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Getting Ready for SHTP 2021

I could get one of those ferrules-in-the-dyneema loop things. I'd rather have the block installed on a spare jib track slider, as a backup. I've got one, and I've got the slider for the second one.

Anyway, finally today about 2:00 the wind kicked in. I had about an hour and a half of 10 knots of breeze and flat water to test the windvane. Fail. Utter fail. Not even close.

Six-plus month, hundreds of hours of work and a couple hundred bucks down the tubes. The windvane doesn't work. The inherent instability of the rudder/tiller is too much for the vane to handle. If the tiller ever goes more than about 15-20 degees off center, the load skyrockets and the tiller heads for the leeward side of the boat much harder than any vane/trimbtab can control. Maybe I could build another rudder or something but it's time to cut my losses and just throw money into autopilots. Not untll after March 15th, though.
 
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So sorry to hear, Alan.

While driving home from Grass Valley yesterday, we listened to a podcast about Iver Norman Lawson, the chemist who invented WD-40. The 40 represents the number of times it took him until he got the right combination of ingredients. I suppose wind vane steering devices are like that.
 
BobJ said:
So sorry to hear, Alan.

While driving home from Grass Valley yesterday, we listened to a podcast about Iver Norman Lawson, the chemist who invented WD-40. The 40 represents the number of times it took him until he got the right combination of ingredients. I suppose wind vane steering devices are like that.
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I know why it doesn't work. I just didn't think it would be that much of a problem.

I tallied it up. Total amount of money wasted on the windvane, $530.35. The HOURS spent, easily 150+. At $15 an hour that's $2,250 worth of my time. So $2800 and my entire Winter vacation...Wasted. All right, then. So be it. Move on.
 
On Ragtime! I tied them on. BTW, 12' of each sheet at the sail end was stripped to slide more easily around the rolled jib (I did inside gybes).

For Surprise! I had the sheets made with small eye splices in the sail ends (still stripped for 12-14') and I attach them with soft shackles. Heavier boat = more load so knots would be harder to untie. It takes just as long to fiddle with the soft shackles as to tie bowlines (plus the need for eye splices and the shackles, plus a spare or two), so on your boat I'd just tie on the sheets.
 
Added PSA: Look at your spinny halyard and sheave with an eye towards it being hoisted for hours on end. I replaced the sheave and smoothed up the sheave box, and had a low-friction cover put on the halyard end. Then once in the trades, ease/trim the halyard a few inches every few hours to move the wear points.
 
BobJ said:
Added PSA: Look at your spinny halyard and sheave with an eye towards it being hoisted for hours on end. I replaced the sheave and smoothed up the sheave box, and had a low-friction cover put on the halyard end. Then once in the trades, ease/trim the halyard a few inches every few hours to move the wear points.
Click to expand...

Yes, the mast comes down in April, assuming that we get a "GO!" on march 15th and new sheaves get installed, as well as a new main halyard.
 
AlanH said:
I really need to learn how to splice dyneema.
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Not so!

Soft shackles are more of a knot than a splice. I tied one at a Brion Toss workshop half a dozen years ago.
The videos in that link show several ways to tie them, and what's really cool is that the soft shackles exceed the tensile strength of the material they were tied with!
Brion told me his favorite use for them was attaching sheets to clews.

Disclaimer: [Only a one or two soft shackles exceed the tensile strength of their material depending on how they are tied]

If time is an issue, and money isn't, already tied versions used to be available at Blue Pelican in a few different sizes.
 
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I fixed the electrical problem on the boat. YAAY, me! it was two butt-joint fittings in the main power and ground wires going from the main switch to the electrical panel. Those wires are in the bilge. The joints weren't sealed and they corroded. So I cut them out, stripped the wire back to "good stuff" and put in new joiners....and sealed them both with silicon tape. I need to make a couple of "hooks" to get them out of the bilge, though, by suspending them up a few inches.

I still need to install the new panel for SHTP but now I have lights and an autopilot for the Corinthian race.
 
Wow. I'm sort of shocked at how expensive those low-friction ferrules are.

EDIT...oops, the Antal ones are half the price of the Tylaskas. What the heck is the difference?
 
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I made a spinnaker turtle today. All the materials except for the aluminum bar that will get bent to keep the mouth open was stuff I just had lying around.

I still need to buy that bar from OSH, curve it, and rivet it together, but aside from that, it's done.

EDIT: turtle is done. Now I have a bag to launch from. I might have made it a scooch bigger than it really needs to be.
 
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Finally, a major success, today. For starters, the NOAA wind report was so wrong it's almost comical. This morning it was blowing 27-30 with gusts to 37+. Whoops! Coyote Point Marina has installed a DAVIS weather station, and it's way out on the breakwater, out from behind the effect of the hill. So it's a pretty accurate report on conditions in RealTime. By the time I got there at noon-ish it had died down to 6 knots. By the time I actually got OUT there, it was back up to more like 15-18.

Well, OK, fine, says I to myself. I don't really want to practice setting the asymmetrcical the first time in that, but you know what? I haven't been SAILING in weeks. I went out in <5 knots for 2 hours to test the windvane, but I haven't been sailing in a decent breeze since my qualifier! So I decided to just stay out for 4-5 hours and SAIL. I needed it. All work and no sail is a dumb way to have a boat. So I tucked in a reef and headed up the bay.

Well, as we proceeded towards San Francisco, it got lighter, like it usually does. I thought...."I'll sail up the the usual wind hole behind San Bruno Mountain and see how it is." Well, when I got there, the water was flat at it was blowing about 5 knots. Cool! So I mentally reviewed everything I was planning, rolled up the jib, gybed the boat, tied my bowlines in clew and tack and set the asymmetrical spinnaker. OK, it went up with a twist in it. I've never packed an asymmetrical chute before. I'll do it differently next time. This time, I just went up to the mast and gave it a few tugs and all the twists unrolled. NICE.

I wound up sailing "pretty deep downwind" and reaching up pretty high just to see what I could do for about 45-50 minutes with no problems. The boat moved well, the spinnaker looks good to me, what do I know? I mean, I can't really see it behind the main, but in the wind I had, the autopilot could have driven, easily. I sailed back down into the heavier air down by Coyote Point and doused the chute with no issues in about 15 knots of breeze and the usual South Bay 2 -foot wind chop.

WIN

Everything worked, the pole works great (Thanks again Greg!) , I ran all the lines right (first time ever) and just...WIN, all 'round! YAY.
 
OK, we're looking tidier for the Corinthian race. I've taken off the windvane. I haven't swapped out the rudders, maybe I'll get around to that before Friday, but the boat steers just fine with the offshore rudder, with the trimtab on it, as long as the trimtab is lashed on the centerline. Should I take the solar panels off for the race? Hmmm. Maybe. Windage, you know?

I got all the wiring into the little clip-thingies that I made to keep all of it out of the bilge, so we're good, there. I'll make a few more to tidy up the autopilot wires. Measurements have been taken for the new electrical panel plywood. The boat got a bath, so now I won't get filthy by sailing it all next weekend. Finally, a mess of the wiring in the battery compartment is now labelled.

I sure hope the PHRF committee gets to my application. It's been in the YRA office for over 3 weeks, now.

========

I am considering what to do if SHTP 2021 doesn't happen. An October one-way trip to Mexico might be an option. I'm thinking about taking a month to sail to La Paz and maybe leaving the boat down there for a year or two. ~Thinking~..about it. Maybe. Or maybe I should take a week and do a Jackie Trip and sail the boat down to Catalina. Then pop over to Long Beach, pick up a couple of nephews and take them down to Ensenada. Then sail the boat back to San Diego and put her up for sale. I dunno. We'll see.
 
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If the race doesn't happen... after crying in my beer (maybe a few beers), guess a week or two in the Delta will be the order of the day (and more beer). But I hope not...
 
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