Shake down cruise

I had the opportunity this past weekend to take the boat out and about on a two night cruise with a friend.
I'm happy to report that she lived up to all expectations. We found a few minor issues (a sticky float on the bilge pump for example) but nothing that didn't work. In other words a shake down and not a break down cruise.
Day one was a motor and then down wind drift at 4kts under the jib alone to the mouth of the Severn where we dropped canvas (dacron actually, but canvas sounds better) and did a brief motor tour of Back Creek.
On the way in we crossed bows with Mario - a online friend from SailNet. I'd never actually met him or seen his boat but I knew he was on BC with a Endeavor 32. I simply yelled "Mario", he yelled back "Chuck" and 5 minutes later we were chatting on VHF arranging a meet up in Weems Creek on the free Navy mooring balls.
Mario and his wife have lived aboard for 2.5 years bouncing up and down the east coast as summer and jobs take them. In other words, living the life most of us dream about.

The next day we unhooked and motored around to the Annapolis harbor and grabbed a ball then jumped on the water taxi and went in to scope out the Spring Boat Show. For 12 bucks it's was worth it but not even 1/4 the size of the fall show. Lots of local dealers and brokers, lots of large expensive used boats and a hundred or so vendors of various mostly sailing related products. None of the big guys, none of the 'boat show' discounts I've been accustomed to seeing.

The weather forecasts had been for 5-8 knots of wind all weekend. A check on Sunday morning was therefore a surprise when the first thing that popped up was a small craft advisory until 10pm. Rather than a slow drift home we got a nice sail with winds building from 8 kts to a maximum apparent wind of 28.4. Another shake down with nothing breaking.
We didn't even reef. It's nice indeed to have 7,000 pounds of ballast standing up to Mr. Wind.

Here's a nice video of the trip where the winds were still in the low teens and we had time to take a video.

Update with a view

So, the view from the top looks something like this:

 With a nice view:

And the helm used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

It's not done yet - on the right is where the control head for the auto pilot goes, under that in the bottom right will be switches for the windlass (for the anchor) and maybe an ignition switch. Under the instrument on the left is remote mike for my VHF and some 12v plugs and a horn switch.

The picture doesn't truly show the 'view', angle is wrong. Yes, we can both see over it quite well.

It takes a village

Remember the simple little whirly gig look thing from my last post? It's  a rather innoculous looking device isn't it?

It just points into the wind and whirls away, and remote sensors pick up how fast it's whirling away and which way it's pointing based on electrical resistors confuslator (pronounced confuse you later) technologies that then sends that information down to a display that you can read placed somewhat more convenient than 54.4 feet up in air.
Simple right?
Um. No.

You see, to send that information down below you have to either buy into wireless technology to magically transport it or a hard piece of cave man technology called multiple wires.

I'm not a Luddite, really I'm not. Wireless works.

It also costs twice as much and (okay, I'm a Luddite) I can't hold it in my hand 600 miles from the nearest Maytag technician and fix it myself.

What that means is someone has to go up the mast - five and a half stories up - in a nylon chair with a rope that is of indeterminate age and actually work with tools on a skinny piece of aluminum that costs upwards of $8,000  to replace just to mount a little $500 whirly gig I want so I don't have to stick my head out the 'window'.

Yeah well, not a one man job.

Meet the crew - not exactly a Iwo Jima moment but awe inspiring nonetheless.

That's John in the aforementioned nylon chair, his lovely wife Donna on belay (to the right holding the safety line),  and me (white sweater) cranking away to pull John up the mast.

Here's the fun part.

I'd met only the guy in the ball cap next to me before. He's Resolute_ZS on www.sailnet.com.
I met him when he drove 2 hours to help me get the boat ready for bringing home, and he rode the boat home as crew - a 10 hour day for him. Never laid eyes on him before.
Donna and John, same thing - met them that day, known her for months as DRFerron on www.sailnet.com. They also drove down from the Philly area (2 hours) just to help me do this.

We started at about  11:30, finished at 5:30. Six hours. John sat in the chair at the top of the mast for almost SIX HOURS.

Poor Resolute (I'm not sure if I can use his actual name) has  18 hours or more of working on my boat and has not had the chance to sail her yet.

These are the people you meet when you love sailing, help others and share. I hope I never stop. 

The person taking the picture? Jimgo from sailnet. His boat was at my pier for 3 weeks while diagnosing a transmission problem that occurred while moving his boat from Deltaville VA to home near Atlantic City.

Serendipity doesn't just happen.

Pay it forward.

Boat Toys

As bought the Irwin is a pretty much a stock moderate displacement cruiser without a lot of frills and thrills - including some things most cruisers feel are essential.

Of course some purist think those things are frivolous and just a waste of money on a 'real' sailboat.

A wind transducer is one of those things:
You have to have them, or hate them. Most sailboats of any size have them (so much for the purist).

These are different than the even more common 'windex' - the little arrow thingee's on the top of the mast. Windex is sailor speak for 'wind index'. It provides a visual reference ( ‘index’) of the direction the apparent wind (more sailor speak)  is coming from.

These are simple, require no power and last years if you can keep the birds off them. They also cause painful cricks in the neck while staring up at them, can’t be seen at night or through a bimini or cockpit enclosure.

Thus the advantage of the transducer. It sends a signal via wire (some are solar powered and wireless) down to a converter that reads the signal and translates it to a visual representation of wind direction and speed. 

Raymarine ITC 5 Sensor Pod Converter

With today’s advanced systems it also computes apparent wind speed and direction and allows the savvy skipper to plot courses for least time arrivals, vectoring and other big words with fuzzy nautical meanings.

There’s a catch – to do that you have to have a display such as this:

This one is the Raymarine i70. It’s not just wind, it has 22 different screens to display everything from wind to engine RPM, depth etc. All the electronics I’m installing are Raymarine’s current generation in order to eliminate communication and compatibility issues (a fantasy).

Of course all these geegaws have a cost, and not just in boat bucks. They consume power, require space and need cabling to be run all through the nice pretty interior of the boat to get signals where they need to be.  Oh, yeah, and the ‘where’ for the transducers is 55 feet up the mast and need power and signal cabling run safely all the way down, through the boat to the cockpit.

I’ve just ordered this stuff – any questions what I’ll be doing next weekend?