Uncategorized

>Now that Jessica is back in Australian waters it’s easy to assume that the worst is behind her.  Not so.  For the last few days she has been in some very unsettled weather and yesterday she was caught in a string of strong thunder cells, one of which laid her flat and tore her mainsail in two places.  Good thing that she has a spare so she can swap the sail out and stitch up the mess. 

It’s amazing that, after so many miles, she has some of the more “interesting” weather of her trip.  I’ll bet that she is ready for a bit of peace and quiet in her life.  Thursday’s blog entry is worth reading and if you haven’t been following her regularly, check out some of the recent posts. 

Meanwhile, Abby Sunderland is making her way around alone from California and passed Cape Horn last week.  Once Jess is back home at least I will still be able to read about Abby’s exploits as she has a long way to go to get home.   Don’t forget to check out Abby’s blog as she does post about every other day or so.

And, of course, there’s Dilip Donde, of the Indian Navy who’s been making his way around and last week made his departure from the last land fall of his trip, leaving Cape Town South Africa to continue his voyage alone back to India.  Not far to go but he continues to run into “interesting” weather.  Unfortunately, Dilip doesn’t post often, with only about one installment per week.  His posts are also a bit more like “the facts and nothing but the facts”, with less personal information.   Perhaps it’s an age or cultural thing.  Not many middle age guys spill their guts online.  Wait, is that true?  Hmm…  Or, perhaps it’s a generation thing with the two young sailors being so Web oriented that they feel more connected by posting regularly.  It’s probably a desire to keep their many sponsors happy. Perhaps it’s both. 

>While I much rather be writing about sailing or working on Pandora, I can always fall back on writing about Jessica Watson who’s just recently made it back to Australian waters.  It’s quite remarkable that Jess has made it just about the entire way around the world and now has made it back to her home waters.  She still has a lot of miles to go but much of her journey is now behind her.

While it’s hard to find any sort of mainstream media covering sailing in the US, Jess has been the subject of much popular broadcasting in Australia since leaving home back in October.   I noticed today that a local TV program, Thursday Night Live, has done yet another segment about her voyage.  In this particular segment, it’s fun to hear the interplay between Jess and the interviewer (in particular the women asking the questions) to see how she (the interviewer) is clearly amused and perhaps repulsed by the idea of going so long without a shower. This disbelief combined with “what could you possibly do to entertain yourself for all of this time” is a clear undercurrent of the discussion.  Take a look at this video and think about the typical 16 year old going 9 months without a shower.  That in itself is remarkable and to some a feat nearly equal to someone so young sailing alone around the world.   The shower thing is impressive enough. You be the judge.

As for Pandora, she splashes next Friday and I can’t wait. Happily, we have our first rendezvous of the season planned with another SAGA 43 the very next day and that will be great fun. With so many chores and projects behind us, it’s hard to imagine that launch time is nearly here.

Lately, I have been very focused on our Summer itinerary including crew for the long runs up the coast and making lists of what I need to have on board. All this plus a long list of weekend adventures including special outings with my grown boys, Chris and Rob with their friends.  Awesome!

Here’s to the best sailing season yet and to Jess’s homecoming. Both will be great, I am sure.

>The fictional character Phileas Fogg in the novel Around the world in 80 days by Jules Verne, first published in 1873, circumnavigated the world on a combination of rail and steam ship on a wager of   £20,000 set by his friends at his social club.  This feat today and it’s current real life record holders is memorialized by the “Jules Verne Trophy” that resides in Paris.    The current record holder did the trip in a trimaran very recently early in 2010 in just under 48 days, 8 hours.  This boat, also from France hopes to do the trip in 40 days.  The attempt will be made in 2012 in a boat capable of a top speed of 50kts.  It’s hard to imagine the boat going that fast much less holding together for the whole trip.  

This video is a bit long, and is in French. However, it’s got some amazing footage of the boat underway. It’s the current Jules Verne record holder from 2006.  Well, I guess that the true feat is to make it around in once piece and a bit faster than the other guy.   Unlike the rest of us, these guys head into bad weather so that they can get a bit faster time.

Even better than the boats that sail for the trophy, is the sculpture itself by American artist Tom Shannon, known for his remarkable pieces, some of which float in the air on a magnetic field or suspended by wires. Check out his site for some amazing photos of his work.

The sculpture that he created to serve as the perpetual Jules Verne trophy and the holders of the trophy through the years are described in Wickepedia.  The following is an excerpt from the description.
 
“The “Trophy Jules Verne”, placed under the high patronage of the French Culture Ministry, was the subject of a public order of the visual arts delegation with the American artist Thomas Shannon.
The work is a floating hull on a magnetic field moored by a cable as an anchor retains a ship. All dimensions have rigorous symbolic meaning. In proportions, the midship beam of the hull correspond to the diameter of the Earth. The ray of each end is proportional to that of the moon. And the radius of the curvature of the frames is that of the sun. The competitors of the Trophy Jules Verne race around the Earth against time, with only the sun and the moon as companions and time keepers.
The sculpture is placed on a cast aluminum base, on which the names of the sailors having won the Trophy are engraved. The French National Navy museum in Paris hosts and maintains the Trophy. Each of winners received a miniature counterpart of this Trophy, magnetized like the original one.

During an official ceremony, the precedent holder gives the Trophy to the victorious crew who receives the hull and must moor it in the magnetic field.”

A remarkable trophy for a remarkable voyage.  While I will have my own voyages I don’t think that I lust after the excitement that these guys seek.

>I neglected to mention that Jessica Watson’s blog has been moved to her site and away from Blogger.  All of her postings have been moved as well. Her site also shows a nice graphic of where she is (now crossing the Indian Ocean and about 1,500km from Australia.  To fully appreciate the graphics you need to have Google Earth on your computer.  Check it out as it’s a great program.  She’s not that close to home yet as she has to go around to the other side of the continent before she is back home. However she continues to make progress and the weather remains a big part of her life and recently, very interesting, I would say.  Her most recent post today makes the conditions sound really rough with seas over 20′ tall.  The progress that she has made, in spite of all that she has faced, speaks to the wonderful boat she has, , n older sea kindly design that is easy on her and tough as nails.

It’s a very interesting contrast to see how Abby Sunderland, who’s make the trip from California on a very different boat, an Open 40, is doing.  This is a state of the art yacht design that’s a lot faster and very high tech.  However, the biggest problem that she has, in my opinion, is that her reliance on electronic gear is total.  Jessica’s steering is a low tech wind vane, a very tough piece of equipment that is not likely to give up the ghost.  Jessica’s most recent post states that the wind vane on her steering system broke and was very simple for her to bolt on a new one in a few minutes.  On the other hand, Abby’s electronic pilot broke down the other day and she ended up hand steering the boat all night while being drenched by near freezing water until she was able to fix it the next morning when she called her shore side team for advice.

The ability to steer a boat and get some rest is very fundamental to a successful voyage and you have to wonder if it’s possible for someone as young as Abby to have a successful voyage in a boat that is so technology dependent.   It makes me wonder if this will end up being a “tortoise and the hare”.  Time will tell.

Interestingly, with all the talk about the “youngest around” both Guinness and the World Speed Council have dropped their “youngest” records.   This isn’t surprising given all the talk about who’s too young to sail a boat on their own long distances.

Closer to home, Pandora was nearly ready to launch as planned yesterday but I decided to leave her in the marina for a few more weeks to finish up on some last minute rigging and electronics details.  A year ago, when I was checking out all the systems, I discovered that the Raymarine plotter/radar wasn’t working properly.  It turned on but the system wouldn’t recognize the charts so the screen didn’t have any detail on it.  Getting this fixed was a real pain and required getting the unit off of the boat and back to the factory for repair.  The folks at Raymarine told me that the problem was a rare one and fixed it.   Now, a year later, same problem.  This “rare” problem is not so rare it seems.

This is really very aggravating as I had to scramble, get a special tool, remove the unit AGAIN and now I have to send it back to the factory for repair, AGAIN.

I mention this as one example of what tech can do if it doesn’t work as advertised.  I love all of the new equipment but Jessica Watson’s experiences are a good example of why some systems have to be low tech to be safe.   Pandora has an electronic autopilot and I have to wonder what would happen if we suffered a breakdown on a long trip.

Our next visit to Annapolis, and the real start to the sailing season, won’t happen till the end of the month.  I can’t wait.

>I can’t believe it.  After the long cold winter Pandora is about ready to be launched in Annapolis.  Brenda and I took a long weekend in beginning Thursday evening to work on getting Pandora ready to go in the water on March 29th. 

We spent the night aboard even though the boat was up on land in the Marina for three nights while we worked on the boat.  Fortunately, the ESPAR diesel heater that I installed last winter worked well and kept us warm each night.  With the nights still getting quite cool, we were happy to have the heater humming away.

The list of chores to focus on was daunting but we managed to get most of them done prior to heading back on Sunday afternoon. 

I have been struggling with a vibration for the last two seasons in the drive train and exhausted about every option to solve the problem with the exception of having the propeller worked on.  The prop on Pandora is an elaborate feathering propeller designed to minimize drag when the boat is sailing.  Pulling it off of the boat is not a simple task and involves breaking it into it’s individual pieces prior to pulling it off of the shaft. 

I sent it back to the distributor and was distressed to learn that it needed a major overhaul. The vibration that I had was because the gears in the feathering mechanism were worn and needed to be replaced.  Now that it’s back and I see how it operates now, I can see just how worn it was.  I am really pleased with how smooth the operation is now. 

The prop is designed to engage the proper pitch, in forward or reverse and yet move into a more “slippery” feathered position when I am sailing.  The ability to feather eliminates a good deal of drag on the boat in sailing mode.  You can imagine how a prop of this size, 22″ in diameter would slow things down.

In this shot you can see how much different the profile is.  Yes, it’s much more hydrodynamic.
Now that it’s done I can only marvel at how shiny it looks.  To me it looks like gold and it should, given what it cost to repair. These pictures will only be a memory as it will tarnish right away when it hits the water.

Along with loads of big and little chores, I polished the entire hull which took hours but the results are wonderful.  You can’t tell that the boat was built in 1998.   With a shiny hull and new standing rigging plus a newly painted mast, the boat looks terrific. 

Not a speck of dirt on the hull.   Now, just a bit of touchup on the bottom paint and she will go in ready to travel.

The one bad part of the weekend is that my new holding tank leaks. Fortunately, I had the idea of putting some red dye into the tank and filled it with water.  All was well until several hours had passed and the bilge began to fill with red water.   My first thought was how much work I had put into getting that tank to fit and how difficult it would be to get it out and fixed.  My second thought was what it would have been like if we had used the tank for sewage and had it leak into the bilge. I prefer the red dye.  Well, I know what I will be doing next Saturday. Time to rip the cabin apart again. Yuck.  At least he bilge won’t stink. 

They say that yachting is fixing boats in exotic places.  Well, the marina in Annapolis isn’t exotic but fix the boat I must. 

Well, back to work again.  Monday work awaits!