darkside

Where can I get a USB GPS receiver in NZ? At the moment I plug in a handheld GPS but that is fairly clumsy with all the cabling. Just looking to make OpenCPN a back up plotter.

The three times I have come up the East Coast I have gone hard till Tauranga so can't help much. Only stopped at Napier, Gisborne, Hicks and White. North of Tauranga really recommend the east coast of Great Barrier, lovely cruising grounds and usually not crowded. Hamish Willcox did a series in Boating last year, one of them here: https://boatingnz.co.nz/articles/around-nz-whangamata-to-east-cape/

I agree. Who would put to sea without a Stix value?

Gold. https://honolulu.craigslist.org/oah/...370727567.html

Any idea of the costs of making a call to a "go" I see some retailers claiming they can get better deals.

Depending on how they are wired you could use the clamp meter to check all the panels are working. After a lightning side swipe in Panama one of ours had melted the printed circuit where it joined the output wire. Pretty delicate soldering job but we got it going again.

It really pays to trim to keep your autopilot happy as they suck heaps when they aren't. With our Coursemaster adjusting the sea state setting would also help it a lot. We also had one of those little Raymarine rubber ban drive wheel pilots. It had no chance when we were powered up but used a lot less amps in the light.

Good call on the batteries, just get on with it and go sailing. Jon is right though the Caribbean is well priced for marine electrical stuff. We swapped our 880 amp hour bank in Grenada through Budget Marine at very good pricing. If you are buying a bit their listed prices are negotiable. http://www.budgetmarine.com/Catalog/Electrical/Chapter.aspx For the meter calibration with our BEP you have to guess an efficiency figure and see if the amp hours remaining numbers work out. Not a lot of science as I saw it but I think 95% was where we ended up. This is to account for heat losses I

I'm in Fiji today and it's actually quite cool this morning. If you live aboard and anchor out a lot 5 years is pretty good. Sure you can run the engine forever and make them last longer. Or stay in marinas more and plug in. Probably cheaper and a lot more fun to enjoy your boat and swap the batteries every five years or so.

The guy installing the set up in the cat asked if I wanted to go to 1:3 ratio. That is fine at 2000 rpm but means you can't motor at 3000 rpm + for long without giving the alternator a hard time. There are times when cruising (getting in that reef pass before dark) when you really want to. We accepted the lower performance and stayed with 1:2

That is some alternator. If I'm not reading the graphic wrong I see 22kW input power by 70% efficiency at 6000 rpm. 22x70% is 15.4kW output. I see that is a 28v alternator which means 535 amps or thereabouts (perhaps the reason for the model number?) I think that might be a tad bigger than most yachts use.

From wheels post if you need high revs to get adequate output you have the wrong alternator for a sail boat. Throw it away and get one better suited to your needs. Inadequate cabling between the alternator and the battery bank can also limit charging ability. On the cat the runs were around 10m from the port side alternator to the starboard battery bank and vice versa. To get that to work we had damn near welding cable running across the boat. Probably should have gone 24v but you live and learn. A bit off topic but how is this for the future of power supply on a sailboat. On boar

My guess either high battery temp is turning off your regulator as suggested above. Partly because you are in Fiji but mostly because the batteries are in poor condition (read old) I agree with mcp get a clamp meter if you don't have one. By far the coolest bit of electrical kit we have. It tells you exactly what is happening now and so easy to use. It made hunting down faults way easier especially on the cat where we had dual charging systems. We had a battery collapse internally mid tasman and located the fault through the smell. Lucky not to have it explode as it was really hot

I only bought it up as a sailing mate called yesterday and said he was going this way starting in October. Last time he left that area he carried on West, which is of course another way home.

Or the third main route and come home with Australia on your portside. But why not buy in the Med or Caribbean and have a an excellent trip home?

Marina every time now. But then I use my boat as an apartment on average one night a week. I live at the Mount but work is in Penrose. I keep the boat in HMB and justify the cost as being about the same as a decent hotel in Auckland once a week. I know where I'd rather stay especially with the Eberspacher humming tonight. Still when we lived aboard it was quite different. We were much happier on the hook and only used marinas when we had to.

I think the changes in the yacht market are more to do with lack of time than lack of money. If you do the sums with depreciation the new Euro awb will cost more to own than the 30 yr old Kiwi boat. However you will have to invest more time to keep the Kiwi boat functioning and that isn't what most want to do these days. Another trap has been buying the dream "I'm going to sail to Fiji in 5 years" rather than the nice gulf cruiser that is ideal for what you are doing now. I think more are giving up on the dream now and the fall in prices of the heavier offshore boats has been proportionally m

Importing a class "a" drug such as morphine is a crime. I'm not sure being "qualified to administer" the drug would make any difference at all. Perhaps if you were a doctor and qualified to prescribe it would be the threshold. I have cleared in with some and a police friend said I was taking a risk and should have pitched it.

Our boys were 5 and 7 when we set off and they loved it. Have a great trip and don't hurry home.

Yep good point. We called in there leaving from Surfers which is probably a bit different. We called up on the VHF and asked what we should do. The Police guy responded just come ashore with your passports. We asked where do we find you? He responded don't worry I'll find you. Sure enough we were walking to the shops and he pulls up stopping his truck in the middle of the road. He hops out, in shorts and bare feet and shoots the breeze about sailing etc for a while. "Just give us a call as you leave" were his final words to us. Pretty much mirrored the tone of the laid back Island.

If you do head for Oz call in at Lord Howe. Not that much north of the rhumb line to Sydney and one of the best Islands I have visited. Plenty of sheltered anchoring room in the cat.

Sometimes speed isn't the tactic to miss the weather. On one trip back from Fiji I remember Des from Russell radio talking about a savage low crossing northern NZ. His advice was if you couldn't get in to Opua by a certain time to wait above 28S or some such. We got in before it but those that waited bobbed around for a few days and headed on in with better conditions.

Most of the radio traffic was with Jon Cullen at Kerikeri radio. I recall that Fiji Met service was worried about the storm about a day ahead of New Zealand forecasters. The chart of 50 knots plus in Farrington's book shows an area 250 miles across by 1000 miles long give or take. Without a clear idea where it was going it would have taken a bit of luck to choose which way to run.

I agree with John B, do some phone work first. The second time we got cat one on the catamaran I phoned ahead to a guy in Opua. He said "I don't know the boat so you will have to lift it so I can inspect the keels" I explained this was our second cat one on that boat plus a Tasman crossing and the keels were sacrificial anyway, not structural. He was adamant so we turned left into Whangarei and got the certificate there very easily. Make sure you can tick as many of the boxes as you can. And if you can't be sure to have a well thought out alternative plan of action.

The first yacht I skippered offshore is for sale in that price/size range. Most on here will say far too light for that blah blah blah. One of the best balanced boats I have sailed. I see a new engine which is nice. It's a sloop but I rigged an inner forestay for the storm jib which I assume is still there. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1286046123