GPSguru

Monday is looking promising, but not nailed on yet. I noticed the window over a week ago, but it keeps slightly changing, however, now changing for the better.

A strange year for me, loads of fish but nothing that was noteworthy sizeable. Plenty of Plaice, Bass, Pollock, etc, but no double Pollock, no Bass over 7lb, and no Plaice over 4lb. Also loads of miniature smutts and Rays. However, all of them put a bend in the rod and that is good enough for me 😉👍

Tut, tut, schoolboy maths 🙄 Multiply by 2.2 for speed, or 2.204 if you have a calculator handy.👍

RIP Terry Hall, lead vocals from the The Specials I remember them from the 80's, but they were still rocking in 2009...............

Excellent ........... TBH, there does seem to be a few more Cod around this winter ............ note to one's self, I must try harder !

I am guessing that was the old ford dorset engine ( 2700 ? mid 60’s to mid 80’s ). IIRC it had a specially designed combustion chamber to promote heat generation during compression, however, they were still a bast’id to start on a really cold day. The cold start lever on the pump was just like the choke on a petrol, to add more fuel relevant to the ambient temperature. As a point of interest, the big cummins 5.9L, and 6.7L had a heated grid in the air intake, which has the same effect as glow plugs.

I am happy to be proved wrong Nick, but TBH, I dont know of any oil burners that do not have plugs for cold temperature use, and when plugs fail, most engines are non starters in temps below 5c. I guess your engine is 2004 ? . Mercrusier used Isuzu, VM, GM, and yota (Land Crusier, loverly engine) as the base for their diesels, which is yours ? Yes, they will be difficult to spot, on my 2.8L VM Jeep, the plugs are tucked up under the inlet manifold, the only way to see them is with a mirror (when you know where they are) or looking up from underneath. On my last volvo D4, the plugs were on the rear of the engine, tucked up under the exhaust manifold. On my MY19 Discovery Sport, the feckers are buried under tons of shite in the engine bay, somewhere under the twin turbos and EGR valve. I know that apparently LR charge near on £1K to change them, but their hourly rate is £150 /hour to support their glass fronted palace 🙄

Hmmm, typical welsh, but I suppose it is better than getting out the back of a sheep 🤣🤣🤣 Joking aside, all the best Luke, and BTW, it is going to be ferkin cold on Friday, before the mild interlude arrives on Saturday.

Yes, it has an old school glow plug system. No glow plug light, the plugs are energized through a timed relay that is connected to the ignition live. The plugs 'glow' for 8 secs. Each plug draws 10 amps. I haven't looked, but I assume the relay is old school with a mechanical bi-metallic timer, and it is probably bolted to the engine. Without the plugs, it would never start in temps of 5c or lower (unless you pump ether into the intake 😉) This system was used by old school yota, BMC, commer, Bedford, and Vauxhall engines. Modern engines (that fail to start more often), are vastly overcomplicated with algorithms to determine how long the plugs should glow given the air and fuel temp, and some have a diesel heater in the secondary fuel filter bowl to shorten the glow time, blah,blah, etc, blah ........

Is it a carbed petrol ?

So I guess that will be the Merc ......... nice motor Yes, the cold weather will play havoc with starting, as that motor will need a lot of current to get it going. Not only will you have thicker engine oil to turn, but you will also have an additional 50 amp of glow plug current. So the battery must be able to supply the additional starter current, the glow plug current, and whilst supplying all that current, also maintain quite a high (IIRC 11.5V) voltage to the ECU in order to fire the injectors. Given that the temperatures we have recently experienced are a rarity, I would be inclined to just keep a couple of purpose made jump leads in the boat for when you need to parallel the batteries for the extra current. Automatic marine battery systems are marmite, some swear by them, others swear at them, and there is a lot that can go wrong. When I had my boat built in 2019, I specified twin batteries, but also specified a simple (but quality) OFF - 1 - BOTH - 2 switch, and not the blusea automatic system that they wanted to fit. Generally I run on both, but when at anchor or drifting, I switch to one battery and save the other for starting (if needed).

🖕 .......... swivel on that, yer bast'id 😇🤣

No need for all this, Just call the #twatfromessex a complete tosser, and you would be bang on ..............

RIP Brian John Duffy (Jet Black) the Stranglers Drummer ..............

Well yes I did think that as he often writes with the sort of vengeance that you get from somebody that has been sucking piss off stinging nettles while being shafted with the rough end of a pineapple 🙄

Yep, not too happy at the moment as I have gone down with yet another UTI, however, this is a known issue with folk that are immunosuppressed, but a UTI is of major concern regarding sepsis, so it needs to be fixed el-pronto. This time, I have only had one night of a 41.3C fever temp. Stupid feckers at the surgery lost/mishandled my first two samples 🙄, so I went in there with the 3rd and jumped up and down a bit (a lot). Luckily they have a 'placement' paramedic, who understood the situation and was on the ball, so sorted me out. 👍 TBF, I am on an antibiotic for kidney infections, but it seems to work well (better than all the others) on my UTI. I hate winter because this sort of crap hits me hard, and I get almost as bad tempered as @JonC 🤣

So am I …… RF ( DC to daylight), telephony, secure comms, paging, ETACS, GSM, microwave, and satellites 😉 But I come from a family of mechanical and precision engineers, and it sort of rubs off 🙄

Shirley you mean Sprag (one way bearing) ? AR-B and ARB are Anti Rust Bearings, but in the case of Shimano, that is debatable 🤣 Fin-nor use a Sprag bearing AND a feck’in annoying dog pawl for belt and braces. We usually remove the pawl to make to reel silent. Although I can crank up the drag to 45lb ish, I have never had a sprag slip.

Dunno about slag, but the best way to stop hormones is to pay them in a timely manner .............🙄

Ah ok, that is not so good. Folk that suffer with that normally have zillions of tiny veins, and often find it difficult to give blood ( like my wife). I have got veins like motorways so circulation is good and I tend not to suffer from the cold. You are going to need some sort of permanent heat, what about something like ‘hot hands’ and keep them in you pockets. My mate uses them to good effect.

If you were to keep busy catching a few fish, then you wouldn't need hand warmers 🤣 Take up slow jigging, that way you are always on the move, instead of sat supping champers 🤣 I use savage gear fingerless gloves which tend to be warm enough, although their use is really to stop my hands from getting an open wound injury, as being immunosuppressed, it can turn nasty quite quickly.

Excellent Neil, tell him from me ‘well done bro’ My boy is a ginge, and had similar problems, until he ‘lost it’ one evening in the town and put a local hard case through a shop window. He never had any issues after that, even the plod smiled and walked away.

Oh yes, I have done that a few times over the years, usually when fishing the skerries, as we fish with a light drag in case a big Blond or a Turbo grabs the bait. Why, was he getting to shag Mary in the school play ? If it was one of @JonC‘s boys then he would have probably got the part of Mary (like father like son and all that)🤣🤣🤣

The sea conditions made it tricky, as whilst drifting a constant ‘look out’ was imperative to see any rogue waves in the swell pattern. Also coming back in at speed required a lot of concentration as you really don't want to stuff the bow in a 3m swell ! However, it was very enjoyable and good to be using the boat in the sea conditions it was designed to do. 👍