Best boaty DIY bodge

handy stuff, and if it makes a real difference to quality of life on board, then who cares about shuttering ply at this stage. Nice neat work.
 
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Not sure that counts as a bodge - seems a perfectly reasonable prototype to me.

Didn't realise at first that it's not gimballed - it looks like it should be. Though if you only want to make tea, clamps to hold the kettle in place will do fine. Is the stove fixed to the shelf?

To my mind, a bodge is something like my grandad's fixing of a ruptured shaft seal by cutting out the leg portion of an old welly boot, and jubilee-clipping one end round the stern tube and the other round the shaft (and remembering not to start the engine!). Fine as a get-you-home, but he set off to cross the Atlantic like that!

Pete
 
prv said:
Is the stove fixed to the shelf?
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No. The piece of softwood keeps it in place. I got the idea in part from your arrangement on KS, just a lot smaller. I must get my mum to take it into Force 4 to get some crockery to fit. ;)
 
I'm not sure this one's ingenious or a bit sad. As an ex-smoker, I tend to the latter, but each to his or her own.

Mid channel, a heavy smoker friend of mine ran out of cigarettes. No problem, he's got pipe tobacco.

But no pipe. One very grumpy friend.

An oddment of plastic hose, a socket from the toolbox and a bit of gaffer tape later and he's happy again as his nicotine levels climb to normal (for him, probably LD50 for the rest of humanity)
 
The best bodge I ever did was refix an alternator that had broken going over the Alps. Both cast brackets had fractured and I put it back into position using a spanish windlass and then tied down the ends of the winding wooden rod down to keep it nice and tight. It worked so well that I forgot all about it for about 6 months and only spotted the "repair" when doing some other maintenance.
Was on a car but would have worked as well on a boat.
 
sailorman said:
yrs ago the exhaust manifold developed a hole 35 mls off shore in a flat calm.
we opened a can of beanz emptied the contents into a saucepan, washed the tin oyt & fabricated a patch held in place with jubilee clips
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We tried this recently - the exhaust fell of when we hit some heavy weather and the cabin was filled with poisonous exhaust fumes for the rest of the trip.
 
Staightend a bendy Citroen Xantia clutch lever in the 90's with a spanner securly wipped to it with 3 meters of 3 mm nylon cord. It went to the scrap yard 10 years later with the modification still working.
 
I successfully mounted the pole for my wind generator to the pushpit by using two sets of two interlinked stainless hose clips (not Jubilee clips - like this with a bolt across the open side). It works like a charm! The pole itself is an interesting "bodge", but I can claim no cedit for it - it was with the wind generator when I bought is second-hand. But it is the carbon-fibre shaft of an old racing scull.
 
String replacement for throttle cable

When my Volvo Penta thottle cable broke, I rigged up a length of string to the cockpit + a length of shock cord at the throttle end to pull it closed again. A couple of screws in the hatch surrounds helped it get round the corners with penny washers to stop the string falling off. A loop in the end of the string held it open at the required revs.

Not pretty, but it got me home!
 
Ru88ell said:
Whats your best boaty DIY bodge? I've recently make a prototype cooker housing
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Your cooker housing isn't a bodge unless you leave it at the prototype stage :D
My best boat bodge / improvisation is my adjustable whisker pole, made from a TV Ariel pole slotted into a rotary clothes line pole with piston G ends from Force 4.
Another is my sheeting arrangement to get the half furled genoa sheeted in tight when beating - third sheet through a turning block on boom to the windward winch.
 
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Our old Volvo MD7A developed (again) a head gasket leak into one of the cylinders resulting in the engine dying as we left port. As the weather was gorgeous we decided to carry on for the weekend. Sailed in and anchored at Newtown for the evening. Took the head off and filled the waterway and head gasket with epoxy 'steel'. Next morning the engine started good as ever. Kept the 'bodge' till the end of season when we dumped the Volvo and re-engined.
 
Many years ago on a friend's boat a fuel filter leaked furiously - it wasn't one of those cartridge things but a case that came in two parts with a gasket. We didn't have a tool for the odd bolts and he had given up when I massaged some Volvo gasket stuff from a tube I had into the join and to my astonishment the leak slowed and I was able to stop it altogether. The cure lasted to the end of the season.

More recently, I was too mean to pay for the incredibly expensive pipe for my hot water, or trace them all the way to the galley, so I simply cut a few inches off that had hardened over the years and started leaking. In doing so I have added four potential new leaks, but who cares, as long as it sees me out?
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