Rhymes with "Generator"

On Oct 19th, 2012 Published By B.J.
A larger and considerably cleaner generator than ours.

So does anyone have a good phrase for me that rhymes with “Generator Oil Leak” because I’m thinking Bad Poetry in the Epic format may be the only way to make this entertaining.

One of the reason that our blog posts have slowed over the last few weeks is we’ve been involved in some distinctly not-fun and not-exciting activities.  These generally also make for what I would think of as not-interesting blog posts.  I find it challenging to right about some gruesome and expensive technical problem we are facing in a way that is entertaining, engaging and light.  So bear with me because this probably won’t be.

Before leaving on this epic journey we had the “Mother of All To Do Lists” which was a six page document (now down to only three!) of things we Must Do Before We Go, Want To Do, Would Like to Do, and Hope to Do Someday, if Time and Money Permit.  Somewhere on this list was the item “Verify Generator Oil Leak.”  There was suspicion of an oil leak because there were small amounts of oil around the base of the engine.  But I wasn’t sure if it was old oil from the last oil leak we had fixed or something new.

Well, I sort of pawed at this item.  The engine room isn’t the neatest place in the boat, and although it IS technically a room it’s not the sort of place you’d want to put your feet up in and watch a movie.  The ceiling is less than five feet high and the floor space is a narrow catwalk between the propulsion engine (a Volvo Penta TAMD 41 H-A, which is a 145 HP Turbo Diesel for the intensely curious) and the generator (a Westerbeke 6.0 BTD).  When one or the other of these engines has been in use it’s a warm place, and there are other various pumps, drains, tanks, compressors and systems scattered around making various buzzes and hisses.  Prior to my replacing all the hoses on the aft holding tank (where the ick from the aft toilet is stored) it also didn’t smell so awesome.  So as we went through the list I sort of wiped some oil and dirt off, Kathy cleaned the engine, and I vaguely sniffed around looking for a leak.  We were in a slip, and we weren’t running it as we were plugged in to shore power.

A brief digression into boat-owner technospeak is important here for some of our non boating (or non LARGE boating) audience that may be wondering “What the heck does he need another engine for?” or “That doesn’t look anything like the generator in Grandpa’s old Corvair.”  If you know all about marine generators I encourage you to skip ahead a paragraph or three.

A large boat like Evenstar has some really big batteries (Eight of a size called “4D”, made of a higher tech construction than a car battery called AGM, the meaning of which I will spare you in this post – suffice it to say they weigh about 135 lbs each).  These batteries run most of our house systems – refrigeration, instruments, lights, watermaker, and the like.  There are also some boat systems that require far more power than batteries can reasonably provide such as the hot water maker and the air conditioning/heating system, these only work with A/C power.  To charge batteries one could drive the boat around and rely on the alternator (much like your car, but bigger) on the primary engine to charge batteries; this is how most smaller keelboats do this.  Also one can plug into shore power, but this really only works if you are at a dock.  We only go to docks when we are getting something fixed.

There are a couple of problems with using the engine and driving the boat around to charge batteries, not the least of which is you might not want to move the boat and idling the engine at anchor makes hardly any power so you need to take it out and rev it up.  Secondly, the batteries are huge – their capacity is such that the alternator just doesn’t make enough power to charge them in a reasonable amount of time.  Finally the engine uses about 2.5 gallons of diesel per hour of operation at cruising speeds, which would mean I’d need to motor around and burn 16-20 gallons of fuel to charge the batteries every other day.

So the solution is to install a smaller diesel engine on the boat.  It’s not a belt driven “generator” like they used to put in cars before alternators took over, it’s a completely separate full-on diesel engine.  It runs at a single constant speed and uses less than one gallon per hour.  This engine primarily produces A/C energy like you have in your house, except in our case it’s 220V power so it’s A/C energy like you’d have in your house if you live in Sweden.  Ours makes about six Kilowatts of power per hour.  This power can then be used to charge the batteries much faster than the engine, as well as running those pesky high demand systems.  We don’t use those much except for the hot water, but every other day for about four hours we need to run this second engine in order to charge our batteries up to run the boat systems.

Fast forward a month from our leaving the dock.  We’ve been living at anchor for this month, and running the generator every couple of days to charge the batteries.  As I go in to the engine room to check the oil periodically, it finally reaches the dim recesses of my brain that I can check off “Verify Generator Oil Leak” off my list as there is clearly oil all over the place.  This wasn’t actually a fast leak, I only added a quart of oil in this time but it was enough to be concerned about.  The generator failing in a remote location could be very time consuming and expensive.

Oil leaks can be tough to track down.  As a liquid it runs down hill, it sprays and it spatters; as any fan of Dexter can tell you tracking its source is a science unto itself.  I didn’t have much luck trying to sort this myself so we decided to take the boat in to a boat yard while we were up in Maine.  After a couple of diagnostic visits, which mostly involved cleaning the engine much more thoroughly than I seemed capable of so we could look for new spatters, it was determined to the the “front seal” on the engine, and this was replaced.  A new fluffy white oil pad was put under the engine and we agreed to “watch for any more leaks”.  That didn’t take long, in short order the clean pad had new oil stains on it.

By this time we were approaching our time to head back South to Rhode Island.  We hoped to continue the oil leak fixing process with the Maine yard’s affiliate in R.I., but schedules and missed communications made that a miss.  So we finally caught up with their affiliate in Annapolis.

Our initial diagnosis was that maybe this was the oil pan, which would pose a huge problem.  The oil pan is at the very bottom of the engine, and requires access to it to remove it and re-seat with with a new gasket.  This would involve lifting the engine up off it’s mounts which is no mean feat in a tight space with only about 18″ of clearance above the engine.  We decided to put some fluorescent dye into the oil and check with an ultraviolet light, which showed the leak appeared to be in the timing cover rather than the oil pan which was really good news.  Or so we thought.

We moved the boat to another facility with the same company and they came and took the timing cover off.  There we got the bad news – the crankshaft itself has some scoring and wear on it (see picture).  This part is supposed to be mirror smooth, and the roughness and damage was what was causing the seal in the “front seal” to leak since it couldn’t make a clean seal any more.

A damaged crankshaft is bad, m’kay?  For those of you that haven’t every disassembled an engine down to a block and a bucket of oily parts it really is the central core of the engine.  To get it out…you basically have to disassemble the engine down to a block and a bucket of oily parts.  To make it smooth again you have to pull it out and send it to a machine shop to be rotated and ground, then you can use a new oversized seal to fix the old leak.  If you do that then you start looking at all the pieces of metal that come in touch with that, then you probably see other wear and before you know it you might as well do a full rebuild on the engine.  Removing the engine and sending it to a Westerbeke shop for a rebuild would take a month or more to do – not an option when we’re planning to sail for the Caribbean on November 4th.

Alternatively you could just…put in a new generator!  Of course, you have to take the old one out first.  Which, in a boat with some nice wood finishes that don’t like oil or being whacked with heavy chunks of metal, takes some careful work.  You can either strip the engine down to a block and a bucket of oily parts and bring it out in small bits, or you can find some way to disassemble the boat without damaging the finish and breaking things.  Apparently Hallberg-Rassy builds their cockpit floor (which is also the engine room ceiling) with bolts to hold it on so it can be removed with relative ease.  Relative being the key word, it’s still a major operation.  With even a small generator costing more than $10,000, once you add in the labor charges this is a very unattractive and painful option.

Putting a band-aid on it would be cleaning up the shaft a little and replacing the front seal.  Then we just keep checking the oil and adding, crossing our fingers and hoping the whole thing doesn’t give out on us at an inopportune moment.

So our options range from the untenable, the insanely expensive, and the unreliable.  So I did what I often do – I asked my friends over in the Cruising subforum over at Sailing Anarchy.  The collection of sailors there have an incredible range of experience and can almost always be counted on to come up with at least one more way to skin any particular cat.  In this case they came through with a solution for us.

Apparently it’s an old mechanic’s trick to use a sleeve of hard, thin, steel to fix problems like this.  This sleeve is slid over the damaged area and pressed on with great force (and some Loctite) to hold it on the shaft.  Done properly it should not change the shaft’s diameter, and the original front seal can be used.  The sleeve restores the smooth surface and allows the seal to mate properly, solving the leak.  This fix can last for years and is no band aid.

So now we are waiting in Oxford, MD for our sleeve to arrive and be pressed on the shaft.  With luck it will arrive today and we will be on our way with the tide in the morning.  Even if we slide into next week though, it seems we will be able to leave with our some confidence in our generator and most of our Repair budget intact!

Posted in bad smells, Batteries, broken things, Generator, procrastination | 5 Comments

Annapolis and the Boat Show

On Oct 17th, 2012 Published By B.J.

Two weeks following the SSCA Gam were spent kicking around in the general area of Annapolis.  This was mostly planned, because the Annapolis Sailboat Show is one of the best in the country and a Mecca for anyone that is even vaguely interested in sailing.  To people like us, it’s a little slice of marketing nirvana.  The stay around after the show wasn’t so much planned, but I’ll likely get into the why’s of that (rhymes with “generator oil leak”) in another post.

Annapolis Sailboat Show

One of the nicest things about the boat show in Annapolis is that it is sail only.  Many boat shows are ALL sorts of boats, but lets be honest – many of the things that sailors need (sails, for example) are of little interest to power boaters.  And the things that power boaters are there to see (booths and booths of fishing equipment and ginormous outboards that weigh more than our entire dinghy) aren’t so compelling for sailors. And the boats…it’s no secret that many sailors just aren’t interested in loud smelly powerboats.  If you have a finite amount of space for boats at a show and half of them are power boats that’s fewer boats for sailors to see, and vice-versa of course.  Someone shopping for a 40 foot cabin cruiser isn’t likely to climb aboard a monohull sailboat for a look around.   So all of the products and services at the show are tightly focused on the sail segment of the market.  Certainly there is overlap, we all need boat loans, insurance, marine sanitation, boat canvas and a variety of other things but the focus is nice.

We came to this show with an agenda, we has some issues to sort out and some things we needed to get sorted.  Our shopping list included:

  • A new propeller for the dinghy.  Two problems with the old one – we weren’t having good results getting on a plan, and there was only one of them.  A spare dinghy prop is a must since Yamaha designed these props to require a special fitting to be pressed if you break it…not easy to do in a remote location.
  • Water maker supplies; filters, o-rings, and so on to allow us to maintain and fix the water maker
  • Refrigeration spares & a better pump.
  • Spare dinghy running light…we broke ours the morning of the show and the supplier (AB Marine) was going to be at the show.
  • Better Boat Living whosit’s and whatsits – the boat show is always has a lot of interesting things that are targeted specifically for life on board.  Whether it’s ice trays with snap on plastic lids to kitchenware that nests, folds, and stores small there’s almost always something to solve a problem that is vexing us.
  • Birthday presents!  Kathy had always had the good fortune to have her birthday right around the Newport Boat Show when we lived in RI so I’ve always been able to double up taking in the show and shopping for a present; aren’t I a romantic?  With this show splitting the difference between our birthdays what better opportunity?
All and all a pretty non-sexy list.  As opposed to our son Will, whose primary objective was to get on and see every single boat that interested him at the show; he could (and did) skip most of the product tents.  We, on the other hand, didn’t set foot on a single sailboat.  Danielle’s objective seemed to be to have an early and pre-emptive Halloween, filling her swag bag with as many giveaways of candy and branded show gew-gaws as she could.
One other thing about the show that was good – catching up with friends, old and new.  There were a number of friends of mine from Rhode Island that work in the marine industry that were at the show,  it was fun to catch up with them.  Additionally at the show were a number of people I’d known on-line for years but never laid eyes on.  Meeting them was also fun, though Danielle was a little over wrought when at one point it seemed like I couldn’t move more than 15 feet without stopping to chat with someone else.
This was our first time at the show by boat, we’d never been there early and seen them set up.  It’s a very impressive engineering feet as the show uses many temporary floating docks that are installed just for the show over what is otherwise an open body of water and mooring field.  The speed they set them up and the stability of the docks and floats is quite a feat.
We left the show with orders for propellers and spare parts, a new light, my birthday present, a pile of literature, a handful of numbers to call for more information and some very sore feet from walking all day.

The Other Half of Annapolis

The other part of our Annapolis visit was to catch up with some family and friends.  My parents live only a couple of hours away, and Kathy’s brother also made the trip down.  So our visit to Annapolis was enlivened by having some welcome company to see some of the sights with.
In addition to our family we know some people in the area – both old face to face friends and on line friends we finally wanted to connect with.  So we took in the sights and went for some drinks and made some connections.  
All in all a good way to pass some of our time in town with family and friends.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Annapolis and the Boat Show

Gammin’

On Oct 3rd, 2012 Published By B.J.

What the heck is a Gam?

gam  (gm)

n.

1. A social visit or friendly interchange, especially between whalers or seafarers.
2. A herd of whales or a social congregation of whalers, especially at sea.
Last weekend we enjoyed our first Seven Seas Sailing Association (SSCA) Gam.  The SSCA is an association of people who cruise on boats, live on boats or want to cruise on boats.  Given the nature of living on a boat the membership is sort of spread out and loose.  The reach is international though and there are a lot of people with common interests.  So they like to get together.
This was an interesting experience for us for a number of reasons.  Mostly it was meeting people, but we heard a number of interesting speakers and ideas as well.

Meeting People

The social part of the Gam started almost immediately.  An hour or so after we dropped anchor there was a knock on the hull, and I got to meet face to face someone I’d known for some time online but never actually met.  While we were chatting and drinking iced tea in the cockpit one of the SSCA officers dropped by to introduce himself.  And so it went on all weekend – meeting cruisers from all over as well as people that I’d known on-line only.

This event had roughly 400 people registered beforehand, and there were a number of walk-in attendees.  The anchorage had over sixty boats in it, and many people came to the Gam over land.  Many of the boats we saw in the anchorage we’d seen before.  We met several people we’d been sharing anchorages with in Maine, and others we’d “passed in the night”, boats that were in the same waters we were but we never met them.  We also caught up with our friends from Troubador, and their son and our kids were happy to catch up;  the three of them were inseparable all weekend.

The weekend started out on Thursday night with informal dinghy “raft up” for those who were headed South for the winter.  Thirty or so dinghies were all tied together behind one sailboat, and there were discussions coordinated on a number of topics as we passed around pot luck hors d’oerves from boat to boat.  Friday night had a pot luck cocktail party, there were also breakfasts and lunches and Saturday culminated with a cocktail hour followed by a BBQ dinner, with an auction and raffle followed by a speaker.

Events and Speakers

One of attractions to this sort of event is for the larger ones some decent speakers can be brought in.  The Annapolis Gam is the week before the Annapolis Boat show, and there are a lot of “luminaries” in the industry already in the area.  What the Gam brings home is that these are really just regular folks like the rest of us; cruisers that have found a voice that has gotten them some recognition.  But their just as happy to be holding a glass of wine and cruising the pot luck table chatting with everyone else.

One of my favorite marine authors has been Nigel Calder.  He’s written a number of books that are (or should be) on most conscientious boat owners bookshelves.  I’ve used his Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual as a classroom textbook and used to keep two copies – one for the boat, and one at home as a reference. When I took a course on boat systems a few years ago I ended up with a third copy, as a new edition had come out which I just had to have.  We’ve got several other of Nigel’s books on board including his Cruising Handbook: A Compendium for Coastal and Offshore Sailors and Marine Diesel Engines: Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair.

What was better that the books though was seeing him and hearing him speak.  When you look around at a table for Nigel Calder, you need to look for the most unassuming looking fellow at the table.  When you hear him talk he’s funny and engaging and quite humble about his extensive experiences.  You KNOW he’s the guy that wrote all these intimidating books, but he’s up there talking about the first time he took a boat offshore with no charts and no clue and you realize that you can do it, you can get out there and sail safely and learn the ropes if someone of his obvious depth of knowledge started out with less of a clue than you have!  Nigel gave three talks during the weekend; Kathy caught all three, unfortunately I missed one to take in a talk on storm anchors.

Another of the high profile speakers at the Gam were the Pardey’s.  Lin and Larry Pardey have been around the world and all over in every kind of sailing condition.  They sail smaller boats they’ve built themselves that don’t have engines.  One book I own in hardcover and on the Kindle is Storm Tactics Handbook: Modern Methods of Heaving-to for Survival in Extreme Conditions.  This is one of the premiere books on techniques for handling heavy weather in smaller vessels.  We’ve based our heavy weather strategies and equipment choices on the ideas put forth in this book. Lin was here to give a talk on setting your boat up to be unstoppable.  They are the authorities on defining how anyone can cruise on an unimaginably small amount of money.

Other speakers included Lee Chesneau, co-author of Heavy Weather Avoidance and Route Design to speak on weather,  Karen & Jeffry Siegel (both licensed EMT’s) to talk about marine emergency medical preparation.  In addition there were talks about storm anchors and drogues, yacht insurance, the Gulf Stream, expectations for new cruisers, radio demos and advice, and many other relevant topics.

So When is the Next One?

We had a LOT of fun at this and learned a lot; it was a worthwhile experience even if we’d only made the social contacts.  Time well spent!  I want to send a hearty thank you to the board and volunteers of the SSCA that put all this together.  It seemed like every time I looked these folk where carrying, setting up, running around and just busy.  But they all look like they were having fun as well.

Posted in Gam, SSCA | 3 Comments

The Rest of the Trip to Annapolis…

On Oct 1st, 2012 Published By B.J.

…really wasn’t all that exciting.

We decided on anchoring after the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal that we wanted to “get up early” and get going, since it was still a ways to Annapolis – somewhat over 50 (nautical) miles.  Which is a decent day’s trip when you are only covering seven or eight of them an hour.

Some time which is often referred to as “Oh-dark-thirty”, Kathy shook me awoke and said “We need to get going.”  I grunted back at her that it was still, technically, not light outside which was in fact the reason we didn’t press on the night before.  So we went back to sleep after I looked out the window and noted 1) the absence of light and 2) the glassy water and the total absence of wind.

When we awoke a few hours later we just seemed to…forget…the whole “get going early thing” and spent a relaxing morning having breakfast and puttering about.  When we finally hauled anchor, it was around 10:00 in the morning and we saw the friends that departed Montauk, NY the same time we left Block Island pulling into our anchorage.  We’ve got about 10 feet of waterline on them, which equates to a fair amount of speed so they had a longer trip down.  They were coming in to sleep as we were leaving.  In between the time we woke up and the time we actually left the wind went from none to a firm 15 or so knots directly from the place we wanted to go.

The primary reason we were pressing for Annapolis was to join the Seven Seas Cruising Association “Gam”; a meetup of cruisers scheduled for September 28-30 just South of Annapolis on the Rhode River.  We decided we would head straight for the Rhode River on Tuesday since we didn’t have anywhere else to be, and the anchorage looked like it might be shallow and perhaps crowded with other cruisers arriving for the Gam.

After motoring into the wind and chop for a while we rapidly got tired of running the engine.  Evenstar is a sailboat and we enjoy sailing her.  Motoring is loud, dull and expensive – we burn two to two-and-a-half gallons of diesel per hour at “cruising speed” which equates to about $10.00 for every hour we motor.  Not a lot pulling into a harbor, but a full day or two of motoring adds up and we were still a little chafed at having to run the engine twice as many hours the day before on the Delaware than we had run it traveling the 500 miles or so from Maine.  So we sailed.

The sailing was actually nice, it was blowing and we reefed to keep the boat flat but we were making faster progress through the water under sail than we were pounding into the waves under power.  Since we were tacking and zigging and zagging all over the bay though our actual speed made towards Annapolis was a fair bit less.

Some of where we were zig-zagging

The upper part of the Chesapeake is fairly narrow with a shipping channel running up it.  This channel is infested with tugs and barges which small boats do well to avoid.  It is clear of crab pots, however.  Outside the channel there are crab pots, shoals, lights, some Federal prohibited zones (like the Aberdeen Proving Grounds) and a few other similar obstacles.  These didn’t bother us much though, and we zigged and zagged around them while trying to time our crossing of the channel so we would neither interfere with or get run down by the numerous barges.

As happy as we were sailing will started to look at our watches and realize a few things.  First, we wanted to stop and take on water before arriving on the Rhode River, so we started the week with full tanks.  The water is a bit…chunky…around here for using the water maker.  Second and most important, if we stopped for water we would NOT have time to make the small, narrow passage into the Rhode River while it was still light out.  Not a wise thing to do.

Down came the sails, on came the engine and the long motoring upwind faces.  As it happened we decided to take on fuel and pump out the heads in addition to taking on water while we were pulled up at a marina in Eastport.  By the time we finished we knew even with the extra motoring we weren’t making the Rhode that night.  We didn’t even manage to find a comfy spot to anchor in Annapolis harbor for the night, we ended up moving to the nearby Whitehall Bay for the night.

Wednesday morning was clear, with the wind shifted enough so we could make the sail to the Rhode River with easy.  With a quick breakfast we weighed the anchor and finally sailed to the Rhodeto wait for the Gam.

Posted in Chesapeake, passages, shoals | Comments Off on The Rest of the Trip to Annapolis…

Fast trip, slow posts…

On Sep 30th, 2012 Published By B.J.

Certainly I’ve been a little remiss in catching up my my blog posts, but we’ve been busy since we hit the Chesapeake.  The trip down here was surprisingly uneventful.  Fun, pretty fast, and really almost two separate trips tacked together.

Leaving Block Island behind was in some ways more nostalgic and sad than leaving our hometown of Warwick a couple of days before.  Since we started sailing and gained the confidence to leave Narragansett Bay with our boat some dozen years or more ago, Block Island has been a staple of our summer cruising itineraries.  It’s a relatively short trip from where we used to keep the boat.  June or July weekends with long days if we had our act together we could leave our mooring and make it to the anchorage there while it was still light (or…not too dark at least), or we could head out part way and be anchored out in time for lunch on shore.  While it’s a small island, there are some nice restaurants, nature trails, bike rides and beaches.   Saying goodbye to where we worked and lived didn’t seem awful, but letting go of one of our favorite playgrounds left me feeling a bit maudlin. 

The weather prediction for a departure last Sunday was perfect though, Northwesterly/Westerly winds that were strong without being excessive.  Although our wild ride back from Maine was fast, we’d still rather get there with a lot less excitement and queasiness.  The forecasts promised a good sail without a lot of maneuvering.  And it held.  We left Block Island, set our sails and pointed South with the wind over our starboard side.  And it stayed there all day and all night, with one small exception for about 45 minutes in the middle of the night where the wind inexplicably disappeared.  We slept, we ate, we talked and laughed and we covered a lot of water quickly.  One thing that surprised us about this trip was that we saw a lot less wildlife than we did going North to Maine, other than a few sea birds and a Flicker (yes, a small woodpecker got lost and hitched a ride) that joined us for a bit we really didn’t see much even though the waters were a bit warmer. 

One thing we didn’t realize about heading to Annapolis first until we looked at our charts was quite how far up the Chesapeake it was.  The Chesapeake is a pretty large body of water, and Annapolis is WAY up North.  Doing some research on the trip we discovered that it was some 40-50 miles shorter to head up the Delaware Bay and catch the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal across to the Chesapeake then head back the fifty miles or so South to Annapolis.  So that was the plan, head to the Delaware Bay and go up and around.  The Delaware Bay didn’t seem to have a lot of comfortable looking places to stop and anchor and is a busy shipping area, so we figured if we needed a rest we could head into Cape May for a bit or we’d have to just keep on going.  Part II of what seemed like two distinctly different trips.

After leaving Block Island around 8:45 on Sunday morning, we arrived at Cape May near 12:30 p.m Monday.  This, we knew would be the end of our fast, easy sailing as we would no longer be going Southwest, but had to turn Northwest and go right into the wind we’d been riding for the last day.  Since the sail down was easy we were well rested and comfortable and decided to press on for the Canal.

The entrance of the Delaware Bay near Cape May was trickier than expected, the shoals in this area seemed to have only a loose connection to what was charted.  We passed a survey boat on the way in that appeared to be trying to sort this out, but we had a few alarming incidents but passed unscathed.  When the chart says 30 feet of water and the depth sounder is registering four feet under the keel and dropping it does get the adrenalin flowing.  But we picked our way through and entered the channels and headed North.  Just after sunset we arrived at the Canal.  With good luck we caught it when the tides were favorable to go through.

The Canal was an almost otherwordly passage that night.  It is well lit with lights every 500 feet or so on either side, but much of it beyond those lights is just dark.  The wind was still and the water was like glass.  The air temperature had dropped enough to cause the water to start giving off a light mist; scenic but not enough to hamper visibility.  We didn’t see a single other vessel the entire length of the canal in either direction, though we did have to pass under five bridges and several sets of overhead wires and pipes.  Those are all a little unnerving because although the charted height is 135 feet overhead, when you are going under a bridge it always looks lower than than.  Even with more than sixty feet assured clearance between our masthead and the bridges, the angle you are viewing them from the deck makes it look like you are about to hit each bridge right up until you are under it.

As we progressed from Delaware into Maryland the shores of the canal became more interesting.  Some houses appeared, and Chesapeake City slid past with shore side restaurants and buildings lit up with a waterfront carnival atmosphere.  The mist was building and adding a slightly surreal glow to the waterfront homes and docks as motored past.  Sadly, capturing those images from the deck of a moving boat at night is beyond my skill as a photographer but the memory will persist for some time.

By the time we left the canal it was getting late and we were not ready to brave the busy shipping channels in unfamiliar waters on a dark night.  We tucked into the first likely spot to anchor and spent the night, catching our rest and thinking about the rest of our journey the next day.

Posted in Block Island, Chesapeake, Delaware Bay, Off Shore, passages | Comments Off on Fast trip, slow posts…

Heading South

On Sep 23rd, 2012 Published By B.J.

Short post this morning, as we are heading South for the Chesapeake in an hour or so.  I’ve been remiss in my posts for the last week and a half because it’s been, well not super exciting.

We stopped by “home”, and I put that in quotes because it’s didn’t feel so much like home, for a week to tie up some loose ends and make some final visits to friends and family.  Working on the refrigeration in a marina and getting our house sorted out for tenants isn’t the material for fiery blog entries.  The most interesting aspect was that it took so little time for our home town to not feel like home, but someplace we had to stop to deal with a bunch of stuff.

Today marks a new point in the adventure.  Maine was cool, but cruising there wasn’t new – we were there in 2010 and had some idea of what to expect.

From this point forward we are cruising in waters we’ve never cruised in, expanding our world beyond our comfort zone and into the unknown.  Yes, the Cheseapeake and beyond is known, but not to us as sailors.  Every place is a bit different and takes some discovering.  Block Island, one of our favorite cruising destinations is a suitable stepping off point – we will miss it these next few years.

Leaving Block Island we ware sailing to Cape May, New Jersey then up the Delaware Bay, through the Delaware to Chesapeake Canal and down to Annapolis where we plan to meet a bunch of cruisers at a Seven Seas Cruising Association “Gam”, which is a boating meetup and social event.  We should be in the Annapolis area for the next week or two, catching the Gam and the Annapolis boat show before we head further down to explore the Chesapeake for the month of October.

After October, things get really interesting when we join a rally in Hampdon, Virgina and sail to the British Virgin Islands in the beginning of November.

Posts may be sporadic for the next few days as we make our passages, but I will catch you all up when we get to Annapolis.

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Evenstar Academy

On Sep 13th, 2012 Published By B.J.

School started back before Labor Day.  Evenstar Academy is open for business!

Dress Code:  Yes, you must be dressed. No Pajamas allowed.

School Hours: 0800 until we’re done with the day’s lesson plan

Curricula:   Calvert School 7th Grade, Keystone School 10th Grade (including American History, Geometry, Biology and English)

Campus:  Saloon & Cockpit of Evenstar; field trips TBD as needed.  To really cool places.

The routine is pretty simple, the kids get up and get ready which is a lot simpler and easier.  Colors go up at 0800 and school starts.  The night before Kathy has reviewed the days lesson plans (while I surf the web or read a book) so she knows exactly what we need to set out to accomplish.

Each of the curricula have an outline for a rough day of work on each subject.  Unlike traditional school you can be a bit more flexible about what you do and where.

As expected the actual time commitment is a lot less for a full day’s work.  If you consider the time lost in a school day, from changing classes, going to the locker, breaks and recesses, waiting while other kids ask questions you don’t need answers to, and the “business” of school such as handing back papers, collecting work and so on – it moves at your pace, not the group’s.  Without so much wasted time we can cover a full day of school most days by not much later than 1:00. Without the extra hours of homework for which everyone is appreciative.

No longer locked into the Monday-Friday, long summer break agrarian model of the U.S. schools, we can work on the days we want to and take the days off when we see fit.  Let every one else make up the weekend crowds, we can do school on a Saturday and beat the crowds on a Tuesday.  We plan “do school” year round with some shorter breaks when we need them for passage-making or particularly special events.

Sure, there are disadvantages.  You don’t get the social aspects of schooling and team sports are pretty much a non-starter.  Both children miss that end of school, especially Will who had such a great time with High School Sailing in ninth grade.  A variety of teachers with better subject knowledge and formal education training of course provide an advantage, though they will never know their students strengths and weaknesses the way you know your own child.

Both of us are involved…but mom seems to be the preferred instructor.  One of us graduated Magna Cum Laude from a prestigious university, the other one graduated Magna Cum Barely…the difference tells in our approach to eduction.  Kathy drives the process and I pinch hit or jump in where there are topics that I know particularly well or am fond of, or there are tasks like reviewing and quizzing to do.  And of course I’m around to ask confusing and irrelevant questions at all times.

What is really cool about it is our direct hands on involvement in our kids education.  We know exactly what they are studying, so we can draw what we are experiencing in the real world now (or what we have experienced before) into their lessons and bring out their lessons into the world.  For which they are eternally grateful (Daaad!  We’re done with school today, OK?).  But how many kids that have studied Darwin’s finches are going to get to sail to the Galapagos Islands, or visit historic forts and installations when they study American History?

Posted in Home Schooling | 5 Comments

Wild Ride!

On Sep 12th, 2012 Published By B.J.

The ride from Maine back to Points South was a wild, fast one.  Because of our boat though, it wasn’t so wet!

After labor day we started watching for our window to sail back South to Rhode Island, where we have a few things to attend to before heading for the Chesapeake.  Some of the big concerns were several tropical storms and hurricanes that were making their way North.  Even if you never come near them or see a cloud or drop of rain from a Hurricane it can make it’s presence known hundreds of miles away.

When it became clear that Hurricane Leslie wasn’t going to come North and clobber us, and apparently was going to meander out to see while a high pressure system came in and brought in a couple of days of Northerly winds…it was time to go.

Weather forecasting is something we’re still developing our skills with.  The U.S. Government provides some pretty decent marine forecasts through NOAA, covering large scale areas and general trends.  Also extensive weather maps and products are available there and also via WeatherFax on Single Sideband Radio.  There are specialized weather routers that you pay for their analysis (we’re not doing this yet…), weather nets on the radio, weather forums on the internet, weather sites on the internet.

Just about the only thing that is absolutely no use at all is the weather you get on TV.  Sorry folks, that’s pretty much useful to let you know if you should carry an umbrella or skip your plans to go to the beach.  It’s not going to help you when you REALLY, REALLY care about the wind strength and direction in detail, never mind wave heights and directions and fronts coming through.

As best we could figure it, the predicted wind was to be 15-20 knots from the North and/or Northwest, with gusts up to 25 knots.  Also there was expected to be some long swells from the offshore hurricane that was passing by, 7-9 foot rollers.  Swells aren’t such a big problem when you sail, you just sort of roll over them.  That wind direction and strength was perfect for us; the wind would be on the beam, or on a broad reach for most of the trip. (Tech note for you non sailors: a ‘Beam Reach’ is wind roughly 90 degrees from the bow of the boat, a Broad Reach is the wind slightly aft of a Beam Reach, up to about 135 degrees from the bow.  Both are amongst the fastest and easiest places for the wind to be).  Evenstar loves a lot of wind like that and we expected a fast sail.

The good news for the trip was the direction was spot on.  Evenstar took off from Mt. Desert Island like a rocket and when we passed Long Island into the Gulf of Maine we were beam reaching along at over 9 knots of speed with our main sail, staysail, and Genoa all full and drawing.  The sky was clear and the sun was shining and we were fast.  Typically we plan our trips with a cruising speed of roughly 6 knots; this is to allow for light winds, tacking, sailing out of the way, current and other forces which can bring your average speed down.  With nine knots under way we were covering a lot of water!

As the day wore on we enjoyed watching shearwaters and gannets flying around the boat, and passed a school of tuna making explosive splashes as they fed at the surface.  Towards afternoon some cloud cover started to come in and the wind started to pick up.  Shortly after we started reefing the sails.  As we started thinking about dinner the wind picked up more, and by the time it was in the thirties we had struck the Genoa (the large front sail) and reefed the main sail down to a fraction of it’s size.  We were still making 8-9 knots and more consistently.  By now the rollers from the Southeast seemed to disappear and were replaced by steeper, large waves being pushed by the Northwest winds.

By sunset we were racing along with minimal sail area, with winds constantly around 30 knots, gusting up to 35.  The waves built to about eight to ten feet, and we raced along with reefed down sails, sometimes surfing off large waves hitting speeds as high as 13 knots.

In the dark, with big waves, wind and high boat speed…it’s easy to get your inner ear out of sync with your surroundings.  The end result of this is seasickness.  If you make a few unwise choices in what you eat, it can make it worse.  During the course of the night everyone at some point felt a little dodgy.  The kids were most able to lie down and sleep which is the best remedy and neither of them fared to badly.  I ended up with the worst of it as I was doing my best to stand my watches and sail the boat.  The lack of a horizon on a dark night seems to make me more susceptible to this as I’ve gotten older – next passage I am breaking our one of the Scopalamine patches well in advance and not taking any chances.

The good side of all of this was that Evenstar handled this wind and weather, showing off her quality of build and seaworthiness.  There was never a second of doubt that this weather was even making her break a sweat.  Evenstar has a hard dodger, all Hallberg-Rassey yachts have a wind screen, and the hard dodger is usually an option.  What does this mean?  It means all the spray and waves tend to stay out of the cockpit, and you stay pretty dry.  Not always warm since it’s open to the wind from behind but it does break most of the wind and water.  When you see the waves forcefully spraying the windows instead of you…you become a believer!

The children enjoyed some gaudy shows of phosphorescence as we made some huge wakes and waves as the boat surged and powered through the water.  As the night grew old a quarter moon rose, giving more light than expected.  Before this the stars and planets were clear and glittering, with the moon they faded somewhat.  But there is little light pollution thirty miles from land and you could see more stars when the clouds pulled back.  As they did, the winds receded a bit as well.

By the time we passed Provincetown the wind had dropped to the predicted 20’s gusting to 25.  Still we powered through the water at 8-9 knots.  The morning dawned bright and clear as we reached the Cape Cod Canal less than 23 hours after leaving Southwest Harbor.  As luck had it we caught the canal’s tides perfectly.

Since no one slept well the night before with all the bucking, rolling and noise from the wind we decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and stopping in the late morning in Mattapoissett would be best for the crew to catch our breath, pick up everything that flew off the shelves, and get ready for the last stage back to Rhode Island in a day or two.

Posted in Cape Cod Canal, excitement, Maine, Provincetown | Comments Off on Wild Ride!

Goodbye, Maine!

On Sep 12th, 2012 Published By B.J.

It is with heavy hearts that we pulled up our anchor one last time and headed South from Maine.

Not one of us really wanted to leave, even though the crisp chill at night and at sunrise was foreboding more and more signs of fall and winter.

All of us saw so many interesting things and had so many good times that it saddened us to realize our time was up.  We’d like to be in the Chesapeake and to Annapolis by the end of September, and we need to spend a little time in our old stomping grounds in Rhode Island to clear up some loose ends and say some final goodbyes to friends and family.  So coming up to last weekend, we saw the wind turning North on Sunday night and our weather window opening for a quick sail – so we took it.

If you’ve not been following all the posts, we’ve done some really neat things here and I think we all had some things we loved a little more or differently than the others.  Speaking for myself, I love the quiet mornings at anchor, the rugged beauty of the islands and mountains, the abundant and varied wildlife, the quaint and neat towns, the helpful people, and of course the first rate lobsters!

For Danielle, I know the wildlife and animals were particularly special.  No day was complete for her unless she saw a seal (pretty much every day was complete), the porpoises made her smile and the eagles, ospreys, loons and ducks were a never ending source of amusement.  Particularly special to her were the Puffins on Eastern Egg Rock, and a small flock of well groomed sheep at the Blue Hill Fair.

Day in and day out Will was in a constant thrall from the parade of gorgeous boats.  From the Hinckley sailboats (his favorite) and power boats, to the windjammers and gaff rigged sloops and schooners – as he put it he could go days without seeing an ugly boat.  Even most of the lobster boats were notably more trim than we are used to down South, and there were a lot of interesting boats derived from the basic lobster boat around.  He certainly enjoyed the wildlife too, but boats are one of his passions.

I can’t speak so much for Kathy, I know we enjoyed a lot of the family time together but I’m hoping to get her to find her voice out here too.  All the wildlife and natural beauty, walks in woods, and the peace and quiet you didn’t have to look hard to find – we enjoyed these together.

We are all sad to know that it will be many years before we can come back this way again.  Our long term plans have us being our of North America for some time before we can be back.  But this summer we banked a lot of memories!

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Blue Hill

On Sep 4th, 2012 Published By B.J.

Another lovely and quaint waterfront town in Maine.  Blue Hill is a pretty harbor; small with a lot of mooring balls and very little anchoring space, but protected and full of birds and gorgeous boats and homes.

Blue Hill.  The actual hill.

Getting into town can be a little tricky, as there is an Inner and Outer harbor.  The inner harbor is spacious, but the end near town is shallow.  So shallow that the town dock is high and dry at low tide.  It looks deceptive because there appears to be water, until you look more closely and realize the seagulls are standing on the mud.  So you’ve got a window about two hours or so on either side of high tide to get into town, get your business done, and get back to your dinghy and get out of Dodge before the tide leaves you sitting there for 6-8 hours.  The other alternative is to dock your dinghy at the Kollegewidgwok Yacht Club (try saying that three times fast…over the radio) and making the 1.7 mile trek into town.  Not a bad walk and pretty.

Fortunately it’s not that big of a place, though it is on the mainland and you can walk to more normal stores if you are persistent.  But the local food co-op and the small grocery and variety store were enough for us.  Surprisingly reasonable prices right near the town dock really take your motivation to schlep groceries several miles on a cart.  You just have to time it right.

Saw some pigs, but they were
much bigger than Wilbur

One of the biggest attractions in Blue Hill during the year is one we lucked into, something that we didn’t even realize was going on until we decided to go.  And that as the Blue Hill Fair.

The Blue Hill Fair was the inspiration for the country fair in Charlotte’s Web.  E.B. White lived near here, and had some familiarity with it.  The Blue Hill Fair is a “Country Fair” in the old style, with livestock and produce judging competitions, horse racing and pulling, horse shows, animal demonstrations and crafts.  But it is also blended with a carnival fair, having the foods and smells, musical acts and attractions, and midway rides and games.

Fair food in America these days sometimes borders on the terrifying; quite a few of the vendors have pushed the envelope on just what you can batter and fry.  I’d steeled myself to try a deep fried Twinkie, just on general principles so I could blog about it after having been horrified by the concept for so long.  But unbelievably I couldn’t find one, though one could get deep fried Oreos, pickles, candy bars and other improbable items they just didn’t have the same reverse appeal.

Pulling twice their weight!

But we did have some decent barbecue, grilled sausages, hot dogs, “French” waffle sundaes, Apple & Bluberry Crisp (not together) and fried dough.  Typical Fair fare, without venturing into “Man vs. Food” or “Fear Factor” territory where that Twinkie would have taken us.  Avoid the “Texas Style Onion Rings”; after eating little more than one of them I felt like I’d swallowed a water logged softball.

We watched a few heats of the draft horse pulling competition.  These HUGE horses are amazing to watch.  The competition is pretty straightforward; two pounds of weight per pound of horse is piled on a sled behind the team.  They are given five minutes to drag the weight as far as they can.  They do it in fits and starts, and it is amazing to see the power in these animals as they bear down and haul this weight.  The first team we saw was pulling 6,820 pounds of weight; those horses made the ones in the picture above look positively svelte.  I can’t say the horses looked like they were having as much fun as the crowds watching them, but what a spectacular showcase for these incredible powerful animals.

In the “not quite so mighty” demonstration category were the Hot Dog Pig Races.  Danielle was tapped as a volunteer to finish the races, and was equipped with a broom, dustpan, and dust mask to handle any “accidents”.  The races themselves were silly and a cute show.  They were either four baby pigs given silly names and raced around a circular track, or four dachshunds who were given the hilarious indignity of wearing hotdog bun costumes for their first race.  The sight of four wiener dogs racing around an obstacle course that included having them go “over under or through” a tire obstacle was pretty cute.  Sadly the battery on the one camera we had with us died right before Post Time.
 

Yeah, I had that song stuck in my head the whole
time I was watching this.

Also on the docket was a Maine Lumberjack Show.   Demonstrations include an axe throwing contest, a humorous chainsaw carving sketch, underhand chopping and log rolling.  There are some serious competitions held every year for some of these, though one gets the impression that the lumber industry in 2012 isn’t quite the same hand-axe-and-flannel-shirt picture that the industry was a century ago.  This group performs their demonstrations at fairs and crowds, and use some amusing sketches and gags to liven it up and were quite fun to watch.

We also caught some local bands including a fun blues/rock combo called “The Bad Daddies” who looked to be well, my age.  Daddies.  There were other bands, a comic circus act, Frisbee catching dogs, animal demonstrations and to cap off the event this year they held a Monster Truck “Night of Destruction”.  We watched them lining up wrecked cars for the event, but decided not to stick around for it.  The fairgrounds were almost a three mile walk from where we parked the dinghy and everyone was getting tired.

As the day ended we watched some of the animals get packed up and saw the very amusing “Carrot Race” at the end of the horse shows.  Billed as a  “non scored” fun event, it involved each rider racing their horse as fast as they could up the ring to a barrel on which a carrot was waiting.  The rider was then to jump off the horse at the barrel, grab the carrot, and convince the horse to follow them back to the start line of the race with the carrot.  Some of them were pretty funny, highlighting both the personalities of the horses (some sneaky little devils trying to get the carrots) to and their riders, who varied from shy young novice girls to confident women that sprinted down the course with the carrot held behind their backs.

Eventually we headed out for the long walk back to the boat.  A tired but happy group eventually got back to the boat as the sun was getting ready to set.

Not shockingly, no one wanted any dinner.

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Posted in Fair, Maine | Comments Off on Blue Hill