Recent content by nathanlee

Will do. I found out yesterday that some old friends have been around the NW coast for the last 4 years as full time liveaboards, and love it. I must try to get in touch with them. Eek, it feels like only a few months ago since I saw them - scary how quick time vanishes. I do prefer books to be...

In the UK, unless you're being a good serf and sending that taxed money to the overlords and living exactly in the prescribed way, you'll have a hard time. Government really does not like people living anywhere but houses, so I'd honestly give up on trying to do it above board and go stealth. If...

Hi folks, I'm wondering if anybody is aware of anybody that has wintered in the UK in a fairly remote anchorage? Any blogs or books or similar I can be pointed to? My google searching is not turning up much of use.

I have an Ioda Solder Pro 70. It gets fairly well hammered and is still in perfect working order. Tips are easy enough to get hold of, and they do burn out so would definitely bear that in mind as Pete mentions. A gas Iron deals with heat shrink quite well too.

re avoiding VAT. It's not my problem. You lot crack on. A bankrupt state is a harmless one. The more the merrier.

Another user of kplex here. I have it running on a Raspberry Pi 2 (£26 quid I think), and it pumps out AIS and GPS data over a wifi network which is also powered by a small 3g enabled router so the instant any device connects to my boat's network, it has access to the full suite of NMEA...

What an awful interior regardless. Awful hull too. I agree with the OP, the older ovni's were quite attractive but that's a right mess. I fear an interior designer has been near that. Perhaps the hull is by Ikea?

A few weeks ago I nutted an anchor whilst shifting it out of the cockpit. One of those bangs on the head that takes some effort to stay conscious. After the initial few moments I realised how much blood there was, so promptly pressed a j-cloth against my head, and staggered up to the marina...

Robin, a small word of caution from one of these annoying programmers that write stuff like that. The updates often (almost always) contain security updates and fixes. If your computer never goes on the internet you'll probably get away with it, but if not then there be dragons. But who could...

I've done just this, though I don't intend to use the MacBook for at-sea navigation due to it being a £1200 laptop that's allergic to water, and a power hungry one at that. What you'll need is a way to get AIS and GPS information over wifi. The alternative is to plug stuff in to the macbook...

Indeed, Liverpool and Holyhead coastguards are frequently getting mixed up, up 'ere. "This is Liverp... sorry, Holyhead.." happens regular. Then there's the digital artefacts which suggests some sort of VOIP connectivity between the control centres and the transmitters. It's all modern...and...

Well there's an example of "a little knowledge..." There's me thinking I was being sensible by not trying to ram 10amp+ through the switch panel when everything is switched on. I think I might have to return to the drawing board on that idea. I didn't bother to check, just presumed the current...

That's odd. Mine was regularly cut off due to exceeding the limit. I was also paying some daft amount for a 4g MiFi device with 15gb (their maximum package). If I managed to last two weeks on both of those I'd be very lucky indeed. This meant that despite paying something like £80 per month in...

I didn't want some of the bigger pulls (anything above 5amp) running directly through my cheap-o switch panel, so I've ran the potentially larger draws through separately fused automative relays. Now, I've not really been pulling much current through them but they're warm. One is running the...

Tethering - nobody gives any decent data allowance for tethering now. Three used to do unlimited, but they stopped it last year, just before I stopped subscribing to their service as it happens. VPN - given the context, I presume you mean to get around the tethering data caps? If so, you can do...