The existing danbuoy on Blue Opal is well past its prime. The plastic cap is brittle, the rope looks like it’s suffered from sun exposure, and the buoyancy disk is dead, for lack of a better word.
While in Viking Marine, my local chandlery, buying an extension for the 16A shore power cable, I noticed they had a Plastimo fixed danbuoy. Upon enquiring about it, I was also shown a Seago inflating danbuoy. Long story short, my wallet is now lighter.
To fit it, I decided to move the GPS antenna nearer to the Navtex. This shouldn’t cause any interference, as both units are receive only. Needed a second pair of hands to put the GPS unit back on the railing; easy to get off, hard to put back on – 4 layers needed to be lined up for the bolt.
The Seago itself needed a bit of drilling to sort out the fixing locations – slightly shoddy manufacturing work on the canister holes meant that when the rail fitting units were slotted over the bolts, the bolts were no longer parallel and wouldn’t fit around the rail!
The horseshoe is also off now (and I’m up โฌ20 because someone else wanted it), and it’ll be replaced with a similar canister-based unit. Admittedly, the fixed units are re-usable instantly, and these canister units will need a replacement CO2 cartridge .. but the general hope is that you never need the equipment. I think the trade off for better access to the side of the pushpit is worth it.
