November 22, 2012
User Benefits Of A Thoughtfully Equipped Helm On A 22’ Power Boat
What The Latest Electronics Can Do For You! Despite the simple appearance, this Boston-Whaler Montauk 220 has a surprisingly complete electronics suite and a host of user benefits. In marine electronics there have been incredible advances in performance, simplicity and convenience combined with gradually dropping prices over the past few years. However, industry insiders tell us the prices have probably bottomed out; we’re not going lower. So, if you have an older boat, now is the time to re-think the benefits you can gain by upgrading your helm electronics equipment.
October 15, 2012
Tips on Cleaning Electronics
Our friends at GPS Store sent us this reminder about the cleaning of electronics, tips that are more important now that boats are being put away for the season. From my own experience I can confidently remind readers not to try to clean modern touchscreen electronics with a damp cloth while the unit is turned on! The GPS Store’s suggestions:
September 13, 2012
Staying Warm or Keeping Cool
Heating and cooling systems add immensely to cruising comfort, whether you boat in cool shoulder seasons or contend with hot, muggy summers. Most boaters learn quickly that extending their season is ideal – Canadian summers are so short, whether you’re on the west coast or the Great Lakes. In central areas, summer is short but it can be hot and humid, and winter is too cold for much cruising in all parts of Canada. Extending into spring and fall makes boating so much more enjoyable, to say nothing of helping justify the costs.
September 12, 2012
Reusable Boat Covers
Investing in a reusable winter cover is a sound environmental choice and a practical way to facilitate winter maintenance on your boat. Over the past few decades, more and more boats in Canada have been put away for the winter under shrink wrap. Properly applied, shrink wrap seals the boat from water and intrusion by creatures, its slippery surface sheds snow (when we get it), and it resists wind and sun all winter. Shrink wrap can also be recycled quite effectively, and some shrink wrap suppliers have created programs to gather used wrap to ensure that it’s recycled and not disposed of in a landfill site.
September 6, 2012
Charging
With a source of external power, shore-cord or generator, current still needs to be fed back into your battery banks to reset their chemistry and return them to full electrical output. This requires a battery charger. Here most boaters can rightly claim to confusion. There are dozens of brands available and most products are a “black-box” with little to distinguish one from the others. There is nothing to show a quality comparison or actual performance, save massive ‘spec’ sheets that tell us too much, usually in techo-talk; incomprehensible without an advanced degree.
April 16, 2012
New Technologies Improve on the Flooded Marine Battery
Batteries lie at the heart of most boats. We need them to start our engines, power our electronics, chill our food and sometimes cook our meals. We rely on them but often don’t give them much thought until they fail. Or outlive their normal lifespan of about five years and need to be replaced. With major advances in new technologies reaching the marine marketplace, let’s take a look at alternatives to the traditional lead-acid battery.
March 14, 2012
Is It Time to Give Your Boat’s Interior a Fresh Look?
We all know what a fresh coat of paint can do for a room. The same holds true for the interiors of boats except instead of paint, you can introduce a new swatch of fabric that can do amazing things to a dining area, the salon and even a sleeping cabin. Not everyone can buy a new boat, but a relatively small investment and some taste can provide a fresh new look and feel…and it's not that hard to do.
February 29, 2012
Searching for the Ideal Engine Room
So, I have to open with a joke. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide all the other people in the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. For the purposes of this article, I do! To be more specific, I divide boaters into two kinds of people: those who want to play in the engine room and those who don’t. Whether your boat is power or sail, you are almost certain to have an engine and every engine needs maintenance and occasional repair.
February 16, 2012
Big Navigation Features Migrating to Smaller Systems
In the past three months, the marine electronics industry has announced several new products that clearly show how big-boat navigation features are migrating down to smaller systems. While these new systems are physically smaller and come with smaller price tags too, they still deliver big performance. You can benefit in several ways. First, the overall prices are down given the performance levels, so you can afford more capabilities for your boat, large or small.
February 10, 2012
Small Efforts Get Big Engine Room Cleaning Results
Putting your boat away with a clean engine room and bilge at the end of the season is extremely important. A coating of oil, or a mixture of oil and fuel, will dry out over the winter and cake onto all of the bilge systems, fasteners and mechanical equipment that it touches. Then, over the winter, the storage wrap traps the oil fumes giving it months to permeate every part of your boat. It also makes the bilge a lot harder to clean out in the spring, but spring is a time when a clean bilge has particular value.
October 18, 2011
Upgrading to Satellite TV
In keeping with our ‘extending the season’ theme for the September issue of Canadian Yachting magazine, we wanted to suggest "Upgrading to Satellite TV" systems for your boat. It is perfect timing. The new TV season is starting, lots of great new shows will premiere and the days will start getting shorter; a perfect excuse for getting cozy in the cabin and watching TV, especially if you have a heating system! (See How To and DIY, Electrical).
October 18, 2011
Lining Up the Repower Project
Getting the owner of an older sailboat to spend the money on a brand new diesel auxiliary is a challenge for many marine service businesses. Often the costs involved in the purchase and installation of a new powerplant carries a bill that can make most recreational boaters blush and run away. Some vessels, however, are built for the long haul and replacing the diesel engine on an otherwise sound mechanical vessel can extend the life of the boat at a fraction of the cost of the replacement of the entire boat. Newer marine diesels are also more fuel efficient, smoother, quieter, lighter, and pack far more horsepower into smaller packages.
October 18, 2011
Extend Your Season With A Non-Electric Heating System
We thought this was a good time to remind our readers that there are a number of highly effective heating systems that you could have onboard to extend your cruising season, but without needing shore power, or running a generator. I know it's tough to beat the comfort and efficiency of a reverse cycle system that provides heat, dehumidification and air conditioning for year-round comfort, but almost all of these systems need either shore power, or a big load of 110 V AC from a generator system.
September 7, 2011
Antifouling: More Than One Way To Think Green
Well it’s spring and time to organize most people’s least favourite spring outfitting job. Time to get the bottom painted. These days, when it comes to antifouling paints, we need to consider not just the cost to ourselves, but also the cost to the environment. With a little education, boaters can make both a green and a cost-effective decision for their antifouling paint. First, a little history. From early days, copper in various forms, from copper sheathing to cuprous oxide in paint was the best available biocide for antifouling. Remember TBT (tributyltin).
September 7, 2011
Spring Cleaning the Green Way
Ahhh… The snows have melted (mostly) and spring is in the air. That means it’s time to think about commissioning and getting our boats ready for another summer on the water. Not surprisingly most of us have a bit of work to do on our boats so now is the perfect opportunity to look at cleaning up our act, so to speak. With interest in all things environmental sweeping the globe, it’s worth thinking about how we can get our boats ready to go and do our part to keep our waters, and ourselves, healthy.
August 23, 2011
Smart Battery Chargers for Smart Boaters
Smart chargers are not new, but they are getting smarter all the time and that’s a great thing. In almost every issue of Canadian Yachting, we suggest you add some new or upgraded piece of equipment to your boat and virtually everything runs on electricity. The highest draw equipment onboard would be your windlass, air conditioning and refrigeration, but new entertainment systems, navigation equipment and galley items can all add big load increases. Complicating this, battery manufacturers are always working to improve the performance of their products and new batteries can change the “charging profile” of the battery bank.
August 23, 2011
Care and Feeding of Your Control Cables
We’ve all seen it, or worse, had the experience ourselves; an older boat making a less than elegant landing due to sticky throttle cables, or stiff, balky steering. There are lots of older boats out there that get less use than they deserve due to old and uncooperative cables. This is confirmed by the amount of discussion on various chat rooms concerning the problems associated with cables. Assuming your engine is in good working order, your steering and control cables are the next most important systems on your boat. Yet so often we see boats where these cables are poorly installed or corroded.
May 8, 2011
Add an Isolation Transformer to your boat
First, if you just remember one thing from this article, remember – never swim in a marina.Why? Because in a marina, you have people, water and electricity. When everything is working properly, that is a recipe for fun and great times. But, if just one wire chafes through its insulation and shorts to ground, there is the potential for tragedy.
January 12, 2011
The Glass Helm: AIS for Every Boat
Although the Automatic Identification System (AIS) isn’t new, the importance and functionality of AIS for pleasure craft may well drive dramatic growth in the coming years, so we have chosen AIS as Part 4 in our Glass Helm series. There are many reasons why. First, there are two versions of AIS1: 1) a receive only system; and 2) a Class B transponder which both sends and receives.
January 12, 2011
Adding a 12-Volt TV and DVD
As Graham Toms at Payne's Marine Group points out, more and more boats are being used as cottages and the owners expect all the comforts of home including, of course, television shows. Sea-faring TVs have become very popular in recent years because the new flat screen technologies enable people to install a television where previously the depth and sometimes the weight, simply could not be accommodated.
January 12, 2011
Rigged to Run Hard: Engine Room Ideas and More
We recently spent time aboard a 54′ Bertram called the Maple Leaf and the boat’s owner made a great comment about his boat. He said that he has not fixed up a used boat; his boat is in the process of 22 years of constant improvement! I loved that attitude. Bertram’s 54 was designed and built as a sport fishing yacht and the only real advantage of moving to a new boat would be that it was new.
January 6, 2011
Is There a Diesel In Your Future?
With the trend to larger boats and the continued strong market in Canada, many boat buyers will be cruising the shows this winter, looking at diesel-powered boats. Diesel power costs more initially. Is diesel worth it to you? Or, should you stay with familiar and less expensive gasoline engines of the same horsepower?
January 5, 2011
Important New Engine Choices from Cummins MerCruiser Diesel
The recent Miami International Boat Show (February 14-18, 2007) was the launching pad for a host of new products, most notably from the engine manufacturers. Among the biggest news stories in the diesel field was that Cummins MerCruiser Diesel (CMD) has announced that they have started shipment of pre-production Zeus pod drive systems.
January 5, 2011
A New Dream Galley on Your Boat?
Here is a TV Show We'd Love to See! The squad of designers and hot shot marine technicians, armed with a load of tools and parts descends on your boat, simultaneously ripping out the soggy, mildewed old galley while ripping off insults about the old design and your personal tastes!
December 24, 2010
One Watt: Each Watt Counts Because They All Add Up
When the last dock line is pulled onboard and you are floating free in the water, at that moment, the vessel that you are on is isolated from any of the support facilities that are so much a part of our everyday lives. You are on your own! If your planning has gone well and you have educated yourself on the systems onboard, you can look forward to an excellent and enjoyable boating experience.
December 22, 2010
Winterizing Tips for Your Diesel Engine
Just this past winter, my own transmission cooler, which should have been mounted in a more upright position, froze and split the casing, causing water to steadily leak into my bilge until we discovered the problem and corrected it. By “corrected” I mean dump money into replacing a perfectly good transmission cooler just because I thought it was fully drained when it wasn’t.
December 20, 2010
Tenderizing Your Tender – An Easy Way to Get Around!
I’ll never forget what a sad looking boat it was – a flaccid little inflatable with a wood floor, awash in perhaps 6 inches of slimy brown water that was slowly lapping into and out of the engine cover of the fairly new 9.9 Mercury outboard. The Merc’ had been left on its side on the floor. The dinghy was half under the pier and half in the rain, tied loosely at the back of the big boat’s slip, banging against the pilings 24 hours a day.
December 16, 2010
Smart Charger Upgrade For As Little As $500
Nobody wants a failure in high season. We interviewed Edward Saunders at Mastervolt about the new generation of smart chargers and he began by saying that electronics have a usable lifespan. Anyone with a 1995 or earlier cruisers may find their chargers are still working, but electrical components can fail; they fail suddenly and often without warning.
December 16, 2010
The Glass Helm Display
In the April 2010 issue of Canadian Yachting, we were starting to “frame up” the glass helm from the perspective of an older boat that deserves better navigation and ancillary equipment. Of course, the “glass helm” refers to the single screen onto which all the information can be displayed. Several companies now offer NMEA 2000-certified multifunction display systems and once the NMEA 2000 trunk line (or backbone) is installed in your boat, the next logical step is to buy your multifunction display screen.
November 2, 2010
Driveline Details Deliver Delightful Days
When was the last time you sent your propeller shaft to the machine shop to be checked? How old are your engine mounts? Have you replaced your cutlass bearing recently? Do I sound like your mother? Well, if she were here, she’d be giving you some important advice!
November 2, 2010
Big Box Botch-up or Why You Need OEM Marine Lubricants
Far too many people do this in the spring; drop into the nearest big box store and grab a season’s supply of universal, discount-priced 2-stroke oil, car oil for their 4-stroke outboard and inboard engines and maybe some all-purpose grease for their cables and steering gear.
October 28, 2010
Your propeller – The Unsung Hero of Boating
Doesn’t a propeller look simple? Visually, the size and shape makes it obvious that a propeller kind of “screws” its way through the water and to a casual observer, it looks to be one of the simplest parts on the whole boat.
October 28, 2010
Social Calls or a Lifeline – Why You Need a VHF Radio
Even if you never venture away from your favourite sheltered lake or river, a VHF radio is well worth the $200 investment for a basic radio and the ROC (M) Course and License to operate it. Here’s why.
June 25, 2010
Framing up the Glass Helm
With this issue of Canadian Yachting, we are starting to “frame up” the glass helm from the perspective of an older boat that deserves better navigation and ancillary equipment. A prime example would have been the older classic, twin-engine cruiser that our group restored recently. Well over 100 lbs. of fatigued old wire with corroded connections and chaffed insulation was carefully disconnected, removed and replaced.
June 24, 2010
Spring Launch Checklist Avoids Trouble Later
This Spring Launch Checklist is intended to be helpful for owners whose boats have been winterized and stored professionally. This Checklist is to help you launch the summer of 2010 with a boat that is in tip top shape and ready to deliver a season of trouble-free boating enjoyment. If possible, before the dealer takes your boat out of storage, go and inspect it visually for any sign of fluid leaks, damage by water intrusion or wildlife or missing or damaged pieces.
June 15, 2010
Oil Changes for Larger 4-Stroke Outboards
Those beautiful new 4-stroke outboards behind you are a wonderful power plant. Smooth and quiet, powerful and quick, they’ve come a long way from the “old smokies” that thumped along a few decades back. However, as the 4-stroke outboards have evolved, their maintenance has become something many owners feel may be too complicated, or just plain difficult to attempt. Most owners simply drop off the boat at the yard for a haul-out or call “the guy” when the scheduled oil change is due.
May 11, 2010
Avoid Breakdowns and Expenses
Create a Custom Checklist for Your Boat Almost every boat in Canada gets “winterized” in the fall and “summerized” in the spring. Here is an easy way to make sure it’s always done properly, to avoid breakdowns and expenses. We suggest that you invest in about two hours of time from the marine technician at your dealership and together, create a winterizing and summerizing checklist.
February 6, 2010
Webasto Dual Voltage Climate Control System
At IBEX, Webasto announced their dual-voltage A/C and reverse-cycle heating system that operates without a genset. Called the FCF-DV, the new system runs on standard 115-volt AC shore power and then automatically switches to 12-volt DC battery power while away from the dock. The noise and vibration from an onboard generator is eliminated, and the skipper can enjoy a night on the hook in peace and quiet while keeping his or her cool…
November 14, 2009
Protect Your Propeller Shaft
When was the last time you sent your propeller shaft to the machine shop to be checked? How old are your engine mounts? Have you replaced your cutlass bearing recently? Do I sound like your mother? Well, if she were here, she’d be giving you some important advice! Powerboats and sailboats with inboard engines generally have rubber in the engine mounts, packing material in the stuffing box and a cutlass bearing in the propeller strut.