I had Makana out of the water in May, mostly for a routine bottom-job.... but as my dripless shaft-gland was at least 6 years old, and their recommendation is to have the bellows replaced every 6 years.... I had that done too. In fact, my guess is it was more than 6 years old because mine did...
Hi, my name is Bruce and I am the proud caretaker of a lovely Ericson 32-III.
And, yeah, it's been far too long since I've last checked in. Sorry.
Lots of reasons. Or excuses. Or something. Work stuff (who knew the cloud-based remote-work business would explode during a global...
Yes, the Dorkiest Boat Project Ever (tm, patent pending, void where prohibited by law, some settling may have occurred during shipping...)
Some of you may know, I have the only Golden Retriever in history who is scared of water. I've had Goldens pretty much my whole life, and with most of them...
Once I knew where things were going to be, I needed to figure out how to build “pads” to get them to the right height and angle. That was an interesting challenge.
I first ordered a couple of angled teak winch pads from Amazon. Besides being the wrong diameter, they were nowhere near the...
Big projects start with small ideas
A while back I decided I wanted to update the deck hardware on either side of my companionway***. The winches were a little small, none of them were self-tailers, and, frankly, the way the lines were led to the clutches sorta bugged me. So… I figure,d, I’ll...
KennethK and I had an email conversation a month or so back about good places to stow things on a 32-III. There are only so many "spots" for things, and one of my laments was that there was no really great spot for things like gloves and hats and things that are rarely used, but that you want...
Best practices
Discharge Floor
As a rule of thumb, limit discharge to 50% of capacity
don't pull more than 50Ah from a 100Ah battery
Don't allow no-load/rested voltage to drop below 12.0V
Going lower will shorten the life of the battery
Available Amp-hours
...
(continued from Part 1)
Battery Testing
Five kinds of testing
1: Open-Circuit Voltage
Open circuit means no current in, no current out
Battery switch to OFF
Battery charger not sending any current (shore-power disconnected?)
Anything directly wired to battery (eg, bilge pump)...
I sent myself to Battery Kindergarten yesterday - spent the day with a few books in hopes of raising my boat-IQ a few points (Hey, it's worth a shot).
Parking a bunch of tidbits here mostly to bookmark what (I think) I've learned, so that I can find it when I need to... I recognize that 99% of...
....(continued from part 1)
To get Makana home I knew I'd have to sail out of Langley, down a stretch of Saratoga Passage, across Possession Sound and into Everett. None of that seemed like a problem. But I wasn't sure what the best options were for when I got into Everett. My slip faces...
I've begun to think that a good part of "seamanship" might is based on being able to pick the least-bad option out of a spectrum of sucky choices...
I spent a lot of time on Makana in June un-doing the effects of a very wet winter. Partly because it needed doing and was normal - albeit late in...
I'm an idiot.
Let's just get that out of the way from the start.
I used to think I was fairly bright. Recent evidence to the contrary makes it fairly hard to cling to that belief.
Case in point.... I thought it would be fun to provide my autopilot with navigation info. Makana has a...
At Christian’s recommendation, I called Buzz Ballenger and asked about his “spar seal” product. This is basically a polymer-based sealer that protects the pores in an anodized spar and keeps it looking nice, too. Per his guidance, I lightly scrubbed (the entire spar) with some “bon-ami” on a...
Next phase of the project was to replace lights and wiring. Most of that wasn’t very dramatic, thanks to the design of the Kenyon spar that Ericson used in this era. It is a beautiful design – there’s an aluminum sail-track that slots into the extrusion, and when you pull that track out from...
(**) "Time is fluid, so the moments where everything feels perfect pass in a wink, and those where you're on your knees in despair drag on like the death of a thousand cuts"
....Ann Aguirre
In other words, "how a small job becomes a four-month project, in three easy steps"
OK, so I’ll start...
No matter what the calendar says, it doesn't feel much like "almost spring" around here. It was 38 degrees and drizzling when Makana went back in the water yesterday morning. But that relaunch marked the end of my first "spring yard bill" in decades, so it feels noteworthy for that alone.
One...
.
A couple of people have contacted me offline to ask how I ended up picking the boat-hauler I used.
The short answer is... I didn't. In fact, I'd never heard of them until they called *me*.
As Hunter S. Thompson once said, "the truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen"....
...but there...
Day four – “load-out day”:
Motored the boat into the haul-out slip at 0730 for an 0800 appointment. Had a whole list of last-minute things to do at the yard, including
-- setting the battery switch to “off”
-- centering the wheel and setting the friction brake
-- stowing fenders and...
Day three – “cockpit, interior and everything else”:
Home stretch! All the big jobs are done, now all that’s left is… everything else. Goals for Thursday were
-- electronics and cockpit gear
-- systems
-- protecting interior woodwork and
-- stowing everything
I had been undecided about what...
Day two – “mast, anchor, deck and hatches”:
Two big goals for Wednesday were to “finish” the mast (get it out, disassembled and ready for the truck), and then get everything on deck ready for the trip, including the anchor.
The MDR bBoat yard did a very professional job pulling the mast. They...