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Just back from Paris. Did the entire Louvre in 27 minutes. Evaded security and ruined a few vacations. Should make me famous on Twitter with my fellow Twits. Kowabunga! Mark

Years ago, while sitting around a campfire, we tried to come up with the silliest waste-of-time "physical endeavor" that might get one some publicity. We settled on backpacking the Pacific Crest trail on a unicycle. Turns out there are a lot of variations on the theme. The most recent I've...

I didn't go with lithium "start" batteries. They are about 6x the cost of simply using sufficient "regular" LFP batteries to do the job. My reasoning is that electrons don't know if they are being used to start a motor. There simply needs to be enough electrons. The mathematics on my trawler...

Not sure how far down the road you are, but here's my experience with LFP batteries aboard. I still have lead acid on my C-Dory, but have gone to lithium on my trawler. All lithium, house and start. I'll premise this by saying that about 65% of what you read about LFP doesn't apply to your...

If you are in 2 feet of water and have a 10 inch draft, it would be almost impossible to hit the bottom because of wave action. A 1 foot wave doesn't travel far in 2 feet of water. Maybe if one was right on the edge of a drop-off, but a 2 foot deep area won't have 18 inch waves, short of a...

I went with lithium on my trawler. Get the ones with Bluetooth so that you can really see what they are doing. I went with 4 280AH batteries (bigger boat, bigger battery bank). It was right before the recent tariff increase, so a bargain. An extra battery is an extra day at anchor. Fusing...

Broughtons

The only issue that I see is "cruising the San Juan Islands for a few days this summer." There are lots of days every summer when I wouldn't worry at all about crossing from Anacortes to Friday Harbor. In fact, most days. Just over an hour in relatively protected water. Maybe 3 hours max in...

My "go to" method is home canning. No freezer. No fridge. No cooler. Only "evaporative cooling" used on my CD 16. Home canning might be beyond what many want to try for extended cruising, but on the 16 it is sort of required (unless cruising between marinas). Everything from chili to...

My Mom always said Grandma had great looking legs because of her treadle sewing machine. I bought my Singer treadle in the 70's. I did some leather work and found that the hand crank accessory was really nice to have. It only connects when needed. New Singer hand cranks are still available...

I put an Espar in my C-Dory 16. I also replaced a Webasto on my trawler when the motherboard went out and parts were no longer available. I put the old Webasto on Ebay and it quickly sold because it still had some parts that could be scavenged and Webasto and Espar parts are crazy expensive...

We are in Dewatto Bay on Hood Canal. I was surprised to still see Chum salmon jumping out in front of us this late. I guess that's why the Orca are here. Usually when the Orca are nearby the bay fills up with 30-40 seals in the shallow water. It's fun to watch them swim under water when it...

Forgot to add this. We just returned from our summer's cruise in northern B.C. I was telling my wife that it sometimes appeared that the small fishing boats that are trolling have an uncanny way of determining what will be a collision course with us. It was entertaining to see a little boat a...

Don't call the CG on Ch. 16. Call everybody on 16. The CG will hear it. Maybe even the Yahoo. Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité. Hello all stations. Be advised that an XXX bound vessel of approximately XXX feet is being operated in a reckless manner by an impaired operator. All mariners in the...

My first suggestion would be leave the hand rails as hand rails. Anything that you do to obstruct their use is a bad idea. On my CD 16, I had room for a single flexible panel. I surface mounted it with YKK "SNAD snaps." Male SNADs on the deck and female snaps attached to the back side of...

My uncle spoke a little chinook jargon. His use of skookum was always "big or powerful" as in "use the skookum hammer" (actually a 4 lb. sledge). Running tidal rapids in a C-Dory makes for a much larger time window than for displacement vessels. In a C-Dory, Tacoma Narrows only gets "lively"...

Most of the hailers also feature a listening ability when the hailer isn't in use. Some of the fog horn programs also have this feature. After your horn blasts, it goes into listening mode. A nice feature in the fog, but beware that a diving bird running on the surface during takeoff sounds...

I replaced mine when I was looking for places that might have had water intrusion. The brass lining and caulking had held, but it was a good time to increase the size and placement. The original holes didn't drain very fast or get the splash well very dry and I wanted to lower the hole 1/8th...