It all began when the start battery died late last fall. Actually, that’s not entirely true. We knew the electrical system was incorrectly wired but were hoping to delay this project until our planned major pre-cruising refit once I retired in a few years. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to buy a new battery, even a cheap flooded lead acid starting battery, and wire it into a system that I knew was slowly trying to kill it. Thus a project began. Our 28-foot 1986 Bristol Channel Cutter has minimal electrical demands compared to most contemporary cruising boats. She has navigation…
Editor’s Note: With multiple marine book titles published (including his magnum opus Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual), numerous articles in this magazine and others and the many seminars he’s taught at boat shows, marine systems expert and Ocean Navigator contributing editor Nigel Calder has built up an impressive body of work that has enlightened untold numbers of boatowners and continues to educate voyagers worldwide on the concepts and procedures involved in keeping a voyaging boat in good operational shape. Recently, Calder launched a web-based teaching effort called BoatHowTo.com that allows voyagers to learn online at their pace. For his latest…
A. 14:30:20 GMT B. Ho of the sun is 21° 17.0’ C. N 45° 19.6’
It was not a propitious beginning. In July 1837 in Bristol, England, as 50,000 people gathered for the launching of SS Great Western, the largest ship ever built, an unknown shipyard worker was killed when a large timber fell on him. Despite that tragedy, Great Western went on to an illustrious and profitable career. The ship increased the fame of its designer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an engineer already of high renown, who had designed the Great Western Railway operation from London to Bristol. At the opening of the railway Brunel was said to have made the comment that there was…