Getting Ready for SHTP 2021

[AlanH]

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.

 

[AlanH]

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.

 

[AlanH]

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.

 

[AlanH]

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.



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.

 

[DaveH]

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

 

[AlanH]

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.

 

[AlanH]

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.

 

[AlanH]

The radar reflector / strobe pole is on.



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~

 

[AlanH]

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.

 

[solosailor]

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.

 

[AlanH]

Hmmm.... might have to go get a battery load tester from HD.

The little 8-inch refurbed Samsung Android tablet arrived. It DOES have an internal GPS in it, and now has GPS Test and Open CPN along with a mess of California charts, installed on it. It's tremedously more readable than my phone.

 

[Intermission]

Hmmm.... might have to go get a battery load tester from HD.

Some parts stores loan them.

 

[AlanH]

Hmmm.... might have to go get a battery load tester from HD.

Some parts stores loan them.

Will be taking the old battery into my car shop this afternoon for some testing!

All the tillers are done. I've beefed them up, considerably and last night I got the steel plates on the last one. I added some bits to the e-rudder cassette so that it fits to a T, now. Once the battery situation is sorted and I CLEAN THE BOAT...it's a mess. I'm ready.

I'm actually addressing the other UnThinKabLE issues....dismasting. I know people will think this is crazy but I'm going to get three, 6-foot lengths of 3-inch, 0.065 aluminum tubing and get them ready to sleeve. I'm putting four hefty eye straps at the top, which will be filled with a plug of douglas fir. The headstay/mainhalyard straps will be through-bolted to each other with s.s. threaded rod. The two eye straps for the shrouds will be fastened into the wood with long screws. There will be a doug fir base, drilled to take a bolt that goes through the mast base that will extend the total height to about 18' 9".

As set up like this, I should have a forestay about 22 feet long. I so-happen to have a trasher jib around, that I bought for $40 for the Piper that so happens to have a reefpoint in it. When reefed, the luff length is 21' 7". The foot is 10 feet. It needs some sewing but it's light-ish dacron, so I can do it on my home sewing machine. I've already cut off the un-needed bottom four feet. Eight of these...


and I can attach it to the wire headstay. That's easy. IF I have time, I'll make a "mainsail" out of a white polyester tarp. I've made them before. The "boom" is a spinnaker pole (I have two) They die in the sun after a couple of months, but if I cut out the shape, add reinforced corners and drive in some grommets, it'll do to get the Wildcat home. IF I have time.

 

[AlanH]

I knocked out an "emergency orange" ripstop sailbag for the fixed-up heavy weather jib, this afternoon. The battery is at my car guys place. We'll see what he says in the morning. Since I had the sewing machine out, I fixed the leech on the cheapo sail I got for the Piper off of Craigslist. My home machine will actually sew through 3-4 layers of this cloth. I'm amazed.

 

[AntsUiga]

All these preparations are pretty amazing and cover most contingencies. The puzzle to me is that I don't know Alan or his prior experience. Is there a history of ocean going problems that reinforce the desire to have all these backups in place?

Some preparation is required by the rules. The rules generally cover the minimum needs.

Charge onward. I am enjoying the posts.

Cheers,

Ants

 

[AlanH]

All these preparations are pretty amazing and cover most contingencies. The puzzle to me is that I don't know Alan or his prior experience. Is there a history of ocean going problems that reinforce the desire to have all these backups in place?

Some preparation is required by the rules. The rules generally cover the minimum needs.

Charge onward. I am enjoying the posts.

Cheers,

Ants

Ants, I've always been a little more conservative than most SSS sailors. I also am a little slower to learn my lessons, than most SSS sailors. That's probably why I only do middlin' well at the racing. You see, I did the SHTP in 2008, and that was the year that Ruben Gabriel took "Sparky", his Pearson Electra across. Sparky dismasted about 800 miles from Hawaii. Ruben recovered some of the rig, and managed to get something up to set up some seriously-butchered headsails to get him to Hawaii.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnbC5WQn8XU

I don't want that to be me, if I can help it.

I tend to think about this whole SHTP thing in two ways, which may at first seem at odds with each other.

Priorities.
1. Don't die.
2. Get to Hawaii
3. Get to Hawaii with a smile on my face
4. Don't be DFL in the fleet.

And this.
If the hull doesn't get a hole in it, and
the rudder doesn't fall off, and
the keel doesn't fall off, and
the mast doesn't fall down, and
you don't fall off the boat...

You'll get to Hawaii. That's basically true, in this day and age of GPS. If you take enough food and water, you'll get there. so it makes really good sense to make sure that either those things don't happen, or if they DO happen, you have a ready-to-go solution on hand to fix it.

Holes in the hull: Well, The Wildcat only has two through-hulls, now that the inboard engine has been removed. They're the cockpit drains, and the join between hull and "tube"...which leads to the hose that links up the drains, is very stoutly fiberglassed by the builders. The hoses on my boat are in good shape, so I'm starting the trip with no extra holes in the boat. Even the sink drains into the bilge (I might pull it out before the SHTP, or I might leave it in, and use the 3 gallon water tank to count towards my water requirement). I will carry a couple of 1 ft X 1 ft squares of triaxial fiberglass and underwater epoxy on the SHTP, ~just in case~. I have real doubts about being able to deploy and fix a hole bashed into the boat below the waterline, so I suppose this is just a risk that I accept.... but I'm guessing that the more-likely scenario is getting the lower rudder pintle ripped out of the transom after hitting something. THAT, I think I could fix....and yes, I will fabricate and carry a backup pintle and a square of 3/8 plywood and a hand saw.

The rudder falling off....well, we all prepare emergency rudders. I've made a substantial one, in fact maybe the cassette is a bit TOO "substantial" but I have confidence in the rudder, itself. For that matter, I have confidence in the cassette, too, it's just awfully heavy.

 

[AlanH]

The Keel doesn't fall off: I'm sure you'll all think I'm crazy but I consciously just accepted the fact that I couldn't really do anything about this issue when I took Ankle Biter over in 2008. Ankle Biter was a Santa Cruz 27 and has a bolt-on keel. I could drop the keel in the yard and inspect the top parts of the bolts, but the truth was that there's no way to know what's going on inside the lead. I figured that the keel wasn't wobbling when I sailed the boat, it had been there since 1978 with no issues, it probably wasn't going anywhere.

In 1996 when I tagged along with the fleet, I sailed a Ranger 29, which has a molded keel/hull and internal ballast. This whole "keel fall off" issue is a powerful reason, IMHO to consider boats like this.

The Wildcat has ballast in two places. 1. There's 600 pounds of internal ballast; lead poured into the keel that sits below the saloon floor, and 2. a 600 pound daggerboard. The daggerboard is tapered and the daggerboard slot is tapered such that without a major breach of the hull structure, the board can NOT fall out the bottom of the boat. So that's reassuring....there's nothing to corrode, here. However, in the unlikely chance of a roll-over the board can fall out the TOP of the slot/case. The s.s. plate that's there, with the block on it that guides the board hoisting line down to the top of the board is held in with 8 s.s. screws sunk about an inch into the fiberglass. That's fine for holding the plate in place for the expected loads but I don't think it's going to stop a 600 pound board plunging from full-drop position. So in fact, a couple of weeks ago, I drilled a hole through the daggerboard case, about a foot above the waterline, and put a stout 1/2 inch bolt through it. Now the board CAN'T fall out the top of the case.

 

[AlanH]

Don't Fall Off The Boat: .. We all worry about this, thus the discussions about jacklines and lifejackets and etriers. I have the usual things as required by the rules, and now the back of the boat is enclosed by a 24 inch high pushpit. That will make deploying and removing the outboard a PITA, but what's more important? I put a nice, strong Wichard U-bolt through the bulkhead right below the companionway. One tether lives on that u-bolt when I'm at sea, where I cannot possibly NOT see it.. I don't put two feet outside that companionway without hooking up to it. I just don't. Not EVER.

Sure the washboard tethers hook to that u-bolt as well, but most important is that tether. None of what I do is anything special, we all do this stuff.

 

[AlanH]

The mast doesn't fall down: ... again, I'm sure you all think that I'm crazy, and I worry too much, and I load the boat down with unnecessary junk, but I just think about Sparky, and I watch videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-jqwkNXMIY

and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64l29uncetY

and the video of the Coco Mini doing the Trans At for normal boats, dismasted in the middle of the Atlantic, no way to retrieve any part of the rig, and nothing on board to put up a new one. NOT ME.

Three, six foot lengths of 3" 0.065 aluminum tubing, with sleeves... through-bolted pad eyes attached, and a couple of extra blocks already shackled to it...three lengths of 1/8 stainless wire with loops swaged into the ends, can make an 18 foot mast and doesn't weigh that much. A lot of guys/gals would consider that extra weight, but you know what? I sleep better knowing that I have it. I can use a spinnaker pole for a boom. Since I have two spinnaker poles, I can pole out that extra genoa, and get going at a couple of knots downwind, I can make some progress upwind...slow, but progress.

It's worth the $$, prep time and weight, to me.

Part of the question when figuring this out, is "how much mast can I actually push up, on the boat?" I mean, if you could carry a 30 foot mast on the boat, pretend it's carbon fiber so it only weighs 10 pounds, wouldn't it be great to be able to put up a 30 foot stick if you had to?

I remember pushing up my Cal 20 mast, with the boat at the dock and that was tough....and I was 25 years younger. Also, as you all know, I compete at the Scottish Highland Games. One of the events is the Sheaf toss, where you spear a bag of hay with a pitchfork, and heave it over a bar. The higher the bar, the harder it is. The vertical pole that are braced and support the crossbar for sheaf, usually go up to 30 feet. They're usually made out of steel or 2-inch electrical conduit, which is heavy. It takes about 6-8 guys to push those things up to vertical, with other people holding the supporting guy wires out to the sides.

I thin it would be POSSIBLE to raise a 30-foot mast by yourself, keeping in mind that if your boat is smaller than 40 feet, half of the mast will be hanging off one end of the boat, while you prepare it, but even on a flush-deck boat where you can rig up side-stays directly in line with the pivot point at the base of the mast, it's going to be a very dicey proposition. If you have 4-5-6 crew, then maybe it's do-able. Alone? I don't think I could do it.

 

[AlanH]

After pushing up 2/3rds of my clubs sheaf apparatus the other day, I realized that 20 feet is really the outer limit of what I could possibly do, myself.

Side-to-side stability during the hoist is important. If you are using a four-point rigging system, a forestay, backstay and two side-shrouds, then things are a little bit simplified. The key is to set up the side shrouds such that their base is directly in line, and outboard of the mast base...the pivot point of the mast. On a flush-deck boat, this is not a problem. There might be a chainplate there, already, or a "backup" chainplate/u-bolt/eye bolt arrangement can be set up beforehand. On a boat with a cabin trunk, clever use of the toerail and lines and probably get the side-shroud attachment points pretty close to in-line with the base of the mast.

Why is this important? Because you want the side shrouds to be pretty taut as you push the mast up from behind, or forward. That will keep the mast from wobbling side-to-side. If you pre-set either of the fore-and-aft stays...backstay or headstay, then you just get under the mast and push it up until that stay is tight. Lead the other fore-and-aft stay to it's anchoring point on the boat, lash it down and there you are. You can also have a spinnaker pole fitting on the mast, and use the spinny pole as a gin pole, and then winch the mast upright.

THINK, though...when you set this up. Is the distance between your mast base and the bow pulpit longer than the distance between the mast base and the transom? Probably not. You'll want to assemble the parts of the mast on the boat where you have the most deck space to work from. For most of us, that will mean that the backup mast will be assembled AFT of the mast base, and a few feet of it will extend over the stern, before it's raised.