Month: April 2014

Getting Weather while under way

Lisa and I have still not been able to leave Key West. We’ve had an endless series of problems with the boat that have prevented us from crossing over to the Bahamas. On the positive side, it’s allowed us to fix the issues in an place that we know well, have very helpful friends, and can get the stuff we need.

Meanwhile, the delays have also given me time to figure out how to do stuff like get the sort of weather reports we would like when we want to make crossings, etc., without access to a broadband internet connection.

For those of you who don’t remember the days of dial-up internet service, that is pretty much what we have using a Pactor Modem and HF Radio (generously supplied by JCP). Anyway, accessing web pages isn’t an option. We are limited to email, and essentially the amount of data you can fit in an SMS (no pictures!).

Given that limitation, there are a couple of handy sources I’ve come up for getting the weather information I would like help us find weather windows to allow safe travels. Both of these sources are email responders that allow one get specific weather information using pre-formatted email messages. This is very exciting!

The first service is from NOAA, the National Weather Service. You can get information from them from the following URL http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/ftpmail.txt or by sending the following mail message:

Send e-mail to:      ftpmail@ftpmail.nws.noaa.gov
Subject Line:        Put anything you like
Body:                help
These instructions are subject to revision....download frequently.

More interestingly, a similar service is available from www.bouyweather.com, with information that’s easier to consume. One of the key features of buoyweather.com  is the ability to set up “virtual buoys” from which to receive weather information. What I have done is predefine a bunch of virtual buoys at strategic locations along the routes that we plan to follow and we can get the forecast we need at will.

All you really need to do to get a 7 day forecast is to send a preformatted message to the buoyweather requesting information for a particular lat/lon and “voila!” you get a 7 day forecast with wave heights and directions, and wind speeds and directions. Following is an excerpt of what you get back.

 BUOYWEATHER.COM Virtual Buoy Forecast
 Location : 24.5N  81.75W              
 Model Cycle: 2014 APR 19 12Z          
 UTC - 4 Hours                         
-------------------------------------------------
           WIND                 SEAS
DATE   HR  dir/deg  range(kt)   dir/per range(ft)
----  ---  ----------------   -------------------
4/19  08   W   270   9 - 12   ESE  5sec   2 -  3
4/19  14   WNW 305   8 - 11   WSW  3sec   1 -  3
4/19  20   WNW 302  12 - 1    W    3sec   1 -  3

4/20  02   WNW 307   9 - 13   WNW  5sec   1 -  2
4/20  08   WNW 304  10 - 14   WNW  6sec   1 -  2
4/20  14    NW 318   8 - 11   WNW  6sec   1 -  2
4/20  20   NNW 336   7 - 10   WNW  7sec   1 -  2

I think this is slick, and it’s super useful for the way we go about setting up our routes for the Bahamas and Caribbean. Check out http://www.buoyweather.com/buoyweather/userguide.html for details.

Buoyweather also offers similar service for long passages which will give you the weather 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours out along your projected route. We don’t need this yet as we will be making much shorter hops, but it’s useful to know.

I know this is all seems pretty sailing/weather geeky, but we hope this helps any of you who read this and are planning to make voyages of any sort.

If you have weather other sources that you use over an SSB or HAM radio, or that you recommend, we’d love to hear about them.

 

Choosing a new Dinghy for Pearl

Sadly, we had to retire Ziply Banana Rocket, the AMI XL 300 we purchased in Portland last year. While she was new out of the box, she’d been made in 2009, which when she was relocated to the “tropics” caused some one of her tubes to leak.

As a result we decided to donate her to the Key West Community Sailing Center (a sailing co-op with the skills and resources to fix her). They plan to use her as a chase boat for the youth sailing program. “Come here little duckies!” We were very sad to see her go. The question was with what we were going to replace her.

Ziply with a leaky tube

The matrix of choices when it comes to buying a dinghy are pretty impressive.

  • PVC or Hypalon
  • Rigid hull Inflatable Boat or Rollup (hard or slatted floor)
  • Air floor or Hard Floor
  • Aluminium or Fibre glass hull RIB
  • Single or double hull

The choice between PVC and Hypalon seems pretty easy. If you’re in the tropics, choose Hypalon. The issue according to a repair shop that I spoke with is that the glue used on PVC degrades in temps around 80 degrees causing the seems to fail and the tubes to leak over time. Apparently the glue used in the construction of Hypalon boats doesn’t suffer the same problem — hence the choice for us.

The choice between RIB or Roll-up has has to do with space. It’s arguable that RIBs are heavier than Roll-ups, however the roll-up we had was heavier than the RIB we have now.

Ribs are great. The are drier, plane faster, and are more robust from the perspective of driving them up on a beach. The downside is that you either need to be willing to tow it, store it on deck, or lift it on davits.

A roll-up, on the other hand will “roll up,” you can put it in a dinghy stuff sack, and turn it into a nice little package that can even be lashed on the fore deck or even stored in a locker. The down side is that they are wetter, less comfortable on long rides, and potentially less durable.

There are a couple of three choices for Roll-Up dinks, soft/air floor, slatted floor, or hard floor. We didn’t spend much time on these options because we wanted a hard floored RIB as a result of Harley. What I have heard, however, is that the high pressure floors with an inflatable keel work quite well to get you on a plane, etc. Based on personal experience, the slatted floors are not great for anything but very minimal use. The hard decks are quite nice, our previous dinghy had them and they worked very well. The only downside is that you have to find the space to store the floorboards.

If you choose a RIB, you have to decide between an Aluminium or Fiberglass hull. Aluminium is more durable than fiber glass, it is more resistant to dings than the gelcoat on the fiberglass hulls but more challenging to repair. They are also lighter! We wanted an aluminum hull but finally opted for fiberglass due to the cost ($5000 instead of $4000) and availability.

Note that there is a very affordably priced aluminum hulled Highfield RIB. We opted not to go with this as the buyer for a major online retailer who’d evaluated the dinks refused to carry them as he thought that the hull-tube bond would fail as the hull was powder coated before the tubes were glued on. I would encourage you to do your own research on this one. AB, however, has a couple of very nice but expensive aluminium hulled RIB models.

After all of that, we came up with the following criteria:

  1. Must be made of Hypalon: it last better than PVC in the tropics
  2. Must be light as it will be carried on davits
  3. Must be rated for a 20 hp engine: what we have–> Must be FAST! (Lisa)

After looking at several dinghies, we ended up with the following short list:

– Caribe 10X  @ ~ $3500.00
– Achilles HB315DX @ $4000.00
– Zodiac Cadet 310 RIB @ $3000.00
– AB VL10 @ $4000.00
– Highfield UL 310/340 @ $3000.00

The general consensus among the cruisers and sales people we spoke with was get either a Caribe, Avon, or AB.  Our initial preference was to get the Caribe 10X which is double hulled, has a bow, locker, etc. When we looked at a Westmarine 340 which had a bow locker, the locker seemed pretty pointless, and it seemed like we be better off and save the weight by getting a “single hull. Also, the “single hull” on the AB isn’t really accurate as the VL has a flat floor.

While we did not personally inspect and test all five choices, what we did find out was that it’s really hard to get Caribes any more as they come out of Venezuela. We also found out that dinghy sales people were remarkably disinterested in selling product in this price range. The notable exceptions were Adam and Mike at the Inflatable Boat Center in Portland, OR and Jeff at Lifeline Inflatables in Miami from which we purchased our dink.

What we finally purchased and extremely happy with is an AB VL 10. It has the right combination of features for us and most importantly, seems to be very well put together. Stay tuned for pics and video of our new dink!

What you have above are a lot of my opinions and I’ve made a number of generalizations that you should take for what they are worth.  On the off chance you are buying a dinghy, I hope they will give you some food for thought. If you have navigated this process yourself, I would love to hear you thoughts and opinions.

 

 

Our 9 Best Upgrades to Pearl for Cruising

We are finally done with boat projects and upgrades to Pearl to make our cruising life more comfortable. After all the theorizing, what we actually have done follows:

1. Dinghy Davits

Lisa and I decided that davits were a “must have.” There are several reasons for this:

(a) Improved boat performance: you don’t end up dragging the dink, allowing the boat to move a knot or so faster.

(b) Safety: you have an easily deployed life raft if necessary. Yes, we have a seperate life raft, but ….

(c) Security: dinghies are better stored “on board” than in the water; needing to climb aboard a boat to cut a dinghy free tends to deter prospective thieves.

The davits we finally settled on are from Garhauer Marine. They are very well made, and I highly recommend them.

2. A Hypalon Dinghy

Sadly, Ziply Banana Rocket, the Yellow AMI XL 300 PVC dinghy we purchased last year started to fail. This was due to the glue that holds the boat together being eroded by the heat and UV in Florida. Given that a dinghy is a critical piece if equipment when cruising, we opted to purchase an AB RIB (Rigid hull Inflatable Boat).

The big deal with hypalon vs. PVC fabric in the tropics isn’t about the fabric itself. It has to do with the glue that holds the fabric together. According to a inflatable boat wright (?) I chatted with, PVC glue start to fail at about 80 F. Since one is consistently above that temp in the tropics,  PVC boats tend to fail sooner rather than later as we saw with the AMI.

3. Upgraded Navionics

Given that the Raymarine Pathfinder Radar had started to glitch and that charts for the chart plotter were pretty expensive, we decided to upgrade all of the navigation electronics and radar, and add in AIS display capability. Oddly enough this was less expensive than buying the electronic chart kits for where we wanted to go cruising. The net result is improved visibility of surrounding traffic as well as less expensive charts!

4. Foredeck Shade

Given that we haven’t added a high capacity generator to Pearl, we figured we’d go with a low tech solution: a deck shade that keeps the sun off the fore deck. Surprisingly, the shade noticably drops the temp in the V berth. Also, the shade is well enough constructed and laced on that we leave it up during storms — for which it can also serve as a rain catcher if required. The shade was definitely worth the $ 380 it cost to get made.

5. Filters on the fuel systems

We’ve added a Racor 500 filter on Pearl. This replaced the Racor 230 (?) that came standard. Additionally we’ve opted to add a couple of fuel shutoff vales to this to facilitate filter replacement rather than running a dual filter system. While I gather you can use vise grips on the fuel lines when changing filters instead of having shut off valves, that seemed a bit dodgy to me.

We’ve also added a Racor 120 gasoline filter for the outboard that will hopefully minimize problems there.

6. “Eye Lids” for the Portlights

Keeping the port light open when it rained was a bit of an issue. It made the boat stuffy and uninhabitable. We’ve added “eyelids” for the port lights which mostly keep the rain out of the boat. These cost appromimately $50 each from Portshade.com and were super easy to install. This was another worthwhile investment as it keeps the boat ventilated.

7. Marine VHF with AIS / Digital Selective Calling

We upgraded the original I-Com to a Standard Horizon Matrix AIS+. There are a couple of cool features to this change. The first is that it has Digital Selective Calling, which enables you to call a specific vessel based on their MMSI number (which most commercial vessels advertise via AIS). The second is that it integrates with the Raymarine e7D and a67 chart plotter/MFDs to provide enable AIS displays on the chart plotter. So, now we can identify the vessel we need to call and reach them directly.

It would be slick to be able to be able to tap the AIS icon on the chart plotter to have a call placed, but that seems way over the top at the moment.

7. Upgraded Bilge Pumps

Pearl came equiped with an approximately 200 gph bilge pump. I hadn’t really thought about what that really meant until I sat down and figured out  how much water we’d take on if one of the sea cocks or through hulls failed. That calculation resulted us adding a 2000 gph bilge pump that is plumbed into the boat as well as a 4000 gph portable bilge pump. A couple of things to note are that what bilge pumps are rated for and how much they actually put out depend on the input battery voltage, how far the water’s being lifted, and I believe, how many plastic buckets one has.

8. Flooded to AGM Batteries

Pearl originally had 200 Ah house battery bank, We’ve upped this to 520 Ah, and changed from flooded batteries to maintenance free AGMs. We figured that AGMs are better for a a few reasons: the first is that they don’t require maintenace, the second is that they are more resistant to being bounced around. The third is that they can be drawn down without damaging the cells.

9. Electric Pump on the Head

Ok. The head in this case is the toilet. We decided to replace the Jabsco hand pump with en electric macerator pump to clear the toilet bowl as we seemed to have interminable problems with the joker valves on the manual pump. This is a nasty mess on which you don’t need the details. The short version is that we a quite happy with the result.

There are several other little tweaks we’ve made — e.g. adding a plexiglass splash guard to the galley sink, a clothes line in the head, etc. The upgrades listed above are our best guess at our most important improvements for cruising.

We’d love to hear from you if you have suggestions based on you experiences!