boatstrader

- Captains, owners and divers should remember to always unplug shore power before diving under a vessel.

- On outboard propellers, you need to mark the spline with a chisel and put a second chisel mark on the barrel in line with the first chisel mark. If you run your vessel and the two marks do not stay lined up, then you know your hub is slipping!

- If a mechanic is going to align your engines and only has feeler gauges and not a dial indicator as well, get him off of your vessel.

- When phototaching a vessel, make sure you are full on fuel and you have the same amount of weight (people) that you will have when you are normally operating it.
 
- When placing zinc on the shaft, always leave at least one (1) foot before the strut. The cutless bearing needs water to lubricate it and if you put zinc right up on top of it, you will make air go through the bearing and wear it out.
 
- When pricing insurance, always get a 1% deductible because most propeller and shaft damage is in between the 1% and 2% range. Stay away from companies that assign adjusters that get paid based on what they beat the repairer down!!. I have worked for all the major companies and will be glad to tell boaters who is good and who to stay away from. some good ones are: St. Paul, Travelers, Boat US, to name a few.

- When ever buying a vessel always hire your own "buyers" surveyor not the one the selling broker wants to use.

- On longer legs of your voyages, when vessel traffic is light, use your autopilot if you have one. It will steer your boat much more accurately that you can, and it will reduce the fatigue of the helmsman. Caution: NEVER leave the bridge unattended when you are on autopilot. There must always be someone at the helm whenever a boat is moving!

- Get some soft pine, tapered plugs at your nearest boat store and attach one to each underwater, through hull fitting on your boat. Then, if a fitting should fail for any reason, you can just hammer the pine plug into the opening of the failed fitting to hopefully stop - or, at the very least, greatly slow down - the incoming water.

- Make sure the Chart Datum on your GPS is the same as the Datum on your paper chart. Most charts today use "World Geodetic System 1984" (WGS-84), but some of the older charts use "North American Datum 1927" (NAD-27). If your GPS is using different Datum than the Datum on your chart, there are going to be some glaring discrepancies. If you go to "Set Up" on your GPS, you can choose the Datum you want to use.

- Always have the best magnetic compass you can afford as your primary navigation device. It will NEVER let you down, run out of batteries or lose power!

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