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I wanted run my boat GPS mouse on the home Windows PC, Carrying the laptop home in the dinghy didn't sound like a good idea, so I just put the GPS mouse in my pocket. The mouse is a G-mouse VK162 with a USB plug. I found this handy program to display the data. Might be useful? Software &...

Can anyone help me out with the torque setting for the flywheel bolts on a DV20, please? The front of my motor is getting a bit rusty - especially around the flexible mounts and it would be a lot easier to clean it up without the flywheel in place. I have taken the flywheel off before (in 2011!)...

For this year, I took a deep water swinging mooring in a less popular creek of Chichester harbour - discounted price! I found, due to the lack of customers, the conservancy have removed alternate moorings. There is thus, lots of space, so I have been departing and picking up under sail. This has...

Anyone know the drying height? I'm hoping to set up a visit to shift off a few non-paying passengers in the next few days.

I have owned my Seal 28, built in 1977, for 18 years. I have been through the rigmarole of getting surveys done for the comprehensive insurance twice before - and now they want me to do it again. This time, though, they want a surveyor's valuation. Up until now, the insurance company has...

I have just bought a new length of line to make replacement genoa sheets. I remember some mention in the past about making the port and starboard sheets continuous across the cockpit - thus aiding cross-winching. It occurred to me that this might be useful to me since I am usually sailing on my...

I have just watched the video on g-captain showing the confrontation between the USS Farragut and a Russian vessel in the Arabian sea. The Americans are complaining that the Russian ship 'agressively approached', but it looks to me as if the two vessels were on converging courses, with the...

You may have noticed the sad story of the MV Benita that ran agroung on Mauritius some while ago. It seems the salvagers used two 64mm diameter Dyneema hawsers to pull her off. The normal steel ropes were too heavy, since they had to be handled by helicopter. Mean break load of 300 tons! G-...

I have been messing about with an old Ebbco sextant. I still make lots of mistakes with sun-sights but I seem to be getting the idea of meridian altitude and sun-run-sun. Thinking about star sights, I remembered PBOStar - a star sight reduction program published in PBO back in February 1996. The...

I have been using Halford's HOF200 oil filter for my DV20 for quite a few years now. My annual pilgrimage to get next year's replacement ended without success, though - their range now seems to start at 201! Are there any other 'high street' alternatives?

I couldn't resist buying VMH charts for Seaclear. I have it running on an old Dell D600 with Win XP. All those lovely charts! I have mostly used it for simply browsing and dreaming of voyages I probably will never make. I have used the Seaclear position function, though, to aid my ditch crawling...

I confess! I am a skinflint WXtide user! If there are any others out there, I would like to create some subordinate stations in WXtide but am having trouble with the differences from the Reference station. For high tide and low tide, WXtide needs time difference, a multiplier and an offset. Can...

My Furuno GP-30 thinks it's August 1997. I noticed this on first switch-on this year and thought that the keep-alive battery had gone flat. I have had the GPS for about twelve years and it wasn't new when I got it - so I ordered a new battery without thinking any more about it. I have installed...

I am a keen dink rower so the Merc 2.5 stays in the shed a lot of the time. I got it out on Saturday for a little job which needed a bit more elbow grease than normal - but there was no pee water and a hot smell! A kind person offered a blow down the pee pipe with an air line, but this didn't do...

One of my sheet winches has been a bit iffy on low speed for a while so I decided it was time to give them a bit of love and attention. They are easy to take apart, one spring ring to get the drum off and another one to hold the low speed gear together. There are two pawls for fast speed and...

I'm looking for some advice about sewing machines suitable for sail repairs. I have been keeping the upholstery, spray hood and sail cover going with an old domestic Singer hand cranked machine but it only does straight stitch. For the sails I either hand sew if its only a few inches or give up...

Good evening and seasonal good wishes to all! I made it down to the boat today with the idea of extracting the s/s diesel tank from the cockpit locker of my Seal 28. My plan was to give it a bit of a swill out to ensure that no nasty sludge got sucked up the pipe and stopped the old Bukh at an...

I have a new (to me) sail for my dinghy. It has the sail number of the previous owner's boat and I would like to change it to my own boat's number. I have tried lifting a corner of one of the stick-on numerals and s**t and blankets came immediately to mind. Any tips on how to get them off...

My Seal 28 has a stainless steel drop-plate built into the rudder. The plate is hoicked up with a little lanyard and a shackle. This is a bit of kit made to go wrong, since the shackle must be tiny to fit inside the slot in the rudder. I was checking it out, today, and noticed that the tiny...

Evening all. I hope you all got to see your boats today. I had a look at mine, but decided to go out for a trip in the dinghy instead of doing some jobs. My excuse being that the Seagull had been running a bit rich and I needed to find out if my repair efforts were successful. Home again, now...