PDQ OWNERS FORUM

Admiral Candy and I have taken Stray Cat (MV34 hull 12) over the Columbia bar and up the Washington coast to and from Puget Sound a couple of times now, in pretty bumpy water without problems (not counting me breaking a couple of ribs when we were rammed at the dock in Astoria -- another story). Sea...

The range you hope to get can easilly be calculated from the 17 knots per hour at 4 gallon per hour presumption. AND, if the water is flat calm and there is no wind, etc. you will get just about what you predict. If you are not in a particular hurry you could get maybe four times the range, and stil...

Consider very low power consumption LED courtesy lights sold by West Marine, Boater's World, etc. running on 12V DC strategically placed. I picture your lighting is being installed in the 'valance' where the flybridge top extends over the sides of the cabin, just above the cabin windows. You might e...

Candy and I have MV34 hull 12, and had terrible troubles with not starting. Everything sounded and felt fine, but it just wouldn't light. I found the solution for us, and I strongly suspect that it would work for you! Cheap and easy too. 1. Buy a nice selection of stainless washers. 2. Using a stron...

When Stray Cat was in the yard repairing the starboard nose from when we smashed it and flooded the stbd hull, we had the yard fashion epoxy coated plywood steps (like a little wall shelf) and bond two or three of them to opposite sides of the inside of the bow storage lockers, enabling non athletes...

The very thin plastic portion of the front frame of the icebox door broke as soon as we left Whitby. This liberated the pin on the right side of the icebox door that serves both as hinge and spring closer. The quick fix was to ductape a sponge to the inside of the main fridge door to hold the icebox...

I have rebuilt the latch hardware on the sliding main door on my MV34 numerous times; where the stress of slamming shut has ripped the threads out of the aluminum latch frame within the door frame. Two rounds of JB Weld (metal filled epoxy) failed and I finally used a diamond saw and abrasive cut of...

Reply to Acquilla 32/31 My system has 16K Mermaid unit in the saloon and 8K between the staterooms. Size will not help here, as there is too little heat available in such cold river (or sea) water. A limiting problem in systems like ours is that the river water freezes as soon as it enters the A/C u...

News flash! I still can't get one of the two mounting screws out. Instead of pulling the whole #$% windlass off the deck and fetching it to my shop I plan to Dremel-saw off the head of the offending 4X.70 SS screw and mount the replacement stripper plate with the headless stud acting as an alignment...

Hi Wally and Mebs, Thanks for the gift of info, we see the same problem keeping coolant in the system, hopefully this simple trick will fix us up too! Welcome back, we would love to hear about your cruise! We didn't bring Stray Cat to the Sound this summer as we were providing hospice care for Candy...

Flash Update: The mounting bolts are chemically WELDED into the case. NO FUN. Both are about 4mm/70 stainless socket head bolts, in an aluminum alloy case, and in the electrolytic soup I mentioned in the last message they both chemically bonded themselves into the case. I got the forward one out wit...

In Stray Cat, MV34-12 we recently had the stripper plate dissintigrate on our windlass. This plate serves to strip the chain and the line out of the gypsey when launching or recovering the anchor, and with the plate gone both continue to wind around the gypsey and instantly bind up the windlass and ...

Hi Steve, First, congrats on a great choice of boat and welcome. Candy and I have an MV34 out in Portland Oregon, and love it dearly. If you will be cruising far and wide I would suggest a SSB/HF radio for easy and cheap-or-free weatherfax, email and voice communications, particularly with like mind...

Check out the Portland Pudgy dingy/liferaft at http://www.portlandpudgy.com I was so impressed by the article in Ocean Navigator and the info on their website that I am designing a davit system to park the 7 foot 8 inch long hull aft between the hull 'tails' on my MV34. I expect that would fit a 36 ...

I had the factory install a dynaplate in the stbd hull of my MV34, so that the mounting studs enter just in the middle of a dry bilge locker beneath the sole of the cabin, and will mount the antenna tuner to those four studs. More to the point for you, I had them lay copper foil in a grill pattern o...