John B

Many old style stern glands have a cup greaser which needs a part turn when you leave the boat. The best modification you can make to those is get a remote greaser,which is basically a grease gun with a tube, permanently mounted where you can get to it easily.

That's what I thought ,Steve. But it's the glue to raw alloy joint which is causing me problems. I would not recommend AB to anyone. One of my bad buying decisions. These weights being quoted are a bit scary. If you're going to have something in the plus 50 kg area you might as well have a big Ole glass delta or something. A dinghy needs to be in the 35kg thereabouts band to be comfortably throwing it on deck without popping a foo foo valve or pranging up the topsides.

Excluding damage and the feed water from the leak scenario, then the leak will be from not enough pressure on the bellows( needs adjusting in) or because the seal has become disturbed and the two faces are slightly out or running in a different place. That happened to me after I had the shaft out for a cutless bearing. So like grinding a valve on your Nannas flathead Ford, it needs to re bed in. I smeared some toothpaste between the faces and ran it . Toothpaste is just fine cutting compound designed to run away with water, and its on the boat.

When I enquired about fixing the bubbles on a 3 or 4 year old boat I was told that getting glue to stick is harder when its raw ali. That makes sense.

I only know this from doing it.Don't overclamp it , it distorts the shape and might damage the rubber, back it up like suggested above. Obviously get rid of that rusty hoseclip. And I think they say replace every 6 or 10 years in the instructions, so bear that in mind. In the meantime , toothpaste. seriously.

That is a John Crane face seal. Manecraft.

The trend is for bigger and bigger tubes and wider boats, so the challenge for a yachty is to find a boat that is narrow enough to go on deck without blocking vision and letting you get around it. I bought an AB RIB a few years ago because of that, 1500 wide from memory, and I strongly suggested that my friend who had an old 1400 wide RIB retubed for the same reason.. Unfortunately my AB is raw ali . I thought that would be better than painted because of all the bubbling powercoat you see, but it isn't, I wouldn't recommend one of those.

Yes we thought we had a bit with 400 litres tankage, squeezed in another tank to get to 500 but like I said , felt it would be a nuisance and a concern so bit the bullet. Friends have 900 litres , possibly if we could fit that we would have not worried about the watermaker. Its done anyway , so we'll see for ourselves. We'll keep the 500 this trip and if we become happy with reliability we could replace a tank with more storage or fuel. But we'll keep it for now.

I got a whole lot of exercise putting on extra lines, springs and fenders. Might deserve a rum after all that.

Fantastic, I'm envious.

Plenty of water around today. We did go through the same dilemma as clareb, there's a lot of expense there and regardless of whether its a kit or not it is quite a fiddly process. But in addition to what I said earlier and after canvassing people who have cruised the area we're going to in the islands, It appears you can get a season which is wet and you'll get as much water as you want. And then you'll get a season which is dry and you'll be begging it from people who may not want you to have it. Add to that the quality of water you may well be getting , out of an islands water table,

We just fitted one for our winter cruise, local design , young guy with a good idea. Low RPM DC pump, its a nice bit of kit , no idea how reliable it is except for others endorsements but it has a few people smarter than me very interested. Although we've been really tight on water for a few decades I just don't want to have to budget the stuff and I hate docking up my boat as well as the usual concerns about giardia etc. Even locally we keep out of the Fitzroy/ Opua /Assassination cove bunfight,One big launch filling up and its all over. The buoy at Whangaroa was the best but that got

As others have said ,Doc, it appears that this process is 'normal'. Taking a lien on someones personal credit card account is normal. reducing one's credit limit for a few days or so is 'normal' I did get a nice nearly apologetic email back explaining that they only like to scare the crap out of their customers with $3000.00 pending credit card transactions on a $400.00 or $500.00 purchase and they really wouldn't actually take it out of their account , even if they did feel like it. Maybe they will. I hope not.I hope their 'system' isn't having a bad day. In the meantime I'll go looking for

I'm certain it is , Doc.. its the time it takes.

So do I . I can do without this sh*t right now, which is why I was up at midnight . $1500.00 is the maximum single transaction , so we're assuming its just defaulted to the maximum amount it can charge.

We filled up yesterday, 400 litres odd in our annual fuel fillup. The pump timed out as we switched tanks so we had 2 transactions. Today we found out we have 2 x $1500.00 bills pending on our credit card. $3000.00! Do not under any circumstances fill there and leave without a receipt.

If it's a face seal it pays to just check it has enough pressure on the bellows from time to time. Like the water rat says ,it pays to back it up with a split hose on the propshaft and a couple of hose clips,or use whatever they sell to do the same job. When you disturb it by altering something like alignment or perhaps removing the shaft for cutless bearings etc, they need to be rebedded or replaced. A bit like a valve grind. I use toothpaste.

Or maid Marion.

I replaced my dodgy thermostat before christmas, it cost $60something at Repco. I then heard about hi flow thermostats as used in performance cars, and bought one of those to fit or carry as a spare. It cost $40 something at Segedins on Dominion rd. Its best to pull the old one and take it along with a vernier or ruler. . some are simple single action things , some ( like mine ) are diverter types and work in a duplex kind of way. Get the multi fit gasket kit while you're there.( or better , take the neck along too.)

That happened to my father in the 90's or early 2000's. They did a cruising race down to the bottom end , as he rowed away from the boat he noticed something dark in the quarter( the offside to where they loaded). On inspection , it was a neat 2 inch hole , prod probably. If they'd been on the other tack she would have had a lot of water below.

Remember the couple that got busy leaving the Tamaki estuary a few years ago. Completely forgot about Rangitoto. Talk about 'carpet burn'/ gravel rash.

Thermostats do die,I suggest you change that as well as all the other checks that are talked about here.

Interesting that bright LEDs seem to be so desired. I found the challenge was finding more yellow/ less bright for cabin lighting. But like I said earlier , I'm just retrofitting bulbs rather than whole units.

I wasn't there but at the time I got the impression they were just blown up high and dry on the point and that the boat remained dry inside despite being wrecked. All her gear went into Relapse, the Young Rocket 50.

I've just been changing the bulbs over, Took a couple to get the colour/ type right but they're all fine now. Guy in Greenpark road has good prices.