North Star II

P1010191
Originally uploaded by stuffin.bocks

World's least seaworthy kayak. This is what I traded my old engine for.

Hmm....

Johny's bottom scrubber

P1010188
Originally uploaded by stuffin.bocks

Its a broom and a long piece of PVC pipe. The fender keeps it pushed up against the hull. Works very nicely.

Chartplotting on a budget

The GPS unit and OpenCPN

I've just bought a "GlobalSat BU-353 WaterProof USB GPS Receiver (SiRF Star III)" for $36.95 from Amazon. Its smaller than it looks online, comes with an optional suction cup and also has a magnetic base that will hold it onto things as small as a screw. I couldn't get reception in my office (there's a floor above mine) but worked great in my home.

I've installed OpenCPN from:
http://bigdumboat.com/cpnindex.html
http://opencpn.sourceforge.net/
which is a free open source chart plotter and will load raster charts from:
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/index.htm
and vector charts from:
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/enc/index.htm
I downloaded the entire set of NOAA vector charts in about an hour and they take up about 1Gb when uncompressed.

I had to tell OpenCPN which COM port the GPS was on, tell it the directory where the charts I downloaded where and then wait a couple of minutes while it digested them.

All in all, pretty painless.

Its got some nice features:

• displays plots of tidal information for all NOAA substations for any time
• can read from NEMA AIS receivers and allows you to setup collision alarms.
• can add waypoints to the chart and transmit directions to a NEMA autopilot
• easy switching between different charts at different scales.
• night mode color scheme
• free
• cross platform. Runs the same in Linux, WindowsXP, Vista and OSX.

Some things that it doesn't support which would be nice:

• I don't see a way to save the waypoints, record tracks or any other information
• MOB mode
• anchor alarm
• AIS via internet
• satellite imagery overlays
• support for GRIB overlays
• anti-aliased scaling of the raster charts. They look very bad when zoomed out.
• its supposed to also have support for currents, although the display
• for that is a little screwed up in the current release.
• radar overlays

Still, it is free, which is cheaper than a kick in the teeth. OpenCPN seems to be the only open source chart plotter available -- I expect (hope) it will only be a matter of time before much of this gets implemented. As it is already, it seems pretty capable.

Couple this with a $300 netbook and your boat's got a battle computer.

Update: NOAA's got a new site for downloading charts -- http://www.charts.noaa.gov
Its pretty slick and lets you download packs of charts by state.

New engine woes?

We've been having some problems starting the new engine. There have been a couple of times when we needed to run the lift pump to clear air in the fuel lines to get it started. Today the engine cut out and later refused restart. I recently installed a charging relay for the batteries and thought the batteries could be to blame. The starter was turned over. Volts at the engine read 12.6 which is normal.

Finally, Wendy suggested that the tank might be empty. We added a gallon from the reserve tank and she fired straight up. Doh!

Can't be sure whether the tank was empty -- the fuel gauge read 3/4 full. However, it has read the same since it was installed. Will know for sure when we fuel up next week.

Day out on the Gold Star

A solid day out with the Cullen family on the Gold Star.

A mindblowing labor of love. The boat's got a lots of history and the owners many stories. More picture here and history here.

Support Bismarck Dinius

You may have heard the story of the Clear Lake accident. If not here's a quick review:

On April 29, 2006, Chief Deputy Russ Perdock of the Lake County Sheriff's Department slammed his Baja 24 powerboat into Beats Working II, an ODay 27 sailboat. Lynn Thornton, finance of the boat's skipper, Mark Weber, was killed in the accident.

From the carnage, it is estimated by ex-Lake County police officers that that the Chief Deputy's boat was traveling in excess of 45 knots. The time of accident was around 9:30, long after dark, when speeds closer to 5 knots are more prudent on crowded lakes. Simple common sense would seem to point to Perdock as the cause of this accident, yet Lake County charged Bismarck Dinius the vehicular manslaughter of Lynn Thornton. Dinius happened to be holding the tiller of the boat while skipper Mark Webber was below. The reasons for this are:

• Dinius's blood alcohol was .12, which is above the new legal limit of .08;
• Dinius was held responsible for the boat because he was at the helm;
• Perdock claims that the ODay's running lights were not on and were found to be switch off by investigators.
• According to California law if you are steering a vehicle, you are responsible for it

I have many issues with this case which makes my cry foul:

• A sailboat, whether operated by drunks or not, has no ability to avoid a boat traveling at, conservatively, 8 times its speed.
  
  
• The rules of the road require vessels to proceed at a speed that is safe for the conditions. If a powerboat is going so fast as to be unable to avoid a slow moving sailboat, then the powerboat's skipper is negligent.
  
  
• Even when on, boat lights are extremely hard to see in built-up areas. Prudence requires a slow speed. I, myself, have had close calls with unlit buoys, anchored barges and even container ships, despite my best efforts to keep a good lookout. Even if the lights of the ODay were off, Perdock should have been going slow enough to avoid a collision with an unlit obstacle.
  
  
• The rules of the road require power driven vessels to give way to sailboats.
  
  
• Sailboats aren't cars. A boat's skipper is responsible for the operations of a boat and any accidents on-board, not the helmsman. The practicalities of passage making (it takes several people to crew a boat, people must eat, sleep, or go down below to take a whizz) mean the a skipper must delegate duties to other people and, as a result, its generally unreasonable for them to refuse. Its the skipper's responsibility to ensure that crew are competent in these duties. If the crew is drunk, it is the skipper's negligence if accidents happen as a result.
  
  


• Statements offered by many eye-witnesses reporting:
  
  • that the Webber's running lights we're on,
  • that Perdock was traveling at high speed
  were refused by the Lake County D.A. and Sheriff's Department because, according to them, (despite the obvious carnage to Webber's boat), there's no way to prove what speed Perdock was traveling.
  
  
• Blood tests showed that Perdock hadn't been drinking, but according to the paperwork, his blood wasn't taken for more than 24 hours after the accident. Apparently, Perdock was driven around town for several hours after the accident by a fellow officer.

My heart goes out to Bismarck Dinius. He is clearly is not at fault. He's lost is his friend, his job and is facing financial ruin as he struggles to fund his legal defense. More worryingly, its clear to me if Russ Perdock were not a member of the Sheriff's department, he would be the one facing manslaughter charges now.

For more details, follow the links from here.

For more details on how you can support Bismarck Dinius, see here.

Prop(er) service.

Shane with my nicely lubed prop. The blade and the stock are numbered. The guys at BMC reassembled it incorrectly meaning that it was probably out of balance.

BMC also screwed up the transmission coupling to my shaft. The new coupling they installed when the fitted my dripless stuffing box didn't have set screws that correctly fit into the shaft. Because the only connection was the compression of the coupling's collar around the shaft, the shaft could in theory have slid right out of the back of the boat. Stupid and dangerous. The practical result was a lot of wiggle and wear between the shaft and the coupling and a ruined shaft. While my engine was pulled I had a new one installed. The picture above is the new shaft with my old propeller.

Here's also a picture of the zinc - its pretty much toast after 12 months in the water. Probably a sign that I should leave my shorepower unplugged and check over my electrical system.

Potting guide

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/sealing_the_deck

Pirates!

http://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php?option=com_fabrik&view=visualization&controller=visualization.googlemap&Itemid=89

Up the mast

Wendy: Tiny
Originally uploaded by stuffin.bocks

Went up the mast again this weekend. Fixed a lead line that had jumped off a sheave, lubed up the sheave bearings and wiped of some of the rust from the standing rigging.

New Bar

Debbie took out a Club Nautique boat this weekend in preparation for her final coastal passaging test.

We sailed from Ballena to SF and stopped for a beer at the Bay View Boat Club. Bar's nice. Boat owners and members only. Not much draft - 4-5ft at MLLW, so only time for a quickie.

Map

New Boot

When I had my mast pulled, the yard did a crappy job with the mast boot. It split before they finished the other work and the repaired version pulled away from the mast collar after about a month.

With the rain coming, Wendy and I made some time to seal up the hole. We bent a strip of inner tube over a pipe clamp and sealed between the mast and the rubber with silicone.

Off to the Drag Races -- The Great Pumpkin Race on Luna Sea

Gin fizz before the race. More

Wendy, Debbie, Jim and I jumped on Dan Knox's Islander 34 (Luna Sea) for the Great Pumpkin Race. I borrowed Jim's dress -- sparkled like a disco ball. Liberating and breezy -- prevents overheating while grinding.

We took 3rd place overall for the day.

Inedible art...

At the pumpkin carving contest last weekend someone submitted a pumpkin shaped into a pair of hands squeezing a poop from a buthole. Many people disapproved (they pooh-poohed). I thought it was a stroke of genius. Here's more of the same....

http://sprinklebrigade.com/ turns dog poop in to art.

If you didn't think much of that either, then check out:
http://www.wambie.com/foto_br-272.html turns fruit into carved art.

Pumpkin Fest Sail to Half Moon Bay

Wendy and I sailed down to Half Moon Bay with Club Nautique this weekend. We met up with the Bear Boat crew in Sausalito on Thursday. We hadn't met the others and were relieved to find that the skipper (Steve) and the other crew (Jim and Mike) were the fun and mostly sane people they seemed like in their emails.

On our previous outing out of the gate, we've both had rough rides in the past. Today though, the weather was fine, clear and warm. We left the dock around 8am on Friday, ran the mile and met the club's flotilla of 14 boats going out of the Gate. Within about an hour, the wind died and we gave up the race, motoring the rest of the way to Pillar Point. For about half an hour on the way, we were surrounded by ten or more porpoises -- seems they're attracted to the sounds of The Police. Another boat we spoke to later said they also saw a sunfish floating around on the surface.

We got some CoNav practice on the way down and back. I sat the course two years ago but got deported before I finished and never got around to taking the test. Someday...

At Half Moon Bay, we checked out the yatch club and a then couple of the local bars. At the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, a mom and son balloon twisting team were doing the rounds and provided entertainment for a couple of hours while we sat around the firepit. This was entertaining not because anyone was particularly interested in balloon twisting but because of the curious mom-and-son-in-trade partnership. Mom was busy teaching the higher level points of balloon twisting (minimize balloon usage, visit as many punters as possible, find a hook and don't waste time if they're not going to shell out cash) . Later in the night the appearance of a older man in a checkered suit whom we all took to be some kind of balloon twister's pimp only added to the interest. As with flower sellers, some people don't take kindly to being harassed away from their beers or made to look cheap in front of their partners. We weren't sure whether the guy in the suit was just the father of the family, or whether his appearance meant that someone had refused to pay for their giant balloon beer mug and were about to receive an education on the advanced applications of high-speed balloon inflating pumps.

Next, we made our way to the Old Princeton Landing. This is more of locals bar and chock full of crazy characters. Jim convinced one of the locals tried to smoke a tampon. Later when he stood up next to me I came face to face with his penis poking out of a slit in his jeans that looked like it was there to, well I don't know, attract the ladies?

Friday night was a late night. We got up too late on Saturday to get to the Pumpkin festival, and in any case, I had other plans. Saturday was my dad's birthday. He died last year. I collected some flowers, made a posy, and Steve let us take the boat out for a short while so that I could drop them in the sea. So long dad. Happy birthday.

On Saturday afternoon the club arranged a cocktail contest. Jim cooked up BearBoat's entry: a hot mix of spiced rum, Goldschläger and hard cider. Delicious. We named it the "Pan Galatic Schlager Baster." And, later, "Pretty on the Inside" after we realized that the drunks were having problems casting their votes for our first name. Shockingly we failed to place in the cocktail contest. I suspect that some people took offense at Wendy's and my OCSC caps. Some Club Nautique scapegrace swiped them off our heads never to be seen again. I guess that's what we get.

Despite this perversion in the judging, our "Mike the Knife" managed to snag first place in the pumpkin carving for the second year running.

During the judging at the yacht club, I found a litter of feral kittens living in the rocks. Cute, cute, cute. I suspect they won't last through winter though unless someone takes them in.

On Sunday morning, we ate breakfast and then made our way back to San Francisco. No winds again so we motored the whole distance. We heard mayday reports from the Coast Guard of a capsized sailboat outside of Horseshoe Cove - interesting especially because that's where one of the Coast Guard stations is. Maybe they slept in.

When we got through the gate we saw another sailboat playing chicken with an oil tanker. It sailed in its path, tacked, fouled the jib and hung out in the shipping channel while we watched on and the tanker weighed around them, honking the whole way. Stupid.

Awesome weekend. Thanks guys.

Travelled: 60nm
Days aboard: 4
Night hours underway: 0
Items Lost: cell phone, car keys, hats, dignity

Angel Island Burning (View From Emeryville)

Angel Island Burning From Emeryville

After we were done sailing with Russ at Fleet Week, we went back to check on my boat at Emeryville. This was the view from the marina lawn.
You could see the trees exploding. Just one freakin huge bonfire.

Fleet Week on Good Grief

My engine's still being serviced so we we took up Russ' offer to go out for Fleet Week. He got a got in the action and out of traffic trouble all day long. Good work fella!

We had a ton of flyovers from where we were. Follow the link for more photos.

Strippers, Getting Head Action, Hot Nuts.

I started on stripping the combing around the cockpit yesterday so that I can sand it back and then oil and varnish it. I bought a copy of "Brightwork" which is a book singularly and obsessively devoted to topic of varnishing boats. I'm fairly sure the author must suffer from some kind of obsessive disorder, or at least have some kind of profileable psychological traits to have produced it. Either way -- it seems like a great book if you're interested in varnishing your boat.

The book strongly recommends stripping old varnish using a heat gun and a scrapper over sanding or chemicals. I started on this and progress was been surprisingly fast. However, scraping works best if the scrapper runs with the grain. Scraping around the grain lifts small splinters out of the grain that require removing more wood when sanding. Scraping around the hardware on the combing is a little problematic because of this. Since I'm taking off the old varnish I decided to take up all of the hardware on the combing (four winches and two compasses) and redo underneath these also. While the winches are removed, I can also do their annual service. I hoped that removing the hardware would make the varnishing job go quicker. However, as I removed one of my primary winches, I found it had been bedded down with some seriously heavy duty adhesive. In particular, the through-bolt threads were covered in the stuff and it took me all of Sunday to remove two of the four winches.

My big problem was that my heavy duty screwdriver (the biggest available) just didn't cut the mustard. In fact, trips to OSH, Home Depot and research on the Internet revealed that they don't even make screwdrivers large enough to properly fit the screws I have. The biggest I found (a #12) has a lot of wiggle room -- almost certain to lead to striping the screw head. My deck key fit the screw head perfectly but bent when I tried to use it. My crowbar also fit the screw's slot but was too long to fit into the recesses containing the screw heads.

It strikes me that screwdrivers are very poorly designed. Its impossible to get significant torque due to the relatively small diameters of screwdriver handles. A large lever arm is called for. A socket wrench would be perfect, but again, the small size bits available lead to stripping large screws. I tried making a lever arm for my screwdriver with my tapping tool -- my screwdriver was too bif. I taped silicone mats from the galley around the handle to increase its diameter. On top of that I added a towel and a tourniquet wrench (a rubber strip that wraps around objects and passes back through a handle to provide a lever). This helped a little but not enough. I tried "Liquid Wrench" to loosen then screws. This helped a little. I tried heating the bolt with my heat gun to melt the goop it is stuck in. No effect.

By around 6:30, by standing directly above the screws and applying all of my weight and twisting screwdriver's enlarged handle, I'd managed to remove four of the six bolts; one of remaining ones had budged by about 10 degrees and the other remained fixed. Worse, the heads of these were beginning to get severely striped, and my hands were both blistered and cramping up from sweating all day in the sun all day and so tightly gripping the screwdriver handle. I researched screw extractor tools. These seem to be last resort measures that often make matter worse by breaking themselves off in the screw. Maybe I'd have better luck from below.

I crawled back into the lazarette and tried bashing the bolts with a hammer in the vain hope of knocking something loose. No joy. I filed down two sides of a bolt's thread so that my monkey wrench could get purchase. This let me eke out an extra sixty degrees but further progress was halted by inside of the lazarette which blocked the wrench's handle. Without about two inches of thread exposed and probably 12 threads per inch, I calculated I would have to remove and reattach the monkey wrench 144 times to turn the bolt out from below. Not that it made any difference -- without being able to twist it ninety degrees, the bolt's new position didn't provide an access to file down more edges for the wrench.

If only there was some way of turning the bolt from below, I wouldn't have to worry about stripping the bolt's head. Think, think, think...

At around 7pm (I'd been working on this since midday) the answer hit me. I could could put a cap nut on the end of the bolt and tighten it. Because the cap is blocked by the end of the bolt, it can't twist up it and so turning the nut will torque the bolt. The long lever arm of my socket wrench would surely twist the bolt free.

If only I had a 3/8 cap nut. I checked my box o' bolts. I didn't. Rats.

I went scrounging for parts from the other boaters. The guy in the slip opposite had a really bright idea - put two nuts on the end of the bolt. The first nut stops the second from traveling up bolt and together they work like the a cap nut. A third nut in my the socket of my wrench stopped the sleeve of the socket reaching as far as the first nut and turning it. Brilliant!

Within about 5 minutes, I had the winch base all removed. When the last nut came out I was burning hot from friction.

Cool beer soothed my hot hands. Satisfaction? Not exactly. Tired and frustrated. Damn this boat. Every time I try to do something right for it, I end up bloodied and sweating.

Wood Care

Striping Varnish

Heat gun and scrapper works best.
Chemical stripper for fiddly part.
- 3M solvent resist

Use chemical stripper for stains.
- Moisten wood first
- Plastic brushes (nylon)

Sanding
- Double tape edge to avoid scratching get coat
- Grits 150-220
- Orbital finishing sander

Filler
- Collect sanding dust. Mix with epoxy (adds flexibilty to expoxy so it doesn't crack) "Cold Cure", "Hardman's". Clean area with lacquer thinner.

Oil. Light Tung oil with 300/400/600 grit 3M wet/dry
Sealer
Varnish
- Clean with mineral oil. With also expose defects in finish.
- Tack rags.

Book Binding Fail

Got my copy of "The Complete Rigger's Apprentice" today. Full of great stuff.

The binding cracked me up though: