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MartinRF

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Posts posted by MartinRF

  1. I do remember attending the local boat show but not when it was. The most interesting part was the corner where they showed cartoons for kids. Antipodean boat shows seems to be marginally better at best.

    Some years earlier I did go to the London Boat Show. That was interesting because my friend who brought me there knows everyone in sailing through his work. His father filmed the first round the world race and was ships mate with Peter Blake.

    /Martin

  2. I have not heard about this dude before and I don't intend to watch his self chronicled antics. There is simply too much of that out there.

    Not a Kiwi view but something a Canadian who had lived for decades in the Caribbean once wrote in a forum when people complained about being 'ripped off' by locals when sailing there. From the top of my head so not verbatim: The mere fact that you have time off, time to go sailing for pleasure, makes you a walking wallet in their eyes.

    /Martin

  3. Inspired by ChatGPT's eloquent lack of information I just had to try out a much, much older chat bot called Racter. Here are a few lines of our conversation:

    Racter: "Hello, I'm Racter. Are you Martin?"

    Me: "What do you know about the silor that was rescued during cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand?"

    Racter: "I may call you Silor, then?"

    Me: "Well, yes"

    Racter: "Hello Silor. I believe you're interviewing me. Are you continuing Martin's interview?"

    Me: "yes"

    Racter: "Well, Silor, Martin and I were talking about depression last time. Martin had just asked me whether is. Shall we continue?"

    Me: "If the depression is called Gabrielle"

    Racter: "Excellent! Excuse me a minute while I attend to some business - I'll be right back. I'm back."

    Me: "Where have you been_"

    Racter: "Ask a question, please."

    Me: "Where have you been?"

    Racter: "I have been in the funny farm. Did you say 'Been'?"

    etc (Racter steering the conversation towards Genghis Khan via Buckminster Fully...)

    Maybe I should point out that Racter dates back to the early 1980s and I run it at a dos prompt under the dosbox emulator. You can easily store Racter on a floppy disk.

    Back on topic: 888 is (was) a good looking cat.

    /Martin

    • Haha 2
  4. 9 hours ago, CarpeDiem said:

    That's Hydrogen Peroxide. I have often thought about using that but have never been able to find any good sources for what concentration to use.

    That was what we used in our fresh water tank when I did my military service in the Swedish navy 40 years ago. I don't remember the dosage but we always added some when filling water tanks.

    Hydrogen peroxide was also part of the fuel for some torpedo models but that is another story.

    /Martin

    • Upvote 1
  5. On 24/11/2022 at 11:32 PM, CarpeDiem said:

    The point is the clutch will fail at or near its maximum working load long before the rope breaks.

    Not arguing against that. I just wanted to highlight that clutch performance depends on the line. More than I thought a few years ago.

    /Martin

    • Upvote 1
  6. 59 minutes ago, CarpeDiem said:

    Halyard/Sheet Load = SailArea x WindSpeedKnots2 x 0.02104

     

    So a Tp52 with 98m2 sail in 25knots needs a halyard rated for a minimum of 1300kg.

    Seems low to me.

    Anyway, halyards are about low stretch not breaking strength.

    /Martin

    • Like 1
  7. 9 hours ago, aardvarkash10 said:

    I'm not intending to swim with it!

    I get your point Martin - It will mostly live off-boat and its easy to flush if by some very strange circumstance I find I have to use it in a howling gale and high sea state.  

    Sorry for being so brief. I was about to leave for work.

    That climbing HW mostly made from high strength aluminum alloys. A friend of mine owns a Tornado. He is also a climber so knows about this type of gear. He noticed the excellent strength to weight ratio and thought "Why not use this on my boat?" He checked with his brother-in-law who is a pro climber and importer of climbing gear to Sweden. Brother-in-law said "Bad idea". Corrosion kills these alloys in no time and then they crumble under load.

    Swimming with that gear is probably OK if you rinse it afterwards but storing it in the boat may not be a good idea.

    I have similar gear for the same reason and I only bring it to the boat when I need it.

    This is a photo from up my mast:

    AL9nZEXSZhB99BOjUfu2pRjcFPBYkCRJWPl36X74

    /Martin

    • Like 2
  8. Reminds me of:

    My first GPS, a hand-held unit bought in 1997, eventually started to behave erratically some twenty years ago. At first the display was bad and then did not show anything. The device was way out of warranty and I am an electrical engineer working for a major telecom company. We have decent labs... But how do I get into the device? I was stumped.

    I contacted Garmin, told them who I was, where I worked and what I wanted to do. I was actually given the email of one of their technicians/engineers in the U.S. and he told me how to open the device and wished me good luck.

    I actually managed to find what had gone wrong but it was beyond my repair powers. The display driver had de-attached itself from the flexible 'board' it was soldered to -- a truly weird building practice. Hence, the GPS could still find out where it was but it could not tell me.

    I bought a new GPS during my next trip to the U.S. They cost roughly twice as much in Europe.

    /Martin

  9. This Sunday:

    746483407_torrsttning.thumb.jpg.6e2c95350d5042177849afe78a28b10f.jpgI cleaned bottoms from some green algae on Saturday using my secondary method. The ease of cleaning has not changed over time. The bottoms are clean save for a two small patches I missed. The paint look 100% intact and the mildly hydrophobic behavior is restored after each cleaning. I would guess it would work for at least another season as is. I will, however apply a fresh layer of paint hoping I will achieve a smoother finish this time.

    /Martin

    • Like 1
  10. 23 hours ago, Black Panther said:

    I don't think we have anything in the pantry that will stop fanworm . Stopping boats moving up the coast can at best slow it down, but expect Fanworm to eventually spread to everywhere it can survive. It's how biology works. 

    Life is very opportunistic.

    /Martin

  11. 8 hours ago, Psyche said:

    any updates Martin?

    My plan was to wait till after the boat was out of the water.

    In short: Works as advertised by which I mean, yes things grow but they are really easily removed. This includes barnacles. I can't just brush them off but a mild nudge with a finger is all that is needed. I have had to clean the boat more but since the work has been easier the sum of work is roughly the same.

    The only disappointment is how rough the surface is. I have done some more research and now I know what to use for thinning this paint. I will try that for next season.

    I doubt you really have to repaint each season as I detect no change in the properties of this paint and as far as I understand nothing is depleted during the season. When fresh the surface is mildly hydrophobic and this property is restored every time I clean the surface.

    /Martin (still sailing when weather and work permits -- have to go  to work now)

  12. Yes, I intend to keep you posted.

    Yes, short mohair roller. I was coached on the procedure by a recently retired Hempel employee who my old boat building buddy knows through his job as a marine engineer. Disclaimer: my coach admitted that he had no first-hand experience of applying Hempaspeed TF,

    I will try to quantify and document the 'smoothness' before launching.

    /Martin

  13. So I ended up doing a complete antifouling 'facelift'. It cost me a month of our sailing season plus, of course, a bunch of money. I went for Hempaspeed TF which is not silicone based so this post is off topic.

    Hempaspeed TF is a bit odd to apply as it is rather viscous and I found it would not flow to a smooth surface which is a bit of a dissapointment after all the work. It is glossy which is also a little odd for an antifouling in my experience.

    It will be interesting to see if algae and barnacles like it.

    /Martin

    PS It is my understanding that Hempaspeed TF is currently only released in Scandinavia.

    817912780_frdigmlad_5e_juni_3.thumb.jpg.d0aeca8bfce501d741d994fbf3921755.jpg

    • Like 1
  14. Kim Klaka used to hang out on rec.boats on Usenet.

    He is (used to be?) a researcher at an institute or uni in western Australia. Lars Larsson used to be a hydrodynamics professor at the university I got my degrees at (*). My brother was one of his PhD students. My brother met Kim Klaka during a trip down under in 1995.

    Now this pops up here. Small planet :-)

    /Martin

    *) My boat was built in the workshop of the marine engineering department of that university.

    Usenet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

    • Haha 1
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