Author: Duncan
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A Sailing Holiday – Dun Laoghaire to Arklow
The planned holiday this year was for K and I to take Blue Opal to Ireland’s south coast. Initial passage planning had us going Dun Laoghaire, Greystones, Arklow, Kilmore Quay, and day-hopping west along the coast. After asking around about cruising the coast, the plan changed to Greystones, Arklow, Kilmore Quay, and then push for […]
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Making a cockpit table
A tale of measure twice, if not thrice, yet also cut thrice… Blue Opal does not have a cockpit table, but she does have a Cobra compass binnacle setup, and it’s more than sturdy enough to play host to a cockpit table. SVB and the like all have teak tables costing several hundred Euro, so […]
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Maintenance round-up
I’m finally going to get Blue Opal out of Dublin Bay and the surrounds later this year, so it’s time to finish up a bunch of jobs. The sanitation hose from the toilet to the diverter valve has been replaced. The new hose (HT Sanipomp Extra) has a “vanilla scent”. It’s better than the smell […]
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Refurbishing the wind transducer
Ever since I bought Blue Opal, the wind transducer has been a bit finicky. It had problems indicating low wind speeds, and would sometimes just stop spinning. I kind of ignored it, because I don’t need to know the wind speed most of the time – I just look at the water, the state of […]
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False alarm leads to real problem (AIS, antennas)
In a previous post, I noted how the AIS sentences had caused me to think that the VSWR alarm was being triggered, but in fact they were inactive alarms. However, I decided to get a baseline SWR reading, and a fellow club member was able to meet me on board today to conduct some tests. […]
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AIS alarm sentences redux
Back in 2020, I posted about the alarm sentences for the B600s AIS transceiver by Alltek Marine. While on the boat this weekend, I was monitoring the NMEA sentences while testing some new software, and I noticed that the sentences were still showing up, and the AMEC app on the tablet was also saying “Error”. […]
