Recent content by laika

I should have read my own ST50 manuals. No dice with getting the transducer data onto my depth and speed ST50s from the airman n2k tridata. Having dug out the manuals it seems that the original autohelm ST50s explicitly *don't* function as repeaters (except the dedicated multi display). From...

20-ish years ago, not long after I acquired my sailing habit, I read about the Golden Globe and realised that the person on the Clapham omnibus had probably never heard of Robin Knox-Johnston, never mind moitessier, so I started asking friends and colleagues to name all the famous yachtspeople...

Definitely straight to Alderney. I used to do this to/from Studland from where it's a nice short daylight hours hop to get you into holiday mood. Not anchored in Studland since all the no-anchoring madness but you don't want to be that close to the shore anyway. Hurst spit or the moorings...

Perhaps the fallacy here is the assumption that everyone has similar priorities: an assumption that people are only willing to pay a certain percentage of their total wealth (5-10%?) on a boat so the only folks considering a £300k boat are those with a £3m house and a couple of million in...

The manual would suggest "yes" : Box Boathook's reply seems to confirm it. And I certainly hope that's the case because I have an N2K tridata unit waiting to be connected up in place of my old directly-connected depth transducer and am hoping the (now transducerless) ST50 depth will display...

Did you antifoul your prop in the UK? It's not something I've ever felt I need to do: I just clean up and grease the prop whenever I lift out to change anodes but I recognise things are different in the caribbean Given all the folks saying their antifoul doesn't work I think I should feel...

Well we could start by watching Pip Hare explain how she rigged hers :)

Slightly bigger and maybe it’s just lack of competence on my part but I’ll argue that the centre cockpit of an oceanlord is a less than perfect starting point for single handed berthing. Duncan Wells’s techniques are hugely useful for leaving a berth but the reverse operation at some point...

This may have been the same person as did mine a bit over 10 years ago: Yacht wheel leather cover Again the (different) url I had is no longer valid so sadly not helpful for me to say that he did a great job and it still looks good today but I *will* say that fixing my wheel cover made a huge...

For those that just want to race their bare-bones stripped down racing yachts I guess it's the Spartan clubs. Those of us whose boats have a whole catalogue of cruising tat may prefer the Argosian ones

Much as I hate it when someone asks "How do I do X?" and someone else says ""Don't do X do Y!" ... I'm genuinely curious as to motivation. I get that pre-gps folks just wanted to establish position with the least fuss but now we *do* have GPS. And if you have power for a program you have power...

I have an old spray hood, old (ripped) stack pack and will soon have a wheel cover replaced. Stupid question perhaps but can old canvass be recycled? I'd rather not chuck stuff in a skip if better use could be made of it

Either you’re watching that without a licence or by my calculations you’re paying about £7.50 an episode

The fenders have stickers on them

It's a fair chunk of the way to Cape Verde but the pictures accompanying the article seem to be of lanzarotte beaches. Before reading the details I'd been thanking my lucky stars that El Hierro where I was a few weeks back has an abundance of tidal swimming pools. Horrific story. How many of us...