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Oct 16th More Boat Work

Near the Top of the Mast!

Trying to get some last minute outfitting and boat work done before we head out and down toward the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). One BIG item was to measure our mast height. Why? We need to go under some fixed bridges on the ICW. The “control height” is 64 feet, meaning if your mast is higher, you can’t go. The spec mast height of our boat is 62 feet and that’s way to close to not know exactly. The reason is that there are a lot of instruments on the top of the mast, see pic below. If they add significantly to the mast height, they’ll strike those bridges.

To measure the height, I had to go get lifted to the top of the mast to make the measurement. I took the photo above looking down at Shelly belaying me (notice my work boots). “Precise” measurement places our mast height from waterline at 61 feet, give or take probably a half foot. That’s good but doesn’t take into account the instruments at the top, the highest one being our VHF antenna.

Shelly winched me up the mainsail halyard and so I couldn’t get right to the top to measure the antenna height, but I estimated it to be about two feet. That makes our total height 63 feet, which gets us under the lowest fixed bridges with an entire 12 inches to spare!

Masthead of the Good Karma

Oct 16th Shakedown Excursion

Motoring Across the Bay

We went out for a three night shakedown excursion to test out all the maintenance and new instruments, just to make sure everything was OK. Did not have any problems in those departments. The navigation system exceeded expectations. We had to motor a lot due to the lack of wind, and that was a good thing in this case as we tested the motor and old fuel and had no problems. Our starboard tank had about 70 gallons of really old diesel that we had to have polished, which means cleaning through a filter. Algea grows in diesel, and condensation is also a problem. These cause your engine to fail. Well, we used about a quarter of that tank and everything was good, no engine failures.

Shelly at the Helm

We went back to the Magothy river near Gibson Island again for the first night. The next day we motored underneath the bay bridge to Mill Creek near Annapolis this time and visited Cantlers Inn for dinner. This was our first trip off the boat on the dinghy with the new outboard engine, worked great.

Moon Over the Magothy

Tanker at Anchor

The next day we tried to get to Wye Island on the east side of the bay and actually got some sailing done. We got going a little late and it was much further to our planned anchorage than we thought, so we decided instead to head to the West River near Galesville. On the way we passed some big ships at anchor, one is pictured above. We reserved a mooring ball at a marina and had our first experience tying off to one of these on this boat. Pretty easy, once you find the correct one, there were about 50 floating out there with numbers on them. Had dinner on the boat that evening.

The next day we went for a morning walk in Galesville, a tiny little community on the bay. Got back to the boat and decided to head back to Rock Hall to take care of some items that still need to be done before we leave. We need to get out of here soon and head south, it’s getting cold! But hurricane season is in full effect until at least November.

On the way out of the Galesville marina we got stuck in the mud in the middle of the mooring field. Again, the tides are extreme due to a full “supermoon,” and we tried to leave at low tide. We waited an hour and then got enough lift to get off the mud.

We were able to sail in excellent wind part of the way back, a beautiful but brisk day.

Cold Weather Gear Except for Feet

Oct 9th Tropical Cyclone Wind

Clear But Windy This Afternoon

As the northern reaches of Hurricane Matthew moved over us the last couple of days we went from drenching rain to high, steady wind. Starting around midnight it rained, at times torrentially, the rest of the night through mid-morning. Then the wind and waves started. The wind makes an eerie sound whistling through the rigging, while every once in a while you hear a loud “boom,” like running into a drum, which is a wave breaking on the hull. We are probably over a hundred miles from the closest pass of the eye but the wind from the storm is significant. Not leaving the slip today.

We are now experiencing an interesting phenomenon that happens in the Chesapeake. Because it pretty much closed at the north end and open in the south, and because it is relatively shallow, especially where we are, the wind can have a large effect on the tides. Fairly high wind has been blowing steadily from the north all day and this tends to push water out of the bay. This causes the water level to drop a bit, and the low tide ends up being, in this case, a couple of feet lower than normal. That means, in our otherwise shallow slip, we are now grounded out, as are several boats here.

Below is a photo showing a couple of our instruments. Not a great photo because the surfaces of the instrument is highly reflective. The left instrument shows the depth below the boat at 5.5 feet, the right shows the wind direction and speed. It’s kind of hard to read but the wind speed is 21.2 knots. It’s been gusting up to 30 knots. But the important reading is the 5.5 feet of depth.

The reason is that the bottom of our keel is 5.3 feet below the water. I’m not sure the depth meter is accurate to an inch, but I do think we are or will be bottomed out because it’s not low tide yet. Normally it should be 7.5 feet at low tide. We couldn’t leave if we wanted to! And the locals tell me it takes a couple of days for all the water to flow back into the bay this far north. The daily tide bulletin board at the marina that shows times for low and high tides says:

Low Tide: No Kidding!    High Tide: Tuesday (Today is Sunday)…

Bottoming Out

Oct 7th On The Threshold

The Good Karma Finally Ready for Serious Adventure

It’s getting quite cool, dare I say, COLD at night during October here in Maryland. It’s a relief from the oppressive heat just a few weeks ago. Whenever she feels cold, Shelly reminds herself that it is way better than the heat we experienced, and I agree. The Good Karma is not a heated boat, which is ok. We don’t expect that it’ll get unbearably cold before we move south.

I’ve been sick the last few days but my recovery is progressing. In the meantime, we’ve completed the big boat maintenance and upgrade project and nothing major is remaining, so we’re now putting our car up for sale. When that sale completes, we will have cut our “land ties” completely!

Dinghy Davits Completed and Outboard Mounted on Stern

We had one last item to finish today which was the crossbar for our davits. It took a few weeks to complete because you have to raise your dinghy on the davits, sans crossbar, to make some measurements. Kato then makes a custom fitted crossbar for you. It took a few weeks to get this done due to the navigation project and our trip to West Point and D.C.

We are now ready for some serious adventure. Due to hurricane season, and our boat insurance, we can’t really go south until November but we have many plans to explore the Chesapeake before we leave for good. Tomorrow calls for a lot of rain here, from the far outer bands of hurricane Matthew, but good after that.

The image below illustrates why you don’t want to be south of Virginia during hurricane season. We are located at the top end of the coast in this photo.

Hurricane Matthew: This Is Why We are in the Chesapeake in October

Oct 5th Success Installing Navigation Electronics!

Radar Mast with Updated Components

After about a week of full-time work, I finally got all of the new navigation electronics installed and working. I learned a hell of a lot about marine electronics and how to install wiring on a boat. Besides figuring out all the different components and how they work, the other very difficult part was squeezing into the tiny spaces to get the wiring in place. BUT… I was able to do a great job worthy of a professional. Not that I would attempt to do it as a real job…

I had the professionals here mount the radar dome and VHF antenna, shown above, on the radar mast. I would have done it but I don’t have a ladder and they do. I’m glad I did because they found that the mast had to be removed to run the cables, an unusual situation. Saved quite a bit of time and frustration for me.

New Chart Plotter and Navpod on the Pulpit in Front of the Wheel

The main component installed is the chart plotter shown above. It is the “google maps” of sailing. It is a computer display that contains all the navigation charts of your area and plots your boat and direction directly on the screen. The previous chart plotter worked fine but was dated by about 15 years, an eternity in the high tech world. The chart plotter is located just in front of the helm so that you have precise information as to where you are going and what is around you in real time. Really, it’s an excellent tool for sailing. The display required a new mount that needed to be installed as well.

AIS Transceiver Unit

This entire project was driven by our requirement to have an Automatic Identification System (AIS) unit on the boat. This is the system that tells other ships where you are and lets you see what other ships are doing, a safety system to prevent collision. As you see above, the AIS box required four different cables to be installed and connected correctly: A VHF antenna, a GPS antenna, power and a network cable. I’m happy to say it all works. It provides information to the chart plotter display to show you where ships are around you, pretty cool actually.

Radar is Operational!

The final component I got working was the radar, display shown above. The radar electronics on the mast connect to the display through a wireless connection. Pretty cool. I think everything on a boat should work this way, would save a lot of headaches running cables below deck.

However, I can’t complain. Last week we toured a WWII submarine and it was impressive how tight cables, pipes and instruments fit in a small space. It had to be extremely difficult to maintain. The Good Karma has spacious cable running room in comparison.

Ok, almost all the maintenance and upgrade work is done. Soon we will be departing Rock Hall for good!

Oct 3rd Last One…

Mom and I at the African American Museum

Ok, last non-sailing post under the sailing category (for now)…

Above is our visit to the historic opening week of the African American museum. It was a madhouse, but history made…

Below is one of the historic ships in the Baltimore inner harbor, the Constellation. They also had one of the ships that survived Pearl Harbor as well as a WWII submarine. The sub reminded me that all my work in tight spaces below decks on my ship is comparatively easy.

The Civil War Era Warship Constellation

Oct 3rd District of Columbia

Sunday Afternoon on the National Mall

Not really about sailing at all. Visited DC again with Mom and Scott. Went to the brand new Smithsonian African American museum, Air and Space museum, White House and Capitol. Lots of walking, traffic, bad bus tours, and dealing with people. Typical DC visit.

Are the Obamas Home?

The Capitol

Oct 3rd Family Visit

Mom Gets the Admiral’s Tour!

Haven’t posted for a while because of our big navigation upgrade project followed by my mom and stepfather visiting for a week. The navigation electronics install are much more time consuming that I estimated but I’ve made great progress, having installed the new display and wiring (photos later), and had the new radar scanner, AIS antenna and stern light installed and wired up.

As for the week-long visit, it started from my stepfather Scott, who was stationed at West Point in the late 1960s, and who wanted to visit one more time as a bucket list activity. And so he and my mom flew into New York City where we picked them up and headed up to West Point.

Million Dollar View at THE West Point of the Hudson

It was a very interesting tour. Lots of history. West Point was a key control point in the Revolutionary War, and only later did they decide to build the Military Academy here. The pic above is called the “million dollar view” due to the beauty of the place, and is actually located just above the west point of the Hudson River, after which the Military Academy is named. The academy itself is huge, we only saw a small part of it on the tour. Scott and I were able to get our temporary IDs to visit his old barracks, which he said looked the same almost 50 years later. He got to walk around and take lots of photos, and also talk to a lot of old guys in Highland Falls (town outside West Point) who knew all the same people he did from half a century ago. This was a great visit for everyone.

One of the Stained Glass Sections of the Chapel

Posted in Sailing by Mark with comments disabled.

Sep 21st Progress!

Rigging Up the Hauling Bridle

How do you know if you’re making progress? You spend a day or two trying to accomplish frustrating and stressful activities, and in the end you feel really burnt out and defeated but in fact you have learned new and valuable lessons.

That’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of days. Here’s the story: We bought a new 9.9hp Yamaha outboard engine for our dingy. This thing is heavy, around 90 pounds. You can’t just carry it around under your arm  (at least I can’t) and throw it up on it’s mount on the back of the boat. So what we did was wheel it in a cart from our car to the boat on the dock. To get it on the boat you normally use a lift, but we couldn’t use that to get it off the dock unless we turned the boat around and had the stern (back end) of the boat over the dock.

So… We spent two or so hours trying to back into our slip and could never get aligned right after probably a dozen tries. We’ve done this before on other boats but the Good Karma is special and we could not figure out the technique. In our defense, there was also quite a bit of wind which always adds to the difficulty of docking. We finally just docked in a position, bow in, but in a location where we could lift the outboard motor off the dock.

Then we had the challenge of figuring out a motor harness that really wasn’t made for the motor we have. Then we figured out how our lift works, but has a lot of tricks that had us in precarious positions several times. Fortunately, all our mountaineering experience with ropes and hauling systems paid off and not only did we not drop the engine, we actually got it mounted correctly. It was way, way harder than we imagined. Ug!

Today we figured out how to haul our dinghy onto the davits, pictured above. That was also quite the challenge, mainly because we have zero experience with such a system. It looks like a simple hauling system, but no, many subtleties. In the pic is one of the davits (a little crane) and at my feet is a hauling bridle to lift the dinghy and keep it level. The bridle is homemade, or should I say boatmade. It works pretty well. I look happy, but that’s only because Shelly told me to smile (grrrrr).

Still not done but should be by tomorrow morning. I’ll post pics of the final system when it is complete.

Progress. We are way closer to having the boat ready to finally leave and start moving down the coast!

Posted in Sailing by Mark with 2 comments.