I love simple functional technology

I just read about the T-ring system for attaching sheets to headsails. Its so easy and prevents the need for a bowline knot for each sheet. We all know that when tacking the bowline can catch on the shrouds and prevent sheeting in the sail quickly. Maybe on my next headsail I will get a T-ring. Take a look.

Happy new year

Its been a while since I posted but with a bit of nudging from someone, who will be nameless but you know who you are, I am going to start again over the winter. So here goes with an update.

We have kept Prairie Gold on the water for the winter 2013/14 season. Our goal was to try to use the boat at least once over the winter between Nov 1st 2013 and May 1st 2014. Given that our condo looks over the harbor, we have previously been frustrated during nice weather wishing we could sail. Well, the end of December conclusion is that it was worth it. We have been out five times since November 1st and hope to get out once more, hopefully January 1st. I have managed to get to the "tree house" several additional times and find myself doing little jobs, even turning my computer on and working for a while. On Thanksgiving day I came down to Prairie Gold, just because, and my neighbor Chuck was here with fishing poles. It was really cold, but we dangled lines for smelt. Then Chuck had the great idea of bloody Mary's. All before 10am. Why not!

I didn't quite know when to winterize while being in the water. Near the end of November there was going to be a cold snap and several people who were leaving boats in the water were in a flurry of activity. Given that I had all of the items on the boat I went ahead and winterized PG. This allowed me to test my new electric oil changer. I put the tube down the dipstick hole, attached to the battery and off she went. It took a little more time than I expected. Then I realized that this was a design feature and that the small print mentioned the need to drink an IPA with each oil change. Instructions duly noted, I obliged.

We normally winterize when we get to our destination to take the boat out of the water. When is the right time to do so when you are in the water? Hmmm. the scientist in me is testing this out. Of course the most important thing is to not allow water to freeze. Cold water 32F and sea water 28F. I winterized our fresh water system and the engine sea water cooling system. But was it yet necessary? So I have been tracking many temperatures since then - sea water, cabin temperature, engine temperature, and ambient temperature. The current conclusion is that the sea water temperature dictates the engine, and cabin temperature. However, I will need to keep coming down to collect more data (as well as checking that the beer hasn't frozen). Currently, the sea water temperature is 37F, the cabin and engine temps are 36F. The great thing is that with the refrigerator turned off and winterized I can keep beer perfectly chilled in there with no need to use electricity.

While we are enjoying the occasional sail, it does take a while to prepare to leave the dock. We have 15 docklines attached to Prairie Gold - see some beneath. And there are days when the winds have really got up there that I have been glad they are all attached.

A chilly December day with snow on PG

Frostbite Sailing - nov 2013

We will stay on the water for the 2013/14 winter season

We have decided after years of agonizing about the winter that we will keep Prairie Gold on the water for the winter. If interested in being added to a mailing list of sailing opportunities ( alternative name - winter therapy sessions) send me a message or leave a comment and I will add you to the mailing list. We expect to sail Saturdays and or Sundays, weather permitting, throughout November and December, March and April. There might be opportunities in January and February too, it just depends on the weather.

Admission fee - strong back, warm clothes, and BYOB for afterwards.

Boston Islands Race

Our intention was to sail to Scituate for the weekend. However, the winds were low and as we started out past Hull we were just to slow for it to be pleasant. Consequently we headed back to George’s Island and picked up a mooring ball and barbequed burgers and ate them with a salad. On Saturday there was the annual Boston Harbor Islands sailboat race that took a course from Spectacle Island, down the Nubbles (between Long Island and Nixes mate) south of George’s island and then a 180 degree turn up the Narrows and back to Spectacle. The winds were low, sailing was slow, but it was a fantastic sight.

Here are some scenes.

Masses of Sailboats jockeying for position between Long Island and Spectacle Island.

At this point the boats are tacking down the channel from the Nubbles past George's Island

From the mooring at George's looking SE we can see the top of the mast of the boat "Shout" that is leading the race and is heading north on the eastern side of George's island heading up the Narrows.

Others are in hot pursuit

57nm, 11hours solo, winds to 30 knots. What a great Sunday

Sailing on Sunday included a diversity of conditions and lots of winch grinding. I woke at about 6am to torrential rain and high winds. So as not to get soaking wet at the beginning of a long day I waited until about 7am to cast of from the mooring ball. For the next 6 hours, all weather predictions were wrong.

Here is the old faithful red daymarker #2 which is the meeting point for the Salem water taxi so that they can show you to their transient moorings. When I arrived on Thursday, the lady on the launch said “Oh Prairie Gold, you know where the transient moorings are, go ahead and pick one up”. I guess we head here often.

As I headed out I took a picture of this sorry sailboat. Apparently it broke free of its mooring in Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and washed up on shore. The Salem people brought it back to life, and reattached it to a mooring ball, but the owner doesn’t want to pay the fees. So it is sitting there in limbo. Its companion way is open, its batteries must be flat, and is presumably accumulating water. A launch driver told me that everyone is just waiting for it to sink so that something can be done. So sad.

After the storm front passed there was an immediate drop in winds to about 6 knots ☹ and they shifted from south to west instantly. This was not in my plans that were based on Sailflow predictions. I motored out with the main up past the Miseries and went on to Stellwagen bank. I was heading straight into 6 foot swells at 6kts and was dying to use the head. In my rush to get sailing I forgot to “go”. Any way, after bouncing around a little, I managed to gain relief and get back to the helm – I will check for bruises. I hunted around Stellwagen for about 45 minutes but found no sign of humpbacks. Later on channel 78 I heard one of the Boston high speed whale watching cats bemoaning their lot that they hadn’t seen anything either. Well I guess I can go back, and I am sure I will.

Brunch consisted of bbqed bacon wrapped steak (health food) salad made form our veggie share including beetroot, corn on the cob, and homefries plus a glass of red wine. Life is good.

As I headed back from Stellwagen I was able to get close hauled and sail at a reasonable pace. However, my course was pretty much back to Salem. With time the wind turned further to the south allowing me to slowly turn towards Boston. As the winds subsided again I decided to change headsails. Remember, I had put the 90% headsail on last Friday morning in preparation for high winds. I started to lower the 90% and when it was ¾ of the way down I decided that this might not be a good move on my part as I was solo – seas were still quite bouncy - so I hoisted it again and just decided to sail a little slower. What a great decision it turned out to be.

On VHF the Boston coastguard kept giving weather announcements about a line of storms (see my previous post for the Doppler radar), that the storms were producing winds of up to 30kts, thunderstorms and after the storm passed there would be a wind shift to the west. Well this was great information, however, they didn’t start providing it until after the storm had passed and continued to provide it until the afternoon when it was beautifully sunny. I guess the good news is that there was little else for them to do on this Sunday.

When I was a few miles east of the NE Graves lighthouse the wind really kicked up again. It is now that I was pleased that I had not changed the headsail. I was close hauled sailing all the way back to Constitution marina with sustained winds of 20 kts, gusting to 30kts. I quickly reefed the main sail and was able to work beautifully in these winds. There was almost no weather helm and I was flying. I have been told before that you pick up speed when you reef because the rudder is no longer acting as a brake. I was passing every sailboat, most of them with full sail and really having problems dealing with the wind.

As I entered Boston harbor 4:15pm came the start of the Americas cup race in San Francisco. Oracle US (with one US sailor) was trailing 8-3, with the Kiwi boat only needing one more race to win the cup. I had an ear piece in my right ear connected to my phone listening to the commentary. The excitement of the race together with my own racing was awesome. In the harbor, winds were changing direction and speed, sometimes 6 knots sometimes 25 knots and with wind shifts of 30 degrees. Then in addition I had to avoid a cruise liner backing out of the port into the main channel, avoid one sailor from a collision because they don’t now that starboard tack is the stand on vessel – I should have asked for a penalty - and then had to avoid some tankers as I was tacking across the channel. This is what makes Boston sailing so fantastic, changing winds, lots of traffic, narrow channels, and I forgot to mention I was tacking against the current.

I arrived back to Constitution marina after 11hours of solo sailing for 57nm. A little tired. I decided to have a second glass of wine from the bottle, talked to my better half who is away, and decided I needed to head home soon otherwise I would fall asleep on Prairie Gold.

The fall is here, the winds are up.

By the way, Oracle won both of the races on Sunday – it is now 8-5. Tune in at 4:15pm eastern time today Monday for the next race. Go Oracle. I love their fighting spirit and unwillingness to buckle when their backs are against the wall.

Now I should go to work so that I can sail again soon.

Rain rain go away

Its been raining like crazy for the past hour. Just had my first cup of coffee for the morning, getting my thermos of coffee ready, then will head out. The wind is from the south at 20kts, and will turn SW, to W to NW during the day. So the current plan is to head out close hauled in a SE direction then keep close hauled and circle back to Boston with the change of wind direction. Good news is the radar is not showing thunder cells

So what's next?

You may ask, "where did you go today?" I didn't. I got back form the retreat late and by the time I was ready to sail it was 3pm and based on wind direction the earliest that I would reach a destination would be 10pm, or later. So I decided to sit tight, relax, drink a beer, cook dinner, and take an early night. My intention is to be up bright and early tomorrow, Sunday, and head to Stellwagen bank to look for whales. However, the wind looks to be gusting 30kts out there so I will wait and see conditions in the morning. Fortunately, I already put the 90% headsail on Prairie Gold before going to the retreat. So I am ready. One more beer, then sleep time.

Boston to salem ready for the retreat

After finishing my meeting at BioPharm in Boston yesterday I sailed - well motored - over to Salem.

There was about an hour of decent sailing but then the winds just died. However, the wind projections suggested that I wouldn't be able to sail at all, so I take it as a good day. Dinner was at Finz - oysters and IPA - then back to the boat for a good night of sleep.

Work started at about 4am and then I went up to watch the sun rise. Not a bad way to work. Realizing that I can connect my computer through a personal hotspot on my phone has changed my life. Doesn't matter where I am I can get the work done and enjoy the ocean too. Do you think there might be even more time on the boat next year? At noon, I will go to land for the Tufts Neuroscience retreat.

This morning there is no wind and I will take the opportunity to change the 135% genoa to our 90% headsail because tomorrow and Sunday, when I will be sailing, are projected to be high wind days. Since I am solo I will pull back on sail area for safety.

Solo weekend sail ahead

Tomorrow, Thursday afternoon I will sail solo over to the Beverly area where we have a work retreat Friday and Saturday. Noonish on Saturday I will then spend time sailing solo to a destination or two before returning back to Boston. Wind predictions are for ~20kts at the weekend, so it should be a fun time.

Salem again

On Saturday we headed out from Constitution Marina with the intent of going somewhere for the night. We used the faithful spinnaker and started down the north channel towards Salem on a broad reach. The wind dropped so we used the engine and once we were close to Marblehead, a sea breeze kicked up that allowed us to sail close hauled, with several tacks, into Salem harbor where we picked up a mooring ball from Salem Water taxi.

For dinner, we didn’t fancy anything spectacular and went to the Tavern in the Square for burgers. Back to Prairie Gold, one episode of Walking Dead and we were asleep by 9pm. After a great night of sleep on the gently rocking water we decided to head back to Salem for breakfast and the launch driver recommended Red’s. It was fantastic. Also their throughput was incredible. A table next to us left, within 40secs their table was cleaned and set for the next group. In another 40 seconds the group was seated and in 10 more seconds their drinks order was taken. Gordon Ramsey would have been proud of the service. The food was excellent and despite the throughput you didn’t feel rushed.

We expected to motor all the way home but as we got to Marblehead the wind came up. We were on a SE heading, close hauled racing others. After about 7nm we tacked and headed for home. As we approached Deer Island, the wind died and we motored to Lower Middle, at which time the wind grew again. Just before we raised the sail a sailboat tacked right across our path that caused us to turn immediately to port and pull a 360 degree turn to avoid a collision. Since we were motoring at 6kts at the time it wasn’t a pleasant manoever for Yolande who was standing at the time and didn’t have a firm hand hold. While I do realize that sailing vessels have right of way, shouldn’t sailors use common sense? This was a stupid maneuver on the sailboat’s part and gets good sailors a bad name.

With the sail up we had a glorious sail home. This gave us time to watch the second race of the day for the America’s cup. Those AC72s are phenomenal. I would love to get on one.

Is that a car in the water?

Mooring under sail

Just moored under sail power at spectacle island

Made it home

My type of marina

Motoring home. Then 4kts of wind came up so for the last mile we got out the sails. It was slow, but a fun way to end the weekend. 

Breakfast on a wet morning

Waiting for thunderstorms to clear. We are in the Hull MA area and stayed overnight at sunset marina - no sun this weekend 

Heading north

As always at the weekend we don't know  where we are going . However winds are driving us along the north shore. When two boats are sailing in the same direction there is always a race. This race lasted for an hour with crew on both boats trimming sails. In the end we won - would I have written with a different outcome? 

Running out of diesel

I have always been a little concerned about whether the E on the fuel meter and an empty tank are one and the same. I now know that they are not. We were returning from a weekend trip to Scituate. Winds were very light and we used the spinnaker most of the way into George's island. We then powered up and had an 1/8th of a tank of diesel for the last 5nm. Given that the tank contains 40 gallons when full you might expect we had at least 5 gallons remaining, which at 2,500rpm we know will provide 10 hours of motoring. So at a speed of 5kts and only 5nm to our marina we should only use 1/10th of our fuel budget. Sunday afternoons can be quite busy in the harbor - an understatement. We were at the narrowest part near the airport and suddenly engine noise stopped - and there was only about 4kts of true wind.

So we jumped into action, headsail came out quickly we turned 160degrees to get on a close haul so that we could make a little wind and have control over our position. We always carry spare fuel and at this moment I was a happy camper (skipper). We quickly added 5 gallons, then I went beneath to bleed the diesel lines. After two attempts and one tack the iron genny was running again.

We made it back to the marina, our friends (non sailors) departed and I don't think they realized potential severity of the situation. A sailing friend texted to me "Sea Tow was probably circling like vultures". Another example of being happy that I maintain Prairie Gold and understand many of the systems and how to fix, or at least jury-rig them.

Whale watching at Stellwagen Bank

Although this is a sailing blog we couldn't help but post about a whale watching trip that we took. Its in our back yard so we feel justified.

Recall notice on Lite Cylinder Propane tanks

These fiberglass propane tanks are great as the don't rust. However, there is a recall notice on them so had to dispose of mine.

Summary video of our two week sailing vacation from Boston to Belfast Maine

Typical day in Boston harbor

Up the mast

During our recent vacation the windex came loose. Fortunately, a low weight friend was willing to be hoisted up the mast. Here is the screw that needed tightening - thankfully and easy fix

A view of the front of the mast with the halyard and bowline used to hoist my friend

Here is the view from the top of the mast

Day 13 – Salem to Boston

Our last day was the same leg, but in reverse, as our first of the vacation. Since we didn’t need to be home until 5pm we thought we would get up at a relaxed pace. The wind was blowing all night and had not let up in the morning and since it was coming form the NE Salem harbor, which faces east, was a little rolly. We checked the weather forecast and saw that there was a small craft advisory with winds about 20kts sustained and the radar show a band of rain over Philadelphia and New York. Since they typically travel NE up the coast we expected to get wet again later. However, the strong winds were our savior as we made record time to Boston.

We dropped the mooring line at 9:30am and headed out of Salem Harbor. As soon as we turned to the south we had the sails up and continued to sail until we were at the marina. Once we passed Marblehead we turned SW and had 6-8 foot swells. Since the winds were from the NE and we were heading SW we were on a dead run to the north channel of Boston harbor. We went wing-on-wing in 20kt winds (true) and were screeching along at hull speed. At times we would surf to 8.5 kts. We made record time to the marina. We have done this trip many times and normally expect it to take 4-5hours for the 21 nm. We made it in 3h 15 mins.

As we were approaching Boston we saw the good old sites – they sent out the welcoming committee in the form of the tourist speed boat “Codzilla”.

We had to navigate around four tankers anchored in the harbor as well as an exclusion zone for the LPG tanker.

We saw the Nantucket Lightboat, that is being refurbished, downtown Boston and one big sailboat

The coastguard station,

The marina

And of course – Old Ironsides, The USS Constitution which is adjacent to our marina, “ The Constitution Marina”.

Some statistics from the trip
13 legs
470 nm in total
53 hours of engine use (ouch that hurts, but it doesn’t hurt our pocket as much as a powerboater’s)
18 harbor seal sightings
18 dolphin sightings
and we caught one meager little mackerel. Mind you dragging a lure at 5-7kts is not ideal for fishing, so I will take it as a mark of pride that we didn’t catch more because it meant that we were actually going places.

Day 12 – Kittery to Salem via the Annisquam River

Today’s trip turned out to be much drier than yesterday’s – no rain but we started with fog in Kittery. We disembarked at 8:15am to ensure we had a low current in the marina and then headed south down the Piscataqua river. The river was quiet, but after sighting a harbor seal, the fog set in as can be seen beneath.

Our radar system did a good job of helping us navigate around local fishing boats, and a sailboat that was heading upstream. We could see just outside of the harbor/river was a large radar reflection that turned out to be a tanker. This was on our intended path but the radar allowed us to divert.

After another 30 minutes the fog cleared but winds were low so we motored over to the Annisquam river. This is always a great place to come through. However, if you are doing it for the first time make certain that you do it with several feet of water above low tide and preferably on a rising tide. We just happened to hit at high tide, so it was a breeze.

Here is the northern, Ipswich Bay side of the Annisquam

We call this waterside property

Though the charts make the trip seem simple, it is east to get disoriented and think that the next buoy that you see is the next buoy on the chart. Be cautious and read their numbers to make certain that this is the case. One time coming under the fixed bridge from north to south we nearly made this mistake since the chart suggested that the next buoys are straight ahead. However, the ones that we saw were the subsequent buoys, however, with a quick check we realized we were missing a pair that were hidden to our port just beyond the bridge amongst moored vessels.

The next major issue – that’s an over statement – is that you may need to ask for the railroad bridge to be lifted (VHF channel 13). Time of day is important as if its train rush hour it may take a while. However, we have not had this problem in our transits through the river. At the bridge the river makes a 90 degree turn so it’s not possible to see if anybody is coming in the opposite direction. Listen to chatter on channel 13 to get guidance and post a bow look out.

After passing the railroad bridge you next meet the Cape Ann marina, then there is a 90 degree turn to port and the Blynman bridge. Again channel 13 communicates with the operator.

After having safely navigated the Annisquam river we headed south out of Gloucester harbor turned SW and the wind picked up at about 2pm. We had a glorious sail into Salem harbor and picked up a Salem Water Taxi (Channel 68) mooring ball (5:15pm). Sailing in the Beverly, Salem Marblehead area is really fun. There are generally good winds and lots of boats, islands and shallow spots to navigate. When this is taken together with tacking against the wind it can be an exhilarating time. I have iNavX on my iphone which allows me to help with navigation if Yolande is at the helm. We were able to sail right up to Red Daymarker #2 to meet the launch service that showed us to the buoy.

We went into town to a local Indian restaurant “Passage to India”. It was a great meal and then we picked up a few cool ones to bring back to the boat. Sunset was beautiful and then the winds picked up. They have been pumping all night and it’s a small craft advisory for the day. Winds from the NE so we should have a great sail back to Boston.