Tag: maintenance
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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 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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Solar upgrade
As noted a while back, the solar panel I have on Blue Opal wasn’t working well with the Votronic MPPT solar charger. The panel I have is a 55 Wp panel, and the testing I did led me to the conclusion that it basically can’t put out enough voltage that the Votronic can buck down…
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Fuel senders
It turns out that Blue Opal has had an electronic fuel sender since I bought her, it’s just never been hooked up to anything that can display the signal. I’d noticed the wires going to the top of the fuel tank, but had concluded that they didn’t do anything useful. As it happens, this conclusion…
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Jammed single line reefing
The other day I discovered the single line reefing setup on Blue Opal had jammed in the reefed position; we were able to go sailing anyway, with the reef in, and it didn’t interfere with our sailing (other than reducing the sail power in the lighter airs that were present). I figured something had jammed…