Boat work

Last week I drove over to Maryland to see how the boat faired during the winter months. It seems to have made it though ok (so far). I'll know for sure once we put it in the water start the engines then start turning on the various water pumps and systems. But for now I can say that our batteries were not fully discharged. One of the house banks were down to 72% and the other was at 80%. The folks at Mastervolt told me to expect about a 2% decline per month which would mean they should have been around 90%. To me this confirms what I already knew my batteries are older have a fair amount of cycles on them and I would guess are at about 75-80% of what new ones might be. Hopefully we will get a better feel for that this summer as I've considered changing them out before we leave on the big trip. I believe two are seven years old and the other two are 5-6yrs old. Most the manufactures suggest they have a ten year life span. Unfortunately everything on this boat flows through these and the inverters one way or another so we are 100% reliant on our batteries to provide power for everything from the TV to the autopilot when away from the dock. If these were like normal tractor batteries that most older boats like our tug used I would just replace them but this boat came with the fancy lithium ones (which we wanted) and are supper expensive. Ours are Mastervolt as is rest of our system and then of course that integrates in to CZone which pretty much controls everything on the boat. I'll have to look into the ramifications of getting an alternative battery brand as I suspect I can save about 50% over another set of Mastervolts.

Over the winter I had taken all the sails and the lazy jack system off the boat so I could drop them off at the sail loft for maintenance. They were able to fix up the stack pack which I was a bit concerned about. It turned out the sun cover on our self tacking jib was not on correctly which allowed the UV to damage some of the threads which had caused our problems with the battens falling out of it the one night it flopped around a bit. They added some chafe protection to the main sail then of course there is the genoa that had to be replaced. Other than that we were in good shape. Now that the sails were all nicely folded they were also much easier to manage. It only took two of us to carry the mainsail now and it fit in the truck much better :). 

Once at the boat I was able to get the shrink wrap and the frame supporting it off. Seems shrink wrapping it was a good call.. I'm told they got a fair about of snow and ice in the area this year and as a bonus the boat still looked pretty clean. I did ask the yard to wax it and for the first time ever also enlisted their help to do the bottom paint. This was a job I probably should have done but I'm guessing it would have taken me two days minimum. Frankly I won't miss the sore muscles or being covered in that sticky stuff for the 3-5 days after. Maybe it will be worth it? I was hoping to get the yard guys to come over and help get the sails on the boat with their craine but after several requests they seemed to prefer to forget about it and head home vs helping me. Of course spring is a busy season for them and they were quite distracted getting other boats ready and launching all day so I can't blame them for not remembering to give their time to me when they actually had real paying work to do. I was able to roll the sails over with quite a bit of effort then got some rope on them which allowed me to hoist them both up using the spinnaker halliard. This worked out pretty well but frankly would have been much easier had I enlisted additional help. Unfortunately I could not get the jib on as I lost the halliard for that sail last fall when I took the sail off. This will require a trip up the mast and then rerunning the line back though the mast which means I'll have to find someone willing to support this effort. With any luck I can drag Max along with me as he likes going up the mast. So with that project on hold I decided to focus on getting the main sail back on. I started with the stack pack and after about six hours finally had it on. I should note when taking it off I noticed that a few of the lines involved with it had broken and been patched together by the previous owner so this involved a couple trips to West Marine to purchase new line to make the system work as designed again.

My next project required a trip to the hardware store for an angle grinder. Last year when using the anchor we found the anchor was just a bit too wide for the anchor locker opening. To fix this issue I sanded back about a 1/4 inch of the aluminum support where it got hung up on in the anchor locker. After a bit of testing it looked like this simple solution should fix the problem.. Hopefully it does not return when it's really hot out again causing things to expand? The other project I wanted to address was our anchor chain. When we had the boat surveyed it was suggested the chain had seen better days and was due for replacement. After letting about 100ft of chain out it seemed that really only the first 30-40ft of chain was severally rusted so I cut it off at the 50ft mark with my shinny new angle grinder. I think we started with 250ft of chain so this now puts us down to about 200ft which should still be plenty. Additionally there is another 200-250ft of rope rode attached to that. I will take another look at the chain next fall or spring before we leave to ensure it's still in acceptable shape to hopefully serve two more years of almost full time duty. On the upside I suspect I eliminated about 75-100lbs of weight from the boat :). Lastly I replaced a bunch of anode's and added a line cutter to one of the props. When we bought the boat the previous owner had to replace the prop that was lost during the sea trial. Unfortunately it seems he just replaced the prop and chose not to purchase the line cutter that was attached to the lost prop. Needless to say I ordered a new one that matched the one on the starboard side ensuring maybe some level of protection from jumping in the water should we take out someone's crab pot along our journey. The anode's on the boat were not a big deal to replace but it seems the ones on the props had to come from Gory. This just means they are German and expensive. Somehow I was able to get those shipped in and replaced before I left. I had planned on doing an oil change & impeller change on the outboard but after looking at it decided the oil appeared clean and should be fine for the limited use it will see this season.

After three days of work I think I managed to get the list down to just two things left to do before launching. I still need to replace a though haul for the underwater exhaust for our generator which is broken in the off position (This has been broken since we purchased the boat). Finally the yard needs to get the bottom painted. The remaining items on the punch list can be done once it's in the water. I hope to make it back to the boat in a week or so as I left the main sail sitting on the top deck waiting to go on and will hopefully have the new through haul fitting for replacement. Lots to do but first I need to head out to take some prom pictures of the boy and his girl friend. See you next week.

Side project

For my birthday I decided to splurge and buy a Lego McLaren P1. For those not familiar it's a giant Lego car set. I had seen versions of these giant Lego sets at Max's friend's houses and of course the Lego stores over the years and fantasized about building one at some point but it was really easy to say it was just a crazy expensive whim then move on. Besides what would one do with it after the fun of building it. Well after all our holiday purchases I had a bunch of Amazon points left on my credit card and decided to burn them on the crazy expensive whim as a gift to myself. I have to say I underestimated how big of a project it would be. The kit had something like 4000 pieces. I started it back in February and just completed it tonight. Granted I didn't work on it every night and it may have sat untouched on the dinning room table for a few weeks here and there. I will say it was a fun project. 

The kit itself is quite impressive. Not only does the steering, hood, trunk, and doors work. The engine's also work. As part of the kit I got to build a working V8 engine with moving pistons and a 7 speed gear box with paddle shifters that work and actually shifts when the wheels move. Additionally as the real car uses electric propulsion to get off the line they included a separate simulated electric motor that one can shift the car into using if desired. The level of detail is quite impressive. Frankly Lego's and their building techniques have really evolved since I was a kid. The fact that this somewhat working car is completely built out of Legos does not cease to amaze me nor does their ability to break it down into such a simple build process. Ok so maybe not simple the manuals were well over 1000 pages but somehow it was not cumbersome or overly complicated process. I think it had 24 bags of parts each taking me 30-45 minutes to assemble.

Of course now that it's done I now need to figure out what to do with it? I have seen some wall mounts for picture frames allowing folks to hang them displayed on a wall or something. While the project was fun I don't know that I'm in love with it enough to want to look at it every day. Maybe I can find a kid that wants it or perhaps sell it on eBay? At this point I don't know what I'm actually going to do with it but I'm sure eventually I'll need to get it off the dinning room table to make room for the next project or maybe even eat there one day :)

New sail

When we surveyed the boat I suspected the Genoa had seen better days as there was a large section in the front that appeared to be delaminated. It seemed someone had attempted to put some stitching in to avoid it spreading further. We used it on our trip from the Bahamas to the Chesapeake last summer and it worked fine but I knew when I took the sails off for maintenance this winter they would tell me it's done. About a month ago I got the call. The loft told me it was basically junk. If I wanted to put a couple thousand dollars into it they could keep it alive for a bit longer but it would be best to put that money towards a new sail. On a good note though.. It seemed our mainsail was in reasonable condition, our self tacking jib was still in good shape but the sun protector was not on correctly which had lead to the stitching holding the battens to fail. This seemed to be an easy fix and I was able to get a couple new battens made to replace the ones we lost overboard for the jib. For some reason I did not drop off the Parasailor for inspection. Maybe I'll do that next winter?

So now the dilemma is what to do. It seems that the boat came with fairly high end sails which are now six years old and have presumably served a fair amount of time in the Caribbean. I'm guessing these fancy sails probably help make our big heavy cat perform slightly less like a big heavy cat? Unfortunately when it comes down to it I really know nothing about sail design or materials. After hearing 2-3 recommendations from a couple of sail makers and doing some reading I decided to stick with a higher end newer generation laminate material called Hydra Net Radial. The universal suggestion was to go with the 9oz or 393 HNR blend for our boat size. The marketing says this should last twice as long as the traditional Dacron material would and will be well suited for the number of miles we are planning to use it for during our circumnavigation. Based on the very small sample of material I got it seems tear proof unless I took the scissors to it but it did seem to loose its shape from my attempt to tear it which is a bit concerning?

I stopped by the sail loft today to pick up my newly repaired sails and put down a deposit for the new Genoa. I was given the choice of ordering it in black or white, adding a graphic or something fun. I went for plain white and could not think of a cool graphic. Even if I did go with some kind of graphic I'm sure I would spend a fair amount of time wondering how that might effect the resale value of the boat if someone thought the amazing picture of me on the head sail was dumb. I'm told the new sail will be manufactured overseas somewhere then shipped to the loft sometime before June. I'm hoping we will have it prior to leaving to bring the boat around to the Great Lakes this summer. Unfortunately having not spent a great deal of time with the original sail I will probably not be able to tell a difference in performance with the new sail. Instead I'm looking at it like preventive maintenance. One was well worn and now it's time to just replace it. Meanwhile I'm trying not to think of the cost. Don't let anyone tell you sailing is inexpensive or cheaper than fuel. For the cost of this one sail I could probably pay for the fuel to do the Great Loop twice in my Nordic Tug or I could buy two brand new Yanmar replacement engines for this boat. I suspect somewhere along the trip we will need to purchase a new main sail and possibly a new jib as well. I'm hoping we don't but we have budgeted for it none the less.

Senior Prom Already

I can't believe last weekend was Max's senior prom. He and his girl friend Sofia decided they wanted to do pictures at a local florist that usually has some amazing grounds set up for folks to use for just this kind of occasion. Unfortunately it seems prom is a bit early this year and there were no flowers in the ground yet so we tried to make the best of it. Below are a couple of the pictures I liked.

It's crazy to think in only one more month I'll officially have two high school graduates. A few months after that and we will be empty nesters with two kids in college! It's crazy how fast this school year has gone by.

Found winter storage on Lake Michigan!

I've been looking for a place that can pull a catamaran our size for no less than two years now. At one point we were going to put an offer in on a different boat and I spent all of two days calling every marina on the Great Lakes I could find about the possibility of hauling out a 50ft boat that is 26ft wide. Seems the 26ft thing is the real problem. Most of the boat wells are about 14ft wide, some are 18-20ft, and I even found one or two that were 24ft wide. The other option is to use a craine which we were quoted a price of 10k a day. So 20k just to haul out then go back in. Who knows if they have any clue on how to handle a catamaran without damaging it as these guys are just contractors that pick large things up for a living mainly around construction sites.

Last year at a boat show around Sandusky I found a yard in Cleveland that said they could do it. I called them several times this spring playing phone tag with them but never getting an answer so I decided to make the 3hr drive over there. Once there they seemed confused that I was looking for winter storage when everyone else is looking to get their boats in the water right now. After explaining that I did not want to do a 3000 mile trip bringing my boat back to the Great Lakes without a place to haul it they finally decided to chat with me about specifics. Seems our boat is too heavy for their craine so it was back to the drawing board. As usual I asked if they might have any suggestions and what they gave me I had already called or they could not do it.

Two years ago when I was looking I had found a yard somewhere on Lake Michigan that thought they might be able to do it but getting the boat in the well would be a tight fit. By this point I had forgotten the name of the place but after chasing down just about every marina on Lake Erie and Lake Huron this spring I was starting to think about them again.  Then I found this picture posted on the Great Loop site. If you look in the background one can see another boat exactly like mine sitting on the hard. Seems I've found a winner! I reached out to the poster and found out it's at Safe Harbor Grand Isle in Grand Haven. This will still be 3hrs away from us but much closer than MD. I'm excited that I've got this key hurdle to our trip planning taken care of. Of course right now I'm just assuming they will take me but I'm pretty sure if they can pull it they will have a spot for it to sit all winter. Then there is also the additional 600 miles or so we will have to travel with the boat to get it from Lake Erie to Lake Michigan where this marina is located during a time of the season with more limited weather windows but that's a problem for a different day :).

You can see the Xquisite X5 behind the FP pictured above if you look hard enough :)

Planning to bring the catamaran back to the Great Lakes

When we purchased the cat we knew we were buying a year too early. But at the time it seemed like a good price and it might be nice to have the boat a little longer to get to know it better. We did sail/travel about 1400 nautical miles with it last year but I don't really feel like we used it much or got to know it other then over the few days we traveled from the Bahamas to the Chesapeake Bay and then winterizing it last year. Much of which I've probably forgotten since. Note the jury is still out on how the winterization went.. We will find out next month when it goes in the water.

As we talked about how we wanted to use the boat this year we seem to have narrowed it down to two options: 1. Bring the boat back to the Great Lakes or 2. Leave it in the Chesapeake for the summer using it maybe a couple weeks and a long weekend or two then take it back to the Bahamas for the winter where we may hopefully make time to use it a week or two a month. Oddly enough option 2 is Amy's least favorite option as winter is her skating season and she really does not have much time to go jetting off to the Bahamas which would mean I would be down there by myself trying to recruit our retired friends to come hang out with me on the boat. So we decided option one is probably the best and started researching how long the trip really is and what that might look like with a large catamaran.

The scale of the distance bar on the map is a bit off

Our plan is to bring it up along the East Coast of the US and though/around Canada bringing it into the Lakes via the St Lawrence. There are two reasons we are selecting this route. 1. It's a trip we want to do and hoped to do with the tug. 2. We won't have to take the mast down or worry about bridge clearances. When I called a couple places along the Hudson River they said they did not have the capability to take a mast our size down mainly due to the beam of the boat and how far their cranes can safely reach out. The other problem is even if we get it down I'm guessing we would still be somewhere around 16-17 feet high with the mast somehow laying across the roof of the boat which would rule out our ability to navigate the length of the Erie Canal. We might have been able to ship the mast but that idea did not appeal to us as we would still have to find someone to put it back up. From what we can tell we think the trip from the Chesapeake to a dock in Lake Erie will be in the range of 3000 miles. Some of the books recommended planning for 45 travel days and suggested it as minimally a 90 day trip ensuring time to see some sights and wait out various weather events. Unfortunately we have a senior in high school graduating this year and he is not really thrilled about the idea of being away from his girl friend and missing all the graduation parties this summer while traveling on the boat with his parents. So what do we do?

We think we have the semblance of a plan. We will hopefully have the boat in the water in June and mostly ready to travel. We plan to do a week or so trip with Max in early June over to Mt Vernon to visit George Washington's old stomping grounds as a shake down cruise. Max has plans in mid June at which time we hope to move the boat up to New York where it will sit for the next month or so as my/Max's trap team will compete at the State event and then Nationals a couple of weeks later. Once this event is over we may move the boat again up to Maine or the Halifax area. Once there we may leave the boat for another 2-3 weeks to allow Max to enjoy the last of his summer at home before he heads off to college. Once we drop him off at school we will then head back to the boat at the end of August and start looking for weather windows that will allow us to bring it rest of the way around to the St. Lawrence. Once we get it there it should be fairly straightforward to get back to Lake Erie. Unfortunately this will not be the kind of trip allowing us to smell many roses along the way but hopefully we can do a slower more enjoyable version of the trip on the way out of the Great Lakes next year when its time to move the boat down to St. Lucia for the start of our circumnavigation in 2028.

I think it will be a fun trip, I hope we get to see some whales along the way, I'm sure it will help us get to know how to sail the boat better, but I'm sad that we will have to skip some things along the way and we will probably have to dash the hopes of visiting Newfoundland this time. But hopefully we can make time to do that stuff next year when we bring the boat back out.

For now I'm off to try and secure a winter storage location at a place that can actually pull a boat with a 26ft beam out of the water in the Great Lakes. I've got a couple leads but so far no one has actually committed to the project.

Time to earn my Captains License

I'm not sure where this goal came from.. I suspect the goal to get both a Pilots and Captains License may have come after reading Jimmy Buffets book a Pirate Looks at 50 many years ago. A Facebook add popped up one day for Captains training class near by and it seemed like the right time. So I decided to take advantage of it. Honestly I really had no idea what I was getting into, what the extent of it would be, or what I might do with it once I got it. I just knew I wanted it. Not to mention I figured a little more knowledge never hurt anyone and it might be fun to do some boat deliveries one day should I get the opportunity. Just to ensure I was not alone in this endeavor I talked Max into joining me on this adventure which really did not take much convincing.

We both signed up for the OUPV class. Which provides the bearer of the license the ability to take no more than six paying customers out for boat trips fishing, diving, sight seeing, or whatever. This is the first level of many it seems but it is the basic starting point should one wish for a paid life at sea. Turns out one needs to be 18 to get a license however Max could take the class and the tests then wait to apply for the license when he turns 18 in a couple months. 

The class entails teaching you over a period of 60 hours how to "successfully" take the four tests required for this license. Additionally they offer to help review your paperwork for submission once you have past the tests and have all the other required items in hand.. More on that later. The four tests required are 

• Rules of the Road
• Navigation General
• Chart Navigation
• Deck General/Safety

The class was taught over a period of ten consecutive days and required two full weekends. There were no excused absences, if you missed you were not allowed to sit for the exams. It was a commitment. Most the classroom time was spent on learning the rules of the road which seemed to come down to memorization. Then there was chart plotting. Surprisingly chart plotting was quite a challenge for me. Mainly because I'm not a very exacting or detailed orientated person. Turns out you need to be pretty precise with those sliders and compass rose when determining coordinates, drift, and routes. Frankly after going though it I'm not really sure how relevant it is in todays age where everything is electronic, we have multiple back ups, and charts are hardly carried in stores anymore. But we had to show proficiency with it none the less. I suppose knowing that I still remember how to use a chart, can plot a course, look in the coastal guides & or piloting guides for a white light flashing four times as I come into a channel may give me some additional confidence while I'm out there. But I would still feel better if I had some working knowledge of celestial naviagation or something slightly more useful for determining where I am should I loose all the electronics while out of sight of land.

After completing our classroom time they suggest studying for a week or so at home before taking the tests. All four tests are available though the school and done online. The tests all have to be taken at the same time. They did give us a 10 minute break between tests. One has to have a laptop with a video camera attached ensuring the proctors see a 360 degree view of the room you're in before starting the test and then watching you while you take them. If you step out of view of the camera during testing it's an automatic failure. This does not sound like a big deal when taking a multiple choice test however when doing the charting test where you end up with a full size chart rolled out on the dining room table looking for points on the map then charting angles, approaches, and what nots its a bit more intimidating. At one point I simply crawled up kneeling on the table while drawing lines and looking for bouy's to ensure I did not step out of view of the camera.

Prior to ending the training our instructor informed us that only about 70% of the class would actually complete/pass the tests to successfully become licensed captains. I'm proud to say both Max and I successfully completed it and Max was their youngest ever to take the class and additionally passed everything the first time. 

So now with the hard work done of passing the knowledge based tests we now both have to get physicals where they test hearing and vision. We both needed current First Aid/CPR certificates. Once that is complete we need to apply for TWIC cards which is a government background check ensuring we are not terrorists I suppose then follow that activity up with a drug test. Once we have positive results from all of those in hand we can then submit our application for the license along with our documented time at sea.

Turns out all this is quite expensive. First there is the cost of the class in our case about $1200 each, then the cost of taking the exams another $100 each. Then the costs of a physical, drug testing (if you're actually a working captain then you need to join a drug consortium where they test you regularly. I think this is about $200 a year), then the background check $135. Additionally we needed valid First Aid/CPR certificates which we had but they were not USCG approved which meant we got to pay $125 each to take an approved first aid class. Finally there is then the cost for submitting all of this for the license which is around another $150. Seems we will be in this for around 2K each once it's all said and done.

At this point I have the completed testing certificate in hand, a USCG approved First Aid/CPR certification, and my physical completed. I still need to complete the drug testing and background check then I should be able to apply for the license. I've been dragging my feet on those last two waiting for Max to turn 18 so we can do both the last two at the same time. Not to mention with the government shutdown we've been told the application process is quite slow right now. So hopefully that gets cleared up sometime soon.

I'll be sure to post here to brag a bit when it's finally official! Guessing sometime this summer.

Its time to sell the tug

Some people say the best two days of boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I disagree. I have generally enjoyed all of our boats. It's weird to say but I think you have to love them like a family member in that some days they really frustrate you and some days they provide an absolutely blissful experience. Not to mention they are a bit like your kids in that both are always needing more money and attention. The other side of that you have to put a lot of your trust into them that they will take care of you along the way ensuring you arrive at the destination safely.

When we bought the tug we originally planned to do the Great Loop in it and sell it when we were done moving back to the sailboat. About the time we were coming back from the Bahamas we realized how little many of the boats down there actually sailed, we were running out of time and would have to skip the Canadian canals, and that we really liked doing the rivers. We also knew we wanted to do the Down East Loop and maybe even the Inside Passage to Alaska with it one summer which would not be ideal in a sailboat. So we decided to put our sailboat that was in storage up for sale and keep the tug. For better or worse the sailboat sold really quick which made things easy. Unfortunately over the last three summers we have not made the time to use the tug as much as we would have liked as it seems that all our kids activities have kept us pretty busy only allowing us to put around 75-100hrs of engine time a year on it.

I have been fascinated with circumnavigation since I was a kid. But it never seemed possible or something that I might be able to do until I found the world of YouTube sailors maybe ten-twelve years ago. Once I saw them doing it and found groups like the Oyster Around the World Rally and the World Arc I knew it was something I really wanted to do. It took a bit of talking but I got Amy to agree to the idea of trying to do it one day. Now that both of my parents have died and my kids are almost out of the house I realized there are not that many more one days so we sat down and put a date on when we wanted to leave. The key was to balance our youth/health, my in-laws health/needs, our kids needs/weddings/grand kids, and the time/money equation. As you can imagine there are a lot of conflicting priorities there but January of 2028 is what we came up with for a date we wanted to leave for that trip. This is basically a long way of saying while we still want to do all of the adventures we planned with the tug. However, we feel like many of those can be done between or while balancing the other life events and maybe its best to do the circumnavigation now and then come back to those smaller adventures closer to home later.

With all of that said I officially signed with a broker today to sell the tug and start focusing our time on learning the sailboat we bought last year for the circumnavigation. I'll miss the tug. It's been a very reliable, easy, and a comfortable boat for us. I hope we can find as nice of a boat once again when it's time to sell the sailboat and buy the boat for the next adventure.

The Neglicted Blog

Seems my biggest theme for this blog is neglect, unfortunately not boating, photography, or some fun adventure. I honestly opened this up to sit down to write a monthly update post when I noticed I had not done a monthly update in the last four months. In my head they were happening. I'm not sure how that got away from me? 

So where do I start?

Seems I last talked about photography so I'll start there. I've been neglecting my photography goal (imagine that) of getting out taking pictures then actually looking at them to pick a few to post each week. For anyone that knows me since closing the photography studio about 20yrs ago I have not used a camera much and worse yet when I do, I don't take the next step to actually look at the fruits of my efforts. This year I wanted to challenge myself to do more. I started out strong on that mission over here but fell off after about week seven. Hopefully with spring emerging I can get myself motivated to get out more with the camera and back to actively posting. Oddly it seems maintaining hobbies is just as hard in retirement as during one's working years. There always seems to be other stuff that needs to be done first... or maybe I just have too many interests? Either way for a brief moment I'm actually feeling caught up and like there may actually be some time to do something I want to vs what I have to. I'm off to find some pictures to post then maybe tonight I'll get back to that giant lego set I got as a birthday present that's been sitting half done for a while now :)

Dusting off my 85 1.2

Yesterday I took the 135mm lens I borrowed out for a walk with the dogs today I took the 85 out at about the same time of day. Unfortunately the light was not as nice but the goal was to see how the two compared when attempting to shoot about the same subject.

This is going to be a tough choice. The 85 reminded me how sharp it is and while a bit heavier and slightly bigger I'm not sure there is a huge difference between the two lenses other than focal length. The only difference is that all of these images were shot at an aperture of 1.2 vs the 1.8 of the 135 lens. I guess I should have tried using it at 1.8 to judge the focus fall off as having shot at 1.2 at first look clearly drops off much quicker.

I think next I'm going to shoot some indoor subjects that don't move in an attempt to directly compare the two. At the moment I'm leaning toward the 135 but really want to convince myself it's based on the merits vs a shinny new toy.

Photographing a couple of my favorite subjects today

On my way back from a coaches meeting in Lansing today I stopped by the local camera store and they were kind enough to lend me a lens I've been lusting over for a couple years now. When I bought this latest camera I convinced myself that I would have a lot of fun with the 85 1.2 as I loved the images I could get from an 85 1.4 I had with my prior system. Unfortunately that fun has not yet happened. I do like the images it creates but don't find myself using it much and have been thinking a lot about replacing it with the 135 1.8. For two years now I've been thinking about selling the 85 to fund the 135. I don't use it much, it's heavy, and frankly is too big for my camera bag. But I know I'm going to loose a lot of money selling it and I just might find an amazing use for it one day so I continue to sit here staring at on my desk while it collects dust. 

In hopes of convincing me to trade in my 85 towards the 135 and ultimatly making money on both sides of the transaction the fellow at the store was kind enough to let me use their 135 for the next week. Also he might have been tired of handing it to me to fondle every time I visited the store :). 

I have to say based on my first use of it I really like the focal length and the pictures look really good! I hope to get out using it every day this week and really compare the two to see if its really a good fit or just one of those things that we all think would be nice to have in the back of our heads. Either way my goal is to finally make a decision and maybe some additional room on my desk ;) So keep an eye out for some more posts/pictures this week. Note: All of these are with the 135.

Boat yard pictures

After my last photo class I have started watching videos on how to edit in Lightroom. I'm thinking of making one of my goals this year to carry a camera and shoot the environments that I'm in and maybe if I get brave the people I'm with. Maybe I can learn to develop some street photography skills? Last week I took my camera with me but unfortunately only picked it up evening while waiting for my batteries to charge at the boat yard. The photo of the abandoned American Dream boat is my favorate. The yard has a long history and a lot of stories in it. Up until about 20 years ago they used to build Dickerson sailboats there. Seems they were also one of the bigger Grand Banks dealers at one point before the company went bankrupt. Their newest endeavor is a plan to focus on catamarans which is how we found them. Walking around one can see a lot of the old tools, molds, and scraps from how they progressed from wooden boats to fiberglass.  I've added a few here that caught my eye as I skimmed through what I captured that evening.

Finally got my batteries charged and started the process of getting the boat ready for shrink-wrapping

I made the nine hour trek back to the boat this week in hopes of getting my house bank of batteries charged up for the boats winter rest. Its starting to feel like at this pace I should have everything winterized just in time for spring to roll around.

Following the directions from the Xquisite service manager I attempted to limit all of the power consumption on the boat so the charger/inverters would not have to worry about charging my starting batteries or doing much with the inverters. This turned out to be a bust. The hope here was maybe the chargers were not getting enough power to kick in. I called back and was then advised to keep pressing the remote switches every time they popped to bring the batteries back up ensuring that I did this within a few seconds of popping in an effort to to keep the battery chargers continually pushing power avoiding them spinning down. I did do this for about four hours and was making progress getting a couple of the batteries up to the 50% range but it was a lot of work and the chargers still were not kicking in to take over. This did not feel like the right solution.

During the drive to the boat I remembered a discussion I had when we first bought the boat that we thought the 50amp splitter that came with the boat might be messed up. I wondered might this be the issue so I pulled out my tester and sure enough one side of the 50amp 125v splitter was only getting about 60 volts. After calling around a bit I did not have much luck finding a new 50amp 125v end I could put on the cable but I did find a new adaptor cable that was only about an hour drive away. Long story short I made the trek, installed the new cable, and while I now had a constant 125volts per side this did not fix the problem.

I then decided to call in a Mastervolt Tech. The first one I called had no clue how to help me but provided me his service line directly with them. The actual Mastervolt tech on the other end was great. He told me what I had been doing was ok to get them out of the danger zone but it was a bad idea to continue forcibly charging the batteries. I was told if I could find a windows laptop with a USB type B cord to connect to the Mastervolt system he could remote in to reset the battery safety error for me. It seems this is an automatic safety Mastervolt builds in ensuring that a tech looks at the batteries to validate they are still safe after a discharge that takes the battery below 10% of capacity.

Somehow I was lucky enough to find a cheap windows laptop on sale at the local Walmart along with a USB type B cord that I had not seen used anywhere in the last 15 years. I had figured I might have to go to the Goodwill to find something like that. I brought it back to the boat, connected to the internet via my phone called Mastervolt back and sure enough the tech was able to remote into my PC connect to each of the batteries resetting the three that had gone below 10%. Seemed the fourth one was ok. Once he did that they were happy to talk with the chargers again and after about six hours were back to full charge. The other upside is that I now have the Mastervolt software and a password that will let me see more of what's going on with the batteries. One problem solved!

Time to move on to the next concern. Last time I was at the boat Trappe had got around 2-3 inches of snow. This time it appeared they recently got another couple inches. I'm starting to get concerned about water getting in to things and freezing then contracting all winter. I started thinking about how to get some tarps over the boat. After another 40 minute drive to a store for some wood I started building a brace that would allow the tarps to have an angle to them but seems the yard did not love my idea should a tarp break loose and start beating on my neighbors boat. Apparently this has been an issue in the past. So the new plan is to shrink wrap it and they will use my existing frame. I feel like the yard might have simply come up with a creative way to get more service work out of me but hopefully its not to late to avoid damage and I'm sure it will work better then my plan. Hopefully the stantions will hold up to the shrink-wrap.

Goals for next year

With the end of the year quickly approaching it seems the right time to start thinking about some goals for next year. This has to be one of the harder years to make goals for as in about 9 months we are probably going to be empty nesters. Is the goal to enjoy as much time with the boy as we can before he moves out and things start to change.. Yes. Is the goal to get some fun extended adventures in.. Yes. Is the goal to loose some weight, get in better shape, spend more time with the wife, learn to use the new boat, sell the tug, develop my photography skills, learn to play the guitar, get a Captains License, and get my Trap team to Nationals. Yep.  Will I have time to do all of those. Maybe.. While I may make progress on all of them I really need to pick three to focus on and I'm sure there are a few items I left off the list.

If it were up to me I would spend all my time on a boat. I would love to take the tug up to the North Channel this year and explore Lake Superior for a month or more. I would love the adventure of bringing the sail boat back to Lake Erie via the St Lawrence while possibly stopping by Newfoundland on the way. The question is will the boy be willing to do either of those adventures with us? Do we leave him at home while we do one or more of those? I think he would like the sailing trip but am not so convinced that he would leave his friends and girl friend for six weeks to do it. Is it fair to ask him to, for what might be his last summer at home? Should we just sell the tug and leave the sailboat where it is one more season.. maybe doing some long weekends and a week or so trips here and there exploring the Chesapeake Bay?

It seems the answer when we talk about it as a family right now is we just don't know. For now we are still marching towards the circumnavigation goal with the plan to leave with the World Arc in January of 2028. For the moment the boy still says he is coming with us and the girl is 100% sure that she will not be coming with us. For now it seems that we have a lot of options for adventures next year and while none of them are bad some do seem more exciting than others. I look forward to seeing what we choose!

Finally finished winterizing the sail boat

I got the call shortly before Thanksgiving that the yard had hauled the boat out of the water. Last time I had left it I had managed to get all of the sails down and everything but the AC units and water maker winterized. To winterize the water mater I needed a couple special hoses that had not come with the boat. Unfortunately the quick connect ends needed were not something I could buy just anywhere and with the boat being in a somewhat remote location I decided I would try to find what I needed at home or get it shipped to the house. To protect the water maker I left an electric heater running in the forward compartment. This was great while the boat had shore power but was less great without. Seems the yard remembered that I had left the heater running in it and had rigged up some shore power for me. Unfortunately it seems a squirrel decided to commit subside by nibbling the wiring and no one noticed the dead squirrel or the fact my boat was not getting power. To complicate things even more everything on my boat runs though the inverters/chargers this means the boat was trying to supply power to the heater and it seems with all the gray days the solar was not enough to keep up with it. Needless to say when I got to the boat my house bank was dead (Lithium Ion) as were my starting batteries(Lead Acid). Once the yard got ahold of the power company I got power back to the boat fairly quickly. I then spent the next few days trying to figure out why my batteries were not charging and why the starting batteries were dead.

It turns out I had left the ECU fuse on for the engines. This is the engine computer. It seems that it's always running and does eat some power which was enough to kill those batteries over the period of 13 days with no power. I've never had engines this new before so it was not even on my radar to know to turn those off when I left the boat. Lesson learned and I probably should be turning them off when I leave the boat for more than a week going forward.

The house bank was a different story and I'm still not sure I have that solved but after talking with the guy that designed the system for my boat I think I've got some good direction to try when I get back to MD. The first day I was there I went about winterizing the water maker. Once I was done with that I moved the heater into the main salon while I was doing other stuff (mainly reading up on the batteries and chargers) as it was about 35 degrees outside. The first thing I tried was to plug a normal battery charger in and attempt to bring the house bank up from 7 -12% depending on the battery to at least 15% thinking that they were below the min cutoff for the charger to recognize them for safe charging. For some reason one battery did charge but it only charged to 53% and quit. The rest just kept popping the remote battery switches. Well I got one of them as high as 20% the charger would attempt to kick on then then shut off and the safety switch would once again pop. What I've learned is that as everything on the boat runs though the chargers/inverters they were working to charge my starting batteries, managing the power the heater was drawing, as well as the power from the battery charger. The power was being provided by a 50amp cable that is then spilt to two 30amp outlets going into the boat. When I looked at the load I could not figure out why the units were showing 25% not thinking it was the heater/aux battery charger I had borrowed. His suggestion was to get more power to the boat thinking the chargers were starved of power thus unable to start the charging process. As I'm probably not going to be starting the generator while the boat is in the yard, though it is an interesting thought to run a garden hose into the sea strainer while somehow holding it there ensuring the generator gets the cooling water it needs. I think instead I'm going to try charging up one battery at a time with nothing else running on the boat. Hopefully the power provided will support this more limited method as I have seen the chargers pull almost 200amps while charging. 

I was pretty frustrated when I left on Friday having not had success with getting the house bank charged over the 3 days I had been at the yard. Then adding to that frustration as I was trying to just turn everything off with the intent of coming back one more time in two weeks to get the house bank charged up I could not even figure that out. Seems even when I flipped all of the breakers and the master power knob to the off position the boat still would not completely shut off. When I left I was more than mildly mad/frustrated.

Before leaving I thought about the training we had got on the boat and decided to reach out to those guys. They then put me in touch with the guy that designed the electrical system. I learned they had hid a 12v battery in one of the heads that is in place to ensure an even 12v power flow. Seems some of the CZone stuff would glitch from time to time without really consistent power and this was the solution. Thus no complete power cut off. Seems their thought was the boat would always have enough solar to keep the CZone and Mastervolt system running. They did not plan for folks winterizing boats, inside storage, or long gray winter days :(

On a good note as I was trying to devise a method to get my mainsail off the deck of the boat one of guys in the yard offered me use of their craine. At 35ft it was just long enough to reach the where the sail was sitting on the deck of the boat. With it I was able to lower it to one those airport type tugs the yard has then drive that over to my truck where it took three of use to slide it in. Next stop will be my favorite sailmaker in OH.. Hopefully he is equipped to deal with this big heavy thing!

Photoclass.. Creating mood.

I was inspired to sign up for a class at our somewhat nearby camera store this week. The goal of the class was to explore mood in photography. I'm not much into landscape photography but have begun to think more about color and how it can provoke feelings. After the first class we made an early morning trek out to one of the local Metropark's. I'm not sure I love any of them but these were my favorites captured on the day. Next week we are supposed to get back together to discuss how to improve our favorite image. Not sure which I'm going to pick yet but thinking of the one framed by the dead tree?

The interesting thing is all four were shot at the same spot at sunrise. I find it neat that it at least feels like three fairly different pictures. The most interesting thing will be to see what the other folks saw and how different their photographs will be.

What's your favorate?