 6, 2018 07:06
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FrozenVent posted:Did you ask them what happened to their old steam boat? I got the sense El Faro was not a lightly discussed subject. A lot of crew had "El Faro 33" stickers memorializing their coworkers, and the safety briefings were more in depth than any other ship I've been on.
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Jul 6, 2018 13:41
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After sailing on other people's boats for years now, I think it's time to make an informed bad decision - I'm about to buy a boat. More specifically, this one: This is an S30, a 41 ft (12.5m) plastic/fibreglass (GRP) sailboat, drawn up by Scandinavian yacht design legend Knud Reimers around 1970. It's an imitation of the old wooden square meter rule skerry cruisers, and as such it is long, low and narrow - the beam is only about 8 ft (2.5m), and you can barely stand upright inside. Just like the old skerry cruisers it's also got a good bit of overhang both fore and aft, so the waterline length is more like 33 ft (10 meters). A more conventional 41ft yacht can easily displace 7 or 8 metric tons or even more, while this thing displaces under 4 tons. Around 300 of these things were built between 1972 and 1982, all in Sweden, and most of them remain here. They're far from ideal for bluewater sailing, but in the Baltic archipelagoes, they're great. The draft is also very shallow at only 5 ft (1.5m) which combined with the fin keel and the long overhang makes it easy to reach land in the archipelago's plentiful natural harbors.  This particular example was built in 1978 and launched in the spring of 1979, was kept by the builder as a demo boat for one year and then sold to the current owner, who is now getting on in years and looking to sell it. It's in overall great shape for a 40 year old boat, and most of the sails have been replaced in the last 5-10 years, but it still has its original Volvo Penta MD7A - a 13 horsepower two-cylinder marine diesel engine. That last thing is the only real issue that makes me hesitate to buy it, because new engines are not cheap (looking at something like $6000 USD for just a 13-15 hp marine diesel engine, then potentially add a new saildrive/prop assembly, installation work etc). Still, the owner seems like a man who takes meticulous care of his belongings - it reportedly runs perfectly and was converted from direct saltwater cooling to closed loop freshwater cooling via a heat exchanger in 1990, so unlike some of its brethren it shouldn't be completely rusted out inside the block. Hopefully. If I end up keeping this for more than a few years, a new engine is probably a good idea at some point, but since it will in all likelihood cost more than half of the price of the boat itself, I'll put it off for a while. The interior is best described as "cozy". It's got six bunks - a twin under the foredeck, two sofas doubling as bunks in the main cabin, and two in a separate compartment aft of the cockpit. There is a toilet with a septic tank, but with the kind of sailing I intend to do (island hopping in the archipelago), that's going to be for emergency use only.   Gonna go on a test trip on Tuesday. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 19:59
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Those are gorgeous, there’s one in SF bay that I see sailing one or two times a year.
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Aug 1, 2018 21:53
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That's beautiful! Mate, if the engine's been fine for 40 years, you're not going to need to replace it. Have it overhauled by a local shop with a good reputation and it'll be fine. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and all that.
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Aug 2, 2018 01:04
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Those old Volvo engines are ridiculously reliable, just keep up on valve adjustments and oil changes. Probably also a good idea to have the injectors rebuilt if it hasn't been done in the last ~500 hours or so. Those older sail drives are... a nightmare. I'd rebuild it on principle just so you know it's in good shape.
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Aug 2, 2018 01:17
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That is a beautiful boat, here's hoping your terrible decision is a good one.
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Aug 2, 2018 09:35
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TheFluff posted:After sailing on other people's boats for years now, I think it's time to make an informed bad decision - I'm about to buy a boat. More specifically, this one: gently caress yeah. Running check stays? This thing was built to go fast.
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Aug 2, 2018 10:13
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Tiller steering on a 41' boat? Have to say that's surprising to me! Great looking boat though, grats.
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Aug 2, 2018 15:47
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The Locator posted:Tiller steering on a 41' boat? Have to say that's surprising to me! Great looking boat though, grats. It is a very light boat for 41', though.
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Aug 2, 2018 17:10
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That is a sexy boat! I guess I’m joining this thread in earnest now because my parents bought a new powerboat. We’ll see when they let me take it out, but the dogs are starting to like the lake. crazypeltast52 fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Aug 2, 2018 17:29
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Big Taint posted:Those are gorgeous, there’s one in SF bay that I see sailing one or two times a year. They really are! We (my sister, her husband and I - we're planning to share ownership) had a long laundry list of things we wanted in the new boat, and "does not look like a floating mobile home" was one of them. The classic skerry cruiser look is great, and I have a particular soft spot for Reimers designs ever since sailing on Primrose, which was also his work. chrisgt posted:Those old Volvo engines are ridiculously reliable, just keep up on valve adjustments and oil changes. Probably also a good idea to have the injectors rebuilt if it hasn't been done in the last ~500 hours or so. meltie posted:That's beautiful! This is good advice, thanks! I'm definitely on board with not fixing it as long as it works, but certain spare parts for these are starting to get scarce as far as I understand. From what I've read, what usually kills this engine generation is either compression issues or the engine block rusting from the inside due to saltwater corrosion in the coolant loop. The latter problem this one hopefully doesn't have anymore, since it was converted to closed loop freshwater cooling long ago. I haven't really heard anything about the saildrives dying though, so that's news to me. It's a Volvo Penta Saildrive 110S. Do you know what tends to go wrong with them? Crunchy Black posted:gently caress yeah. Running check stays? This thing was built to go fast. I'm not too good on sail trim terminology but I think those are just regular running backstays. It is a fast boat though - long waterline (when heeled over) means high top speed. The Locator posted:Tiller steering on a 41' boat? Have to say that's surprising to me! Great looking boat though, grats. Haven't actually bought her yet, but it's looking good so far - it's definitely the best one out of the handful I've looked at already, the price is reasonable and it ticks all of the boxes. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 3, 2018 |
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Aug 3, 2018 01:40
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Maybe it's because I worked at a marine industrial park I saw a disproportionate amount of broken sail drives... Just never liked the things. In boat news, today I ran into something I've never seen before. Sadly the handful of shops I called have never seen it either... This is the alternator off a Bukh engine. I was called in for help because of a failure to chooch condition.  What we're looking at is the back side of a French S.E.V. Marchal alternator, I think they're basically the Nippon/Denso of France. The unusual part is the two B+ studs at the top of the picture. Those are two diode isolated outputs from the alternator designed to charge two isolated batteries at the same time. I can't imagine it works very well (well, it doesn't work at all now...). Issue is someone has hamfisted the terminals and broken the little bondwires off the diodes. I can find rectifiers and regulators for this unit, but not that weirdass isolated diode thingy on the back. Thinking I'm gonna have to either make my own diode set or convert it to being a conventional alternator and find another (likely better) isolation solution. The alternator does produce power when bench tested, just not through the diode pack magic. My other option is to try and find something modern I can retrofit. This alternator is much more common on some old Volvo Penta, so I might see what owners of that engine convert to. I hate doing weird one-off modifications for someone. Nobody else will be able to fix it, I end up owning the stupid halfassed repair...
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Aug 3, 2018 02:31
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chrisgt posted:Maybe it's because I worked at a marine industrial park I saw a disproportionate amount of broken sail drives... Just never liked the things. I think that generator (or one very like it) was standard equipment on the 70's Volvo Pentas, yeah. I suspect the boat I posted about has one. As far as I know though the red assembly with the dual battery charging system was an optional accessory and I think you can just remove it? Amazingly it seems you can actually buy replacement regulators for these things, at least around here.
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Aug 3, 2018 03:17
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TheFluff posted:I think that generator (or one very like it) was standard equipment on the 70's Volvo Pentas, yeah. I suspect the boat I posted about has one. As far as I know though the red assembly with the dual battery charging system was an optional accessory and I think you can just remove it? Amazingly it seems you can actually buy replacement regulators for these things, at least around here. I have an 800 page PDF of alternator parts that's saved me in the past. Punching the model number in brings up both the regulator and the rectifier. From the pictures I've seen it looks like the versions without the double charging nonsense still have a diode block on the back. They have a weird diode arrangement to isolate the D+ wire, one diode on the output and then one diode to the D+ so it has the same voltage drop and thus regulates properly. I might experiment ripping it all out and just wiring it like a normal alternator. The other issue I was running into bench testing is that it sometimes regulates fine, and then randomly jumps up to 15.2 volts. When questioned the owner says it always does that and it's normal.... They also say batteries don't last long on this boat, I wonder why... I think conversion to something modern is the correct solution here. Of course I could buy a regulator, but then I'm half way to just buying a whole new unit.
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Aug 3, 2018 13:36
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Welp, I guess it's time for a new boat trailer...
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Aug 5, 2018 04:54
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Aug 5, 2018 04:58
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Granted, the trailer is probably 20+ years old at this point, and has lived in a salt/brackish water environment, so it's pretty amazing it's lasted this long.
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Aug 5, 2018 04:59
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Next time I'm down at the coast, I'll get pictures of my Hobie Cat trailer. It's from the 80s, and it's definitely seen more than a few saltwater baths.
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Aug 5, 2018 06:19
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n0tqu1tesane posted:Welp, I guess it's time for a new boat trailer... Since galvanized trailers aren't welded, that piece is likely just bolted on. If the rest of the trailer is in decent condition it might be fairly cheap to have a trailer shop bend you a new one of those. Could buy you a few more years out of the trailer for not much money.
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Aug 5, 2018 12:07
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chrisgt posted:
This actually makes *some* sense, if you wanted isolated starting and house battery banks. Most larger RVs and Boats do this, but by way of an external relay. I had one on my RV that ended up blowing up somehow and melted most of the wiring surrounding it. I bypassed it with a boat-style Perko battery switch (1/2/both/off). e: coincidentally, look what popped up on facebook's on this day  TheFluff posted:
Runners in conjunction with a regular backstay are great for being able to depower without having to throw a reef in. It does mean your mast is a relative noodle, though, you're right, she's definitely no bluewater boat. Looks reasonably comparable to a contemporary, the Soverel 33, which I have many many hours on. Crunchy Black fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 13:15
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chrisgt posted:Since galvanized trailers aren't welded, that piece is likely just bolted on. If the rest of the trailer is in decent condition it might be fairly cheap to have a trailer shop bend you a new one of those. Could buy you a few more years out of the trailer for not much money. Or do what I do... Buy some galvanized plate or bar or angle/channel, and bolt that poo poo right over the existing structure. I've even welded it, just grind off the galvy, and then use cold galvanizing spray afterwards. Just wear a respirator and ventilate well.
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Aug 5, 2018 15:49
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chrisgt posted:Since galvanized trailers aren't welded, that piece is likely just bolted on. If the rest of the trailer is in decent condition it might be fairly cheap to have a trailer shop bend you a new one of those. Could buy you a few more years out of the trailer for not much money. Oh, it is bolted on. However, the rest of the trailer isn't too far behind this cross member as far as rust goes. The back of the frame where this cross member attaches is pretty far gone rusted from the inside out. And, the front cross member has already rusted out on the bottom. And the wood runners are due for replacement. I've known this was coming for a while, and have a good line on a used aluminum trailer, but was kinda hoping to limp this one along until the end of the boating season.
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Aug 5, 2018 20:09
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sharkytm posted:Or do what I do... Buy some galvanized plate or bar or angle/channel, and bolt that poo poo right over the existing structure. I've even welded it, just grind off the galvy, and then use cold galvanizing spray afterwards. Just wear a respirator and ventilate well. Ya, I weld it outside with an exhaust fan and a respirator. It's one of those things where once in a while isn't gonna kill you, it's long term exposure.
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Aug 6, 2018 00:09
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Beach Bum posted:Next time I'm down at the coast, I'll get pictures of my Hobie Cat trailer. It's from the 80s, and it's definitely seen more than a few saltwater baths.
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Aug 6, 2018 21:32
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gvibes posted:I still haven’t bought my goddam hobie cat yet. I’m now considering tracking down a getaway (their biggest roto molded cat) if I can one for a decent used price. But H16 is still more likely. 16's are perfect for solo work or lightweight duos. If I weren't a goddamn Sasquatch I'd be perfectly happy with my 14 Turbo, but I've been looking for the right 16 for years. Anything bigger is too much of a pain in the rear end to get to the beach and step the mast and right if you're by yourself. Fake edit: I see the Getaway seems to be a fancier version of the 16, but I'm pretty "eh" about it.
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Aug 7, 2018 07:08
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