December Just About Upon Us

On December 16, 1975, in my first year at MIT, there was a performance of Handel's Messiah part 1 in the Institute's rotunda on Massachusetts Avenue. For days before the event the posters read: "bring your scores". I brought a score and from the 2nd floor railing with hundreds of people, the MIT Chamber Players, Choir and 4 magnificent student soloists sang through Part 1 of Handel's Messiah with everyone in the audience - on the main floor and on 2 levels of overlooking balconies - joining in at the choruses. It was absolute magic and I will never for get it. Christmas IS this piece from handle's Messiah. Enjoy.

AIS

Terratima is equipped with AIS.  This is an Automatic Identification System that reports a ships position, speed and heading as well as the name and MMSI number of the vessel.  Someone sent me a link to a web site where you can track ships around the world by their AIS signal.  I put in the name of our sailboat just for fun and it turned up in the web site's data base.  Someone had taken a photo of the boat and put the name in the database.  We have no idea who that was (it says Judy Findlay), but here is the photo:  as near as we can tell, it was taken as we were approaching Nanaimo.

  Terratima Approaching Nanaimo Harbour

(we think)

The photo can be seen (and our boat tracked when we are sailing) at MarineTraffic.com.

AC Panel Changes

The Island packet is a superbly built yacht.  I can not say the same for those who ultimately commissioned her for our use.  All of the issues we have had with the boat has turned out to be with the equipment added at commissioning or things done at commissioning.  The latest issues have been:

1. Failure of the circulating pump in our hydronic heating system.  The pump was a cheap one and it has totally failed.  The replacement is a robust pump that you can service and not just throw away.  The wiring for the pump was poorly executed and this was corrected for durability when we repalced the pump.
2. The AC panel was badly done, so we activated the 2nd bus (Bus B) and redistributed the load.  part of the problems we found were the number of connections to a point that really only allowed for a maximum of 2 connectors, a burned out neutral board and a connection to the galvanic isolator that was poorly done.  

 All is now well with the panel although the light bar on the B Bus will be replaced and tagged next week. 

Same old, same old.....

Marine Forecast

Winds

Issued 04:00 PM PST 18 November 2012

Tonight and Monday Gale warning in effect.
Wind southeast 30 to 40 knots diminishing to southeast 15 to 25 this evening then becoming southeast 15 early Monday morning. Wind veering to southwest 15 to 20 Monday evening.

Extended Forecast

Issued 04:00 PM PST 18 November 2012

Tuesday Wind southeast 15 to 25 knots.

Wednesday Wind southwest 15 knots.

Thursday Wind southeast 15 to 25 knots.

Weather & Visibility

Issued 04:00 PM PST 18 November 2012

Tonight and Monday Periods of rain.

Looking Up

Here is a picture from deck looking up the mast in the late afternoon sun.  The sails - headsail and staysail are all lit up and the mainsail is furled in the mast itself.  You can see the furling line and worm gear at the bottom right.  In the upper left you can see the radar reflector hoisted aloft under the main spreader.

Repaired Bail

The bail that had failed and released both the main sheet block, the main sail furling line and the main sail out haul was repaired this morning.  We replaced the bail and put the two blocks on separate bails.

 The block to the right is the main sheet block

The location of the main sheet block is not well placed.  It should really be (according to my rigger ), aft of the vang.  This spring, we will have another bail added and the block relocated. This will also allow us to add a boom brake in the right position.