Boat Projects

Since getting our sailboat here at the end of May, I have been spending my weekends working on a variety of boat projects instead of keeping up with this blog.

It started the very first weekend in June when I took the Coconut Grove Sailing Club water taxi out to the boat and tried to start the engine. All the starter did was make clicking noises. There wasn't enough oomph in the batteries to turn over the engine. My first instinct was to blame Mike and Kevin, who had stayed on the boat in the shore power-free mooring field for a few days after our arrival from Mexico but probably hadn't thought to run the engine to keep the batteries charged or to change the battery switch from "Both" to "2" to preserve the starter battery.

Weighing my options, I decided it might be a good time to install the PowerFilm solar panels I had bought last year but never taken out of the boxes. Not remembering that I had all the cables I needed somewhere on the boat, I went to West Marine and bought components to build a cable that would plug the panels into one of the cigarette lighter adapters and charge the batteries. The cable worked, or at least the little green lights on its ends lit up, but the batteries did not charge. If anything, they ran further down, since now the starter wouldn't even click. It could have been that I didn't have a diode or charge controller in the circuit to prevent the panels from draining the batteries when the sun wasn't shining.

The next option was to pull the starter battery and take it ashore to get it charged. The Sailing Club has a charger available for use by members, but there was a long line of batteries waiting to be charged. Not wanting to wait a few days during which the bilge pump was not running and the stuffing box was slowly dripping water into the bilge, I bought a charger from West Marine. It indicated that the battery was fully charged. I reinstalled it, confirmed that the engine still wouldn't start, and pulled the two house batteries. Each required extensive charging, which made me hopeful that the problem would be solved. Sure enough, after reinstalling them, the engine fired right up.

I moved on to other projects, like measuring for the new Doyle CradleCover I was ordering and taking down the mainsail to have the Super Sailmakers people attach the fittings for the new TideTrack system I was installing. (See Strictly Sail at the Miami Boat Show for more information on both products.) Each weekend, I started the engine and ran it for at least fifteen minutes to charge the batteries. Eventually, it wouldn't start again. When I talked about the situation with my friend Pompeii, who is a professional boat person from Cuba, he told me I needed new batteries. The current batteries were the ones that came with the boat when we bought it in 2010 and they were at least two years old then. Sorry, Mike and Kevin. It wasn't your fault; the batteries were old and would have died soon anyway. Pompeii was very specific with his advice. He told me to go to DC Battery in North Miami and buy three new AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) batteries. So I did. At sixty-five pounds each, installing the batteries in the tight space of the extremely hot engine room was one of the most difficult physical things I have done in a long while. I was sweating so hard I worried I would short one out or electrocute myself.

That was last Saturday. This morning, I returned to the boat for the first time in a week and the engine fired up immediately. Feeling confident, I attacked the solar panel project again. I had ordered a controller and I had found the missing cable, plus I had located some excellent testing instructions online. With everything connected together, my multimeter indicated that amps were most definitely flowing from the panels to the batteries. Life was good! That should end my nightmares about having the boat sink at its mooring after the bilge pump fails due to dead batteries.

Bob at Super Sailmakers says the CradleCover should arrive at his shop tomorrow. It acts as both a sail cover and a set of lazy jacks, and makes quickly dousing the mainsail as safe and quick as possible. If I can convince Pompeii to help me install it next weekend, Nan and I may finally be ready to take the boat out by ourselves.

Strictly Sail at the Miami Boat Show

On Saturday morning, I took the train downtown alone and then walked to the Miamarina at Bayside to attend Strictly Sail at the Miami International Boat Show. Nan had wanted to go with me, but she was back in Wisconsin attending to her ailing mother and dealing with the terrible weather there.

I arrived just in time to see our friend John Kretschmer's talk, Force 10 - Storm Sailing Strategies. I have seen John speak a number of times, but I never tire of his stories and I always learn something new. What impressed me most was his progression of strategies to use as the weather worsens. Heaving-to, which essentially parks the boat and creates a protective "slick" to windward, is useful in all conditions unless there is the danger of a lee shore. Fore reaching, which is sailing a tight near reach with reefed sails, is the next strategy and is useful to maintain sea room or to make headway if the intended direction is to windward. The final strategy is to run before the waves and weather, with minimal sails or bare poles, but this requires diligent manual steering to prevent the boat from diving into the troughs. The hour went quickly and good questions followed. I caught up with John and his wife Tadji outside the tent and chatted briefly. John told me that his article about sailing the Mediterranean in a recent issue of Cruising World had won an award. I congratulated him and suggested that he let me post it on his website. He said he would check with the magazine and let me know, then he was off to a meeting with the Jeanneau people.

I wandered over to the Super Sailmakers booth to see about two of their products, the Doyle StackPack and the Tides Sailtrack System. The StackPack is a sail cover and lazy jack system that contains the sail as it's coming down the mast and controls it in a zippered nylon cover--no more leaping around a heaving deck piling your sail onto the boom with sail ties in your teeth! And the Sailtrack System replaces the mast's existing track with one that is virtually frictionless, making it possible for one person to hoist the sail easily from the cockpit using the aft-led halyard, a task that normally takes three strong people in our boat--one pulling hard on the halyard at the mast, one cranking on the winch, and one tailing--because there is so much friction on the existing track. Back in July 2012, Peter Grimm of Super Sailmakers had demonstrated these systems at the JK University workshop on blue water passage making I attended in Fort Lauderdale. Peter wasn't at the booth but Bob Meagher was, and he was happy to show me how it all worked and provide me with a discounted "boat show quote." I told him I would be placing an order right after we sail the boat up to Miami from Mexico this coming May.

My final stop was at the namesake booth of ATN Sailing Equipment, presided over by Etienne Giroire. Nan and I met Etienne at a party at John Kretschmer's house back in November, and after listening intently to John's boat show talk, I very much wanted to talk with Etienne about his patented Gale Sail, a super strong Dacron storm sail that hanks over a fully furled jib or staysail as a much safer alternative to a partially furled headsail, which could chafe its lines and blow open with disastrous results. Etienne also provided me with a discounted boat show quote, and I told him I would try to purchase the sail before we leave for Mexico in May. It could be useful for the upcoming trip.

There was much more to see, like all the brand-new sailboats flying their advertising streamers at the piers and all the discounted-but-still-expensive boat goodies, but I had seen what I came to see and I still had a long walk back to the train station.

JK University

Back in April, when I was out in Savannah getting work done on Whispering Jesse and spending time with family, I took a few days to drive down to Fort Lauderdale for a blue water sailing seminar led by John Kretschmer. I planned to write an article about it for Cruising World magazine, and I obtained John's permission ahead of time, along with his assurance that he would contact the magazine for their approval. The idea was that John would benefit from the free publicity and I would earn another publishing credit. So I was surprised and disappointed when I received a polite rejection indicating that the magazine was aware of John's seminars and planned to write its own article about an upcoming one. I had been scooped!

Since it's not going to be published, I might as well post it here:

JK University’s Blue Water Passage Making Workshops

Suppose you’re an experienced coastal cruiser looking to take your sailing to the next level, to blue water passage making. Where do you turn for instruction and guidance? If you’re like most sailors, you get started by reading books by such noted sailing authors as Jimmy Cornell and John Vigor. But books will only provide you with theory. What about practical, hands-on experience? It used to come only from taking the risk on your own by making an actual passage, or by signing on as crew for an experienced captain. More recently, there have been instructional passage-making trips offered by outfits such as Mahina Expeditions.

Now there is a new offering, mixing classroom instruction with practical experience to fill in the knowledge gaps of potential ocean-going sailors: JK University, named in tongue-in-cheek fashion after its founder, Capt. John Kretschmer. John is best known for the book he wrote about his delivery captain days, Flirting with Mermaids, and for the passage-making trips he offers through his outfit, John Kretschmer Sailing. He has partnered with Bob Pingel, a contributing editor to Sailing magazine, and Rick Thompson, a marine electronics expert, to provide four-day workshops designed to answer all the big passage-making questions, with an emphasis on safety and self-sufficiency: What are the best methods for avoiding hurricanes? How do I splice a rope for an anchor snubber?

JK University’s Blue Water Passage Making Workshops are conducted three times a year in John’s hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida or in Solomons, Maryland. Both locations are close to water for easy access to ocean-going sailboats. Firsthand inspection of a well set-up vessel or two is one of the key components of “field trip Saturday,” along with the actual deployment of a Switlik life raft. Here is a typical workshop syllabus:

• Introduction: Myths and realities about passage making
• What makes a boat a blue water capable boat? Slideshow of 25 great boats
• Outfitting: Necessary, nice, extravagant – 10 important items for a serious boat
• Hands on – Rope
• Inspecting boats: Caribe, a Beneteau First 456 performance cruiser and retrofit project, and Tioga, a brand-new Hylas 56
• Hands on – The bullet-proof electrical system
• Hands on – Standing rigging, discussion of rigging emergencies at sea
• Passage planning, pilot charts, safety, weather, watch schedules, crew management, food preparation
• Communications at sea: Satellite phones, wifi, SSB, VHF, AIS
• Life raft launch
• What’s new in cruising sails? A plan for optimizing “manageable” downwind performance; sail plans for storm sailing; how to spend money on cruising sails
• Heavy weather: Dealing with storms, gales and squalls
• Chart work and celestial navigation in the digital age: Thinking like a navigator

Workshops run from early Thursday afternoon through late Sunday afternoon to help make scheduling as easy as booking a long weekend trip. The late start on Thursday and early finish on Sunday allow out-of-town attendees to arrive and depart without the expense of additional overnights.

To reserve your spot at the next JK University workshop, scheduled for February 7 to 10, 2013, please visit the John Krestschmer Sailing website at yayablues.com and click the Schedule link. In addition to a calendar of workshops, you’ll find all kinds of passage-making opportunities designed to help you build your confidence and broaden your experience.