Sun and Sailing

Suddenly, poof! It's summer, or at least it sure feels like it. My lovely wife and I had a lazy afternoon sailing around the lake.

Our little Oday 19 is such a simple boat to sail. The Ranger 23 was only 4 feet longer but had basically the same complexity and layout of much larger boats. It was good training while it lasted. One thing I do miss is the roller furling jib. However, it's a sad day when I'm too too lazy to send the lovely wife out on the bow to hank the jib on by hand. Besides, while she's out there she takes care of raising the anchor too.

So what did my lovely wife do after a long afternoon of sailing? She opened up the sailing books and did some more studying. Me thinks she's gotten over our shipwreck and is ready for more adventure. There is a good sized semi-wilderness lake not too far up the road in Maine that she wants to visit. It's supposed to have some really nice beaches.

I may skip tomorrow's blog. It is a holiday weekend after all, right? We've been invited to a huge pool party so that looks like loads of fun.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday. Take at least a few minutes to remember those who've passed on, but then party. Life is for the living.

-Sixbears

First launch of the season

We finally had enough decent weather so I could finish up the little projects on the boat. I'm still waiting for a new main sail, but that should be easy enough to change out. The old sail is good enough for our little lake and it was time to launch.

It's nice to have a boat at my beach, ready to go. The state of NH sells fishing licenses on-line so people can print them out at home. I've a boat in the water, a license and fishing poles. This should work out just fine.

My lovely wife had no hesitation getting back on a sailboat. Sails were raised. The wind came up. The boat leaned a bit before leaping forward. Both of us had big smiles on our faces. Nothing like getting back on the water after a shipwreck. Good memories push out the bad.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of talking about the shipwreck. The word has gotten around. When I run into people I haven't seen in a while that's the first thing they want to talk about. While that's understandable, reliving the experience over and over again is getting old.

I find myself stressing that we lived on the boat for months before losing it. Good times were had. There are a lot more photos of remote beaches, gorgeous sunsets, and beautiful anchorages than of a wrecked boat.

Too bad the boat was lost, but a bare boat charter in that area for two weeks costs about what we paid for the boat. We sailed it for months.

We had some good experiences and expect to have many more.

-Sixbears

The return of the things

My replacement keys for the gun safe came in. Once I got the paperwork together and mailed it all out it only took a week. Pretty good service in my book. Nice to have easy access to all the toys. Sure beat digging out the heavy duty drill and destroying the lock. Much cheaper too.

The van is back in my yard. I'd lent it to my daughter so she could use it. Her and her husband are doing a major remodeling job on their house. With all the camping stuff pulled out of it the veggie van makes a pretty good construction material hauler. Nice to be able to haul full sheets of plywood. It mostly functioned as a shed for building materials.

Not everything from the missing wallet has been restored. With the exception of a debit card, everything else is pretty minor. It's stuff I don't think of until I try to use it, like a discount card from a local gas station or a card for a free drink at a coffee shop. Minor stuff in the great scheme of things.

There's also a pretty steady stream of items being delivered to the house. Nothing major, but it all adds up. While I got a decent check from my home owners insurance for personal items lost in the shipwreck, I'm trying not to spend it all at once. Some things don't have to be replaced because needs have changed. Other items were replace with donated items from friends and family.

All in all, things are pretty much back to normal . . . normalish?

-Sixbears

Electric sailboat

As most of you know, my lovely wife and I lost our boat in a shipwreck. That doesn't mean we won't be sailing. Once the ice is off the lake our Oday 19 will be back in the water. While it doesn't have the creature comforts the Ranger 23 had, we've made it work for us in the past.

Last year I did away with the gas engine and switched to a 55 pound thrust trolling motor. Since it's a sailing boat, the motor isn't needed all that much anyway. Mostly, we used it for leaving our anchorage. Once last year the wind totally died and we came back using the electric trolling motor. We traveled about 4.5 miles and there was still plenty of charge left in the battery.

It was nice to not have to deal with a heavy gas motor and gas cans. Because we used the motor so little, a small 30 watt solar panel was able to keep the battery charged.

That was great for the type of boating we did, but what if we use the boat for days or weeks at at a time? One thing I'd like to do is to convert the home made gas can box into a battery box. There's plenty of room for two heavy duty deep cycle batteries. That's great, but how to keep them charged up?

The little 30 watt solar panel would probably not be up to the job. Since we occasionally stay at marinas, it would make sense to be able to charge the batteries at the marina. About 6 years ago I converted a regular heavy duty outdoor extension cord into a 30 amp marine cord. I already had the extension cord it was easy to just purchase a 30 amp male plug and wire it myself.

That was great but this past winter I noticed a lot of marinas have done away with the 30 amp power poles and completely replaced them with 50 amp. In fact, plenty of boats were tied into two 50 amp power outlets at the same time. What the heck where they doing that they needed so much electricity? Arc welding?

Probably not. Live aboard power “needs” have increased to the point where 100 amps barely does the job. Air conditioning is a big power hog, but things like freezers, ice makers, and a whole host of appliances really increases the power draw.

The simple solution would be to buy a 50 to 30 amp adapter. The problem is that they run for over $100. Sure, I could buy one, but If I solved all my issues by throwing money at them, we'd never be able to afford to sail at all.

One good thing now about marinas is that for many of them electric power is not included. How is that good? That means a guy like me who uses very little power isn't paying the same price as a guy who's got the AC turned so high they could use their boat as a meat locker. Once the 100 watt solar panel was in operation we never connected to marina power. The sun provided all the energy we needed.

The solar panel was one of the few things salvaged from the wreck. If it was installed on the Oday it should be able to do a good job of charging the trolling motor batteries. I could even keep the 30 watt panel charging the ship battery that runs the lights.

The best part is that outside of the batteries themselves the project could be done with materials already on hand.

-Sixbears.