A Great Sail, Part 2

After lunch, we decided to motor the short distance to the West End mooring basin. It's a boring video, but my battery ran out before I could get anything better. I'm standing on deck, hanging on to the mast. The Astoria-Megler bridge is in the distance. It spans the Columbia River, which is about 4 miles across here. Astoria is on the left, Washington on the right. It was a gorgeous day, with no ship traffic (Saturday).

The camera is my little Fuji FinePix. I'm new to uploading to YouTube, so this is an experiment...

A Great Sail

We had a great sail today. Left about 10:30 Saturday morning, and motored upriver, around tongue point, and into Mott Bay (X marks the spot).

This is the approach around Mott Island, toward Lois Island. We maneuvered around many fishing boats to arrive at this calm and private area.
I think this is an osprey.

By the time Chris and youngest son Kyle decided to take a dip in the cool (but not terribly cold) water, the sun had come out.

Kyle sunning himself on deck after swimming many laps around the boat.







By the afternoon, the wind had picked up. We reefed the main, and sailed (carefully) through all the fishing boats. Then we tucked into the East end basin, docked, and lunched at the Rogue Public House in Astoria ~ Pier 39.

FINISHING TOUCHES

Skipper's Lament

There once was a boat quite perverse
that refused to go straight in reverse
her owner lamented
"She acts quite demented
but my previous boat was much worse"

By Chris Hogan

Transmission Upgrade

"OLD AND IN THE WAY"
Hurth HBW-50 makes way for new ZF-10

We hadn't planned to haul our boat until the end of the season this year, but our Hurth HBW-50 transmission became increasingly dodgy - slipping while in forward gear, to the point where the only reasonable voyage we could make was to the boatyard.

Luckily, Astoria now has a boatyard with a new travel lift right next to our marina.

On May 25, we hauled the boat having ordered a new ZF-10M transmission (thanks to Miki at MMI of Seattle for the great service). This new transmission is rated for higher horsepower than our engine develops and will hopefully provide us greater reliability.

In addition, we replaced the engine mounts and added a flexible coupling between the transmission output and prop shaft, all in an effort to reduce vibration and prevent the transmission suffering an early demise. We obtained these parts from PYI in Seattle, who were very helpful.

Installation was straightforward and notable for the conspicuous absence of seized bolts and busted knuckles. We did have to cut the prop shaft back about two inches to accommodate the longer transmission and the flexible coupling. A right-angle grinder and a steady hand were all that was required.

Bottom paint and fresh zincs, and we were good to go.

The boatyard staff were very accommodating and skilled. Thanks, guys.

NEW TECH FOR AN OLD BOAT

A few pictures and a quick update on what we have accomplished aboard "Footloose".

Upon bringing our new old boat home several things were immediately on my wish list. A working depth sounder first on that list. We tried repairing the ancient Brooks and gatehouse unit to no avail and finally bit the bullet and bought a new Raymarine st60 unit. Rather than haul the boat I bedded the transducer in resin hoping for the best. Luckily it works wonderfully well and we can add the through hull transducer if we wish at the next routine haulout.

Second on my list was a navigation system. I used a Garmin GPS and paper charts on the trip from Port Townsend and while it worked it was nerve racking for me to constantly be peering at the tiny chartlet on the Garmin screen and hoping my translation of position to the paper chart was accurate. Initially I aquired The Rose Point/Maptech Coastal navigator program and used my laptop for navigation. this worked well and with the addition of a laptop mount to the nav station bulkhead was secure. With the addition of a Raymarine x-5 Autopilot this spring , aswell as A.I.S. it became a bit cumbersome to be plugging and unplugging cables and resetting com ports. The solution? A dedicated computer onboard. We went with an Acer Veriton L460 which has a very small footprint and is pretty much overkill as far as speed and capacity goes. A 19" flat screen monitor mounted to the bulkhead on a swing mount affords good visibility and the added benefit of being able to swing the display toward the salon for videos.

We now have a system that integrates GPS, A.I.S, Autopilot and electronic navigation. All at a fracton of the cost of what a proprietary system would cost. The hardest part of the installation by far was the cabling for the autopilot fluxgate compass, control head, course computer and drive unit. The computer end of things was basically plug and play. We used a Noland Multiplexer to bridge the USB computer ports to the NMEA and Seatalk components and it works like a charm. The Rose Point/Maptech program is intuitive and laying out routes is the work of seconds. Need to edit your course while under way? Just drag and drop your waypoints and re-send to the GPS and you are good to go. Best of all we are free from the tyranny of the wheel. It is a blast to watch the boat steer herself while one attends to the other pressing matters onboard.