Afishionado

Thank you to you all, greatly appreciated. Mad Mike

Did any one notice the "and the drinks are on me lads" part of Toms post? Could the web master sorta forge it in? Mad Mike

Do we get a discount off these guys? Mad Mike

A 535 is an ideal first boat and well worth the time invested if you can get her cheap enough. I live in the Kinson area if you want me yo have a look with you. Mad Mike

quote.........One other point which has served me well, try and get a boat that someone has used for fishing, they are much more likely to be trading up or stopping altogether, so look for the extra gear as part of the price - like, Fishfinders, VHF, GPS, flares, rod holders, Anchor, warp, fenders,Trailer lights, straps etc it can add up to hundreds of pounds by the time you have assembled it all yourself. Bluddy good point and well made too. Mad Mike

I must echo Maverics comment and hope I am not too late. Dont buy a Dijon they have too low a freboard for use at sea and are inherantly unstable. Badly made with an atrociously thin GRP hull. Take your time and look at several types before parting with a penny. Ebay and Boats and Outboards are good places to look on line, not nessessarily to buy but just to start putting the types and shapes of boats with the names. For a first boat any of the 'cathederal' hull types make a good choice. they are stable, good load carriers, easy to load and tow and rugged construction. Such names as ... Wilson Flyers, Del Quay, Capri, David Still, and many others cover this type of boat. All of these will need a 40hp or more engine to get them on the plane. Slower more sea kindly hulls are called 'Displacement' hulls, usualy round bottomed with a bit of a keel. This type of hull is safe, sea kindly and slow. The advantage here is that an engine of about 8 to 10hp is ideal and the fuel consumption is very low. I am sure that if you saw something that you want to go ahead with a request here would get you someone with a bit of boat know how to come and give it a once over for you. Mad Mike

By the by, how are you fixed for a day's bassing. When I've finished this job and one or two others to the boat, a tester day would be good. Terry. Sounds like a plan Mad Mike

Terry, they are usually what is called an 'interference fit', meaning that they are just a very tight push fit. Most often one can drift (tap) them out using a rubber or leather hammer. Another way is to wrap the end in some cloth and using a monkey wrench ( a big mother with adjustable jaws) clamped over the cloth covered tube twist gently away and out. Some have a tiny ridge acting as a stop to stop them being pushed in too far. If so you can start them on the way out bu putting a BIG flat bladed screw driver between the ridge and the hub and twisting the driver. Have the wheel jacked up and freely rotating fo all of the above. Mad Mike

They are certainly not the cheapest, like for like. It pays to check them all out. Mad Mike

The other thing I didn't mention and which I should have is wind and tide. One might not think it would make much of a difference whether the wind is blowing with the current or against it. In fact with a small boat the difference could be deadly! Lets say you leave the slip going out on a forcast of SE force 3 to 4 on an ebbing tide (I am talking about this area) Therefore the wind will be going with the tide and you decide to go out to the West and round Hengisbury or Old Harry on the ebb. On the way you think that the forcast 3 to 4 was a bit over the top as the wind seems light and the sea state is relatively flat. OK 6 hours later you decide to come home. The tide has turned and is flooding strongly and as you get going the wind seems to have suddenly picked up and feels more like a 5 also as you approach the headland you past coming out the wind strengthens to a fierce 6 and the is a maelstrom of big standing waves and huge white rollers. You don't notice this till to late as all you have seen untill you got there is the relativley smooth backs of the waves. Suddenly you are in deep doodoo!!! So what changed to make such a huge difference? the surprising thing is very little. 1/ The wind is now against the tide and against the direction of your travel. You didn't feel the wind going out because you were going with it. 2/ The wind will pick up about 50% more strength as it swirls round a headland. 3/ The wind and it's increasing speed at a headland is now working against the flow of water which also speeds up round a headland causing the water to bunch up into higher waves 4/ Your feeling that the wind is stronger is simply because you are now heading into it, so you have wind speed + your speed. This is called 'apparant wind speed' So when looking at a forcast wind and wave situation work out how it may affect you coming back as well as going out.. It might pay to move back past a headland at slack water to avoid a nasty and possibly dangerous situation later on. Mad Mike

Via the railway line Rockley boat park backs onto 'crime central' of the Poole area. The council estate is called Turlin Moor. Dont let tide and low water worry you too much at Poole. You will have to get used to the double highs and double lows in a single tide cycle. But the FULL low is the 2nd Low and the one that moves most rapidly in time and depth. If you look at ...< http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/tides/south.shtml > and study the graph you will see what I mean. The main thing to remember about FULL low is that it's ebb lasts 3 hours and it's return to the level it was when it started takes only 3 hours. So If you arrive at your slip and ground half an hour before low water you only have to wait an hour and a quarter to get water under your keel again. Mad Mike

In the Pacific one might have a readin/forcast of 60ft wave hight but at a 20 minute period, and as far as our boats are concerned it would feel like flat calm because the top of each wave is so far away (in time) from the top of the next one. The Solent (notorious for it's choppy sea state) one could easily have just 3 ft wave hight but at a period of 3 seconds it would be very uncomfortable as the boat could easily be caught nose in a trough going down the face as the next wave face going upward bursts over it.. Another BIG factor is what they call 'fetch' which is the distance the wind has to run before it hits you. So you could be tucked up in Alum Bay in a SE or SW wind that was making the Solent quite choppy whilst you are sitting comfortably. One moe thing if you double the LAND forcast suggested wind speed for the wind at sea you will not be far wrong. I would sugest that you do venture out with the firm plan that if you feel it's dodgy you come back in. This way you will start to be able to relate forcast to fact on the day. Decide on alternate areas that will be out of the wind from the forecast direction. Fix in your mind a comfy bolt hole if you find yourself away from your home port and it turns nasty. All these things any good skipper does automatically when planning a trip and it is a good habit to cultivate. Afishionado

Quote ..i have bought a four bladed prop smaller blades spin quicker but has more grip Unfortunately this is not nesessarily true. If you consider the total arc the prop spins is 360 degrees it would be obvious that a 360 deg disc would not propel in any way. If you cut the disc into 4 segments and angled those segments you would create a sort of propeller. However the gaps presented by vectoring the segments would not allow much power as they are too small to allow sufficient water past. To rectify this one could make the gaps larger and the blade area smaller or reduce the number of blades to three or two keeping the blade area high. To go any further with this post would require a thesis on propeller function and efficiency and I for one don't have the time. But suffice it to say that the NEED for a 4 bladed prop is very specialised and that 3 bladed props over all have the best effficiency. I would be interested to find out what the performance change will be by going to a 4 bladed prop (Of the same diameter and pitch as the 3 bladed one?) Mad Mike

Hi Daz, what d'you do, where'ya from, tell us a bit about yourself it all helps each one to get to know the others. Mad Mike

I think all diisocyanate based glues have the same properties and giving them different names is a marketing ploy. But that is only my opinion. Mike

I have used it on Mono for fixing stop beads on paternoster booms and it worked fine. Flouro? I have no experience but my gut feeling is that it will work fine. Mad Mike

Not too sure about braid. I don't think it will harm braid through chemical reaction, but as it is likely to creep into the lay by capilliary action it may well when set, enable the braid to snap easily through fatigue stress. Mad Mike

Rob, You have a PM. Mad Mike

We wanted to try for some smooth hounds so taking advice from previous posts we decided to go to this Saddle mark in Bournemouth bay. By the way apparantly the 'Saddler mark was a reference to the sponsorship of a yacht racing mark named after Saddler yachts. Since Saddler went bust the racing mark has been adopted by BP and is Yellow with the BP logo on it......... Any way not far from it there are some shallow gullies in the sand/gravel bottom which we thought we would try. The first half an hour or so was dead and we were thinking of moving but decided to wait untill the full ebb started. We made the right choice and as the tide picked up we were into some lovely Smoothounds, and boy did they fight on our light Maxximus carbons. Terrific fun! It lasted for about an hour and then like the flick of a switch they were gone. Still catching little bream and mackerel on bare hooks as we reeled in we stayed for anothe half hour and called it a very nice warm and sunny day. By the way talking about reels, I used for the first time a 'ToothyCritter' multiplier I picked up on Ebay for

That would be Mark. A vacant loose jawed stare? Slightly crossed eyes and nasal hair with a dew drop on the end ? Your lucky he just looked on mate. It's a full moon and I only have three silver bullets left!!! Mad Mike

Went out of Poole and turned west towards Swanage and the headlands. Mackerel ZERO so off we went with just frozen mac's and squid. Tried several places in an increasing NW wind certainly more than the light breeze forecast. We eventually caught some fresh mackerel on the bottom using frozen Mackerel as bait, but nothing else. In the mean time the wind had increased even more to a force 5 (Even the WAFI's had put reefs in their sails) and it was against the roaring ebb tide. We had a smashing trip back to Swanage bay through the edge of the races which had huge standing waves cresting foam, you could hear them roaring as they crested, broke, and reformed. The Jeanneau handled them superbly with us all closed up in the cabin and the wipers going flat out bursting through them in fine style. Once in Swanage Bay we tried an area of Potters shoal to end up with the almost inevitable LSD's. By now the wind was bl00dy freezing and we called it a day. I think we saw young Dan in his blue hulled MF625 coming out of the Swash when we were coming back in. A catching day? Not really but OH boy was it good to be out again. We're off out again tomorrow to make the best of the current weather. Mad Mike

once upon a summers day

Didnt see you out ? We were well out (2 miles) from the pier on the edge of the Dolphin banks. Mad Mike

Condolences Kam, the way forward is best taken one step at a time for the moment, but soon you will feel like taking bigger strides and the sun will light your way again. Mad Mike

Having looked at the fish ID site that Tom showed, I am pretty certain the only sizable fish (about a pound and a bit) was a Couch's bream as it looked exactly like the photo on the web site. Truth to tell I had never heard of such a fish. My previous (not great) knowledge, bream were divided into Red and Black sorts. The titchy things were unhooked and returned without any real examination, all I can say is that they were a pink hue. Mad Mike