Category Archives: Sailing

Six gauge follies

Posted on October 31, 2007 | Comments Off on Six gauge follies

To get the new trolling motor’s power lead to the midships battery on the family sloop requires extending it about eight feet with six gauge wire, according to the manual. I got the wire at Lowe’s easy enough. but then the fun began. Lowe’s doesn’t sell six gauge insulated ring terminals to attach the wire to the battery. Actually to the circuit breaker, at least for the positive wire. The negative can go directly to the battery. Why in the world would they sell the wire but not the terminals to use it? Home Depot? Nope. A contractor friend suggested Nunn’s Electric Supply here in Austin. They didn’t have six gauge terminals either. They suggested Grainger industrial supply. They had them, alright, but couldn’t sell me any smaller amount than a box of twenty. So now I’m fixed for long-term electrical work–as long as I use six gauge wire.

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No-sweat electric

Posted on October 28, 2007 | Comments Off on No-sweat electric

Finally got the new battery charger installed under the dinette table in the Catalina 22 family sloop. Now to complete the wiring to extend the power leads on the new Minn Kota 55 to the midships battery compartment. That it will all be worth the trouble was confirmed yesterday as I walked out on the dock to the boat. I passed a 25-foot sloop in which a young woman was sitting patiently in the cockpit while her date/boyfriend/husband strove to start his recalcitrant outboard so they could back out of the slip and go sailing. He was red in the face and looking angry as he pulled the starter at least twenty times before it finally caught. That’s what I’m aiming to avoid.

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Abandoning the outboard

Posted on October 21, 2007 | Comments Off on Abandoning the outboard

I set the old Suzuki DT-4 beside the dumpster at the marina today and walked off. After making sure that the new Minn Kota 55 amp trolling motor would stay reasonably secure on the old outboard motor mount on the family sloop’s stern. It will, unless it vibrates too much. Now for the tedious part: wiring, soldering and crimping everything up so I can keep the deep-cycle 12-volt in the cabin amidships where it’s already located. Plus installing the new battery charger beside it. Hope to have the first, underway test of the new motive power before Halloween.

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Gravity waves

Posted on October 12, 2007 | Comments Off on Gravity waves

A Texas scientist I know has a sloop on Lake Travis named "Gravity Wave," which is handily explained here, but the link and this post is about another, much larger kind of gravity wave called an "undular bore." Stupid name, but an impressive event, as a train of thunderstorms recently spawned four gravity waves rolling through the atmosphere over Des Moines, Iowa.

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Posted in Sailing, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

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Going electric

Posted on October 4, 2007 | Comments Off on Going electric

The only really bad thing about sailing is having to mess with a motor to get you in and out of the marina, or bring you home in a flat calm. After months of nursing a recalcitrant, 10-year-old outboard with a mind of its own, and faced with the prospect of buying an expensive new one that wouldn’t be much better, I have opted for a cheaper trolling motor, instead. Like the other few Catalina 22 owners who have done it, I don’t expect to go anywhere fast under power, now, and will have to plan better to be more certain of the weather and the distances to be covered. But, for the first time in a long while, I’m looking forward to dealing with the motor phase of an outing instead of dreading it.

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Robot sailboat

Posted on October 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Robot sailboat

It isn’t a dumb idea, exactly, since most sailboats are balanced such that they will turn into the wind when their tiller is left unattended. But that wouldn’t get you anywhere, so it’s hard to imagine how this would work without human intervention. Yet that’s what some people are setting out to do: create a 4 meter sailboat that can sail itself across the Atlantic. A large model, in other words. The Aussies have already completed and sailed a mini version of the larger trek.

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Outboard tutorial

Posted on September 29, 2007 | Comments Off on Outboard tutorial

For years I have been alternately praising and cursing my Suzuki DT4, depending on whether it ran or didn’t, as if it was able to understand me. But, seeing as how I was mainly interested in sailing and only used the outboard once in a while to get in or out of the marina, I never really knew what was going on with it. After reading this book, I at least have an understanding of how it works. Not, necessarily, enough to fix it. But its recent refusal to idle, for instance, looks like a fuel problem. Possibly contamination of some kind clogging the fuel pump, leading to gummed up carburetor jets, particularly the ones that control the idle. Gives me a few ideas to try. If they don’t work, I’ll figure it’s likely the fuel pump and/or the carburetor needs cleaning. So I’ll siphon the gas out of it and take it to the shop and tell them to look at both. Much better than exasperation, anyhow. And while it’s there, I’ll look again at a Minn Kota electric, and consider blowing off this combustion baloney.

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