The ELCI (Equipment Leakage Circuit Interrupter) is a new-ish device in the US, which will be part of the ABYC (American Boat and Yacht Council) standards in a few weeks. They've been around in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand for 25 years or so, but I guess we yanks are slow to catch on.

We all know the little GFCI outlets, the ones we have in our bathrooms with the little test and reset buttons? The ELCI is like one of these, but it protects your whole boat. The ELCI would be the first thing in the AC wiring after the shore power cord plugs into your boat, and according to standard, should be within ten feet of where the cord plugs in.

As cruising sailors we always talk about the grand vistas - the sweeping seascapes, the towering islands, the glorious landfalls - but sometimes the most arresting sights are on a smaller scale...a much smaller scale. While soloing through the channels of Chilean Patagonia for about six weeks I had lots of time on my hands while waiting for weather. I often took short walks in my foul weather gear with my waterproof camera (because it never stopped raining). These photos were all taken along the water's edge with a macro at  about one centimeter away, which either means I was a budding nature photographer, or getting cabin fever.

A good piece of advice for any aspiring mechanic would be, "Buy the best tools you can afford." Quality tools will last a lifetime, and pay for themselves with jobs well done.

If the aspiring mechanic happens to work on boats, I dare say this strategy should be revised.  I'm careful with my tools, but looking over my tool bag there are very few that were there four years ago. Some, like my hammer, have been with me forever. You're always hanging onto a hammer, and it's not likely to go flying. With screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, and the like you're always shifting your grip, and it only takes one slip for splash splash glug glug. Many trusty tools will find themselves on the bottoms of bilges and bays, and in other people's tool boxes.

These are really aweful. The second one, where the strop slides off the bow, almost happened to me, and they  dropped my boat back in the cradle before disaster. Now I always have them tie a line between the two strops, so they can't slip fore or aft.

The main thing we can learn from these is don't be anywhere near a boat when it's being lifted. I don't think anyone was killed in these accidents, but it looks like a few injuries. 

Let's treat the development of these products historically:

In the distant past, the only way to connect a battery for charging or discharging was to flip a switch. This switch usually connected the battery to the main electrical bus, and the main electrical bus was where connections branched out to various consumers of power and charging sources. If you wanted a battery bank to get charged, say, while the engine was running, you flipped its switch to connect it to the main bus. If, after the engine was stopped, you wanted to keep this bank in reserve, you disconnected it from the main bus.

Basic Battery Switches:

The LED "revolution" is sweeping the boating world. Installing LED lights means less power to get more light, smaller lights, smaller wire, tiny switches, and less weight. I'm not running out to replace all my lights with LEDs, but when I have to replace a light anyway, I replace it with an LED.

If you've got the kind of florescent light  pictured above (I've got three on my boat) it might be tempting to replace it with an LED strip, but the then you've got the stained footprint and screw holes from the old fixture to contend with. 

My customer just gutted the florescent fixture and replaced the bulbs with LED strips, using the original switch...and I will do the same someday.

With the Clever Clevis™, you’ll be the hit of any sailboat!!!

Simply wait for an appropriate moment, toss the Clever Clevis™ onto the cabin top, and let the mirth unfold!!!

Note: Nobody must see you toss the Clever Clevis™. It must seem like it just “fell from the sky.”

Watch your shipmates scramble around, looking aloft! See how long it takes before someone looks at the rig through binoculars! See if you can get every single shipmate to look aloft at the same time!

For added fun, deploy the Clever Clevis during a race!

For maximum enjoyment, deploy the Clever Clevis when the sailboat is winning the race!!! Everyone will love you!!!

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I’ve just returned from Clipperton Island, a French atoll lying 800 miles off the Mexican coast. I went as part of the Clipperton Project, an art/science/environmental/documentary expedition, but I was involved more with boats, landings, and communications. They tasked me with a survey of sea turtle nesting sites, but I walked around that whole island (about seven miles) and there didn’t seem to be any nesting sites, or I’ve got really bad eyes.

Masked Boobie with chick

I am off for 3-1/2 weeks on The Clipperton Project, a scientific/artistic expedition to an atoll in the middle of nowhere, and not on the way to anywhere...or I might be the unwitting participant in some bizarre social experiment or new reality show. At any rate, about twenty of us are off on three boats, leaving from La Paz, with the goal of having eight days on the island to carry out various studies on the island, the lagoon, and the surrounding reefs. Clipperton is a French possession, but closer to Mexico/Central America.

I arrived at about 10 p.m. to see the pandemonium of not one, but three boats in the midst of last minute preparations for an ocean voyage: sorting onions, stowing gear, topping fuel, and trying to keep the new arrivals out of the way. One boat left at midnight, on the falling tide.

Gauges and sending units can get very confusing.

In the photo above, this very nice Beneteau came with this engine panel, which has idiot lights for high water temperature and oil pressure, but no gauges. In an ideal world you want both, the gauges to show you normal temperatures/pressures and trends if anything changes, and the idiot lights/buzzer to go off if something catastrophic happens. This also builds in redundancy, because you have two pressure senders, two temperature senders, and the corresponding guages/lights at the helm.