Posts In The “Technical” Category
Earlier this week our dryer stopped producing heat en route to Rencounter Bay, Newfoundland. The drum would tumble, but there was no heat. Once we’d anchored, we rigged a clothesline in the engine room to take advantage of the heat to dry the large load of clothes while we investigated the failure. We opened up…
Oil analysis is one of these practices where many people I know find it valuable and send their oil out for analysis on every oil change. We don’t on Dirona not because we don’t believe in it but more from a perspective that the hassle/cost-to-value equation isn’t sufficiently compelling for our usage. When I raced…
Our main engine now has more than 8,000 hours, so increased oil leaks are more or less expected. But up until recently it has leaked almost nothing and the change to leaking more happened quite quickly, so we decided to dig deeper. Oil seepage can be caused by loosening bolts, tired/old gaskets and seals, and…
Boats are full of compromises, and advances in one dimension can bring problems in another. Nailing the full equation of longevity, strength, and serviceability often is truly challenging. A perfect example of this challenge is the Nordhavn 47 and 52 rudder upper bearings. The early members of the Nordhavn 47/52 line used fixed race ball…
Soverel Harbour Marina has been an excellent stop to replenish our boat spares and supplies, address Jennifer’s shoulder injury, and just relax and enjoy a slower pace. While here, we’ve also completed a ton of boat projects, ranging from battery replacement to canvas work to automation systems. Below are the majority of the projects we’ve…
In our charging configuration, we parallel the house and start alternators to charge the house battery bank. Each alternator has its own individual Balmar Max Charge MC-624 regulator and we’ve been asked a few times if we balance the outputs using a product such as the Balmar Centerfielder. This is one of those issues where…
PassageMaker Magazine Jan/Feb, 2016: A globetrotting Nordhavn 52, Dirona, offers a case study in range & consumption planning for long-range cruising.
As we describe in Dirona fuel manifold, we choose to explicitly pump fuel from the appropriate bulk tank to the supply tank rather than gravity feed. This is a slightly more manual operating mode but has some advantages that we really like. The first advantage is that a leak in the supply system can put…
Our Mastervolt MassCombi 24/4000-100 120V inverter works well and we generally like it but it has always seemed to go into thermal shutdown earlier than it should. The inverter is particularly vulnerable to thermal cut out when it’s more than 80F outside and the sun is shinning directly on the stern. The early thermal cutout…
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PassageMaker Magazine April, 2016: A Nordhavn owners’s remote cruising habits inspire a generator overhaul.
We travelled directly from Rodrigues to Reunion, skipping Mauritius, mainly to spend more time enjoying Reunion’s incredible natural beauty. But we’ve also been taking advantage of being on a little less of a tight schedule to complete a few boat projects. Trip highlights from October 6th follow. Click any image for a larger view, or…
Our NavNet 3D black box began showing screen anomalies the night before we arrived in Reunion and blue-screened as we neared the dock, reporting an nv4_disp device driver problem. This is an Nvidia device driver–almost certainly we have a hardware problem. NavNet 3D is a Windows XP Embedded device, so we don’t have direct access…
You never know your boat’s real range until you start to make substantial ocean passages. Theoretical range in flat water with no current and little wind can be surprisingly optimistic so we probe the bounds conservatively. The 3,023 nm Indian Ocean crossing from Dampier, Australia to Rodrigues, Mauritius is the furthest we have ever gone…
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We’ll be running our main engine at fairly low load for several weeks while we cross the Indian Ocean. Since this likely is below the manufacturer’s recommended range, we’ve been asked if we’re concerned about underloading the engine. It is true that manufactures have a preferred and fairly narrow range over which a diesel engine…
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Before we left Seattle, a friend with a strong South African accent asked if we were worried about the parrots. “But they’re just little birds”, James replied. The “parrot threat”, as we’ve come to call it, is something we’re often asked about and definitely is a concern for us. It’s not had any impact on…
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We live in a connected world and yet, on a boat, connectivity remains a real challenge. Since I work full time while cruising often unpopulated parts of the world, connectivity is particularly challenging. Our approach is a hierarchy of options. Depending upon what is available, the top of the hierarchy is the highest bandwidth and,…
We’ve had a few questions about which countries we needed visas for, and how we were able to stay so long in New Zealand and particularly Australia. Here are the details on the visas we did apply for and how the overall process worked out for us. Of all the countries we’ve visited so far…
Excess engine room temperatures are hard on the equipment and tough on the people. Engine room checks end up less detailed and, if you need to do emergency service, it can become a safety problem. We are all sufficiently motivated to want lower engine room temperatures but its actually not that easy. Engine room temperature…