Venture Continues - Deer Harbor to Reid Harbor

Now that Labor Day weekend has officially started, we're headed off to Reid Harbor for some (hopefully) peaceful time at anchor, and to finish the hike to the Turn Point lighthouse. We ran out of time last year at the intersection by the air strip. Hopefully it won't be as dusty this year (it took months to get all the dust out of my shoes).

Unfortunately, we hit the first maintenance snag of the trip this morning. Frog Prints has her holding tank mounted high in the hold - a location which is excellent for emptying the tank by gravity where allowed, but means there's a good uphill run in the line from the head to the tank. This morning the head doesn't seem to be pumping uphill as well as it should, and things seem to drain back. The layout prevents a siphon, so it's not a disaster, but it's not pleasant and would require filling the tank faster than usual (it's only a 12-gallon holding tank) to avoid sewage from running back. Most likely it's a bum joker valve.

Fortunately, we're not that far from West Marine in Friday Harbor. If we divert early, we should be able to miss the growing chaos of a holiday Friday at Friday, while still picking up what we need.

We set out for Friday Harbor around 1015 for an uneventful trip. We managed to get the last spot on the temporary dock, although it was a bit of a trick wedging in. There seemed to be a good current, and there wasn't a lot of space. Laura did a great job getting us in to the dock, and we levered her in on the lines.

Happily, West had what we needed, although only in the full rebuild kit. We stopped and picked up some extra stuff at the grocery on the way back down to the marina while we were there, and I began the project. Flushing some raw water through the system kept everything reasonably pleasant, and the shower sump pump got the water out. The old joker valve had calcified and was not closing well. The new one fixed everything up nicely, and with a douse of Lysol and hot water, we were ready to head out around 1345.

We were hoping the crowd in Reid Harbor wouldn't be too bad with it only being Friday. We figured most people would be wanting to stay someplace more developed for their first night out. We were wrong - there were around 80 boats in the harbor that night. It took a while to find a spot, and we annoyed at least one power boater while we were looking (they must have had a heck of a lot of scope out). We finally found a spot towards the outside - not perfect, but good enough. It would be good exercise rowing in from there.

Our nearest neighbor was an island of power boats. I think they were trying to see how many boats they could hang off of a single anchor. At first it looked like a boat show, with a small, medium, large, and extra large boat all rafted together, although the island kept growing as the evening wore on. It must have been a dozen boats of different sizes at its peak. They were well-behaved though, and didn't disturb us.

This was our first opportunity to try our new anchor riding sail. Laura was going to sew something up, but we ran out of time so we splurged for one from Banner Bay Marine. They do a nice job, and since they ship by USPS, it only took three days to get the sail.

Given a choice, Frog Prints actually likes to lie stern-to in the wind. It makes backing her into a slip when the wind is blowing her off quite easy, but it also means she tends to wander when at anchor. Personally, I think she just doesn't like to stay still (first thing heard at any dock is some variant of "She looks fast"). Anyhow, we're still experimenting with the best way to rig the riding sail, but it does definitely help keep her pointed. Since we opted for the colorful one, it also helps spot her when rowing back in a crowded harbor.

Well, two days into the trip and we're already set for a day off. Tomorrow's just hiking before we set out for Canada on Sunday.

The Journey Begins - Shilshole to San Juan Islands

Well, Frog Prints is all loaded up and we head out today. We have plenty of provisions, grill and Walker Bay dinghy (from Windworks), our asymmetric spinnaker, and our new inflatable tandem kayak from Advanced Elements - boy am I glad Frog Prints has the hold (the sail locker which would be the third cabin in different layouts).

We planned to do a one-day run with the tides all the way from Shilshole to somewhere in the San Juans (given Labor Day weekend, we weren't sure where we'd stay this night) in the manner of the Northwest Yachting article. We planned to leave by 0600, but we ended up a little late (as usual), although we still left by 0700.

We started out with an absolutely beautiful day - bright, sunny and comfortable. No useful wind mind you, but still a beautiful day. As we motored north on the ebb, we focused on getting everything stowed away. Everything was looking good until just about Point No Point.

Approaching Point No Point, we spied the first fog bank making its way down the Sound. It was only a few hundred feet high, but thick as pea soup. Since Frog Prints doesn't have radar, and knowing how complicated the western shore would be (not to mention dealing with the Hood Canal junction), we made a run to make the East side before the fog arrived. We made it far enough across before entering the soup that, with a constant plot on the charts and a good depth contour to follow, we were in pretty good shape. As an aside, the little PostIt arrow flags are great for keeping a plot on a paper chart - particularly if you don't always erase all the pencil lines from previous plots.

One thing we noticed in the fog is how few other vessels sounded fog signals. We came across a couple power boats who, save for their engines, we would never have known about. One ended up following us for a bit off of Double Bluff since we seemed to know where we were going. The ferries did sound signals, as did some large traffic out in the VTS lanes.

The one that was quite disturbing though appeared as we were passing though a pocket of thinner fog. We heard the thrumming of something big, but we were way outside the VTS lanes, so we weren't expecting anything. However, as the fog thinned for a minute, we could see the tug and barge passing off our port side. Not only was it not making any signals and operating outside the VTS lanes, it was also headed southbound on the east side - it was completely where it should not have been. We just hope he had us on radar because there certainly wouldn't have been anything we could have done had we been closer.

The fog thickened back up as we followed the eastern shore up towards Partridge Point. We plotted a new course up Whidbey to the eastern San Juans in case the fog continued into the Straits of Juan De Fuca. As we approached Partidge Point though, the fog cleared up back into a beautiful day. We reset to our original plans and headed for Cattle Pass - we had considered Roche Harbor, but we figured it would be a little too crazy (and they wanted a three-night minimum). I missed the donuts, but cest la vie.

As we approached Cattle Point, we heard one of the first Maydays of the trip. A 63' power boat had lost propulsion in the tide rips just inside the pass, and the caller was quite frantic. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be very familiar with either their vessel or with procedure. Not only did they call a Mayday (rather than Pan), but they also didn't know how to change the channel on the VHF when Coastguard Port Angeles wanted them to move to a working channel. Granted, I can understand their concern - the tide rips were quite boisterous that day - but avoiding panic is so important in any kind of trouble. We found later they were picked up by Vessel Assist and managed to go on with their vacation (we saw them in Deer Harbor the next day). Apparently, they had run out of fuel (all 1400 gallons of it - Frog Prints carries 27).

Entering the channel was quite the E-ticket ride, since we arrived well towards max flood. You can see on the track plot below that we managed to hit 10.5 kts over ground with the current - and that's when we were doing about 6 kts water speed under engine. Some of the rocks under the rips come pretty far up (10-12 feet of water) which was a bit nerve-wracking, but that's why we have a shoal keel.

We decided to head for Deer Harbor for the night. They've done a really nice job with the marina there, there's a good restaurant within walking distance, and we could both fuel and pump out before departing. We were headed for Stuart Island the next day to finish the hike to the lighthouse we didn't finish last year.

Preparing for the Journey - Nav Station Update

Last year, we carried a laptop (actually, a Motion Computing Tablet PC) along with us as a chart plotter. Although most navigation around here can be done by coastal pilotage, there are occasions where a plotter is a nice plus (not to mention, it's fun to have a record of where you've been).

I've been looking at the various options for quite some time. There are quite a few options out there, many of which are terribly expensive. While I would love to have a multi-station Raymarine system with all the bells and whistles, I needed something that would better fit the budget (at least at this point). The solution came in the form of a PC.

The original nav station for Frog Prints was very basic - electrical panels, ICom VHF, Furuno GPS32, and basic electrical and tank gauges. Over a year or so, much of this will be changing.

The new chart plotter is a small form factor PC connected to a 15" LCD touchscreen mounted at the nav table. I'd been comparison shopping for quite some time before settling on this specific kit. It's not perfect, but it fit the budget.

The PC itself is a low-end Via Mini-ITX system mounted in a VoomPC case intended for use in cars. All the components were purchased from Logic Supply. The Via PCs are clone processors - in this case a 1.2 GHz EN-series board with 1GB of RAM mounted. The Via designs give a full-featured PC that fits in a case about the size of a shoebox that can run navigation software pretty well on about 24 watts. I don't know if there are more capable solutions with similar power consumption available, but this one works pretty well. The PC is now mounted in the little space under the nav table - the one about knee height.

The LCD is a 15" ELO Touchsystems monitor I picked up used on eBay for about $120 - they come cheap if you have the patience to wait for one. I was hoping to pick up a panel-mount model to make my life easy, but they just weren't showing up so I settled for a regular desktop one. I figured I could take the case apart and convert it into a panel mount. It worked pretty well, but it turned out to be trickier woodworking than I expected - the seam between the front and back parts of the display are a much more irregular design than I was expecting. The touchscreen draws about 12 watts - mainly for the back light.

Power on a boat is another tricky thing - everything is really only nominally 12V. For the PC itself, this wasn't so much of a problem. They make power supplies meant for use in cars which can handle a wide range of input voltages (usually from around 8V to 18V), and even can automatically shut down the system if its switched power is turned off, or if the voltage drops below a set level.

The monitor was a bit trickier. The ELO panel internally uses +5 and +15V for the logic and back light respectively. Because I wanted to have a very efficient solution, this meant I had to dust off my old EE skills and gin something up.

Because the ELO monitors normally take AC in directly to the case (no power brick necessary), that provided a nice chunk of space inside the case to work with. I took out the original AC supply and built a new board with a couple TI switching regulators that fit in the same place. The TI regulators are supposed to be over 85% efficient, and seem to meet that goal. They don't generate much heat, and didn't require much in the way of additional components.

Along with the monitor, it's panel at the nav station also include a thing called an X-Key Stick from PI Engineering. This is basically a stick of 14 back lit buttons that can be programmed to do just about anything. They're great for providing easy access to any functions of the chart software that aren't easy to use with the touchscreen.

Speaking of software, we decided last year to opt for Chart Navigator Professional (the Maptech name), which is also Coastal Explorer from Rosepoint Navigation. CNP is wonderfully easy to use, has a mode that works really well with touch screens, and is very affordable. We picked it up on special at West Marine last year for $399 including a full set of vector, raster, photo, and topo maps for the entire US. We added the CHS maps for the east side of Vancouver Island this year (raster only - the vector maps are $499) so it now covers our entire current cruising range. I can't recommend this package enough.

The PC also includes iTunes with our entire CD collection, and electronic versions of all kinds of documentation - everything from the Coast Pilot to all the manuals for on-board equipment. It's running Windows XP (I wouldn't recommend Vista for these types of low-power applications yet). I set everything up so that it could eventually have the OS and programs on flash memory, but I haven't managed to shoehorn the flash drive into the case yet.

It's also set up to use the Windows Shared Computer Toolkit, which has now been replaced by something called Windows Steady State. This is a set of tools to lock down a PC. and also sets it up to undo any changes that are made. This means that charters can screw with the PC and it will return right back to its original configuration when rebooted. I don't have this all working yet, but it's getting there.

There are two power switches on the panel - one switches both the PC and the monitor, while the other switches just the monitor. That allows saving about an amp (the monitor power) without shutting down the PC. The power wiring for the PC is set up for a future installation of a 12V UPS which will allow the PC to shut down gracefully if the power is switched off. I've been meaning to install such a thing anyway to maintain the memory in the stereo - right now it loses all its presets when the Comfort circuit breaker is shut off. There's also a USB hub mounted under the LCD panel for easy connection of a keyboard, mouse, or other accessories.

Since installing the touch screen required rearranging a bunch of stuff on the two nav station panels, I decided to just replace the panels rather than hacking up the originals (I didn't want to mangle the nice original wood). The new panels are 1/2" marine plywood with a mahogany veneer applied to make it look a little more like the original wood. The Moabi veneer Dufour uses is much nicer, but I haven't found a source yet. I had Daly's Paints in Bellevue color-match the stain to the original woodwork. The color they came up with isn't exact, but it works pretty well on both the Mahogany veneer and on oak (used for a knife holder in the galley).

In shuffling around the panels, I also added a Xantrex battery monitor (the XBM - Jackrabbit has a nice installation package) and left a space for a Raymarine repeater for instruments and future autopilot. The battery monitor won't be hooked up until this winter, since I need to redo a bunch of the wiring at the batteries to accomodate the shunt. I also intend to replace some of the analog guages with CruzPro equivalents, like their smart tank guages for fuel and water. I like the look of the analog guages, but I've had problems with the accuracy of the water guages. Finally, I added a string to support the panel when its down to protect the VHF (the thickest thing on the panel).

Overall, everything is working pretty well. The GPS feeds both the VHF and the PC, and it all looks pretty nice. There are a couple small goofs that probably only I will ever notice, but I'll probably fix them at some point - I really like to keep the boat in a factory-like condition. There is some RF interference on the FM radio to deal with, and the USB devices go flaky every once in a while, but I think I can tackle those problems. I'd also like to add an AIS receiver (you'll see why in my posts from the trip) and a low-power GPS logger for when the PC is off. I also need to wire the PC into the stereo. There's always something.

None of the PC components have been marineized. I figure most was inexpensive enough I'll give it a shot in stock condition first. If I run into problems, I'll at least add conformal coatings to all the electronics in any replacements. Everything is pretty safe from salt water, but I do worry about condensation.

Preparing for the Journey - LED Anchor Light

The last project on the stick was to replace the original anchor light with an LED light. We went with the Hella sealed fixture both because I've had years of good experience with Hella products, and I got it on sale. The one challenge with a sealed light is that the wiring is a little trickier - normally you run the wiring into the fixture and attach it to terminals there. With a sealed fixture, the fixture has a pigtail which needs to be connected to the mast wiring.
I figured the easiest solution was to mount the new light atop a small weatherproof (NMEA 4x) electrical box, and then attach the whole thing to the top of the mast. I mounted a small terminal strip in the box, and the mounting holes for the box match those of the original light, so everything went together pretty easily. I was nervous about the wiring though - if I somehow lost a grip on the mast wiring, it would have slid into the mast and been impossible to recover. To prevent this, I attached a couple wire ties to make the wire larger than the hole in the masthead, which worked out.

If I did this one again, I'd be a little more careful mounting the light to the box (I had to do a little excavating with a Mototool to get one of the nuts to fit - argh), and I would shim the box at the masthead. There's a rubber grommet around where the mast wiring comes out which ends up making a non-level surface for mounting the box. The mounting screws still hold everything in place, but it's less secure than I would really like.

All the aloft projects are now done - time to move on to the interior.

Preparing for the Journey - Masthead Sheaves

The original sheeves Dufour used are the plain-old white plastic things. Three years of UV had made them brittle, and the spinnaker halyard had taken some chips out of the edges, which caused the halyard to bind between the notches and the sheeve box (it would release by lowering the spinnaker a bit and then going up again, but this got way too tedious).




The original halyard sheaves appeared to be 3-5/8" diameter, 5/8" wide, and with a 1/2" axle pin. The sheave box looked to be 11/16" wide (keep in mind - all these measurements were taken while hanging from the masthead - precision was less than perfect). Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything that exactly matched the original sizes.

Garhauer makes a nice ball bearing sheave which is almost a match - 3-1/4" (I think) diameter, 5/8" wide sheave, and a 1/2" axle. It's the kind of black material most blocks are made of, so it should hold up quite well - and they're only $60 (only - I must be a boat owner). However, they have a small stainless flange around the center of the bearings which makes the overall width at least 11/16" (I didn't have my good calipers with me), and I didn't want to risk getting all the way to the top and finding they don't fit. Argh.

Harken also has a nice ball bearing sheave (should be for $100). It's a slightly smaller diameter (3"), but even at the hub it's only 5/8". I decided to go with these and hope they work.
I only changed the forward sheaves (the main and topping lift sheaves seem fine), which turns out to be a relatively easy project. The axle pin is internal to the masthead, with a small open hole on one side for a pin punch to push it out, and the hole on the other side covered by a little plate held on with two screws. The plate keeps the pin in, so there are no cotter pins or other contrivences to deal with.

I managed to get the pin and the old sheaves out with no major incidents (I did drop one sheave hub, but I didn't need it anyway). The new sheaves also went in easily, although it's a bit tricky to line everything up what with the halyard going over there and everything. It's all in place and looks good, although the new sheaves don't extend outside the box the way the old ones did. We haven't had a chance to fly the spinnaker of them yet, but hopefully we won't have any problems.

Preparing for the Journey - Up the Stick to the Reflector

This has been quite a busy year for Frog Prints, which has left a number of projects until the last minute before our departure on our annual End-of-Summer journey. This year Laura and I will be out for 14 days, with Kit, Roy and Rob taking her for an extra 8 from Nanaimo, so everything needs to be ship shape.

I took the first two days of the vacation (while Laura was finishing up at work and taking her co-workers to a Mariners' game) to finish off five specific projects I had been planning for a while, and generally check everything over. First on the list were a bunch of projects aloft - re-fitting the radar reflector, replacing the masthead sheaves, and switching the anchor light for an LED one.

I tackled the upper projects in order of altitude, with the radar reflector coming first. Given the amount of commercial shipping around Puget Sound, we opted for a TriLens reflector - it's a little bit pricey, but should give the best reflections from all angles of anything that would fit on a 34-foot sailboat. It does have one downside though...

The TriLens is shaped like three softballs attached together in a Y. It mounts to an aluminum shelf-type bracket on the mast. The problem with the shape is that people seem to get things hooked behind it - the genoa leech, halyards, I don't know what all. It doesn't happen that often, but people don't always pay attention, and the tugging on the reflector tends to work its mounts loose. We've lost one reflector, and the mounting shelf has a big chunk ripped out of it.

TriLens also provides a hockey-puck-shaped mount that can be used to mount the reflector on a flat surface. My plan was to use the puck on the bottom side of the shelf to act as a backing plate for the reflector. So, I had mounted the puck to the new shelf, grabbed all the necessary tools, and headed up the stick.

The reflector has a threaded tube with threaded ends which goes through the center. The tube can be used to raise the reflector on a halyard (just thread it through the center), or the ends screw into the puck-like mount, or the end sticks through a hole on the shelf mount and an end cap clamps it in place. So, I got the caps off, and safely secured the reflector to a spare halyard while I got the new modified shelf out. With the puck as a backing plate, the reflector would need to be attached to the shelf before mounting the shelf to the mast since it now would be screwed into the plate. However, when I went to screw the reflector into the new mount, I discovered the threads are a somewhat unusual design which would only screw into the puck from one side (and not the side I had expected). So, everything goes down the stick while I figure out what's next.

Back on firm dock, try as I might, I couldn't get the reflector to thread into the backing plate. I finally gave up and mounted everything back the way it originally was (although with the new shelf that doesn't have a chunk missing). I think the solution is going to be adding a second shelf-style mount on the top of the reflector, and attaching an aluminium loop to the mount to keep things from getting behind the reflector. Oh well.

Time to go to the next level - the masthead....