too_tall

Who knows how to sail? Maybe not the best idea to be planning a longer trip when you require someone who knows how to sail.

That will take a moderately large pump Wheels - I would imagine an absolute minimum of 1liter per second at a reasonable pressure. Would make a much cleaner anchor locker however!. Maybe a 240v pump running off your inverter could be the trick to get the flow etc?

There are plenty of drop over the side pumps which have attached hoses and power leads which work well if you don't fancy having one connected to a through hull. KM, the deck wash ones are normally salt water.... The bigger the better to be honest. The drop over the side ones can also double as a pump to drain any areas of the hull which are poorly enough designed that they don't drain to wherever the bilge pump can get the water. Or as an additional bilge pump should the leak be just a bit bigger than your existing pump can manage

That still feels pretty modestly priced for a Maramu - even an original - which it appears is kitted up for offshore. I guess location would not be a strong point for selling, though.

I guess that giving all assistance to your rescue is very wise. And also, I have yet to be stranded somewhere watching my ticket out of wherever somewhere happens to be turn into a wreck so maybe my calm and collected " I would not have used the EPRIB if cell communication were good " comment might have become a "F*** me, come and rescue me ASAP !!"

When he has cell phone communication is an EPIRB really needing to be set off? Assuming he didn't set it off as a reaction to, say, his phone getting wet or going flat, he had already notified coastguard of his position and predicament, appeared to be not that far out ( water taxi responded being my indicator for this assumption ) and was not in imminent danger personally. I would not have set off the EPIRB in this case ( unless the phone died ). What do others think?

Rocketguides for Vanuatu and New Cal come highly recommended. I hope they are good - will be there in a coupla weeks ex Fiji. Looking through them having installed them on Monday, they have a lot of information on both navigation and also a "what to do" guide in the various places, lots of information to sift through. For fiji, use OpenCPN with the google earth "charts" as they are more accurate than most charts we had. Specially more so than the Navionics or Cmap ones for our plotter and on tablets which would have had us high and dry many a time. Nothing beats a keen set of eyes and

Agreed that generally things go to plan, but its amusing watching the Riverias all bouncing off each other. Full length keels and a full tidal current can be fun if there is a bit of a breeze also. I have had a couple of worried moments. Piece of cake when the tide is slack.

Bridge Marina has heaps of berths but it can be entertaining if your not proficient in tight spaces, tides and lots of expensive things to run into!.

Could I suggest that whatever you finally build, a Carbon Monoxide sensor/alarm could be a very wise investment should you not already have one?

Often I have seen people miss one air bleeder on a system when filling or recovering from an overheat, I have done it myself once or twice. Can be really hard to get the system to work if there is an airlock in it.

I had not thought of a flow switch. I have many of them in differing applications around the farms too. Very simple and effective. Not the requirement to know the exact pressure first. Only downside is a pressure sensor could ( if it has 2 setpoints or is analogue ) sense both low pressure ( no flow ) and overpressure, indicating potentially a blocked exchanger. Getting a bit pricey to go to an analogue type setup though.

That amount of water going through a modern common rail diesel would cost a full set of injectors and a high pressure pump. Scary. All our common rail diesels now have 5 micron filters on them, and we have also added large bowl water traps which are drained automatically. Were not cheap but injectors and pumps are certainly not at all cheap.

2 6v 100ah batteries are only half the capacity of a single 12v 200ah battery. That 12v battery will be very heavy!. I believe that the physical construction properties of the 12v batteries vrs 2 6v batteries will give the 6v in series bank a better lifespan if both systems are charged and maintained correctly. Also, as noted above, the 12v battery is going to be one heavy unit, unless you make up the ah rating with multiple parallel 12v batteries.

On a related note, what sort of pressure is going to be on the output side of the pump? I am guessing only .2 bar or thereabouts? After all, there should be not much restriction through the exchanger or injection to exhaust. But no doubt there is enough that a suitably sensitive pressure switch could be installed to sound an alarm should the pump not be pumping sufficient water for whatever reason?

Wheels, your missing one little point in your calculations - Alternators are not overly efficient. Is it not a rule of thumb that you need around 1HP per 25 amps? thats 750w input power to get out about 345w assuming 13.8v. I have some Balmar literature here which states their 70a alternator has a power draw of 2.8hp. 100a alternator 4hp and 120a 4.8hp. Assuming mounting a 25a alternator on the prop shaft on an inboard.. You would need an impeller which could produce the sort of work output at a speed which could be nicely geared to get the alternator spinning at the correct speed.

Wheels, years ago I owned an Audi A8 with the W12 motor. I believe that you needed a post graduate degree in both Audi maintenance, and contortionisim (sp?) to change the filters on that thing. Unfortunately you also needed unlimited funding to own one as it made my prior Jaguar look very reliable. I also found that over a bit of time, it became a very bland and boring vehicle to drive. Didn't keep it long.

First things I would look at being you state the raw water pump appears to be operating.. ( although check volumes running through that too ). Is the circulation pump operating correctly? Its not got an airlock? pully sizes correct? or possibly the heat exchanger could be clogged?

I have had a somewhat similar miss in a stationary diesel engine once - albeit a 300hp one attached to an effluent pump. It was a fuel problem, and it was the pressure switch in the supply pump was faulty and not turning the pump on when it should. At unloaded, the engine had sufficient fuel pressure reserve in the filters etc that the pump would supply fuel again before starvation occurred. Under load, at high RPM the supply pump never shut off. At low RPM, again, enough reserve. But at around .5 - .75lpm fuel demand resulted in the fuel supply pump still cycling off, but not sufficient reser

Our dealings with L&B have been limited to a few small things, and never overly exciting. Navico have offered some pretty good support, including getting parts couriered to various pacific islands, and even tracking down one of their retail installers who was cruising within a few hours sailing time to come and offer some higher level technical assistance which could not easily be done over the phone with my father when I was not there - and that was to fix up a poor job by the installer who did the job here in NZ ( not at all related to the guy who come to sort out the issue ). Navico

Beccara - heaps of good options around. http://www.sparkshop.co.nz/Catalogue/List/Category/125 would be a place to start. The Britax B62a connectors are used extensively in agriculture with 12V applications. I have a fair few sprayers which draw around 14 amps using them without any issues at all, even when wet or covered in cowshit.

Generally, yes, but its inefficient. Some switch mode chargers are a little unhappy with modified sine wave inverters however. I have not really ever used one, so have not had reason to look into this issue so others will have to assist. Phone and laptop - get a 12 volt charger. Drill might be harder to source, or very expensive to source, a 12v charger.Phone chargers ( assuming it will charge off USB ) are a dime a dozen on DX.com or still pretty cheap at supercheap, JBhifi etc.

Wheels, unfortunately the cost of the fuel is only a fraction of the cost of the overall transport and production cost. Everyone keeps on telling me that the reduction in the price of fuel must be helping us farmers a lot. Really? On the farms expenditure I was analyzing yesterday, we have spent for the year to date, $11500 on fuel give or take. Thats out of a total expenses figure of $1,070,000 give or take. ( This includes interest and tax, but its something we all have to pay ) If fuel doubled in price, thats only going to make the overall expenses figure to lift to 1,081,500 or th

we have an Inreach Explorer Screen edition. You need the screen edition IMO - the phone connection is flaky at best, and it also is another thing to go wrong. If your phone was drowned, you would like to still have more or less full functionality. They are absolute pigs to actually send a message on - very, very poor user interface. They are good for 160 character text messages. You can have a full conversation with them, but remember to index your messages as they dont come in matching the order in which they were sent. Inreach need to modify the software and their website to allo

Deal Extreme sell the full range of UniT gear - or you can buy them from the TM reseller who buys them from DX initially. Or, you could go into Jaycar and pay about five times the DX price but you get full NZ warranty and CGA protection. I have not had one fail on me yet apart from having had one I dropped in the bilge of a yacht with a rather leaky gland. That killed it outright.