Recent content by b_arrington

Different engine, similar scenario. I had a 1998 2 stroke Evinrude outboard with a carb. It was all mechanical and I learned how to fix everything on it. Rebuild the carb a bunch of times, and did the required in-water tuning. I liked it because it was simple and I could do the repairs...

Cicadas are the sound of summer of my youth in NJ. Along with the katydids, spring peeper frogs, and bullfrogs. Not many cicadas on Long Island, nor frogs where I am. Miss them. We do get the katydids which I love. I call it the sounds of the "night bugs".

I started going to a train with my wife last year. I told her a big goal was flexibility so when I have to do “boat yoga” in the bilge I can still move around and don’t stiffened up and get stuck.

Smaller boats are not bolted/glassed like this. They use No. 8 coarse thread stainless screws through the 2 layers, the outer deck part and the inner hull part. In mine, there should have been caulk that sealed the joint. Whoever did the caulked was really lousy at it, barely putting any...

A couple tips for this project. Use 5200 for the hull to deck joint. This is a structural item that you don't want to come apart, and the perfect use case for 5200. Don't use a pressure washer. Acetone or MEK would be a good cleaner. MEK has a slower evaporation time but is harder to...

It's "kinda" normal. Fiberglass layup is a hand process with variability in profile on the back side. But...in some cases Sea Ray didn't do a good job in sealing the hull to deck joint. Or the sealant may have failed.

That's basically what I did on my 270 AJ. Differences: I reused most of the SS screws, and I did not put sealant on the top of the rub rail.

My dad was a home inspector with his own business. He actually wrote reports in a narrative style vs. most others that do a check list thing. I read a lot of his reports, went on a lot of inspections with him, and listened to a lot of his client advice. He would list the condition of things...

I usually don't update until the SW has been out for a few months to see if the new versions are running OK. The GPS devices are too critical to do an update right away and risk it not working.

This is my situation. I overhang the end of the finger by about 17 feet. My bow line goes to the end of the finger. There's not much traffic that goes by me. There's a private boat ramp, and the water get very shallow.

Automotive stores often have a set of super fine grit wet sanding pads and foam blocks. I used a set when I needed to make a gelcoat repair. Worked very well to conform to curves. A trick I learned for wet sanding gelcoat is to use one of those quart size sprayers filled with water and...

I have to think the 8600 card readers will work. How else could you load the data? Garmin also has the ability to use non-ethernet external card reader. It installs on the dash (or where ever), and the cable is USB type. That reader takes full-size SD cards.

For sure Garmin is moving away from Bluechart. I figured that would happen when they bought Navionics. Id didn't make sense to keep and maintain two different charting systems. When I added a second 8600 device, I specifically got a close out from BOE that was using the Bluechart G3...

I use the same quart size for my RIB each year.

Citi Marine offers a Phasir generator kit to do exactly this. Includes a Racor filter and 10 gallon fuel tank with a 4.5kW diesel generator for about $9.8k. $11.5k if you want a sound shield. Uses a Kubota motor. Probably don’t need more than that on a 28 footer...