Fall Ride Turns Bad

So I set off with a friend of mine last Sunday for a day long ride.  We met for breakfast and headed off toward the US border.  We took Chuckanut Drive which is beautiful and runs along the water.  There were many bikes out and it turns out that we were in a lot of "Oyster Run" traffic.  Near Anacortes Washington, I stopped for a red light and shortly after stopping was hit from behind by a couple on their Harley.

 I went down with the bike, here are the 

right side panels scraped

 

The passsenger foot peg and bracket to hold 

the hard saddle bag severely damaged

 

Damaged muffler.  It was bent upward 

and the hard saddle bag was torn off

Hard bad on right held on by bungee

Out for a Ride

Off for a ride with a good friend of mine tomorrow.

Me on my Concours and he on his BMW

Geoffrey West

Geoffrey West will be a keynote speaker at our conference on affordable housing and off-site construction being organized by our department at the University of Alberta (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering - Engineering and Construction Management).  My research concerns cities and their organization and growth and will hopefully intersect with what is being explored at the Santa Fe Institute.

Ship's Sextant

Slowly we continue to check off items from our "Off-shore Cruising List".  This item is the ship's sextant.  In the age of GPS I know it seems quaint, but it may be the only reliable navigational aide if the electronics are fried by lightning, give out or if the US government turns off the accessibility because of one crisis or another.  It does require some skill and you need to do the math using the reduction tables.

This was my first (and probably only) venture onto eBay but we now have a C.Plath Navistar Professional made in Hamburg in 1983.  Now I have to worry about the skill and the sight reduction tables.

C. Plath Navistar Professional

Close up of arc vernier.  The orange button is to light 

up the readings in low light

Certificate with date 

All Fixed

But it is clear that the boat was not properly commissioned.  IP will be receiving a description of what was done improperly. Again my thanks to Geoff for his help and expert work.

here are some pictures of the crossing PRIOR to the blocks separating.

Rigging Woes II

It's a beautiful September 1st morning in Nanaimo BC.  Here we are at the dock in nanaimo Harbour with our mainsail draped over the starboard side.

Here is the boom and you can see an empty pad eye.  Right in front of it was another that carried 2 blocks:  one organized both the mainsail outhaul and the furling line, and the other the mainsail sheet, leading the lines back to the cockpit.  You can see the pad eye is missing.

Here is one of the blocks lying at the base of the mast

Here is the real problem:  the resulting jam of the in-mast furling.  With 20 knot winds, the separation of the blocks ended up separating a line (or it could have been the other way around, we don't know) and the jamming of the line in the roller mechanism.

More on the repairs later...

Rigging Woes

So we set out for Nanaimo with our friends on The Job Site and met with a rough crossing. What we did not expect was having a block separate from the pad eye under the boom and cause a cascade of trouble that ended in a jammed main mast furler. We had to take down the mainsail. So now we are in Nanaimo harbour with a mainsail covering our cockpit and starboard side. We called Nanaimo Yacht Services on their emergency number and Geoff Pettifer came by. Life saver!!! Repairs will be made today.

Here is the job site along side under sail with reefed main and genoa.

 

Our friends' boat: a Hunter 34:

The Job Site