Uphill migration -- leg #1

Koan has begun her trek North. Motivated by NWS LOX's promise of glassy seas and complete lack of breeze, we made a mid-week bum rush W-NW towards Morro Bay. After a morning of hauling gas cans until my shoulders burned, and at least 4 copies of the same checklist floating around on the kitchen table, Kitty and I departed on time, noon sharp on Tuesday. Not a minute too soon, as Harbor Patrol would have been there to kick us out for slip fee non-payment if we'd stayed a minute longer!

We motored the whole way, at probably 2/3 throttle on our little Honda 5 hp, and did chores and generally got the boat ready for the night passage. We had some breeze, probably around 10 kts, in the mid-afternoon, then everything quieted down as we approached Point Conception. We rounded at 7:45pm, and continued on a straight line to Pt. Arguello. Half-way between the two we noticed what seemed like an unusually high concentration of boats (2!) around what looked to me like a workboat mooring. We turned on the VHF as we were passing abreast, only to be greeted by a Coast Guard notice to mariners informing us that what we were witnessing was in fact a barge in the process of sinking. Too cool! Kitty claims it changed shape as we went by. I'm not so sure, but in any case, very interesting. And *no* mention of it anywhere in the CG news today...



It got dark shortly after that, and we found ourselves wondering what was causing the eerie glow behind Pt Arguello. As we rounded we were treated to the otherworldly view of a Vandenberg vehicle assembly building fully lit up, with a perimeter of extremely bright lights, in the fog. As we rounded the point we had some, ahem, navigational doubts, so we switched to waypoint (instead of eyeball) navigation for the night. We left platform Irene to port, and then everything was completely dark. Our biggest worry was the possibility of snagging a crab pot and burning the engine or mangling the prop in the process, but we seemed to miss the ones we came to see by a good 10 feet every time. We eventually had dinner and switched to our night-time tethered-to-jacklines-when-on-deck system. We started 2-hour watch rotation at 11pm, with me on 11-1, 3-5, and Kitty 1-3, 3-7. By my 3am watch I was seriously sore from helming against the big rolly swell, so I brought out Otto, the Raymarine ST1000 autopilot, who basically helmed for the whole rest of the trip.

By 7am, when I came back on deck, we were close enough to Pt Buchon to see the shoreline, and Kitty said she'd seen all kinds of marine life during dawn. We had breakfast, I saw a whale, and we saw a bunch of sea otters as we approached Morro Bay, where we docked at MBYC around 9am Wednesday morning. We took empty tanks and a bunch of personal gear off the boat, and put her on a mooring, where she awaits us for the leg further North. All in all, we made it look easy :)

Screw the headliner

A lot has happened since my last posting, and projects have been slow over the intervening months. But there is some progress to report, and still more to come soon. For today, I report on the successful venting of frustrations that was the removal of the headliner...

Koan's headliner I think was original. It was particle board with a pattern, painted white and screwed to the ceiling. The purpose was to hide the ugly fiberglass underneath, and the wires running between it and the underside of the deck. Unfortunately, deck organizers, cleats and cabin top winches had been installed through the headliner, making a bit of a mess. And of course, this hardware had been installed blindly, with no knowledge of where the wire was running. So, in order to back the hardware properly, and in order to inspect the wiring underneath, the headliner had to go.

 It was a bit disgusting, and soreness inducing, and here's the mess it made. But it came off. And look at the awesomeness it revealed! Mmm, bolts going right next to and almost through wiring.

Check out this cabin top winch installation. I think the odds of making this particular pattern while blindly picking a place to install a winch are astronomical!

So the headliner is off, all the wiring has been moved to run elsewhere, and today I cut all the backing boards for the hardware that needs them. I also painted the bare, yellowed fiberglass a nice gloss almond color, which takes away some of the harshness of having it exposed. Most importantly, the current situation, while cosmetically inferior, is infinitely preferable, as all hardware can be backed, inspected and serviced properly.

New things to try on Koan

Since Koan doesn't have standing head room, everything belowdecks is done either sitting on the berths or kneeling. The cork I installed a few months ago didn't hold up at all, so I've decided to try out these gym flooring tiles. Bonus points that the best berth in the boat while at anchor, that is, the floor, is now somewhat softer!

I also finally finished connecting the GPS to the VHF, so that the VHF can transmit our coordinates over DSC in case of distress, and it can also be powered by the house battery bank. That meant I needed somewhere to mount the VHF so that the cable would reach, the device would have signal, but it would also be somewhat protected from the elements. The default solution tends to be the companionway, and I confirmed with Mike, who owns the Moore 24 that I race on, and who has the same Garmin 76 device, that the companionway works for signal. So I went with it. I really liked the strong but flexible Gorilla-style arms that I've seen on some of the Mini Transat Zeros, so I looked for something similar. I decided to go with a solution from the photography world, where 1/4''-20 thread tripod mounts are ubiquitous, and modern DSLRs weigh more that my GPS. I'm using an i-Stabilizer bracket to hold the GPS and it connects to a stainless steel gooseneck with a tripod mount on the top end and a female socket for the same size bolt on the other. The default position is up (and invisible from the cockpit) and then you can bend it sideways to make it visible, and presumably improve the satellite reception.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have solar!

A while back I ordered cheap, but allegedly accurate, digital voltmeters from ebay, and today I cut out holes in the tops of my battery boxes and installed them. I built them up so that they hook up to the batteries with little alligator clips, so they can be disconnected if need be.

I also moved the AC charger closer to the new location for the batteries, so that the cables run without tension. It's the big gray box on the right in the photo. Finally, I installed a PV7D solar charge controller, the little gray box on the left.

The improved battery situation.

The charge controller is fed by a cheap 20 Watt panel, also from ebay, mounted on a Sunsei articulating mount from the sale rack at West Marine. I finished the installation (14 AWG throughout, so the panel amperage can be increased in the future) yesterday and tested that everything works today. I'm pretty happy with it, except for the water resistance of the panel-side connections. It's pretty clear that this panel is not marinized, so my quandary is whether to wait for it to crap out somehow or replace it with something marinized and save this one for some sort of terra firma application.

The solar panel.

Pit and mast upgrades

The way things used to be:
a Garhauer stainless steel rigid vang and a wooden backing board for the pit control line clutches.

The pre-1993 Harken 150 cams for the pit controls were corroded beyond belief! Of the 6 cams on the pit board and the mainsheet controls only 2 were serviceable, one as was, one after a rebuild. Here's the carnage:

This is how it is now: 
A Seoladair Boomkicker fiberglass rigid vang:

and a Starboard backing board with new Harken 150 cams:

Lessons learned:
* the vang is a Boomkicker K0800. However, the K0800 mast-side fitting is made with bolts that are too big fit in the track of my mast (the original 1973 Proctor mast). The K0750 mast-side fitting uses #10 bolts that fit in the track, and Seoladair was happy to swap it out. On the boom side they have recently adopted female-style track, rather than the T-track they used before. In my case, there is already a 1 inch T-track bolted to my boom to fit the Garhauer vang that I wanted to use. They were happy to send me a car that fits that track. Finally, with the mast-side fitting at the very bottom of my mast, and the boom-side fitting almost as far aft as it can go, I still needed to hack off about 8cm of the fiberglass tension rods. But I love the way this has all worked out!

* I tried using a round-over router bit at the fastest RPM of our drill press to round-over the Starboard. No dice. It kicked and bucked. Not sure if the speed was too low or the material too finicky, but don't try this.

New shelf in the port locker

I recently converted the starboard locker (formerly the head) to a hanging locker. Then I made a removable shelf to subdivide the port locker into two. The bottom section is for tool bags (the boat has three tool bags: electrics, hand tools and caulks) and shoes. The top is for things like towels, blankets, pillows, etc. I removed the foam-backed liner so the bases of the eye bolts that hold up the shrouds can be immediately inspected.

Converted the old fluorescent light fixtures to LED

I gutted the old fluorescent light fixtures of their innards, and hooked the terminals and switch up to two adhesive strips of 9 LEDs each. They work beautifully and consume 1/10th the power.