Comments on: Marine mechanics: Women’s work

By: Sabrina Nichols

Sabrina Nichols — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:25:38 +0000

Good job sailing sista! Awesome posting about your experience. We BOTH attended Marina Diesel School because we felt it would be important for us BOTH to learn the material as nether of us had much knowledge or experience in the marine diesel world.
~~_/)~~
Sabrina
s/v Honey Ryder Caliber 40 LRC
http://www.wildcatsailorgirl.blogspot.com/

By: Gwen Hamlin

Gwen Hamlin — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:28:14 +0000

While I didn’t do much electrical stuff per se on Tackless II, I did understand it, after reading up about it. Back then I was enamored of the 12 Volt doctor’s Alternator Book, which for some reason is very hard to find. But, bu golly, after reading it I understood how alternators work! Today’s version would probably be Nigel Calder, although he is sometimes a little too comprehensive for someone trying to get the basic principles down. Understanding really contributes to diagnoses when both of you can contribute to analyzing a problem.

What I did do was most of the electronics hook ups, which requires small hands and a logical mind…”let’s see the output from here goes to the input there, etc” and I did do 12 volt electrical stuff on my own boat Whisper. I second the counsel to hire professionals for 110v issues!

By: Carolyn Shearlock

Carolyn Shearlock — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:11:18 +0000

Great job . . . and I’m sure you’ll catch on to the DC side of things, too. I did all the electrical on our boat, just because. We never did have a problem with the AC side of things, but we made a pact that if we did, we were hiring an electrician — AC can kill and neither one of us was comfortable dealing with it.

And yeah, I’ve always thought that at least one person on board should be a contortionist!