Tag Archives | Dashew Offshore

One of the great things about metal yachts is the ease of making structural connections in a totally watertight fashion, by welding. When this takes place on a completed vessel certain cautions need to be observed. All equipment with electronic circuits on them should have their breakers turned off. Sensitive electronics, like engine CPUs may […]

The prop shafts have been removed (they slide past the rudders) and we’ve given them a close look. The cutlass bearings are both still within tolerance, with the starboard bearing showing no wear. The port bearing has on the order of 1/8″ (3mm) of slop, not much really. However, we are replacing both since the […]

Corey (left) and Casey (right), from the Triton Marine crew, head down and tails up, taking the drive lines apart on Wind Horse. After 5700 hours we want to have a detailed look at the various elements to see how they are wearing. The ball races from the starboard engine’s  cv-axle. Although we are inexperienced […]

  After some 5000 cruising miles since delivery in March of 2011, I have some pretty specific thoughts on how Iron Lady is working out. Some were surprises to me. At the top of the list was that I felt safe on Iron Lady. While I can’t necessarily identify all the features that make the […]

As we were heading down the Chesapeake from Whitehall Creek we noticed a large group of schooners milling about. Turns out this was the day for the annual schooner race. The photos which follow are fun to study, and there are a couple of rig items worth noting. We’ll start with this derivative of the […]

Over the last 30 years we’ve been involved in many aluminum and fiberglass yacht construction projects. Our experience has been that properly built, aluminum holds a substatial edge overall in maintenance issues. “But what about corrosion, and the horror stories that are rumored?” you might be thinking. To anwser that we offer the photos above and […]

It is the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 2011, and we have a new batch of photos from Circa, a few of which we’ll share. That’s Avatar, FPB64-1 in the yard, back at her birth spot for a get home auxiliary to be installed. After two years of cruising and many […]

Sometimes an idea that seems great in abstract fails when you get into detailed drawings. Such is the case with our solar roof, now history. But as cool as it might have seemed (to some) we have a much better solution. The array is now mounted all the way aft. The six panels shown here […]

An often overlooked benefit of propulsion efficiency and its reduced power demands is a quieter engine system. But as quiet as Wind Horse is under power, 57 dB at eleven knots, one of our goals for this haul out is to reduce the sound level further. Of course when you are at 57dB already, further […]

The rendering above shows the proportions of a solar roof for the flying bridge (support is not yet shown, but will be required). The efficiency and cost per watt have gotten to the point where this may make sense. In the scheme above there would be eight 250 to 320 watt panels, depending on what […]