aardvarkash10

This looks like it will absorb a chunk of this weekend...

bloody hell they are cheap on Tardme eh. Probably not great for professional use, but for ocassional or one-off I'd go that way

where is the offending article located?

Has it got a model # on it? If so, track down the manual for it. Maxwell is here I had ours apart recently. It had broken the plastic stripper arm and also flicked the circlip of the bottom of the capstan shaft (I suspect it picked up on the warp). The manual recommends 6-monthly services and its not onerous - takes about 1 beercan to complete from start to finish. Basically a clean of everything on the capstan, regrease the clutch and shaft. The motor drops off it separately and is probably best serviced onshore where the stuff you drop ends up on hte floor not the in the o

excellent exposure blanket. With reefing points.

^ €2K on safety equipment instead of a new sail? What is this madness??? 😂

Actually, the approved method is single press (just like olives and coffee!). Multiple presses on the same terminal fatigues the wire and leads to early breakages. It won't come off if you try immediately, but it work hardens (especially copper) and fails later.

I did some work for a friend who is an aircraft mechanic once. Cessna 150. Every wire was white. I couldn't believe it. A tiny serial number printed every 300mm or so along the wire identified the circuit, but it was unreadable unless you were equipped with Mr Magoo glasses.

well, so they do! Cheers

True. Its nearly as simple as terminating wire rope.

First rule of any rescue situation. Hard to save anyone if you are dying as well.

Before I head off to beg with a merchant, has anyone in South or East Auckland got an offcut of thin marine ply that want to get rid of? I have two small soft spots in the cabin top that I am going ot cut out and repair with a drop-in block, epoxy and glass. Its on a curve (bloody hell...) and relatively narrow (2 areas about 100 x 100mm each) so I will need thin stock to be able to get the curve approximately right. Not fussed about the timber as long as its marine grade - it'll be hidden under a few layers of evadure and paint. Pay in Kash or Bottles of the Realm. Cheers

^this. Disclaimer, I am not and have not ever, lived aboard, but... Displacement launches have all the advantages MH states, and then some. A launch, for any given length, wil have significantly more interior volume than a yacht, and more useable volume - headroom tends to be available ot the bulkhead, unlike a yacht that tends to lose headroom once you are away from the centreline. The volume has advantages when you are looking for somewhere to tie it up to. For any given size of living space, the launch can be shorter than a yacht and shorter length means cheaper and more ac

After reinstalling the engine last week I hooked all the wire-y and tube-y bits up and hit the go-switch. Nothing. Blank looks. Voltmeter across the engine earth and live finds nothing. 0.00v or near as dammit. 6.00pm and fading light and it had been a big day, so I locked it all up and left. Came back yesterday full of the joys and with capacity to think. Looked at the live cable to the starter and thought "thats an odd angle its sitting at." Reached down, grabbed the cable and it fell off the "crimped" terminal... Off to the local autosparky who happily and prope

Panmure. Good facility, bar handy, great bakery up the road that does proper pies and donuts, burnsco around the corner, banter from the hardstand supervisor. Everything you need from a hardstand.

change of sponsor coming up?

loving that coach bolt! True #8 work right there.

Where are you, and have you got a model name and number for the alternator? Unless its weirdly unusual, pretty much any auto-electrician should be able to help you out. If its a larger unit, find a sparkie who does a lot of heavy commercial work.

Here to expand your vocabulary KM. Service to the Community. Fridge access sounds good though...

I really like that he "passed the batten over". An appropriate homophone for a sailing forum.

Bumping - still available.

^ pretty much what I had in mind.

...the more I hear the more I'm inclined to just chuck an alternator-switched coupling relay at it and call it done...

Thanks MH, but I suspect that would seriously overcapitalise our yacht. The charge control device is interesting tech though - thanks for the link. We don't have any real problem with capacity atm, but I would like to take the "human cock-up factor" out of the charging network which is manually controlled by the isolator switch currently. I did my time as an auto-electrician, so I can turn the alternator thats fitted into any configuration (int/ext regulated, machine/battery sensed etc) without too much trouble. I was going to put a diode splitter into the battery system and

yeah but I'm a lazy leftist who relies on the hard sweat and skills of the business classes to enlighten me 😆 Thanks Fish - very helpful and informative as usual. So was KM, in his own ideosychratic way.