Hauling the Boat

It looks like we will haul her on March 4, 2013.  We cannot get out of our slip unless it is high tide.  There is a sand bar about 30 feet to starboard and at low tide we cannot turn without running onto the sand bar.  So it has to be high tide:

Looks like around 10 AM on the graph.

Bad Science

The Whole Idea...

... of a cruising sailboat is summed up here:

We will follow as soon as we can.

La Familia Sailing the World

With little ones aboard:  worth watching

Therapy - Signal Flags

In their roll-up storage folder:

Using the Wind

In the age of sail, the shipping routes followed the winds with outbound and returning routings taking best advantage of the prevalent wind directions for the hemispheres.  With current sail technology, the routings are still similar.  Meanwhile, diesel powered ships go anywhere they like, but something is lost in the process - in addition to the cleanliness of the air and the water.

16th Century Portuguese and Spanish Trade Routes

The clipper routes to New Zealand and Australia took advantage of the Southern Ocean which has no land masses to interrupt the fetch of the wind.

The Clipper Route using the "Roaring Forties"

This nifty animation captures the routings around the world during the age of sail.

The Physics of Sailing

This is worth watching...

Haul Out Update

The boat is coming out of the water the week of March 4. Everything is in except the solar panels and the pactor modem.  Spring cleaning is at hand.

The Well Dressed Yacht

I was curious about how one would "dress" the ship for festive occasions.   Here was the diagram I found on line:

Therapy - Signal Flags

Here are a couple examples of the outcome of working on the International Signal Flags kit from Sailrite.

The signal flags: India, Papa, Yankee

IPY

(Island Packet Yachts)

and....

The signal flags for 4, 6, and 5

IP 465

Valentine's Day and...

Wind (knots)	E 8	Air temperature (°C)	5
Conditions	N/A	Relative humidity (%)	N/A
Visibility (km)	N/A	Dew point temperature (°C)	N/A
Pressure and tendency (kPa)	N/A	Humidex / Wind Chill	--
Sunrise	7:23 PST	Sunset	17:31 PST

Update II

The SSB radio (ICOM M802), the antenna tuner, antenna, grounding plane, new AGM batteries and solar panels have all been ordered and will be in shortly.  We will haul the boat to have the work done. For those of you unfamiliar with liveaboards "dry-docking" their boats, we do NOT go elsewhere while the boat is in the yard. We continue to live aboard although a few things get a bit odd.  One such item is getting on and off.  last time we did this, we rented a steel stair complete with a handrail to get us to the rear swim platform, then onto the boat.  It's high up, so great care is required.

We'll be in the yard for between one and two weeks as the work is done. Installing the  battery bank will be the first thing done, then solar panels and regulator.  Then the radio with all related fuses, wiring and panel breaker additions. We will document the work just to give everyone an idea of that was done and how.  

Flying

I was clearing out a bunch of old files on my Mac and found these two photographs of a trip I took with a couple of friends many years ago.  We flew a Cessna 182 RG (that is, with retractable gear) to go hiking in Wyoming.  This Cessna - C-GMUG - had turbocharging, so she could fly really high - much higher than we could breath, so it was equipped with oxygen.  In the photo below you can see the oxygen nasal tube connected to an outlet above and to my right.  You can also see that we are flying at just over 13,500 feet.

The photo below is our short final approach on to runway 21 at Laramie,Wyoming.  The field elevation is over 7,000 feet!!  When we took off a few days later, the outside air temperature was just below 90 degrees F.  Density altitude being what it is, the takeoff required a good bit of the runway - even with turbocharging.