Page 23 of 42 FirstFirst ... 1319202122232425262733 ... LastLast
Results 221 to 230 of 414

Thread: Getting Ready for SHTP 2021

  1. #221
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    Everything is wired up...the two panels wires go to a bus bar, and smaller wire goes to the MPPT controller. The controller is wired to the battery and spent 2-3 hours today trying to float my toasted battery. That one comes out and the new one goes in, this week.

    I also figured out what the heck was going on with the bilge pump hoses. It's kookaburra! ...but sortable.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  2. #222
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    I mounted the radar relfector on it's pole today, and make the little epoxied-on shelf for the strobe light.

    The air quality is NASTY...really bad from the lightning-firest in the Santa Cruz mountains.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  3. #223
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    I picked up the heavy weather jib from Leading Edge sails, today. It's a heavily cut down working jib that came with the boat. Hoist is about 22 feet, on a 31 foot headstay. The clew is really high, about 6 feet, so seeing under it is easy. LP is probably 6 feet +/- on a J of 7.5 feet. This is probably about 50%, maybe 60% of the foretriangle. I sewed on the corner patches but my machine can't handle the edges, so I took it to Joe. The foot and leech are hollowed a couple of inches, so there should be no flutter. The sail originally had battens....those are gone, though parts of the pockets remain, there's no reason to rip them out. The sail has a #6 luff tape and 7 grommets behind the tape ~just in case~ I have to wire-tie it to the forestay.

    I'm reserving one full weekend to SAIL and try everything out before I go. I think I will buy some inexpensive 3/16th galvanized wire rope and put eyes in it, so that it's ~Exactly~ the same length as the luff. Then I can hoist the whole thing on a halyard, with the tack on a loop between the two bow cleats and I can try the "backed storm jib inside the working jib" system for sheet-to-tiller self steering. It would be nice if it worked, as I don't have a self steering backup for the ST2000 yet.

    AND...I printed 7 charts, covering the coast from Pt Arena to Pt Concepcion. Ouch. Paper charts are expensive. Seven charts = $300. The guy printed a couple of them oversize, which cost more but then I got through it quicker...I was at FedEx for almost two hours between waiting in line and paper jams. The paper quality is *meh* but hopefully only one of those charts (SF Bay Entrance) will ever come out of the roll-tube. This saved me a trip to WayPoint, though I like those folks. Readability is good.
    Last edited by AlanH; 08-20-2020 at 10:26 AM.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  4. #224
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    I like to run a flashing strobe light at night when I'm more than about 20 miles offshore. Technically, a strobe is a distress signal, but I keep the radio on at night, so if a ship sees the strobe and calls out, I can tell them ..."everything is fine, please don't hit me!" I well remember my first LongPac, wow..1996 or so, when it was getting towards midnight. I was about 20 miles from the turnaround point and hadn't seen another boat all day. Lo and behold, I spotted about three strobes going off, two north of me and one, south. They had to be a couple of miles away from me, but WOW...visible. I was an instant convert.

    Anyway, the higher up the rig the strobe is, the further away it's visible, of course. However, I also like to have the strobe completely independent of the boats electrical system. That way, if the electrical system fails and I have no running lights, I still have the strobe, alerting other vessels to my presence. It's a LOT of wire, to set it up that way, with the strobe at the top of the mast, so I've usually set up some gizmo where it's mounted about 8-10 feet up the backstay. This time I decided to mount it on the radar reflector pole. It's not ideal, as any ship directly forward of me might not see the strobe, as the sails will be in the way, but I'll live with the compromise.

    Name:  Reflector_Strobe_Pole.jpg
Views: 489
Size:  462.5 KB

    I cut out the plywood pieces for the strobes' "shelf" from 1/4 inch plywood and set them all up with clamps and epoxy on the pole itself. So I sort of "built it in place" and eyeballed the angles. Ooops....not quite level. Ah well, the boat will almost never be level anyway, it doesn't really matter. The wires will go to a 6-volt lantern battery in a plastic bag, lashed to the pushpit. I can run that strobe for DAYS on one 6V lantern battery. It's crude, but unless the pushpit gets torn off, it's pretty idiot-proof. The fiberglass pole is a section of high-jump or pole vault pole, which we use in the highland games as a crossbar for the weight-over-bar event. I have a mess of 4-8 foot bits of this stuff around. It's the same stuff I made the windvane pole out of.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  5. #225
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Location
    Alameda CA
    Posts
    497

    Default

    Any concern that the strobe may effectively blind you from that position?
    DH

  6. #226
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by DaveH View Post
    Any concern that the strobe may effectively blind you from that position?
    DH
    Yeah, I've thought about that. The post is about 6 feet tall, the strobe is at about 5 feet up. The bottom of the post will be about 8-9 inches off the deck, so the strobe will be something l;ike about 7 feet above cockpit floor level. I'm going to fit it to the boat this weekend and eyeball it. If I think it's going to be a problem, I'll glass on another 2-3 feet of the fiberglass tubing and get it up a bit higher. I have a mess of the stuff.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  7. #227
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    What the heck, it's easy to do. I just added 2 feet to the height of the pole by glassing on another length to the bottom. That will get the strobe well above my sight line, and 2 more feet height on the radar reflector can't hurt.. I've got a piece of bamboo inside the tube to hold it in line, and then wrapped the two poles, butted up next to each other, with a couple random 3 x 3 scraps of glass right over the join, and 3 wraps of 10-inch wide, 6 oz. glass cloth. It's all wrapped with waxpaper, and then I've got blue painters tape wrapping the whole thing very tightly, to make a really strong bond. The lower piece is a different color from the top, but hey...whatever.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  8. #228
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    The radar reflector / strobe pole is on.

    Name:  radar-ref-pole.JPG
Views: 486
Size:  255.1 KB

    It's funny, the previous post in here was about me making it longer. I set it up quick 'n dirty on the boat and it was way too "floppy", because it was so long. So I just sawed off the piece I fiberglassed on last night! Oh well.

    It would be nice if the wood bits had paint on them, but this just has to get me through the September run. I will probably re-do some of what you're seeing here for Hawaii, if I can get the windvane to work. If that happens, then the radar reflector will go somewhere else.

    I am on track...which is a miracle. What you can't see in that photograph is that the electric bilge pump, which had been totally disconnected for what??? The four years I've owned the boat, is now connected to an outlet. THAT was a project, I had to saw off part of the fitting on the back of the boat so I could get a 90-degree PVC fitting on it. Whoever put that fitting on obviously put it on from the outside without think about the inside of the boat. There was NO room...none between the end of the barb and the fiberglass that forms the structure of the cockpit seat side. Thus, half an hour with the saw attachment on the multi-tool. The 90 degree PVC fitting is glued on with 3M 5200 sealant/glue, so once it sets up, it's NOT coming off. That leads to some 3/4 inch PVC that I heated up and bent, and now the electric bilge pump home actually will discharge overboard.

    I found out last weekend that the manual bilge pump exit hose was fine, but the intake hose just went to the old engine compartment bulkhead, and was CUT OFF right there!! It didn't go anywhere! So today I drilled out the goop, plywood mix that was left over from sealing that hole, and ran 10 more feet of bilge pump hose down from the bottom of the old engine compartment (where the batteries are, now) back up to the bilge pump. VOILA! ....One days work and I have two functioning bilge pumps, now!

    AND...

    The charge controller is telling me that the solar panels are "floating" the old battery. Hot Damn! It's NOT dead! So once I drop the second battery in there, I have, like 200 Amp Hours of battery life. ..or something like that anyway.

    The replacement Samsung tablet arrived today.
    I'm successfully messaging friends and family with the InReach. I took it out for a walk today and it tracked me every 10 min for an hour, and updated the shared map.

    Tomorrow I rebuild the starboard cabintop winch and install a second autopilot plug.

    Next weekend? SAIL...and clean the boat, it's flippin' mess right now. ...and SAIL. ~Finally~
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  9. #229
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Posts
    2,095

    Default

    With the new pushpit in, the lifelines are now about 5" too short. I thought about getting some swaged wire "extenders' but I can't find my swaging tool. So I made these from stuff I ordered from sailrite.

    Name:  lifeline-extenders.JPG
Views: 387
Size:  175.7 KB
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  10. #230
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    609

    Default

    The charge controller is telling me that the solar panels are "floating" the old battery. Hot Damn! It's NOT dead! So once I drop the second battery in there, I have, like 200 Amp Hours of battery life
    That doesn't mean the battery is good. You should put a similar load on it like you will when you race.... so at least 5A and let it run it's course. You don't want greatly diminished capacity because a battery "might" seem OK.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •