Nautihamstern

I've tried everything from polyurethane varnish (very durable but horrible to work with if you ever need to redo it) via old school Le Tonkinois varnish that never *really* hardens to the norwegian Owatrol system, which is what I use today. The idea is to completely saturate the wood/plywood with Owatrol D1, which is a mixture of linseed oil, a little bit of turpentine and tung tree oil. This process takes anything from 5 hours to 18 hours of almost continuous wetting of the wood. After the material can no longer absorb any more, you are done, if you want a matt finish. If you want a high gloss varnish-like finish you can continue with multiple layers of Owatrol D2. The diffrernce between this stuff and "normal" varnish is that it will *never* peel off, since the underlaying wood is impervious to muisture. A friend of mine wipes a thin layer of owatrol D2 on every wooden surface in his 30 year old boat every spring and it still looks like new.

Don't forget that the power draw on the cable will be smaller the further away you get from the main board, as only the first part of the wiring will conduct the full power draw of the lights, i.e. the last part, between the last light and the second last light will only need to conduct as much as the last light is drawing. Hence the voltage drop has to be calculated for each part of the wiring and then added up to get the voltage drop by the last light fixture.

Close but no cigar... The boat name is in a dialectal swedish, spoken in my hometown up the coast in Finland. Yup, there are about 4 percent of us here in Finland, who speak mainly swedish. Anyway, the name Sööta Öödi translates into "Sweet Destiny", although "sööta öödi" is mainly used as an expression (something between "oh dear" and "for f*cks sake!). "Sööta Öödi!" was also part of what my mother exclaimed when I told her that I had borrowed a substantial amount of money from my sister in order to buy a boat... (Our rubber dinghy (courtesy of my insurance company after our former dinghy took to the air in a 21 m/s gust) is called "Kondoomin", the contraceptive...) And yes, finnish *is* an impenetrable and tongue-paralysing language but alas, extremely useful for cursing, swearing and general lamentation!

I was very, very drunk...

Little Venice

I hate to be tooo far away when I read stuff like this Well, at least I'm going to go for a little leisure trip along the coast on the cargo ship "Ballerina" on monday (shh, don't tell my boss I'm skipping work for that one!)

The black stuff (cuprous oxide) isn't a good conductor and a cable that has oxidised this way should actually be scrapped. I have had similar problems in our boat and one way to ensure a good connection at the lamp or breaker is to spread out the thin wires in the cable and rub them with sanding paper. Not a cure but a quick fix and it works...