The tireless crewmate arrives

As much as I love sailing, I don't much care for spending a lot of time steering the boat. That situation is compounded when I'm sailing alone and there are so many other things that need doing - like eating and sleeping and tending to the sail and navigating - just to mention a few.

The solution to this is either an autopilot or a wind vane. Autopilots require a lot of electrical power when they are in continuous operation - especially when I'm sailing down wind. I hope to do a lot of down wind sailing. It is so much more pleasant than beating into the wind and the waves.

A wind vane is a logical choice for a sailboat. It uses wind power and water power to do the steering. It consists of a vane that senses wind direction and some kind of linkage to a rudder to make corrections so the boat stays at the same angle to the wind. Since sailboats are wind powered, this makes a lot of sense. Yes, when the wind shifts, so does the boat's course. That's when I get up out of my bunk, reset the vane and retrim the sails. With an autopilot, the course would stay the same but I still would have to do the sail trimming. All told, I would say the wind vane is the hands down winner in the autopilot/wind vane competition on a sailboat.

One of the really great things about a wind vane is that it is a silent crew member. It doesn't complain. It doesn't eat. I doesn't get tired of steering the boat. What more could I ask for? Well ... we won't go into that here.

Way back in the dark ages - about 1960 or so, an Englishman by the name of Blondie Hasler came up with an arrangement called a pendulum-servo wind vane. It consists of a vane that sticks up into the air and can be turned to the desired angle between the boat and the wind. If the boat goes a bit off course, the vane is blown over to one side. The vane is linked to a rudder-like device (an oar) in the water that, in addition to being able to turn, it swings from side to side like a pendulum. When the oar turns, the pressure of the water flowing past it causes the oar to swing to one side. There are lines (ropes) attached to the oar that, in turn, are attached to the tiller or steering wheel in a way that causes the boat to return to the original angle relative to the wind.

I'm sure that is confusing. Maybe it will be more clear as this discourse progresses.

When I sailed my old boat, Chatelaine, out into the Pacific in 1975/76, I had an early model of the wind vane now known as the Monitor. At the time, it was considerably cheaper than the Aries, the only other pendulum-servo wind vane on the market. When I started thinking about a wind vane for Laelia, I was delighted to find that the Monitor had become easily the most popular pendulum-servo wind vane on the market. I visited the manufacturing facility at Scanmar International in Richmond, CA, and found that my beloved Monitor has been much improved over the years. It is built of better quality, more robust materials than my old vane. Additionally, the Monitor has been installed on a number of boats identical to mine so ScanMar had detailed drawings of the installation.

I finally scraped together the money to buy the Monitor about a month ago. It looked to be a pretty simple proposition to mount it on the transom (the rear-most part of the boat). There were four mounting brackets and four stainless steel tubes that positioned the wind vane. I went to work installing the upper brackets and did a trial fitting to see how it would all work.

Remember that Laelia is a ketch. She has two masts. The boom on the mizzen (the aftermost sail) sticks out over the transom a bit. I figured that ScanMar had dealt with that. Much to my dismay, the initial fitting ended up looking like the picture to the right. The mizzen boom overlapped the wind vane by a good four inches. That means that every time I tack or gybe and the mizzen boom is going to swing across the boat, I have to remove the vane, do the maneuver and reinstall the vane. Not good! With Chatelaine, the wind vane did most of the steering during these maneuvers leaving me free to deal with the sails.

I talked to the folks at Scanmar and after some discussion, they agreed to make a custom mount that would put the wind vane an additional six inches away from the boat. This meant adding two more stainless steel tubes for extra bracing. They did this at no additional cost to me. I call that great service!

It took a while to get it all mounted. I spent the biggest part of the time drilling holes in the stainless steel tubing. One of the holes took over two hours! Fortunately, I work with people who deal with fabricating complicated devices out of exotic materials. One of them spelled out a better way to go about the drilling and it went much faster after that point. The final mounting left about two inches between  the mizzen boom and the wind vane. The finished mounting job is shown to the left.

That left me with the task of attaching the lines from the servo oar to the steering wheel and running a line used to turn the vane to point the right direction. All it took was another $350 to buy additional blocks (pulleys) to route them properly and keep the friction in the lines to a minimum.

Sunday, July 29th was the day of the first sailing trial. My neighbors, Eric and Diane, were eager to go along and see how an experienced sailor handled a boat. (They were talking about me!) They live on a boat just a few feet away from mine so they had been spectators to the whole ordeal of mounting the vane. They would come to look at it, shake their head and say that it was hard to believe that it would work.

The day looked perfect from my berth at Pete's Harbor. Lots of sun, enough wind to ensure a good sail and tides that would work in my favor for the sail. When I say "would work in my favor" I mean that we set out a low tide. If I run aground at low tide, the rising tide will eventually float the boat again. If I run aground at high tide, I could be there for 12 hours and 45 minutes until the next high tide. If the next high tide wasn't as high as the previous one, it would be another 12 hours and 45 minutes before the next. This could go on for quite a long time until either I get a higher high tide or I pay someone to come drag me off the mud.

We left the slip with minimal fuss - quite a feat (if I do say so myself) given that this is undoubtedly the worst berth in the marina for getting in and out. We motored down Redwood Creek toward South San Francisco Bay and discovered that the wind was going to be from dead ahead as we went up the channel to the bay. Not to worry. The engine was running fine and we plugged along until we finally cleared the narrow channel leading to Redwood Creek.

Now, readers of this blog may recall my experience of moving the boat down here from Sausalito (see "A wild ride"). It doesn't take much wind to kick up a nasty short, steep chop in the shallow waters in the south bay. On this day, with only about 10 knots of wind, it was definitely lumpy sailing.

Nonetheless, I unrolled an appropriate amount of jib for the conditions and turned the helm over to Eric while I started messing around with the wind vane. Remember what I said about lumpy conditions? In a matter of about 10 minutes, I was hanging over the rail feeding my last ten meals to the fish. I would have one of those gut wrenching episode, do some work with the wind vane and return to feeding the fish.

The result? When Laelia was going to windward, the wind vane did an excellent job of steering. But then again, Laelia will sail herself for short periods when going to windward so that wasn't much of a test.

By the time we had tried this out, I had my third trip to the rail and I was ready to call it quits for the day. We turned downwind to return to Pete's Harbor. The vane didn't do quite so good a job downwind. Laelia was out of trim (my fault) and she tends to wallow in a following sea to begin with. I had to keep on the helm and add corrections to keep her on course. I thing that this was mostly because of the arrangement of the steering lines. There was too much slack in them and I had no good way of adjusting them. I was able to both tack and gybe with the wind vane doing most of the steering and the mizzen boom did not hit the wind vane.

Sad to say, I was paying too much attention to the wind vane and not enough to navigating. At some point, Diane pointed to a channel marker some way off to starboard and asked if that was the one we were suppose do be sailing to. I pulled out the GPS unit and saw that she was correct. It was actually the second marker - we had missed the entrance to the channel Redwood Creek channel and were sailing merrily along toward the main channel toward the Dumbarton Bridge. In my debilitated condition, I made a bad decision. I decided to cut across from the channel we were in to the one we wanted to be in. It was just past low tide so it is no surprise that in short order we were stuck in the mud.

I figured that the rising tide and the action of the waves lifting the boat would eventually get us off the bottom. I was right, but it took a little over two hours. In the meantime, we were getting beaten up by the choppy waves. We were turned beam on (sideways) to the waves. They would break against the side of the boat and the spray would douse us all. Fortunately, I had put on my foul weather pants earlier so I wasn't in too bad shape. Eric and Diane didn't have foul weather gear but they took it all in stride. They sat out in the cockpit with me for a while getting doused by breaking waves and even went up on the bow for a bit to see if the weight shift would float us off. It didn't. I suggested that they should go below where it was warmer and drier. Eventually they did and passed up the jacket to my foul weather gear so I was pretty well protected. It was just a matter of waiting it out until we floated free.

At long last, we floated/motored free into the Redwood Creek channel and headed home. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful except that with the wind and the tidal current, I managed to scape the piling on one side of my slip. I scraped it hard enough to remove several feet of varnish from the cap rail (the wooden trim rail around the edge of the deck.)

I think that there's nothing wrong with the wind vane that another hundred or so dollars worth of parts won't cure. Everyone who has ever owned a boat is aware of the saying that a boat is just a hole in the water that the owner tries to fill up by throwing in money. I have some of the parts on order and I look forward to getting it all rigged and trying it again.

It will be a blessing if the next time out does not include seasickness and getting stuck in the mud!

Now I'm cooking with gas!

Back in the days of my youth, we lived in caves and cooked over campfires using wood as fuel. It worked but it was awfully slow when we were standing around with an appetite and waiting for a slab of woolly mammoth to be reheated to body temperature. One evening, our cooking session was interrupted by a large dinosaur - a brontosaurus, as I remember. We dove for cover in the cave while the bronto sniffed around hoping for some form of food. Being strictly vegetarian, he/she didn't find anything of interest. Being strictly vegetarian, the critter also farted prolifically. One of these expulsions of gas came when the bronto was close to the fire. The ensuing explosion frightened the critter away.

As with many disasters, there was a lesson to be learned. Acting on a hunch, we went looking for brontosauri the next day. We carried with us some size able clay urns. The objective was to get close enough to catch an urn-full of flatulence. We were successful. The evening's cooking session went much faster as we released the urns of brontosaurus gas through large diameter bamboo tubes in the vicinity of the fire. In short order, we were eating dinner. Thus came the expression, "Now we're cooking with gas!"

Fast forward now to life aboard Laelia. Since I moved aboard in December, I have been cooking on a single burner hotplate. You can see the hotplate in the picture to the right. I did have a section of counter top over that big hole, but you can kind of get the idea what my galley (kitchen) looked like. It works but the hotplate is sometimes maddenly slow. I timed how long it took to get a half filled pasta pot to boil - 45 minutes! Not satisfactory! I like my pasta and when I get home from work at 7:30 PM, I don't feel like waiting 45 minutes for the water to boil. What to do?

My first thought was to go back to the olden days but I quickly realized that there were no longer any dinosaurs roaming nearby. I suppose cows would be an adequate substitute but those are about as available as dinosaurs here in Silicon Valley.

While perusing a West Marine catalog, I came across a Shipmate 3 burner propane stove that looked like just the thing. It even has gimbals. Gimbals are devices to keep the stove level while the boat is rolling from side to side. I paid an outrageous amount of money to have a propane locker installed in the lazarette (a storage compartment in the very farthest aft section of the cockpit). Unfortunately, this used up all my money. I had to wait until I found a job and paid off some bills before I could actually buy the stove.

Last weekend, I ordered the stove. On Wednesday, I got a call telling me that the stove had arrived. I left work early to pick it up and hot footed it back to Laelia to install it. Amazingly enough, it turned out to be not much of a problem. By 11 PM, I had it installed and I was boiling water in my tea kettle. See the picture to the right.

This evening, I did a comparison. I was lusting for a pot of spaghetti so I hauled out the pasta pot, filled it, turned on the stove and started a timer. Fourteen minutes later, I had a vigorously boiling pot of water. Huzzah! I'm back to cooking with gas!

By the way, the wind vane project is moving along. I am waiting for some parts so I can finish it off. I will post pictures and commentary on the process after the first sailing trial. Stay tuned!

The Great Transmission Adventure

... in which I learn (and re-learn) lots of things.

The first effort at getting the transmission problem resolved involved a fellow occupant of the marina who claimed some expertise in engine and transmission matters. He came to the boat, looked it over and said he would pull the transmission out and take it to his shop. In an effort to save some money, I said I would pull the transmission and have it ready for him later in the week. Wrong answer! I didn't hear from him for a couple of weeks. I ran into him one day on the dock and he was not happy that I was doing the part that was going to earn him some money. I was having trouble getting the transmission out so I offered him the chance to finish the job. He declined. Oh well!

Did I mention that I was having trouble getting the transmission out of the boat? Well, I was. It all sounded so simple. 1) Disconnect the prop shaft. (That was easy). 2) Remove the four bolts that hold the transmission onto the engine. 3) Beat on it with a rubber hammer until it comes loose. This is where the fun (?) began. I beat on it periodically most of one weekend. It wouldn't budge. I periodically applied a mixture of automatic transmission fluid and acetone as a rust penetrant and beat on it some more in the evenings of the week following. Nothing moved. The next weekend I was in Placerville so nothing got done. The following week was a repeat of the previous - come home from work, brush on a little more penetrant, beat on the transmission and give up in frustration.

Finally, the next weekend, I rigged up a block and tackle arrangement  (see picture to the right) to put a healthy pull on the transmission while I beat on it and (ta-dah!) it came loose. Much to my chagrin, the place I had been applying the rust penetrant was not the place where the transmission mated to the engine.

So, OK, now I have a transmission lying in the cockpit ready to be repaired. The only problem is that I don't know who does that. I did an Internet search and didn't come up with anything that looked promising. I lefat a message for a yard foreman who didn't return my call and another one for the surveyor who did the survey on the boat when I bought it. The surveyor returned my call. I described the problem. He said he would get back to me with some information on where to go for the next step. After I had hounded him with three more calls, I gave up on him.

The next move was fairly obvious. I called around to some boat yards and asked who could look at the transmission. A place called "The Boatyard at the Grand Marina" in Alameda said they could do it. The gentleman I talked to said they were open 8 - 5 weekdays. I explained that I work 9 - 6 in Santa Clara so that was going to be a problem. After some back and forth conversation, he said that one of the mechanics usually showed up at 6 AM and I could leave it with him.

Monday morning, I was out of bed at 5:30, ate breakfast and hit the road to Alameda. For those of you who do not know the SF Bay area, there are three bridges across the bay that handle all of the traffic going from SF and the peninsula to the south to what is known as the East Bay. That means that the morning commute gets pretty ugly. Going over was not too bad. Traffic moved at the speed limit across the San Mateo bridge and then crawled up the Nimitz Freeway (aka Interstate 880). As I was approaching Alameda, the morning radio show I had tuned in announced that there had been a fire on the BART line (the commuter train that runs under the bay from East Bay to SF) and both tracks were shut down. This put a whole bunch more traffic on the road headed for the bridges. It was looking pretty grim for the trip back to Santa Clara.

I pulled into "The Boatyard at the Grand Marina" a few minutes before 7 AM. With some luck, I could make it to work pretty much on time. Unfortunately, the luck was not with me. The shop was locked up tight. I sat in my car and watched the front door waiting for someone to arrive. Finally, at 8:10, a car pulled up and a man jumped out and ran for the front door. He unlocked it and went in. I followed closely. I explained who I was and why I was there so early. He apologized profusely and explained that USUALLY someone was there early but for some reason no one was this morning. Oh well!

I explained the problem I was having with the transmission. He wrote up a repair ticket and hauled the transmission into the shop. I beat feet for my car and left in a hurry in the hpe that I wouldn't bee TOO late for work. I promptly missed the turn onto the freeway and spent 10 minutes trying to find my way back. Once on the freeway, the traffic was slow and go - remember the BART problem? By the time I got back to the San Mateo bridge, the lane for getting onto the bridge was backed up for at least two miles. I kept going South in the hope that the Dumbarton Bridge would be better. It was.

Once back across the bridge, the normal thing to do would be to get on highway 101 south. As I drove over the overpass, it looked like it was pretty badly jammed up so I decided to be clever and take some back streets to bypass the mess. Unfortunately, I don't know the back streets very well and I spent a frustrating 15 - 20 minutes finding my way to Interstate 280 where I was pretty sure there would be no traffic problem. For once, I was right. It was the ususal 75 - 80 mph all the way into Santa Clara. I was only 30 minutes late for work. Not that anyone noticed - but it did mean working late.

Two days later, I got a call from the boat yard. They had done some minor adjustments and said there was nothing wrong with the transmission. The thing that bothered me about that was that I had made the same adjustment and it hadn't made a difference. I drove over to the shop early Friday morning, talked to the mechanic who had done the work, paid $150 for the work and took the transmission back to the boat.


Damper plate - most of the splines are gone!

Transmission shaft - splines on the left.

Saturday morning, I put the transmission back in place. It still did not work. I pulled the transmission back out (it was easier this time) and looked at the place where the transmission shaft went into the engine. It is an gizmo called the damper plate. I removed the damper plate and looked at it carefully. Aha! The center of the damper plate has a hole with splines (little ridges and grooves) that are suppose to match up with the transmission shaft. (See picture to the right.) Most of the splines were stripped. The engine would run merrily along turning the damper plate - but with no splines, the damper plate spun freely around the transmission shaft. (The transmission shaft is the next picture - below to the right.)


Another Internet search turned up a dealer for the engine. He was in Fairfield - a good hour and a half drive from here. I called and found out that the replacement damper plate would cost $225 and they could UPS it to me. The problem with that is that I didn't have a local mailing address. I had them send it to Placerville and picked it up the next weekend on my regular trip home.

It took a couple of evenings in the following week to install the damper plate, reinstall the transmission and verify that it appeared to fix the problem. Encourage at this, I hooked up the propeller shaft, started up the engine and put it in gear. Voila! Laelia moved forward against her dock lines. I put the transmission in reverse and she backed up! It looks like we have a fix! The one remaining concern is that the transmission shaft splines look kind of beat up and it looks like the shaft does not go all of the way into the damper plate. It felt like it was a nice snug fit when I did a trial fit on the transmission shaft before installing the plate on the engine. I wonder when (or if) it will fail the same way.

Later that weekend, I backed Laelia out of the slip, turned her around and backed her into the slip (with a little help from my friends) in preparation for the next big adventure - installing the wind steering vane.

So! What did I learn from all of this? The biggest thing was that I need to look into these repairs and upgrades myself before I call in the paid help. Most of it is not rocket science and there are plenty of knowledgeable people on the Internet willing to give advice. Of course, one has to do some sanity checking on the advice, but I did get some good help this way. I need to know how to do a lot of this stuff if I am going to sail off to places where it is hard to find help.

The other thing I learned yet again is that a lot of people are not too good on follow-through when they say they will help. Best to do it myself, if possible.

Stay tuned for updates on installing the wind vane. It is a beautiful, ingenious piece of hardware that will steer the boat for me using only the wind and water to power it. It is a major "must-have" item for sailing alone. It is a big milestone in getting ready to go.