Alan Duncan

At the point where my rudder post emerges from the deck, there is a flat bearing which used to contain ball bearings. The races have now completely broken up and all the bearing have dropped out, meaning that the swan neck now flaps around loosely. On most boats these bearings appear to be bolted in with 4 bolts, mine however has only 2 bolts. Can anyone give me a steer (sorry!) as to where I might find a replacement bearing in the Nottingham area? (Failing that, anywhere!). And does anyone know what the proper name is for these little beauties? All advice gratefully received. Alan

Hi there Josh Pardon my ignorance (I'm used to it but it can be a shock for strangers!) but what is a voltage stabiliser, what does it look like and where can you buy them? We used to have a combi set which had a transformer but ran quite happily on the boat's 12v system which had normal domestic 13a sockets. Unfortunately in a moment of total madness, when the set was sat in the hall at home I plugged it into the 240 v socket! (Note earlier comment about ignorance!). I don't think I need to say more. I'm curious as I have a 15 inch LCD which has a transformer as well as a cd system which also has a transformer which I currently power via a small pure sine wave inverter. This works very well but if I can cut out the undoubted waste of power the inverter requires so much the better. All advice gratefully received.