My First Raft-Up
This Labor Day weekend, I participated in my first raft up. We were a strange group: one sailboat, one cabin cruise, one small speedboat, and a kayak. We came over in the sailboat and cruiser. The speedboat was our ‘dinghy’. I was hoping, in the future, to use the kayak as my dinghy. I wanted to see how it would work out.
I met the others in the York River. Jodi wanted to come with me, since I was planning on sailing. So we tried to figure out how to get her from the cruiser over to my sailboat. I suggested she get on their raft and I could ‘rescue’ her. So Jodi hopped on the raft, I circled so I could get close enough to throw her a line. She grabbed it and I pulled her to the swim platform where she jumped aboard.
The cruiser towed the powerboat, and was able to use a ‘shortcut’ to reach our destination on the East River, off the Mobjack Bay. I sailed around the long way and am glad I did. The winds were great the the temperature was perfect. Interesting though: we arrived only about an hour after the cruiser.
We had a hard time finding the cruiser when we arrived. We’d been given the wrong mile marker to look for. But they brought the powerboat out to find us and guide us in.
I read an article online telling how to raft up so I’d have some idea what to do. So I arrived and, as the article said, I motored past the cruiser, dropped my anchor, the reversed to set the anchor and sidle up to the cruiser. Well, the anchor set. But I was on the wrong side for reversing and sidling. I kept going the wrong direction. So I tried going forward and doing it again, all the time my anchor is down and Jodi is letting out line. Well, I don’t know how much line we let out, but we finally did end up next to the cruiser.
Mistake one: letting out all the line. The next night I just drifted back and we had no problem sidling up to the other boat.
What did go right? Well, luckily our free boards were close enough that the fenders were not an issue. And we didn’t have problems stepping from one to the other. We did pull the sterns in, not the bows, as etiquette prescribed, since we are good friends. I’m not sure how we would have handled bow to bow, since the cruiser’s bow is higher than mine. And my lifelines in the front are difficult to detach, so walking across would have been problematic.
Another thing that went right is that Maria, the owner of the cruiser had done this before and knew to pull the lines in tight. That proved quite helpful when the powerboats in the vicinity sped on by, causing waves. Our boats weren’t banging hard against the fenders.
The temperatures were perfect that night. The company was great, and the food and drinks were delicious.
The next morning, I was up at 6 am. Everyone on the other boat was still asleep. I had brought yogurt and fruit for my breakfat. So I reached into the fridge and, lo and behold, the fridge wasn’t cooling. The ice in the tray had melted. I looked at the battery gauge and it showed less than 10 volts on the charge. The lights were still working. But the higher amp items, like the fridge were not.
I did have issues with the batteries the day before. After we’d been sailing for a few hours, the lights on the console began to flicker. I’d seen this before and knew that the batteries were running low. So I turned on the engine to charge the batteries back up.
I’d had this issue in the not too distant past. After finally becoming frustrated enough, I pulled out the battery meter and found one of the house batteries was dead. I’d replaced it and no more problems. Did my current issue mean the second house battery was now dead? Guess I’ll need to take a look.
So now, I finished my breakfast then tried to turn the engine on. No clicks. Was it the starter battery that was the problem?
More on the electrical set up on my boat. I don’t have a switch; I have 3 handles. I have not done anything with those handles. But a conversation with Maria from pointed to the fact that I should disengage the starter battery when anchoring to ensure I had a charge to start the engine later. I filed away that useful but of info.
Again, I’d seen this before. I’d thought maybe I was out of fuel. And, indeed, the next day when I put in fresh diesel, it started right away. But when I later tried filling the tank, the 20 gallon tank only took 6 gallons. So no answer there.
A fellow boater at the marine had suggested tapping on the solenoid, that it might have a loose connection. So I talked with Jodi, a whiz at electronics, and asked her to show me where the solenoid was. She figured that out, we tapped it, and the engine started. Batteries charged again, I was in good shape.
Maria and Jodi noticed the tea I’d also make myself and asked if I could heat them some water, too. They had an electric stove on the cruiser, which required getting the generator started to work. I had a propane stove that was much easier to light and use. So I heated water for them, as well as for Maria’s husband, CT.
After this very leisurely morning, air blew up my kayak. I have a Sea Eagle kayak that ai love. It’s quite sturdy for a blow up kayak, and it takes up a small enough space when deflated that I can transport it in the back of my car.
I got it inflated and was disappointed to see I’d not included the skeg. Ah well! Paddling would be harder. But it proved not to be. This is rated for 3 people, but 2 adults fit in in comfortably. I sat in the front so I could also play with the sail. And I had no problems steering it. I did, however, order a new skeg when I got home.
Later, I put the kayak away and we took the power boat to try going into the nearby town of Matthews.
We had talked before about taking the kayak over. I’m glad we didn’t: it proved to be further than we had anticipated. We went during high tide, since we were told it wouldn’t be passable otherwise. As we approached the town, however, it was too shallow for the power boat and we started kicking up mud. Jodi, who was being pulled in a raft, helped turn us around and move to deeper water, and we headed back. Mission to accomplished. But we did get a nice view of the rest of the river.
We played for a bit more when we got back, then decided it was time to start moving to our next destination, in the Severn River, on the other side of the bay.
More on day 2 and the rest of the trip in the next post.
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]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.
[Top]Installing the Electric Engine
Of all the tasks I’ve had to do on the boat this spring/summer, installing the engine has got to have been the most straightforward – and the most nerve wracking!
Three things worry me when I do repairs or put something new on: one is that I’ll do it wrong and have to do it over again; two: that I’ll mess it up badly enough that the boat will sink; and three, that the next owner of the boat will look at what I’ve done, shake their heads and say, “What was she thinking?”
I guess the last one shouldn’t bother me that much. But I was office mate to a guy buying his first sailboat. He’d done quite a bit of research, and he was pretty handy in his own right. So he would regale me with tales of poorly done installations and repairs on the boats that he looked at as he search for something he’d want to own. And I guess I don’t want to be ‘that’ person.
So, installing the engine became almost the last thing I’m doing before I put the boat back in the water. I don’t want to sink the boat. I don’t want to get it done, find it’s wrong and have to do it all over again. And I don’t want the next owner to look at what I installed and feel the first thing they’ll have to do is redo what I’ve done.
But, although time consuming because of my own limitations, installing the engine has proved to be very easy. The Electric Yacht folks have built something that is easy to work with and provided detailed enough instructions to quell many of my fears. On top of that, Scott McMillan, the owner of the company, has quickly answered my numerous emails asking for clarifications or more information.
I must admit, I didn’t do things quite in the order suggested. The instructions say to put the batteries in place first, then put the engine in. But I was laying the batteries in the engine compartment in such a way as to make them easy to access, which meant getting the engine placed first, to make sure that everything would fit.
First thing, I moved the house batteries. Those are smaller and shorter than the 4 AGM batteries I was installing. So it was easier to put two of the AGMs where the house batteries were, and move the house batteries to a locker beside the engine compartment. So, I cut a piece of oak large enough for each battery, and treated 2×4 to help make the surface level. I covered each piece of wood with West Systems (where would the modern day sailor be without it?), fiberglassed the 2×4 in place, and screwed the oak shelf onto the 2×4. I left the other side free, since I didn’t want to put holes in the bottom of the boat. We rewired the house batteries in their new location and moved onto the engine batteries.
I planned on putting two of the engine batteries where the two house batteries had been. One of the remaining engine batteries would go on the aft end of one of the mounting rails, with another 2×4 support attached to the side of the engine compartment. The last battery would go between the rails, raised slightly with some oak supports to ensure that I wasn’t blocking anything from flowing into the bilge.
First, however, I put the engine in place. The engine is much narrower than a diesel or gas engine. So mounting feet are provided to hold it in place. Spacers are included, in case the distance to traverse is longer than the feet will alow. In my case, the spacers were a necessity. I assembled the feet as instructed and slid everything onto the rails.
The coupler provided by the company is much easier to use than the one normally used. No feeler gauge necessary! The coupler is a 4″ sleeve that goes over the shaft from the prop and the shaft from the engine. The bottom half is a solid piece, with a slot for the key. The top is two halves: one to fit over the prop shaft and one to fit over the engine shaft. When alignment is right, the two halves bolt easily in place.
We aligned the engine, using a mirror underneath the shaft to confirm placement. We then checked the spacing of engine in terms of where I wanted to place the two unseated batteries. Everything looked like it would work. So we pulled the engine out again.
I cut two more platforms out of oat for the last two batteries. Like the house batteries, I put plastic battery holders in place to keep them from shifting. Note on those plastic holderes: those things are tough! Moving 100 lbs isnt easy. So when I put one holder under a battery to see if it fit right, I should have crushed the thing with my handling. But not a tear appeared on it. That made me feel alot more confident about my choice to use them.
More West Systems epoxy on these platforms, the 2×4 support for the ‘upper’ battery, and for the two thinner oak supports for the ‘lower’ battery. I also used West Systems and fiberglass matting to hold the oak supports in place, again so I wouldn’t have to screw anything into the bottom of the boat.
While the engine was out, and before I put the last two batteries in, I also installed the charger, since it would be on the wall of the engine compartment, forward of the ‘upper’ battery, and beside the engine. I also installed the battery cutoff switch, the fuse and the relay required by the engine.
Once all this was in place, I reinstalled the engine. I didn’t connect it with the couple yet. I want to test it out once we have it all wired up, and I don’t want to ruin my new cutless bearing when we do. I then put other two batteries in place. Tomorrow, we wire everything up.
Long Time to the Simple Solution
I’ve finally reached the point when I can start working on the pieces leading up to the installation of the new electric engine. First stop in that regard is getting the 4 – 100# AGM batteries in place. These are taller (12″ vs 10″) and longer (13″ vs 8″ or 12″) than ‘conventional’ marine deep cycle wet cells. I wracked my brain, and those of several friends, to try to figure out a way to put the batteries forward in the engine compartment, making them easier to install and deal with. But every configuration we came up with left us short on space; we couldn’t find a way to fit all 4 without reconfiguring the stairs down into my cabin. And, as long as this years project has taken (2 months out of the water as of yesterday), I really didn’t want to add another carpentry project to the list.
So yesterday afternoon and this morning, I spent making cardboard cutouts to confirm the battery placement, before I started cutting wood. This afternoon, however, I had an ‘ah hah!’ moment.
Why not move the house batteries, leaving enough room for the engine AGMs right where we wanted to put them?
So I started looking at the lockers on each side of the engine compartment. They could easily hold the house batteries. I could then put two of the engine batteries where the house batteries were, put one battery ‘under’ the engine platform, forward of where the engine would sit. That would leave one battery that I hoped to put over the bilge. But, again, I ran into a height problem. So it will go on the port side, behind the engine and on top of the porside engine rails.
After all that planning and figuring, I was only able to get one house battery moved today. Tomorrow, I hope to get the second replaced. By the end of week, I’ll try to post pictures with the new configuration.
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