Day 2 la Paz to Hilo
03 April 2014 | 100 miles west of cabo
John
We covered 110 miles in the past 24 hours and are now 2484 miles from the harbor entrance at Hilo, Hawaii.
This puts us about 70 miles behind our planned schedule which is not a concern this early in the passage. The slow start was due to light air in the Sea of Cortez and the headwind that forced us aroung the top of Isla Cerralvo on our fist night out. We also had a strong tidal current against us yesterday afternoon.
Right now we averaging well over 6 knots and our schedule is based on an average speed of 5 knots.
A lot can happen between here and Hilo so the schedule does not mean that much in the long run. I like to plot it out, day by day, so I can look at the weather several days in front of our current position as we make our way along our route. One of our navigational programs (Open CPN) lets us overlay our GRIB weather data on the chart showing our route and expected way points along that route.
This morning the wind is about 20 kts at 319 magnetic. We have partly cloudy skies and the seas are approaching from the NW and are mostly less than a meter high with an occasional 1.5 meter one passing under us.
The temperature in the Pilot House is 69 F.
Our second 24 hours out of La Paz was even more windless that the first 24 hours.
So far we have motored for 24 hours and used 55 liters of the fuel we have on board. That leaves us with 364 liters or 87 % of our fuel supply still available.
As we approached Cabo San Lucas last night we had a nice supper of cold fried chicken and coleslaw that Shawn had made the day before we left La Paz. We have gotten into the habit of buying a good supply of fried chicken for our first few days at sea. Frequently we can find a KFC to buy the chicken and Shawn just has to make the coleslaw (his is much better that KFC's) but we never found a KFC or other reasonably price fried chicken place in La Paz so Shawn made his version which is excellent but a lot of work just before a passage.
We still have several more fried chicken meals to look forward to.
Early in the evening, shortly after the time we passed under Cabo San Lucas, the wind started to blow. We had obviously motored out past the cape far enough that we were seeing the winds that low down the outside coast of Baja.
The wind was from 243 magnetic which meant we could not make our rhumb line course to Hilo which is 257 magnetic.
That was not a big deal since we are about 180 miles N of the latitude of Hilo and expect the wind to continue to clock around to the NE eventually. Dropping a few miles south of the rhumb line is not a problem. As a matter of fact when the wind did shift a it to the north we did not follow it up to our course but, instead, eased off a bit to make the ride faster and a little more comfortable.
While we were in La Paz I made some modifications to the run of the lines that connect our wind vane to the boat's steering system. We had been experiencing chafing problems where the lines and blocks get to close to each other under the steering quadrant. Those changes seem to have helped performance of the vane and it has been steering since the wind came up last night.
It is important to us on passages that the vane do most of the steering since it does not use any power and our autopilot uses a lot. The vane is also a silent crew member that just does its job without even requiring that the Captain share his beer supply with it.
We have never been satisfied with the performance of the Cape Horn wind vane that we installed shortly after the boat was delivered. I had made up my mind that this was its last chance to steer us on a passage or I was going to replace it with a Monitor wind vane that had worked very well on my last boat. I had contacted Monitor and gotten pricing and delivery information so I could swap them out it Hawaii.
So far the vane is behaving like it might get a new lease on life.
One of the larger annoyances on long passages is the need to run the engine to charge batteries. Its noisy, smells bad and heats up the boat. Having the wind vane steer reduces out daily power budget a lot since we dont have to deal with the autopilot's power voracious appetite for power.
Last night we had to turn the wind generator off a couple of times because it was overheating in the high winds (over 25 kts at times). But even though it was off for 3 or 4 hours last night it still put enough power into the batteries that we were only down 40 amp hours at dawn. We were down 18 amp hours when we started sailing last night and the wind vane took over steering.
After a couple of hours of daylight with both the wind generator and the solar panels putting power into the batteries we are only down 30 amp hours and will probably be fully charged by lunch time. Without the autopilot the electrical system has to run the fridge, the computer, lights, and the navigation computer.
Before I forget I wanted to make a couple of remarks about our new KISS ground plane system for our high frequency radio.
The radio uses the boat's backstay as its antenna. A length of the stainless steel cable is isolated using insulators and is connected to an antenna coupler that helps the back stay resonate at all the frequences we use for communicating while at sea. Ideally we would have a separate wire antenna whose length had been operated for each frequency we wish to use. That would require so many antenna wires that we would not need sails. The windage from all those antennas would be enough to push us down wind.
The Antenna couple lets us get away with using a single length of wire and manages to convince the radio that it is powering the correct length regardless of the frequency.
To operate correctly our antenna coupler needs an antenna attached and a counterpoise or ground plane that allows the antenna to resonate.
The counterpoise we started out with was the traditional one made with two plates of sintered bronze metal bolted to the bottom of the boat. The bolts for these plates are connected to the antenna coupler, inside the boat, using thin copper foil 4 or 6 inches wide. The foil is a real pain to work with as it is delicate and easy to damage. It is difficult to lead around under the floor boards and in the lazarette and corrodes easily.
Our old foil, that I installed before we left California was starting to look like it would need replacement before too long.
Fortunately I came across an ad for a new device called the KISS ground plane. It looks like a 10 foot length of garden hose with a 4 foot long wire sticking out of 1 end. The wire is what you connect to the antenna coupler, instead of foil, and the tube contains a lot of wires cut to the right length so that at least one of the wires will resonate at all the commonly used frequencies.
I ordered one of these thins for $150 and had my sister bring it with her when she visited us in La Paz.
I connected it to the antenna tuner and just laid it out on deck to try it out.
HF radios do not usually work very well in Marinas with the forest of masts all around but I was able to test the KISS device at all the frequencies I commonly use to send emails and receive our weather information. It seemed to work at least as well as our old foil system so I went ahead and installed it under the floorboards in the lazarette..
Now that we are out in the open ocean I can say that this thing works way better than the old foil and bronze plate system. I get connected tot he shore stations faster and the rates of data exchange are much faster than with the old counterpoise.
The KISS system cost about ΒΌ the cost of the old counterpoise if you dont count my labor to run the foil. To install the old system the boat had to be pulled out of the water and holes drilled in the bottom. The KISS device could be installed at the dock and without all the cuts on my hands and arms from the copper foil.
The next time we get hauled to have the bottom painted we will be pulling the old bronze plates off the bottom and repairing the holes in the boat. I have already removed the copper foil from the places where it was in the way.
Those bronze plates could not be painted with bottom paint so a lot of critters set up housekeeping on them and they were both a pain to clean and the drag would slow us down if they were not clean.