Rigging the Boom Brake

We tuned the rig (nice and taught) and trial placed the Dutchman Boom Brake.  Paul and I talked about how to rig the brake and agreed to keep it as simple as possible.  I went to the Island Packet Owners website and found that the IP 485 "Sea Cloud" had successfully installed exactly the same brake in consultation with the inventor of the brake.  The lesson here:  the yacht owners groups are INVALUABLE in getting information on dealing with issues on your own boat.  The IP Owners site has come to the rescue many times because - let's face it - our colleagues out there have probably faced the same problem you might be facing before at some point.

So here is the set up described by the owners of "Sea Cloud" which we will adopt for Terratima:

The Dutchman Boom Brake in the Same Position Aft The Vang.

We Have the Identical Brake Placed in the Same Location.

Fixed End of the Brake Line Tied to a Large Bow Shackle Mounted 

at the Checkstay Chainplate Replacing the Standard

Clevis Pin Holding the Checkstay Turnbuckle

On the Starboard Side Chainplate, "Sea Cloud" Has the

Same Large Bow Shackle Replacing the Clevis Pin,

But a Turning Block is Placed Here

View of the Adjusting End of the Brake Line

Running From the Turning Block 

to the Small Winch on the Starboard Combing

Rain, Rigging and Boom Brakes

It's raining today and we have a bit of  a busy boat.  The grounding of the SSB has been done and we are getting the proper power output although strange things happen when we transmit.  The NMEA connection works and we have position information for both the VHF and the SSB.

Both the genoa and the staysail came down and the rig is being tuned by Paul from Oceansailing.ca and a boom brake is being added.  Crappy day to do the work, but the boom brake is a safety element when I find myself single-handing the boat downwind.   I managed to lose one of the furling guides for the inner stay overboard (that sickening sound of "splash" as the part hit the water never to be seen again).

The configuration of the boom brake will take shape once we have the new bale placed and the vang reconnected.  Then we can mock it up.  

SSB - Sailmail On A MACBOOK - No Easy Process

We have our SSB installed, but it still needs to be grounded.  That should be done shortly, but the process of making our Mac talk to the SCS Pactor IV Dragon 7400 Bluetooth modem, joining Sailmail and getting it all working was a bit of a pain in the nether regions.

First of all, we have a MacBook Pro computer and not a PC on board, so the fist thing we needed to do was to install Parallels Desktop.  The reason:  all the modem software is for a PC, so we have to get the Mac to pretend its a PC.

It's been a few years, but our old computer was a DELL desktop, and we had Windows XP, so after installing Parallels Desktop, we had to install Windows XP.  Of course it had none of the Microsoft Service Packs, so we had to go on line with an ancient version of Explorer to download all the Service Packs (there are 3) to update XP to where it is now (and where we can get an upgrade to Windows 8 should the spirit move us to so so).  Microsoft's site was intent on getting us to install Explorer 8, which of course we could not do without the operating system being "Service Packed" to the hilt.

After much frustration and time, we had the proper screens:

Windows XP Starting Up on a MacBook Pro

Windows XP needs to be at least past Service Pack 2 to have it look for Bluetooth Devices.  A careful read of the somewhat badly translated (from the original German) Installation Guide lets you know that the pairing key is the latter part of the alpha-numeric string of the modem's serial number.  That alone should be in highlighted text somewhere, but no, it's in the thick text.  

One word here:  do the pairing FROM WITHIN WINDOWS and NOT from Mac OS.  Once done, it works fine.  You get the screen below that shows the Modem paired.

Windows XP in Parallels Desktop 

Showing the Bluetooth Devices Paired

Now for a word on how the modem and the ICOM IC-M802 are connected.   The modem comes with two connection cables and you use both:  One goes from the ACC socket on the ICOM to the 8 pin socket on the modem.  The second goes from the 9 pin REMOTE jack on the ICOM to the 13 pin socket on the modem.  

So you're all set to do Sailmail.  With XP running and the modem bluetooth connection in place, you can start the Sailmail program (which you downloaded and installed in the Windows OS (and NOT the Mac OS)

Starting Sailmail

The Sailmail window allows you to open the "Options" menu and put the Pactor settings in.  You can also compose e-mail messages here, but to send, you click on the little mailbox icon to "post" the message.

Sailmail Window

No comes the interesting part:  to actually send or receive a message, you have to connect to a Sailmail location on one of their frequencies.  To do so, you click on the little blue globe that appears in the line of icons toward the top of the window.   This brings up the other window

The Terminal Window 

Once the terminal window pops up, you can choose the location and frequency of the Sailmail stations and you will see the frequency automatically tuned on the ICOM (a little amazing actually).  Then you hit the green circle on the left side of the window (ensuring the "handshake" button is DOWN - that is ON).  The radio will transmit (and do wild things if it is not fully grounded).  Ours made the most horrific sound that seemed to be coming from elsewhere in the boat.  I have been told to shut off the refrigeration and hang on.  

INTERESTING SUNDAY

The SSB has been installed and the split lead antenna is in place.  We still have to connect the GPS antenna to provide the radio with positional information.

ICOM M802 SSB Transceiver at the Nav Station

Pactor Dragon 7400 Modem and the M802 Radio Box

GAM Split Lead Antenna on the Port Aft Stay

It is Connected to the AT-140 Antenna Tuner

While all this was being done, the varnish finish on the teak was being sanded and reapplied on the starboard side:

Mirror Finish on the Teak Toerail

Kits Beach

Carolyn and Christopher went for a walk with Skoki to Kitsilano  Beach and English Bay.  Have a look:

Looking Toward Bowen Island 

Looking Toward North Vancouver

Downtown Vancouver in the Background

Carolyn at Kits

Farewell John

Meet Dr. John.

He has been tied up in front of us for the last five years here at Shelter Island Marina.  Before we arrived, he had been here for 25 years.  He is a retired obstetrician.   He would spend his summer sailing with his son Chris around Vancouver Island and beyond.  They had also sailed the Pacific leaving from Vancouver, sailing down to Cabo San Lucas, then over to the Marquesas, Tahiti, Bora-Bora, on to Hawaii then back home.

John is leaving us and heading off to Snug Cove  and the Union Steamship Company Marina at Bowen Island.  It's a great spot and we wish him well (and will drop by at some point).

Live aboard communities can be quite tight and we know we will be missing John a lot.  It will take some getting used to not having Tjaldur (the name of his boat - the national bird of the Faroe Islands) tied up in front of us.

John and crew-mate Dan

Tjaldur Getting Ready to Leave

Tjaldur Heading to the Gap and Down 

The Fraser River

Farewell John

Asymmetric Spinnaker

We'll not use a roller furler for the asymmetric spinnaker we are thinking of adding, but we will use the ATN tacker and sock as shown here.

Yet Another Update

It was to be Friday, but there has been no activity.  If I hear nothing by the end of the day Monday, I will get the components from the contractor and do the work myself or have someone else install it.

QUICK UPDATE

We are still waiting for the final installation of our SSB which means the radio box itself, the antenna, grounding plane and modem.  The guy who is to install it this week had an accident yesterday and broke his ankle.  It may take some time before this work finally gets done.  

MIssed It By A Day

My friend in the office in Newfoundland sent me this picture of the first iceberg of the season going by St. John's

Iceberg is in the middle of the picture

Awesome Newfoundland

Flew to Newfoundland for a workshop and here are a few pictures taken on my miserable Blackberry, but beautiful none the less.

Cape Spear - From Signal Hill

The Signal Tower 

St. John's from Signal Hill

Beautiful Topography

Looking Down Toward the Gap That 

Enters the Harbour 

Some Thoughts On Living Small

When we sold our house in Edmonton and bought this yacht, we had not yet thought through the issue of what to do with all the “stuff” in the house.  The furniture, cloths, dishes, small appliances, paintings, and myriad other items including many books.  We stored it all thinking we’d buy ourselves some time with the idea that we could always go into a condo if we did not like the cruising the world in a boat neigh 50 feet long.  

We are now halfway into our 5^th year aboard Terratima.  She is our home and we find we miss nothing.  Our son has spent almost 1/3^rd of his life aboard this boat.  So now we confront the issue of our “stuff”.  After some discussion, we have decided to retain items we feel we have a special connection to.  These are picture albums, some books, and some paintings.  Everything else we have decided to sell and what does not sell will be donated.  

In dealing with this, we confronted a bit of a demon - the one that pushes us to accumulate.  Sitting through a typical half hour television program will put every model of car in front of you that always seem to be subjects of perpetual sales discounts.  At the same time we are hearing that the American economy is driven by consumption, the American middle class (all those consumers) are dwindling, that the Canadian economy is simply supported by resource exportation and that Canadians are carrying a unprecedented levels of personal debt.  We are, in addition, pummeled by ads in BC and by the feds related to the need for growth of the economy and this is repeated by every government in the free world - all echoing the voices of businesses  and industries both big and small.   Is it not obvious that this is all simply unsustainable?  That ultimately we cannot grow without limit.  

The objective of just about any growth in business, companies, economies is virtually hyperbolic.  This is not possible.  The physicists call the upward arching curve, the “singularity”.  In Civil engineering, we can even work with these using what are called singularity functions to manage the discontinuity from one side of the curve to the other.  

The “other side” of the singularity is usually decline and collapse.  Now some companies have avoided this by “relaunching” or - to use a very good term - “innovating”, and in essence restarting the hyperbolic function at a lower level.  Apple and Google have done this very well.  The trick is (and this is put forward mathematically by Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute quite neatly) you have to keep innovating in shorter and shorter time frames.  This at least delays the inevitable singularity and its implied collapse.  

In Nature we see an equilibrium of staggeringly complex interrelated systems.  I often wonder what a world would look like where we were in synch with and a non-antagonistic partner of these complex systems - living in a sustainable civilization.    Living in a world that creates yet does not waste; that consumes and yet replenishes; that leaves the world better off with each passing generation.  What would this world look like?  What would our cities look like? (And yes, there will be cities, probably bigger and denser than our present ones.  The arguments for this are compelling and worth a read of the working papers of the Santa Fe Institute on this topic).  

We get a small and imperfect taste of this living on a sailing yacht - of living within the technical constraints and the circadian rhythms of the planet.  We are suddenly aware of the what the boat is made of and how it was made (oil and resins), of the consumption of water, of how to get fresh water continuously, of how to deal with waste, of what power generation and consumption mean, of how to try and balance the good things of our technology and our innovation with the bad that it often contains - sometimes manifesting itself years later.  

All the while, we are aware of the ebb and flow of the wind, of how our sails can harness that flow to move us along and to do so with a  grace that is this beautiful machine  we call a sailboat that seems to have its own soul and personality.   And we hear her speak to us in the sounds of water rushing against the hull and wind whistling in the rigging. 

On Shore Daily Routine

OK, Either I'm heading to the airport off to some place for project work, or I do this to head over to the office from the marina.  In this case, I'm on a visit to the Victoria Office and suiting up to drive over to Schwatz Bay to get the ferry back to Vancouver.

Good thing  everything is waterproof

Off to Schwatrz Bay

Raymarine Firmware Update

Not having a computer that has a port for a compact flash drive (the older kind you put in digital cameras), I had to buy a reader (relatively inexpensive) and a compact flash card - cheapest was a 8 GB one and it hurt!!

Anyway, the C120W chartplotter is now updated.  

Added Components

So the boat now has:

2 AMERESCO - Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Modules

Samlex Solar - SCC-30AB - 30 Amp Charge Controller

ICOM - IC-M802 - Single Sideband Radio Transceiver

ICOM - AT-140 Antenna Tuner

KISS - Ground Plane

Gam Split Antenna Mounted on Port Side Backstay

Pactor IV Bluetooth Modem

ZF - Bronze Propeller