A week or so ago I posted some mid-season tips you should consider, like touching up any brightwork on your boat and getting the bottom cleaned to improve both speed and fuel economy. Well, there's another thing you need to get a look at and deal with, especially if you're running an outboard engine or IO drive on your boat. The drive anodes. If they are more than 50% consumed, get some new ones installed right away. Remember, once they're gone the next piece of metal in the corrosion food chain is your engine............Do I need to say more?

Just in case you don't know an anode from a fish hook, the diagram above illustrates where you might find them on your engine. Get a look at yours and replace as needed. Just a reminder, many folks call these "zincs". The best anodes today are actually made of an aluminum alloy. Much better performance and easy to find these days. 

Recently a surveyor friend in Newport, RI sent me some photographs of some standing rig fittings he had been asked to give an opinion on. The boat was a rather large Oyster ocean going sailing yacht and the issue was that someone had inspected the boat for insurance purposes and stated that all was in good order. The owner of the boat was wise enough to get a second opinion, and so was my friend the surveyor, he asked my opinion. The photos below show some of the fittings.

So, to help the uninitiated here, what you are looking at is caused by crevice corrosion, a topic I've discussed on this blog before, but is certainly worth more discussion based on this case. Crevice corrosion is pretty exclusive to stainless steel alloys and is caused by salt water exposure in an oxygen deprived environment.

 In this case the the fittings you see are out on deck, and connect the cables that hold the mast upright on this boat. The boat gets expsoed to salt water spray constantly when underway and some of that water migrates down the multi-strand wire rigging you can see in the upper photo and enters into the barrel of the fitting that secures the end of the cable to the boat, where it gets oxygen deprived. So, what you are looking at is corrosion that began on the inside of the barrel and has managed to corrode all the way through the metal shell of the barrel to the outside of the fitting, severely weakening the strength of the fitting.

Let me keep this simple, the insurance evaluator in this case was incompetent. What you see here is a potentially dangerous situation that could easily be the cause of the mast on this particular boat falling over in a heavy wind situation, when it's all loaded up to maximum strain.

The bottom line? The owner here was wise to think of the situation in medical terms. You don't like what your doctor tells you? Get a second opinion, and if necessary a third. Sometimes your gut feelings are the best feelings. You see rust on stainless steel........ask yourself what is or could be happening and deal with it sooner than later.

Hella just announced that several of their LED lights have been certified to meet Ignition Portection requirements as set forth by international requirements. This solves a problem that has been on-going for some time, finding compliant lighting for engine rooms, fuel tank areas and on newer boats, on-board tender or jet ski garages.

Both the new DuraLED and EuroLED series of lights are now compliant with ignition protection standards of ISO 8846, USCG, ABYC and SAE J1171. The lights are available in several configurations and are shown here:

 The advantages to LED lighting are much cooler running, very low current draw and extended life. Hella has carried that one step further by overcoming one of the bugaboos with some of the earlier LED's brought into the marine market, voltage variations on board.
There are many reports of pre-mature LED failure due to high voltage spikes in real world situations such as faulty voltage regulators for on board charging systems and such. Hella supplies these lights with integrated "multi-volt technology" that provides consistent lighting and circuit protection from 9-33 VDC, so that historical problem is now in the past.

As for the ignition protection from a safety perspective, the need for electrical components used in any area on the boat where either gasoline or LPG is stored cannot be over-emphasized. Check these lights out if you have that situation on your boat. 

Xantrex just added a new 60 amp rated battery charger to it's already successful TRUECharge2  line-up. This is timely as folks keep adding to their battery capacity on board; bigger battery banks need bigger battery chargers and the new TRUECharge2 60 is a well specified unit. The unit has some interesting features that make it a worthy competitor in a very competitive sector of the marine marketplace.

For the Cruising Sailor, the new unit offers truly global AC voltage input that ranges from 90-265 VAC and 47-63 Hz, so it will work anywhere in the world where shorepower is available.

The unit comes with temperature compensation capability, with a three setting standard or optional temperature sensor (recommended) which will add needed input to the micro-processor controlled unit. This allows for more precise voltage and current output while charging batteries, maximizing battery potential life cycles, which is super important today considering the price of quality batteries.  The unit is also programmable for use with all of the popular battery chemistries used today. Of course the TRUECharge is a three phase unit and does come equipped with a fourth equalization phase for those still using traditional flooded cell batteries.

Another super feature set is the size and weight of the unit. Unlike older battery charger designs, this one has as small footprintat only 3.5 X 6.7 X 13.4 inches dimensionally and it only weighs 10 lbs.

Additionally, the TRUECharge 2 60 complies with virtually all of the international Standards for marine battery chargers, like ISO, CSA, ABYC and IEC. the unit is rated for ignition protection so it can be mounted in areas of a boat storing gasoline or with gasoline engines.

This unit comes with a two-year warranty and has a price of $630.  Based on the specifications, this charger is definately worth a look if you are planning an upgrade or setting up a new boat. I've got one on order to run through a test sequence and give you an up close and personal look at how it performs, so stay tuned.

The Silverton nonskid and gelcoat redo is finally complete. The best way to see how this came out is probably to look at some before and after photos. As for the method used, as I said yesterday, the perimeter of the areas to be refinished had been masked off and additional protective covering added beyond the perimeter outlines to prevent any splattering of the new surface onto the original gel coat.

As for the actual application, here's the good part....No special equipment needed here. Rather than spraying the new surface, it was rolled on with conventional paint rollers. The next trick is that the new surface is actually Awlgrip in a nice off white tan color. The nonskid grit has been thoroughly mixed in with the paint. Since in this case we are primarily trying to end up with a relatively rough surface (non-skid), the final sanding in preparation is not as critical as it would be if we were attempting to create a mirror gloss. For a high gloss, Awlgrip recommends sanding to a 280-400 grit level smoothness. In this case, 150 grit seemed to do the job.

So, first coat is using the recommended primer (Awlquick). This will be followed by two coats of the new color applied in strict accordance with the Awlgrip application instructions. Here the mix of Awlcat #3 brushing converter is quite important. Dry time between the two coats is 16 hours.

The other key factor here to insure long life and the final quality of the finish is the use limits as the multi-part paint slowly comes to full cure. At 77 degrees F and 50% relative humidity, you're looking at 3 days until light service can be safely expected and up to 14 days for a full cure.

My recommendation is to go to the Awlgrip website (www.awlgrip.com)  and get a look at the product data sheets they provide before you even start a project of this magnitude. That said, this is really quite doable by any handy person. It's not rocket science, if you can read and follow application directions, you can make this happen on your own boat when the time comes. So, now the before and after photos:

 Cockpit Before

Cockpit After

Deck Near Fuel Fill Before

Deck Around Fuel Fill After