Thursday, June 30, 2011
Land Ho! Ooops, wrong island...
(This is a post I wrote a while ago on the leg from Bermuda to the Azores)
We have been sailing to the wind for about 5 days now, trying to get Southeast over to Horta. The winds and waves have been high for days and we have had the storm jib up the whole time. We are now very close to the Northwest islands of the Azores which are Corvo and Flores. They are about 130 miles Northwest of Faial, the island that Horta is on. The winds have been coming straight out of the Southeast which prevent us from going the direction we need to go. All of the weather reports we have received have told us the winds will shift to the West any time so we are waiting and waiting for that to happen. As soon as the wind comes from the West we will have a beautiful tack that will carry us Southeast down to Horta. All we need is for that wind to shift!
However, the closer we get to the islands the more the wind kept shifting to the East (the wrong and unexpected direction) which made our track curve to the North of Corvo, the Northernmost island. Since we missed our intended target and were now getting low to negative VMG we decided to tack back. We are now on a port tack back through the channel between Corvo and Flores. On this tack we see the first glimpse of the outline of Corvo which is the smallest of all the islands in the Azores. It was too dark to get a picture.
We are all pretty tired and beat up at this point and our immediate goal is to try to find a little relief from the pounding waves and wind for the evening. We are trying to sail between the two islands and to the lee side (downwind side) of Flores to see if the conditions are better there. We sail all day trying to get around Flores and the sun sets before we find any relief. We begin heading towards the lights on the Western side of Flores to within about a mile. There is no port on the West side of Flores that we could pull into.
It is still very windy and bouncy and we decide to just heave too for the night to try to get some rest. The heave too provided quite a bit of relief but the wind was still howling and the waves were bouncing us up and down. We still did the regular 1 hour shifts through the night in case the boat got knocked out of the heave too and started sailing again by itself. It was interesting to be on the watch during the night in these conditions. The wind was making howling noises through the lines and struts and the waves were splashing all around the back of the boat but when you checked our speed through the water it was zero knots!
When the sun came up we started sailing again. We had drifted about 18 miles in the wrong direction during the night. We began reversing our track between Flores and Corvo again. These pictures are the first sighting of land in the Azores. It would have been nice if it had been the right island. Oh well, at least we got a chance for some nice pictures.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Otto driving
Our dear friend Otto was back with us for the leg from Horta to Gibraltar. It was so nice to have Otto back, we all missed him terribly. He is pretty camera shy and really tries to avoid the limelight. After much prodding and cajoling I convinced him to allow me to video him while he was at the helm for just a little while. Here are a few little clips of Otto the auto-helm driving Koinonia. Sometimes it seems like Otto just picks the bumpiest roads to drive on!
Navigating the Straits of Gibraltar
When we were still 300-400 miles off the coast of Spain we began to see a big increase in the amount of ship traffic. There was a rather steady pattern of ships going in and out of the Med from all directions. Ships would tend to follow lanes of traffic, more or less. As you can see in the first of these pictures they are coming and going North, South and the East. A few were angling in from the Southeast too. This is a photo I took of out chart plotter, I’m sorry it is so blurry but the boat was moving around quite a bit and I could not hold steady. We are the boat in the middle at the end of the yellow arrow. Keep in mind the scale of this picture is 600 nautical miles. The boats show up a lot larger on this display than real life. Ships are large but not near 30 miles long like the chart plotter displays. We could not even see any of the boats around us when I took the pictures. But it gives you an idea of what we were trying to keep track of. You still wanted to pay attention because they were all moving around and we were too.
The next picture of the chart plotter is about 120 miles from Gibraltar. You can see the steady pipeline of traffic in and out of the Med here. Soon after this photo we began to cut through to the North edge of the traffic and get closer to land. We wanted to get out and away from the main shipping lanes before dark. Our plan was to hug the Spanish coast once we hit the Straits, we figured it would keep us out of the major lanes and possibly give us better seas.
Our cut to the North came when Don calculated a little break in the traffic that we could slide through. About this time the winds from the East started picking up wildly and blowing against the current running into the Med. This made the waves stand up nice and tall. We had sharp breaking waves that were not particularly pleasant. But we made it though and into somewhat calmer waters before nightfall.
It was still a busy night with ships all around. Unlike some other watches, we had to constantly watch on this watch. If you lose track of which lights are which out there it can take quite a while to get re-oriented again. It’s important to keep the information you are receiving on the AIS screen lined up with the moving lights you are seeing on all sides of the boat. In the middle of the night we ran across a large carrier-type vessel and support ships. The lights were brightly colored blue, white red and green on the carrier and were very confusing. What made it worse was that none of them was broadcasting AIS so they just showed up as a big set of lights with no explanation. The main ship was just barely moving but the support ships seemed to be hanging between the coast and the big guy. The vessels we were tracking both visually and on AIS would disappear when they got behind one of the military vessels. All in all it was a pretty intense evening.
Our first glimpse of the Spanish coast was during the night as we approached. We could see a faint loom on the horizon from the lights of the coastal cities. As we got closer I could make out shoreline lighthouses flashing over the sea. I checked the view with the night scope as was able to barely see the outline of the land. It was good to know we were close. When I awoke for the 6 AM shift the sun was up and the next picture is my first view of land. This sunrise image is the Southern coast of Spain close to the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar.
We got in close to the Spanish coast as we worked our way around to Tarifa which is at the Western edge of the Straits. The water was more calm close to land and we were shielded from the East winds still blowing out of the Straits. Once we rounded the corner at Tarifa we were in the Straits which is a body of water about 19 miles wide that separates Spain from Africa. I included a picture of a marine chart so you can see where we are in the world. We are parked in the marina in Gibraltar right now at the little red arrow.
I created a poor quality panoramic picture of the view sailing down the Straits. It’s not such a good job because we were moving and I had a hard time getting the edges of the pictures to line up. Anyway, I decided to post it anyway. The left side of the picture is the Spanish coast. Just to the right of the mast you can see the outline of Gibraltar. The land mass outlines that you can see further to the right of the picture is Africa.
There are a series of wind farms along the Straits. It must be a very productive place to put the wind mills. It was blowing like crazy as we were going through. I included a picture of the Spanish coast with a row of wind generators along a ridge. Looking further to the East down the coast we were able to make out the outline of Gibraltar. Looking 19 miles to the South is the African coast. The pictures I was able to take do not show much detail, it was rather hazy out. You can make out the outlines of the coastal mountains.
The closer we got to Gibraltar the more dense the ship traffic became. The port of Gibraltar and the Spanish port of Algeciras are across from one another is a big bay called the Bahia de Algeciras. The bay is about 7-8 miles long. The two ports handle an incredible amount of shipping. Huge ships were constantly going in and out of the bay and it was a bit dicey getting across to the other side. I included a few shots as we got closer to Gibraltar that include many of the ships and ferries. Remember you can click the pictures to enlarge them for more detail if you wish.
The final shot in this series is of Gibraltar as we are entering the bay. The back (West) side of the big hill is what we Americans usually think of as the Rock of Gibraltar from the Prudential advertisements… I'll take some picture of that side when we get there.
Hold the mushy peas please
Horta Boat Paintings
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Horta is the largest city on the island of Faial in the Azores. It is located on the Southeast corner of the island. There is good natural protection from North, West and South winds with the only exposure being from the Southeast. In the early 1900’s a large construction project created a molle or a protective sea wall on the Southeast side was built creating a very well protected harbor. Since then another molle inside the original wall has been built leaving a very nice, safe harbor that can shelter hundreds of boats. It is a great marina in my opinion. There is plenty of space, the facilities are great and nearly any marine needs can be met somewhere nearby.
The people you meet in the Horta Marina hail from all parts of the planet. Most folks are nice as can be and they have good stories they are more than willing to share. I find a kinship among sailors in Horta not found in other ports. You can strike up a conversation with anyone easily with “How was your crossing?” or “When did you arrive?”. Everyone seems glad to be there and some feel grateful to be alive. If you are willing to listen you will hear some great tales.
There is a tradition among sailors passing through Horta to leave their mark or boat emblem. Tradition says you will have good luck for the rest of your journey if you leave your mark in Horta. I did not care to ask what tradition said would happen if one did not leave a mark. I had no hesitation about leaving a mark.
All of the sidewalks, walls, benches and most any smooth concrete surface is covered with paintings. From a distance it reminds one of graffiti, which I suppose technically it is. The street that runs through the marina is cobblestone and no marks are found on the stones. Some of the sidewalks and patio areas are put together with small black and white stones in varying artistic patterns. This form of construction obviously took a lot of time and effort and is very beautiful. Sailors consider these surfaces off-limits for paintings as well. Nearly any other surfaces are fair game for yacht paintings within the bounds of the marina.
One frequently sees people walking through the area with cameras taking pictures of the paintings. While in the act of painting one gets a chance to meet many people. Almost everyone stops by to see how you are doing. Of course many of them may not speak English very well so you get the universal thumbs-up or thumbs-down sign. It depends.
There were a couple of small children from Argentina, Sophia and her little brother Benji that were trying to paint the mark for their boat. They bummed paint and supplies from other sailors. They had quite a time getting it completed. The first day they completed a small 10x12 inch white “square”. Next to the white square and kind of overlapping it was spilled white paint. The next day they had red. They got it sort of fixed up and only left the small can next to it to block traffic and someone stepped in it and smeared it. The following day they got a hold of some yellow. I found the yellow paint sprayed about 12 feet from the little square in a nice splatter pattern. A taxi had evidently run over it and squashed the can all over the place. I’m not sure if they got a thumbs-up or not but it was fun talking to them about their project. They were quite proud that they did it all by themselves.
As I posted earlier, we also left a painting marking the passage of Koinonia and her crew through Horta. I’ve included in this picture gallery some photos of us working on it. Our painting did not get stepped on or smeared because we did “paint-drying watch” in shifts. Seriously, its’ well documented.
I also included probably too many pictures of some of the paintings I found while wandering around. Each one tells a story. It’s fun to imagine what that story may be and where the story teller may be now.
Bermuda Friends
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These are pictures of some of the people we met in Bermuda. We spent quite a bit of time living on the boat in the boatyard and got to know the folks around There pretty well. The boatyard is owned by Craig Faries and his family. His wife Donna and their daughter Kendra were frequently helping in the office. Mel is a guy that helps out in the boatyard. He’s a good old guy and always there to lend a hand. Paul in the Chevron shirt spent a number of days working fiberglass on Koinonia repairing the steering column problem. And last but not least is Molly. “Good golly Miss Molly!” For some reason she never did really warm up to me. Maybe it was the beard.
If you ever find yourself in Bermuda with a boat that needs some tender loving care please stop by and see Craig at the St. George Boatyard. Tell him Scott sent you. Thanks Craig and company! Their web site is http://http://www.massbda.com/
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Made it to Gibraltar!
We are tied up to the dock in a marina in Gibraltar. It's good to be done with the Atlantic for a while and into the Med!
It is a busy place around here. The ships are just coming and going all the time. I'll post soon about our trip in through the straits, it was a good adventure.
Just wanted to get out a quick post to let everyone know we made it here safely. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Getting closer every day
We are now about 100 miles from a waypoint that we placed in the middle of the Straits of Gibraltar. We should get our first glimpse of land today. We plan to try to enter the straits at sunrise tomorrow so we have daylight to navigate the ship traffic and can make it around the bend to the Gibraltar marina before sunset tomorrow. We are still motoring, the winds are not favoring our desired direction of trave, to say the least. The seas are not calm and we have some fair size rollers coming at us from the east. There have been some 25+ knot winds blowing East through the Straits for days causig these big waves. The combination of motoring and the big waves is not particularly plesant but it's no big deal compared to some of the other conditions we have faced. The latest weather we have received tells us the East winds will calm down for our passage through the straits. Yesterday was a Joy-full day. We stopped for a swim and a bath! It was sure nice to dive in and swim around and get cleaned up and lemony fresh. I checked the chart depth where we were swimming and it was about 13,000 feet. I didn't worry much about bumping my head when I dove in.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Lots of water out here
We are now about 300 miles from Gibraltar. We have had good winds from the North-northeast for the last 4 or 5 days.We were averaging over 5 knots and making great time. Seas have been a bit on the bumpy side but we are experiencing a little break now so I can type a bit. Trust me when I say there is a lot of water out here. Water water water. It was pretty exciting yesterday, a board floated by! There is quite a bit of boat traffic picking up. It looks like we have sailed right through a major shipping lane crossing with boats coming in and out from the Med crossing with boats going North and South. At one time we had close to 100 ships showing up on AIS. I took a picture of the screen and will post it when I get some wifi.It was pretty impressive with all the ships around and little old us right in the middle of it all. Of course we rarely even see a ship, I think the closest one has come to us was a couple of miles. We had to motor through the night and it looks like we will be motoring most of the day. We have light winds from the East. Not ideal sailing conditions but it is what it is. It will be nice to see land again.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Becalmed
We have been motoring all night and have now shut down the motor. The sea is glassy smooth and no wind. We do have a slight current that is taking us in the right direction. I'm checking the weather again now to see when the wind is expected to come back up. So we sit and float along. When I came out on deck for my 6 AM shift there was a nice surprise, a pod of dolphin were playing around the boat. A nice way to start a day. I'm a little excited about bath day today when the sun comes out!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Beauty days of sailing
We are 30 or so hours out of Tericeria. It has been gloious sailing since we left. The winds have been great and the seas good.Fair winds and following seas! It is so nice to have Otto back. We have hardly touched the wheel and we are planning to have movie night tonight. We rented the Revenge of the Pink Panther. I tried to make HF contact tonight but had no luck with people in Jacksonville. I did talk with a number of station across Europe and it was nice to chat with you all - Jack , Enrico and Toon. 73 to each of you. Scott
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Leaving Azores Again
We are pulling up the anchor again and leaving the Azores this morning (Saturday). The winds and weather looks good for as many days out as we can see. Winds are from a good diretion but a little on the light side so it may take us a bit longer. We still plan on 10-11 days for this leg. Watch for our Spots!
Truada da Corda
We went to a "Truada da Corda" event last night on the island of Terceira. It translates to "Bull on a Cord". The bull was kept on a long rope and sort of controlled by a bunch of guys in white coats and black hats. Then young men would taunt and fight with the bull using only blankets and umbrellas. It was quite a festive event. The street was prepared for it ahead of time. Notice that the walls are all boarded up to keep the bulls out of the yards. The fence points on the metal fences are covered in case someone needs to quickly jump a fence. When the bull was released they would fire off a single flare into the air and everybody quickly cleared the street except for the guys that wanted to challenge the bull. When the bull was secured again they would shoot off a two-explosion flare, indicating it was all clear. At that point everyone would rush back to the street, haul tables full of food out into the street and have a little party. The street would also open up to traffic during the break. Then another flare explosion would go off and the street would clear again. There were 4 total bulls released during the event. I think these events happen in different places all around the island throughout the summer. It was a great taste of the local culture and we met a lot of nice people.
Then and now
I found this old movie of me from when I was in Horta in 2007. I decided to mimic myself, which, as it turns out is not that hard because I am still me. Anyway, I created a very similar movie in the same spot this year (2011). Note the boat painting all over the walls, benches and sidewalks.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Faial to Terceira leg
We left Horta, Faial on Thursday morning and were heading out to Gibraltar. Somehow we ended up deciding to stop at one of the other islands in the Azores called Terceira. We are now in the port of the historic Azores capital city known as Angra do Heroísmo. It is the Azores oldest city and it is quite a busy place. The are many very old buildings and churches. It is clearly set up right now for a big festival that starts tonight. There are flags and lights and stages for bands all over the downtown area. At 5:30 we are going to go watch bull fighting in the streets if we can find it.
I've included a few shots of our crossing between the islands. It was about a 65 mile trip and we arrrived here soon after sunrise. The picture with the flag is leaving Horta. If you look closely on the ridge of the hill you can see the wind farm used for electrical generation. The next picture is another of Pico from a different angle, followed by another shot of Pico at sunset. Note the boat passing beneath the sun. Finally there is a picture of some of the cliffs on the island of Terceira and a panoramic shot of the port of Angra do Heroismo. Remember you can click the pics to make them bigger if you want.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Leaving Horta
We are pulling up our anchor here in Horta as I write this. We just finished painting our boat emblem on the sidewalk. Don did the majority of the paiting and I think he did a great job!
Our next port of call should be Gibraltar in about 10-11 days. This will be the last picture post for a while. We are all looking forward to getting some wind in the sails again.
Calderia do Faial
As I mentioned earlier, the island we are on, Faial, is a volcanic island. I took this panoramic shot from the edge of the main volcano on this island. This one has been dormant for a long time. The most recent eruption on the island was in 1957-1958. We toured around the island and took pictures of the most recent activity. I still need to sort through them all and I will post more from the island when I get some time in the Med.
ThIs is a panoramic picture, taken using an app on the iPhone called Pano. It weaves together photos into one long picture. If you click on the image it will blow up the size so you can see it better.
Pico
Pico is the island to the East of Faial. It is, like all of the islands in the Azores a volcanic island. The shape is that of the classic volcano and makes for a very beautiful site. Here are a couple of pictures of Pico, one from the port and another is from up in the hills of Faial. I will post more when I have some time in the Med.
Young French Entreprenuers
This group of young French sailors set up a nice shop on the sidewalk by the docks. They had taken a visit to the forest and collected flowers and some mint. They were selling bundles of mint or mint tea. I had a cup of tea and it was delivered on a little tray with a cup of raw sugar and a little stirring spoon. It was very nice. We sat down to discuss how they would handle investing all of thier earning from the enterprise. I think most of it will get invested in ice cream!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Otto is back!
Our auto-helm has been released from the hospital! We installed it this afternoon and it is working like a champ! We are very excited to have Otto back with us. We plan to depart from Horta tomorrow (Thursday) morning for the next leg of the journey.
We plan to head into the Med and will try to stop in Gibraltar. We are not sure if that will work out, the last time we tried to stop it was all full. If it is full this time we will follow along the coast of Spain to another port. This leg should take us 10-11 days and I will try to post SPOT updates as we move. I'm unsure at this point how the radio e-mail (and posting) is going to work. At this point I have no reason to think it will improve but I hope it does.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Wave size factors and the left-hand rule
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Folks who do not live around the ocean or large bodies of water probably have never thought about what determines the size of waves. There are actually 3 main factors that determine wave size. We all know that when it gets windy, bodies of water gets rough. So wind speed is the most obvious factor in determining wave height. The harder it blows, the bigger the waves get. When you have constant winds of about 17 knots you will begin to see whitecaps on the water. The very tops of the waves begin to break and curl upon themselves when the wind blows at this speed.
The second factor in the wave size formula is the amount of time that the winds have been blowing. When higher winds first start up the waves are do not immediately get big. It takes some time of hard wind blowing across a body of water for the waves to come up. So Time is the second factor.
The third major factor in determining wave height is a little more difficult to know intuitively. It is just not quite as obvious as Wind Speed and Time. The third factor is called ‘Fetch’. This is the Distance over which the water that the wind has been blowing. If you are on a small lake or a channel the fetch is never big, there just is not enough distance for the wind to blow to build up big waves. No matter how hard it blows there is not enough time for the pressures of the wind exerted on the water for it to build up. Out in the ocean it is a different story. The fetch is huge out here, the wind blows for hundreds of miles over the surface of the ocean. There is plenty of time and distance for the wind to do it’s thing to the water and make some very impressive waves.
I have simplified wave creation with this explanation and there are many more factors that affect waves but these are the major forces involved. Sometimes at sea you will experience large sets of big rolling waves come in. Usually these are caused by distant storms or low pressure systems. They seem to come at somewhat regular intervals. Surfers also wait for these sets of waves rolling in to a beach because they create the best surfing opportunities.
The weather reports that we receive while sailing give us the big pictures of where the high and low pressure systems are located and general feel or which way they are traveling. By looking at these pressure charts you can determine the wind direction and get a feel for what the waves will be doing by using the “left-hand rule”. If you see a low pressure system on a map you point your left thumb down in the center of the low and wiggle your fingers. The direction of the wiggle is the direction the winds will be blowing in a circular pattern around the center. The reverse is true for high pressure systems. If you see a high pressure center on the map, you point your thumb up from the center of the high and wiggle your fingers. The wind will be blowing in the direction of the wiggle. So as pressure systems move around your location you can get a feel for what winds you will be experiencing based on how close you are to the center of the pressure system and the direction of the wiggle of your left-hand fingers. Of course the left hand rule only works in the Northern hemisphere. If we were to cross the equator to the southern hemisphere we would have to switch to the right-hand rule.
O idioma dos Açores
Os Açores são um arquipélago constituído por nove ilhas, que é uma região autónoma integrada no quadro de Portugal. Portanto, o principal idioma falado nos Açores é o Português. Eu não tive qualquer formação em Português. Eu nem mesmo tenho um livro sobre ele.
Eu tive um par de anos de francês na escola. Na verdade, fui eleito o Rei do carnaval na aula de francês! Pode ter sido porque eu era o único homem da turma. Isso não é particularmente relevante, exceto que muitos dos açorianos locais falam um pouco de francês como segunda língua. Eu pensei que provavelmente se dão muito bem que os Açores por causa disso.
Temos um pouco do humor da família sobre a língua francesa. Nós gostamos de falar a nossa frases em francês com um sotaque forte Missouri. Traduzido para o francês, a frase "você fala francês?" Sai "Poly Vu Pernas de rã?". Depois de dizer que a piada, o meu pai se transforma em um volume total cantando a versão do hino nacional francês. Não me pergunte, é simplesmente a minha história pessoal.
Minha habilidade em outros idiomas é muito limitado um pouco de espanhol que eu peguei de visitas ao México e Espanha. Eu posso dizer "por favor", "Obrigado" e "Onde é o banheiro?" Em espanhol. Considero que aqueles que devem ser os elementos críticos. Também posso pedir um taco se eu estou com fome.
Assim, quando confrontados com uma nova língua como o Português, que eu chamo no meu vasto conjunto de competências linguísticas e trazer tudo para suportar sobre o povo do meu país de acolhimento. Eu acredito que posso ficar por muito bem. Eu não tenho nenhuma base factual para isso, porém. É somente a partir de minhas experiências que eu acho que isso.
Vou partilhar convosco a minha técnica para ficar junto, a língua-wise. Eu costumo cumprimentar uma pessoa nova com "ola". Isso permite que eles saibam que eu estou tentando falar alguma coisa perto de sua língua. Então eu seguir com "Poly vu Inglish, Por favor". Quase sempre o meu novo amigo que fala Português irá mudar imediatamente para falar Inglês. Portanto, minha conclusão é que se você falar um pouco de língua francesa e falam alguma língua espanhola, o resultado soa como Português e estou completamente no compreendida.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Previously marked spots
There is a tradition in Horta amongst the sailors that visit that is as old as the port itself. The port area of Horta has large expanses of concrete sidewalks and benches around the area where the boats are tied up. When sailors stop here they always take time to leave a painting of some kind on the concrete indicating they were here. The paintings frequently have some theme to them and nearly always contain the boat name, crew members and the year of the visit. There are literally thousands of these paintings here and cover almost all of the open surfaces. Some of them are on the sidewalks, some on benches, some on top of benches, some on the sides of walls. You will find nearly every open space has at one time or another had a boat painting on it.
Walking around the area of the port is endlessly entertaining due to all of the different paintings. Of course with the passing of time paintings fade and new ones are created to fill the holes. It is fun to look for boats that you may recognize or even more fun to look for paintings you may have completed yourself on other visits.
In 2007 Charlie and I stopped in Horta on our way over to the Med. Of course we took the time to leave our mark in Horta. One of the first places I wanted to walk was to the old painting to see how it survived. Here are a couple of pictures, one from 2007 when we first painted the Meander painting and one from this year, 2011. Our old painting is the white one on the bench seat between us.
We are planning the Koinonia painting now and hope to get started on it soon.
Don raising the Azores flag
There is a strict protocol used by sailors when entering a new country for customs and immigration. When entering the territorial waters of a new country that you plan to make a stop in you must fly a yellow flag. This flag is called the Q-Flag or Quarantine Flag. You must leave the Q-Flag up until you have checked into immigration and customs in the new country. Once you are checked in you raise the flag of the country you are visiting. Most sailors also fly the flag of their own county somewhere on the boat.
This is Don raising the Azores flag after we arrived and got checked in. The flag on the top is Portugal and the flag on the bottom is the Azores.
Sunday Morning Radio Contact
It's Sunday morning. I plan to try to check into the Bermuda net today at 12 GMT on 14.277. My friend Glen, VP9ID in Bermuda is the net manager for this particular net. If you are one of my ham friends in the US perhaps we could meet on that net. I am not sure if I am going to be able to get out on the radio very well. I have switched on the radio a few time since we have been in Horta and not heard a thing. We are tied in the middle of 3 boats on a wall and there are sailboats on all sides of us. Our poor antenna is just surrounded by metal.
If that does not work and I cannot hear the net or be heard then I plan to switch to D-Star. I finally got some good Internet working here at the boat so I will hop on REF034 C after I have given the Bermuda Net a fair try. I hope to talk to some of you later this morning. 73
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Sail Daze - New Movie Trailer!
Here is another little “Movie Trailer” video. I hope you are not all holding your breath for the full-length movie release. We just have so much on our schedules now it’s hard to find the time to create a full-length motion picture. For those thinking “Wow” - don’t be too impressed, I use a Mac and this is just a template that I fill in. The rest is all Apple and GoPro Hero magic. I think it is best if I just burst my bubble now.
I wanted to just give you a few nibbles of our experience under sail. This video has snippets of sailing in fair weather under the spinnaker as well and some pretty aggressive sailing with the storm jib up. The bright orange sail in a few of the clips is the storm jib. It zips on over the top of the furled headsail. It is very sturdy, small in size compared to the normal jib and designed for sailing in high winds and rough conditions. We had it up for 5 days in a row.
I had hoped to capture a feel for the experience of being in some high winds and rough seas but after looking at it the video I see that I failed. It just is not the same watching it on a computer screen as it is Being There. Try watching the horizon of the sea relative to the motion of the boat to get an idea of how much we are moving about. Sadly, none of us attempted to do any videography during the worst of the storm, it was just not possible to hold on, move about and manipulate the camera at the same time. Not to mention that taking video was about the last thing on our minds. Oh well.
Enjoy!
I'm having trouble getting the video uploaded to this site. The above is a link to the post on YouTube. I'll keep trying to get it here.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Electricity Budget
People often ask me how we keep food cold on long ocean crossings. Well, we use the refrigerator and if we want it really cold then we use the freezer! Then the question arises, “Where does all the electricity come from?” So I thought I would write a little bit about how we manage electrical usage on Koinonia. Keep in mind as you read this that Koinonia is a very modern boat and quite luxurious compared to some sailboat provisioning. I spoke with one sailor here in Horta who had “refrigeration” on his boat only for about two days until the ice in his cooler melted…
Managing electrical generation and usage is a lot like managing a financial budget. Just like a monetary budget has an income or the money that you have coming in, the boat has various means for generating electricity. When you get some money coming into your budget you generally would store it in a bank account until you are ready to spend it. On the boat our electricity bank is a set of big batteries. We call them the “house” batteries to distinguish them from the engine-starting batteries. In your financial budget you have various expenses. Some of the expenses are considered essential and must “come off the top” before optional or luxury items can be purchased. On the boat we have electrical needs that are considered critical as well. There are also some things that are considered optional uses for the limited energy available to us.
Electrical generation on the boat can be divided into two classifications, renewable and non-renewable sources. The renewable energy sources on the boat are a pair of solar panels and a wind generator. The solar panels are rated at 260 watts. So if it is a bright sunny day and the angle of the sun is good on the panels we can generate enough electricity to keep two very bright light bulbs lit. But instead of using the energy directly to light bulbs, it is stored in the house batteries. The wind generator makes electricity from the power of the wind. It does not generate wind from electricity as the name may imply, otherwise we would just call it a fan. The more wind we have, the more electricity the wind generator creates. The electricity generated by the wind generator is also stored in the house batteries.
The theory behind choosing these two methods for electrical generation is that on windy days it may very possibly be cloudy. A low pressure system typically makes for cloudy, windy days. On the other hand a high pressure system usually is very calm yet the sky is clear and sunny. Other days it may be both sunny and windy and we get some good energy generation. Also some areas of the globe historically have constant winds and other areas are historically sunny but lack a reputation for reliable wind sources. So having both of these forms of renewable energy sources on board provides a good balance under the broadest conditions for sailing vessels.
There are two sources of non-renewable energy on board as well. The engine of the boat will charge the batteries when it is running. The engine runs on diesel fuel which is of limited quantity on board so this method is non-renewable. We also have a diesel-powered generator on board. It outputs 5,500 watts of energy, making the generator a very strong source of non-renewable energy. It can re-charge the batteries completely in a few hours.
On the expense side of the equation we have a few items which are left powered on all the time and considered relatively critical by the crew. Keep in mind that nearly all of these items are luxuries in the minds of some sailors. One may still meet a sailor who rebuffs all modern technology and still does things the way it was done in the past. The more complexity you have and rely on, the more likely it is that something will break that you cannot fix yourself.
The refrigerator and freezer are very important to us. We have prepared a number of our meals ahead of time and they are vacuum packed and stored in the freezer. We can just drop the vacuum bags into hot water to prepare the meals. If we lost the freezer, we would either have to quickly eat all the remaining food in one big feast or some of it would go bad and be wasted. We could probably live without the fridge if we had to. It tends to hold luxury items such as butter, cheese, lunchmeat and cold water. We keep both of these appliances powered on nearly all of the time.
The only exception for keeping power to these devices is when trying to use the radio. One or both of them generates some extremely bad radio frequency (RF) interference. It creates an overall noise level much higher than the natural RF noise floor. It also generates a pattern of beeps and blips as you tune to different frequencies up and down the dial. The interference is so bad in some frequencies that it makes them unusable. As it happens, one of my favorite frequencies is 14.300, the Maritime Mobile Service Network is centered right on some bad bleeping. So when doing any radio operating I turn off the fridge and freezer. Most of the time I remember to turn them back on.
The next item that is (or was) considered to be essential in our power budget was the auto-helm (poor Otto…). The auto-helm is the system that will physically steer the boat for us. It interfaces electronically with the GPS, chart-plotter and wind instruments and moves the rudder with a screw drive to keep us on the course we select. The auto-helm is a power hungry device because it is doing a lot of physical work moving the rudder back and forth all the time. It is rated at about 7 amps so it can be a big draw on our energy resources. After Otto died on our Bermuda-Azores leg all that extra power was money in the bank, baby! We were power-rich after that and could run anything we wanted (except the auto-helm). But I would still prefer having Otto back instead full batteries any day.
It is important to have the sails well balanced with each other and to the wind conditions. When properly balanced, the forces needed to keep the boat on course are significantly less than when not balanced. The auto-helm (and us) work much harder when the boat is unbalanced. I am still learning how to do this balancing, Charlie and Don are very good at it but don’t seem to be able to explain it well enough for me to understand. I think it is more art than science.
There are two ways that the auto-helm can be set up for navigating. Using the first method causes the auto-helm to go on an absolute path from one specific point to another specific point regardless of what the wind is doing. The second method allows you to tell the auto-helm to automatically keep you a certain number of degrees off the wind.
The first method ignores what the wind is doing completely. Otto assumes that the humans are making the proper adjustments to the sails to enable him to take the boat where he is told. If the wind or wave conditions change while in this mode and you do not adjust for them it may cause the auto-helm to work much harder than it needs to. Eventually Otto will just throw in the towel and give up. It’s his way of telling you to pay attention to what is going on.
When using the second method, you ride along with the wind, if the wind shifts, your course changes as well. This is easier on the boat (and the crew) as long as we don’t care which way we are going because it does not fight trying to make the boat do something that the sails may not be set for and it keeps the crew from constantly changing the sail set as the wind changes. Fortunately, at sea the winds will stay at a pretty much constant direction for days and days which is really nice if they are favorable to where you want to go. It can be more than a little irritating if they are not favorable to your destination. Watching a negative VMG (velocity made good) for very long or beating into the wind for days does not make for the most pleasant sailing experience.
In order for us to know where we are, what our speed and course it and what the wind conditions are we rely on the instruments on the boat. This is the next category that is deemed to be power-essential. The instruments are left on all of the time while under way. The radio and AIS receiver are usually turned on at the same time and are left on as well, they all work well together. Plus the switches for these items are all right next to each other on the electrical panel. So a simple triple-finger switch flip gets all the navigation systems going.
All of the electronics on board are integrated into the RayMarine sea-talk system. The GPS sends location information and the central control unit sends that data back out to the chart plotter. The chart plotter places the boat position on the map on a computer display that is right at the helm of the boat. This is the main instrument one keeps track of while under way. It is a back-lit display and can be set to be quite bright for visibility in bright sunlight. At night it can be very bright even when turned down, I like to keep it way down or near off when I am not using it so I retain night vision. My guess is that the brightness of this display is a big power consumer.
There are a couple of wind instruments located at the top of the mast. One of them is the anemometer which tell us the strength of the wind. The other is a wind vane which tell us what direction the wind is coming from.
Remember that both the anemometer and the wind vane can only give us information relative to the boat. If the boat is moving through the water at 5 knots and the wind is blowing at 20 knots at an angle of 40 degrees off the port bow then a strict reading of either instrument would be helpful but not accurate. In order to be accurate and give us true information we need some other inputs and some computational power.
There is another sensor which is a little wheelie thing under the water on the hull of the boat. This sensor feeds our speed through the water into the main computer. We also have the GPS which can tell our true course and speed over ground. When all of these inputs are collected they can be processed using the RayMarine system to output much more useful information.
The RayMarine computer can use it’s program and something called “trigonometry” to calculate the “apparent” wind speed and direction. To the sailor, these are much more useful figures. It tells you how you are doing relative to the wind. Both the True and Apparent wind and speed are displayed on the chart-plotter screen so you always have access to both.
The chart-plotter display is packed full of other useful information as well. If you have a destination waypoint set there is always a little line from the boat to your destination. A quick glance tells you if you are close to being on course. One of the data fields present on the screen is XTE (Cross Track Error). This tell you how far off the track you have drifted. It’s a way to judge how well you are doing when trying to manually steer a track. It can be quite useful, especially when motoring. Fortunately there is an easy way to reset the XTE and I find it helpful to do so just before the end of my shift. Charlie is known to make a 90 degree turn near the end of his shift to get back near the track.
The second most important instrument as we are sailing is the wind direction meter. It is a smaller display near the chart-plotter that has a picture of the boat in the middle with a needle that swings around the boat, indicating where the wind is coming from. It also has a digital readout of the wind speed. You can set this readout and the needle to indicate true or apparent wind with the press of a button. While sailing one tends to watch this display almost as much as the chart-plotter. Once the sails are set to our course and wind you need to maintain the same direction relative to the wind for optimal speed and angle to the waves. That is the exactly why you keep an eye on this little meter.
Those are the main critical energy consumers on board that are kept on constantly. There is another electric powered system that is just as critical but does not consume energy all of the time. But when you need it, you really need it. The water maker is only run every few days but it takes quite a bit of power when it does run. We frequently run the generator or the motor when making water just so it does not deplete our house batteries too much. The water maker uses a process called reverse osmosis to convert sea water into drinking water. It will make about 8 gallons of water per hour. As long as we have energy, we have drinking water so it saves us from having to carry a lot of water and allows us have the occasional luxury of a fresh water rinse while under way.
As the water maker works the fresh water is stored in a couple of big water tanks. In order to use the water in the tanks there is a pressurized water pump system that makes the faucets work just like they do in a house. This water pump is generally kept on most of the time as long as it is working OK. It only uses electricity when the water is flowing.
The SSB radio is a critical (IMO) electricity consumer which is only used occasionally. We use the High Frequency radio for getting weather fax, sending and receiving e-mail via WINMOR, receiving Marine Safety Information reports, checking into nets, chatting with hams and other sailors and of course it would be critical in case of an emergency.
The last system that is a critical consumer of electricity but not a constant use is the heads. Flushing the heads uses electricity and fresh water. This is a critical system. Even though it is a luxury to have electric flushes and I like the way it works, I wish there were some manual backup system in case of a catastrophic electrical systems failure. I guess the P-lines are our backup system.
Optional items that use electricity include items such as room lighting, fans, the entertainment system (TV, DVD player), microwave and the water heater. We typically use personal lighting systems such as headlamps or flashlights so it is rare to have a room light on, maybe only during cooking or meals. It also tends to wake someone up because there is usually someone trying to sleep. On the last leg we were power-rich due to Otto being off. We also had some extreme winds for days in a row which kept the battery bank actually too high a voltage level. We were looking for things to use the electricity to keep the batteries from being damaged by overcharging.
Most of the other items that are frequent consumers of electricity are battery powered and need to be re-charged occasionally. Some devices can recharge using 12v car adapters and other devices need AC voltages and current. We can produce normal household AC power from the house batteries by turning on the “inverter”. There is some overhead involved in using the inverter but it is an essential element to a well designed electrical system on board a boat. It costs approximately 16% to run the inverter itself then There is additional overhead using a charger which typically converts back to DC voltage at the levels required for each specific device.
Well, that is a brief summary or how power is generated, stored and utilized on Koinonia while we are under way. Hopefully you found it to be entertaining and educational as well.
More sunsets at sea
Here are a few of the sunsets we had on the Bermuda to Azores leg of the trip. There just are not that many photogenic things to take pictures of out on a long crossing. Lots of water. Each other. Lots and lots of water. Sunrise and sunset are really the best photography opportunities. People think I am kidding when I say it but it’s still quite an exciting event when a piece of trash floats by. We generally call out a flotsam and jetsam alert when something floats by so we can all see it. There is a lot of water out here!
Crew at sea, leg 2
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Here are a few pictures of the crew members on the leg between Bermuda and Horta. I’m not sure what Charlie was doing in the first picture, I think it had something to do with getting the magic line to work for steering the boat. I decided to turn it into an “art piece”.
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