New Guy With a Venture 25...

[irishguy]

Hey Folks,

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum or not, but what the heck here goes...

My lovely first mate and I just bought a very nice 1974 Venture 25'. It has a ton of stuff that goes along with the purchase: Life jackets, A main sail, a Jib, and a Genoa, all in good condition. It has a very nice enclosure for the pop-up top that is like new. It has a 10 hp Honda motor. All of the cushions are in excellent condition. We only paid $1800 and it is on Lake Guntersville. We went up this weekend and cleanend the boat out and brought everything home to inventory it all. It needs a new rudder, but I have already started making that today, and should be finished by nexgt weekend.

We are driving down to Pensacola next weekend and picking up a trailer for it. So we should be good to go shortly. There are a few things we need to sort out, but they don't seem to be insurmountable tasks.

I would love to post pictures of the boat and pictures of the work I am doing ont he rudder, but I don't think I can post pictures at this early stage of my membership to the forum.

The main questions I have for the forum are related to electrical. I want to be able to run a fan at night and maybe watch DVD's while we are anchored in a secluded cove. I have seen Solar Chargers at Harbor Freight, and was wondering if those weere a good alternative to keeping the batteries charged.

Anyway... Hello to everyone, and I look forward to sharing with the group.

[SkiDeep2001]

Irishguy, welcome, I cannot answer your basic question as to solar vs battery but I can give you my opinion on electrical components (and other) from Harbor Freight. Yes, the price is right but beware, you get what you pay for. In the past 3 years I have spent well over $2,000 bucks at their store . All kinds of stuff, some I needed and, well, I still have bags of things laying around that I have never even opened and what I have found is that you are better off spending a little bit more and getting a better product as far as electric components are concerned. Things I have used a few times that break or quit working, hand pumps, C-clamps,hand tools, tarps (heavy duty silver LOL) that separate after 6-8 months etc... I have bought a few electric items, chargers, heat guns, welder (small), have had trouble with all . Fortunately I paid for the extended warranty on electrics but I am so done with them. Price is right/product is wrong. Look for Duane Dunn's website or posts on this board and their are others. He has a pretty nice setup and seems to know what works and what doesn't. If you login and use advenced search function you should be able to pull up all kinds of info on setting up dvd's and other gadgets. Good Luck

[irishguy]

Thanks for the reply... I wasn't really questioning the quality of items from Harbor Freight. I have bought many things from there and I realize that what they have for sale is kind of hit or miss. No biggie... You Just have to go in there with open eyes.

[John Jessie]

Irishguy,

I use a solar panel battery charger on my Mac 25 to keep the battery up to snuff. It seems to work well for that; however, I don't think it has the juice to run anything more than a small fan. If nothing else it would keep your battery charged enough to use other electrical gear for a while.

Welcome aboard. This is a great forum for trading info and meeting other Mac owners.

[irishguy]

Thaks for the replies so far folks...

I started my fist project this weekend... rebuilding the rudder. The previous owner had just left the rudder in the water and the lower portion was rotted pretty bad. I took it off the boat and dismantled everything. The tiller and the upper wooden portion of the rudder were salvagable. I have everything cleaned up and sanded down at this point. I used the old rudder as a pattern for the new one and I used 3 pieces od 4" cypress spliced together to build the new one. At first I made it rectangular like the old one, until I saw a picture in an original Venture 25 brochure and it shows a sort of a triangular shaped rudder. So I am now going to clip the lower front corner off at about a 30 degree angle from vertical. The wood is only 3/4" thick so I am trying to find some wood that is 1/4" thinck to laminate on each side up at the pivot to act as a boss around the bolt and also to stiffen the entire rudder. i will then epoxy the whole thing and then coat it with several coats of Polyurethane for sun protection.

Once I get it finished, it will always be removed from the back of the boat and stored inside the cabin when not in use.

[Sumner]

Which solar panels are you looking at? How long do you want to run the fan? See if there is a label on the fan that tells you how many amps it uses. If not and you have a Volt/Ohm meter and it has a higher amp scale (probably at lest 10 amp input), you could hook it up and see how many amps it pulls. Let's say it is 4 amps and you want to run it for six hours then that would be 24 amp hours and is how much elect. you will use.

Lets say you have a solar panel that is 40 watts at about 16 volt output then it is going to put out about 2.5 amps (40/16). If you had a good 10 hours of sun on it (unlikely) and it was putting out the full 40 watts it would put out 25 amp hours of charge back into the battery (2.5X10). If this was the case the battery would maybe stay charged.

In all likely hood you will probably need at least a 40 watt solar cell to do what you want to do, but until you do the math it will just be a guess. If you are looking at those small under $50 solar cells they sell they are only meant to keep a "charged" battery charged and not charge one unless it might be on the battery for a number of days after the battery has been used.

I have thousands in HF tools including 2 mills and a lathe and lots of little tools. Over all I'm very happy with what I have bought from them, but wouldn't buy some things like a welder (my welders are a Lincoln TIG and a Miller MIG). The mills and lathe are the same as Grizzly and Enco sell.

Good luck,

Sum

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[SkiDeep2001]

Sumner, glad to hear you have had good luck with most Harbor Freight items. I may have been blowing a little steam in my earlier post. I know what I'm getting at their prices and some/many are OK or a good deal. I just wish that I didn't get stuck with a number of things not working properly and the biggest steam is from a 36 ft heavy duty silver tarp I used to cover my motorhome prior to this past winter and when I spring season cleaned RV in April I found the tarp had deteriorated (not torn) over the winter (3-5 months) and it just happened to occur simultaneously with the roof seam on my rear end cap developing a split/crack and rig was parked on slight downhill front to rear and I sustained about $4k in water damage on roof. I will be spending about $300 bucks on a semi trailer tarp so I don't have to worry about that happening again. Will probably buy one for too.

[JoeVacs]

Thaks for the replies so far folks...

I started my fist project this weekend... rebuilding the rudder. The previous owner had just left the rudder in the water and the lower portion was rotted pretty bad. I took it off the boat and dismantled everything. The tiller and the upper wooden portion of the rudder were salvagable. I have everything cleaned up and sanded down at this point. I used the old rudder as a pattern for the new one and I used 3 pieces od 4" cypress spliced together to build the new one. At first I made it rectangular like the old one, until I saw a picture in an original Venture 25 brochure and it shows a sort of a triangular shaped rudder. So I am now going to clip the lower front corner off at about a 30 degree angle from vertical. The wood is only 3/4" thick so I am trying to find some wood that is 1/4" thinck to laminate on each side up at the pivot to act as a boss around the bolt and also to stiffen the entire rudder. i will then epoxy the whole thing and then coat it with several coats of Polyurethane for sun protection.

Once I get it finished, it will always be removed from the back of the boat and stored inside the cabin when not in use.

Hey Irishguy,
Sounds like you're gonna have some refurb fun. I would caution you though on your choice of polyurethane for your finish coat. It doesn't really like to be emersed a whole lot. Sounds like everything else will work fine though.
Pictures, Pictures, Pictures ! Take lots of 'em and post !
Welcome !

[JoeVacs]

Sumner, glad to hear you have had good luck with most Harbor Freight items. I may have been blowing a little steam in my earlier post. I know what I'm getting at their prices and some/many are OK or a good deal. I just wish that I didn't get stuck with a number of things not working properly and the biggest steam is from a 36 ft heavy duty silver tarp I used to cover my motorhome prior to this past winter and when I spring season cleaned RV in April I found the tarp had deteriorated (not torn) over the winter (3-5 months) and it just happened to occur simultaneously with the roof seam on my rear end cap developing a split/crack and rig was parked on slight downhill front to rear and I sustained about $4k in water damage on roof. I will be spending about $300 bucks on a semi trailer tarp so I don't have to worry about that happening again. Will probably buy one for too.

Even those won't last but 2 or 3 years. I just put up a Leonard metal building. It' s just a metal roof with legs. $900 , and it will last a long, long time. That's better spent money than a $300 camper cover and a $600 cover for my pontoon boat. I can fit both of them under this building at once.

[SkiDeep2001]

JoeVacs, Did you have to get a permit for that metal ?building? I hate having to get permits. Since I have 5 acres I think I will look into that option. I think I can find a place in pasture to erect something like that. What lengths do they come in since I need to cover 32' RV, 26' , 2 cabover campers, tractor etc.... 100' long sounds about right

[SkiDeep2001]

JoeVacs, I just checked out their website, http://www.leonardusa.com/. I like it, thanks for the info. On second look, they even have a 100'er

[JoeVacs]

JoeVacs, Did you have to get a permit for that metal ?building? I hate having to get permits. Since I have 5 acres I think I will look into that option. I think I can find a place in pasture to erect something like that. What lengths do they come in since I need to cover 32' RV, 26' , 2 cabover campers, tractor etc.... 100' long sounds about right

I don't know about where you live, but in NC you don't need a permit unless it's got power connected to it.

[baldbaby2000]

Sounds like you got a great deal on that boat! I've owned 2 Mac 25s and loved them. The enclosure is a real plus as it gives you headroom. I've always used the flexible Uni-solar panels http://www.oksolar.com/solar_panels/uni ... xibles.htm if you can still get them. On the Mac 25 we had it bungeed on the top of the pop top and left it there even while sailing. They're light weight and flexible.

[johnnyonspot]

...Once I get it finished, it will always be removed from the back of the boat and stored inside the cabin when not in use.

If you are slipping your boat, installing and removing the entire rudder assembly each time you go out seems like it would be an unnecessary PITA imho. You should be able to simply kick the rudder blade up and tie it off so its out of the water. Maybe the V25 is different from the Mac 25 rudder assembly, but this is all I ever did when I wasn't using it and it worked great.

[Newell]

1974 Venture 25? I thought the 24 was built during the early 70's and the 25 came later?

Newell