Black Panther

I remember him from Ok dinghy days

Last week my batteries died. I decided to stick with AGM. Got the exact same so just a few bolts and job done. Plus due to various improvements in batteries I gat 20% more capacity. Cost 1168dollars for around 500 Amp hours. But I used 1100 in reward points on my credit card. So cost 68 dollars. Then took the old ones to the scrap dealer and he gave me 78. I made a profit of 10 dollars on my new batteries!

If you want to sail offshore and do not currently own a boat, my advice would be to fly somewhere else and buy a boat. Whether you sail back to nz and pay or sell it back into another country is your call.

Good for delivery skippers though.

Everyone I have spoken to answered in Polish

Wonder if it has a double bed and an oven?

Oops, just remembered another suicide, so that's 3.

This evening I was thinking about this. In 60 yrs plus of messing about in boats I have known personally one person fall out of a dinghy and die (hypothermia, elderly,drunk) I have pulled two bodies from under my boat. Both drunk, one having a pee, the other drunk. Unless his wife pushed him in which case he'd be in the next category. Murdered by spouse while on a boat , 2 but maybe 3, see above. Suicide while on a boat, or jumping off.2 Death from natural causes while on a boat, 1. Seems to me being nice to your wife is better safety practice than

Tide went in and out several times this morning in our river

Anecdotes are not evidence. I went out in a dinghy once and nothing bad happened

There's an outfit at Westhaven, close to the toilets. Their motto is something like "eliminating all drowning in Auckland ".I laugh every time I see it.

specifically relevant to tendering

Aha, a big silver box.

If 2% of that number need disposal in one year, that's 28 boats. 20k per boat is 560,000.

Increasing costs, Increasing bureaucracy ( its almost impossible to anchor in Florida now). And the character or the cruising fleet is very different now.

Fact is you don't " need" anything. Everything else is optional.

Again, anyone who has the desire to go offshore cruising, go now as the window is closing rapidly.

Increased Cruising Permit Fees - Bahamas’ New Rules Take Effect July 1 - Southern Boating https://share.google/TCJcKPUxKN1EGz9tt

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/30/irish-whale-watching-company-ends-tours-on-south-atlantic-coast-and-blames-overfishing

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Bought the outboard for peanuts on trade me.

They lost me with the first paragraph OpenPlotter Tool kit to be used as navigational aid in small and medium-length boats. It can be installed as a Raspberry OS disk image or by parts on your favourite Debian-based Linux distribution. We offer some Raspberry OS images with the most used applications installed and configured but you can also customize your image with the OpenPlotter À la Carte tool.

1) for the mechanics. I have replacement 4hp 4 stroke yamaha. The old one always started on the second pull. This one on the 7th. Do I have to live with this. 2) my favorite chart plotter app (mx mariner) is no more. What would you replace it with. Preferably free. Preferably able to download nz charts, free. And easy to use.

I use sailboat all the time. I prefer it to yacht as it is more precise.