Weekly Photo #44 – Catamaran

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Impulse buy of the year. David and I were at Hayden Pies in Ulladulla and the idea of getting a catamaran popped into our heads again. Using the 4 bars of HSPA and our trusty Android phones, it wasn’t long till we had the eBay app loaded and sourced a boat that went off in about 4hrs. The conversation went something like “should we bid?” … “hmm it looks good” … “should we do it?” …. “hmmm I dunno…” … “YES, do it!” “go for it!?!?:” hahahahhahaa. So yeah, we ended up with a catamaran. I chose this picture not for it’s photographic value but more or less a reminder to how amateur we are at sailing… in the backyard. It took us many times to figure out how to actually rig it up and this was a victory moment. Our maiden voyage was another story in itself but we basically overloaded it, mildly sunk it and had to get rescued.

$117.50 Mercury Voltage Rectifier Replaced with $4.95 Jaycar Rectifier

In order to fix the charging problem on the boat motor I had to replace the voltage rectifier. It converts the AC current from the stator to a DC current. I checked the price on the proper Mercury part and it was $117.50! What a complete ripoff boat parts are. A bit of research on the net and it turns out these rectifiers are nothing special. I picked up a $4.95 35amp Bridge Rectifier from Jaycar. It wired up nicely and even screwed back on to the original mounting holes.