Recent content by chriscallender

My experience, alebit a long time ago now was sometimes the opposite. Maybe it depends what "small" means and how busy the marina is, but I used to find if you phone up in advance to book a berth a day or 2 in advance for a 21 footer you will be told the marina is full because (I think) they...

Usually it works that boat owners A and B don't have "annual berths" , they pay for a licence allowing them to keep boat A and boat B in the respective marinas. If you go away sailing (or off to a different marina) they will happily put a visitor on "your" berth and make some extra money because...

News reports say that two people were rescued from the water, one is in serious condition, the other uninjured. Miraculous that anyone could survive that I agree.

I'm glad there's someone else that thinks like me... my experience is the things that are likely to cause problems in a boat are the things that never occurred to you to check until they broke, not stuff like this. I'd rather spend the time that it takes to fit a second clip looking very...

I did most of that in 2011, single handed (overall I did Southampton -> Firth of Clyde). My route was (Padstow)-Milford Haven-Arklow-Dun Laoghaire-Skerries-Ardglass-Bangor. I did Milford Haven to Arklow overnight, the rest were day sails. At Milford you can go to Dale pontoon, I went there at...

When my kids were young they were always trying to hang cables connected up to their Nintenodo DS over the side with exactly this plan to charge their batteries when they ran out. Actually they were a bit confused between jelly fish and electric eels as well (both would hurt if you touched them...

You can measure the primary and secondary resistance with a multimeter, if you can find out what it is supposed to be from a service manual or the internet. Or get an inline spark checker which fits between the plug and the HT lead and flashes each time there is a spark. This is bringing back...

Ok you said it ran then after the last few times you’d worked on it it didn’t. So what work did you do those times? As others have said, with a spark, fuel and compression it should run. The only other thing that can be wrong is if the spark timing is completely wrong eg if the woodruff key is...

That depends ... NMEA0183 version 1 is single ended like you describe, however v2 is differential so the other post isn't necessarily wrong. Fortunately v1 and v2 devices can still even be wired up to each other (if the OP needs to get into that), for instance this web site describes the wiring...

PWM generators on Amazon are about 5-10 pounds (5 for a board, 10 in a case as well), and have an LCD display showing the duty cycle (=heater flap position). Hobby model RC servos usually operate on about 6 volts, so you might need to be careful about getting servos that can work at 12v, but...

The problem is that the current number truncates the underlying data. Their actuaries have a wealth of information about how much they are likely to have to pay out for rig failures with <10 year old rigging because they just need to look in their past few years of claims in their own company...

Sitting there rotting in a boatyard | Facebook

Some real life weather experience. I sailed a boat up from Southampton to the Firth of Clyde in May 2011; generally the weather was pretty unsettled and grotty for the time of year with low pressure systems coming in at 3 day-ish intervals. I spent plenty of time in ports waiting out the worst...

I seem to remember that is because golf balls spin, and the roughness allows them to be somewhat steered in flight by people skilled at golf, ie not by me. Now sailing boats also spin, at least they do when going down the Alderney Race with a large spring tide behind them and they hit a...