robinm

We have a Rocna after finding our Bugel was dragging, 25kg on a 12.8m boat - it’s been fantastic in up to 40kts with enough chain - never dragged. I sleep much better at night. Lived on the hook for 9 months last year. We had another smaller boat with a CQR and replaced it with a shovel, similar experience - although we never tested the shovel fully, as the worst conditions we’d ever anchored in was 25kt in the Marlborough sounds. The CQR dragged on a number of occasions, but never the shovel.

Ok, to the point: yes, it’s probably a good idea to have safety inspections, but it would be great if it were less judgemental on specifics and have more room for the variety of boats out there. Having said that, it exists and if you want to go cruising, get a boat which can pass and work through the checklist, you will have a more seaworthy boat than when you started, in my opinion.

It’s really not that bad, we did cat1 and have spent the season cruising in New Caledonia and Vanuatu and it has been great. Most boats I’ve met from Australia would pass anyway. Apart from the ridiculous price of flares in NZ and having to screw down floorboards, it all seems like pretty common sense safety stuff anyway. Actually I’d like to transmitting AIS added so I have less ghost ships to contend with on night watch.

Signal and Laregnere, just out of Noumea

I don’t know that it’s a recent development, but AIS MOB is a great technology also, we just loaded our life jackets up with a Man Over Board AIS transponsder. We ran it in test mode and the Vesper Marine XB 8000 just worked out of the box. I love the general AIS features particularly on coastal passages, but this feature is an excellent source of peace-of-mind when crew are alone on night watch. I’m hoping Vesper Marine keep updating their firmware as new features become available.

I met the more recent owner of the schooner, nice fella.

Sadly I’ve just finished an Intel NUC setup, although not quite as flash as these I’m still pretty happy. Many NUC models can happily run on 12v even though they come with a 19v power supply, they seem to draw very little power and of course sleep mode saves even more. We run OpenCPN and an offline version of Wikipedia for our daughter to do school work with while cruising. The NMEA gateway function of the Vesper Marine AIS we bought from IT means we have all the good instrument data. We have a 4G internet from discover.net.nz and a 120GB plan meaning we can watch Netflix and

Hi Anthony, did you find a good electrician for your EWOF? I've got some AC work I need done - and I'm looking for someone that comes recommended.

Thanks, everyone, I don’t think 3 months will be enough time either! We were at Castlepoint (by car) on Sunday, and if we have the same whopper high that we’ve had over the past week with light NW we had on Sunday, it would be a great spot to stop and get some ice creams. One can only hope. I’ve also seen some pretty nasty stuff most other times I’ve been there.

In February the family and I are starting a slow sail from Wellington to BOI - we want to be there by May and so have plenty of time so explore the east coast. Can anyone recommend any less well known must-see spots?

A fellow boatie who is a live aboard at Chaffers has an ISP just for this, you can even take the router home to use there. http://discover.net.nz I use it and it works really well.

Hi guys, A good friend gave us a self-steering unit to try on our boat, a "servohelm" unit made by Trans Terrain Ltd in Christchurch. I am keen on finding some more information about this unit, most specifically how the vane attaches to the pivoting part at the top of the upright section, as it appears I am missing some small parts. Does anybody have any experience with, or information on these self steering systems? Thanks, Robin

Dropped rudder to prepare for the removal of the shaft (some bugger drilled holes in it) removed a dodgy through hull and glassed it over, ground back the other filled in through hull and faired it over. Decided to replaced our fixed prop with a feathering one seeing as it has a bad case of electrolysis. Selected various plumbing fittings to replace the under sink plumbing in the galley.

Maybe it's the other ship being attacked? Possibly it would be easier to control a regular commercial ship and have it ram the naval ship. GPS spoofing doesn't need the Internet, essentially it jams the correct signal and sends off the wrong coordinates to any GPS in range. Maybe the US navy GPS is not susceptible to these attacks but all the other ships in the same area would be.

I'd be very surprised if a fully crewed destroyer failed to have a proper watch system. There are a number of possible explanations but as that article says, there is a statistical anomaly. I have had some experience in cyber security, you'd be surprised just how prevalent attacks are in banking and government. Interestingly the US navy has returned to required celestial navigation training, good for us too, the course is freely available online from Vanderbilt University.