Tuesday, October 2, 2012

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

The good:  I finally got the AIS working again!  This time it was the cable connecting it to the chartplotter.  So it works again, until next time.  Had a lot of help by e-mail from Colin, the Tech Service guru in England.  [This repair gave me something to do today; it's raining and we are on a mooring ball.]

The bad: For the second time, our [formerly-owned] Suzuki dinghy outboard broke - instead of the shear pin, it was some internal part that broke.  When this happened several years ago in Florida, it cost us about $200 and a couple of days to get it fixed.  This time I threw the damn thing away, and we bought a new Honda 2.3 hp 4-stroke short-shaft outboard - will have it by tomorrow.  I just can't go with "unreliable".  Should have bought a Honda in the first place. Well, there goes another Boat Unit ...

The ugly: The cable connecting the wind vane with the boat (running down inside the mast) is broken.  Rayfuckingmarine wants $107 to replace the wire and proprietary connector, plus shipping.  And then there will be the mast-threading and (partial-?) mast unstepping.  This time we will find someone else to do it. [Yeah, it broke because of our stepping the mast ourselves at a lousy place with river swells and wakes, but the use of 32-gauge or smaller wire had a lot to do with it too.]  Meanwhile, it's back to sailing without a wind gauge. I think we used to do this all the time ...  And more money, of course.

CRUISING :: "Boat repair and maintenance in exotic locations ..."

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