New Boat Owner/Where to start/Help/Hello

[sastanley]

Dan and I have met and chatted extensively over A-4's. He is an old salt on all these things and I feel his knowledge is trustworthy.

Dan, it sounds like you and Jil had a great talk...just the the thing that is needed to build confidence in the motor. I had similar guidance when my boat was new-to-me while she was on jackstands and had a few friends aboard familiar with A-4's to give me something to work with. It jump started the evolution.

[jil]

Skywalker- does yours ever get stuck? Is it something that I shouldn't worry about as long as I use PB Blaster once in a while to unstick it?

[Skywalker]

Jil, it has never gotten stuck. I'd soak it and see if it loosens up. If not, probably time for a new one.

FWIW, the only time I use it is at the end of the season. I shut off the flow, pull the carb and filters. Even though our tanks sit high, I've never had a problem with unwanted flow.

I'd love to see some other pics of your boat. It's always interesting to see how others have "aged" and been modified and improved.

Skywalker

[HOTFLASH]

Welcome, A4's, MM, T27's and zincs

Jil,

Welcome. I too have a Tartan 27, a '74 yawl. I knew absolutely nothing more than what I remembered from 5th grade science class about gas engines when I bought my T27 in 2001, though I was a part owner of a '69 T27 sloop for a few years in the early 70's . And with the help of this forum and the MM manual I took apart most of my engine, added a lot of upgrades from MM, adjusted the valves, and put it back together, re worked and replaced the entire exhaust system, rewired 99% of the boat including the engine, added LED lights throughout, added a gimballed stove and much more.

Re "zincs" (actually, "anodes"): a T27 has few choices. We have a 1" shaft. There is not enough room between the prop and the rudder (if your setup is the same as mine) for that nice prop-nut style zinc. A regular donut with a 1" hole does not fit between the cutless bearing where the shaft exits the boat and the forward end of the prop. I used a thin donut, smaller than the usual size in thickness, made for a Beneteau but sold by

boatzincs.com

, that barely fits but does work. It is has a 25mm hole size and is not a perfect fit around the 1" shaft but works fine. The techies and engineers there told me that as long as there was touching of the shaft and I could tighten it up, I was good. They also warned against trying to shave or to cut the thickness from a regular-sized, but more available donut (can start a fire). If you can get a thin 1"-holed zinc, great. I am in fresh water, so I was looking for magnesium or aluminum anodes. They are harder to find than zinc anodes.

With the electrical, my only words of wisdom are to research well what you do, read Charlie Wing, Nigel Calder, the BlueSeas site, and

www.pbase.com/mainecruising/boat_projects

and of course, run things by this forum. On this site, I think Neil Dutton just put the link to a downloadable version of the ABYC standards for boats electrics.

Good Luck
Mary
'74 T27 Yawl HotFlash

[ndutton]

Right you are Mary, just posted it today and for ease of retrieval I'll do it again here:
ABYC E-02.pdf
ABYC E-09.pdf
ABYC E-11.pdf

edit:
That gave me an idea and I proposed it to Admin Bill, a forum category for standards. He agreed. Thanks for the inspiration.