[Yanmar]

Sorry if this upsets anyone who thinks their Yanmar is a "purpose built marine engine" but Yanmars are converted tractor engines, just like Kubotas. See yanmartractor.com.

 

Also, John Deere engines and tractors are rebadged Yanmars which is why you don't see Yanmar tractors in countries where John Deere are sold.

 

There's really no difference between a Beta or Nanni based on the Kubota tractor engine or a Yanmar based on a Yanmar/John Deere tractor engine, except the silly price of spare parts. For the Kubota-based engines you can readily buy the parts at tractor prices, Yanmar not so easy. John Deere parts would probably fit but they deliberately give them different part numbers for the same part to make it difficult. Beta are happy to publish the part numbers for the underlying kubota parts.

 

And as for being designed as marine engines, tell that to anyone who has to get the stupidly placed impeller out of a JH2 engine in a hurry. Allow an hour to change the impeller if your arms are triple jointed! Also frustrating needing a vacuum extractor to pump the oil out up the dipstick pipe because yanmar put the drain plug where you can't reach it on a boat (handy on a tractor though). The built-in oil extractor hand pump on a Beta is a great feature.

 

I have 2 tired yanmar 3JHs, these are some of the frustrations. I have no actual experience with Kubotas but I'm sure they have their own different set of issues. To me though, the beta looks much more like it was "designed to be a marine engine" than the Yanmar 3JH.

[Cayman Islands Registry?]

St Peter Port is in Guernsey not Jersey (A beautiful little port with insane tides). The main port in Jersey is St Helier but in fact Jersey registered boats (except those actually owned by locals) are required to put "Jersey" as the port of registry on their stern, not St Helier.

[Cayman Islands Registry?]

Thank you. This looks a promising possibility

 

We were very happy with it overall. There was a bit of delay with things being posted to jersey and back and they were very nice but not quick to respond, otherwise all went smoothly. Had to send photos of the boat name to prove the letters were big enough (10cm high). Also had to fix a registration number plate to a bulkhead with phillips screws, then drill out the heads of the screw to make them look like rivets and send a photo!

 

Lots of other flags also a need tonnage measurement certificate so your boat may already have one from a previous registration if you're lucky. I think Jersey would probably accept an existing measurement certificate.

 

The Jersey flag looks cool (red ensign with gold lions) but you tend to get checked often in some countries by customs thinking you're dodging taxes, Jersey being a tax haven. You're also allowed to go incognito and fly a plain british red ensign, which reduces the attention you get.

[Cayman Islands Registry?]

When you get to it let us know what the survey involves

 

Jersey don't require a survey, just a tonnage measurement. Survey is only needed for commercil vessels. The measurer (usually an IIMS surveyor) gets out a tape measure and measures the internal volume of the boat, then uses an equation to work out the theoretical number of Tuns (large barrels) which would fit inside. This is because cargo ships have historically always been taxed on the number of tuns they can carry (their tunnage). Technically should be called a tunnage measurement, not tonnage as it's measuring volume not weight. When customs forms ask for your tonnage that's what you're supposed to enter, not your weight. Curly Hayter did ours in Auckland a few years ago forthe Jersey reg, took about half an hour, cost was minimal.

[Private jetty marina berth & pile moorings to rent in Kerikeri]

Very handy for the town. Sheltered and stunningly beautiful location.

 

Walk-ashore berth on my private jetty comes available in November. Would suit a large catamaran up to 15m waterline and 9.5m beam (Additional bowsprits and overhangs no problem). Separate access from road, delivery of post & collection of rubbish available. Ideal for a live-aboard. Would also suit one large monohull or could take two monohulls sharing at a bargain price but one would need to move to let the other one out. Price depends on your boat but significantly less than a marina.

 

I have pile moorings available now nearby to suit vessels up to 12m overall, they come with dinghy mooring at the jetty. One of them would be ideal for a catamaran or tri. $120 per month, one month free if you pay annually in advance. Live-aboard allowed.

 

Photo attached. PM me any questions please & include length, beam and draft of your boat. Thanks!

[Cayman Islands Registry?]

Take a look at Jersey (Channel islands), it's very cheap and easy, plus it's open to any commonwealth citizen (including Kiwis) and also to EU citizens I think. You can fly either a Jersey flag (red ensign with lions on it) or a British red ensign and you get all the protection of British Navy etc. All you need is a tonnage measurement certificate which most UK surveyors can give you. When we got ours Curly Hayter was the licensed surveyor to do it in NZ, he may be retired now but the cost of measurement was minimal.

 

Big bonus is you pay only once and your certificate then lasts a full ten years, no renewal, no admin fees etc. etc.

[NZ blue water cruisers ssb weather operator tracking site]

Hi Chris,

 

Do you have a date for departure so I know when to have the weather splitting in the site by? The other stuff is working as I didn't need a sat phone to test that.

 

The site has been quite busy with boats on the way to the islands and I've been ironing some issues out as a result and havn't had a chance to build it. Gulf Harbour Radio is getting localised weather information from yachts on passage and is taking that into account for its weather it's predictions. eg a yacht that other day reported winds 10kn NNW and a yacht 58 miles away reported SE 15. So in your sat updates i'll make is so you can add weather as it is extremely useful for the forecaster.

 

Thanks very much! Glad to hear the system has been popular and useful , I will email you later with details.

[NZ blue water cruisers ssb weather operator tracking site]

Ok spent the day putting part of this in and its working on the live site, just need someone/chris14679 with a isatphone to test it. It works via normal email fine.

 

so to do an update use the following.

 

s@yit.co.nz (email address)

boatname (email subject)

 

[p]mypwd

p:36 25.6037s 174 50.4068e

This is a test update with a position for kawau island.

 

Now recieving weather updates which maybe 500 chars or larger. I can split out the body into a series of 160char chunks ( I presume the address on sending doesnt enter into the char count does it? ) on the server and send one after another to your isatphone email address. This would push the weather update out in 3-5 emails. Is there a time limit on these like an hourly limit that you know of? Fiji weather, such as towns, can be quite long sometimes.

 

Sorry about the delay replying, I forgot to turn on notifications of replies and only just re-found the topic.

 

I don't have credit on the satphone at the moment but will be topping up for an offshore passage soon so we can test it then. I think when you reply to the isatphone then your email address is included in the message and does count as part of the 160 character limit.

 

I'm not aware of any limit on the number of free text messages we can receive.

 

Cheers,

Chris

[NZ blue water cruisers ssb weather operator tracking site]

Hi there,

 

I've been looking for a platform like this which will work with emails from our isatphone. The phone is limited to 160 character emails (including the length of the email address) because emails go via text message. The upside of this is that receiving emails is free as long as they are within the 160 charater limit.

 

I know a lot of other cruising yachts use isatphones and it would be great to be able to take advantage of a service like yours, but none of them seem to be designed to work with short emails (which would be an advantage on any slow email connection, not just an isatphone.

 

Sending messages is expensive so it would be best to condense an entire update down to one or two 160 letter messages. For example, the message format for updates could be condensed by using some shorter tags like [P instead of [position].

 

There is no limit on the number of messages we can receive for free so the important thing is to split the information into 160 letter chunks and condense it as much as possible.

 

Would you possibly be able to implement support for isatphone emails for this season? We would use it for sure and I reckon many others would too because there is nobody else out there supporting automated updates from the isatphone but it's popular and cheaper than iridium.