Kaimusailing

A cold snap was forecast, so the water tanks were winterized by pumping out all the water, putting in a little antifreeze, and then pumping that through the lines. This was easy in the port hull with its electric waterpump, but in the starboard hull the footpump took a long time to pump out the tank. There were probably 30 gallons in the tank. The aft compartment in the port hull was given a small electric heater to keep the holding tank and water heater above freezing. The shower sump pump would not come on so as much water as possible was pumped out with a portable bilge pump.

I began moving gear to the dockmaster's garage in preparation for the galley/dinette project. We took a trip to the lumber store to look at counter laminates and hardwood for the sole.

There is a forum called cruiser's forum that is very active. Just about any question pertaining to cruising sailboats exists as a discussion thread on that forum. One of the discussions about navigation software is about an application called OpenCPN and a vector chart standard called CM93. I downloaded the OpenCPN program and ran it with my charts. Some charts could not be opened and it was suggested to load them with another nav program and then save them as bitmaps. A file transfer program called eMule was mentioned and I tried that and found a vector chart zip file that included charts of the whole world. EMule is a way to send large files to multiple recipients efficiently. It sends fragments of the file to each recipient, then the recipents send that fragment along until all the recipients have all the fragments. It's not as quick as FTP transferring to one recipient, but is faster when transferring to a large group of recipients. The large CM93 zip file was almost 1gig. It took a day of eMule running in the background to transfer it fragment by fragment.

When I unzipped all the vector charts, they were about 1.3 gigs in size. In OpenCPN the vector chart folder is browsed and added to the database of charts available to OpenCPN. When I tried out the program, I could look at charts of Japan, England, and any other navigable waters. I spent some time in the chilly pilothouse and OpenCPN responded properly to GPS and AIS input. The GPS signal centered the chart of Chesapeake Bay on Bodkin Inlet right where the boat is. The AIS information was displayed as yellow arrowheads and right-click on the chart gave a tab called AIS information, which had ship information such as course and speed and after about 15 minutes, ship's name, destination, etc. Whereas I had full charts of USA, Caribbean, and some of Central America, now I had added the whole rest of the world. I will test the print function of this software to see what hard copy looks like.

After searching the OpenCPN users manual and their website, I could find no mention of the print function. Later searching the web there was a hit and indeed, there is a print function and it is turned on in the tool menu. When I printed a test page, it was letter size. After loading tabloid paper in the printer and setting the print size to A3, it printed a nice 11X17 "chartlette".

When I opened my sextant case, after cleaning a mess of squirrel poop off it, the sextant inside was a real mess. The mirrors were corroded and I dropped it while cleaning it, breaking the vernier bracket. I was able to buy repair parts on the internet, but I didn't think I could actually repair the delicate instrument. I looked for another sextant and found a nice Freiberger Yacht Sextant and ordered it from a retired captain in Oregon.

After about a week I realized that maybe I had been scammed by the sea captain, though he sounded like an honest guy. The parts came in for my old sextant and I replaced the mirrors, adjustment screws, and repaired the vernier with glue that a vendor had sold me at the boat show. It really worked. I was able to adjust the mirrors and put the old sextant away. Finally, the day before Christmas Eve, the Freiberger arrived, after more than 2 weeks. I looked at it carefully and noticed the usual problem spots were fine. The index scale is held on with ordinary steel pins, these corrode at sea. Also the micrometer drum can corrode, including the internal worm screw.

The work of unloading the galley/dinette continued. The dinette table was removed. The laminate countertops were removed using the multitool with scraper attachment, a large stainless steak knife, and an even larger stainless strip with a beveled tip.

The attached picture is the OpenCPN chart of the Chesapeake area near Bodkin Inlet. The ship channels angle off to the West to Baltimore and up North to the C&D Canal to Delaware Bay. The details of the chart display suffered when saving and resizing it.