Indian Summer

Indian Summer is a Hallberg-Rassy 53; here is a photo of a sistership. She will begin her voyage this week!

The Voyage of Indian Summer

Starting next Wednesday, I will be filing position reports for "Indian
Summer" on their outbound trip to Bermuda. I will be aboard for the
return trip, back to Annapolis, the first week of June, so watch for
updates here for that trip as well. We will be staying in touch via
SSB, once a day at 6:00 PM EDT, so updates will come shortly after
that time each day.

Maiden Voyage

We sailed on Silence last night in a north breeze, 10-15 knots. Very
pleasant sailing.

Sails are Bent

We bent on the sails today, so Silence is ready to sail. Unfortunately, there is no wind today. I'm off to scratch the backstay.

Home Sweet Home

Silence is back in the water, and has returned to her slip, at last.

Failed Sheave

Here is the better of the two failed sheaves that caused all of the problems for the centerboard. The other sheave was just dust. It's amazing that we didn't notice more difficulty earlier. These sheaves were made by Edson as steering gear, and were never intended to be used below the waterline. Twenty-eight years of salt water exposure has taken its toll.

Silence will Float Today!

I just received word that Silence is ready to go back in the water.
Let the season begin!

Centerboard Unhinged

Bermuda

I've signed up for a return trip from Bermuda to Annapolis at the end
of May aboard "Indian Summer". Looking forward to being at sea again!

Centerboard Work in Progress

Here is the area around the centerboard trunk. Still, there is lots of work to do to reconnect everything that had to be cleared away for this work.

Sheave Box

Here the sheave box has been rebuilt.

Data Logger Testing

The data logger is finished. This is the logger running for a quick test. The 9V battery is the power supply, the AA battery pack is the test voltage supply. Two AA batteries put out about 3.1v, according to the logger. Now we just need to get out for a sail to hook this up to the autopilot...

Centerboard Sheave

Here is one of two of the replace-ment sheaves, in position, but with no bearing installed yet. After installation, the whole area will be fiberglassed over again. Here you can just barely see the centerboard cable going over the top of the sheave, and down towards the centerboard.

Voltage Data Logger

Here is a picture of the data logger, almost complete. This is based on an Arduino board and SD card shield. The software onboard is able to read the voltage input and write out a CSV file to the SD card, for analysis in Excel. There is some work still necessary to scale the voltage range to 12V, and then I plan to package this up into a box to protect it from the elements.

Auto Pilot

Another project that I have in the works is to figure out why my new autopilot resets itself occasionally. The old pilot that we replaced did this also. This can be a big problem, because when the reset happens, the boat steers off course. Right now, we have a hard time trusting the autopilot, which defeats the purpose of having it.

My suspicion is that there is a voltage fluctuation in the power that feeds the pilot. Now, how to see this happen...? A voltmeter doesn't really help, because you might not be looking at it when the failure occurs. So, I am building a voltage datalogger that I can hook to the power supply leads to the autopilot. This will log the voltage to an SD card 5 times per second, and hopefully this will provide enough data to prove or disprove that voltage dropout is the cause of the problem. Stay tuned for updates on this ongoing project.

Mainsail Furling Motor

My other project is to get the mainsail furler working again. The electric motor failed last season, so we used the manual crank to furl last summer. The first step in the process is to remove the boom from the gooseneck, easily accomplished with some help from my friends. The next step is to remove the 12 screws that attach the gooseneck to the mast. Once those are free, it's just a matter of lifting the gooseneck with the furler motor and gearbox out of the mast slot. Sounds simple, no?

This would have been easy, except for the fact that when the mast was overhauled a couple years back, the riggers used some sort of adhesive on all of the screws to lock them in, and prevent corrosion. With a screwdriver I couldn't get any of the screws to budge without fear of stripping them. With an impact driver I was able to get 7 screws free. Still 5 to go. Trying a heat gun and the impact driver again, still no luck. So, I have asked the crew at the yard to help me with this... hopefully by next weekend I will have the motor on my workbench.

I even think I know what's wrong with the motor: the brushes tend to turn to dust if any water gets in from the top, and this tends to happen every 3-5 years or so. More to come...

Centerboard Repairs

The problem with the centerboard was caused by a sheave which has failed. It turns out that Bristol used two Edson sheaves below the waterline. These sheaves were not really designed for being immersed in saltwater, so they tend to eventually fail. At this point, Silence is 28 years old, so hopefully, the next set of sheaves will last as long! The repair involves cutting open the fiberglass housing around the centerboard trunk, installing new sheaves, and then re-fiberglassing the make the whole mechanism watertight again. This should all happen in the next week or so...

Charging

I am charging the batteries this weekend. This means running an extension cord to an outlet in the yard, and setting up a charger to hook to the batteries in turn. At the dock, I could power up the onboard charger, which charges all of the batteries at one time. With the boat on the hard, I have to make do with only charging one set at a time. This means several trips to the boatyard.

From the logbook, July 3rd, 2003

Today is what all of us envisioned when we decided to take this journey. We have been sailing since 1:30 AM. The wind is blowing at about 12 knots.

Later, the breeze picked up. This is fine sailing, 10-15 knots of wind, close reaching, clear, blue skies, tropical clouds, calm seas.

Spirits are up as we anticipate landfall in two days with this breeze. We positioned ourselves well on the ocean to avoid stronger winds further north. The price of admission to this ride was the motoring of the last several days, and lying ahull to conserve fuel, drifting last night. Now we're sailing directly to Bermuda, our speed varying from 5-7 knots.

Dirt Dwelling

Silence was hauled out of the water this week, and she is sitting on the hard for the winter.