Electrical

Ensuring a Safe Space for Batteries

When charging, lead acid batteries generate hydrogen from the electrolysis of water, and some acid gases, the amount of which vary with the battery...

Extra Anchor Lighting

When summer comes, a dozen or more sparkling white lights will adorn every popular anchorage. Visible from miles away, they promise to provide good...

Watertight Connector Test

Oh, for a good standardized 12- volt electrical connector. I’ve never had a boat without multiple connector failures, and most of them involved proprietary...

Preventing Electric Shock at the Dock

The human body runs on electricity and if you overload the nervous system with an external field, everything goes haywire. Every year several people die because they go swimming near a dock, a wiring fault creates an electric field in the water, and their muscles freeze. It is called Electric Shock Drowning (ESD).

Batteries, Cleaners & More

As a subscriber, you have free access to our back-issue archive-more than 2,000 articles. Here are a few topics you might find relevant this season.

Testing VHF Coaxial

The loss in RF coaxial cable increases substantially and quickly, when there is water intrusion. Coax that uses foam dielectric, like RG8X and LMR type coax, is particularly prone to this problem because the water can quickly propagate along the foam dielectric used in these type coaxes.

Antenna Gain and VHF Transmission Range

Recreational marine VHF antennas are usually broken down into three categories: 3- and 4-foot sailboat antennas (3dB gain), 8-foot powerboat antennas (6 dB gain) and 16-plus-foot, long-stick antennas (9+ dB gain) that are popular on larger, long-range craft. Antenna gain is a ratio related to an antennas effective radiated power (ERP) instead of a fixed quantitative value.

Sailing Gifts for 2018

No one really wants just practical gifts, so weve tried to locate a few items that go beyond pure utility for this holiday season.

Keeping the Shorepower System Safe

One of the often overlooked maintenance items in the pre-season rush to the water is the AC shorepower system. Over the years of surveying, Ive amassed a small collection of scary photos from past surveys showing the common examples of neglect to this critical system.

Solar Panel Sense

Movies can be corny, but Jack Sparrow nicely summarized the romance of sailing: Thats what a ship is, you know. Its not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, thats what a ship needs but what a ship is ... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom.