Kaimusailing

It may seem that we are sitting around watching America's Cup boats sailing and not getting anything else done. That is only partially true. The heat wave makes working in the afternoon very difficult, so it is a good time to take a siesta, but on America's Cup sailing days the racing comes on in early afternoon, so we can watch the racing and avoid the heat. The time to do work is in the morning.
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I rushed to get the boat and mast ready to restep the mast, but the boatyard has a different agenda involving clearing additional area, grading and tamping the soil, and then moving boats into the new area, creating room for more boats. In the meantime I have to do other tasks. One job is to replace the batteries which are now about 6 years old, well due for replacement.
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I needed to use temporary batteries in place of the old batteries, as the old batteries have to be turned in at the store when the new batteries are picked up, otherwise there is a core charge for each new battery. I decided to use a donated size 31 "Marine/Stationary" battery in the port hull and use Trillium's little size 24 wet cell battery in the starboard hull. I didn't need a lot of capacity, the only loads would be charging the cell phone, interior cabin lights, and the 12 volt fan.
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The procedure is to disconnect the solar panels from the charge controller before disconnecting the batteries. The reason for doing this is that without the batteries in the circuit, the voltage can rise to whatever the solar panels can put out. This is referred to as open circuit voltage and can run as high as 22 volts. After disconnecting the batteries the temporary battery is connected and then the solar panels are reconneccted to the charge controller. The only difficulty with this procedure is the awkward location of the batteries and their weight.
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Radio Bill sent in his position by winlink with the added comment that he had hit floating debris offshore off of Cape Fear. He continues in a NE direction and his URL for position reports is:
http://services.wlw.winlink.org/maps/PositionReports.aspx?callsign=N2ZLY
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When I started looking for batteries I had only 2 local places, Walmart and Tractor Supply, that would supply a deep cycle marine battery. Why only local? Shipping wet cell batteries, which are heavy and dangerous if they spill, is expensive. While I was looking online, a fellow came up and gave me his business card. He was Chris from a large wholesale battery store in Jacksonville. There is no sales tax by Florida business when the product is ordered in Georgia and no shipping charge, since they service many of the marinas and boatyards that do regular business.
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It turns out that the core charge, that is the charge levied when you don't provide an old battery to turn in when you buy a new one, was about equal to the shipping charge for buying out of town batteries. Because I am increasing my battery banks to sets of 4 group 27's in each hull and only have 4 batteries to turn in, I would get hit with a core charge about equal to the cost of an entire battery.
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Another factor is related to battery maintenance, if flooded cell batteries are well maintained, they can last as long as maintenance free batteries, which cost up to twice as much. Knowing that I have not been attentive to battery maintenance, I decided to try AGM batteries which have several attractive features. They require no maintenance, they are more sturdy and on a sailboat that is important, and they typically last about twice as long as flooded cell batteries. The vendors are saying 1-3 years for flooded cells, 3-5 years for AGM's. My old batteries were purchased in 2011, so there's a 6 year flooded cell example, and they are shot.
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I found an online vendor of AGM's that didn't ask for a core charge, probably because the state they are in doesn't require it, but their shipping cost was about equal to the core charge I would have to pay locally for my extra batteries. So I ordered them. Actual cost was a bit less than the local free delivered batteries, but the locals would require my old batteries, so I still have the cores. If these online batteries work out, then maybe I will generously give my cores to someone else who is increasing their battery bank.
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The Louis Vuitton qualifying scenario keeps surprising me because of my successive layers of understanding of the rules takes a quantum step, usually too late. First I thought Ben Ainslie was done fore with hull damage, but he came back and sailed on. Then I found out that my ideas about Round Robin One were way off base due to there being incorporated Round Robin Two, really just two back to back round robins where everybody sails twice against the opponents.
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I misunderstood that the brass ring in these round robins was an extra point to be applied not in the next series, the Louis Vuitton semifinals, etc., to determine the challenger, but in the actual America's Cup competition against the defender, Oracle Team USA. So, my active mind started to think about the defender winning the point, then of course they would have an immediate one race advantage, but what about the challengers? What if Artemis Racing Team Sweden won the round robins, what would happen if they didn't make it through the semifinals, etc., then where does that point go? They can't use it if they don't make it all the way through to the America's Cup competition. It turned out that I didn't have to get out the rule books, Oracle thrashed the Kiwi's and won the overal round robin and the extra point. Because every team has lost a race, sometimes an upset, it is hard to figure out how this is all going to play out.
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It turns out that the Kiwi's, who won the challenger's part of the round robin, got to choose their opponent in the semifinals, Great Britain Team Ben Ainslie Racing. The Ben Ainslie team has generated a lot of press with their collisions, damage, and lack of boat speed. But they didn't get close to being eliminated in the round robin. Is Sir Ben sandbagging? If he defeats the Kiwi's in the semifinals, the rest of the opposition will also fall. Or, if he is really down on boatspeed, he is in big trouble, the Kiwi's have dominated almost everyone else, but lost twice to Oracle. The Swedes and Japanese have lesser records, but they also haven't been eliminated, maybe they have more gas in the tank than they have showed.
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My work preparing the larger battery installation in the dinette had to be done during the mornings before humidity and temperature soared in the afternoon. It was mostly a cleaning job, removing objects that ended up sitting on the dinette benches or table, until there was a sizable pile. It was removed and the seat on the port side of the dinette had its compartment underneath enlarged. Somehow this brought me into intimate contact with the bilges, which had been opened under the dinette table to dewater the starboard hull. Now there was more rainwater in there. Along with the afternoon heat and humidity, pop-up thunderstorms would come through with a deluge, an of course I did not properly close the hatch during one of those. I paid my dues, sponging out bilge water, again.
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One factor of bilge water is that it provides a place for mosquitoes to breed. If you close the boat up it gets hot. If you leave a tiny crack open you get bugs. Mosquitoes however can breed right inside your boat, in the bilges, if you have fresh water puddled there. Dirty oily water is apparently not acceptable to the breeding mosquitoes.
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Citronella is one type of repellent that the locals rely on, so I bought a bottle of citronella torch oil. I had a couple of citronella candles that had burnt out, but the wicks were still there, little metal cones with a wick coming out of the tip. Would they burn using the oil instead of the candle wax? My first attempt would not light so I put a little denatured alcohol in it, just a bit, and lit it. It lit. The alcohol made a general flame and the wick never lit. It kept burning more and more, so I put it out. When I relit it, it flamed up again. I reasoned that the oil had to cool down, then might burn properly. A second burned out candle with a little less oil seemed to burn properly. After the hot one that flamed up had cooled, I took out some of the oil and relit it. It seemed to be burning properly now. Then it began to increase, more and more. I took a photo of the flame. I let it burn out completely. The mosquitoes were nowhere to be found. I then lit the other candle that had burned OK, but soon it too was out of control. Experiment failed.