Line Back
After last time’s unsuccessful attempt by a Sea Scout to get the jib halyard back on the mast, their Scoutmaster, Mike, offered to do it for me. So, the following weekend, we met and he donned the climbing harness that Liza had used the week before.
I had been concerned about being able to get Mike, or any full-grown adult up the mast, since I don’t have alot of upper body strength and I figured that alot of the physical part of overcoming gravity would need to be done by me and the winch trying to raise Mike on the main halyard. Mike assured me, however, that he could shimmy up the mast to help in the effort.
Well, it didn’t quite work that way. Apparently, my mast was too slick for him to climb. So, like with Liza, he climbed onto the boom so I could get enough slack to get the line through the catch block we had set up and onto the winch to turn it to lift him up.
Mike atop the mast
The job turned out to be much simpler than I thought it would be. Gotta love Newtonian physics in action! There was enough mechanical help from our setup that I had no trouble turning the winch and lifting him up. Mind you, it took alot of turns to get him up – it was a slow job. But it was fairly painless from my perspective.
Not so Mike. He got as far as the shrouds and asked me to stop. I assumed he was tired and needed a break. Luckily, the line was through a clutch, and on my self-tailing winch, so I didn’t have to hold it while he rested. It also made it easier on the climb up because I didn’t have to worry about losing ground.
Once Mike reached the top, it was a quick job to get the line in place. He had pulled the core out of the line and woven the ends back to make a loop that was narrower than the line itself. He then attached a string, and attached the straightened coat hanger to the string. The whole thing went in and he was ready to be lowered in no time.
Lowering Mike down, with that setup, was no problem either. I wrapped the line around a nearby cleat, to give me some leverage, lifted the clutch, pulled the line out of the self-tailer, and started lowering him. Again, it proved to be much easier than I expected.
When Mike got down, he said he’d gotten dizzy when he was up there, which surprised him. That had never happened before. He did take some time to lower his head and get back his equilibrium before pronouncing that this was the last mast he was likely to climb; he was going to leave it to the Sea Scouts from now on.
Mike, after his rest
Lighted Boat Parade
Lighted boat parades are an adventure. I keep reminding my friend of this. They will be guaranteed to have a story. The first year we did it, I had a terrible time judging the distance between me and the other boats. In fact, at one point, I got call on the VHF radio from the guy in charge asking if we were still part of the parade. The second year, I went to rent a generator for running the lights and they only had large (I thought) ones. I went to the boat, discussed it with a few folks, and we decided we could run the lights with an inverter connected to the house batteries (no, not going to run them on the engine batteries!). We tested it and it seemed to do ok. But the parade came, and we had no lights. There wasn’t enough power so we were sailing dark. We did have glow sticks, and the lights at the very front worked. In addition, I decided to head up Sarah’s Creek. I didn’t see the marker and ran right into it. Stopped the boat cold. One of my passengers somehow fell against a heater I had in the vberth and hurt his back.
Then there was this past year, our third.
I didn’t want to have the generator problem again. I had bought a generator during the summer as a backup when we headed down for Cock Island. Erik and I checked it and couldn’t start it. I had purchased the protection plan. So we went to Harbor Freight and exchanged it. Generator? Check!
This year’s issue? The cheap bottom paint I bought last year.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I had barnacle problems this year. On top of that, I used cheap bottom paint for the first time. That was a big mistake! What I didn’t talk about in the barnacle article was the fact that the boat was so covered with slime that I had to have it power washed, which I wasn’t planning on. Then, in September (4 months later), it was covered with slime again.
Well, I guess I should have pulled it out and power washed the bottom and cleaned the prop again, because the boat barely moved. We couldn’t be in the parade because we couldn’t reach the parade. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the boat going fast enough to catch up to the parade. <sigh!>
So we played on the water, trying to head to Yorktown Beach. But, after singing our carols and enjoying some hot buttered rum, we headed back.
We still enjoyed each other’s company. But next year’s checklist:
- Generator? Check!
- Bottom cleaned? Check!
- Prop cleaned? Check!
Oh, and there was one other issue. I ran lights up the mast, but didn’t do it too smartly. I ended up with the ‘wrong’ ends down below and couldn’t light the lights. Paul, my resident electrician, had to restring some of the lights so we could get them all going.
After all, we had a generator. We should at least have the lights! 🙂
2013 Lighted Boat Parade
Motorsailing into the Docks
Today was a lovely day for a sail. It was completely overcast and breezy, which kept the temperature down. And the waves were low, which made me happy. I don’t mind wind; I hate fighting waves. When you have to go through waves, much of the energy that should be going into forward motion instead goes into getting through the waves. Lots of physics to that. Will have to look it up sometime.
So no waves.
The wind was coming from the west, so I decided to head out towards the bay. That way, I’d be going downwind heading out and upwind coming back, making it cooler in the hotter part of the day.
I left the docks about 8 am. The plan was to head out about 2-1/2 hours, then take about 1-1/2 hours to come back. That would have been great for upwind out and downwind back. But it doesn’t work too well for the reverse.
The problem in York River is that the prevailing winds tend to go move in such a way that, if you’re tacking to close haul, you’ll spend your entire time going from one side of the river to the other, making very little progress. I hadn’t thought of that when I was making my plan for the day.
Still, it should have been okay. I could just motor enough to get me in a good spot to tack into the channel leading to the marina.
Step back a moment here for the next part.
As those who have read my blog fairly regularly know, I have an electric engine. I have 4 100-amp 12-volt batteries that run it. Those batteries are sufficient for most of my needs, which is getting out so I can sail, motoring back in when I get the sails down, and handling the occasional time when the wind completely dies. I have used that power to sail all the way from Yorktown to downtown Hampton, running out of juice just about 1/2 mile before we reached our slip.
I put the batteries on the recharger every time I leave the boat. The batteries, when quite low, will take about 17 hours to charge. I normally check the charge levels before I leave the slip. If all the lights are green, we’re good to go. If something is blinking, the batteries were probably really low and it’s taken longer than usual to charge. The blinking means the charger thinks there may be a problem, since it has taken too long. So I’ll unplug it, then restart it so that the recharger is reset. Next time, we’ll be good to go.
I had one occasion when the charger didn’t seem to charge the battery right. We had all sorts of problems then. Apparently, when one battery is low, it drains power from the others. So we actually had to be towed in by another boat to get to our slip that night. And, the next day, we couldn’t even start the engine. I discovered that time that one of the charge wires had come loose. Once I fixed that, everything charged and we were good to go.
So, this morning, I didn’t check the colors on the recharger before I took off. I did notice that the display for the engine only showed 85% charge, which was strange, since I hadn’t been sailing in a week. But I figured I’d check it out later.
Now, back to our lovely day of sailing.
I’m heading back. I’m in the river, I’m doing the usual back and forth and not wanting to be. So I go directly upwind, which I need to do to get to the marina channel, and I turn on the engine. The wind is pretty strong, so I’m not making alot of progress. But I am making some progress. And the display shows that I should have 4-1/2 hours left in the batteries. No problem. I’m definitely less than that away from where I want to be. So I run the engine long enough to get around the refinery piers, then turn the engine off and sail a bit more.
Strange. The indicator is now showing I only have about 30% left on the batteries. That doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t have gone down that quickly. When I turn it back on, it still shows that I can do another 2-1/2 hours, so I figure I’m ok.
I turn the engine off, tack over and back. I’m still not as close to the channel as I want to be. But then again, when I get frustrated, I tend to hurry the process. Rather than going long on a tack, to allow me to position myself better when I tack back, I tend to turn too early, requiring a few more back and forths.
I turn the engine back on. This time, I don’t seem to have alot of power, although I am moving forward. This was a symptom we saw when we ran out of juice heading to Hampton: the engine was turning the prop. But it was turning it slowly, and it didn’t matter how much we turned up the throttle; no more juice was going to get out.
I’m in the channel at this point. And I let out the jib, just about 25%. Luckily I was at a good angle to use it. Lucky, too, I didn’t hit bottom. I don’t think I ever would have gotten out if I had.
I back into my slip. It’s easier to run the power if I do. But I barely had enough juice to move the boat backwards. In fact, we touched the pier across from the slip before I could back it up.
When I plugged in the power, I hadn’t yet turned off the indicator. Now, instead of 28% battery, it showed 56%.
Hopefully, the cause is just an in-line fuse blown on the recharger line. Hopefully, it’s not that one of the batteries has gone bad!
[Top]Dunking
So, I was moving the boat over by myself last Friday so it could be hauled out for painting and other seasonal maintenance. There was a bit of a breeze, but nothing heavy. I had a line ready at the bow and beside me in the cockpit. There was enough of a breeze that the bow came in first, rather than my sidling up to the dock, so I went forward, grabbed the line, jumped to the dock. I tied on the forward line. By then, the aft portion of the boat had started to slip away, so I pulled on the lifelines, got hold of a stanchion forward, and started trying to turn the boat so I could grab the aft line and tie it off. The anchor got in the way, so I was pushing the bout out a bit to get the anchor positioned better. Well, me and the wind pushed it a bit more than I hoped and I found myself in a precarious position.
Don’t you love it when things start moving slow motion? Well, in those precious seconds, I was able to hold onto the lifelines as the boat slipped away from the dock. Unfortunately, I don’t have alot of upper body strength, so I let go and plunged into the water.
Luckily, the water was a nice temperature. Also luckily, there were no jellyfish and I was only 30 or 40 feet from the boat ramp. So I swam over and let myself out. I walked to the boat lift and grabbed one of their boat hooks (which I should have done in the first place). I pulled the boat over and tied up the rear. I went home and took a shower.
That afternoon, I started to hurt. I apparently hit a rib pretty hard, because there’s a big bruise on my back, but it mostly hurts in the front. Nope, I never did get checked out by the doctor. And there was still the work to do that I was hauling the boat out for in the first place.
So mornings I worked for a few hours, until it started to hurt. Then I’d take a break, go home, get some more good drugs, then go back and work a few more hours. Luckily, Erik and Wendy gave me a hand so I could avoid alot of the heavier stuff.
Now it’s all done. The boat is back in the water. I can recuperate.
What did I do right? I knew the marina well enough to know the closest place to get out of the water.
What did I do wrong? I should have waited until I knew there were people around, in case something went wrong. I should have backed the boat up and pulled up so the rear was closest to the dock, the way the wind was blowing. I should have taken a boat hook off with me to pull the boat in to tie it off.
[Top]The Long Road
Well, it’s that time of year again. The Cock Island Race is next Saturday. But family obligations left me with little vacation time. So, rather than taking the boat from Yorktown to Hampton on Thursday, then Hampton to Portsmouth on Friday, we took the boat up to Hampton on Sunday. This did offer the advantage that I had a weekend to check for optimal weather, rather than being locked into a single day.
Saturday and Sunday looked to be the same, weather wise: beautiful if you were on land or lounging at the beach, not exactly optimal for sailing. There was to be some breeze in the morning, but nothing in the afternoon. And the high temperature was expected to be 90. In other words, we’d have wind when it was cool in the morning and be roasting in the afternoon with no wind to cool us.
My crew for the day: Paul, Grant and Bette, were open on Sunday, so that’s the day we picked.
We were taking the boat to the Hampton Public Piers this time. They offered a special with every 3rd night free and, if you paid for their annual ‘preferred guest’ pass, it was only $.75/foot/night as opposed to $1.50 – $1.75/foot/night at the other two places: Old Point Comfort and Salt Ponds. It would be about an hour farther than Salt Ponds, and we had made Salt Ponds before with no problem. Heck! We’d made it home from Hampton Public Pier last year without a hitch. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and not bring a generator for backup power this time.
The morning was beautiful. Not much sailing, since the breezes were light. But the sails were shading us from the sun and the temperature was pleasant. Early afternoon was about the same. We did get pushed by the wind a bit. But it was mostly motorsailing we were doing to keep the speeds up to at least 2.5 knots.
We did get some following winds to push us along. But the winds were fickle, changing direction enough that Grant and I got alot of practice putting up and down the whisker pole.
We had the autopilot on most of the time. I’d pick a marker at the end of whatever straight course we needed to follow. Paul would look it up on his phone’s Navionics app and give me the coordinates and I’d plug them into the Garmin 76CX GPS. This was much easier than finding the mark on that tiny map that the device gives, and it saved us using up Paul’s phone batteries by relying on it as the primary GPS device.
Towards mid-afternoon, Bette took over at the helm and the wind kicked up. I swear she brought the wind gods to our attention finally. We had had a bit of sailing before, but the winds had been so fickle that we have to be cautious that we were not losing ground by sailing back the way from which we had come. But after Bette took over, just past Salt Ponds, the winds were in our favor. We were heeling 20 – 30 degrees and moving at quite a clip – and in the right direction.
It was beautiful! I was finally able to turn off the engine. We were riding smooth. And the wind was keeping us from getting hot in the afternoon.
[Photo by Paul Gregory]
We spent about an hour doing this, making our way towards the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, trying to figure out who the ships were that we were seeing and just enjoying the chance to finally sail.
I took over the helm as we approached the tunnel. I turned back on the engine and kept us at about 2 – 2.5 knots, mindful of the fact that the display showed us with about 2-1/2 hours of battery life left at that point.
When we got to Bluewater Marine, the first marina in the downtown Hampton area, I asked Paul to take over the helm. As soon as I did, you could hear the engine ramp down. Paul pushed the throttle up the entire way and it didn’t change things. We had already put the sails down, and we had a following breeze, so I tried to pull the jib out. It got stuck about halfway, something it had done the last couple of times we had brought it out. If I went to the roller, pulled it back to roll the sail back on, then let it go, it would work. I’ll need to look at it next week when I have a few experts around.
I had tried several times to hail the dockmaster and received no answer. I called and left a message on her cell. Someone on the radio said she’d gone home for the day, that I should just find a slip and talk to her in the morning.
The engine gave up about 15 minutes after Paul went behind the wheel. But we had the current with us and the jib. So we sailed into the Hampton Public Piers.
The first slip we found was right beside the one marked for the water taxi and dinghy tie-up. I wasn’t sure that we could use it, so we moved down the dock. We finally found #12 open and turned in. We were only going about 1 kt at that point, so we could pull ourselves along the side of our neighbor into the slip. I jumped off the bow onto the dock and stopped the boat. We did bump lightly into the pier but sustained no damage. We tied up, ensuring we had a good spring line to avoid bumping into the pier.
I was very grateful for the crew I had. They knew what they were doing and there was no word of complaint, even after the heat hit us bad once the engine gave out. They worked together efficiently as a team to get the boat safely into the docks. I’m very happy they were with me.
I was wondering, as we were drifting in, whether we could have used the house batteries, which are on a separate circuit and still had plenty of juice as a backup to get us into the slip. Since the batteries are quite different, although both are 12V, I don’t know if any damage would be caused. I’m going to put a note out to the electric boat mailing list and an email to Electric Yacht to get some insight. I’ll post what I find here.
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