Recent content by Chuck Losness

A large hole in the center won't work. Has to be open on one end to be able to access the mooring ball. The moorings have a concrete block resting on bottom, then 1" bottom chain followed by 3/4" chain up to the mooring ball. The boat attaches to the mooring ball with a 3/4" 3 strand pendant...

The club is again exploring servicing our moorings. The guy who has serviced the moorings in the past has more than doubled the cost. Close to $2000 per mooring plus parts. One of our newer club members spent 18 years servicing the moorings in Jamestown before retiring several years ago. He...

You can download OpenCPN for free to your laptop and a simple gps receiver will give a great chart plotter. That's what I use on my Gulfstar 37. You can download all of the US charts for free too.

The Club has given up on having their own barge for servicing moorings. Not enough moorings to justify the cost. Thanks for everyone's suggestions

The current guy uses a barge that he made. It looks to be steel and around 40' to 45' long by around 15' wide. I believe it is two hulls about 4' wide but could be wrong on that. The middle of each end is open for about 10'. The water depth varies from 10' to 30' in our mooring field...

There is only one guy left who services moorings in Morro Bay. He is looking to retire. His barge is old and he is having to make constant repairs to his equipment. We are considering having our own barge to service the club moorings. We have 25 moorings. The biggest blocks weigh 5000 lbs...

This is just brainstorming for ideas and things to look out for at the present time. A lot of these older boats need lots of work to stringers and gas tank replacement. Transoms also tend to have rot around the cutout for the I/O drive. The cutout for the outboard would be just big enough to...

Cold day in hell that I will ever go to electrical power for a variety of reasons. If you want to discuss electrical power please do it in a different thread. I have thought about the MacGregor 26's. A good friend of mine had two of them. It would work for me. They are starting to drop in...

I have read lots of threads about the conversion from I/O to outboard. They all involve attaching a pod/bracket/ whatever to the transom and attaching the outboard to that. I am asking about cutting a hole in the transom and mounting the outboard to that. The old catalina 27's with outboards...

Due to an injury to my left hand I am having to transition to a small powerboat in the 24' to 26' range. I no longer have the grip strength to pull on the sheets and other lines on my Gulfstar 37. I am not interested in going fast. Cruising at 6 to 7 knots with a top speed of 8 to 10 knots...

The fishermen in my area all seem to have 9.9 high thrust outboards for trolling and as a get home motor. If it is your only engine I would go a little higher in hp. Maybe 15 to 20 hp. Bayliner does have some older models that were semi-displacement hull shapes. Look for 2670, 2270 and 2260...

For the size of your masts and sail area have you thought about using laser 4.7 sails and masts.

Search the forum. Years ago this was discussed in detail. Eric shared a paper he had prepared that describes how to design free standing masts. Free standing masts are a cantilever beam with a force that decreases from the highest at the partners to zero at the mast head. If you are looking...