Ramblings
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Boat works 2025 – round 4
Saturday The initial plan for Saturday was After reaching Howth and collecting the equipment, we looked at the weather (wet), and the new weather forecast (wet all day) and turned for Ballymun (and Ikea) instead of onwards to Malahide. Drove into the parking lot of Ikea and drove right back out – apparently there was…
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Boat works 2025 – round 3
Saturday Another weekend, and another car rented and a one hour drive to Malahide. Went via the toll tunnel this time, learning from my mistake from the lift-out. The task list for this weekend included The yard had been unable to schedule the removal of the diesel tanks, so I opted to get as much…
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Boat works 2025 – round 2
Friday I took yesterday off, so that I could get more than just a weekend to tackle the works that needed doing. The yard had confirmed earlier in the week that the engine had been removed, so one loaded (remembered the latter this time) car and we were off to Malahide for breakfast. We passed…
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Boat Works 2025 – round 1
Blue Opal was scheduled to lift today at 10 am, so K and I came up the night before with bedding, replacement lithium battery (for the house bank), and a few other odds and ends. The drive up through Dublin was a right pain in the ass, with road works and long queues (due to…
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Boat Work 2025 – prelude
Blue Opal was built in 1998, and has a Raymarine navigation electronics suite from that era. On our trip in 2021, I used an Android tablet (with OpenCPN and a few other bits) as a cockpit-based MFD-like tool for charts access etcetera. This didn’t work out too well, due to the power consumption of the…
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A new soldering iron
K asked me last year what I’d like as a present, and I pointed at a Fnirsi HS-02A soldering iron and a GAN USB-C power supply for it. Several months later, I’ve got around to actually trying it. Room temperature to 350 degrees C in under 10 seconds (according to the screen; I don’t have…