Elise

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

2012 Singlehanded transpac aboard 'US 101'

http://vimeo.com/46703286

2012 Singlehanded transpac aboard Pogo 2

)

2012 Singlehanded Transpac aboard Slacker

)

Cleaning up Elise

Getting her ready for a bay race this weekend

Photo by Serge

Back to Bay lifelines. Serge does pro work.

Nice little eFoy 'control panel'

Couldn't be any simpler...Manual ON, Manual OFF or Automatic ON.

I velcro'ed it to the bulkhead...Nice and clean now.

Photo courtesy of Serge.

great video from Idefix (tour of the boat)

Adrian posted a picture - dedicated to the sailors in the 2014 SHTP race. )

the cool 'steering line' system - by Jason

)

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The SPOT device seems to be working

And the folks I had subscribed to the alerts got the following:

Was on my way to the Farallones when the wind died and I turned around to try to make it back under the gate before nightfall on Sunday.

Wonderfully successful test.

Everything critical that could have failed did fail except for the fuel cells.These work great. And they are so easy to use. There is basically...well, about nothing to do really. Plus they are super super silent. Amazingly silent, except for the slurpy noise, like someone is drinking Coke with a straw and bad manners. I love these guys!

So very successful as when you understand why things fail early they are less likely to fail when it is much more difficult to debug them.

Doomsday device stopped working
Solar panels did not charge batteries
NKE did not work

More details

I practiced anchoring on my own due to lack of wind and not wanting to have to stay awake all night drifting near a lee shore. Worked great. Boat loved it. Anchor loved it. I loved it. I still turned on massive instrumentation, VHS, GPS, etc... to try to eat up as much power as possible and have the fuel cell decide it is time to take over. They pushed out over 2 Amps into the batteries and peaked at about 4 Amps when I really got cranking. Loved it.
NKE didn't work. Looks like some miswiring somewhere. I just wouldn't initialize properly so would turn to port when it really should be starboard and vice versa. Really confused. Brian fixed that today. It seemed to initialize fine. Kept coming up with an error message this weekend.
Doomsday device worked great on day 1 and stopped working middle of day 2. I hardly steered at all on day 1. OK, the top gust I saw was about 7 knots so perhaps not too demanding on the equipment but it certainly worked fine during that whole time. And power consumption was really low. It hardly drained the battery. I even had to force the fuel cell on as the AP wouldn't draw the batteries low enough before I wanted to go to sleep and anchored after running most of the afternoon and some of the night. Turned out (Brian checked into this) that a resistor 'melted' because my motor is too big (it is the standard minitransat motor according to NKE!) - so that's now fixed and will be fixed going forward.
Solar panels did not charge: one defect in a connector to the big solar panel (now pumping 6 watts into the system when overcast) and the 40W seems dead. The 12W is just a topper and I wouldn't expect it to really charge up battery more to keep them topped off when the boat is not in use. Doesn't even push an 1amp.

The solar panel mount worked GREAT!!! Jason is a miracle!

System test - post sail

A bit of a bruise...hit a stanchion trying to take pictures of dolphins..

What a cool effect. Serge tested the little engine and it worked fine again...I will try again, and again, and again. And have it run, stop, be restarted...test the heck out of this thing since it gave up on us a few times.

The 'engine lab' at home

Offshore lifelines removed.

Next we will remove the mount for the big solar panel.

Serge cleaning ff the #2

and again...

A new torpedo tube at ZYC!

Cleaning up back at the dock on Sunday night. We took most everything off the boat. Full car driving home!

Two for Tea and Tea for Tow.

Serge had called me and offered a two (via Peaches protector). Looking at the ebb current and not desiring to spend the night at Point Bonita, in the middle of the shipping channel I had originally said yes, and then the wind picked up to 4 to 6 knots by the gate

By then though Serge and John were already out there. The wind dropped to 2 knots and after the gate and before the club it was glass, no wind at all (and a building ebb...)

View from Elise for the 'Uber of the sea'

Setting up a tow line. At that point, I had no working autopilot anymore (not a problem really on this trip)

Photo courtesy of Serge.

Spotted!! (dropped kite, etc... to become more maneuverable)

At the end of the day, a good thing that I got a tow or I would still be out on the water by midnight. No going anywhere..

Being towed at 10 knots!

Under the gate. About 4 knots of wind.

10 knots of boat speed!! - and it wasn't coming from the little engine...

Surfing!

The view from the protector

Woo hoo!

Day 2 - WHALE

As I got busy watching the dolphins, I kept wondering why they were spending so much time around the boat, clearly getting my attention. Normally, when you are not fast, they get bored after about two passes and leave you to find more fun things to play with.

They only stay with you if you put on a surf competition and surf next to you in the waves.

And then, looking on the starboard side (at the time when the wind picked up to 2 knots so I got moving again, at about 3 knots...picking as high an angle I could without sailing away from the coast) - I saw a spout!! There she blows!

Big big grey whale (or humpback??) - I can't tell the difference. Massive. Slow. Heavy but super close and I am sailing right onto it. Dolphins still playing.

Whale is undisturbed and continuing its path. Blowing water out on a regular basis. Looks like a million musseles on its skin. I sail nearer and nearer. It seems to be on a steady path.

Dolphins still around.

Whale surfaces a few boat lengths ahead. Majestic. I tacked away from it. Dolphins swim toward whale.

Whale passes and goes away. Dolphins come back to boat.

Whales surfaced up a few times. The bow of the boat was literally one boat length away from its tail at some point!!

Dolphins left.

Day 2 - DOLPHINS!!!!!

Having resolved myself to having to sail back, I try to drift out of the main shipping channel, opened up a beer (wheat beer, the one that doesn't taste like beer), bungeed up the tiller, relaxed and admired the sky. Not much more I could do, I figured the ebb would shut me out for the night.

I was about to open a book. Both NKE and Doomsday device seemed to not be working, but given that I had 0.00 knots of boat speed, steerage didn't seem to be the most pressing issue.

And the magic happened.

Dolphins. 4 of them. They surrounded the boat from all sides.

They swam around the boat for a good two hours, under the keel, around the back, around the front, from all sorts of different directions.

I wonder if they were trying to tell me something. I just saw a ship in the distance and I was off the shipping channel so no risk of collision (and my radio was working :) so I could even have called straight to the ship or the traffic channel to indicate that I was basically adrift - there was still a lot of room for the ship. A non issue.

They came so close I could have touched them. I put my hand in the water and one of them swam right past it. I could feel the turbulence on my skin.

They something dove at the stern and reappeared at the bow, or started from one side and reappeared on the other, or just swam alongside the hull turned around and did the same thing int he other directions.

Bad photo, but the dolphin is right behind the solar panel mount.

Then two more came from behind and I had a group of 6 dolphins play around the boat.

I was all smiles!
What a fantastic experience!

Here are the last two swimming over to where the other ones were.

They stayed with me until I met the whale.

Day 2 the way back

I sailed past the lightship - probably about 3 miles or so past the buoy, then the wind speed dropped dangerously so I headed back. Probably not making it to the Farallones under sail...

Hoisted spinnaker but the wind got so so light (even on the way out, past Point Bonita, there was nearly nothing) that the spinnaker was very droopy and not effective. At that stage, a genoa holds its shape better and powers up the boat faster.

1 knot of breeze. 1.5 knot of boat speed. 3 knots of ebb. Guess who wins?

I saw the 'Adventure Cat' at the lightship (didn't know they were going out that far) - bubbling around and taking pictures of sea lions. (which I did too...)

Pretending to put a smile on despite the fact that this is my sub 5 knot face (ie we're not going anywhere fast face, I like to sail FAST).

I thought that Brian on RedSky was going to be out there so I first hailed, then called him. Figured that if he was out there, I could get a tow back...but he was int he South Bay.

I started the engine but it died after 45 minutes, and I couldn't start it again. I need to figure this out. Either it's me, or it's the engine, or it's both but we need to work it out so the engine works reliably. Only use choke for 10 seconds or so so I don't think the engine was flooded and I tried again to start it afterwards with no choke on at all (which should have helped flush too) and all the right vents and valves were open.