My O’Day 22 Sailboat Blog

Since I repaired the DOA radio I bought from eBay I have given the seller the option to reconcile the issue by spliting the repair cost of $40 with me. That means I’m asking him for a partial refund of $20 for the $50 broken radio he sold me. The responses I’ve been getting are just unbelievable. Not only does this eBay seller not willing to work with me on any of these issues, he is to the point of blatantly lying about the conditions of the item now. In his last post he is claiming that his radio is in “perfectly working” condition. This guy is insane. Does this look like “perfectly working” condition?

Definition of “Not Perfectly Working” Condition

Here is a screenshot of all of this guys negative feedbacks from eBay:

If you ever come across this guy on eBay, DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM HIM. He goes by the eBay name “jdsmarine” and “heatherblu”. Apparently in May of 2005 he decided he just had too many negative feedbacks with the old account “heatherblu” that he needed to get a new account. Since then he has racked up more negative feedbacks in his new account.

This is where ebay can be problematic for people that sell a lot of stuff. By looking at his overall rating you see it in triple digits. That appears to be good because this guy sells alot of items on ebay. When you buy something from him you are basically rolling the dice. If you get lucky, which happens to be majority of the time, you will receive the item as described. When you don’t, forget about dealing with him after the fact. This is where the eBay rating system basically falling apart at its core. They are no ways to prevent sellers from posting retaliatory feedbacks to their buyers. My opinion is that once the payment is made by the buyer, their part of the transaction is fulfilled and the seller must post feedback based soley on that experience. However, almost all sellers wait until a positive feedback is posted for them before they reply with one of their own. This system provokes this kind of tit-for-tat retaliatory feedback environment.

The bottom line to this story is that you can more or less feel safe about buying on ebay if you know what to look for. I would suggest that from now on, don’t buy anything from anyone unless you have read all of the negative feedbacks from the buyer regardless how few there are. You may just end up being one of them if you don’t.

Here is a cool site that shows just the negative feedbacks of any user on ebay.

http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs

Sample pages:

Negative feedbacks from eBay user “JDSMARINE”

Negative feedbacks from eBay user “HEATHERBLU”

I bought a new marine radio for the boat from Amazon and I figured that it would be a good idea to setup a base station at home so I can monitor channel 16 and also let my wife contact via the radio while I’m out sailing. I didn’t think I would need a new radio since it might not get that much use so I looked to eBay. After bidding on a few of them without success I finally won an auction for a used Standard Horizon Eclipse. After about a week and a half this radio lands on my porch. It was pretty much as described once I opened the box. A closer look revealed the PL259 antenna connector is fused to the radio due to salt water corrosion. I was kinda bummed out. luckily there is enough cable coming out the end to allow some splicing. So that’s not that big of a deal.

The radio as it was posted on eBay.

After splicing some wires and cables I got the antenna setup on the side of the house with a cable running into the house. Using a 6 amp converter I have 12v power as well. I connected everything up and turned the switch to the on position…. Nothing…. Not even a click. This was pretty irritating. I email the buyer from eBay to let him know that this thing was not as described. While waiting for the response I figured I may as well try to do some trouble shooting.

I first checked out the connections and immediately found that the inline fuse also has a lot of corrosion build up. I scraped off both ends of the fuse as well as the terminals in the containing and put it back together. This time the radio turned on! I was thrilled. I was thinking that I would email the seller back to let him know that I had fixed the problem. Before I got that far I picked up the microphone to make sure I can communicate with my handheld. After setting them both to channel 71 I tried to press the button on the mic…. Nothing again. This is starting to piss me off. The button on the mic doesn’t even move. It is permenantly depressed but the radio does not transmit although it receives just fine. This radio does not have a detachable microphone so replacing it is pretty much out of the question. I didn’t want to go into that much trouble if the seller would just let me return it.

Later that day the seller emails me back apologizing about the mistake in the posting and agrees to refund me. Great. I write back asking for the time frame and the method of refund but got no reply for the next 24 hours. I wrote back again. This time I suggested that I should get my refund before I have to send the radio back since that is how I first acquired it from him. Makes complete sense to me as this would be how the transaction would be done if I was to sell it to someone else on eBay. You get the payment for the item then you ship it. This solicited an aggravated response from the seller. He writes back.

“I have allready told you to return the unit and I will refund the purchase. You must return the item first or nothing. I will not go back and forth on this, just do it my way or nothing. This is my final offer, I will not answer again. If you leave feedback I will leave feedback immediately positive for positive or negative for negative.”

WTF??? This guy is nuts. I looked further into the history of this sellers history and saw dozens of negative feedbacks regarding DOA items. One of the reasons that triggered this research was that he wrote me back using a different eBay account than the one I originally contacted him with. The inquiry showed that this guy had another eBay account that he had been using since 2001 that has a rating of 631 but 16 negative feedbacks. His new account has only been established since 2005 and it already has 4 negatives. I figure this is not gonna go down quietly.

I began an onslaught of research and record keeping through both eBay and PayPal. I was prepared to drop this guy his 5th negative feedback of the year and hold on tight for the aftershocks. Well, not so fast I thought. This thing has the potential to drag out forever. Do I really want to do that? I may not see my money back and I’m stuck looking for another radio on eBay unless I want to take the blow and buy another new one. I decided that I may want to give it a shot at fixing the microphone. I figured it couldn’t hurt since it is already broken.

I opened up the microphone casing and find further corrosion of parts. Its not completely hopeless as most of the parts seem to work fine. Specifically it is the push-to-talk actuator that suffered the brunt of the damage. It was corroded pretty badly and it is also the reason why the push to talk button was stuck on as it no longer has the ability to push back. I ran down to the local radio shack and picked up a replacement microphone for 25 bucks and came home and opened her up. There was the exact part that matched what I needed to replace in my marine radio. I just don’t know for sure it the internal schematics have changed that would require me to wire it differently when I resoldered them back up. I went ahead and started disassembling anyways.

The microphone showing in this photo is the one I sacrificed for the radio.

The new microphone disassembled. The object to the right with all the wires going to it is the part i needed.

The original part that needed replacement. The black part on the right goes in and out when the push-to-talk button is pressed. This one no longer moved.

desoldered the old part and ready for disposal

The new part prior to desoldering and removal of wires.

After awhile of fumbling parts around and making sure nothing gets shorted out I managed to rewire the old mic with the new part and placed everything back into the little compartments inside the mic casing.

Reassembly of the old mic. The new part is installed and soldered with the correct wires as I know it.

Now came the moment of truth. I started with a useless radio and soon I may end with with another useless microphone. I plugged everything it and clenched my teeth as I pressed down on that PTP button….

The radio turned on and ready to be tested

The PTP button depressed and transmitting!!!!

Hooray! It worked. Note the red light under the LCD screen. It worked. I am pretty glad I don’t have to find another radio. But I still have this eBay guy to deal with. At this point I have spend about 80 bucks into fixing up the old radio and for another 20 I could have bought new. I guess you live and learn. Maybe this ebay guy will agree to refund part of my money for the repairs. I’ll write an update when I find out.

This is what’s left of the now useless new microphone from Radio shack. Note the old PTP module on the bottom left.

Frappr is a community mapping site that lets groups of people map themselves via zip code on an interactive map. I have created a page for the readers of this blog to let each other know of their home ports. Click on the “View Users Map” link to the right under the “Pages” section or the link below to view the map and add yourselves.

Yesterday I finally got my new main sail after a few months of hunting for one. For those of you who have followed this blog, you know the trouble I’ve been through to get one. Yesterday was no different.

After tracking the package online with UPS I finally was expected to deliver yesterday. However I experience something I’ve never seen before. The tracking website showed and exception. It said it didn’t have the correct suite number. I called their 800 number and they setup a time for me to pick up at their distribution center in town. They were suppose to call me when it was available before 7:30 PM. Of course that didn’t happen. I just decided to drive there and see if I can find this thing. Apparently after the customer counter closes, the entire UPS office turns into a mad house. People are playing basketball in the parking lot, people are talking to their buddies on their cell phones, people are horsing around yet these packages still somehow manage to find its recipient. Mostly anyways. They finally track my package down after 15 minutes or so and I was a happy sailor.

the box the sail came in.

I was happy to find that the sail came with slugs already installed. It is also amazing the quality of a new sail vs. my old one. Everything is constructed very solidly and materials seem to be of high quality. It includes one set of reefing points which is something I didn’t have on my old sail.

Reefing point clew and batten installed.

What this sail has the I was not going to get with Porpoise Sails is the insignia of the boat. It is not that big of a deal but its always easier for people to find you out in the water. If I wanted to have my hull number on the sail I will have to make it myself. Maybe another day. At this point, I just want to sail it and see how it performs.

O’Day 22 insignia.

Head of sail with sail slug.

View of the sail. The cut is much fuller on top than my old sail.

Came with a nice sail bag.

Sails East logo by the tack of the sail.

Reinforce clew of the sail. Note the little pocket about the clew.

I couldn’t wait to test the fit on the boat so I went there last night before I went for my daily jog. It was a perfect fit. The old sail was loose footed but I think this new one fits better using the rope. At least for going upwind. I think it will perform much better going upwind but I will have to wait to find out tomorrow. I will take some photos of the sail on the boat and post it here as soon as I can.

I saw this post on Craigs List the other day and went to go see it yesterday. I was in Santa Barbara for the afternoon and I swung by there to find this beached sailboat. I forgot to bring a camera with me but I snapped some low-res photos with my camera phone.

It is a Santana 27 and looks to be in relative good shape before it ran aground. It some how broke loose from anchor at the infamous “Fool’s Harbor” on the east side of Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. From what I heard, this boat washed up on the 19th of May and the owners have until the 2nd of June to get it off the beach. According to the Craig’s List post, if you can get it off, it is yours. I don’t know if its worth the effort at this point. Just from what I can see, there are going to be a lot of work to get her back to shipshape. The spade rudder is gone, one of the sidestays have snapped off and took a piece of the port side spreader with it. There is no motor any more. If anything, this boat can be scavenged for parts. Even the parts won’t be worth much to anyone unless you have a similar boat that needed alot of work.

This is pretty unfortunate for the owner. I don’t know what exactly happened to it to cause it to break loose from its anchor. Apparently the anchor was still connected to the bow when it washed up so it just dragged itself all the way up the beach. Unless it was a feeble attemtp to try to kedge away from the sand. There hasn’t been much weather in the area so it must have just anchored really poorly out there. I would not be surprised though if this was a sabotage job either since I know there are some shady characters that live aboard at the free anchorage. They often will mess with your boat if they see it just left alone. As it is a free anchorage, there tends to be a lot of homeless live-aboards and they don’t like having too much of a crowd in their backyard. What a shame. Good luck to the owner getting her off of the beach. If you are around the area, go check it out at East Beach in Santa Barbara…

This is a photo from someone else toko the day before I took mine above. Note the anchor line is still attached and it is still pointed away from the beach. It may have been used in a fail attempt to kedge the boat off of the beach.