Kaimusailing

The yardbirds have asked me time and again have I been following the Volvo Ocean Race. I hadn’t. It’s kind of an extreme sailing kind of race, has nothing to do with us who are mainly cruising sailors and adverse to getting “hosed’ on deck, breaking ribs while down below, and occasionally being washed overboard and being lost at sea.
.
Now I am hooked. I bookmarked the tracker page of the Volvo Ocean Race website and clicked on the weather icon on the left of the screen to turn on a graphic wind display. The website is here:
.
https://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/tracker.html
.
The recent activity has been a leg from Newport, Rhode Island, to Cardiff, Wales, UK. The boatspeeds have been down in the single digits and up close to 30 knots. My, oh, my. The fleet got separated by tactics on when to gybe to the northeast. Then we watched them reconcile their different tactics. Higher/slower vs. lower/faster. Then they all got back together in a pack of rabid sailing dogs. They are crossing one of the most feared stretches of ocean, the North Atlantic, and sailing in near gale conditions much of the time.
.
At the same time I was surprised that the Washington Capitals, perennial losers in the NHL playoffs, if they made the playoffs, have now made it through to the Stanley Cup finals.
.
No time to spend on any of these sporting events, Kaimu is getting built up to go sailing. It has been muggy with afternoon thunderstorms, difficult work conditions, but using the hockey method of work, work for a while until there is difficulty, then take a rest, maybe do something else that is in the shade or take a break, then get back at it after feeling up to it.
.
The battery installation was hard work, but now they are in and up to full power. I wanted to get the running lights in order. They had been switched out on deck in the helm station out there, but salt spray ruined that installation, so I’ve moved it all into the pilothouse. It’s a neat installation with a switch panel on a little box mounted on an expensive (not to me) Edson GPS mounting arm which is mounted on a converted stanchion mounted on the pilothouse console. The mounting arm allows wiring to pass through it, so I made a pull line to draw the wiring through the stanchion and arm. It didn’t work, mainly because the depth sounder transponder cable is thick and has a long fitting on the end that couldn’t negotiate the twists and turns. I considered running the wiring outside the stanchion and arm, but that would be defeat.
.
It was impossible to run the wiring through the stanchion, then assemble the arm around it, but I modified part of the arm that would in no way affect its operation. Now I could run all the wiring through, then assemble the arm around it, and then mount the switch box and terminate all those wires. In fact, there was no room remaining in the GPS arm, completely filled with wires. Later I discovered the nav lights wire was not installed to the box, well, it could never be, there was no room for it. I ran the nav lights from a switch on the main panel to a pair of terminal blocks, one is nav lights +, the other is ground. All the nav lights will terminate on these blocks.
.
Nav lights include compass night lights, so I went out to the helm station on deck and found the compass there (Ritchie Navigator) didn’t have a working compass light. I found that the “kit” to install LED compass light was $36 from Ritchie, $27 plus from Defender, so I bought 20 LED’s 12 volt, red, on eBay for $7. I will only need 2.
.
The stern running light, which I had built myself using an Aqua Signal fixture and a pair of Davis LED’s was no longer working. I had a spare LED, but it was no longer working. I spent a couple hours fiddling around with these things. I gave up and went online to find an LED stern light. I bought one from Milpitas, CA, for $10.76, and it will be here in about a week. It has six high brightness LED’s in it, and it will probably be brighter than the Davis which had only two.
.
I tested the starboard running light and it is OK and its wiring comes right to the terminal blocks to be installed. The port running light has a bundle of wiring that still has to be run. I guess the culmination of the running light installation will have to wait for the stern light and the compass light LED’s to arrive.
.
The other wiring project is to redo the #2 AWG wiring to the windlass. It used to terminate in the on deck helm station, one short set of heavy cables bolted through a plywood bulkhead inside the steering station to another set that ran all the way forward to the windlass in front of the mast. Now the short cables could be removed and the long cables extended to the engine battery by #2 butt splices. This was all done and then I tried to activate the windlass, just see if it would turn one way or the other. Not. The windlass contactor which is a kind of relay that can change polarity, thus powering the windlass with UP voltage or DOWN voltage, was clicking and was likely working OK. Jumping the cables directly to the windlass power leads did nothing. Ugh. The windlass is a difficult item to service because it is bolted down from below, from inside the rope and chain locker, and there is confining access to the bolts, which are allen headed.
.
Replacing the windlass motor is over $300, and is probably about $450. If it needs replacement, it needs replacement. I have worked on the windlass way more than I have actually used it. It was the single most destructive device, the one that depleted the engine battery, when we went on our last fateful voyage. I have deployed the anchors many times without using the windlass, but it is a messy job, and I have to make an effort to service it. I have to remove it anyway if I am going to replace the motor.
.
I wrote up the windlass in this post:
.
https://www.sailblogs.com/member/kaimusailing/324451
.
But, I wouldn’t recommend going there to read it. It is telling me the windlass has probably died due to corrosion, swelling of the metal due to rust, and will need replacement.
.
Gary Dierking, the outrigger canoe expert, posts infrequently on his website, but now has posted this link to a coastal voyage in a traditional Hawaiian canoe:
.
https://vimeo.com/95787134
.
This image is a screenshot taken during that voyage.