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Shower Sump Lid
By Capt. Wayne Canning, AMS
Shower sumps without a lid tend to smell from the stagnant water in them. A lid will help reduce these odors. The only problem with the lids the manufactures fit to their sumps is that they are screwed on. This is not really the best idea because a shower sump makes a good back up bilge pump. Most shower sumps do not have very high capacity pumps but let's face it if your main pump fails with a slow leak ...

Staying Warm
By Capt. Wayne Canning, AMS


As it starts to get colder it is time to think about tuning up the heating system. And time for some guerrilla boat repair. Although I have a reverse cycle AC unit I always end up dragging out the little electric space heaters. The AC unit will keep up with the needed heat but it freezes up when the water I am floating in gets too cold, which of course is when I need the most heat. I got over this in the ...

A couple of years ago I bought a used West marine inflatable dinghy and 3 hp Nissan motor for 500 bucks. The motor is great but the first time I put the dinghy in the water the bottom fell out! Well I was not too upset as the motor alone was worth what I paid but being the kind of person I am I could not just toss the dinghy.
So I went off to West marine and spent $120 for 2 pints of special glue to reattach the bottom. I mean how hard could that be right? Well I used 1 pint to reattach ...

Tags: inflatable boat repair, inflatable dinghy repair

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I am finally making progress with the antennas. With the FM antenna I found one of the biggest problems was with a splice in the coax I forgot about. Once I re-did that the reception got better, but not great. I tried using an old marine VHF FM antenna but that was still not perfect and had some fuzz in the signal. I decided to build a new FM antenna out of wire and PVC tube. I used the old loop type antenna design laid out on a horizontal. This type of antenna is called a 5/8 wave "folded ...

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Been a slow couple of weeks working on the boat. We did have over 24” of rain in a 4 day period so that proved useful for finding any deck leaks. Only had a couple of minor ones but of course they are not always easy to fix. I will have to remove a station to get at one but the others have all been dealt with.
It has not been a good time for me and antennas. I have been struggling with getting a decent wifi antenna to work for me. It seems nobody makes a true marine system. I have been thru ...