Interesting; I would think the conditions vis-a-vis bathing, personal hygiene, clothes washing, sleeping, and the lack thereof would reduce inspiration for such activities.
Now, where is that sign-up form, again?
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Interested in a boat for 2018 TransPac
- Thread starter jamottep
- Start date
Interesting; I would think the conditions vis-a-vis bathing, personal hygiene, clothes washing, sleeping, and the lack thereof would reduce inspiration for such activities.
Now, where is that sign-up form, again?
BobJ
Alerion 38 "Surprise!"
"I like sailing solo, I really do. The experience is much more engaging. On a crewed boat everything is about human interaction. There is no activity that is not part of the group, none. Many decisions are taken out of one's control. Every move, every action is part of the larger picture. Solo, everything is about being part of a magical moment of sea, wind, technology and oneself coming together, in a constantly changing exchange of perception and action. Clipper may help me become a better sailor and a better person, but sailing solo is really where I find my way."
Awesome.
Awesome.
Interesting; I would think the conditions vis-a-vis bathing, personal hygiene, clothes washing, sleeping, and the lack thereof would reduce inspiration for such activities.
Now, where is that sign-up form, again?
If everyone smells the same the personal hygiene will be less of a problem...
Yeah, these are the Clipper stories that everyone really wants to hear about
How did you find out it happens in the sail locker?Ok ... about the sail locker ...
I wish I'd have a story along the lines of ... After coming down from my watch exhausted, skipper asked me to check if the code 2 spinnaker had been wool'ed. I went down to the sail locker and started lifting heavy sail bags to figure out which one was the code 2. I found it stuck upside down under a bunk and blocked by the yankee 1. I couldn't get access to the spinnaker to see if it had been packed properly. So I proceeded to make room to reach the opening of the bag and maybe get my hand in there to check for wool ties. A bit of huffing and puffing and I finally got to it. The wool ties were there and all was good. I fell down in exhaustion on the bag and relaxed for a moment trying to catch up some strength before going back to skipper with the good news. I heard a heavy "clang" and figured the sail locker's door had closed under its own weight. I turned around and that's when I saw her.
I really was just intrigued by the fact that the policies on the fleet didn't say a word about interactions between crew (I do think skippers shouldn't engage with crew). I just mentioned it someone who had it from a previous participant that it does happen and it happens in the sail locker. And someone else said: "there's loads of relationships going on" ...
I wish I'd have a story along the lines of ... After coming down from my watch exhausted, skipper asked me to check if the code 2 spinnaker had been wool'ed. I went down to the sail locker and started lifting heavy sail bags to figure out which one was the code 2. I found it stuck upside down under a bunk and blocked by the yankee 1. I couldn't get access to the spinnaker to see if it had been packed properly. So I proceeded to make room to reach the opening of the bag and maybe get my hand in there to check for wool ties. A bit of huffing and puffing and I finally got to it. The wool ties were there and all was good. I fell down in exhaustion on the bag and relaxed for a moment trying to catch up some strength before going back to skipper with the good news. I heard a heavy "clang" and figured the sail locker's door had closed under its own weight. I turned around and that's when I saw her.
I really was just intrigued by the fact that the policies on the fleet didn't say a word about interactions between crew (I do think skippers shouldn't engage with crew). I just mentioned it someone who had it from a previous participant that it does happen and it happens in the sail locker. And someone else said: "there's loads of relationships going on" ...
Another day on Double Espresso today. Wind around 20 kts with gusts to 27. I was tense and uncomfortable, almost getting seasick. I just wasn't familiar with the boat anymore, in those conditions. I'm still trying to make friends with the autopilot.
However it was my lucky day in a way as I made a couple useful discoveries:
1. The knot meter doesn't measure speed the same on each tack. It's off center, to starboard. So on starboard tack it reads about 1 kt too fast. And that explains why I thought one tack was slower than the other.
2. I was holding on the jib sheet with AWA between 40-50. I had trimmed the jib nicely using tell tales. Then while fiddling with something else I let the sheet go a little. No way I could get it back without going to leeward with the winch handle so I let it be. And that's when I noticed the boat speed jump 1 kt! 1 f***ing kt that I had been sitting on because I didn't experiment more. I wonder what else is hiding
Too bad I don't have a sail locker.
Coming back to the harbor the wind dropped to nothing a few hundred yards away and I paddled my way in, very slowly.
Not a bad day ...
However it was my lucky day in a way as I made a couple useful discoveries:
1. The knot meter doesn't measure speed the same on each tack. It's off center, to starboard. So on starboard tack it reads about 1 kt too fast. And that explains why I thought one tack was slower than the other.
2. I was holding on the jib sheet with AWA between 40-50. I had trimmed the jib nicely using tell tales. Then while fiddling with something else I let the sheet go a little. No way I could get it back without going to leeward with the winch handle so I let it be. And that's when I noticed the boat speed jump 1 kt! 1 f***ing kt that I had been sitting on because I didn't experiment more. I wonder what else is hiding
Too bad I don't have a sail locker.Coming back to the harbor the wind dropped to nothing a few hundred yards away and I paddled my way in, very slowly.
Not a bad day ...
[email protected]
Capri 25 - Jack
I see Barry Bristol often (last night in fact) and I know his Capri 30 is for sale. It has completed the round trip twice to Hawaii and back. I am sure it would not be all that expensive.
http://sfbaysss.org/forum/showthread.php?1854-Catalina-Capri-30-for-sale
http://sfbaysss.org/forum/showthread.php?1854-Catalina-Capri-30-for-sale
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Failing wind instrument
My wind instruments have started failing. At first I'd get no reading on wind speed then it would come back, on and off like that. Now it's pretty much gone. The wind vane and anemometer are at the top of the mast. They're feeding to a Raymarine display. Any suggestion about where I should start before I go up the mast?
I think the wind angle comes through but not the wind speed.
My wind instruments have started failing. At first I'd get no reading on wind speed then it would come back, on and off like that. Now it's pretty much gone. The wind vane and anemometer are at the top of the mast. They're feeding to a Raymarine display. Any suggestion about where I should start before I go up the mast?
I think the wind angle comes through but not the wind speed.
BobJ
Alerion 38 "Surprise!"
I've had several of these and I'd start with the masthead transducer. Raymarine sells service kits for them - you can even buy the kit for their older unit at Wally World!
Wind transducer service kit at Wal-Mart
The kit for the newer units is available at Defender:
http://www.defender.com/product3.jsp?path=-1|344|2028690|2028831&id=1723894
Unplug the birdie, bring it down and overhaul it. Just tell your wife you'll be "hangin' out" at the boat for awhile.
Wind transducer service kit at Wal-Mart
The kit for the newer units is available at Defender:
http://www.defender.com/product3.jsp?path=-1|344|2028690|2028831&id=1723894
Unplug the birdie, bring it down and overhaul it. Just tell your wife you'll be "hangin' out" at the boat for awhile.
Thanks Bob ... The cups are spinning just fine up there, it's just not making it to the display. Not sure that's the problem ...
Here's a video of the spinnaker work I did last week.
https://youtu.be/BCDbyWj2KkE
I'm thinking of heading out tomorrow for my qualifier. It does look a little breezy then soft for the turn around. I'll see how things look like tomorrow morning ...
https://youtu.be/BCDbyWj2KkE
I'm thinking of heading out tomorrow for my qualifier. It does look a little breezy then soft for the turn around. I'll see how things look like tomorrow morning ...
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Philpott
Cal 2-27 Dura Mater
Good luck! We'll be waiting to read about it all when you get back!
Thank you ... this is done
Who validates this? This link should bring to a Google drive with the tracks I created using Navionics Boat HD: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_9W-lr12yxVQzBya3gwRUtIanM?usp=sharing
I'll follow up with a report later ... now I'll just brush my teeth ... highs and lows ... highs and lows ...
So then how was it?
I drove to Santa Cruz Thursday morning with my solar panel, Iridium GO, dodger, water, food, emergency rudder, radar reflector, a bit of extra clothing and stuff I'm forgetting already. After putting the boat in the water I proceeded to setup the boat with all of the above. The Iridium GO had a wrong setting and off hours support from RoadPost helped figure that out and so I went on my may ...
Exiting the harbor I got into almost now wind and I paddled my way out to reach the westerlies. I was under one reef and number 3, being ready, or so I thought, for what I was expecting further out. Wind picked up and I started tracking. The auto-pilot was put to work.
Making my way out West wind continued to pick up and I put the second reef in. Sea state continued to build up as well and I was being overpowered with the #3. Just like the first time I tried to go out for my first offshore stint the boat was wet and water started sloshing around. I figured sometimes it's not worth to push things too far out and I turned around.
I got back into Monterey Bay, with much lighter winds, popped the #4, stowed the 3, all at ease on a flat boat and went back for it. By now I knew what was coming. It wasn't long before I was back into the breeze and agitated sea. My wind instruments are dead so I can't say for sure what it was but the forecast was 20-25 kts and it certainly felt like it. Sea state I would guess was between 8-12 ft with mixed swell. The auto-pilot was whirring, the boat was getting wet and I was staying under ... I fell sea sick and settled in a new routine: laying low in the berth with an alarm for 60 minutes later, checking AIS on the VHF when it beeped, filling up the bucket with the bit of water and crackers I was trying to get down, getting the unwanted water out of the boat (buckets were dropped in the cockpit; that mast hole is a fountain). It wasn't bad as most food in my stomach had been digested already. Sea sickness staid for most of the trip. As a result most of my experience was inside the boat but the best happened outside.
I hit the 100 nm out mark and tacked the boat. As the track shows I did so a few more times then hit "home".
Inside an Olson 30 ... it's brutal! The whole hull is an echo chamber mixing the constant whirring of the auto-pilot, the VHF's crackling, announcements and AIS alarms, the water gushing along the hull, the waves slamming the hull on the side, the hull banging over the top of the waves ... It's just all crazy loud ... And me through all of that listening to the boat for signs of things going wrong.
I didn't change head sail nor flew the spinnaker. I didn't feel it wise to push, being sea sick. I had already cut through a bit of skin trying to muster a solution to chafing on the radar reflector hoist line. I did shake the reefs after the third night, first one then the second one. So at times I was slow, certainly I was under-powered. But 2 reefs and the #4 still move the boat; it's quite amazing.
A few tid bits ...
Despite not drinking much nor eating at all at first I didn't feel any worse than sea sick: no cramp, no headache. I started drinking and eating during the 2nd night.
The only thing that went wrong is that the knot securing the second reef line to the boom slipped. I'm lucky in a sense that the the reef ties didn't rip through the reef grommets.
Towards the end of the third night the VHF flashed a low battery signal. I did have a bit of sun so some charging happened. The AIS VHF and the auto-pilot were on all the time. I charged my cell phone 3-4 times. I forgot to turn off nav lights, twice. I barely used the cabin lights. I had the instrument display off. So the third day, under a foggy sky, I turned everything off and steered, with the handheld VHF and the auto-pilot on standby. This was a very good exercise as I don't have much experience steering a compass course. It was a foggy beam reach in 10-15 kts. I may explore using a separate/emergency battery system for the auto-pilot but I think I'll have enough to go by the first 3-4 days.
The Iridium GO worked well to stay in touch with my wife, whom, I found out later, was quite stressed up and slept poorly, especially after I shared I was see sick.
I had a most beautiful moment with dolphins. At the third sunset I saw them jumping out in the distance and I hoped they'd come closer. They did and it was the best way to put the previous 2 days in perspective. I've got a long GoPro run with them so I'll see if I can share that here.
Besides the cut no injuries (well a few knocks here and there but that doesn't count) and besides the knot that slipped no breakage. So that's pretty cool!
Making my way out of the fog I arrived to Santa Cruz with the bay filled with lasers and dinghies. It was a beautiful landfall, cutting through the races, putting side by side two different sides of sailing: them all clad up in wet suits and me stinky and banged up after 3 days out. I was a bit tired and a boat was right in the middle of the dock so I ended slowly t-boning the dock. Mostly pride suffered ... And I jumped off the boat, ran to Aldo's and got me a fish and chips! When all that was down I proceeded to stow the sails, hoist the boat out of the water, do some basic cleaning and hit it home early enough to avoid Sunday afternoon return traffic. I went back to day to complete cleaning and will need another trip for odds and ends. I didn't have much energy but I wasn't really tired either, weird ...
I ate freeze dried camping food but I didn't dose properly so it was "burrito soup" and "scrambled eggs with bacon soup". It all went down fine.
I think that's it. Main lessons learned: significant water ingress at the mast, explore emergency battery for auto-pilot, explore sea sickness remedies, sail simply when it gets hard (set sails, do trim checks and relax under, if possible). And I do need to practice switching to the #4 in rough seas (I'll probably bring someone along).
I'm really happy with how it all turned out. Would I have preferred champagne sailing? Sure but I wouldn't have learned much.
I'll edit or add if anything else comes to mind.
I drove to Santa Cruz Thursday morning with my solar panel, Iridium GO, dodger, water, food, emergency rudder, radar reflector, a bit of extra clothing and stuff I'm forgetting already. After putting the boat in the water I proceeded to setup the boat with all of the above. The Iridium GO had a wrong setting and off hours support from RoadPost helped figure that out and so I went on my may ...
Exiting the harbor I got into almost now wind and I paddled my way out to reach the westerlies. I was under one reef and number 3, being ready, or so I thought, for what I was expecting further out. Wind picked up and I started tracking. The auto-pilot was put to work.
Making my way out West wind continued to pick up and I put the second reef in. Sea state continued to build up as well and I was being overpowered with the #3. Just like the first time I tried to go out for my first offshore stint the boat was wet and water started sloshing around. I figured sometimes it's not worth to push things too far out and I turned around.
I got back into Monterey Bay, with much lighter winds, popped the #4, stowed the 3, all at ease on a flat boat and went back for it. By now I knew what was coming. It wasn't long before I was back into the breeze and agitated sea. My wind instruments are dead so I can't say for sure what it was but the forecast was 20-25 kts and it certainly felt like it. Sea state I would guess was between 8-12 ft with mixed swell. The auto-pilot was whirring, the boat was getting wet and I was staying under ... I fell sea sick and settled in a new routine: laying low in the berth with an alarm for 60 minutes later, checking AIS on the VHF when it beeped, filling up the bucket with the bit of water and crackers I was trying to get down, getting the unwanted water out of the boat (buckets were dropped in the cockpit; that mast hole is a fountain). It wasn't bad as most food in my stomach had been digested already. Sea sickness staid for most of the trip. As a result most of my experience was inside the boat but the best happened outside.
I hit the 100 nm out mark and tacked the boat. As the track shows I did so a few more times then hit "home".
Inside an Olson 30 ... it's brutal! The whole hull is an echo chamber mixing the constant whirring of the auto-pilot, the VHF's crackling, announcements and AIS alarms, the water gushing along the hull, the waves slamming the hull on the side, the hull banging over the top of the waves ... It's just all crazy loud ... And me through all of that listening to the boat for signs of things going wrong.
I didn't change head sail nor flew the spinnaker. I didn't feel it wise to push, being sea sick. I had already cut through a bit of skin trying to muster a solution to chafing on the radar reflector hoist line. I did shake the reefs after the third night, first one then the second one. So at times I was slow, certainly I was under-powered. But 2 reefs and the #4 still move the boat; it's quite amazing.
A few tid bits ...
Despite not drinking much nor eating at all at first I didn't feel any worse than sea sick: no cramp, no headache. I started drinking and eating during the 2nd night.
The only thing that went wrong is that the knot securing the second reef line to the boom slipped. I'm lucky in a sense that the the reef ties didn't rip through the reef grommets.
Towards the end of the third night the VHF flashed a low battery signal. I did have a bit of sun so some charging happened. The AIS VHF and the auto-pilot were on all the time. I charged my cell phone 3-4 times. I forgot to turn off nav lights, twice. I barely used the cabin lights. I had the instrument display off. So the third day, under a foggy sky, I turned everything off and steered, with the handheld VHF and the auto-pilot on standby. This was a very good exercise as I don't have much experience steering a compass course. It was a foggy beam reach in 10-15 kts. I may explore using a separate/emergency battery system for the auto-pilot but I think I'll have enough to go by the first 3-4 days.
The Iridium GO worked well to stay in touch with my wife, whom, I found out later, was quite stressed up and slept poorly, especially after I shared I was see sick.
I had a most beautiful moment with dolphins. At the third sunset I saw them jumping out in the distance and I hoped they'd come closer. They did and it was the best way to put the previous 2 days in perspective. I've got a long GoPro run with them so I'll see if I can share that here.
Besides the cut no injuries (well a few knocks here and there but that doesn't count) and besides the knot that slipped no breakage. So that's pretty cool!
Making my way out of the fog I arrived to Santa Cruz with the bay filled with lasers and dinghies. It was a beautiful landfall, cutting through the races, putting side by side two different sides of sailing: them all clad up in wet suits and me stinky and banged up after 3 days out. I was a bit tired and a boat was right in the middle of the dock so I ended slowly t-boning the dock. Mostly pride suffered ... And I jumped off the boat, ran to Aldo's and got me a fish and chips! When all that was down I proceeded to stow the sails, hoist the boat out of the water, do some basic cleaning and hit it home early enough to avoid Sunday afternoon return traffic. I went back to day to complete cleaning and will need another trip for odds and ends. I didn't have much energy but I wasn't really tired either, weird ...
I ate freeze dried camping food but I didn't dose properly so it was "burrito soup" and "scrambled eggs with bacon soup". It all went down fine.
I think that's it. Main lessons learned: significant water ingress at the mast, explore emergency battery for auto-pilot, explore sea sickness remedies, sail simply when it gets hard (set sails, do trim checks and relax under, if possible). And I do need to practice switching to the #4 in rough seas (I'll probably bring someone along).
I'm really happy with how it all turned out. Would I have preferred champagne sailing? Sure but I wouldn't have learned much.
I'll edit or add if anything else comes to mind.
