Hey sailing!

So we've managed to be out sailing once or twice since the boat went in the water. Managed to hit 7.2 knots the other day in 20 knots indicated true wind. Frankly it was both exhilarating and frightening. We've mainly done lite air sailing, and were out this time in 15 to 20 knot winds, gusting to 25ish. Which really isn't that much of a blow. And we've been out in this kind of wind before, but only on someone else's boat, with that someone in charge. Made a giant change when it was just the two of us out there. Had to roll the genoa in a bit till I depowered the boat enough to be comfortable I wasn't over powering things. But didn't have to reef the main. Which is good as I haven't yet made the required lines to handle that. I think I'll deal with that this weekend.

Managed to get my radar functioning. So everything except the Wifi link is now working. I have the cables for the wifi link at the boat, they just need to be run to the helm. Had an issue getting the boat started last weekend, found a very high impedance connection to the common connector on the battery switch, so swapped that out. Boat started, so I guess I fixed that. Need to check the packing gland on the prop shaft, seems to be a bit more water coming in than I expected while running. And that frankly is going to be a pita to get to, which is why I had the boatyard replace it in the first place.

Not much else is happening sailing wise. Restricting ourselves to early morning sails as of late as it is just so bleeding hot this summer. Looking forward to the fall when things will possibly be a touch cooler.

See you out there!

Yay in the water!

After a long and frankly boring winter Amadeus finally hit the water. We had her hauled last year so we could get the masts down and replace the sheaves in the mastheads, for both the main and the mizzen. So that of course lead to other things:

• New Radar
• New Depth Sounder
• New Wind Instrument
• New Halyards for the mizzen
• New Top light
• New Wind-ex
• New Streaming light
• New Deck Light
• New LED's for all internal lighting.
• Replace Zinks
• Anti Fouling bottom paint
• New Packing for the prop gland

We had already purchased a Zeus multi-display unit and used it last season. I have to say it is superior to the iPad based navigation system we tried to use previously. Mainly this is due to our being able to see it in direct sun. We have no cover over the helm, so direct sun is what we have to deal with while sailing. We hope to deal with this lack of shade in the foreseeable future. 

Issues we have faced so far:

• OMG how do I contort myself into that shape to get to that wire? 
• OMG WTF is THIS? 
• OMG WTH does this do?
• OK really Previous Owner? Did you wire every single thing on the boat directly to the batteries? 
• Hey what is this giant bundle of wires that is cut and bound with old electrical tape?
• This batch of wires is not on the schematic, any clue what it does? 
• Hey this set of wires looks important... Oh wait the other end is just laying in the bilge. Huh?
• OMG this is a set of live wires just laying here, directly connected to the battery. Nice.

Yeah, while I am not the most knowledgeable marine electrician in the world even I know this isn't how stuff is supposed to be. I think we spent at least three days trying to find the routing and purpose of of a number of wires and frankly were only successful maybe 50% of the time.

Anyway while the masts were down we pulled all the old wiring out of the mast, replaced it with new, pulled through the internal conduits as designed. Replaced all the mounting gear for lights and what not and added the new sheaves. 

Working on the getting the navigation network installed. Have to add a NMEA 2000 network to the boat. First challenge was getting the new Depth Sounder/Temperature/Speed sensor installed in the hull. This requires that the old one be removed, a new thru-hull sleeve be glued in, then the sensor slips into that. Yeah had to get the boatyard guys to get the old one out. Then there was some controversy about the sensor I got, ended up they recommended the exact one I had. So I ended up installing the new sensor and thu-hull. And while you'd think that would be fairly straight forward, just put a good amount of 5200 on the flange and up the threads then screw the giant nut on, well no. The original hole was not drilled perpendicular to the hull. The PO had sanded down a piece of plywood, just regular old plywood mind you, into a bit of a wedge shape to accommodate the hole angle. I cut a chunk out of a old plastic cutting board and free-handed a wedge with my trusty Dremel tool. Really the 5200 seals the hole and attaches the thru-hull flange to the hull, the backing nut just keeps it from falling out the bottom till the 5200 sets up. Anyway no leaks, so that is successful so far. 

Once that was done I mounted my new rate compass in the same cabinet, right in line with my keel. Except it has a SimNet connector which is not exactly the same as a standard N2K connector. Cut that off and replaced with a field replaceable N2K connector. Found out I pulled my backbone cable through the boat backwards so my wind instrument wouldn't just connect and terminate the backbone. The backbone requires terminations on both ends. Yanked that out and reversed it, now the wind instrument works as advertised. Added an additional 6' drop cable and three wire to get power to the Display unit. Wanted to come up the steering pedestal and out the front under the compass. Yea, not today. This boat is seriously old and everything is so corroded. Broke the compass mount trying to get the screws off that, so boo. Now I'll have to figure out a replacement for that. So I drilled a hole in the laughably termed hanging locker, in the equally amusingly termed navigators berth and fed the lines through to the cockpit. So now I have wires under the floor slats in the cockpit, not exactly what I wanted, but workable for now. Betty crawled back in there and pinned everything up so we can go back to using it for storage bins. 

On a side note I love how they design and build these sail boats. They have us staffed up to 1800's Royal Navy standards. I have berthing for two in the V-berth, two in the sea berths in the salon, two more in the salon table area, one more across the way from that, one in the navigators berth, and finally two in the aft "Master Cabin". So yeah, berthing for ten. No way I can ever envision ten people trying to survive in this little thing. We'd be sitting in each others laps and murder would break out three days after leaving port.

Got the Radar cable back through the boat and back by the nav station, but another interconnection issue there. Have power, but no connection to the N2K network. The WiFi-1 unit to allow us to monitor stuff on our iPad is yet another SimNet connector, so ordered two SimNet to Micro C cables. Looks like I also have to run a new Ethernet connector to the back of the Main nav display. It'll get done eventually. 

Still need an AIS transponder and attendant wiring, but I'm really in no hurry for that.  

So we wanted to sail to Annapolis for our wedding anniversary but it just took too long to get everything else done. Plus I lost an afternoon to a wonderful migraine. Been having those since my car accident last December, yay. 10 to 20 a month, so very not fun. 

So we drove up instead.

And that's about all for now! Going to get the sails up tomorrow, depending on hangovers from tonight's bacchanal. And then some sailing finally this weekend. 

Getting ever so much closer

Oh my, I think the boat will hit the water later this month. I still have a few bits to source, but nothing that will stop us from going sailing.

As I said earlier I purchased a complete new navigation system over the last year. It's been sitting in my basement and slowly the piece parts have been making their way to the boat. I'm quite excited! Had a bit of concern over the angle the new depth/speed/temp sensor would end up being at once installed in the boat. Spent a considerable amount of time researching this particular sensor that came with my system, a DST-800. Happily found out that it will work at mounting angles from 0 to 22 degrees. Which is great because my hull is about 18 degrees where I plan on mounting it. I will need to be very aware of the offset when I am leaning to starboard, as the sensor will be tilted beyond what it can handle. So I'll be mounting the can it sits in this weekend. Then run the wiring for the network on the boat. I also need to find a place to mount my rate compass. That tells all the things attached to my navigation network which way the boat is oriented. It will probably end up right next to my DST sensor in the forward port settee cabinet.

Have replaced all my sheaves, and received all the new rope for new halyards. Also replaced all the wiring in the mast. New Radar cable, three wire for the steaming/work light, VHF antenna wiring, two wire for the mast head light. All fit in the handy conduits that were in the mast for exactly this reason. Now only my halyards will run free through that space. Hopefully there will be much less banging.

This so far has been a fun project. I'm not as fast as I used to be, but I think that is more of a function of age than my current brain damage. I still need to source a few exit boxes, but if I can't I can send them to Zephyr and get them rebuilt. I love his communications, just the price and his address. Nice.

I'll post pictures once I recover some shots from Betty's phone.

I'm still wondering about a staysail. Doing some further research in the "owner's manual" I found one of the exit boxes was on the front of the mizzen was for flying a staysail. I wonder if the extra wire I found was to fly an extra jib, or was it for a main mast rigged staysail? Anyway I bought enough rope to make a halyard for that. I have a line run up the mizzen to draw that line in, so I wonder if I should just not mount it, I don't think I even own a staysail at this point. I'll have to look into getting one before we go far foreign. But I also need to know how to rig and fly my spinnaker as well. Oh well off to school I guess. Loads of youtube in my future as I struggle to figure this out. Oh I also need to get a jib pole as well.

Well that's it today from this Oldy Boat.

Back again...

Well after a long hiatus I'm back again. mainly because I've been watching SV Delos Youtube videos.

We spent last season sailing Amadeus as much as we could. Which wasn't as much as we should have, I unfortunately have developed a touch of anxiety about taking her off of the moorings. Severe enough that we can't cast off sometimes. Yeah, fearless captain isn't me. But we did get out most weekends at least once. We sailed a lot in the light winds that we find most weekends in the area, and managed to go out and come back without ever bumping into anything, breaking anything on the boat or running aground. And we managed this with very little in the way of navigation equipment. We have a GPS enabled chart plotter, which is a freaking godsend. But that really is all we have. Well that and really well marked cruising grounds.

I have since purchased a complete navigation system, depth/speed/temp sensor, wind speed and direction sensor for the masthead as well as a radar unit that overlays the radar on the chart plotter. The new radar unit uses non ionizing radiation so it is much safer to use than the old style I used to work on, so it is more energy efficient, and won't cook your body parts if you get in front of it somehow.  Of course that also means that I can't hoist my Christmas turkey up in front of it and cook the thing in a speedy fashion either, but I felt that was a fair trade off. The E2-C Radar system I used to work on had the reputation of causing sea gulls to explode if they flew through the cone of radiation, but sea tales are all about the story, with the same touching concern with facts as our current political leadership.

We had Amadeus hauled early in November and pulled the masts as well. They really needed some work done. I was missing a halyard on the mizzen so I could not rig the mizzen sail. The mainsail had gone from difficult to OMG is this even going up? And every time we had to raise the genoa it was a battle as it kept jamming and getting twisted. We were completely unable to raise the working Jib at all as it jammed and twisted almost immediately. I wanted to examine the condition of the sheaves that live at the top of the mastheads. And really there are three ways to accomplish this.

1. I could put on the bosun's chair and have Betty winch me to the top of the mast and look at them.
1. One issue with this is that I have to use one of the sheaves (what the pulleys the halyards run through up there) to accomplish that.
2. Second issue is I am a complete baby when it comes to heights. Scares me spitless.
2. I could winch Betty to the top of the mast and have her look.
1. She has no idea what she is looking at.
2. Still have to use one of those sheaves.
3. Pull the masts off the boat and lay them flat for work and inspection.

So we took the masts down. I needed to replace the internal wiring anyway because it has been banging around inside the mast for maybe thirty years and for some reason, probably because it is a PITA, the wiring has not been run through the conduits that are on the inside the mast for exactly that purpose. Makes for a really noisy mast system while in a rolly situation. Also lets me inspect the fittings and connections of the standing rigging. Which frankly look fine. So now I have the ugliest slowest speed boat ever seen.

I started this repair/down season feeling optimistic that I could do a couple searches for pieces and parts, bits and bobs and voila I'd be able to source said parts for this beastie and in no time at all we'd be all ready to go back in the water by April no sweat. Yeah I'm an idiot. First and foremost I called Jeanneau, they made the boat after all, who never bothered to return my calls, go figure. I asked for help on the Jeanneau Pro Boards, which garnered zero responses to my requests for assistance. So I struck out on my own, which garnered even fewer useful results. So I did what I should have done in the first place, I asked the guys at the boatyard for assistance. Much better. In one 15 minute phone call I received three solid leads and they even sent my poor old busted stuff off with a sales guy for a quote. The quote that came back was frightening, but that wasn't the boatyards fault. I think I have mentioned them before, but the fine folks at Washburn's Boatyard are both kind and helpful. The ladies in the front office are helpful, the guys in the parts department are always willing to answer my newbie questions and help as much as possible. And did in fact help considerably. I was able to order custom built sheaves to replace the originals and those cost less than $400.00. Shout out to Ed at Zephyr Sheaves who handled building those for me. The old ones were super worn out, had some nylon type insert as the bearing surface. That had gone super hard and brittle over the 30 years they had been up there exposed to weather and were quite obviously past their useful service life.

I'm still looking for a series of things called exit boxes and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Of the ones I have located so far none match. Mine are frozen solid due to corrosion. I took a set of them off the mast and put them in a jar with penetrating oil for three months, ah sucks to be me, not one of them can be moved.

I had also changed halyards last year, and while I thought I was using the correct sizes, I'm once again proved wrong. While I used the same size as the PO, HE was the idiot this time. As he is dead and can no longer defend himself I'm totally going to lay the blame on him. PO is the idiot this time! HE chose the wrong size rope leading me to choose the incorrect size of rope to fashion into my  halyards. So annoying. So I have to purchase new halyards this year, AGAIN (Huff, Puff, HUFF) Anyway that is another couple hundred bucks.

I ordered a bunch of stuff, a mount for my radar transceiver unit to attach to the mast, a LED masthead light, a new LED work light with separate LED steaming light that is still attached to the work light, uses some of the same wiring, a new VHF whip antenna. Feeling inadequate for some reason I got the 3' whip vice the 1 1/2' version. Will still work with the VHF so anyway there's that. The size difference isn't going to make it work better, it's at the top of a 52' mast after all, but I wanted a 3' whip. So I got a 3' whip. I'm going to be so pissed if it doesn't work for some reason. To round out my order I got some wire to connect my lights with, a bunch of shroud covers and new tip covers for my spreaders. I would be so pissed if I tore my 150% Genoa. I was flat amazed they wanted to charge close to $80 USD for leather tip covers, a piece, to sew over my spreader tips. So I got plastic. I also ordered 6 1' sections of bird spiking strips. Maybe I can dissuade the local ospreys from using my mastheads as combination butcher blocks and dining room tables. This may keep the carnage from accumulating in the cockpit, with commensurate stench. Few things smell quite as nice as week old crab guts left laying in the sun for a week.

I was going to modify a plastic cutting board to make an adapter so I could reuse the old mount I had for the radome from my old burned out radar unit. Like I mentioned earlier I got a new radar system, and who would ever include a mast mount with a new radome? It's completely unheard of for a radome to be to be mounted on a mast, you know like about 3/4 of the way up say a main mast? That's a deeply sarcastic statement if you couldn't tell. But then I got to thinking about this a bit further. I spent a pretty good penny for my new radome and if my plastic fantastic adapter failed at some point my pricy radome would fall off the mast and dangle from its wires while repeatedly flinging itself suicidally at the mast till it was returned to kit form. I doubt that B&G's warranty would cover that sort of damage. So I ponied up the cash and bought the official mount. So now I feel virtuous but a little poorer.

Now for the other fun I encountered on my off season, at the beginning of December I was involved in an auto accident. Some guy in a hurry to get gas or sometime stated he didn't see our Nissan Murano barreling up the road and darted in front of me which ended up totaling our new Murano. He got the ticket. I got the concussion. Now I am battling post concussion syndrome and am not enjoying my new status at all. :(  So as this is a sailing blog I will not really be touching on that after this, because really who wants to read about another late middle aged guys medical issues? I have had a freaking headache for close on to three months now, my anxiety is through the roof, I can't seem to hit the programming zone anymore, my memory is even worse than it has ever ever been, and I would give my eyeteeth for a solid night of sleep. Yeah ok, enough medical whining.

Running up to the boat this weekend to affix my new depth, speed sensor to the wire of my old depth sensor so the boatyard guys can swap them out for me. I am just not up to doing the work at this point, I'd love to, but spending that amount of time bent over with my already pounding head just sounds like a recipe for a gigantic screw up.

I'm about to post this, so for the 11 guys in Korea that are going to instantly pounce on it 안녕하세요