Repairing our Isotemp Water Heater AGAIN
Having hot water on the boat is awesome. It’s hard to imagine not having a water heater. Unfortunately, we didn’t have to imagine it because our water heater broke (again) and we didn’t have hot water for about a week. And of course it happened in the middle of winter. Our Isotemp water heater is […]
Vesper Watchmate XB-8000 smartAIS
The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a shipboard broadcast system that acts like a transponder, operating in the VHF maritime band. AIS has been around since the 1990s when GPS for civilian purposes reached global coverage. In 2002 the International Maritime Organization mandated that passenger ships and commercial vessels should carry AIS transceivers. In a […]
Toilet Woes and General Maintenance
Waste Pump Maintenance As is bound to happen eventually, our manual toilet pump started leaking. Our Lavac toilet came with a Whale Mark V. That original pump stopped creating suction a few years ago, so we replaced it with a new Whale Mark V and bought a rebuild kit for the old one to keep […]
Why is Our Engine Overheating?
We’ve been really lucky with our engine. Sure, we haven’t used it that much, but it’s never failed us, and until recently, overheating wasn’t an issue. For something that’s 43 years old with an unknown number of hours or maintenance history, that’s pretty good. So when the high-temperature alarm for our trusty Perkins sounded, needless […]
New Sailing Instruments
We considered a few different brands of sailing instruments. So why did we pick Raymarine? It’s a pretty popular brand in the sailing industry, and they have a pretty good reputation. Ultimately, it was because we already had a Raymarine radar. Our boat came with a pretty old Standard Horizon speed log and wind gauge. […]
Cleaning Our Water Tanks
Our water tanks are fairly new. Removing the old stainless steel tank was one of the first projects we did back in 2013. That tank had at least one hole in it and the entire bottom was rusty brown. We think the old tank was about 90 gallons. The two polyethylene, rotomolded tanks we replaced […]
Our Stuffing Box Leaks
Yep, our stuffing box leaks. But wait…it’s supposed to. We have a traditional stuffing box (also known as a stuffing gland, packing gland, and other variations). In general, it’s “an assembly which is used to house a gland seal. It is used to prevent leakage of fluid, such as water, between sliding or turning parts.” […]
Making a Custom Boom Vang
A boom vang (US) or kicking strap (UK) is a line or piston system on a sailboat used to exert downward force on the boom and thus control the shape of the sail. There are a lot of really nice boom vangs for sale that I’m sure are fairly simple to install. We considered buying […]
We Almost Lost Our Prop!
Note to self: Don’t let the dinghy painter get tangled in the prop. It seems like a pretty basic premise, and yet, that’s exactly what we did. What started as a quick little sail out to Middle River for the weekend, turned into yet another project to fix. As we were trying to anchor in […]
Fixing Our Wheel Brake
What’s so important about a wheel brake? That’s what I wondered when we couldn’t get ours to work. Back in 2012 during the survey we noticed the wheel brake didn’t work. It’s basically just a twisty knob on the side of the steering pedestal that tightens a clamp around a shaft that stops the wheel […]