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.

Autopilot Problems

Our S1 Wheelpilot autopilot went on the fritz on the way up from Seattle to Port Hadlock, as noted here previously. The compass wouldn't track as the boat heading changed, an issue which manifested itself in gradual course changes off the designated heading, followed by sudden corrections in the wrong direction at odd times. It wasn't a big deal to hand steer and we had other things going on so I didn't mess with it on that leg of the trip, but I decided to look at it Friday morning as we were taking the boat over to Port Townsend for the haul-out. I had checked Raymarine's support website before we left, and found an advanced diagnostic for the sort of issues we were having.

I pulled out the multi-meter and checked the wire pairs for the impedance values specified in the diagnostic document, and sure enough, on one of them the measurement was four ohms above tolerance--probably a short. I re-swung the compass anyway, just to give it a shot, but when we tried the AP on the way to the boat yard it had the same issues.

I called Raymarine tech support while we were waiting for the lift. The guy listened to my explanation and the results, then told me to take the compass itself apart and measure the impedance values internally; if they were still high, the compass was probably bad and should be returned, otherwise it was a wiring problem.

So I took the compass head apart and measured the values on the wire pair again and got a reading not described anywhere or by anyone. I called Raymarine back, got another tech who told me the values were whacky and I should probably send the thing back in. This was not exactly music to my ears, since their turnaround time probably wouldn't get us the component back before we were due to leave. I had absolutely no excitement about hand-steering both ways to Alaska and back (Mandy didn't seem to mind, though... I think she hasn't had to do it enough).

But I thought about it a bit after I hung up with the tech, and the readings started to make sense--they were lower than the spec, but that made sense because I was measuring inside the compass, not across the wire. So for the heck of it, I went back and measured at the wire ends to the computer again... and the value now was dead-on what it was supposed to be.

All I had done was take apart the compass head, but apparently that did it. I'm still a little worried there is a short in it somewhere but it will be hard to tell unless it has problems again. After we got it back in the water and headed back to Hadlock, I tried it again. On the first try, it gave me the disturbing message "NO RUDDER" but I was pretty sure that I did have a rudder, since we were able to steer and all. I was worried the rudder sensor had somehow been damaged, but then realized it was more likely that I had disturbed the sensor wiring at the computer when I was messing around with the compass wires. I cycled the system off, checked the connections, turned it back on and got a good AUTO function when I tried it next. After that, it held a course all the way down the bay, no problem.

And also the girls...

Oops... I see that among her other thank-you notes, Mandy has inadvertently excluded "the girls," Ed and Terry's pugs Thelma and Louise. While they provided little assistance either at the boat, or at the house, or in fact anywhere at all, they did quite reliably provide us with various amusing vignettes such as this:

...on quite a regular basis. For which we must thank and appreciate them as well as our two-legged helpers.

Special thanks to the Graebels, Mrs. Moon, Mr. Frye, Matt, Lindsay, and Luke

We wanted to give a special call-out to those who helped so much this weekend up in Port Townsend.

Thanks to Scott and Linda for graciously allowing us all to raid your house, even though you weren't there. We certainly missed you both. It seemed almost mean to be at the Port of Port Townsend when Scott was out of town! Thanks also for getting the bouy in the water so we could leave the boat up there until we leave in May.

Mr. Frye, thanks for getting there at the precise moment necessary to grab a paint roller and start working upside down so I (Mandy) didn't have to. After sanding the hull, I was happy to be right-side up. Thanks also for helping with the portlights (yes, Scott finished the caulking around the screws). And thanks for hoisting Scott's butt up the mast. Lord knows I couldn't have done it. And my weak little fingers couldn't have gotten the rivets in either, so the Raydome couldn't have gotten finished without you and Matt.

Mrs. Moon, I think it was knowing that you were going to be there cooking that got the rest of us excited to go! We all always love the food, but I am especially grateful that your magic got that rope out of the bottom of the mast so we could run the electrical wires up it. Yay for the girls!

Matt, thanks for your willingness to do whatever we asked you to, for always lightening the mood, for also getting Scott's butt up the mast, and for coming back to the Graebel's on the boat with Scott once the boat was back in the water. And seriously, the portlight was already cracked before you were pulling it out, so stop worrying about it already.

Lindsay, thanks for driving around Port Townsend looking for a new portlight for us. That saved us a lot of time for sure! And thanks for bringing Luke up and spending the weekend with us all. Your company is always enjoyed, and I am always inspired by you.

And, of course, Luke. Thanks for your fascinating linguistic capabilities and for just being a great little two-year-old. I was entranced with how many different ways you could come up with to say, "Scott". You're a lucky kid to have such great parents, and they are lucky parents to have such a great kid. Scott and I are lucky to know all of you.

We probably won't have many chances to write mushy sentiments like this, so I wanted to make sure I took this opportunity to express our gratitude. Thank you so much, all of you!

Outfitting - A Boat Out of Water - Part Two

The long, hard weekend haul-out is done and we are back home for two weeks while the boat sits on the buoy up north, bottom freshly painted and pristine.

There were no major problems and parts of the weekend were actually kind of fun, but we're wicked tired tonight.

We were scheduled to have the boat lifted at the Port of Port Townsend's Shipyard at 12:30PM on Friday. We had to motor up from the south end of the bay, and I wanted to spend a little time troubleshooting some ugly autopilot problems which had reared their head on the way up from Seattle, so we left a little early... around 8:30AM. After messing about with the autopilot (another post on that later), we headed to the Boat Haven at the north end of the bay.

We tied up at the lift staging area and checked in at the yard office. Since we were early, they offered to pick us as soon as they were ready next--almost an hour early. We jumped at the chance for more time on the hard: the yard costs for your first and last day are waived, so we had booked back to back lift and drop days to save money. Every extra minute out of the water had value.

The yard staff were great. They asked a bit about our hull configuration, looked at some pictures we had from the inspection haul-out (and shook their heads--apparently it was done extremely poorly by the yard in Seattle, which made sense to me when they explained why), and then went and got their travel-lift. They waved us forward into the U-shaped dock the lift sits over and jockeyed us into position over the straps quickly and competently. We were up and out of the water in no time and after a quick pause at dock level so we could hop off, the boat was trundling through the yard in the slings.

We got a half-hour (more like forty-five minutes; it was their lunch break) in the washdown facility and we used the pressure sprayers to blast a couple years worth of Lake Union slime off the hull. I was a little worried as we did; it was nice to get the thing clean, but the sprayers were taking off paint down to the glass in some places... not a good sign. But all the slime came off, and the lift moved the boat over to our tarps and the yard crew blocked it up. They eyeball everything but they've done it so often that, although playful, the operation is safe and the result solid as a rock. They put wood blocks under the keel and fore and aft, and then adjustable pads to either side to steady the whole thing. When it's all done, it's sturdy enough to walk on. We walked over to Sea J's for some lunch while they were finished up.

When the yard crew was done, we (only Mandy and I at that point; all our help was coming up later in the day) immediately started sanding. Something to watch for on fiberglass hulls is something called blistering--water intrusion into the gelcoat and fiberglass laminate which comprise the hull. Although most glass boats experience this to some degree and in many cases it's a strictly cosmetic issue, at worst it can dramatically delaminate the hull and hurt the structural integrity of the vessel. The surveyor had pointed some of this out when the boat was hauled out for the pre-purchase inspection and so I looked for it now. Fortunately, there was nothing worse visible now than then. We were only sanding enough to rough up the surface for the next coat, not to take it all the way down, so it went quickly.

Something we did find that was a problem was a long crack at the front of the keel, where the lead meets the fiberglass hull. This sort of thing is not unheard of on older boats (it's so common on a certain era of Catalina 30's that it's known as the "Catalina Smile") and although it seemed to indicate that the keel was falling off, I wasn't actually too worried--I check the keel bolts regularly and there's been no sign of movement, and the keel didn't budge when pushed, so it seemed mostly to be an issue with the paint cracking off. I decided to patch it with some epoxy and shredded fiberglass and then paint it again (you can see the patch job to the right on this photo).

Mandy actually ended up doing most of the sanding, since I had to run over to West Marine for some rags and resin. We were able to start painting within a couple hours of the haul-out, much better than we had expected, and important to give the paint some good drying time.

It doesn't really take all that long to paint a boat. Other than some tricky bits around thru-hulls and the prop shaft, it's all long, unobstructed surface. The paint is some nasty stuff--we used Pettit Unepoxy, a hard bottom paint (hard meaning it stays on--some marine bottom paints are ablative, designed to flake off as crap attaches to keep the bottom smooth) and it's a bear to mix properly. The stuff has heavy metals in it as the active ingredient to prevent marine life from taking up residence, so you have to re-stir it frequently as you work. We used rollers to put it on and it went on thick and fast.

Our work crew showed up when we were about half done--Ed and Terry took off work early and showed up around 4:00PM. Ed took over painting and Terry gave me a lift back to my parent's place so I could pick up our truck with the additional supplies in it. As it happened, we didn't need most of what I brought... the painting was pretty much done when I got back. We finished up and called it a night.

Matt, Lindsay, and Luke showed up later in the evening and Terry fed us a fabulous dinner.

We headed back to the yard early on Saturday and did some touch up work on the paint and some other random bottom work (cleaning the knot log impeller, replacing the propeller shaft zinc) but the big focus of the day was getting the radome mounted and other topside work done. It's much easier, we've found, to work up the mast when the boat isn't wobbling around below. Actually, even on solid ground it's a little wobbly up there, but it's better than doing it on the water. Mandy and I took turns getting hoisted up and riveting the mount on, bolting the radome to it, and hooking everything together. Below, we had Matt and Ed working on caulking, while Terry made provisioning runs, and Luke and Lindsay went hunting for a new portlight (the old one having been snapped in two during caulking operations).

I'll put another post up dealing with the radome mounting, since it was a project in and of itself, but we finished it up about an hour before we were scheduled to get picked up again.

After the yard crew brought the travel lift over and hoisted us off the blocks, we made a hurried round of sanding and touch-ups to get the bottom of the keel and areas covered up by the blocking. It didn't get a lot of dry time but they were small patches so hopefully it was enough.

They put us back in the water with no problems. The crane operator asked me right after I went back in if I wanted to check my bilge, if I'd done any thru-hull work or similar, before the slings came off--apparently it's not all that uncommon that people will have taken apart thru-hulls and reassembled them improperly and find a geyser down below as soon as they get back in the water. I hadn't messed with any of the holes in the bottom, however, so I just backed out and tied up at the staging float so we could load all our food and gear. Matt and I hauled it all down to the float and onto the boat (minus one can of corn, which "sleeps with the fishes" now). I also filled the water tank up, cleared the deck up as best I could, and then we headed south for the mooring while Mandy drove the truck back.

Terry made another great dinner and we all went to bed early and exhausted.

I spent the day today organizing and stowing all the food and junk we loaded aboard, and got probably 90% of it done. All things considered, we got less done than I had hoped, but all the important stuff is out of the way. Still, we'll probably need a day or so to take care of other odd jobs before I'll be comfortable taking her across the Strait.

We really want to thank Ed and Terry, and Matt and Lindsay for taking the time to come all the way up this weekend; we never would have got through everything that we did without them, and even if we had, it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. Thanks!

On the ball in Hadlock

Well, we made it to Port Hadlock in one piece after a couple of rather trying days. The boat is on the bouy out in front of my folk's place; Port Townsend is the hill across the bay, and the crane at center right is Naval Magazine Indian Island. There's a designated foul weather explosives anchorage just off the piers there... there are frequent jokes in the family about the likelihood of being on the receiving end of various terrorist and/or missile threats as a result, but in fact the base is a pretty sleepy place.

We had a heck of a time getting out of the marina on Tuesday. I replaced both our fuel filters, bled the engine, and started it up to warm up... whereupon it promptly quit after about two minutes. I bled it again, blew out the injectors, checked the fuel flow, etc, etc, to no effect. Finally, Bobby, one of our helpful neighbors (and former diesel mechanic), came over and took a look. He said it looked like air in the lines to him, so we kept cranking and bleeding, and sure enough, it fired up eventually. It bothers me that I can't always tell what the problem is. Marine diesels are simple things, but after bleeding it and changing the filters multiple times (expensive filters!) I would have sworn that it was something other than air in the system. But Bobby immediately ruled out compression problems just by listening, and bled it out differently that I had, and that took care of it. One more technique for the toolbox, I guess.

I got a lot more intimate with the engine after we tied up at Shilshole for the night. While Mandy went to work, I went into preventive maintenance mode, changing the transmission fluid out, replacing the engine zincs, and replacing the impeller. The zincs and impeller were all in bad shape, so I'm glad I got to them. I had a whole other list of things to do but ran out of time... maybe this weekend.

I was a little sad to leave Lake Union for probably the last time; Commercial Marina is conveniently located and chock full of friendly people and knowledgeable sailors. We've learned a lot from them and have always felt safe with the boat there. We're on the list for a slip at Shilshole, though, and hopefully it will be open by the time we get back (was supposed to be open in March! popular place). We're sick of having to get through two bridges and the locks every time we want to sail someplace, though. I have always waved at the bridge tenders as we've gone through before, on the theory that they would be more inclined to open fast for us the next time if we were friendly; this time, the last time, I had to suppress and impulse to flip them all off as we passed by. Bridge tenders in Seattle have been a mixed bag; Fremont is usually friendly and fast, Ballard slow and obnoxious, and the railroad bridge... well, they are a bit of a mystery there. Anyway, I'm happy to be done with them, and the locks as well. I don't mind locking through so much, but in the summer it's a drag, and it's always fraught with potential for problems--odd currents, other boats in close proximity, and a lot of eyes on you increase tension considerably.

After all that, we had quite a nice sail up to Port Hadlock. We had south and east winds the whole way and a nice ebb tide to ride and made good time--about eight hours. The autopilot went goofy on us after about the first hour--I think the fluxgate compass needs to be recalibrated, or the connections are loose, or it's shot--but steering was easy in 5-10 knot winds. During the last reach south of Marrowstone Island, the wind kicked up to about 20-25 knots and we almost got to make the rare passage of the Port Townsend canal under sail. Rare because you need a brisk wind out of the north or south, a favorable turn of the tide, and some luck to have room to manuever. The channel is narrow and the currents strong, but we had a good strong southerly behind us and had a shot. The current, however, was such that we made it about to the south breakwater and ended up basically stalled out--our five knots under main alone (I had furled the genoa as it was just being masked anyway) held us about steady in the channel, but couldn't put us under the bridge. We fell off, dropped the main, and motored through as usual. Maybe next time.

A different kind of cruising

Had this bad boy tied up behind us at Shilshole when we spent the night there the other night. I hadn't really noticed it much until after dark... then the neon logo lit up and you couldn't help but notice.

She also had more wireless access points aboard than I have in my home. All secured, more power to 'em. Still... the whole thing represents a cruising experience utterly foreign to ours. I go aboard these yachts at the boat show and it's like being in a mansion. I can't tell if I would like that more or less than our cramped little diesel-smelling 33 footer. Luxury is nice, sure, but I wonder sometimes if the lack of it is more the point on some sorts of trips.