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2 year refit of C&L 37 Europa Victory!!! The new AC panel is in. That only took four days longer than it should have... Here it is: After spending the last three days running down a series of wiring issues, it's finally in. As a function of feature creep in this one, the new shore...

2 year refit of C&L 37 Europa As I discovered yesterday to my dismay, there's a wiring fault somewhere in my outlet circuit, I think at the distribution strip down in the bilge. After hooking everything up, my AC outlets no longer function. Both the hot and neutral are 110V to GND at...

Quick rant... I'm cutting out the old AC wiring and found this... which had been placed in line. Here's what's under several layers of electrical tape and rubber liquid tape: Yep, a brass bolt and nut. Now, I find this kind of thing all the time, but what kills me about this example is...

Yes, the diagram shows which inlet is which. It's kind of redundant since the selector has "power available" indicators for each source. But it balances the space and looks kinda cool :-).

2 year refit of C&L 37 Europa Quick update on today's progress: Not much. Instead of spending the morning helping the bigger kids with their engineering sessions, I got roped into doing that AND fabricating a wind tunnel for the little kids' project. I hadn't planned on spending all day...

Since you can't let sleeping dogs, I stayed up late and designed a v2. Of the DC panel that incorporates the bilge pump controls, and since I had to finish the growler of beer before it went flat, I did up an AC panel too. I ran out of time between when the kids left and the instructor had to...

Well, it does help to have a 40 year old boat. Most of that stuff has reached equilibrium, and I just had to change over the electronics labels. And the stuff I've added, like our portable chest fridge/freezer, although to be honest I haven't figured out exactly where I'm going to put that...

Thanks. I'm having a great time, and the next owner of this boat is going to be way ahead of the current one... I am super stoked with how the new DC panel is turning out. I had to redo all the text, because a standard SVG file is only standard if the proprietary software importing it agrees...

Back in business So the doc has cleared me to do a little bit more, like crawl around, so it's back to work in boat-ville. Sort of. I've been filling my time volunteering at my kid's school, and the school my wife teaches at, so that's been burning up about three days a week. The PT is a...

It's been short of forever, but sometimes life just gets entertaining. I've been using the trawler rather than working on it, as I've been doing projects on other boats. That and the boss declared a moratorium on tearing her up for the fall. I had shoulder surgery, and it wasn't until this...

Part of my work at the salt mine involves underwater search and recovery, usually stuff people try and dispose of, but occasionally people themselves. We use a high end sidescan sonar that cost nearly as much as my trawler. I think part of the issue is that the manufacturers of consumer...

I did. As mine is the same. On a related note, I just saw a trailer for a BBC TV production of "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" with Elijah Wood. It looks good enough to give it a go. Out in October.

Made the trip back up from Ventura to SB on Friday morning. I didn't have time to finish the autopilot install, so I hand steered. It was significantly more pleasant with the revamped steering. I also played with the new electronics toys, and drove quite a bit from the flybridge. It's just...

We did a sea trial Friday morning. I can't even begin to describe how much better the boat handles (but I'll try.) If you don't have a wedge on your rudder, do whatever it takes to add one! First the new prop: the acceleration is impressive. Before, when I throttled up it would immediately...

When I got to the boatyard Thursday morning my boat wasn't where I left it. A good sign. The little travel lift dock got blown out by a big squid boat when he couldn't stop and crushed it, so the yard uses the big commercial lift for everything right now. So they used the little lift to move...

It melts rather than cuts from the friction, making a real mess and requiring constant clearing of the teeth. And lots of edge cleaning afterwards.

2 year refit of C&L 37 Europa Launch got bumped till tomorrow afternoon. The yard asked if I would mind giving my spot to a working boat that had an emergency haul a few days ago. Gladly. I figure that captain operates on a "no go, no dough" model, while I'm just puttering about. The...

This had me curious, so I checked the SDS for Rydlyme. Turns out it's 5-9% Hydrochloric Acid. So it's the same as Muriatic Acid, which is a trade name for Hydrochloric acid. With a little math you can make your own from a pool supply house and avoid the whole "marine" price.

In the few hours I had this morning I finally managed to get the last bronze taper thru hull disassembled. It involved some serious boat yoga, and would have been impossible without the flex ratcheting wrenches. Those wrenches have saved my bacon more times than I can count. Here's the...

I had a few hours after work this morning before I had to be home to take over kid duties, so I snuck over to the yard to get some boat time. The yard is finishing off the shaft project, and it looks amazing. A bit of project history: The survey noted that the shaft had corrosion and should...

I had today and Tuesday off, so I worked on getting rid of boxed parts. I didn't take a ton of pictures, I was kind of in the zone and finishing stuff. I made the template and then fabricated and installed the chain locker divider. I was concerned that there wasn't a limber hole in the lower...

The new prop came in. It looks great. It should make a big difference in efficiency.

Last week my wife came down and we spent the day working on the boat. She did netting for the dog on the foredeck, I did a bunch of little stuff. The netting is the kind used on golf courses to keep cars dent free. I terminated the cables for the windlass and mounted the control box. I...

Here's the labeling system I use for wiring.