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Power Management Seminar

J

jimb522

New member
I am giving some serious thought to making reservations and flying in to attend the power management seminar on November 12th. Is this a typically a well-attended seminar. I would enjoy meeting some of the other current and past competitors in the race. I would fly out the next day.
I do not know the area. Any hotels convenient to the Oakland Yacht Club?
Jim Bates
 
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The Marina Villiage Inn (http://marinavillageinn.com/) is just across the parking lot from OYC and is cheap but decent.

Fly in to Oakland Airport if possible, OAK, as it is much closer than the alternatives.
 
Pogen,
I have reservations to fly in at about noon on November 12th, and leave the next afternoon, and a reservation at the Marina Village Inn, per your suggestion. Is the airport close enough that I can just take a cab, or should I rent a car. Thank you for your help, and I will look forward to meeting you and the other folks who are there.
Jim
 
jimb522 said:
Pogen,
I have reservations to fly in at about noon on November 12th, and leave the next afternoon, and a reservation at the Marina Village Inn, per your suggestion. Is the airport close enough that I can just take a cab, or should I rent a car. Thank you for your help, and I will look forward to meeting you and the other folks who are there.
Jim
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When I fly out of OAK I get there from Marina Village (next door to the Oakland Yacht Club) via Uber. Costs ~$25 one way for the 10-15 min drive. I'd expect a Taxi charge to be about the same. Only reason to rent a car is if you want to sight-see.
 
Jackie and Brian have asked me to present the Power Management seminar in a few days. As I prepare I'm reminded this is a large and detailed topic. To get a run at it, here are links to some pages and resources. This is your "homework" of sorts:

Brian and Max's excellent slides from last time.

A bunch of electrical budgets from the 2008 SHTP, including mine.

Mike Jefferson's treatise from 2001/2002.

My initial post on the subject. :)

Power Management has historically given SHTP skippers the most trouble on the passage. This seminar also forms a "base" for other seminar topics such as Autopilots or Communications. I hope many of you can attend.
 
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BobJ,
Unless the plane takes a detour over Egypt, I will be there and already have reservations.
Looking forward to seeing in person what kinds of people do this stuff.
And seeing what a "buglighter" looks like too.
Jim
 
I hope many past and aspiring Buglighters will be in attendance. Since this is the first seminar of the series, we'll want to make introductions, get a race status update and stuff like that.

To follow up my previous post, if you want a "live" editable Excel spreadsheet for your electrical budget, send me an e-mail and I'll forward mine. This board apparently doesn't allow .XLS attachments. BobsailsSF at the Yahoo place.
 
jimb522 said:
BobJ,
Unless the plane takes a detour over Egypt, I will be there and already have reservations.
Looking forward to seeing in person what kinds of people do this stuff.
And seeing what a "buglighter" looks like too.
Jim
Click to expand...

Hey Jim,

Looking forward to meeting you. That is a long way to travel, and nice to hear you are going to make the trip.

Brian
 
`````Brian,
I am looking forward to it and meeting a bunch of folks. I dont love commercial flights in cattlecars, but it will be worth it on a couple of fronts. I will get a few hours on the next day to see my only grandchild, who lives in that area and was born in July. I have only seen pictures of her. Plus I expect I will get to meet other folks who have done this race and are doing it again, and maybe find out what boatyard is a good one to commission a boat coming off a trailer, and what marina to stick it in. Then back here. Basically 11-12 hours of flying in 36 hours.
I am in the middle of designing and installing a complete new electrical system in the tri and expect that while I basically understand what I need to do, I am sure I will pick up some knowledge that I didnt have before. I have actually given some thought to leaving a boat in the Bay area for competing in the SSS series of races. I would have to figure out if I could afford it. I dont know if the trimaran would be a good boat for that. There are a lot more boats racing out there, then there are here, and multihulls are not nearly as common here, so it would certainly be fun. My wife would certainly enjoy a few long weekends to see our daughter and grandchild.
jim
 
If you decide to bring it out early, check Marina Bay, the municipal harbor in Richmond. It's been the harbor of choice for visiting multihulls including Thebault's "Hydroptere," the Mod 70 "Orion" and I think the Irens "Paradox." With the way the harbor is arranged it tends to have more end ties. The rates are good and you'll be close to the central Bay.
 
Yep, that's a start - but for a 2-3 week passage to Hawaii it really needs to take you all the way through to net charging time per day and fuel capacity.

We also have a lot more loads due to the autopilot (if really racing) and communications requirements.
 
Got back last night at 2 a.m. from my trip to Oakland for the Power Management seminar. The trip was well worth it. I have a fair working knowledge of boat electrical systems, but I expected to and did find a few nuggets of information that were helpful. More important to me, I got to meet and observe the buglighters in their natural environment for the first time. Nice bunch of folks.
Prices in California for boat slips take my breath away. BobJ, the Marina Bay slip was about a $1000 monthly, with a $1000 deposit. Of course, being on the end of the dock ment that they would have to put me in an 82 foot slip, and if I had a large and long yacht, I would have thought that was reasonable.
The clerk at the Marina Village Inn commented that the boat slips behind the hotel cost more to rent typically then housing rents are here. Talk about sticker shock.
In any case, it was well done and was well presented by folks who took their task seriously. I will not be able to make many of the seminars, but definitely will be doing the weather and routing seminar if things go well and I can get the boat ready. Even met the grinch, er solosailor, who wants to rain on my erudder parade. Good guy, even though I disagree with him. Thanks to the folks that put it on.
Jim
 
Bob, thanks for doing the seminar. I leaned some stuff for sure.

Regarding the engine topic. I had an engine failure at sea a couple years ago which turned out to be caused by small, solid paraffin like blobs forming in the fuel tank. Took a lot of troubleshooting to find them, basically tore the whole aft cabin apart to get at all the gozintas and gozoutas for fuel system and vent. Eventually cleared the prob temporarily by blowing into the fuel tank supply hose to dislodge the blockage. Installed a 6 inch fuel tank access plate and cleaned the thing thoroughly when I returned home.

But what I wanted to mention is you are absolutely spot on about knowing how to bleed the system and, you need to have spare crush washers and even bleed screws/bolts on board. If it gets rough you could easily strip one the the screws or drop one into the "who knows where" . One more thing on Yanmar in particular. Some engineering genius thought it would be clever to put various size screws and bolts in the bleed locations. I have used a sharpie to mark the size of each bolt head so you don't fuss around with figuring it out under pressure. I think there are three bolts and one screw in the Yanmar bleed circuit - (2GM20F)
 
Yeah and on the 1GM, Yanmar put stainless steel bleed screws directly into the aluminum engine castings instead of into SS inserts. On my engine the screw on top of the primary filter is the biggest problem. You can only tighten it so much before the threads start to deform and then you need a new filter assembly. I have a spare but it's not something I'd want to replace underway. Dumb dumb dumb . . .

The side point I was trying to make at the seminar was that I knew zilch about all this when I had my J/33 (e.g. my comment about never opening the engine box). The deal with this race is the self-sufficiency. You need to be able to do this stuff by having the parts, tools and know-how. It was tremendously satisfying to arrive in Hanalei Bay in 2006 having had NO problems with the boat. I probably did, but fixing them underway was so routine they weren't really problems.
 
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BobJ said:
New SSS'er Gregory Saramite took a great video of the Power Seminar - see link below. Headphones help to hear the comments from the audience. THANKS GREGORY!

I got long-winded - this only shows the first two hours(!) - so you don't get to see KYNNTANA's yachty electrical panels at the end.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4137351/SHTP_SEMINARS/2016SHTP_Seminar1_Power_mgmt.mp4
Click to expand...

Yeah, well that's good because I forgot to mention all the great electrical bullet-proofing tips that I had learned from Michael! (Though we remain in disagreement on one thing -- I still have a soft spot for Harbor Freight tools ;)
 
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