Archive | December, 2013

Powerboats – aka Stinkpots

December 31, 2013 by

STINKPOTS

Motorboats do not have the greatest reputation in the sailing world.  It is a bit like cats and dogs.    Gail quickly joined the fraternity of sailors on this point.   We have suffered our largest and most disruptive waves from passing boats – much more violent than a 40 knot wind.   The wind was 4 knots but stinkpots the size of homes were passing our exposed cove at 25 knots.   While Gail was cooking dinner, I called the waves.   60 seconds … 30 seconds … 15 seconds.   Gail used this time to brace the galley.   It was a free salad toss but we were having salmon asian style.

Anchored motorboats tend to rock more than Two Fish when hit with wakes generated by their own kind.   Then why don’t they slow down to reduce their wakes?   Not in Sud America and probably not in el munro. Some of them are very polite and slow down immediately when we are abeam. Hmmm, I wonder if they have ever watched their wake come ashore. We are always amazed by how close they pass us by, even at sea. I think we are a bit of a novelty as catamarans are infrequent here. We have tried setting a course away but the other boat’s reaction is often to turn with us so they don’t miss the viewing.

FUNNY AND TRUE

One of the local stinkpots is “Thanks Mellisa”.   Nice sentiment but it fell down when they chose to name their launch.   The owners insisted on an English name that was related to the mother ship.   So they came up with “Little Thanks Mellisa”.   I am so tempted to tell Melissa she was of no use.

ILHA ITANHANGA

Two Fish in Angra

Two Fish in Itanhanga

Every boat owner posts photos of their yacht in picturesque anchorages.  One reason we post these photos is that we rarely see the boat from this perspective.  Or, do we post them so our readers feel jealous?   We traveled to a new anchorage which offered the full package.   We went on a great hike to the top of the rocky cliffs, ate at a great beachside restaurant and watched Samba, the golden retriever swim out to boats begging for meat scraps from their afternoon bbq.   Her well-developed technique was successful until the owner curtailed the mooching.

View from Two Fish

View from Two Fish

 

We anchored using our 33kg Rocna, which has been good to us under easy conditions.   We have seen mud bottoms and light breezes that last few weeks.   That being said, I do spend plenty of time making sure we are stuck to the bottom.   We drop the anchor and chain and let the boat settle in to its position.   Then we attach the bridle.   We have the standard french bridle clip but some day we may swap it out for the huge Mantus clip.   We then wait some more, checking our transits for potential drift.   I then turn the Volvos back on for a power set with the engines in reverse.   I work the power up slowly and stop at 1500 rpm.    We also use the application Boat Monitor to warn us of anchor drag.   I think it is the best on the market but needs a few tweaks.  I very much like being able to see our tracks to visualize wind changes or anchor drags.    (Tech note for Boat Monitor:  I prefer telling it how far away the anchor is and direction rather than using the “drop” mode.)

MORE ON STINKPOTS

I have gone a bit over the top giving motorboats a hard time given that we use our dinghy a bunch.   But many of the Brazilian motor boat crowd seem to come from a different world.   40 to 50 foot boats tend to have two professional crew.   The owners can be seen on the flybridge while the pro crew steers from the inside.   The marinas expect ourt-of-control boats when the owners do choose to drive.   Dock crew come out immediately to tie arriving boats to a mooring ball.  We routinely decline.  I may have once heard some mumbling from Gail after that decision.

The Brazilian power boater loves their music.   It is hard wired at 11.   Lots of fun when playing pop music but seems off the mark  for slow vocal ballads.

Brazilian boats have different safety rules than US boats.   One difference is that many boats carry a flashing strobe light in addition to the normal navigation lights.    Feels like the police are after you all the time.   Two Fish has been chased by the police in Uruguay, so we prepared for another encounter with the cops until we saw the source.

Enough moaning.   We are having a great time and looking forward to the New Year’s Eve party on the beach with all our new friends whether motor, wind or foot powered.

Two Fish is hooked by a fishing line

December 29, 2013 by

 

At the end of one of my almost daily swims, I grabbed a scrub brush to clean up Two Fish’s water line.   She still had the brown tint of the Rio Plata and some orange by-product from the engine exhaust.    The proper technique is to use the paddleboard and our suction cup clamps as a sturdy platform to vigorously scrub the topsides. However, my focus was on goofing around more than on proper boat work.  The less efficient technique that I employed was treading water, and swiping at the boat with the brush.  My apologies to graduates of the nautical sanitation engineers college.

During the scrubbing of the waterline, the “two of everything” on a catamaran became tiresome.   While scrubbing away, I felt like I was cleaning a grossly over-sized MacMansion (a 7,000 square foot suburban home).   Two 44 foot hulls equal an 88 foot yacht .   This was just a passing thought, as I was enjoying thrashing in the water like an over-the-hill water polo player.   I kicked hard to reach parts of the topsides that were a few feet out of the water only to have gravity pull me back.  Overall, the topsides are in good shape – no dings yet in the gelcoat from poor docking.    It will happen someday – like a first ding in a new car.

As I was finishing up my cleaning project, I chose to dive under the boat to check the propeller.   We have 4-blade feathering props.   While sailing, the blades feather to create less drag.  I was greeted by a bird’s nest of small diameter polypropylene line wrapped around the prop shaft.    I was excited – a real job that requires swimming.

In order to set the right tone, I informed Gail of the importance and potential danger of the mission.   She cobbled together gear to help increase my chances of surviving unscathed: gloves, a folding knife with a serrated blade, and a dive line (Gail rigged a line from the toe rail abeam to the propeller for my use while descending).   All was set for a scene from a Bond film as I could use my knife to cut an enemy’s air supply.  Without frogmen to distract me, I made short work of the festooned prop shaft.   My technique was to cut the line with the blade facing away and then try pulling at the mess to remove loose bits.   I had two concerns – one rational and the other crazy.   Crazy was my fear that the engine could come alive and in no time the propeller would become a Cuisinart producing a fresh batch of Jason burgers.

The less dramatic risk that had a real probability was my concern of cutting myself on the Shark Shafts.   We had Shark Shafts installed on both prop shafts.  The Shark Shafts are after-market serrated knife rings added to our propeller shafts to cut lines away that might otherwise foul the prop.   Do we like them?  Without a video camera down by the prop, we will never know their efficacy.    While diving, I wished they were not there.  When Two Fish first hooked the fishing line, did the Shark Shafts cut enough of the line to keep the props running fine?   Instead of a mid-ocean repair, all I had was an at-anchor clean up?   There was evidence that something sharp had damaged the fishing line.  Shark Shafts are like a flu shot – you never really know if they worked.

A few paddle board photos to end the post.

Photo Tour of the boat

December 22, 2013 by

In response to requests from our readers to see more photos of the boat, I have posted a few photos.   It did require cleaning the boat and finding internet.  Both are tough jobs.   My tips for cleaning an Antares are to get on your hands and knees.   I use swiffer cloths for the wood and no soap.   (Yes, I am shocked that I am sharing cleaning tips, but this is the new Jason. Sorry, no photos.)   The second tip is to keep shoes off the boat.  Not even on tip-toes.   To fight bugs, we have dunked our fruit and vegetables in the ocean before they came aboard.   Bananas seem a great place for a village of odd bugs to live.

Another cleaning quandary is how to rid the boat of the new boat smell.   The boat closets leach a strong freshly made fiberglass odor.   It is so strong that cracker stored without a lid will taste like fiberglass.   Our solution is to air out the cabinets when in calm harbors.   Smarter tips from our readers?


Nav station

Nav station

Here is the photo of the navigation station.   We use it as the office desk while at anchor.   There is a great view of outside through the windows.   I kept an eye on Gail while she paddle-boarded from here yesterday.   What are all the electronics?   Left to right:

Iridium Extreme Satellite Phone:  Primary use: emergency phone,  Secondary use: very slow dowload of weather files.   The phone is in a cradle to access an outside antenna, but it can be used like a cell phone from the life raft if the worst happens.

Vesper AIS:   Primary use:  brains for our AIS.  This nifty device listens for short radio messages in electronic format from other boats with their location, speed, name etc.   It then puts this data on the network so all electronics can use it to avoid contact.  It also sends out data about Two Fish.    Vesper or Furuno brand AIS?   Vesper looks much cooler but needs an anchor alarm application ASAP.

Furuno Autopilot:   You can steer the boat from inside using a little knob.   Would not try this for docking but in cold weather, away from other big objects, it is a great option.

Speaker for Single Side Band radio:  Yup, it is a speaker.

VHF radio:   Used for chatting with nearby boats.   Everyone should be listening to channel 16.   And then we switch to another open chanel for longer chats.   “Huge supertanker, this is Two Fish”   “Two Fish this is the Super Carbon”  “Please continue on 71”

SSB radio:   Should be useful for long distance communication.   We have not tried it yet.

Black strip with white writing in second row:   Various places to plug in to the other satellite phone (KVH v3), TV, stereo and such.

White object in second row:   Modem for the SSB.   We will try that soon.

 

Keeping Watch, or, Is Someone Moving my Market?

December 17, 2013 by

A while ago, early in the morning, I (Gail) was on my first solo watch. I began thinking about some of my friends back home and started writing an email to tell them what I was doing. Usually, these emails in my head are one-way conversations. This time I wrote it down.

When on a passage for multiple days, someone needs to be on watch at all times. This is like today’s world of 24-hour markets where someone  always needs to be holding the trading book. But how do you know where to go, or what to look out for? At the start of a passage, the Navigator (or in market lingo, the Chief Investment Officer) will set a series of waypoints. The Navigator does this based on experience with the area, weather predictions, and knowledge of the boat. This is like your Strategic Asset Allocation. But how do you track your performance? The boat has a compass and GPS, just like the pricing  functions needed for Asset Allocation; GPS is your instantaneous pricing and the compass needle is your allocation.

Suppose you have a few asset classes and are trading (or using your rudders to steer) to maintain that allocation using an automated trading system (usual conditions such as continuous pricing, liquid assets and homoskedasticity apply). On the boat, the autopilot serves this function. It is programmed to either follow a course (allocation) by steering the boat at a steady angle to the wind, according to a compass direction or heading towards a waypoint. Strategically and tactically, you can not just stay on autopilot and walk away. You need your Network (Eyes and Ears), Bloomberg Terminal(Chartplotter/Radar), Financial Times(Weather Reports), and S&P 500(GPS).

Like market news, the weather report’s value depreciates over time; it is something you would like to get often. We can fetch weather reports by downloading electronic GRIB (gridded information in binary form) files while offshore. The fastest way is when we have a working cell modem but this only works within a few miles of the shore, near towns. Cell modems are like having your servers right next to the exchange using fiber optics. In Brazil, it also requires a Brazilian SIM card, which is like having a local banking license since it requires a Tax ID. The next best way is to use our KVH satellite phone, which is like DSL. The slowest method is to use our Iridium satellite phone; this is like a 2400 baud Hayes Modem – painful but it can come through when needed. What if I don’t know how to interpret this weather info? I can look to my Market Strategist, aka a Weather Router, who looks at all of the data and gives me an interpretation of where and when I should sail that is specific to my situation.
We also have a Radar and AIS, which appear on our chartplotter, and like your Bloomberg terminal tells us current news of interest. Radar sends out radio waves that reflect back from other objects, such as ships, buoys and land. I just looked at my Radar screen. A new entrant in the market? Will she be a problem? Is she following the same Asset Allocation as I am? Will that crowd the market? Maybe I should change course or delay action so as not to be affected by her. I slowly steer the boat a bit to the right.
AIS (Automatic Identification System) is another thing we watch. We broadcast our ID via AIS so that other vessels can see us. We also have a radar reflector to make it easier for other boats to see us.
Just like anything else, using your brain and taking your head out of the boat/screens is the best way to confirm what is going on. Sometimes you also need to pick up the phone. We can use our VHF radio to do this. Fortunately, in the ocean, as opposed to financial markets, your counterparties are best served by full transparency and if you hail them, they will tell you exactly what they are doing. I am not sure how the existence of Sunspots will affect this equilibrium state.
Now I am watching the other boat follow its path away from me. I readjust my Tactical Asset Allocation back to the Strategic Course and we are back on our way.
Next week’s lesson: Volatility Trading, or, Using Sails.

40+ knots of wind … How did we do?

December 15, 2013 by

Because I am writing this post, we clearly survived.   Let me cover the numbers first.   Max wind speed was 48.6 knots.  The Beaufort scale (think Richter scale for sailors) describes a force 9 wind as “High waves whose crests sometimes roll over. Dense foam is blown along wind direction. Some branches break off trees. Construction/temporary signs and barricades blow over.”  We did not see any construction signs blow over but there is a paucity of  construction 10 miles off the Brazil coast.  We only had 40+ knots for 6 hour stretches so the seas did not build to Mr Beaufort’s level.

Two Fish’s max speed over ground (SOG) was 19.0 knots (fast enough for a ticket in a school zone).   The top speed occurred when I turned the autopilot off and hand-steered.  At the top of the wave, I let the boat descend into the trough and set my personal record.   There is so much buoyancy in the bows that the boat was never thinking about burying a bow.

My first take-away from two days of near gale and gale conditions was massive confidence in the boat.  Inside the cockpit enclosure, it felt like 20 knots on a smaller boat.   However, it is not the wind but wild seas that sailors fear.  The professional skipper on our buddy boat, Live Wide, insisted that the wave heights to exceeded 5 meters, but I rated them at a more conservative 4 meters.  Two Fish has a reassuring motion in these following seas.  She never falls to hard into a trough and seems to lift herself gracefully over the wave sets.   Before this post drifts into a marketing piece for Antares, I must discuss the noises. Monohull sailors will be shocked by the loud noises that all catamarans produce in vigorous seas.   After 12 hours, I began to recognize certain sounds –   the whirring noise of the bobstays parting the water as the bows head down a wave is followed by the boat slowing down as it climbs up the next wave and the random slaps that the inner sides of the hull receive from opposing-angled waves passing under the bridge deck.   While under the master cabin bed working on the water maker, I watched the hull flex under the pressure of some of the waves.  All were within operating tolerances,  but it does take a few hours to be comfortable with the experience.   Gail’s reaction to the cacophony of new sounds was to bury herself face down in bed.   After 20 hours, I pried her out of bed and she did a portion of my watch.

 

TECHNICAL MUMBO JUMBO

ENCLOSURE:   My first thought was not to keep an enclosure up on any boat in over 30 knots.   Years ago I delivered a boat from NY to Florida and we kept the enclosure on up to 50 knots; however, I spent the entire time concerned it would rip away.   On the Antares in 45 knots true (37 kn apparent) there was no sign of stress.  I think this is because the enclosure was part of the initial design.   The enclosure was so solid it was tough to know that it was blowing hard.    I was wearing my PFD (lifejacket) but with the enclosure up, this was probably overkill.   Some other day I will discuss the Spinklock PFD with AIS.

SAILS:   We had two different set-ups in 40+ with true wind angles of 140-165.  The first time we had only a two-reef main.   This would not have been my first choice, but it was very easy to handle.  The full length battens kept the shape nicely and the preventer line rigged from the end of the boom to the mid-cleat created stability.   This set-up would be good for breaking waves as the main is much higher than the genoa.   For our second encounter, we had the genoa at 1.5 reefs.   The genoa leaves you prepared for further windspeed increases, but the sail often loses shape as you sail down waves.

WEATHER HELM:   The main-only set up had about 9 degrees of weather helm.  This is not ideal for speed, batteries and steering gear.   The helm was more neutral under genoa.

ROLLER MAIN:    Our buddy boat, Live Wide, has the furling main so we had multiple chances to compare this to our slab reef main.  The roller main is probably better than the tradition main when the breeze exceeds 40 knots.   This is because the roller allows for easy deployment and can be furled to a smaller size than the double reefed traditional main.   The two reef main on the traditional rig is about the size of the genoa.   Too large for over 40.   Several more experienced owners have wished that the boat had a third reef or a deeper second reef.   Too early for me to weigh in on the topic.

REROUTE JIB SHEETS:   We found that having the sheet led to a block forward as a barber hauler and then to a second block attached to the aft cleat was ideal for this wind condition.   The barber hauler block allows for a nice sail shape and the aft block gives a sheeting angle that protects the enclosure.   It is key that this block comes from the cleat as the sideways load would be too much for the toe rail.   The downside of this set up is a sheet cutting across the stairs.

CHAFING:   We were careful to protect the main from chaffing on the spreaders.   We did observe chafe on the preventer line and main sheet blocks.   The cause was using undersized line for the preventer and temporarily over-trimming the main sheet.

FOOD: Lots of Jamon y Queso on Pan. Second round we pre-thought a bit more and made some Pasta Salads to keep in the fridge. For Gail it was strictly a Quaker granola cookie diet.

 

Photos in Transit

December 2, 2013 by

Not much time for one of my long-winded posts; this might be welcomed by readers who prefer more photos and less history from the 1800’s.   The trip across the river Plate is known for strong headwinds and we were not let down.   We hid in Puerto Sauce for a night(mentioned in previous posts) which was a bit of a let-down since our previous visit provided us with a lifetime supply of paper mill smells.    I did very much enjoy the night approach to Sauce since I knew the harbor well but was still challenged while I try to regain my night vision.   I motored in slowly, except when cross winds required a bit of gusto.   I had to thread the needle between two anchored boats dancing at their moorings.   It felt very close in the dark of the night.   Guess what? In the morning it looked even closer.

We also have enjoyed leaving the silt waters of the Plata and seeing blue/green ocean water.   We can finally test our water maker!   Fingers crossed that it will convert ocean water into drinking water for our floating city.

I am surprised by the paperwork and radio work that sailing in this region requires.   Every port entry and exit requires a call to the control and 1 to 2 hours of paper work in a few different offices.    The staff are always friendly and the folks at Sauce were excited to see us again.  I tried not to let my face show that if I had had a choice, I might have chosen a different port.

 

We are now at our planned stop in Punta del Este, a Yachting hub made more exciting by the finish of a popular sailboat race from Buenos Aires to Punta.   As we arrived at 2 am there were many racers also arriving.   Our radar helped us to avoid meeting them on the water.  The boats showed up easily with Sea Gain set to 40, the other controls left on automatic and range set at 1 mile.  I will soon figure out how to show two radars at once on the left screen.   This way you can be zoomed in to avoid small Brazilian fishing boats while keeping a broader view for storms.   All of the large ships have AIS so they appear on the chart.   Makes the dark night much less scary.

We will leave mid day and are expecting very light air for 20 hours.   Then the breeze will increase to 25-30 but will be from the south, giving us a comfortable and safe ride North to Rio Grande, Brazil.   This leg is about 2 days.    Water rationing?   Nope.   With 4 people aboard we have used 3/8 of our water over 2 days.   Food rationing?  Nope.   Everyone besides me does not eat a bunch during passages.   We have pre-prepared some pasta salads and other simple foods.

Keep following us on our tracker but keep in mind it often takes a holiday.   Do not panic when it stops publishing, we are still fine.

It is all North from here.  Expect to hear from us soon when we get to Brazil.