Getting ready for summer

We had to go into town last week to see our accountant, and it was our first opportunity to catch up with friends and family there after a month of dog-sitting had pinned us down in Hadlock, so we turned it into a three day mini-trip. It also conveniently overlapped with a monthly yacht club meeting, which we have missed the last few of, so we were also able attend that.

It was the first time we had a chance to spend any significant amount of time on the boat for a few months, and I was a little worried about what I might find. I already knew there were a couple projects to be done. The leaky head has been on my radar since last fall, but before tackling that we needed to pump her out (as clean as possible, thank you!) so that was on the agenda this trip, and also some AC wiring needed to be replaced/reterminated after a melt-down earlier in the winter. What else might have happened in our absence was what I was most apprehensive over, however; boats left sitting on their own do not fare well during the winter months and I attribute our relative lack of troubles this past couple of years to a continuing presence aboard even during the off-season months.

Our trip to town did not start off well; we had a ten AM meeting with the accountant so we planned to catch the eight o'clock Kingston-Edmonds ferry, but when I got in the truck and turned the key, all I got was: click! My first impression was that the battery was out, but that didn't really make a lot of sense since it had only been a week since I had been anywhere with it, and it had started without any hesitation then. Sure enough, when I hooked the charger up to it, the only change was: click!click!click!click!click!click!click!click!click!click!

So, most likely the starter, not something I could do much about right then. Fortunately, my parents left their car here over the winter so we grabbed the keys for that and made the next ferry and got to our appointment on time. Just before we went in, I got a call from someone and had to make some notes; the pen I grabbed exploded while I was making them, and got all over my hands and notebook. So I looked really poorly prepared when we went in to go over our tax return. At least that part went well.

Afterward, traffic was terrible, the weather was miserable, and Mandy was hungry, a very bad combination. We had to get gas before going to a restaurant, and since the Costco gas station is right next to Home Depot, I had to buy my project supplies there too. Instead of just being able to pick the wiring you want off the shelves now, they have some big fancy motorized rack that only store employees can use to access the wire spools, so I was further delayed explaining what I needed and waiting for the Home Depot guy to figure out how to get it.

Eventually we got the girl some food, which was helpful, and then I dropped her off at a Starbucks to get some work done and stay out of my hair while I was working on the electrical system. It was, I think I have mentioned, cold and miserable, but while I was working on the AC system the whole thing had to be off, which meant no heat. So, I fumbled around with numb fingers stripping wire and crimping and re-attaching various connections. In some ways I got lucky: the main trunk from the shorepower connector had been melted right at the switch terminals, but it still had enough slack I could cut that away and re-terminate it with clean wire. The length of wire to the aft AC circuit was completely trashed, so I replaced it with some outdoor wiring, hopefully better suited to the harsh engine compartment environment it runs through. That was a pretty short run so I didn't have to do much to replace it. I was worried that it had damaged some of the other circuit cables, but fortunately it had not.

I pulled everything off the AC bus and cleaned and shined up the switch terminals. I suspect poor contact there led to a lot of the excess heat in the first place. In a perfect world, that panel would get replaced, but here I settled for cleaning and sanding them up. The subject might get revisited next winter if we need to run heaters frequently again.

That work took me all afternoon, curled up like a contortionist over the engine, and I was cold and sore and in a spectacularly negative mood by the time I was done.

The next day, though, things were a little better. The wiring all worked, and despite running the hot water heater, battery charger, and a space heater all night long, it wasn't warm at all. Then I fired the engine up for the first time in six months and despite having forgotten to switch the battery over to the start bank, it turned over and caught on the first attempt. No water in the fuel, and I only had to top up the transmission fluid slightly. The transmission itself was no worse than ever. The much-patched muffler spat out a load of rusty water, but didn't leak at all. It's getting replaced this summer anyway, but it was still gratifying that all the patches held over the winter. Perhaps the rust has reinforced them.

So we went over and pumped out the holding tank in the rain, and flushed it through as many times as I could convince Mandy to do so. We pulled the access plate on the toilet and it was as clean inside as I have ever seen it. I'm going to let it set for a while to dry out, then pull it apart to hopefully find and fix the leaky seal.

There were no other leaks anywhere; the forward part of the bilge was bone dry. There was a little water in the after part but no more than was there last time I looked at it, months ago.

While I was mucking around with all those systems, Mandy cleaned up the galley and icebox and took off the rails that hold the ice box lid up, which were beginning to fracture and need to be repaired. We'll have to do something similar with the larger and more fragile rails that support the nav desk at some point, so fixing these up will be a good trial run.

So things are fairly good on the boat front, even as we continue to look for a replacement. As far as the truck goes, I found a rebuild kit online for about ten bucks, so that is on the way and I should have time to pull the starter and make sure that's the problem before the kit shows up. And as for the rest of our summer, we have a slightly better picture of what it's going to look like than we did a month ago. Some friends of my parent's are planning to go to Las Vegas for July and August, and they asked if we could watch their cats while they are away. Since we didn't really have anything else planned, we said sure. So we are going to be house-sitting for most of the summer, too. If there is time in between, we might duck up to Princess Louisa Inlet, which we still have not seen after passing by it five or six times. Otherwise, we finally got official liveaboard status at the marina, so we can hang around at the dock as long as we want or take short trips around the Sound without respect to watching our dock-time to stay under the allowed limit.

It's probably not going to be much of a sailing summer, but that's okay; we'll be able to get more work done, and hopefully afford a better boat when we find one!

The gentle thunder of electricity

So I mentioned that our solar panel was doing nicely keeping up with our boat battery needs, all of which are low-draw DC devices, but when it comes to getting work done, we rely on our computers... AC power required. I've never seen the point of using inverters to go from DC to AC for that purpose except in emergencies or if there is a surplus of power otherwise being generated by the system beyond what the battery bank or other draws require. It's just too inefficient to convert DC to AC, and when you are already operating in a low-margin system, that twenty percent or so loss can make it flat-out unsustainable.

Our laptops all run on DC current, and for the small Eee PC I use, it was easy enough to find a DC power adapter that plugs into it directly to use instead of the manufacturer's wall wart. I can charge it off the house battery system, with the engine or solar panel easily keeping up with the low draw it has. I've had more trouble finding direct DC chargers for our larger Apple laptops, though. There isn't quite the ecosystem of equipment providers as there are with PC laptops, and the chargers I have found all seem of dubious quality. The systems also draw quite a bit more than the Eee... enough that even with the solar panel at maximum efficiency, it wouldn't keep up with our working needs, to say nothing of our occasional entertainment uses.

Our alternative to date had been extra battery packs and intervals spent in marinas charging them up, then carefully shepherding them while we are out away from civilization. This year, though, we expected to spend a lot more time out, and didn't relish paying for marinas so frequently or having to dash back to civilization, so I broke down and brought my little Yamaha 1KW generator aboard.

We're not big generator fans, a stance borne of too many evenings/early mornings sitting in anchorages next to powerboats with big gensets and no compunctions about using them at odd hours. They're noisy and smelly, and we didn't really want to be the ones to inflict such disruption on our neighbors.

The Yamaha has a "quiet" mode it can use with low-draw applications, which keeps it down near fifty decibels, which I am told is conversation level. With it out roaring away in the cockpit, it seems a lot louder than any conversations I regularly have. But I hope that the combination of putting it down in the cockpit below the bench level and running it in quiet mode keeps it from being too obtrusive. It has a twelve hour runtime on one tank of gas (about half a gallon) but we'll only use it a couple hours at a time. And, if I have my way, we'll only do it when we're in an anchorage alone, or as today, we're far out on the periphery of a very large, already quite noisy harbor like Ganges. If our neighbors can hear us at all over the roar of floatplanes coming in every five minutes or runabouts screaming past, I would be very surprised.

So far it's working pretty well. I think that Mandy, with her noise-canceling headphones one, is getting the better part of the deal, though.

Haulin'

This year's haul-out has come and gone remarkably quickly considering we did it over three days instead of our usual thirty-hour turnaround. Still, I didn't feel like I had time enough to post anything, or even to take any pictures, although looking back I can't see what might have been so urgent. Yesterday, the day we splashed, for instance, I spent several hours simply sitting around waiting for paint to dry after everything else was all done. We even went back in the water early, a boon to the always professional, always fun yard workers at the Port Townsend Boat Yard... it being Friday, an early splash time on the last scheduled boat of the day, which we were, means an early weekend!

I had so much spare time because I wasn't sure what sort of shape the keel might be in after a close encounter with a rock in Montague Harbour earlier this year. Based on previous experience, it felt like it might have done a fair piece of damage, gouged some lead out, perhaps even damaged the hull above. So I booked a day in the middle, anticipating some real work banging it all back into shape.

During the actual hauling out, I am still on board the boat (yes, it's a pretty strange feeling when you're standing on deck and 7 tons of boat starts to take off like a helicopter) and so when the underside comes clear of the water for inspection, I can't see a thing. So all I could do was watch everyone else watching it and to try to judge from the looks of horror exactly how bad it might be. There were no obvious gasps or cries as it came out, but there was an ominous hush among the spectators which I took to bode ill.

When I stepped off and looked for myself, though, I got a pleasant surprise... some paint and epoxy had come off at the bottom of the fin, but there was hardly any lead damage, and it was all confined to a patch about four inches at the trailing edge of the keel. Why the trailing edge? We were in forward when we hit... I assume that most of the trouble came from getting off again. Conventional wisdom, in fact, is that once you are hard aground, it's better to stay there and refloat on the tide than to try to get a pull off. Our luck with that technique hasn't been so great, though, so I am fine with the decision we made to get yanked off quickly rather than waiting around.

Anyway, it took very little epoxy and fairing to get the keel back in shape, and most of it was done by the end of the first day. That day was a little windy to be painting, anyway; my friend Maxx and I had sailed up making hull speed on only a little scrap of unfurled jib, and all those powerful winds continued to hammer right into the yard after we arrived.

The next day was calmer and sunnier and dry enough for me to get 1.5 coats of paint on; I did a double-thickness with extra coppery paint near the waterline, where most of our fouling problems are. That said, the existing bottom job looked pretty damn good considering it had been in the water three years: the sprayers took off most of the crud, and the only barnacles were on the prop shaft and at the bottom of the rudder. The prop shaft zinc was missing, too... not sure at what point that might have come off but there was corrosion and pitting on the prop and strut, which isn't good. This year, in addition to putting a fresh zinc on, we put on a couple coats of a zinc spray paint which is supposed to help protect against both growth and corrosion.

While I painted, my stepfather did most of the epoxy and fairing work, my mother waxed and polished, and Maxx and Mandy worked on the other big project on the schedule: repacking the rudder stuffing. On and off, that took the better part of the first two days, but Maxx also found time to clean and paint the engine (at least, such parts of the engine that can be reached without taking it out entirely) and Mandy waxed and buffed the hull above the waterline. Some gouges and scratches in the gelcoat at the bow also got fixed up.

Everything ended up looking very nice and clean when all was said and done. I had two major disappointments, though. One, the radar, which had been acting up for more than a year and finally quit completely last summer, remains out of commission despite a rather lengthy trip up the mast to check the circuits and re-seat connectors and such. Whatever is wrong with it, it's more complicated than I can figure out, which likely makes it expensive to fix. Two, the rudder, despite being repacked, still leaks. I will have to tear that back apart in the water, possibly weighting the bow to raise the shaft above the waterline. I have some idea what might have gone wrong there, but won't be able to look at it for a couple weeks.

We also think that the muffler is leaking now; we make a lot of water underway, and I can see that the prop shaft is not leaking, but what is coming out comes out from near the front of the muffler. It's impossible to see the muffler itself, which is wedged in under the fuel tank, but it will probably have to come out for further examination at some point soon.

We basically came out of it having checked everything I wanted to check, but with only about half of it actually successfully addressed. Nonetheless, I feel better about it all than I probably should with that poor a track record, simply because the worst that might have come up, a major keel repair job, never materialized, and that was enough a relief to make up for the other disappointments.

Boat Week

Although we've been back aboard full time for almost a month now, we've been so busy working and catching up with friends in town that we've done little more than basic cleaning and tidying with the boat. That is all changing this week, which I will call "Boat Week."

Boat Week kicked off yesterday as I cleaned the decks (somewhat pointlessly, in view of the fact they are going into a grimy, messy boatyard in two days) and Mandy cleaned and de-stained most of the hull. I also checked over the engine, which looks a little rough but fired right up and ran well, and we motored over to the fuel dock to pump out our holding tank and fuel up. As usual, I was surprised by how little fuel we had used since the last fill up--about ten gallons. I was even more surprised at the price; almost sixty bucks. We've been watching gas prices on land drop these past few weeks, but apparently the marina kept a Memorial Day premium price or something. Marine diesel should be cheaper yet as you don't pay the "road tax" on it, but next time it looks like it's going to be cheaper to take our fuel jugs up to Safeway and lug them back.

Apart from that, the who evolution went well, and we are all ready to head north to Port Townsend Tuesday afternoon for our haul-out. The weather is just about the worst possible combination; Tuesday should have southerlies, but they are supposed to be "light" which for all practical purposes means no sailing, since you quickly outsail the wind when going the same direction in that situation. Wednesday and Thursday, days when we hope to be painting, promise to kick it up a notch, with southerlies to twenty-five knots... great for sailing, terrible for painting. Particularly because the yard in Port Townsend is moderately well protected to the north, but wide open to the south... those winds will whip across the bay and tear right into us. I have some tarps I can rig as a sort of wind/rain screen (oh, did I forget to mention it's supposed to pour rain as well? yeah) but I don't know if that will be sufficient.

Actually, as I check it this morning, the forecast has moderated somewhat, leaving Thursday not quite so terrible, but the fact remains that it's not going to suddenly break out in sunshine and chirping birds... one way or another it's going to be pretty grim outside.

We've got some barnacle scraping to do. We've never had that problem before, being primarily in fresh water in the past, so it will be interesting to see how easily, or not, they come off the bottom of this thing. Our paint sands off quite easily but I don't know how deeply they dig in.

I also am beginning to think that we have another leak toward the stern, in addition to the rudder post (which I already knew needed to be re-packed); I'm thinking we have some holes in the muffler. It's impossible to say for sure, because the muffler is wedged in beneath the fuel tank and I can only see one end of it. There is certainly water dripping out from beneath it at a fair flow while the engine is on (perhaps a drip a second) but you can't tell if it's coming from the muffler itself or somewhere further aft. If we have time, I'll want to yank it out and see if it can be patched up or welded. It doesn't absolutely have to be done while we're out of the water, though; it's below the waterline but there is no water in it unless the engine is running.

Ditto with cleaning and painting the engine. I would like to do it while I have extra hands around, most of who are more patient and methodical than myself, but it could happen another time if need be.

The keel is going to be the great unknown. I can't see a thing from above the water so I have no idea how dinged up it may be. The cool temperatures are not going to help with any work that needs to be done on it; epoxy and paint both dry slower when it's cold, and it's going to be pretty cold. My hope is that, one, it's repairable, and two, it's repairable inside our time frame... if we miss our splash time scheduled with the lift, we could get stuck. The yard is busy this time of year. Last time we were there, we were next to a guy who had missed his splash date and wound up having to sit there, paying yard fees, for an extra two weeks before they could schedule him back into the water. Of course, if the repair is that complicated, yard fees will probably be the least expensive part of it.

Anyway, rain and all I am excited to get out for the trip up and back. It's been rough, even with the terrible weather, just sitting here watching all the other Memorial Day boat traffic going in and out. We'll still have the terrible weather, but should have the Sound pretty much to ourselves for the trip.

Go ahead. Be noisy.

Sure, I need to hike up a rather long dock, even if it's raining, to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. And I haul our drinking and cooking water to the boat in gallon jugs. And I have no choice but to play footsie with my husband in my sleep because our bed converges into a six-inch wide space at the foot-end. And my showers cost me $0.25 per two minutes, and also involve a walk up the dock and a wet-headed walk back again. It isn't a life of opulence or convenience. But today I absolutely splurged on something to make boat-life a huge chunk easier--Bose noise-reducing headphones. I've been ogling them for months, if not years. I'd held off a long time on this extravagant purchase, and I now feel like the most spoiled girl on the dock.

Everyone knows the boat is a tiny space, and Scott and I have managed our workspaces in such a way that we can both work without being in each other's physical way. But, either we must have silence, or headphones on, in order to not disrupt the concentration patterns of the other. Sometimes it just isn't practical. Scott is near silent in the hours between when he wakes up at some (unnecessarily) crazy hour while I am still asleep. But once my heads pops out of the v-berth, it really is only fair that the silence is ended for a while.

Today the audio level boat compromises seemed like they were just adding too much to all the other compromises of married boat life. Scott should be able have CNN on his laptop sometimes while working at the other computer, and I should also be able to have quiet while I am working. I don't think either of us wants too much. He doesn't ALWAYS have CNN or music or a radio on, just some of the time. And I don't ALWAYS want silence when I work, just when I need to do certain kinds of tasks. Yet the two seem to conflict often enough. So I headed downtown to the Bose store.

It took less than 15 seconds to sell me. The salesman told me to try out the headphones. I put them on and he hit a button that made music and talking come out of them. The audio was telling me about the superior sound quality of these headphones, which I don't really care all that much about. I just DIDN'T want to hear other stuff. So I was going to take them off and ask the guy about the sound they eliminate. What I hadn't realized was that when he made sound come out through the headphones, he also turned on the sound of an engine and a train in the store. I was actually confused as to where those sounds came from. I put the headphones back on and the sound disappeared again. Okay. Good. He went on to tell me I could return them for a full refund for 30 days, and they have a full warranty for a year. I asked if that meant that they malfunctioned for ANY reason I'd get new ones or fixed ones, even if I drove over them or something? Yes. Good. I should know within a year whether these suckers will hold up to the salt air. I happily made my purchase, and headed to a coffee shop to try them out.

Wow. Really. Wow! I had to put my computer on it's lowest volume setting, then reduce the iTunes volume even more to have my background work music low enough while it still drowned out regular coffee shop sound. What was more amazing was that, when I took them off again, the coffee shop sounded horribly, horribly loud. Once my headphones were off, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And I can usually easily work in coffee shops with regular coffee shop sound. I just turn my earbud volume up high enough to drown everything else out. Not good for my ears. Not good at all. This is much better.

A funny thing to be excited about when buying something is the size of desiccant that comes in the packaging. These headphones had a huge packet with them, three times bigger than you get with a new pair of shoes or something. I think the size of the desiccant says something about the quality of the product. I plan to keep my packet of drying agent right in the lovely case that my headphones came with. I also think it's probably good that the little things like desiccant excite me, even when I just got very cool new headphones. I am, after all, a very simple girl.

Yep, all is good. And quiet.

:)
M

Apparently the couth and class of participants at the annual Fisheries boater's swap meet (which we were unable to attend this year) has not improved since this depressing episode I experienced a couple years ago.

Marty over at Three Sheets Northwest seems to have had a similarly poor experience this year. Are people just broke and desperate now? Or do events like that just draw out the few jerks in the community?

Drip drip drip goes the rudder shaft

So, just to get it out of the way, we did go to the boat show, and I was pretty severely unimpressed. Very few boats (very, very few sailboats) to look at, morose salesmen who looked as if their next step might be off the edge of the dock seeking the comfort of a watery grave, and nothing particularly new or interesting to hold our attention. I very much regret having bought tickets for two days, as both turned out to basically be a waste of time and money (well, except I got a cool light-up yo-yo from the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority booth).

So anyway, I put Mandy on a bus for Hadlock this morning and got down to the business of preparing the boat for the trip to Canada next week. If that doesn't sound like a lot of time to prepare to you, well, it doesn't to me either.

But it was sunny out today, and warm, and reasonably dry, and things went pretty well. I cranked the engine over and it started up on the first shot and ran solidly despite some really cruddy fuel coming in to the separator. I changed the primary fuel filter, and we'll fuel up before we head out, which should dilute the remaining crud and hopefully filter it all out. I checked and topped off the transmission fluid, and checked the transmission itself... it shifted smoothly in and out of forward and reverse. I lubed the steering gear and the transmission cable, and stowed our spare mainsail in some unused space under the helm lazarette.

The oil change went smoothly, too, and without much mess. Since everything was going so well, I decided to take a crack at tightening up the leaking rudder post, and that's where I hit a wall.

Apparently the thing seals with two very large (2"? I can't really see them) counter-rotating nuts atop the shaft. They are, however, right beneath a fiberglass shelf which apparently provides support for the entire rudder assembly, so they are the very devil to get at. This all happens, I should mention, at that point in the hull where it is sweeping up toward the transom, so the closer one gets, the more squeezed one becomes.

Anyway, I didn't have a wrench large enough to get on the nuts, let alone two, and if I had two, and they were big enough, I doubt I could fit them both into the space at the same time, and if by some miracle of modern industry all that could happen, I don't think I could spare enough arms to turn them.

This wasn't what I had expected to find at all. I had done some research when I first discovered the leak and the few references I could find to my model of boat talked only about a single packing nut; or maybe the whole assembly is referred to as the "packing nut" even though there are two components. I found someone discussing another model of boat talking about holding the top nut in place and rotating the bottom to tighten, which I suppose is basically what I would try anyway... but it's the sort of thing (hole in boat) where I would like to have a little confirmation before I go messing with it.

I would take a picture but it's dark out now and I don't have my flash camera with me. Anyway, I'm posting the question to HunterOwners.com and there is probably someone there who can clear me up on the matter, hopefully before I am back next weekend to finish all this up.

As far as finishing goes, the big thing I would like to have done is radar troubleshooting. I am pretty much resigned to having to send Mandy up to look at it again. She can't lift me, and even if she could, I'm really the only one who can operate the controls on the console to test it adequately (and safely) with someone up there. Bizarrely, it's easier to talk her through tracing wiring connections and measuring impedance and voltage values than the display console controls. Either way, I am pretty well resigned to the thing still not working, which is bad considering much of the trip will be happening at night and quite possibly in marginal visibility.

Fueling up and pumping out are really the only other things, and assuming the engine doesn't quit on us, that should all be done next weekend.

New to us dinghy

I forgot to mention, or at least forgot to highlight, that we picked up a new dinghy earlier this summer... that's it over on the left. It's an eight foot West Marine inflatable with a fold-up wooden floor, locking oars, a single inflatable seat (although there is a spot for another toward the stern if we should decide to add another), dual air chambers, and a strap-on motor mount for an outboard up to 3.5 horses. We're still on the lookout for an affordable outboard in that range; considering that we have been rowing everywhere so far, though, I think we'll manage with just the oars in this suitably for a while anyway. They are much smaller than the oars on our old dinghy, but they don't roll around as much, so the overall velocity made good is probably similar.

I should also note how remarkably similar this model appears compared to our all-time ideal dinghy as encountered last summer in Campbell River. Eery, isn't it? We have almost as many patches (some of which seem to be leaking... that or the valves, I'll have to take a spray bottle to it this week to see for sure) but have yet to cultivate the growths of green stuff on the bottom. Give us time! It's still the height of growing season, I'm sure we can get a nice carpet of foliage going before fall!

Spot on

So, this year, rather than renting out an EPIRB for the more remote portion of our passage, we decided to purchase a SPOT satellite messenger instead. It's about the same cost for this year, although we will own the device going forward. It will cost about $100 a year for continuing service, but the service includes more than just emergency notification--we can send "OK" status messages with position, an intermediate "Help" message to select people to request assistance below a full-blown emergency, or of course there is the full 911 service, which activates all the normal local and federal rescue apparatus that an EPIRB or Mayday distress call would bring.

There is also a tracking option, which normally costs extra but which we got for a year free from a coupon I happened to have... it basically sends periodic updates to a web-based map to allow people to see your course track. I doubt we will actually use that feature much, however; I don't see any real reason to burn through the batteries like that, particularly considering our rather slow mode of travel.

SPOT is not a full-fledged emergency beacon; it operates strictly off satellite communication, which does not allow it to be used as a final approach homing beacon for rescue crews. The built-in GPS sensor does provide information more accurate than many EPIRBS, but the limitations in signal strength and Globalstar's satellite coverage (the network the device uses for communications; the company is more widely known for satellite phone service) make it less reliable.

We decided for our purposes that it is an adequate solution, however. For one thing, we are going to be operating well within the Globalstar coverage area, so getting a sat in view to transmit shouldn't be a problem. We're going to be out on open water, which doesn't present any impediments to signal. Finally, we're not going anywhere too far outside regular VHF radio range; the SPOT is redundant and would probably be our secondary means of contact in any event.

We also like the ability to send out periodic "Okay" messages, which is something missing with an EPIRB; if an EPIRB doesn't trigger in an emergency, for whatever reason, no one knows anything is wrong until the vessel is overdue. There is no positive indication of well-being, just "no news is good news." While that has been the norm for seafarers for thousands of years, it's quite bad systems design. If you are putting out daily "Okay" messages and suddenly stop, then there is an immediate indication that something is wrong, and a pretty good idea of the area in which it happened (in contrast to overdue vessels, which could have gotten into trouble anywhere along their anticipated course track, or indeed well off of it).

We aren't currently making the SPOT broadcasts public (which basically consists of publishing the map overlay of position messages... I'm not comfortable with that level of exposure in my life just yet, plus I may want to sneak up on people for some reason!) but I am happy to add anyone who is interested to the mail list for receipt of our "Okay" messages... drop me a line or leave a comment here with the e-mail address you would like to receive the messages at and I will put you on the list at the next opportunity.

One thing leading to another

It's always one thing leading to another... I had a few free hours today so I decided to run by Second Wave to see if I could find a replacement clevis pin for our anchor roller at the bow, the original having been bent and fractured by whatever unholy forces ripped the boat from its mooring last fall. I have been meaning to do this for a while but the day I usually have available for boat stuff is Sunday, which also happens to be the day Second Wave is closed.

Since I don't have any of the original documentation or the brand name of the roller, I decided to go to the boat first to retrieve the pin first so as to be able to compare the size directly to potential replacements (ever mindful of the water pump hose adapter fiasco).

It developed, however, that despite it's damaged state, the pin was in no mood to come the rest of the way out. A clever design impeded it from being pulled out entirely after insertion; the manner in which it was bent prevented it from being pushed completely through the other side... and yet it was not bent enough to simply pull it out without going through the opposite hole.

"Well, it's already bent up pretty good," I said to myself. "I'll just bend it a little more, and voila, as the French sailors say... it will pop right out!"

Nuh-uh. My vise grips and pliers wouldn't budge it. In fact, the roller assembly started to flex before the pin showed any sign of bending further, deepening the mystery of what the heck actually happened to the boat last fall all the more.

"Well, then," I said to myself. "I'll just unbolt the roller itself, which should allow me to flex the roller assembly enough to drop the pin out."

But here is where the predicament of my position checked me; the anchor roller, necessarily, is the furthest forward object on the boat, out over the water, and if there is a sure and certain law of the sea, more dire in consequence than setting sail on a Friday, more inevitable than poor weather after red sky in the morning, it is that if you go mucking about with nuts, bolts, tools, or other small objects over the side, you're going to drop one or more of them into the soup.

A good rule in these situations is to solicit the assistance of others... but at 10AM on a Friday morning, the dock was deserted. I wasn't ready to quit yet, though, so I decided I'd put together my own fail-safe system: I would lash the roller to the forestay, so even if it dropped unexpectedly it would simply dangle.

That done, I hauled out a crescent wrench and a ratchet and went to work. But not for long--the ratchet was broken, and simply spun around aimlessly without gripping the socket. Time to buy a new ratchet.

I considered going at it with two crescent wrenches but that was just tempting things too much... I'd lose a nut for certain. So I put everything away and scratched the clevis pin plan for the moment.

I did swing by Second Wave anyway, though, and I wanted to plug them again... it's a great place to look for anything nautical. I needed some other stuff for a mooring pennant I am also putting together, and I wanted to see if they had any outboards in our size range. They had a 2.5 horse Tohatsu which would probably have been fine, but it was already sold. I picked up a length of 5/8" mooring line, and when I went to check out, the guy at the counter said, "That looks a little pricey, doesn't it?"

I told him that everything looked pretty pricey to me these days, and he said, "Well, let's fix that," and knocked 30% right off! There's no way he could have known that I just recommended the store to someone last week, but he made me glad that I had, and confident in the referral.

Tiresome spring projects

Although I have said there is far less to be done on the boat this year than most years, that doesn't mean I am off the hook entirely. Since it was so nice out today, and it's a Friday, I headed over to Shilshole to see if I could make some progress on a few of my outstanding projects.

I also know I keep saying that I will take pictures when I do these things so that it makes more sense to look at; but I forgot the camera again today. I'll have to go back sometime and do a marathon photo updating session to cover everything I've done (although, unless I go back and disassemble some things, you won't get any of those neat step-by-step "in progress" shots that other people seem to manage so effortlessly).

As usual, I got about half way through about three different projects, halted on each of them by lack of some particular part or tool close to hand. I had intended to get the bow nav lights all wired up, pull out and dissassemble/fix the water pump or failing any obvious fix to replace it with our new spare, and to either wire up or at least scope out the wiring territory for the ignition system, which I am replacing with a two-station push-button setup to replace the key/lock switch that has gone out. I figured if I had time I would tidy up a bit, organize my electrical tools and supplies into one of the new dryboxes, take a gander at the PSS shaft seal to identify or rule it out conclusively as the source of the stern leak, and try to troubleshoot the radar (which turned up a "no signal" error when I fired it up late last month).

I got the nav lights done.

That took longer than I had hoped mostly because I was working up on the pointy end trying not to drop anything overboard. In my haste to remove the busted pulpit last year, I cut and pulled out the wiring running through it to the bow lights. Mandy and I re-installed the fixed pulpit a couple of weeks ago (with a good deal of pushing and pulling to get it bent back into shape, and the liberal application of 5200 to keep it that way!) and Mandy had done the time-consuming work of threading new wiring through the tubes again, but now it all had to be hooked up.

To avoid a situation where I would have to cut the wires to remove the pulpit again, I used fully insulated male/female disconnects, which I can unplug from inside the anchor locker if the pulpit has to come off in the future. I used heat shrink tubing to seal them up (it gets pretty wet in there) and then taped them for a belt and suspenders approach. I also zip-tied the wiring up out of the way along the toe-rail bolts, as previously it had simply been dangling around waiting for a length of anchor chain to rip it up.

I managed not to drop anything valuable in the water, and checked to make sure the lights worked when I flipped the switch: success!

I then went back and cleared out the starboard cockpit locker, which is necessary in order to fit myself into a space where I can get at the water pump or the backside of the engine control panel. Normally those are Mandy jobs since she fits much more tidily! But most of the stuff in there needed a good airing out anyway.

I first disconnected the ignition switch and made sure I knew which wires did what... still a little fuzzy on the "On" position but I at least isolated the wires I need for the push-button starter. Looks like the start button I got will fit handily into one of the available blanks on the panel! I may get a different one, however, with a built-in guard cover, as this might be a little too easy to bump into. Either way, I got stalled at this point because I didn't have any disconnects of the appropriate wire guage. I also needed to leverage myself out of the pit to trace the engine-side wiring, to install a switch in the system inside the boat, to prevent anyone from wandering by and starting her up from the cockpit. It's a laborious process to unfold myself from the cockpit locker, so I decided to just move on with the water pump.

Checking the old pump, it looked like the motor was probably shot, so I unmounted it to install the new one. Got all the wiring sorted out (had all the appropriate connectors this time!) and made sure the new used pump we picked up worked (it did) and then yanked the output hose to connect it. No dice... the old pump is a Jabsco with slip-on flange connectors, while the new one is a Shurflo with screw-on fittings (proprietary, from the looks of it). I hooked everything back up to the old malfunctioning pump, because the water tank is above the level of the pump and is perfectly happy to gravity drain itself dry, flooding the interior in the process.

So; shopping list now consists of 12 guage disconnects and Shurflo hose adapters.

I sorted out some of the electrical gear as I had planned but it got depressing pretty fast as I realized how much I needed to replace... a lot of corrosion was evident (which is why I got the dry box for the stuff this time around) and what was good enough to keep didn't take up too much space in the new box.

Didn't get to the radar at all. Not looking forward to it, as that could be expensive. It's brand new though, may be covered under warranty, or it may just be a bad connection somewhere.

Oh, and I discovered a split in the holding tank vent line, right where it joins the thru-hull in the cockpit locker... that made my stay in the confined space even more enjoyable than I had been expecting! I'll probably just tape it up, as I'm not sure there is enough slack to cut and re-secure it, and more splices=more potential leaks in the future. It's not as if it carries sewage itself, at any rate.

All this the day before the opening day of boating season. Unfortunately, it's supposed to rain. I usually go down and watch the races in the Montlake Cut, but I think tomorrow I'll be paying for playing hooky today by working instead.

48 ° North Fisheries swap meet

Today was the annual boaters swap meet at Fisheries Supply on North Lake Union and Mandy and I drug ourselves out of bed early to go tromp around through the rain and see what deals there were to be had. Conventional wisdom is that all the good stuff is gone by six AM but there are deals to be had all day long if you don't mind doing a little digging and have fairly conventional requirements. We weren't looking for anything in particular--deals are where you find them--but I had an eye open for dinghies and there were a few there, including an intriguing all metal job that looked like it wanted to be an inflatable. Big crease on the port bow where it had run into something nearly as tough as itself; but metal doesn't fold up well nor is it likely to tow easily behind a sailboat under sail!

The others were all just okay, but not particularly good deals. I've seen better on Craigslist recently, although none in our size range. One of them there happened to be something I had seen on CL, but thought it was still overpriced in the current market. I told the guy if he didn't get rid of it today, I'd be looking for it on CL tomorrow, at a discount.

We ran across a few anchors that looked good as well, and I kicked myself for not having measured out some dimensions on our pulpit... our current ground tackle has served us pretty well, but I wouldn't mind going a size up on the Danforth. But those are usually in abundant supply at Second Wind so there was nothing urgent about it.

I was also on the lookout for cruising guides for the west coast but didn't see many, and no charts to speak of... odd, in that last year there were charts aplenty. Maybe its cyclical.

There seemed to me to be fewer people selling overall, although the dismal weather may have had something to do with it. Even Fisheries themselves had a lot less out than last year. We ended up picking up a dry box from them however, a bit cheaper than the cheapest deals I've found online.

Apart from that, all we got was a spare water pump (which, depending on whether or not our current water pump can be easily resurrected, may become our primary water pump). It's nice, frankly, to not need a lot of stuff... we're still pretty well fitted out from last year, and I didn't wander from vendor to vendor this time around wishing I had hit another cash machine on the way there to get over my withdrawal limit.

Edit: Inserted degree symbol appropriately

REAL spring

It may not be here for long, but it's here now: real honest-to-god spring weather, almost 70 degrees according to my weather widget today.  Nice and warm, and a good 10-15 knot breeze out of the north.

Unfortunately we weren't out on the water enjoying it, but instead sweating and swearing at the boat tied up at the dock watching other boats going by.

Still, I rate it a pretty successful day.  Without the foreboding possibility of rain (or snow!) we were able to get the bowrail re-wired and re-mounted, so now we look like we have a real sailboat again instead of a random derelict.  It took longer than we had planned, mostly because I made a stupid mistake when I was getting it off last fall (you may or may not recall it was damaged in a storm up at Port Hadlock; the stanchions tore from their mounts on the deck and I had to yank it to prevent further damage to the forestay and lifelines); I cut the wires to the running lights in the wrong place, necessitating re-running the wiring through the rail.  Fortunately, this is the sort of laborious, minute, fastidious task that Mandy excels at, so I left her to it and went back to figure out what was wrong with our water pump that it wasn't pumping water.

That turned out to be a Mandy-task as well, however; I was able to determine that the pump was getting electricity, but it is in a tight little compartment in the cockpit locker that is too tight for me to get my fat hands in easily.

By the time I got that far, though, Mandy had the wiring done, and we positioned the bowrail back at the bow.  It had been bent slightly out of shape by whatever tore it off in the first place, though, so we had trouble getting it on.  After a couple of false starts trying to decide which bit to screw down first, we got the two screws on the chainplate locked in and then used a line led back to a halyard winch to haul the stanchions back into line with the mounting holes.  After that it was pretty straightfoward to bolt them down.  I didn't connect up the wiring however; I need to get some good waterproof connectors to use so if the thing has to come off again, the wires don't have to be cut at all.

After that, we moved on to the transmission, which has been shifting hard for more than a year.  I read somewhere that draining the oil, filling the case with diesel, and running it in forward and reverse alternately for ten minutes or so could sometimes clean them up and improve the shifting.  My plan was to go run around the Sound for a half hour or so to warm up the oil, which makes it much easier to pump out (on a boat, there is nowhere, or at least no access, below the engine to drain oil... you have to pump it up and out of the case, which is always messy and difficult but moreso when cold), but after leaving it to sit for the winter I wanted to make sure there was still oil in it at all.

When I pulled the dipstick, I got more bad news: it came out dripping a milky pink.  Emulsified; there was water in the transmission case.

I had checked the transmission and crankcase oil immediately after we put her back in the water last summer, guarding against the possibility that water had gotten into the engine sometime during our misadventure.  They were both a healthy normal color, and figured the water hadn't been able to intrude.

I fooled myself, it appears, and in retrospect I think I understand why; the engine hadn't been started or the transmission engaged, so any water that had intruded hadn't mixed with the ATF yet.  The dipstick showed a normal purple, because it hadn't emulsified yet.  I reinforced the impression by checking the engine oil several more times on the way back, finding it normal at each turn.  But the crankcase oil was free of water; only the transmission had any in it, and I didn't check that again, as it's typically less maintenance intensive.

At any rate, it didn't seem wise to run it around like that, so we drained it and flushed the case with diesel until the diesel started coming back clean.  Then we filled it with diesel again and ran it for the ten minutes, shifting back and forth, as advised.  It didn't shift any easier than ever, but hopefully it got a little cleaner in the process.  We drained the transmission for the last time and filled it up with fresh ATF and called it a day without heading out on the water at all.

I'll probably drain it and replace it again after the next time we go out, just to be sure.  I'm not holding out a lot of hope that it improves, however; if it was bad before then I am sure that running it around with water in the tranny for a month didn't improve the state of the gears.

In other bad news, the key no longer cranks the starter... the starter itself is fine, I can jump the terminals and the engine fires right up.  The panel lights up when the key is on, so it's getting juice, but when the key is turned to "start" nothing happens.  I'll track that down another time; I've been wanting to do something else with the starting system anyway, since the key itself is on the verge of snapping in half... one misplaced boot by the helmsman and it's done for.  I checked with the local Yanmar dealership last year though, and you can't just get another key (and it's too bent up to duplicate elsewhere): you have to buy a whole new instrument quadrant, to the tune of $160.  So I've been meaning to come up with something else and this is good motivation.

Finally, I hooked up the chartplotter and made sure it still plotted and such, which it does.  The radar, however, gives me a "No Data Source" message when I try to light it up... not sure yet at all what's going on with that.  The plug on the back of the unit was a bit difficult to jack in, so it could just be that the contacts need to be cleaned or something.  I didn't feel like digging into it today.  The unit on the mast is both new and well-sealed so I doubt there is a problem at that end and feel pretty confident I can get it going again without any major difficulties.

I really need to remember to bring the camera along sometime and get some pictures of all this stuff, it's a lot easier to look at than describe.

Spring refit

It has been clear and sunny here for most of the week, but today it was actually warm out as well, so we chucked our respective afternoon tasks for work and headed for the marina instead. It's time for Insegrevious' spring cleaning and refitting!

It surprised me a bit to realize as we were driving toward Shilshole that I actually have a list that is shorter than my own arm to be done before the boat is ready to go for the season. Despite having a terribly rough year last year, she's really not in terribly bad shape; or rather, there are some potentially serious problems, but they are neither numerous nor particularly urgent, so I am more optimistic about boating this year than I have been any spring for a long time.

My hopes for today were even more limited: I wanted to get the sheared off screw on the bow chainplate drilled out so we could get the bow rail mounted again and at least make her look whole again. I also wanted to pull the fuel feed mechanism off our stove and take it home for more detailed cleaning and examination. Mandy wanted to get the tarp off and get the dodger cleaned, and I thought if we got through all that maybe I would get the tools sorted into "rust-destroyed" and "not-rust-destroyed" piles and perhaps take a closer look at the engine and the water pump. Realistically, I didn't expect to get anything done other than getting the screw drilled out, if that. I had given it a shot last fall and come away utterly defeated; despite procuring specialized tools and sinking almost an hour into it, I hadn't managed to budge the thing.

Today, it was out clean fifteen minutes after we got to the boat. I have no idea what changed. Maybe it was just too cold before. I used the same reversing bit. We did secure the bow a bit better to have more leverage on it, but even so it seemed like it was a completely different bit--it just chewed right into the thing. Although it was one of those two-step processes where you drill a pit into the head of the screw and then use the other end of the bit to dig in and back the screw out, but I didn't even need that. The first step, where it dug in to the screw, budged the thing out enough that I could get a good grip on it with a pair of needle-nose pliers, and it was loose enough that I could just screw it out that way.

That seemingly laborious task quickly and easily completed, we moved on quickly to separate tasks: me to the stove, Mandy to the dodger.

The stove mechanism was stuck good--once I pried it out, I found a lot of gunk which had been gluing it into the feed reservoir. We brought the mechanism home to be cleaned and checked. I have had my fill of it, and that sort of detailed work is more Mandy's forte. I scraped out most of the gunk from the reservoir but Mandy will have to finish that bit as well... if for no other reason than her hands are small enough and mine are not.

I spent the rest of the time scrubbing rust off of tools and the engine. I didn't get the mixing elbow off, but after taking a closer look at it, I am thinking it might not actually have a leak after all... there may just be a loose fitting. I had pretty much reconciled myself to dropping a couple hundred bucks and replacing it but that may not be necessary. I'll pull it off and leak test it another time anyway, but am thinking now it may be okay. The mount bolt beneath it looked pretty solid too, once I got the patina off it. I also noticed that the transmission lever, which is located near both those items, was a little cruddy, so I cleaned that too and am hoping that may help with the hard shifting problem we have had.

My next plan for the tranny is to get it warmed up, drain the oil, and fill it up with diesel for a bit. I've heard that running them for ten minutes in a diesel bath, while regularly shifting between forward and reverse, can help considerably with sticky shifting, so I will try that and cross my fingers that I can avoid a rebuild on it this season at least. Rebuild kits aren't that expensive, but I don't feel comfortable doing it myself, and I have heard some real horror stories from people who have had third parties install or rebuild their transmissions. Better the devil you know....

Anyway, I'm pretty optimistic about things at the moment. A lot of cleaning could be done, and Mandy wants to redo the interior woodwork, which is fine with me. I didn't get a chance to take a look at the water pump... the warm weather did not magically fix that the way it seemed to have done with the chainplate screw. We have to empty out the cockpit locker to get at it; I suspect a rebuild or perhaps just replacing some wiring might get that going again, and those are pretty cheap and quick solutions.

More soon, I hope!

Boat Show ends

The boat show ends this weekend, under appropriately sunny skies. Our last day was Thursday, however, which wasn't quite so sunny, but was considerably less crowded and slower-paced than our first two days.

We went to the South Lake Union section first to take another longer look at the sailboats there with more opportunity to poke around in the nooks and crannies and more time to talk with the salespeople. We spent quite a bit of time chatting with one helpful gentleman from Discovery Yachts brokerage aboard a Regina of Vindo--Mandy loved the (uber-expensive) pilot-house boat but I thought our conversation with the broker was more useful... more information and better informed speculation than one might get in a year of surfing various Internet message boards. Goes to show you that you can't live life successfully entirely online, I suppose.

The Regina was not to my taste, although obviously well-built and well-appointed. It was only a 35, of course, which seems pretty small next to most of the boats there, but it seemed a little cramped even compared to our 33... probably due to more storage and tankage and a different, off-shore-oriented design philosophy.

Two 38 foot Bavarias there had caught our eye on Monday and I went aboard both for another look. I had done a little digging in the interim and found that they are pretty poorly regarded boats, seen as more expensive but in the same category as many of their American coastal cruiser counterparts. I had noticed some problems--puddles at the bottom of lockers, a segmented bilge without drainholes through stringers, and some other design defects. And like the American boats (Bavarias are built in Germany; you're more likely to see them in Europe than the west coast of the US) they weren't designed for heavy ocean-going work, without the host of small features you want to see in a boat that is going to take a beating from time to time. Apart from that, though, I couldn't find the construction and finishing defects that everyone online seemed to complain about. And they do seem better suited for off-shore work in some respects, with more tankage and some of the fittings one would expect on a beefier boat. It's an odd combination, I suppose, and I'm still ultimately not sure what to think. I was initially impressed by their CE Class A (Offshore) rating until I chatted with someone who had gone through the rating process and insisted it was a bureacratic joke. Still, for the money they seem to have better offshore features than their American counterparts in the same size range, and I imagine that even if it is mostly lipservice to the CE rating, that is why.

One of them was used, but it presented a currently unavailable center cockpit version, which I quite liked. Mandy wasn't impressed by either one, though, which I suppose is just as well. Something common to those and the other European boats was the inclusion of the head amidships or slightly aft, which I really like. Our Hunter has a similar arrangement and I can't imagine considering anything else for use in bouncy waters. It's a task to stand up forward of the mast when we're in heavy seas; trying to use the head would be a disaster. The easier motion toward the stern makes the necessary functions much easier. I am not sure why it has been left to the European designers (with a few notable exceptions) to come up with more practical modern accomodations, but that seems to be the trend.

Mandy was quite impressed by the Catalina 44DS, which practically has a basement in the bilge... but then, she's the one who doesn't want a boat bigger than 38 feet in the first place. The space is nice, but a floating condo isn't really what we're after.

At the end of the day, there wasn't really a lot down on the lake that impressed us. We did get some ideas on various features we like, though, which will probably be a help when it comes time to shop around for an upgrade.

After we were done at Lake Union, we took advantage of the free SLUT (South Lake Union Trolley for you non-locals... they changed the official name pretty quick when they realized the acronym it formed, but you can still buy "Ride the SLUT" T-shirts in a variety of venues in the South Lake Union area) tickets and grabbed the streetcar downtown for lunch. Then we hoofed it over to Qwest Field to catch the Man Overboard presention by Chuck Gould, editor of Nor'westing magazine.

This turned out to be a presentation we both liked. It was suitably generic to type and size of boat, even though Gould is primarily a power-boater, and suitably specific to the region and our climate. There were no flashy insights or silver bullets, but then none were expected. Gould gave a good talk and presented an effective framework for thinking about crew safety in terms of MOB accidents.

After all that, I feel like I should be out in the sunshine today working on Insegrevious. Since it's SuperBowl weekend, though, I'm at home instead, doing the work that I might instead have done tomorrow, had I not been going to a SuperBowl party instead. But it feels like spring is getting ready to burst out soon, and with it we'll have to find some time for sailing again.

Seattle Boat Show

It's that time of year again... freezing, windy, with a dash of snow thrown in for spice. The warm breezes and gentle swells of summer on Puget Sound are but a distant memory, which only the most stout-hearted are able to chisel out and contemplate without tears of sorrow sweeping their cheeks.

It must be time for the Seattle Boat Show again!

We got three day passes again and have gone for two of those days. My first impressions are that the show is both smaller and more sparsely attended than last year, but the deals are much better and more easily had. Pity we're not shopping for much this year... most of our outfitting was either done or won't be done again until the next time we are getting ready for along trip. Most of the boat budget this year will probably go into engine repairs, if that.

We are taking the opportunity to catch some of the seminars that we missed last year in our haste, and to check out potential future upgrade boats should we suddenly have a fit of profitability in one of our businesses. We're only catching the free seminars, not the presumably more comprehensive "Boat Show University" presentations, which cost extra, and they've been a mixed bag. Mandy liked the Marine Weather skills presentation by Lee Chesneau, which I felt was scattered and confusing (to be fair, Mr. Chesneau looked as if he were having a horrible day, with some sort of fever and an uncooperative electronic equipment, and I am sure that hurt his presentation), whereas I liked Clyde Ford's Situational Awareness presentation and Mandy felt it didn't address the topic that was promised. We're going to go to Chuck Gould's Man Overboard presentation tomorrow; hopefully that will score a hit for both of us, as it's a significant concern of ours.

As usual, the show has us all fired up about getting out on the water again. With the economy in the dumper, why not spend all this time not working by sailing, instead? I'm not sure I know the answer to that rhetorical question yet, but with the economy the way it is and our impending nuptials this summer, there might be "Perfect Storm" conditions for taking another sizeable trip considerably before we had ever thought we would. Sailing as a honeymoon has the virtue of putting the dollars that might otherwise be blown on airfare and accomodations into something that we will get more long-term use out of (ie, the boat). And diesel prices are lower and the exchange rate better this time around, to boot.

Outfitting - Hillbilly Solar Panels

A lot of Northwest sailors don't worry much about auxiliary power sources. As long as you are in one of the great Sounds formed by the Olympic Peninsula or Vancouver Island, you are almost assuredly within a day's sail of moorage with shorepower available, and due to the fickle winds and currents in these parts, you are very, very likely to be spending part of any given day motoring out of necessity, which will charge up your batteries at the same time. And, of course, when you're talking about solar power, the high latitudes mean high angles, and, well, pretty much everyone is aware of the local propensity toward cloud cover.

Be that as it may, I did some figuring for our energy budget and realized that we couldn't go much more than a day without recharging given the expected usage patterns. As we intend to be more aggressive about sailing versus motoring, and waiting for the wind, not to mention spending a lot of time at anchor versus in a marina, I decided we needed some other option to at least take the edge off our reliance on the engine for electrical power.

Although there is a lot of information available on marine solar power and solar power in general, for the most part it is oriented at the high end--people who are primarily relying on it and have massive arrays to work with. Although we are in a position to need some auxiliary energy source, we actually have a pretty low daily power requirement... on the order of 45 amp hours with a fairly generous set of assumptions. So, with the addition of only around 10AH a day of solar power, I can stave off having to charge with the engine for another two days or so, which is acceptable.

Running the numbers (A*V=W) I figured I needed about a 20W panel. The solar pros can get into an all-day-long discussion about the actual versus advertised wattage of panels, and all sorts of detail about different types of silicon and such, but while I appreciate the math, what I really needed was a practical lesson. So to start with, I bought a cheap 2W panel, advertised as being able to keep your battery "topped up" when you were away.

I unpacked it, threw it up in a portlight on a sunny day, and got out my trusty multi-meter. The charging light was on and I measured it as pumping out a whopping 20V, which according to all the theory I had read, should have been plenty. I measured the voltage on the unloaded house battery bank (two Group 21 batteries) and then hooked the thing up and left it for a day.

Imagine my surprise when I measured again around sundown and found that the bank was lower in unloaded voltage than when I started! It was as if the panel had been sucking juice out, not putting it in! Supposedly it has a diode inside to prevent that from happening, so I checked the output voltage again. Still in the high teens, despite the sun being low in the sky. So I hooked it back up to the battery and measured again. A-ha! When connected, the output dropped to the same background voltage as the battery bank had itself. Although I wasn't sure why, I knew this didn't seem right, since other chargers elevate the voltage of the whole system to around 13.5V, which is necessary to impart a charge.

After some asking around on Sailnet, I finally got a somewhat straight answer about the phenomena from the gurus. Turns out, although I hadn't ever heard this mentioned before, that the amperage also affects the charging ability. If the force (the common metaphor for amps) of the power source isn't sufficient to overcome that available in the battery, all the voltage in the world won't help. This makes me wonder about the concept of 'trickle-charging' at all... it seems like it couldn't ever possibly work, although a lot of people seem to buy into it. I still haven't heard a reasonable explanation for that... but from a practical standpoint it meant I needed to experiment with a larger panel.

So, I found a decent price on an 18W panel and bought it. It came with a charge controller, although most of what I have read suggests I don't much need one for this size panel and battery bank.

I installed the charge controller in the engine compartment directly over our Protech AC charger. Neither of them are particularly conveniently located, but they are out of the way and close to the batteries.

I didn't hardwire the controller to the batteries yet; I'm going to use the alligator clips until I am sure that the whole thing works, then I'll wire directly to the battery terminals from the controller.

For the internal wiring I just used some 16 gauge tinned wire I had around, and ran it along the existing conduit path from the electrical panels to the cabintop (a lot of the wiring is out of spec, technically--at some point I needed black and couldn't get it, nor the new ABYC negative standard of yellow, but they had white and so I ended up with a bunch that is used for the negative path on a lot of my DC runs).

The cheap panel I got had things configured a little oddly; it came with alligator clips and a male cigarette lighter adapter, but the plugs on these and on the cord from the panel don't match the charge controller. I didn't mind much--none of the included cabling was sufficiently long to make the run I needed anyway, so I cut the connector from the alligator clips and spliced it to the 16 gauge wire coming out on the cabintop. This will match the plug on the cable coming from the panel, so it can be put in place and removed as necessary for weather, positioning, etc.

It's definitely a hillbilly setup. I don't have the room or wherewithal to permanently mount the 18W panel, and I wouldn't want to anyway without having some solid proof that it works well, so I just rig it with cords and strap it to the cabin-top on sunny days (and put it away when things are rough or dark--it's all-weather, but still, things last longer inside). This has the virtue of being easily removable, and easy to reposition at better angles to the sun as it moves or the position of the boat changes. It looks pretty ghetto, but it has been working quite well keeping the batteries topped up. We've had a lot of sunshine and wind so far, and so we've been relying on it almost exclusively, and it's done well. This week as the clouds roll in I'm likely to find more challenges keeping things charged (although happily, the bad weather will coincide with a part of the trip I would have had to motor through most of anyway).

A replacement dinghy?

We saw this fine red specimen sitting unused on the foredeck of the immaculately kept sloop moored next to us here in Campbell River and we're thinking about making the guy an offer on it. What do you think, Mr. Frye?

Outfitting - Radar

I already detailed the chartplotter installation which comprises the other half of the radar setup; the chartplotter provides power and viewing screen for the integrated 2Kw radar from Raymarine, so those bits were out of the way when we went to get the radar up and running, and all we really had left to do was mount the radome and route the cabling. Of course, those are the hard parts.

After eyeballing things a bit, I decided to mount the radome a couple of feet above our mid-mast steaming light, drop the cable down the interior of the mast, and out again just above the mast step, across the cabin-top to the port-side grab rail and then back to the plotter beneath the dodger. This isn't the perfect installation, but it will allow us to do it without unstepping the mast (ideally, you'd route the cable down into the cabin and back to the screen somewhere inside) which is outside our budget and timeframe right now. Additionally, it lets us do it while leaving our options open to go inside in the future... and without punching any additional holes in the boat.

A rudimentary inspection of the mast revealed that it was not one of those with conduit inside it--the existing wiring and halyards simply dangle freely inside. So we would have to drill carefully putting the holes in, and also figure some way of snaking the radar cable up from the base to the mounting point. My plan was to simply drop a nut on a string down, fish it out the bottom, and tape the connecting cable on to pull to the upper hole. The holes for the cable would have to be fairly sizeable, and we would need to use some sort of grommet or chafe guard to keep the cable from cutting itself on the metal.

I had picked up a Seaview mount for a reasonable price at the boatshow in January and their recommended method of attaching the mount to the mast is cold-riveting. I was initially planning to tap and screw it into place, but the more I thought about it, the better I liked the rivets. I'd never worked with them before but I went out and picked up a hand-riveter and it seemed pretty straightforward compared to screwing things in. This way, we only had to drill appropriate sized holes and then slap the mount points on, rather than messing about in the air with a tapping set.

Speaking of messing about up in the air, we (or I did, at least) realized early on that it was going to have to be Mandy doing so. She weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet, while I am almost double that; it's not too tough for me to winch her up but there is no way she'd be able to get me off the deck. The downside to this is that she doesn't have the upper body strength to run the riveter very easily.

We picked the nicest Saturday in early April to make the installation. It started off poorly; I forgot the radome, the toolkit, and the mount platform diagram. As it happened, none of that mattered, but it was a preview of things to come.

Mandy had to work in the morning, while I killed time at the Fisheries Supply annual swap meet, and then scrubbing the deck, and then helping shuffle boats around at the marina as they moved a big houseboat into the dock. She finally showed up around lunch time, and we got something to eat and called my friend Dave for a hand.

Dave and I used to go rock climbing, but Dave hates heights. I give him full credit for the few seasons of climbing that we put in, because he went up and did it time after time, never freezing up but always extremely deliberate and cautious. This is why I called him; I knew he'd be extremely safe even if I tended toward being cavalier about matters.

I've never heard of anyone else using a separate safety line while climbing the mast, but we had never done it before and I figured it might be difficult at this late date to find another partner to sail to Alaska with, so while I followed the conventional method of hooking Mandy to a halyard and winching her up, I also rigged a spare halyard as a safety line and had Dave run a belay on it as I hoisted her up. In addition to that, I sent her up with a loop of webbing to wrap around the mast and clip in to her harness... if all else failed, as far as she would drop would be the spreaders.

There were no problems getting her up to the right spot, and as soon as I got her tied off, I hoisted up a bucket with the necessary tools and materials. I tied some cord around the heavier bits of equipment and had her secure that to the bucket so that Dave and I didn't have to worry about wearing a drill on our heads. I had her tie the bucket off, then hoisted the assembled platform on the same line--that allowed me to take the weight off it while she positioned it against the mast and marked the drilling points for the holes. Then we lowered it back down again and Dave and I disassembled it and sent back up just the mount plates, which she could then tape in place and rivet in with nothing else in the way.

All that went pretty well. Things started going south as Mandy started drilling in. The mast is about a quarter inch thick, heavy aluminum, and she had almost no leverage. It took a long time to get a hole into it. Then, despite practicing on the ground, and having a riveter with better leverage (courtesy of our dock-mate Jack), she wasn't able to get the first rivet set. We dropped her back to the deck and went through the process again, and then hoisted her back up and she was able to get a total of three (out of six per mount plate, for a total of twelve) drilled and riveted. But after that, she was out of oomph, and we had to call it a day.

Based on that experience and time factors, we decided to complete the installation on the hard in Port Townsend. The stability of the mast improved and we also had sufficient help around to crank me up so I could handle the stuff which required significant grip strength (drilling and rivetting). Mandy and I switched off going up and down; I finished drilling and rivetting the mount points and drilling the hole for the cable. We abandoned the second safety line but continued to clip into webbing around the mast while we were up there, in case something happened like, say, accidentally drilling into our own halyard.

The process took most of the day Saturday. Mandy bolted the mount to the mount points, then I went up, had the radome hosted up, and bolted it onto the mount. Unfortunately, I was unable to fish down the messenger line for the cable, so we had to hoist Mandy up again, who got it down on the first try and pulled the cable up through. Then it was my turn again; I connected all the wiring, fitted a grommet to the cable where it passed through the mast, and put the cover on the radome. Getting the grommet in was a real fight--Seaview included one with the mount kit, but it turned out to be far larger than we needed, so I had to perform surgery aloft to get it to fit. By this time, the wind was kicking up and blowing me and the tool bucket around, so it took a while. Finally I got it cut, inserted around the cable in the hole, and glued in place.

After we got the boat back in the water and headed back to the moorage, I fired the Raymarine system up and after the five minutes it took me to figure out how to access the radar screen on the chartplotter, I got the radar turned on and it worked like a charm. There was a big transport at the pier of the Navy ammunition depot at the north end of Indian Island and it painted a huge return right where it should have. Additionally, I could see the Port Townsend Keystone ferry coming in, and a couple of the smaller sailboats cruising around on the bay. Next time we get caught out in the fog, we'll be ready.

Outfitting - Chartplotter

You probably figured out already from the autopilot post that we're pretty much doing all Raymarine, all the time on this boat. The chartplotter and radar are no exceptions; we went with the Raymarine C80 plotter and 2Kw radome combination, with the Raystar 125 GPS antenna for GPS integration.

Installation of the chartplotter component was a breeze. I went against conventional wisdom and installed it on the cabin-top beneath the dodger rather than at the helm station, based partly on a desire to have it relatively central to the batteries and subordinate components and partly on my reading of some of the design philosophies espoused by Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger. We don't have a hard dodger, of course, but it is notably less fatiguing to keep watch under our dodger instead of out in the weather at the helm. Also, the distance from wheel to cabin-top is sufficiently short that the plotter can still be read from the helm position. Due to the integration of autopilot and plotter, you can effectively steer the boat from the protection of the dodger simply by inputting waypoint orders right on the chart.

For ease of use, then, I mounted the plotter on a "lazy susan" type of arrangement screwed into an empty winch hardpoint on the cabin top, so it can be swiveled to face either the helm, or someone sitting under the protection of the dodger. Originally I made this out of plywood until we decided that it would work out alright, and since have replaced it with sturdier starboard. I'll also thru-bolt rather than screw it down; didn't have time last weekend but it was on my list and I'll definitely do so before we risk the swells in the Strait.

I punched a hole in the cabintop just forward of the mount and ran all the necessary cabling down through that. Although it's under the dodger and out of the weather, I'll probably seal it somehow before we leave. I had no trouble at all tying in to the existing SeaTalk data network already running with the autopilot and depth-sounder. I did not, however, like the odd little cable connectors Raymarine supplied for the raw wire ends... they are difficult to use and strike me as unreliable. I'll probably go back and crimp everything off properly with heat-shrink butt connectors at some point.

We mounted the mushroom-shaped GPS antenna at the port grab rail just forward of the dodger. It's unlikely to get stepped on there, it's close to the plotter for a short wire run, and it's somewhat protected by the dodger. Initially we just strapped it to the rail, again making sure that it would work properly before making a more permanent fixture, but have since mounted it on a short post glued to the deck and further strapped to the rail. That's actually not all that permanent either; I guess I am still considering moving it either under the dodger or up onto the frame somehow.

Of course the first run out after we installed the chartplotter, we ran into heavy fog almost all the way up and back to Port Townsend. Now that we have completed the radar installation, I'm sure we'll never see another whisp. Nonetheless, the plotter was very useful keeping us on course and out of trouble in the weather, and the autopilot integration was terrific; people often complain that autopilots lead to people booming around at full speed not paying any attention to where they are going, but we found that it actually gave us a lot more freedom to keep a good watch, as we had to pay less attention to steering and navigating.