Here's a handy tip

I learned a handy tip too today. When you rewire the cockpit socket for a tillerpilot, don't just test that there's 12v across the terminals and call it done. It also matters which way round those 12v are :)

(Cue dismantling and rewiring the tillerpilot plug in the cockpit in the middle of the Solent this afternoon. Fortunately I had someone else on board to steer this time!)

Pete
 
If you are close to the top when being winched up a mast using a mast mounted halyard winch, ensure the winch drum doesnt fly off the mast and into the sea.

This renders your safety harness redundant.
 
Discover electric water pump is leaking when tap is on.

Remove pump.

Recognise that it is just one of the connections that has vibrated loose after 10 years.

Refit.

Turn on tap.

Bury head in locker to establish pump no longer leaks when tap is on.

Oh yes.




Open sink seacock before turning on tap and burying head in locker.
 
...Or go up a mast, self-hauling, with the bosuns chair secured to only one wire halliard. When it snapped I was luckily younger (dumber) and fitter, so I managed to make like a koala as the mast whipped by. Down-climbing was fun too...


I now always have a back-up - a fixed halliard with a mountaineer's jumar attached to the chair by a short strop, barely inconvenient yet a life saver.
 
Another tip - when splicing an eye in your brand new length of dyneema, measure very carefully where you want the eye. Keep in mind how much of the tail you will need to bury. It might even be convenient to mark where you want to top of the eye to be, and where the buried tail will exit the core for trimming.

But when you cut in order to actually do the splice, make sure you cut the tail of the rope off, and you DON'T cut at the exit mark for the bury. If you did that, you would've just made the rope far too short, and effectively useless. If, by chance, you do make that mistake, make sure you don't make it 10 minutes after all the chandleries have closed for a bank holiday weekend.
 
You know those bulbs with off-set bayonet fitting for mast head lights, designed to ensure the bulb is fitted the right way round?

If you try, you can fit the bulb the wrong way round by engaging the lower bayonet in the upper slot. It sort-of holds. But it does not sort-of light up.

Simple mistake; best remedied before stepping the mast. Believe me.
 
Open sink seacock before turning on tap and burying head in locker.

Sounds like the classic one of disconnecting a sink waste, carefully catching all the water in a bucket, and being very smug that not a drop has spilled. Then emptying the bucket into the sink :D

Pete
 
Sounds like the classic one of disconnecting a sink waste, carefully catching all the water in a bucket, and being very smug that not a drop has spilled. Then emptying the bucket into the sink :D

Pete

Or possibly feeling smug that you have drained the sump and removed the old oil filter without a drop touching the bilges and then you fill her up again.......... :mad:

Don't ask how I know! :o
 
" You know some words sound like they're opposites, but really mean the same thing ?

Like 'Flammable and Imflammable'; Man did I learn that one the hard way ! "

- Woody, 'Cheers'...
 
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