|
|
I had the opportunity to work with a friend on his boat yesterday and I took the inline scale and a tachometer with me to test the performance of the engine in a static thrust test. We also did this with both the stock 8 pitch prop and a 6 pitch prop.
The tachometer is a Sendec unit good to 7000 rpm in 10 rpm increments.
The scale is a 3000 lb loadcell scale accurate to the nearest 1 lb increment.
I have been wanting to do this for a while as I have the same engine only marketed under the tohatsu brand and it has run weak since I got it. I had assumed that there were problems with my engine but based on the test results I think that there is a much larger issue.
This is a preview of Review of Nissan / Tohatsu 1 cylinder 4 stroke 6 HP engines MFS6BUL NFS6B2 performance data . Read the full post (964 words, 0 images, estimated 3:51 mins reading time)
I stayed on Sea Puppy this weekend and early week. I know she will be coming out of the water soon.. Just a matter of days really. I don’t really want to think of it. Everyone one I know has invited me to go sailing with them when I pull Sea Puppy. Sometimes I wonder at how fractious our sailing club is. Times like this makes me see it for the family it tries to be. Though the only blood binding us is that spilled on our boats and taken by the ocean to pay our dues for using her it is still a powerful binding. There is a brotherhood not really spoken of but it is felt. So for any of you that read this…. Thank you brothers and sisters! It has continues to meant much to me.
Permanent link to this post (140 words, 0 images, estimated 34 secs reading time)
I took sea puppy out sailing today.. not many more days sailing left for her this year. I will be taking her out of the water this coming week. 🙁
Permanent link to this post (31 words, 0 images, estimated 7 secs reading time)
For some reason I thought I had written up the story of me going up the mast and fixing the topping lift and replacing the bulbs in the perko masthead light with LED bulbs. I couldn’t find them by searching on the site so I grabbed what I had written on http://www.beneteau235.com and am posting it back to my site.
Sea Puppy has a perko mast head light unit. It has two bulbs one for steaming and uses two for anchor. I just used two bayonet 12 led bulbs that are a bulb for bulb replacement for the stock bulbs size wise… I was worried that It would not give me enough light compared to the old bulbs but it seems to work.. a friend out with me at night on the ocean this past week when looking or it could see them from 3 or 4 miles away with no problem he said.
Each of the new bulbs draws about 260 millamps so between the two I think about a half amp total compared to the 1 1/2 amps the two old bulbs used.
Next morning we left anchor under sail and due to error on my part got into shallows that the rudder touched. We were moving very slow about 1/2 knot. Not much wind and flat other than a few wakes. I dropped engine quickly and just backed straight up when then next wake ripple came by. again no fuss or muss..
It was all very embarrassing though.. second time in two years that I have touched bottom. 🙁
We did the long motor back to the marina and did breakfast with the gang 🙂
actually we were pretty lazy the rest of the day hanging out with everyone at the docks for most of the rest of the day.
Permanent link to this post (119 words, 0 images, estimated 29 secs reading time)
The night of the 4th this month we went out and anchored out but we left late from the dock.. maybe 9pm… it was very very dark (no moon at all) and all the idiots on the water kept trying out their 10 million candle power spot lights directly on us.
We got about 3/4 of the way to the inlet and were winding through an area just past the calabash crossroads when the water depth started dropping and dropping… I thought I was in the middle of the channel when just to starboard the red dayboard marker slid by. This is the dayboard marker that when your on the other side of it you stay about 100 feet away not to get into to shallow water. I was between it and the bank of the island. It passed about 10 feet away on starboard and we could barely see it. Combination of just plain dark dark and our eyes getting blasted by multi million candle power lights.
I recently got a question about mounting my TP32 autopilot on sea puppy and here is my reply to it.
He had asked about the width and slant on the shim I made to get the cantilever arm horizontal when mounted.
I can certainly do that for you if you want but mine is not quite perfect. I can tell you that the widest is between 3/4 and 1 inch thick.. probably closer to 1″ and the thinest is 0″ inches. I will measure it Friday when I get back to the boat and can send it to you the beginning of the week when I’m back off the water. 🙂
Noseeums invaded in force and we decided to motor back. So it wasn’t a long morning on the water.
Permanent link to this post (20 words, 0 images, estimated 5 secs reading time)
Went out and anchored overnight behind bird Island 🙂 very nice.
Permanent link to this post (12 words, 0 images, estimated 3 secs reading time)
Tohatsu USA sent me a lower pitch prop to try on the boat free of charge in their efforts to try and help me with the performance issues I have been having. I got out yesterday and put the new prop on and got some preliminary static thrust measurements.
The prop on the engine goes on and off super easy. Pull the pin on the nut and it just turns off with two fingers easy as pie. The prop then comes right off and the new one slid right on. We just turned the boat around so with the engine up I could sit on the edge of the dock and reach the prop with the engine in the up position. Maybe 2 minutes to change it out.
This is a preview of Tohatsu outboard engine problems the continuing saga . Read the full post (560 words, 0 images, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)
What an awesome morning. I sat in the cockpit with a mug of hot tea and for a very quiet and calm morning start. A little bit later Patty and Jeff showed up on Pirate Girl and I tied them off behind me and went over and had breakfast with them. After Breakfast they took off and headed home. They had had a rough night anchored offshore when the winds kicked up into the low 20knt range.
I sailed off the anchor with just the main up. 🙂 I am really enjoying working on my engineless sailing skills. Each time I do this it gets easier and I get more confident in being able to cope with an engine out issue.
Well we were supposed to race to Murrells Inlet on saturday but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. Everyone else bailed and decided to do a Sherman and back race instead of going to Murrels inlet except me on Sea Puppy and Patty & Jeff on Pirate Girl. We left around 8 in the morning and once out on the ocean there was no wind. So we decided forget the race we will just motor for a while till the wind comes up.. 2 hours later “no wind”. Patty decided she didn’t want to motor all the way to murrels inlet and I went along with it as at this point I was just happy hanging out with her and Jeff. We were about 10 miles down the coast line from Little River Inlet and 3 miles off shore. We just anchored there. It was about 36 ft of water and the water was very clear. I almost went swimming to give the bottom of the boat a scrubbing but I got lazy. We were going to raft up but even the very light swell was making them rock to much so we just tied me off of Pirate Girls stern about 20 ft behind her. It was a great afternoon of lazy 🙂 We ate and kicked back under tarps for shade and read and napped. Jeff rigged up a seat cushion on the end of a line to float watermelon over to me. A good time was had by all.
|
|
Recent Comments