Kaimusailing

We had another rain event on its way, so I had the fuel tank project ready in the woodshop to work on if the conditions outside deteriorated. I was now painting the old wooden remnant that was used as the mounting for the aluminum tank. The fuel fill had been mounted and the sender for the fuel meter was reinstalled after finding out what ohmage range it operated at. It was like 33 ohms to 266 ohms. I found the corresponding gauge available at Defender Marine for about 30 dollars including shipping. I bought from them because it was the first internet site that included the ohms range of the meter. Good for them.
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There was an area on the port hull bottom that needed priming with the epoxy and then some fairing. The port hull was not as convoluted as the starboard, so fairing on the starboard hull bottom will be a chore. After completing the port hull, except for the keel bottom, I began on the starboard hull and decided to apply the epoxy fairing mix to 2/3 of the inboard side of the hull. I had been doing 1/3 of a hull side at a time prior to this, so was I biting off more than I could chew? I ended up putting on the last of the mix mid afternoon and had skipped lunch, so I was glad to stop and make something to eat.
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I was out of bread so made pasta with some diced ham and peas in a store bought alfredo sauce. The ham was sauteed with two cloves of garlic. A dusting of black pepper and it was ready. Yum.
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The fairing mixture using the glass microspheres was similar to the phenolic mix, but I was getting more exact mixes of the fillers by cutting the bottom off a plastic cup and sizing that to get a consistent mix. It is around 1.5 X the volume of unthickened epoxy for both the micro spheres and the colloidal silica, 50/50 mix of the fillers. The colloidal silica makes it harder to sand, but powered sanding tools work OK with it. It looks like I will have to order more epoxy before I am done, but I will wait until the bitter end.
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The rain came later and work was done for the day. The electric bosun’s chair had had its winch replaced with a 1500 lb winch from Pilot Automotive. It cost $50 including shipping. After it arrived I bought another. It perfectly replaced the old winch, so having a spare might be a good idea. I also might find another use for it on board. I also bought a 12 volt brick battery to power the chair.
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I had been looking for an AIS receiver, small, receive only, to interface with the nav computers. It is very easy to get OpenCPN to recognize the AIS receivers. I had used one from Smart Radio but I found a much less expensive unit that came as a USB dongle with a BNC connection on it. This was the Quark A021, but then I found the dAISy, which is a little radio with a micro USB port for power and connection to the computer, and a BNC connector. It was $62 including shipping from the US supplier. It is imported from the UK. Side by side tests show these cheap receivers have no trouble picking up the higher powered commercial AIS transponders, but have trouble with the lower powered recreational transponders. I will get to try the dAISy out and see what it does.
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It was a rain day, so I did some grocery shopping and decided to make some more of the pulled pork in the pressure cooker. The Stubbs barbecue sauce has enough in the bottle to do two batches of pulled pork. While the pressure cooker was pressurizing I installed the pickup tube to the gas tank. The tube originally had a barbed fitting for gas line to the engine on its original boat, but now I wanted the Yamaha fuel line fitting, same as the day tank uses, so that I could just unhook the line from one tank and hook it on the other. The fitting and the pickup tube threaded together, but the threads on both had to be cleaned with a wire brush, and then a fuel sealant was applied and the tube and fitting were screwed together and into the tank. It was remarkable that the new tank had its hole for the pickup tube situated so that the I-beam that sits over the center of the tank will have about a quarter inch clearance from the hose fitting. Now the only thing left is the 5/8“ vent line and the vent fitting. The tank could probably be reinstalled on Kaimu as it is now.
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Some drone parts came in after a long trip from China, spare propellers and an additional battery charger. Also the dAISy AIS receiver came in. It is tiny. I have no way to adequately test it unless I take it down to Fernandina Beach with one of the nav computers and a VHF antenna. I was able to hook it up to the B300-X and run a few lines of testing in terminal mode and got appropriate response from the receiver. I also found an excellent commentary that is only 21 (so far) forum pages posted by the inventor or designer of the unit at:
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https://forum.43oh.com/topic/4833-potm-daisy-a-simple-ais-receiver/
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I envision using this small unit with an antenna mounted on one of the shrouds on deck level, like I did with the previous Smart Radio unit, then switching antennas, deck level to VHF radio, masthead antenna to the AIS receiver. The frequency band is virtually the same, so the antennae can be interchanged, and reception on both is line of sight, so the higher the antenna mount, the greater the range. The deck level signal will be fine when we are in port or heading in or out to sea, but once out there, the VHF radio range is less important than the AIS range. On our deliveries last fall we used handheld VHF radios most of the time.
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I chose the dAISy because unlike the Quark radio, it did not plug directly into the computer’s USB port. This configuration would result in the Quark, which is like a USB dongle, getting damaged, also the radio would add to the footprint of the computer, just one more thing that could break or get in the way. The dAISy has a USB cable, so it can be put out of the way and less likely to get jammed into something when the computer is moved back and forth. Similarly I prefer the GPS pucks that have a cable over those that plug into the computer directly as a USB dongle.
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There is another issue, the dAISy appears to the linux based OpenCPN navigation app as an ACM, an asynchronous communication module, not as a USB device. This might conflict with one of the GPS dongles that also appears as an ACM. Still another issue is, as far as I can see so far, the dAISy is a USB device, not a NMEA device, so chartplotters will have trouble interfacing it without the use of a USB/NMEA interface. This is the world of marine electronics where the rest of the interchangeable plug and play world can’t be used, you have to use Raymarine’s or Furuno’s or Garmin’s proprietary AIS device. I know I have shot myself in the foot too many times, but I would rather have the Getac B300-X portable computer with GPS and AIS externals than any of the chartplotters and their devices, which can cost ten times more. The Getac is waterproof (except when you open the waterproof doors to plug in the USB devices), shock resistant, and strong enough to withstand someone stepping on it on their way after a knockdown and everything is on the pilothouse sole.
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In our last delivery we used the Getac on the galley table, out of the weather, accessible to the crew from the cockpit, bright enough to be visible in strong sunlight, and running the OpenCPN nav program was easier than anything else.
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In the old days the skippers were more cautious and mainly had carefully accumulated local knowledge. They didn’t grandly fly into port under full sail, into a port they didn’t know. We do that now, we accept what our electronics tell us and act as if that is the final word, press on, and we run aground in deep water.
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I have been watching from time to time presentations on You Tube of Graham Hancock, who is a very entertaining story teller. I think he is on the right track with some things, but there is one big blunder in his presentation about modern navigation vs medieval navigation.
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Hancock has for many years postulated that there must have been an earlier civilization before the Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia. Oh, also the Mayans, who were not that ancient. One of the pieces of evidence is a map of part of Antarctica that shows its coastline, the one that exists below the ice. We know what it looks like now, because we have ice penetrating radar. He also says that the longitude of many ancient coastlines on these maps is incredibly accurate, and that we didn’t have such accuracy until the chronometer was invented in the 1800‘s.
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The fact is, that navigators of old could determine longitude with moon sights, which helped establish time as well as position. So he is making a false claim, but I still wonder how they got those maps of South America and Antarctica when they hadn’t got there yet.
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In the news an Iawasca shaman, that is a traditional medicine person of the Andes, a woman, was murdered, and a Canadian man was subdued and strangled by a rope around the throat while he was being dragged along the ground, by a mob that held him as the murderer. How does this tie in to this posting? Graham Hancock has talked extensively about his contact with the shamans who have admitted him to th e Iawasca experience several times and how it has helped him and directed him. So, I can’t direct you to the Andean shamans and the iawasca cure, but I can direct you to Graham Hancock’s website, just google him, but be careful.
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The image is of the tiny dAISy AIS receiver from the vending website.