Southerly SAilor

Odd jobs round the boat

2006-12-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Lady grace is out on the hard, I wont be anti-fouling this year as the antifouling used last year is designed 2 last for 2 years and looks fine, only a couple of barnicles on the the hull. Too rainy to do any of the jobs I had anticipated doing so I decided to do some work inside of the boat. The fuel gauge on the boat, is hidden away at the back of the engine compartment, its a piece of pipe about 7 inches long, the tube has got murky so it is very difficult to check the level of the fuel.
I decided the best idea for a new one was to run a pipe through to the heads (toilet) and have it next to the boiler pipe, here it will be very easy to get a reading.
The biggest problem was getting the right size of pipe to fit, I ended up using 6mm (internal) pipe. works very well.

Three and a half hours later i was finished. The second and final job of the day was to move the battery charger from the engine compartment to the locker under the port side quarter berth.
My reason for doind so is the wires ran from the locker to the charger unit which is inside the engine compartment and back through to the locker, it made more sense to me to have all components into the same place. The unit was screwed on to the side of the compartment , which on the other side of it had the starboard cockpit locker, which was full of safety equipment and other boaty items. This made it very hard to undo the screws, after an hour or so of fiddling around moving stuff i managed to remove the main unit with great difficulty though. Then i had to bring the wire out of the engine area pulling it through under the floor and through a few other lockers, after removing it all I worked out how much i needed and then cut of the excess, then I simply fitted all teh wires back to the correct places and voila, we had a working battery charger not half a mile from the battery!

That was today, next week i plan to create a self cooling cupboard next to the fridge, using to computer fans. one to suck air in and the other to blow it out, this should increase the fridges efficency and let me have a small pantry rather than just a plain cupboard.

motorboaters

2006-09-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

Motorboaters

Weymouth/Portland

2006-08-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who has a motorboat in weymouth, he took me for a spin into portland harbour, here are the photos.

calais

2006-08-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

We went to calais instead of going to holland. Heres the photos

Holland (shotley

2006-08-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

these are a collection of photos taken on the trip to shotley.

Holland-Shotly

2006-08-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

well we nver made it to holland, mechanicaal falure, the autopilot drive shaft snapped half way through the journey, the only problem is I woke up at 3-30 for nothing, we diverted into shotly after the factors of continuing were weigd up with diverting, we should get a new drive belt on tuesday but I am doubtful. Got some pics but am too tired to put them on.

Holland 1

2006-08-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

I will be sailing to Holland tomorrow, its 120 miles away and should take 24hours, the skipper has been preparing for a couple of weeks now and has invited me and ...nowon else. I shall update with pictures from the crossing as soon as i can but bye for now.

The wrong time

2006-07-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

What is it with people and taking pics at the wrong time!

Can you identify

2006-07-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

I saw this lovely little boat in essex, I was wondering if anyone out there is able to identify it, if you know anything about this boat please leave a comment.

chatham

2006-07-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

I sailed to chatham today, guess my problem.. no answer well, th bloomin wind was always coming from the bows which was most annoying. At basin 3(chatham marina) ther is a lock, the engine wouldnt run because there was to much air in the water due to the rapid income of water. Heres a pic of inside the lock. Good god today was fun!!!

pic 1

2006-07-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Me in the dinghy.

Setting Sail

2006-07-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

There are many tipes of sailing, dinghy sailing, cruiser sailing, ocean racing, the list is endless, i go dinghy sailing and cruiser sailing. I have been sailin for many years now, i sail a leader mk1 and a southerly 100. Sit back and watch my blog set sail.