May 2009 Archives

This project essentially started 6 weeks ago, but today it is finally complete! Back in April we had a new AIS receiver delivered, and soon after determined the installation would be trickier that expected. The AIS receiver enables us to see commercial tracking and get GPS coordinates, range, heading, speed, and more - in a fashion that is superior in many ways to radar (assuming commercial ships are using their AIS transmitter as required now by international law). The project took so long because of needing to get more information or equipment, and because of other trips (like the backpacking vacation) and projects at home keeping me from getting back to Tahina.

We first had to figure out our navigation network diagram (the manufacturer did not include this information in our boat manual for some, unfortunate, reason). So, I had to track dozens of wires to figure what went where. Next, I called the manufacturer and got some tips (better explained than in the manual) on how best to configure the network. On that trip, I realized I would need to run a different wire between the helm and the nav station in order to connect four wires (instead of the two wires currently run). At the time, I tried going to local marine stores and couldn't find a suitable wire.

Back home, it hit me I could use a simple ethernet wire for the wire run. So, the next time I was out my Dad helped me run the wire when he was out for the rip-roaring sail - this was a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, we ended up having to buy a wire "snake" to get through the nooks and crannies of our boat, and then puzzling out a tricky situation getting the wire to run down a narrow pipe to get it to the helm. This ended up taking several hours, and we ran out of time (and energy) to complete the AIS install again.

Today, I finally felt ready to complete the install. It took a few hours to strip all the little wires, connect them at the helm, then mount the AIS receiver unit and connect power and the rest of the wires, cut another wire to connect to the VHF dataport, and I had to solder the wires to the plug for the VHF. After everything was hooked up, I fired up the navigation system and amazingly enough: it worked! You can see from the screenshots below that in this view we could see two ships (triangle shapes in "magenta" with names by them) up the Cape Fear river (about 8 miles away) on the chartplotter. And, when I select one of the ships I get a bunch of data including the name of the ship ("INTEGRITY"), size, vessel type ("Tanker"), position, status ("Under Way"), Destination ("Charleston"), and more.

The AIS will be a great addition to our situational awareness (especially at sea) because we will not only see the ships on radar, but also know more about them and their exact positions. Further, the data enables us to know with great precision whether a boat will cross our path well in advance. Our navigation software can take this information and issue an alarm automatically if a ship will pass within a certain distance. This gives us plenty of opportunity to take corrective action and/or contact the ship to verify they know about us.

The other wire I made to our VHF from the AIS has the added benefit of getting GPS data to the VHF and our radio is capable of using the new DSC which supports the Maritime Distress Safety System allowing us to receive or transmit emergency data about ships. This info is now integrated into our boat network allowing us to check this information on the computers and chartplotter. Very cool!

During sailing trips, just as on business trips, its often handy to have a card handy with basic contact information to share with other boaters you meet along the way. This way you can help stay in contact with friends who you may have few chances to see as you are sailing between destinations. We recently had some boat cards made. Last week, while I was in California, it proved to be a great way to encourage people to follow this blog and the Tahina twitter account. The people I was meeting with were definitely the type to read both - it being a techie conference.

On our boat card, there is no physical address mentioned. The only essential information are our names (Karen and I), boat name, e-mail, blog URL, and twitter. Once we leave, we probably won't include a cell phone number - although, I hope to get a Google Voice account, so people can easily leave voice mails we can check over the Internet.

The twitter account is a new experiment for me. It provides an avenue for micro-blogging when there's not enough time to write longer posts, or when you just want to point out something you see interesting.

We hope everyone following the Tahina Expedition will help encourage folks to subscribe to our blog and follow our twitter. The Tahina Expedition vision is to try and get as many people as possible to follow our five year trip around the world. We not only want to share our exciting, and hopefully mostly positive, experiences; but we also hope to help show everyone some cool places to visit in unique and beautiful places. We're taking some pretty cool gadgets to help provide some unique photography, and will be using several Google platforms (like Google Earth/Maps, Gmail, and Picasa), to make it easy for you to follow along. And, finally, we hope to educate people - and kids - about sailing, marine life, travel, cultures, and see how the environment is doing along our route.

Roz Savage is an adventurer who has already rowed herself across the Atlantic Ocean. She is now about to leave Hawaii to continue her attempt to row across the Pacific Ocean. She became the first person to row from California to Hawaii last year. You can follow Roz Savage at her website: www.rozsavage.com. You can also follow her on her blog and with Twitter. She'll have satellite Internet access from her boat.

This week I went to California for my annual trek to the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference. This is a gathering of the world leaders and top tech geeks for anything and everything to do with online mapping and related technologies. It's a great opportunity to meet people who read and write about Google Earth and Maps related technologies, and also the guys and gals who create them.

On Tuesday I ran a workshop on "Extending Google Earth", where I presented the many ways you can make Google Earth do much more than just look at your house. Not only that, but one of the highlights of my talk was the announcement of a very cool ship simulator built by Paul van Dinther which uses the Google Earth API.

But, the best part of the workshop was that I happened to describe a bit about the Tahina Expedition to the audience. Lots of people were apparently "wowed" by the concept. Over the next few days I had dozens of people come up to talk to me about the trip and ask all kinds of questions about it. And, as I told them more about the cool gadgets and amazing photography which will be shown in Google Earth as we travel the world... well, let's just say I think I recruited a few dozen subscribers to this blog. :-)

To me, this was the first opportunity to actually talk to a large number of people in person about the Tahina Expedition. It was extremely gratifying to have these very intelligent, technologically savvy, mapping experts validate my vision of a new way to share a traveling experience.

And, the icing on the cake is that several companies I met with discussed possible partnerships which will either enhance data available to Tahina for our travels, or provide another avenue for us to share our experience. Needless to say, I'm traveling home today thrilled with the experience, and even more psyched about the big trip!

In honor of the National Safe Boating Week, I'm going to talk a bit about a few of the safety systems on Tahina. I also suggest boaters should check out the excellent US Coast Guard Boating Safety site which has all kinds of information on boating safety. It is important that all boaters learn basic boating safety facts, and be cognizant of the rules and safety recommendations from the USCG. The USCG has limited resources - yet, thousands of boaters each year make mistakes requiring USCG response - in many cases, these mistakes could have been prevented by following safety guidelines. Especially annoying mistakes are inappropriate use of radios, non-emergency use of flares, unintentional EPIRB beacons, and false "mayday" calls.

So, what kind of safety systems does Tahina have on board? Here's a brief overview:

• Life raft - we have an inflatable life raft on board (which includes a number of related items in the system)
• Life jackets - we have standard issue life jackets, and plan to have automatically inflating jackets (which are more comfortable to wear for long passages.
• Life Tags - we have elastic band radio beacon devices (about the size of a watch) that are tied into our navigation system. While on passage and on watch you simply wear one of these devices and if they separate from the boat (if you went overboard) they automatically initiate man overboard procedures including recording the GPS location, and setting off alarms.
• Jack lines - we have harnesses which can be attached to jacklines so you can safely walk on top of the boat. This insures you don't go overboard unintentionally. A little known fact: one of the most common overboard scenarios is a male relieving himself at the back of the boat.
• Communications - an essential part of safety are communications systems. Being able to call for help, or to contact another boat to avoid collisions are essential.
• Radar - being aware of other boats and objects at sea is critical. Keeping a lookout is essential, but having an automated system with alarms can be a life saver. Also, radar can make you aware and sometimes avoid some forms of bad weather.
• Fire - we have several fire prevention systems on board: fire hydrants in several areas of the boat, fire blanket near the oven in the galley, and automated fire suppression in the engine compartments.
• Carbon Monoxide - we have CO detectors with loud alarms to help warn of possible danger.
• Lights - having functional navigational lights and spotlights are essential for night time safety. We have full spares on all essential lights on board on passages.
• Anchor - having an appropriate sized anchoring system can be critical to safety (waiting out a storm at anchor).
• EPIRB - We have a regular 406 MHz EPIRB that came with the boat. We plan to upgrade to a GPS enabled EPIRB before we leave. EPIRBs are the new internationally accepted emergency beacons and have saved many lives. They are detected by satellites circling the Earth. The beacons can be set off manually, or automatically when they float in water (boat sinking).
• First Aid - we have a large collection of first aid, medicines, and medical tools on board. Before we leave, we will get some prescriptions from our doctor for essential pharmaceutical supplies required for off-shore first aid emergencies.
• Training - probably one of the most critical items to safety is training. Knowing what to do for different emergencies is essential for the crew on board. My wife and I have practiced a number of emergency scenarios in the past, and will do more both before leaving and periodically during the trip.

That's just a high-level overview of safety related systems and items on board. Boating safety is really important when you go around the world. What you have on board may be the only thing keeping you alive in an emergency. Also important is having a well-equipped boat, good sailing knowledge, and safe crew policies so you can avoid situations which might require an emergency (such as storms, running aground, collisions, fires, etc.).

As mentioned yesterday, we had a wild ride on our sail on Wednesday. I've processed the GPS track using GPSVisualizer to colorize the track by our speed. That way you can see the wide variance in speed as we sped up with the wind gusts, and slowed suddenly as the waves grabbed us. It gives you a good sense of how much motion we experienced (soon I hope to also share some video clips are probably even more dramatic). So, check out the track of our sail here (with Google Earth). I've also added some notes explaining a few of the twists in our track (where we raised and lowered sails, etc.).

And below is a slideshow of a few of the photos taken. You'll see a few shots of the waves, and the wake as we zipped through the seas. And, a couple shots showing the broken steel jib halyard. Here are the photos:

Yesterday I took Tahina out for a sail off the coast of North Carolina near Wrightsville Beach. My Dad came out to see Tahina and get a ride. He hadn't yet seen the boat, and I told him I needed to take her out for a sail. We got a little more than we bargained for with the weather.

Tahina needed to have some new watermaker water added to its tank. The watermaker automatically runs to flush fresh water through its filters every 4 days - to keep the system from accumulating bacterial growth. It uses a few gallons of water from the tank each time it flushes. You can't use chlorinated shore water - it needs to be pure watermaker water. Our tank was getting low since I hadn't made water since the trip to Miami.

The weather delivered a little more than we bargained. Dad arrived on Tuesday afternoon, and we discussed the best time to depart. Given the weather and tides, we decided we'd leave early the next morning. The winds were forecasted to be 10-15 knots and seas 3 feet near shore and 4 to 6 feet offshore to 20 nm. I told Dad it should be a brisk sail.

We headed out about 7:30. The winds were stronger than forecasted - at about 15-20 knots. This made leaving the dock a little tricky, but we managed to leave unscathed without dock hands to help. We then motored up to Masonboro Inlet (about 10 miles away) because the tide was too low to head out Carolina Beach. Winds were up to 20 knots with some gusts higher. I told Dad this was going to be a Rip-roaring sail. That was to be prophetic.

We got out to the inlet, and I immediately noticed the waves crashing over the jetty. We got out there and the waves were already 4-6 feet. And as we got past the point, we saw some swells which were a bit higher than that. We motored 2 or 3 miles further hoping deeper water would have more settled conditions, but it was more of the same. So, we went ahead and raised sails. Since winds were getting to the 20-25 knot range, I put in two reefs in the sails. As soon as we turned into the winds we leapt to 10+ knots in boat speed! Given the angles, I had us going 60 degrees off the wind so we were quartering instead of going direct into the waves.

We soon reached clearer blue waters (the east wind was blowing the clearer water closer to shore). So, I put new filters in the watermaker and we started making water. We sailed a couple of hours out and had a good time. I took several video clips and photos (which will be posted later). The waves were closer to 6-8 feet average with many periodic waves hitting 10+ feet. Apparent winds were in the 30+ knots range, so the double-reef was a good thing. Here's a short video showing what the ride was like:

The new spray dodger was put in place a week ago. We were glad we had it! We had lots of spray on this ride. This is the roughest ride I've experienced on Tahina so far. In fact, it was the first time we had substantial spray to the cockpit area.

We eventually turned back and were on a beam reach on the way back. As often happens, the winds diminished just a bit as we got closer to shore. We were down to 15-20 knots again by the time we got to the inlet. We again went back to Masonboro inlet as we were well past the hightide at this point in the mid-afternoon.

We pulled back into our slip and took a break for a while. Then, because of all the ocean spray, we spent a while washing down the boat. I was glad to have Dad's help as Tahina is a big boat to clean. Later in the evening, I was checking over the boat and realized we had managed to snap the jib halyard. Our jib is a roller furling unit, and it is held up with a fixed steel cable. That really was a rip-roaring sail!

Back at the end of April, I mentioned removing our Raymarine E-120 multi-function chartplotter instrument to return to manufacturer for a repair. The problem is that the back-lighting has been randomly "flashing" to full brightness and back to dark when running at night. This has the very annoying effect of destroying your night vision while at the helm.

When I reported this at the Raymarine online tech support, they suggested it could be a low-voltage situation. But, they suggested sending it in. After paying hefty shipping and insurance fees I sent it off before my backpacking trip. I expected they would fix the problem and ship it back.

Last week, they called and said their tests showed the E-120 is working fine. They recommended a voltage isolator/converter to basically control against surges or voltage drops due to other electrical equipment in my system. After discovering the unit they recommended costs several hundred dollars (this is what they recommended), I wondered if this is an isolated incident or a problem with our electrical system. E-mails to other St. Francis 50 owners, and the manufacturer confirmed they have all seen this annoying problem with the E-120. So, I did some Googling and discovered several other E-120 owners on many different boats have reported the problem. The most common factor seems to be that when the E-120 backlight is in low-light mode (at night), and the alternator regulators are charging the batteries, you get the flashing on the E-120.

The E-120 specs say it can handle 10.2 to 30 volts of power. But, I suspect the backlight system is more sensitive. I'm curious whether there are cheaper voltage isolators which might solve the problem. Time to do more digging... Ahh, the fun process of diagnosis and learning the quirks a complex boating system.

I'm finally getting around to writing posts for final two legs of our trip to Miami in February. I've just posted the one for St. Augustine to Charleston, and one for the final leg to Carolina Beach. Each of the posts include the GPS track of the passage, photos, and a description of the trip. I'm back-dating the posts so they will be in the right order chronologically for the post archives.

The blog is going slow this week because I left on Monday to head to Arizona for a backpacking trip. Part of preparing to leave for a five year trip is to spend some quality time with some of your friends. I've chosen to meet up with a bunch of my best friends and show them my old college town (University of Arizona in Tucson). We've been doing some sightseeing at the Desert Museum and Kitt Peak National Observatory. For the next few days I will be completely incommunicado backpacking in the mountains. I'll be back next week and share the highlights with some photos. Later I hope to share some processed panoramic photos and GPS tracks in Google Earth.