Reefs and reefing

One of the big things I am looking forward to on this cruise is spending time on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. According to Wikipedia, the Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. It is said to be a beautiful place to sail and dive. I hope to be there around June 2014.

Most people have heard of reefs. They are those hunks of rock or coral that lurk just below the surface of the water waiting to sink unwary boaters. But sailors have another kind of reef that is beneficial. When the wind starts to blow, the normal course of action for a sailor is to reduce the amount of sail that he has up. One way to do that is to lower one or more sails. Another less drastic way to do it is called reefing. Reefing is a process whereby the sail is only partially lowered. That reduces the sail area and the stress on the boat.

 
 







The picture on the left shows Laelia with a full mainsail set.



















If you look closely at the top of the sail in the picture on the right you will see that it no longer goes all the way to the top of the mast. That is because the sail has been reefed. Reefing is also referred to as shortening sail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the picture on the left, you can see a set of strings dangling from the sail. These are used to tie up the portion of the sail that has been lowered.

 

In the picture to the right, you can see the portion of the reefed sail that has been rolled up into a nice neat bundle and tied in place with the strings (called reef points) that you saw in the previous picture.

 

Sounds simple? It is simple doing it at the dock on a day with no wind. The process gets a little more difficult when under sail, the wind is blowing hard and the boat is rolling and pitching. Still, if all goes well, it is a 10 minute job. It pays to spend time at the dock figuring out how to make the process go smoothly and neatly. The alternative is to suffer with trying to figure it out when the wind is blowing hard, etc.

Next week, I will be taking the boat to Alameda to have all the standing rigging (the wires that hold the masts up) replaced. The existing standing rigging is old – possibly more than 15 years old. It doesn’t seem prudent to attempt a circumnavigation with rigging that old. If it breaks half way to Tahiti, no one will be coming out to tow me back to port.

Along with that, I will have the anchor windlass in stalled. That is the piece of gear that helps me pull the anchor up. The anchor weighs 45 lbs and is attached to about 200 lbs of chain. If it is all deployed (not unusual in the Pacific islands) it is way too heavy to be pulled up without some form of mechanical aid. More on this later.

Electrified!

This project is one of those that illustrates how something simple leads to complications. It started with having to replace my batteries. This did not come as a surprise. They are five years old and had been weak for a while. When I was out sailing, a battery would hold up for about 30 minutes with instruments and radio turned on. I had to switch to the second battery to restart the engine. Not good!

Finally, one of the two would not charge at all. I replaced both of the batteries with gel cell, sealed batteries at about $250 apiece. Gel cell batteries can be ruined by charging them as if they were old style flooded, lead/acid batteries so that means buying and installing a new battery charger that will not kill my expensive new batteries. I had never paid much attention to how battery chargers were supposed to work. I assumed that they just supplied electricity at a specified voltage and the batteries charged until they matched the voltage level. Not so - at least if I want my batteries to last. The charger has to supply three different voltages based on the state of charge and the battery type.

Who knew?

I have been aware of the horrible state of the boat's wiring but I have managed to push it off as something to deal with - someday - maybe. Well, the time has come for redoing at least part of the wiring - the part from the batteries to the main buss.  All in all, it took about three days' work to get the rewiring done and the new charger installed.

When the moment came to fire up the new charger, I was relieved to see that it appeared to work properly - no fire, no smoke and the readings concerning battery levels were as expected. I left the system to charge the batteries to normal level and by the next morning, both batteries showed full charge.

As a test to verify that the system would charge at maximum rate, I turned the charger off, selected battery 1 as the one to carry all the DC loads, planning to drain the battery to a low level. After about 30 minutes, battery 2 showed that its voltage had dropped to a level that usually means the battery is depleted or is under heavy load. Very curious given that the battery was not (or wasn't supposed to be) under any load at all. I turned the charger back on and the battery came back to normal level in about 30 minutes. Today, I am retrying the experiment putting the DC loads on battery 2. In about 20 minutes, the voltage dropped to a level indicating recharging was necessary. A little later, the voltage was back up into the level indicating that it was not fully charged but was above the recharging level. Battery 1 shows fully charged.

What does this mean?

So - it remains to be seen whether or not there really is a problem. Maybe the battery is acting strangely because it was previously charged by the old charger. Maybe it will act normal if I let it discharge significantly and then recharge it using the proper charging profile.

Stay tuned...

The new project is a full boat cleaning and inventory. I will be starting at the pointy end and working aft taking everything out of its normal place, scrubbing down and cleaning up the boat and the removed items. Some things will not be put back. My needs are changing now that I am not living the conventional work-day life.

Also in the near future - I have put out requests for quote on replacing the standing rigging - the wires that hold the masts up. I hope to have that done in the next couple of weeks. It means a sailing trip to a yard in north bay and back.