Waiting for the Earl

On Sep 2nd, 2010 Published By B.J.

Well the Great Maine Expedition of 2010 is drawing to a close – I’ve got pictures and updates coming but we’re a bit more focused on the unwanted visitor coming up he East Coast…

From this picture, and since the state of Maine just went under just went under Tropical Storm Watch, looks like we’re going to get a bit of a pasting.

Our storm strategy, after much deliberation over moving from our current location in Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island to someplace West (away from the storm in theory and closer to home) or South (closer to home), is tha we decided that discretion is the better part of valor and leaving a well built mooring in a fairly protected harbor on the edge of the storm’s path for a more uncertain location didn’t seem wise.

So the decision was made and would NOT bring the boat  back Labor Day weekend as originally planned but we would leave it here and I would bring it back later with friends.  Our thinking was that going West to someplace like Portland wasn’t adding any real protection and it wasn’t getting us that much closer to home.  No matter what we weren’t making it back in time for school by water so making a long trip in the wrong direction for a negligible increase in security made no sense.  Going South seemed counter intuitive since that was into the storm and we’d have to leave several days before the storm to be assured of avoiding it. It could also mean chopping the vacation in half over a threat that might never materialize, and in general Maine seems to take fewer hurricane hits that RI.

Besides, it would give us a couple of additional days here on Mount Desert Island which is an awesome spot. But that wasn’t really a consideration…just a bonus and the subject of another post anyway.

So here we are in Maine battening down for the storm.  well not battening much yet, it’s not due until late Friday / early AM Saturday so we will batten a bit this morning then probably play for another day and finish battening down tomorrow. I don’t want to spend the next day tripping over sails and canvas down below until I have to.

If you are on the various e-mail lists for on line marine suppliers (I am…not surprisingly) you’ve been getting breathless “get your chafe gear NOW!!!” e-mails for the last couple of days.  So yesterday I headed over to Hamilton Marine in Southwest Harbor, which was a pleasant dinghy ride through porpoise infested waters I made with my son.  Again…another post.

Going there I prepared Kathy for the worst: some new dock lines maybe, snubbers, chafe gear, etc.  I got walking with the fellow in the store who had all the appearance of a local lobsterman that ducked off the boat for a minute to sell me some gear.  After talking with him about where I was and what I had on the boat his recommendation for “the absolute best chafe protection” that everyone locally uses?  A roll of Gorilla Tape – total cost $9.99 plus tax.

Somehow I feel I’m not doing enough, not having come away with several hundred dollars worth of additional protection for the boat.  Nothing but a $10 roll of tape just seems so…minimalist.  But I’ve reviewed my plans with some other local folks and they seem to agree that attaching four BIG dock lines to the mooring while taping them heavily where they touch anything combined with stripping off anything loose that can catch wind will leave us as safe as can possibly be.

The major decision left is to whether the conditions will be bad enough that we should watch the potential destruction of our boat from a hotel on land or stay on board to monitor things and adjust chafe gear as needed.  I’m thinking that cutoff is somewhere around 50 knots of predicted wind…

————–

As a side note…it was not at all amusing to me that in all the concern for the storm here and now I’d completely overlooked the small matter of my house which is about 100 feet from the water back in RI.  Fortunately my parents are there to remind me that maybe I should think about that too.  Yes, please tie down the porch furniture so it doesn’t fly through the picture windows if you get a minute!

It looks like RI will take a harder hit than Maine will since the storm will probably be a Category 2 when it grazes RI and be down to a Category 1 or even Tropical Storm by the time it gets here.  So it’s better that Evenstar is here but not so great for the house.

Posted in hurricane, Maine, yikes | Comments Off on Waiting for the Earl

Falling Behind…and it’s Still Summer!

On Aug 16th, 2010 Published By B.J.

Here it is mid August and I’ve not posted an update since mid June.  It’s not that we’ve been idle, just the opposite – we’ve been quite busy.  Every available weekend we’ve been somewhere and even some unavailable ones.  I will try to assemble a brief trip log here, time permitting (ha ha) I will come back and flesh them out a bit.  Destinations include Block Island a couple more times, Cuttyhunk, Martha’s Vineyard, Stonington CT, and Dutch Harbor for Jr. Race Week.  Spinnakers were flown, night sailing done, a new member of the fleet was added and I committed various humiliating acts on my Laser.  And of course we are planning for “The Great Maine Expedition of 2010” which starts this Saturday and runs through Labor Day.  I really am quite far behind.

So briefly with few details (e.g. where or if we stopped Friday night, various and sundry evening sails, day sails etc), in reverse order which is the order of clarity of the memories…

8/13 – 8/15:  Dutch Harbor, Jamestown, RI
The NBYA Jr. Olympics (aka “Race Week” though it happened on a weekend this year) were held out of Ft. Getty on Jamestown last weekend.  My son was racing Lasers and my wife was on call so I parked Evenstar in Dutch Harbor to shorten the race day commute from 40+ minutes to a five minute dinghy ride.  Excellent way do the regatta, hanging with friends who did the same thing and watching the kids sail. We sailed the kids from my daughter’s sailing class with us on Friday to end their season too which was fun.

8/6 – 8/9: Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard
This was our first trip back to the Vineyard in two or three years.  We sailed to Cuttyhunk Friday night arriving well after dark and anchoring in an unpleasant Northerly.  Up early Saturday and in Oak Bluffs by 9:15, we picked up a mooring and had a pleasant three day weekend on the island.  Monday we sailed home much of the way, though it was a beat from the Buzzards Bay Tower to Newport.

7/30 – 8/1: Block Island
Yeah, we went there again.  We’ve done Block Island a lot this year, frequently because we’re either meeting people there or taking people that haven’t been in a while.  That’s fine with me, it’s a fun place to go – this time we took my parents who’d not gotten out with us all year and were likely to only be able to do one weekend due to scheduling.  This time we had great breeze on the way home and sailed pretty much from the harbor exit at Block to the entrance to Greenwich Cove.  We set the spinnaker South of the Jamestown Bridge and flew it all the way up the bay, doing a conservative take down near Patience Island.

7/24 – No Trip…Kathy on Call

7/17 – 7/18: Block Island

Short weekend with family in town Friday night, so BI is the obvious destination if you can’t leave until Saturday Morning and need to get off shore.  Got up EARLY and got to the island early too.  Sailing home was awesome, we set the spinnaker outside of the BI harbor entrance and flew it all the way to the North end of Jamestown, where the wind shifted too North to carry it any more.  What a day, we cracked 10+ knots over the bottom when the breeze piped up off Pt. Judith and successfully jibed the spinnaker a couple of times.

7/9 – 7/11: Cuttyhunk via Newport
Nice weekend in spite of the weather predictions.  We got some sailing in and saw our first rain storm on the new radar right before it hit us.  It was weird weather, because Cutty seemed to be in a circle of sunshine, with clouds all around on the mainland and the Vineyard.  I’m not complaining, it was a great trip and sadly our only extended stay at Cuttyhunk this summer.

7/1 – 7/5: Block Island
For the Fourth of July we met friends on Block Island once again.  Crowded, but fun being rafted up with friends.  My original plan was to bring the boat out Thursday to secure a good anchorage.  As it turned out we used Evenstar to bring a bunch of kids to Newport on Thursday to see the America’s Cup, so my two kids and I were able to jump off from Newport to get the boat to Block Island.  We had a nice, fast motor sail out there (I didn’t want to use the main since the radar mount was having problems and I couldn’t use much back stay tension) and anchored the boat.  Kathy had to work ad joined us Friday by ferry.  The details of the ride home escape me, but I know we didn’t sail much due to the back stay concerns.


6/26: Quonset Air Show
Great platform for watching the air show, we took some friends and family for the day since Kathy was on call and Will had a Laser regatta Sunday anyway.

6/18-6/20: Stonington, CT via Dutch Harbor
Although we can drive there by car in under an hour Stonington seemed a cool place to go.  We were looking for something different anyway since we knew there were several Block Island trips on the horizon, so we left Friday night after GBSA orientation night and stayed in Dutch Harbor.  Stonington is a lovely town and a nice destination.  While a little challenged for good ice cream spots, Noah’s restaurant is ample compensation – we ended up there for dinner and breakfast the next day.  The kids had fun sailing the new dinghy around (more on that later…separate post) the harbor and the town is small but charming.  A nice change of pace, though we picked up a mooring since the anchorage did not seem very accessible.

So the rough travel log is there, so I won’t forget it if I ever feel the need to expand on it.  There are many details to add, but  the big trip is coming up.  This Saturday we leave for a two week vacation (our first ever) to Maine.  Our place is to stop in Provincetown en route, then go straight to Penobscot Bay on an over night through whale infested waters.

Posted in Block Island, Cuttyhunk, Dutch Harbor, Oak Bluffs, Quonset, Stonington | Comments Off on Falling Behind…and it’s Still Summer!

Trip Reports – Block Island and Block Island

On Jun 15th, 2010 Published By B.J.

Yeah, it sounds a little repetitive.  But Block Island at this time of year is nice.  It’s a little too cool for the beaches but there aren’t any crowds.  All of the restaurants are pretty much open and there are few waits.  The only crowds are associated with sail boat racing which is not, in my view, a bad thing at all.

Trip #1 – Memorial Day
Memorial Day weekend we were still scrambling to get the boat ready for human habitation but we got off to an early start on Saturday morning.  It was a lovely day with wind dead on the nose for Block Island.  This is a common phenomena and one of our least favorite things about the trip to Block Island – the prevailing winds in this area run about 70% from the Southwest.  Which is also pretty much the course you steer to get to Block Island.   In addition it means you usually have a significant downwind trip home too, unless you run into the dreaded Sunday Northeasterly which seems to be unnaturally common given the percentages.

Impatient to get there after all of our work to leave we opted to motor instead of tacking all the way there in very light air when we left early in the morning.  With favorable tide we made a quick passage out, though the wind picked up it stayed dead on the nose.  We had a lot of friends racing out there and knew they’d be beating the whole way, but we just didn’t have the patience.  So we motored out while we played with the new electronics – running the radar on a clear sunny day so we could test it and learn it.  We were quite impressed by the time we arrived on Block just over four hours later.

With a lot of friends from our yacht club on the Island we had a nice weekend with friends and family.  Staying out too late, drinking a little too much and eating well – but that’s part of meeting everyone there for sure.  We woke up ready to leave on Monday with predictions of Southeasterly winds – exciting!  After a nice breakfast in town we headed back to the boat.

What a ride home, the Southeasterly winds filled and we had a fast, lovey sail home.  Reaching across Block Island Sound under full sail was a great way to stretch Evenstar’s legs after a long cold winter of dark and work.  Even heading up the bay when we turned to more of a down wind run the breeze was steady and strong.  Sailing all but a couple of miles of the trip is nice, and unusually so since on a weekend trip the pressure is to get there! in both directions since your time is so limited once you actually arrive.  Having good breeze to make a timely trip as a pleasure we don’t seem to get enough of trying to sandwich weekend jaunts between work weeks.

Trip #2 – Back to the Block
OK, we could have done this one in a Trawler and it wouldn’t have been much difference.

One nice thing about June trips is that it is light late, so if you leave early enough you can get where you are going Friday night and still drop the hook while there is daylight.  Of course…you really want to get there.  Again wind on the nose, and foul current to boot.  But we were going to make it Friday night, especially since the forecast for Saturday had the day starting to deteriorate into rain as it progressed.

For the first time we got to experience why I went through the trouble to install an AIS receiver.  For those late to the party, the Automated Identification System allows information about a vessel to be broadcast over a standard VHF frequency in digital format.  This includes information like the name, size, course, speed and destination of the vessel.  The information is limited by the same line of sight distance as VHF radio but with an antenna mounted on top of a mast you can often pick up detailed data on a ship well before you see it on radar or visually. 

This is helpful for a lot of reasons, but it does have limitations.  The refresh rate is fairly low, so fast moving vessels may not update on your screen as fast as they are actually moving.  With any of these tools you still have to use your brain, your eyes and some common sense.  But it is another too.  And the best thing about it?  You get the ship name. 

Many years ago when we took a trip across the gulf stream the most unnerving thing out there were the tankers.  Fast, huge and tough to turn – they can appear on the horizon and overtake you in half an hour.  If there is concern of a collision it is wise to contact the ship to let them know of your presence (sailboats are hard to see, and they could run a small boat down and not even know it if you didn’t scratch the paint up too much) and to make sure they know of any course changes you (and they) are making to avoid contact.  Of course raising on them on the radio when you don’t have their name is sometimes difficult…by the time you can read the name off the bow it is usually too late to worry about talking to them.  In theory they are supposed to have an English language radio operator…in practice, hailing the “East bound ship in the general vicinity of XX.xx by YY.yy this is the sailing vessel Evenstar” rarely gets a response.  Hailing the “Kobayashi Maru” by name on the shipping channels…that gets an answer.

So we had our first civil chat with a commercial vessel, where he indicated his preference for our taking his stern not crossing his bow and all drama was avoided.  Very nice.  Uneventful, unexciting.  Utterly thrilling.

The trip home was in fog, with visibility from 1/2 out to one full mile for much of the way.  I’ve never had such a clear picture of what was happening out there, and it felt really nice.  The only unfortunate thing on the trip was the wind – the dreaded Northeasterly all the way home which basically amounts to a motor slog if there’s not time to spend 6-7 hours beating back and forth up the bay.

We’re headed out again next weekend, and looking for something different.  We’re expecting a new arrival in the family this week – a little package that comes with sails, not diapers, so a nice dinghy friendly harbor with some good exploration potential is on the horizon.

Posted in Block Island, Electronics, Fog | 1 Comment

Ghosts in the Machine…

On Jun 14th, 2010 Published By B.J.

So nothing goes off perfectly and this electronics installation is no different.  This past weekend we found a couple of glitches, mostly to do with my skill at assembling “Field Installable” NMEA 2000 connectors.  These are a necessary evil unless you want to drill giant holes all over your boat to accommodate the huge connector heads even the smaller cables have.

Running cables has probably been the most time consuming part of the project.  If you don’t want the inside of your boat looking like one of these places you need to spend some time removing ceiling and floor panels, cabinetry, furniture, etc. and snaking cables through the hidden areas of the boat.  It looks nice if you do it right and awful if you do it wrong.  Of course of your cables attach to things that go outside the boat you actually need to worry about water leaks too…but I digress.

This weekend we saw a little oddness with the NMEA data that was displayed.  When one of the displays showed our “Speed Over Ground” at 199 knots I figured something might be up.  Using the Maretron N2K Analyzer (I figured I’d need this expensive thing so I bought it pre-emptively…I was right) I was able to isolate the problem to a poorly made Micro Cable connector I had on the GPS.  That seemed to sort it out.

There are still other integration issues to resolve – for example the Multi Function Displays are still not reliably showing course information to the other display units and there are still the occasional lockups on the MFD’s (these may be related to my babbling N2K Cable…) but overall it is working smoothly.

I’ve still got a long punch down list and the entire autopilot installation to complete but as it stands now we’ve got a good solid functioning core set of gear.

Posted in Electronics | Comments Off on Ghosts in the Machine…

Hasta Luego Little Friend

On Jun 4th, 2010 Published By B.J.

Recently the family fleet got one smaller.  Forgot to mention this highly unusual development, we seem to keep acquiring boats, not shedding them.  Anyway our kids have outgrown the little Skimmar dinghy and we sold it on Craig’s list. 

In about twenty minutes.  And nearly had a slap fight in the parking lot of the marina where the boat was between potential buyers.  Perhaps I didn’t ask enough for it.

Great little boat for the money, but my son has grown about two feet taller since getting it and is almost as tall as me and my daughter could barely fit either.  There is a new family sailing dink in the works…details to follow.

Posted in Skimmar | 4 Comments

Field Report #1 – the New Electronics!

On Jun 3rd, 2010 Published By B.J.

So the Memorial Day trip to Block Island gave us a chance to check out the new electronics and see how it all works.  It was a clear beautiful weekend and a gorgeous trip out and back, perfect conditions to test and play.  Being able to see with the MkI Eyeball what the Radar is showing lets you know it’s working.

And it is working – very, very well.

In a word:  Cool.

Being able to SEE things out there and now where they are when your eyes are blind is nice.  And somewhat novel since our old radar was OK but antiquated.  The small CRT tube on the nav station showed some monochrome blips that were usually where they were supposed to be.

The NEW radar shows a lot more blips with a lot more accuracy.  We saw crystal clear returns off of small Quahog boats (14-18 foot power boats usually made of fiberglass and sometimes wood), sailboats where as clear as day and we even got a faint return off a kayak.

But more than that new radar has lot of of “Stuff” tied to it that the old one just couldn’t do.  Like overlays over charts so the blips appear on the chart which helps you determine what’s a government mark and what’s a boat.  And ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid), which allows the radar to acquire “Targets” and then calculate their course, speed, turn rate and flag any intercept threats.  And AIS (Automated Identification System), which is a VHF signal required on commercial vessels giving their name, course, speed, destination, size, etc. etc.  VERY useful when figuring out where that huge thing is going and getting you a name to hail long before you can pick it out on the binoculars.  In fact the AIS can “see” ships that the Radar can not, being that they are both “line of sight” but the AIS signal is received 80 feet above the water and the Radar is only 18-20 feet over the water.

And all this stuff actually worked – we could see AIS signals from ships 10+ miles away or further and track other boats with ease.  On a clear day, it’s cool.  In the fog it gives you a lot more margin for error.  Of course you can’t keep your head in the boat twiddling the dials and staring at a screen, you have to use your eyes and ears but every little bit of extra data helps.

The other instruments all worked well and easily.  Some calibration is needed; we did the Maretron compass but the boat speed seems off.  But it’s pretty damned good nonetheless, and we were already able to get more benefit from having true boat speed (not GPS which isn’t so helpful) to get our sail and boat trim dialed in better.

The Maretron DSM 250 is beyond great as an anchor watch tool (the primary function I bought it for).  I can have a nice dim screen with red lights showing me heading, wind speed, time and boat drag position.  The “Drag Alarm” feature is nice, you define a starting position (either with the current GPS position or you enter it) and it will notify you with a loud and persistent alarm as soon as your position moves outside a certain radium from that point.  Just what I was looking for.  The only disappointments are 1) I still can’t figure out where to permanently mount it in the at cabin and 2) it highlights how much NMEA2000 sensor information I am not making use of.  There are a wide array of possible sensors out there – temperature, weather, etc. etc. most of which leave empty and useless screens.

My only real complaints are the FI-50 series instrument displays.  The first complaint is they are a bit too reflective, a less shiny surface would pick up less glare and allow better visibility.  The second complaints are specific to the FI-504 “Multi” and FI-503 “Digital” displays, neither of which compares favorably to the ancient Raymarine ST80 “Multi” display.  Why?  The ST80 allows you to show one large data item, or a “Multiline” display, and you can put any available information on any line of the multiline display.  This lets you get a pretty useful display of what you want to see.

Not so with the FI-503  “Digital”, each line has a very limited subset of data that can be shown on it.  You can’t get speed on line one, you can’t get depth on line two, etc. etc.  And line three is tiny and mostly environmental information (of which I have next to none) or logged miles which I think is pretty useless.  So I can’t display any data on any row.  And the “Multi” does not have a multi line display option – it will show you everything in the system but only one item at a time.  So neither device can match the capability of the older Raymarine gear.  Disappointing, really.  Though I’ve not read the manual cover to cover I’m pretty certain I’m right on this.

All in all – a very satisfying shakedown.  Sure there are things to work out.  Since returning from Block Island I’ve already made some changes, like installing the Power Supply Unit with the Radar.  For this weekend I took a shortcut and plugged the radar directly to the MFD (Multi Function Display) which worked fine, but means the Radar is always on Standby when the MFD is on and is sucking precious power.  With a separate power supply I can turn the Radar on and off and only let it suck amps when I think I will need it.  But that is now in and working.  And the antenna splitter I installed to piggyback the FM radio on the VHF antenna just didn’t seem to work, the VHF wasn’t getting out and the AIS wasn’t receiving until I dropped that out of the loop.  Of course I don’t care a lot about FM anyway but it would be nice to work it out so I could listen to commercial radio if I felt like it.

The punch-down list for the electronics as it stands now:

  • Reconnect new back stay antenna line to SSB antenna tuner (involves another hole in the deck)
  • Install Furuno Autopilot, including rudder reference indicator, NMEA 0183 integration with network and a binnacle mounted controller.
  • Move old Raymarine Autopilot controls out of the way
  • Figure out why the MFD’s aren’t telling the course info to the FI-50’s
  • Install the Wave WiFi unit permanently (waiting for “N” connectors); we did test this with a temporary small antenna and got signal and internet from shore.
  • Tidy up all the wires
  • Calibrate!
  • Install an extra FI-503 display on the nav station.
  • Figure out how to get a decent multi data display on the binnacle along with the autopilot control head.
  • Update the MFD’s and other gear with all the latest firmware, charts, etc.

I’m sure there is more…and there is a much longer list of the “Spring Punchdown” list!

Posted in Block Island, Cool Gear, Electronics | Comments Off on Field Report #1 – the New Electronics!

Slackers!

On Jun 3rd, 2010 Published By B.J.

Ever hear the story of the U.S.S. Yorktown back in WWII?  During the battle of the Coral Sea the carrier Yorktown was badly damaged – so badly damaged the Japanese scored her as “sunk” and American experts figured she needed at least three months in dry dock in Pearl Harbor before she could even consider being combat ready. 

However the work crews in Pearl, under intense pressure from the Navy because of the knowledge of the impending Japanese attack on Midway pulled of a miracle in the yard and turned her out for combat in three days and she made it to Midway in time to play a pivotal role before finally being sunk by multiple hits from bombs and torpedoes.

Slackers.

If they had seen the shape Evenstar was in in when she hit the water last Tuesday they might have been impressed that we managed to whip her into shape in time for a Memorial Day jaunt to Block Island.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little.  But to see the boat on Tuesday morning go in the water with no mast, ceiling panels down, chairs removed from their mountings, doors off their cabinets, holes in the deck, binnacle, and cockpit, wires hanging everywhere, tools, crud, dust, baking soda, wire snippings, wire insulation, boxes and uninstalled electronics on every flat surface – well the transformation to a functional boat with mostly functional systems in time to leave before 0800 on Saturday morning was quite a feat.  With thanks to Chris (of “Teak Project from Hell” fame) for his assistance on a couple of long days, and a sterling organizational and cleaning effort by the whole crew Friday night we got it together and had a nice time.

Even if the boat was still too cruddy for company and we left port with an empty booze locker anyway…

Posted in maintenance | Comments Off on Slackers!

Autopilot Madness – a bit of a Rant

On May 23rd, 2010 Published By B.J.

So yesterday I FINALLY figured out what exactly Furuno meant in their manuals for installing the PG500R “Rate Compensated Heading Sensor” which ships as part of the Navpilot 511 Autopilot system.

I thought it was me, I thought I just wasn’t getting it.  After all how could these new, state-of-the-art devices actually rely on NMEA 0183 to talk to each other (and everything else) when the rest of the super-slick Navnet 3D products are using far more up to date technologies like NMEA 2000 and Ethernet?  To me it read like Furuno was expecting me to throw a “bearskins and flint knives” solution on board the Enterprise.  It just was not logical.

Turns out I was right – it DOES make no sense.  The Navpilot 511 and the PG500R simply do not speak modern networked instrument protocols.  It is NMEA 0183 all the way.

** Technical Interlude **
To the non technical, non sailors who might be reading this (Hi Mom!) you might be wondering “What is so appalling about this NMEA 0183 thing anyway?  What about it offends you so?”

In short, it is a communication standard for electronic devices set by the National Marine Electronic Association (NMEA); it was the cat’s meow back in the 1980’s.  It is fairly slow and fairly limited and frequently involves soldering or twiddling with tiny little wires and cross connections and “bridges” trying to figure out which is “Talker+” and should be talking to the other Talker+, or maybe talking to Listerner+.  On one hand, it is fairly simple…because it is fairly limited.  It also does not include a power source, NMEA 0183 devices speak over NMEA 0183 but they need their own connection to batteries.

The NMEA released a new standard called ‘NMEA 2000’.  It is much faster, has standardized cabling, uses more advanced protocols and offers a whole lot more of options and power to the equipment network.  NMEA 2000 (or N2K) also provides power over the network, so most (but not all) N2K devices just need to be plugged into the network.  If they do not drain too much power they need no more external wiring or fusing – it’s plug it in and turn it on.

Ethernet is the same basic protocol/network that has been used in computer networking for the last 20+ years now, that it is finally becoming almost de rigeur in marine technologies is more of a comment on the state of marine tech rather than the network itself.  But it is fast, easy, and ubiquitous – almost every one of you reading this is connecting through Ethernet somewhere in the mix.

NMEA 0183 = cranky, slow, archaic but with small wires, NMEA 2000 = fast, simple and powerful…big fat cables but with power.

** End of Technical Interlude **

So – what is my bitch?  Easy – THIS IS BRAND NEW AND VERY EXPENSIVE STUFF, IT SHOULD USE THE LATEST PROTOCOLS.  The NavNet 3D gear on the boat all talks to itself over Ethernet and can use N2K data – why can’t the autopilot?  Why has Furuno not updated this yet?  To get this device talking to the rest of the boat I need to run another NMEA 0183 cable half the length of the boat and wire it in so it can talk slowly to the rest of the gear.

It gets worse though, because my original plan was to have this snazzy new “Rate Compensated” compass supply the default compass data for my network.  This allows the Radar/AIS combo to use something called ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid) to calculate possible intercepts and collision course from target data on the radar.  It also would allow me to look at a monitor in the middle of the night to see if the boat has changed directions or swung at anchor.

Unfortunately the default wiring for the compass with the autopilot has the compass get powered by the autopilot.  No power to the autopilot = no compass.  And of course it also relies on NMEA 0183 to get the data to the Radar/AIS, possibnly even through the autopilot.  It CAN be powered independently (like I want to run another power lead to it…not) but it is not designed to do so when used with the autopilot.

Of course this is not an acceptable solution, I have no desire to leave an autopilot powered on all night to get a compass heading on a data display, it is a huge waste of power even if the Autopilot is on Standby mode.  They should be independent, this is a throwback to the bad old Raytheon days when the Seatalk bus got all of the power from all of the instruments from the Autopilot processor, you HAD to have the A/P on if you wanted to see wind direction for example.

The upshot of this all is that I decided to add a sensible, modern compass to the mix so I picked up a Maretron SSC200 Solid State Rate Gyro Compass.  This appears on the surface to be a far superior product to the Furuno PG500R.  Even if the Furuno is capable of more frequent updates the Maretron speaks (and is powered by) NMEA 2000.  Additionally the Furuno is very cranky about which orientation you install it in (must be on a horizontal surface pointing forward…not always easy to find in a boat) whereas the Maretron can be installed in pretty much any orientation so long as you configure it accordingly.

Being a belt and suspenders sort of guy myself I am not offended by the concept of extra electronic compasses on board – I’m all for redundancy.  But I am offended that this technical offering does not integrate with the rest of Furuno’s fine navigation hardware.  In truth I could have used ANY autopilot and it would not have mattered one bit since it is all over NMEA 0183 and offers no real integration with the rest of the electronics suite.

Posted in Cool Gear, Electronics | Comments Off on Autopilot Madness – a bit of a Rant

Bottom’s Update

On May 23rd, 2010 Published By B.J.

We have two coats of bottom paint, the yard came through today with the Saturday workman.

Remaining to do, bottom-wise before launch (with responsibilities):

  1. Reinstall prop, spray paint it and install new zincs – ME
  2. Remove, glass over and paint old ST80 depth/temp sounder through hull – YARD
  3. Install Shaft Shark without opening any veins (yes, we are planning to visit Maine this summer…) – ME
  4. Clean out  bow thruster tunnel, service thruster, paint tunnel and reinstall protective grating – YARD
  5. Touch up bottom paint, remove masking tape and paint missed areas – YARD
  6. Swap out old Airmar/ST80 speed thru-hull for new Airmar speed/depth/temp thru-hull; paint accordingly – YARD

And of course when the boat is in the slings the bottom of the keel needs some paint too.

We just might get splashed by Tuesday if the yard can get around to the glass work.

Posted in bottom paint | Comments Off on Bottom’s Update

Progress Report Part 2…the Bottom

On May 22nd, 2010 Published By B.J.

So the bottom was a disaster in slow motion that I simply hadn’t planned or budgeted for.  The original plan was simple:  Slap another coat off Pettit Trinidad Ultima SR on the bottom before launch and splash.

And to think I believed I had a problem when Pettit “changed” the pain to Ultima SR 40.  I was having nightmares of incompatibility.  My problems should be so small, this was well before I noticed paint falling off in chunks on the bottom.

Over the winter I saw just that – several spots where the paint was gone with white showing beneath it.  Presumably that was gelcoat, we had a bit of difficultly determining if it was gelcoat or barrier coat.  But the paint was very, very rough at the waterline and had a couple of spots where it had just fallen off.  this concerned me, I didn’t want to put 3-4 gallons of paint (at about $250/gallon) over a layer of paint that was falling off in chunks.

So we decided to soda blast, based on the mistaken assumption there was no epoxy barrier underneath.

A brief technical aside – just in case my mother is reading this.  Fiberglass boats can get “blisters” which as the name implies is a bubbling up of the outer layer or “gelcoat”.  The risk of this can be lowered by applying layers of epoxy paint to the gelcoat before any bottom paint is applied to create a “barrier coat” to protect the bottom from direct contact with the water.  This is a normal process for boats and most high quality boat builders will recommend it if they do not deliver the boat with the epoxy barrier coat on.

Apparently Sweden was closed when we were trying to get information on whether Evenstar was barrier coated or not from the factory.  A U.S. Hallberg Rassy dealer thought they were not.  He was wrong.

The soda blasting removed all the paint, and also left traces of gray stuff which we found out later was “Hempel’s Light Primer”, an epoxy barrier paint.  Oops.  Our original thought was to blast off the paint and repaint, and maybe after two years sand off that paint and barrier coat.  Too much money being spent this year.  Hoever Hallberg-Rassy, when I finally reached the, most emphatically recommended reapplying barrier coat before painting.

Then we noticed a lot of pinholes, which pretty much sealed the deal on doing an epoxy barrier coat.

So once again the yard bills are creeping up.

We eventually arrived at a PLAN to get this together with as little bloodletting my me as possible as I was already hemorrhaging money all over the electronics project (and paying my tax bill, remodeling the house to prep it for sale, paying school bills, etc. etc.).  The plan involved sanding, epoxy and bottom paint in various combination with me crying and whining about the price the whole way.  It also involved glassing over a through hull and changing another ( from the Electronics Project).  It was a nice plan, and we said let’s GO!

As Bugs Bunny said on the moon when asked if “all systems are go” he replied “no, everything is sort of stop.”  Which is what happened after the plan was made…we sat for a week after sanding was finished.  Weather was a factor as well as commitments to other boats without last minute “holy crap I don’t want to have to pay for this sh*t” emergencies I suppose; good planning always helps and this was not an example of it.

So with weather cooperating we got some barrier coat done yesterday.  And today the bottom got it’s first coat of dark blue paint.

The current plan has the last coat of bottom paint going on this weekend.  The launch target is now late Monday or really early Tuesday.  With luck I will have a rig soon thereafter, then we can deal with the rest of the commissioning and get out for Memorial day.

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Posted in bottom paint, hell | Comments Off on Progress Report Part 2…the Bottom