Maintenance and Mechanical

When I purchased my 1981 E38 she came with no boom vang and the topping lift line affixed to the boom. This meant having to always go forward to the boom whenever I raised or wanted to drop the mainsail. Last year I decided to install a new Garhauer rigid vang and upgrade the deck organizers to feed the topping lift and reefing lines back to the cockpit.

At the time I had a triple clutch on the port side that had the Jib Halyard, Port Spinnaker Halyard, ...

In one of my previous blogs I had a request to write up about my solar PV setup. This site has been a godsend of information about my Ericson 38 and various projects that I've had to tackle so I'm happy to oblige with this blog. My boat came with two 85W Solartech PV panels on top of two cross frame mounts on top of the bimini frame, these PV panels then went directly to a Specialty Concepts PWM (pulse width modulated) solar controller and then directly to the two 4D lifeline batteries. ...

I managed to get to work on the boat yesterday after contending with freezing weather last weekend and a blizzard earlier this week. I'm on the final stages of the rewiring project. I've replaced all the boats cabin lights with new 12V LED light fittings or LED bulbs. For the reading lights I purchased them off eBay, they are stainless steel and look great!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MARINE-BOAT-...JYKs6n&vxp=mtr ...

As I mentioned in Part 1 of my blog I replaced all the old circuit breakers with new E-T-A breakers with ratings now correctly matched to the circuits so as to protect both the wiring and to the type of device or load attached to the circuit. As an example I’m using a 5A circuit breaker for the stove circuit as the only load on the circuit is the propane tank solenoid fed via the LPG control switch in the galley.

I have also wired all the boats loads to be fed from the DC panel, no ...

I’m coming to learn that boat ownership is a never ending tale of repairs and projects in multiples of three…that is it takes 3 times longer and costs 3 times more than what you budgeted for. Every weekend I strike one item off the to-do-list and then add two more on to the to-do-list and so it has been with my boats electrical rewiring project. It all started easily enough with the planned installation of a decent stereo at the nav station along with a Blue Sea combo 12V/USB outlet and two slim ...