Tag: Blue Opal
-
Cutless bearing – hypothesis
As far as I am aware, Blue Opal was kept in Conwy from when she was launched until I bought her. Conwy happens to be at the mouth of a river, and the marina gets a fair bit of fresh water flowing into it – I’m not saying it’s fresh water, but it’s almost certainly…
-
Cutless bearing troubles – mitigation
The local yard have put Blue Opal’s stern gear back together, and applied an epoxy job to keep the top bolt in place. The anti-foul looks pretty good against her blue hull, but no one will ever see it. Research continues.
-
Cutless bearing troubles
Blue Opal has been developing a low grumble/rumble when the engine is running under load. The suspicion was that the cutless bearing was deteriorating, because the engine itself sounds very smooth, and there’s no grinding in the gearbox. Finally got her lifted over at the local yard this week, mostly to clean and anti-foul the…
-
Sodding autopilot reference transducer .. disconnected again!
Yep, it’s fallen out again. So Loctite didn’t work, epoxy didn’t work. I suspect the epoxy may not have got a good bond in the splined cavity, but have no way to prove that. Unfortunately, a replacement unit (because it’s the whole unit, wiring etc) is a few hundred Euro. Ouch. Perhaps I’ll see about…
-
Suited, booted, and wired
Blue Opal is back to two house batteries now, in a parallel arrangement. I ordered a whole bunch of parts from Marine Parts Direct, and a Draper battery terminal crimper from Amazon (the club doesn’t have one, and doing it with a spanner and a hammer didn’t seem right), and have spent some hours over…
-
Fixing the autopilot reference transducer, again
With K visiting over the weekend, it was a good time to re-fit the registration arm for the autopilot; she fits down the locker much more easily than I do. So, on Saturday, I roughed the splined pin with a small file to clean off the Loctite-clone and provide a good bonding surface, coated it…