motorb

https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/06/24/poor-seamanship-lack-of-proper-charts-led-to-hauraki-gulf-grounding/

This long weekend is looking mint for sailing.

I doubt the distinction was made by those making the rules, even if the issue at hand is indeed those 20kts boats with open props in the water. Of course if a guy doing 20 kts can hit a relatively stationary ferry hard enough to sink it and kill someone, the whales and dolphins have no chance of being spotted regardless of these misguided (but well intentioned) rules Even my 25ft keeler is apparently invisible to some of those boaties, so I don't see how the typical riviera skipper will locate and track a pod of dolphins that are cruising along below the surface. I've s

Can't park there, mate.

Nothing under 15 meters!? Well I'm not entirely surprised.

Maybe we should all just go back to cladding our hulls in copper plates?

Welding won't be too expensive, so I guess it's probably worth a shot if you can't find available replacement parts. At the very least you will get a few years out of it until being forced into replacement. Just keep in mind that welding will remove any protective anodizing in that area. I would wonder if a wheel place might not be as capable as a good engineering shop, but that will vary wildly between wheel shops and engineers/welders anyway.

Honestly, I'm waiting a few more years for the new sodium-ion battery tech to come into the mainstream. It's got all the benefits of lithium with none of the fire hazard, at only a slight weight penalty. It's already on the market so won't take long for victron etc to catch up. In the meantime, I'll stick with my AGM lead acid. Saving 20-30kg isn't going to make much difference for me (and the weight is low down anyway). OK, that wasn't helpful.... stainless is fine for a battery box assuming there's no chafing or shorting, but where is all the heat and gas going to go if it

That's a very shortsighted view of the situation, and as someone too young to experience these stories of a past healthy hauraki in the 70s/80s, and myself wanting things to be better for my own future kids and grandkids, I find that attitude to be a pretty appalling. (That's the polite version.)

My "paper" charts seem to show it....

If it was going to be good news they would have told us by now. Expect the worst; Auckland Council has no interest in "subsidising" auckland boaties and demands the maximum financial return. Just be thankful they haven't figured out how to sell it to a property developer.... yet.

Private would take one short sighted set of management to run a stock to extinction before moving onto the next species. Plenty of existing examples of this to know it wouldn't work.

Yeah stuff like that is why I don't take many of these standards too seriously. There are risks associated with lead acid, (namely wet/flooded cells that can produce hydrogen gas), but having them compartmentalised is neither necessary nor standard practice. Edit: The omission of that hazard is actually pretty telling....

Great Barrier is part of Auckland. The question should be why Waiheke and Rakino gets exemption from the rules....

Read that recent article, and I still can't fathom how it costs eighty thousand dollars to dispose of a boat.

And here I thought it was just my new mooring ... My previous #5 coat was a "bad batch" with so much copper in it that the blue paint was actually green, and only went blue beneath the waterline after a few months in the water. Best antifoul I've ever had! Maybe there's a case for adding extra copper ourselves to meet required performance 🤔

Citric acid is great for cleaning stainless steel, copper and brass without damaging it, and actually creates a protective layer on copper alloys, effectively passivating them (excellent for spent rifle casings!) so is a great choice for heat exchangers and plumbing. On stainless it removes free iron which will help stainless stay stain free. Phosphoric eats iron oxide (rust) and converts it into a black protective layer, passivating steel or iron. I use it all the time on the farm and when cleaning machine parts. I just get concerned when there's dissimilar or unknown metals (like z

Honetly I thought they were lost or something for the first race.... but to miss so many starts so badly is just ridiculous

Then how would they charge thousands per spectator boat? (Seriously though I can see how that could be a problem with cheeky boaties just drifting along at a few knots, possibly spoiling the view for paid spectators or even causing race control issues if they leave the corridor)

Remember to check your strainers and replace the fuel filters! There will surely be a bit of fugitive water in the system being trapped there.

Perfect weather for a sail around Kawau Bay and a swim to finish the day off. Fish aren't biting though.... it looks a bit barren based on what we saw snorkeling the last few days, but that said we had a kingfish lurking under our tender this morning about as long at the inflatable is wide!

Yep your water strainers will catch the rest; just keep an eye on them and probably plan to replace the fuel filters after a bit of running. (I'm assuming you've already drained that part of the system, of course)

Is it possible to push air into the tank to force the water up the hose? All it takes is an air mattress inflator or tyre pump. You don't need much pressure so duct tape is all you need to seal mismatched hoses to holes. Edit: maybe try blowing back down the fuel pickup line?