You may be aware that we bought some beautiful teak chairs a couple of years ago and used these most of last summer which means that the oiled dark teak had been sun lightened. Now although these chairs are originally dipped in oil to get their beautiful colour we will need to do some work […]
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It is always interesting to know what the range of your fuel tank is likely to be. Although, that would normally presume that you run the fuel tank dry and after 17 years of use, and filling up in some less than savoury places, I imagine there is some junk in the bottom of the […]
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We love Ian and Rob at East Coast Stainless but….. the problem with stainless steel is that it tarnishes over time and you need to look after it. With a weekend away planned, Maria decided that we would also be doing boat chores. This week she wants to clean the stainless steel, all of it, […]
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On our return from Hamford Water to Ipswich, we suddenly detected a change in engine noise. Actually, if I’m honest, Maria had mentioned that when the engine started, and I was on the bow, she thought she may have heard a whine from the engine that she didn’t recognise. One thing we have learnt on […]
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Those who know us well will know that, like most pet “owners”, we are controlled by the cats and they generally get whatever they want. We have a cat flap fitted to a shower door so that they can have privacy when they need to go the toilet! We also let them roam when we […]
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We have very much got used to our in-mast furling system on Mariadz, having learnt with this system ten years ago. We generally have our techniques for avoiding sail jams despite having one for the first time in years a few weeks ago. However, one of the issues with older sails is that the flap […]
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We like Mariadz to look good as well as being in good working order. So she gets a regular clean from us but sometimes you feel it needs a little more. We’re not OCD (well mostly), but we think, since Mariadz looks after us, we should look after her and make sure she always looks […]
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We like having redundancy and spares on board Mariadz. One of our fallback navigation and anchor watch options is the iPad but these are power hungry apps which will run down the batteries quite fast. So, in true Mariadz style, this has led us to get a charge capability in the cockpit which will work […]
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Dahling, one can’t have a sundowner without ice! And so it began. The hunt for a portable ice maker that could make ice quickly and didn’t use much power. Our cruising friends have always said that ice is very unusual on cruising boats and potentially a commodity. I can see the ice maker being on […]
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We had a lot of electrical work done a few years ago and as part of this we had some extra 240v sockets added in useful places with usb sockets included. The vast amount of devices that are now chargeable by usb seemed to make this a sensible change. Unfortunately this year one of the […]
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