Ramblings
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A visit to the National Botanic Gardens
Saturday gone, K and I hopped on a bus to go to Ireland’s National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin in Dublin. It’s a 10 minute walk to the terminus of the line just south-west of where I live, and about an hour on the bus to reach Glasnevin. The view from the top level of the…
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Fixing a broken Whale pump
The other weekend, when K and I went to Blue Opal to spend the night (so we could go sailing before the club opened the next day), I used the head and pumped to the tank. There was a bong (which is normal for the tank), and then I heard water dripping. Alas, I very…
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Winch greasing
Noticed last week that the winch on the coachroof sounded “graunchy” when winching the main up. Realised I probably hadn’t done anything to the winches since I bought Blue Opal, so it would be a good idea to to something about that. Ordered some Lewmar winch grease (research showed it might not be cheap, but…
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How to check the masthead light without a dinghy
Having re-done some of my navigation lights, I figured it was a good idea to make sure I’d wired everything correctly. The LED lights don’t draw many amps, and so it can be hard to tell if the light has actually turned on. In the past, I’ve waited for nightfall, tied up alongside at the…
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Is it summer?
It’s been sunny for over a week now, in Ireland. Dry too. One might say summer had arrived, though there’s a definitely nip in the air still. East coast has daytime highs of 16 – 18 C (west coast is hitting mid-20s), though the winds are pretty light out of the north to east –…
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Flirtations with a flash
Many, many moons ago I picked up a set of Pocket Wizard Plus Xs (archive) and a pair of LumoPro LP180s (archive) to complement the Nikon SB80 that I already owned. David “Strobist” Hobby (archive) had been quite enthusiastic about this hardware, and at the time I thought I might be going more into my…