Ebay

Still some good deals left on ebay. I bought a manual bilge pump for $20. This will help the boat budget. I also bought a Attwood HD 1700 GPH for $38.

Mt Carrigain Hike

I have been playing with the new Flip HD camera, enjoy

Tropical storm Danny

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Waiting out tropical storm Danny in Northeast Harbor Maine on Snowfish

End of Summer

Bob and Martha can up to Snowfish this weekend. Nice visit and a great lunch at Shaw's Lobster in New Harbor. Went for a nice day sail up Johns Bay then down to Poorhouse cove and a run thru Pemaquid Harbor. Very windy out of the south 18-22 (guess). Worked thru some of the winterize list:

Fix stove pipe- Check

Go for sail- Check

Change oil- Check

Flush engine- Nope

Winterize engine- Nope

Winterize water system- Nope

Remove sails- Check

Remove boom- Check

Center Board Pulley Maintenance

I recently removed the cover of the center board pulley to have a look. It appeared that the cover had never been removed. After removing the bolts the cover was stuck stuck stuck, we had to use a knife and screwdriver to pry up the cover. There was a sticky black gasket material that covered the whole opening.

After removing the gasket we were able to inspect the pulley. It was an Easton bronze pulley and this thing was frozen and did not turn. I tried to pound it with a punch and was able to get it to move but it was obvious that I needed to remove it to free it up. The problem was that the cable is captured in the pulley so you would have to remove the cable to get it out of the boat. The other interesting thing is that the cable will not move (jump) off the pulley because it cant get past the bracket, so it can not jump off when slack. We could not drop the board enough to remove the cable so we wound out the winch all the way to remove and inspect the cable. The cable looked good but the allen screw holding the cable to the winch was deformed from the wraps of cable. So I got a 8X8 block a punch and a hammer, set it up on the floor of the boat and pounded the pin out of the pulley. Success I was able to take everything apart and clean grease reassemble. I had to clean up the end of the pin on the grinder where I pounded it into a mushroom. No the pulley turns freely. To reassemble the cover I cuts 1/8” red rubber like gasket material punched the screw holes out with a leather punch. Put a heave coat of 3m 4200 on all surfaces and all new SS bolts. When Snowfish splashed we were 100% dry.

Photo of the day

I am still playing with the new Solar Stik and wanted to post a few photos. The detail is very very good. When I looked at their website the photos there don’t tell the whole story about the craftsmanship, you can tell the workers are proud of the work they produce. Anyway more to come but a few photos:

Pope Sails

Had a nice visit with Doug Pope of Pope sails  to talk about our new sails and mainsheet traveller. Full batten main :)  More to come on that. Art if you splash her this summer maybe a friendly race?

What do Northern sailors do in the winter

What do Northern sailors do in the winter

We buy stuff and play with it. As part of the preparation for our cruise we wanted solar charging, we had it on our old boat. It was a flexible 12 watt and it did not do any major charging since the Catalina 25 did not have any major users, it assured that when we arrived for a weekend she was fully charged and ready to play. 

Snowfish has 2 group 27 batteries old style incandescent lighting and the only charging is the engine. Last summer we were killing one battery by the end of the weekend even when running the engine when we needed to. I always like to save one battery for the engine. Part of the refit is added battery reserve, solar maybe wind and a higher output alternator. I wont go into the added load we will be adding on the system this time but we might put in refrigeration. So we have been kicking around the idea of the Solar Stik www.solarstik,com . Looks very nice comes with 2 50 watt BP solar panels and a Blue Sky charge controller. Ok ok I know I could have had this stick built and ordered the panels and the charge controller put it together and maybe save a little money, or arch built. But I liked this “kit” I liked that we could get more charge time (changing angle) then flat mounted panels there by needing less panels in theory. So when Solar Stik had a Demo unit sale we jumped on it. Less then 24 hours after receiving it I have it charging a battery and its set up on the front porch. I am impressed with the build big time, very nice welds heavy duty, I removed the stainless screws that were threaded into the aluminion and every one has anti seize, this thing is well thought out. The Solar Stik will look good on the back of Snowfish. Right now I have a light running and the solar disconnected and I will go out in an hour and let her recharge. I cant wait to get this installed this spring, its the start of the DC system rebuild that I plan to do this spring.~Kurt

A photoshop of the Name plate

This is my what the new name will look like, I like the stars but not sure if they will be on the final draft. What do you think?