How-to

As part of your spring maintenance and upgrades there are some key areas of concern if you own a gasoline fueled boat and are replacing certain components that are either mounted directly on your engine or located in a space where an engine is or a fuel tank is located. The term to remember here is "ignition protected" and it applies to some common items that fall under the routine maintenance or upgrade category. This designation applies to gasoline fueled boats only (as far as engine and tanks torage is concerned) and LPG gas storage areas as well as battery storage areas and is  actually covered under USCG regulations as well as ABYC Standards. That said, way too many boaters ignore or simply don't understand what the regulations dictate. The bottom line here is that things like starter motors, alternators, ignition components like distributor caps, or any electrical device located in engine room spaces or fuel tank spaces must be rated for ignition protection. The problem is further complicated by the fact that this is a marine only requirement and the fact that the designation of a component as being ignition protected rated is sometimes obscure to the average boater. Component labeling requirements allow some latitude in how a manufacturer can mark their equipment to let you know that the part meets the specifications. Any example is shown here on a gas engine ignition distributor cap: In the center of the photo above you are looking at an engine distributor and you can see it has a label on the cap. The label reads "SAE J1171 Marine". Now a lot of dockside gurus over the years have figured out that marine gas engines are actually marinized automotive engines and think that the marine labeling is merely an excuse for the parts people to charge more money for the part. I can say definatively that in this case you will be taking your life in your hands if you substitute an ignition protected component with a standard automotive component. In the above example J-1171 refers to an automotive standard that identifies ignition protected, which means that the device will not be a source of sparks in the event of a fuel leak that could blow your boat sky high! J-1171 is not the only standard that is referenced. UL-1500 is another possible reference, and on components made overseas, you may see a reference to ISO 8846. This designation applies to things like fuses, circuit breakers, alternators, starter motors, ignition distributors and / or caps and switches, bilge pumps, and blower fans that may be mounted in the above described areas of your boat. The bottom line here? Look for one of the above references on the new parts you install this spring as you get ready for launch, and don't let the dock guru tell you that you can save big money by going down to the local autoparts strore and buying the automotive equivalent. Simply put, it is not going to be equivalent! This is NOT an area where you want to try and save money. …Read More

Our recent piece by Jeff Siegel of ActiveCaptain about a novel dinghy anchoring technique stimulated quite a bit of discussion from readers and we even heard about another, possibly even better, technique from John Marshall, owner of the Nordhavn 55 Serendipity. Marshall discovered a particular product that makes the process of anchoring the dinghy off [...] …Read More

Have you ever made a mistake that killed your boat? I know I have… more then once. Hopefully, reading this will help you avoid making any of these three boat-busters: don’t do this!!! 1.The Fishing Line Blunder – If you fish from an outboard or stern-drive boat, sooner or later you’ll wrap a line around the [...] …Read More

Reading my colleague Lenny Rudow's piece yesterday entitled "Installing New Bilge Pumps, Read This First" made me think of an on-going issue with bilge pumps and any small motor circuit you install on your boat, macerators, bilge blower fans and such. The issue is called "locked rotor" and what happens when this occurs. A locked rotor situation is basically defined as a motor that's trying to turn, but can't, for whatever reason. In the case of a bilge pump motor any bit of debris that enters the motor housing around the pump's impeller and wedges itself between the motor housing and the impeller could jam the pump so that the impeller can't turn. The problem is, your float switch doesn't know that. When the float reaches its turn on point, its still going to send power to the bilge pump motor. what happens next is the tricky part. The motor has power so its trying to turn but can't. So what happens electrically here is the interesting part. You have a voltage source, and a device trying its best to function. It does the  only thing it can do at this point, generate heat. In fact maybe even enough heat to catch on fire. The electrical current is flowing, but gets reduced based on one of the key electrical equations we have, Ohn's Law. Ohm's law states that if voltage is a constant and electrical resistance increases, amperage must go down or be reduced. That's whats happening here, the voltage supply is pretty steady from your battery, the motor is heating up and that increases electrical resistance, amperage goes down. Its a mathematical fact. The problem is, we would hope a fuse would blow in this case and shut down the power to the motor. It won't. Why? Because fuses blow based on amperage and if the fuse is not being subjected to enough amperage, its just going to sit there and allow whatever current there is to flow freely. The simple answer to this problem is to be absolutely certain the fuse for your bilge pump motor is rated exactly as the motor manufacturer recommends and that's where the installations typically go wrong. The vast majority of blower fan and bilge pump circuits are over-fused, and in the event of a locked rotor will not blow! In the photo below, you see the beginning stages of what can happen. Mind you I disconnected the power to this motor after about 20 minutes.    If you turn sideways and look very carefully at the printed information on the top of the pump you'll see that Rule recommended using a maximum 11/2 amp fuse (this one is a 24 volt motor). All I did to get the melt down going was lock the motor impeller in a vise and install a 5 amp fuse. Again, within about 20 minutes the case got hot enough to start melting as you can see. Had I left the power connected, it would have eventually caught on fire. So, besides Lenny's sage advice about adding a vented loop to your near the waterline bilge pump installations, make sure the fuse you use matches what the pump manufacturer recommends, and no more. …Read More

The view from next door. © Clipper Ventures Donna Womble was very clear on her reasons when she signed up for leg six of the Clipper Round the World race. She was a lifelong sailor, she wanted some sea time, it just wasn’t happening, and this would solve the problem. Leg six is scheduled to [...] …Read More

Editor’s Note — Victoria Allman is the chef aboard a 143-foot megayacht and the author of the recently released “Sea Fare:  A Chef’s Journey Across the Ocean.”  This is the third in a series of periodic columns here on OceanLines featuring her irresistible recipes. Best of all for OceanLines readers, who are travelers of the [...] …Read More

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Fair to say, many a lifelong sailor has never experienced 24 knots on a boat. Also fair to say, it takes a lot of 30-plus to turn out an average like that while logging 28,523 miles. On a new circumnavigation record. Which will, however, be computed for official purposes using, not the actual distance sailed, [...] …Read More

How crazy are the French about long distance adventure sailing? Crazy enough that photographer Yvan Zedda could get a plane ride and a picture to be captioned thus: Flyby of the maxi trimaran Groupama 3 to the NE of the Azores aboard a Falcon 50 fleet 24F from the Naval Air Base of [...] …Read More

Mobile Mariner LLC has announced the official launch of the Mobile Mariner™ for the Blackberry® smartphone, which will provide NOAA marine weather forecasts, tide information and life weather conditions for the coastal United States, including the Great Lakes. More upcoming releases will expand the application to other smartphone platforms and cover more international areas. Mobile Mariner [...] …Read More