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What an awesome morning. I sat in the cockpit with a mug of hot tea and for a very quiet and calm morning start. A little bit later Patty and Jeff showed up on Pirate Girl and I tied them off behind me and went over and had breakfast with them. After Breakfast they took off and headed home. They had had a rough night anchored offshore when the winds kicked up into the low 20knt range.
I sailed off the anchor with just the main up. 🙂 I am really enjoying working on my engineless sailing skills. Each time I do this it gets easier and I get more confident in being able to cope with an engine out issue.
Well we were supposed to race to Murrells Inlet on saturday but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. Everyone else bailed and decided to do a Sherman and back race instead of going to Murrels inlet except me on Sea Puppy and Patty & Jeff on Pirate Girl. We left around 8 in the morning and once out on the ocean there was no wind. So we decided forget the race we will just motor for a while till the wind comes up.. 2 hours later “no wind”. Patty decided she didn’t want to motor all the way to murrels inlet and I went along with it as at this point I was just happy hanging out with her and Jeff. We were about 10 miles down the coast line from Little River Inlet and 3 miles off shore. We just anchored there. It was about 36 ft of water and the water was very clear. I almost went swimming to give the bottom of the boat a scrubbing but I got lazy. We were going to raft up but even the very light swell was making them rock to much so we just tied me off of Pirate Girls stern about 20 ft behind her. It was a great afternoon of lazy 🙂 We ate and kicked back under tarps for shade and read and napped. Jeff rigged up a seat cushion on the end of a line to float watermelon over to me. A good time was had by all.
Well as I’ve said in the last couple posts I have lost or have had stolen from me my old canon s45 digital camera. I paid 400+ dollars for it new 5+ years ago and have taken more than 10,000 images with it. It has been an awesome camera to use. With exceptional image quality and long battery life it met and exceeded my expectations from when I got it.
Because I have enjoyed my previous canon cameras so much I have been looking at some of their cameras that came out this past year or so and finally got one. I went for the Canon A640 10mp camera. I found one at Costco for 299 bundled with a canon picture printer. I still have to get the underwater housing when I can afford it.
We heard Orrin and Angela head back to the dock about 5am sunday morning. Angela had to be at work at 8 so they had to get going early. We rose a bit slower than that. more along the lines of 7:30 or so.. Underway at 8:30 and back to the dock to join Breck, Orrin, and Jerry for breakfast.
I wish the inlet was closer to the dock. It took an hour and half to get back to the marina from the inlet.
And again no pictures because of missing camera.
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This past weekend Miriam came down and we took Sea Puppy out saturday afternoon and went and rafted up with Orrin and Angela on La Bon Vie and Ben and Susan on Winds of Freedom. What an awesome evening. The company was great and everyone contributed some food to be cooked and the six of us had more food than we could eat. Tilapia, salmon and steak on the grill. Wokked vegitables, Asparagus, and more.
After dinner everyone unrafted and we each anchored separately. As always I got a great nights sleep on the water.
Well I got the tach in and put it on the engine this past weekend and she is only taching out at 3800 rpm at the dock.. on the water with the boat moving the rpm’s do come up more than I would have thought but only to 4200 rpm. For an engine that is supposed to get 5500 rpm for nominal 6hp at the prop this isn’t acceptable. I think there is something wrong with the engine even though it has no violent symptoms of being broken other than lack of power. Tohatsu is now saying they think the prop is too far down in the water and want me to move the engine mount back up two inches to the stock height. I will do so but after this I am getting tired of playing with it. They have told me that lowering the pitch will increase the rpms but a while back they said it will only give about 300 more rps which will still be 900 rpms below nominal and 1400 below max rpm at 6000. I could have paid many hundreds less for a 4hp engine rather than buying a 6hp if I hadn’t wanted more power than I had before. This engine is still running weaker than the old early 90’s 4hp 2 stroke Johnson..
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Sunday morning I halfway had decided to head in but got a call from Patty and Jeff and ended up following them out. I was still weighing anchor when they got out on the ocean but after a long light wind chase caught up to them a few miles out. 🙂 its really cool when I can catch a Beneteau 323 🙂
Before leaving I took a few pictures of My Annie while some pelicans flew by
Saturday morning was beautiful also.. With the sun rising over Bird Island.
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By 9am I was out on the ocean sailing.. I went out a couple miles and then back to make the 11 am start for the race. In racing class were Tenor the new beneteau 10R and TeeSzu. In Cruising class were Runnaway, Sea Puppy and Achilles Heel.
I had a really good day racing. I hit the start just right and sailed well against Runnaway and Achilles Heel. Unfortunately Runaway had to DNF and go back in before they finished the race. I think I would have beat them but at the point they turned around at they were only about a minute behind me. Unusually, I ran away from Achilles Heel on the upwind leg of the race, as normal I rapidly opened up the distance even more on the downwind leg. On a 4 mile course I owe them 4 minutes but since I came in about 9 minutes ahead of them I think I won that one 🙂 Normally once the handicap is taken into account Achilles Heel has historically run really close to me with us passing each other in the standings on a regular basis.
I took sea puppy out Friday after getting the new 6 hp engine back on her. It still lacks power compared to the old 4hp 2stroke. It was nice a calm on the water friday afternoon and evening. There were only 5 or 6 boats anchored out behind Bird Island for the evening.
The sunset was spectacular. 🙂
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I have gotten my engine back from the service center on Friday and used it this weekend. I am starting to be rather disappointed in this engine. ( the Tohatsu MFS6BUL 4 STROKE 1 CYLINDER ) The service center told me that it is fine. That they couldn’t find anything wrong with it but they also said they didn’t even put it on a tachometer to check what kind of rpm’s it was turning in the tank. They also told me that as a one cylinder engine that it will vibrate. On the other hand they also told me the other day that they had never seen much less worked on one of these smaller engines. I honestly don’t have any idea at this point whether this engine is running the way it should be. (Note: the seller http://www.outboardsales.com never did call me back or follow up in any way to my phone call and subsequent email to them..)
I took Sea Puppy out by myself today. It is the first time I have used the new engine to run to the inlet and back.. I will put up a updated review of it in a day or so so check back.
Winds were running about 10 knots I think. I sailed beside Pirate Girl Patty’s Beneteau 323 most of the day and hung with them speed wise. I averaged 5.5 t 6 knots on the knotmeter. I think the fully battened mainsail is helping a lot. With the foot pocket eased she generates a fair amount of power in this wind range.
I wired up the solar panel and alternator on Sea Puppy today. The solar panel is wired into the batteries before the 1/2/all/off switch so that it will still trickle charge the batteries even if the the power is shut off on the boat. The alternator I wired in on the other side of the switch so that it will run the system even if the switch is off.. ( I need to read up on this to make shure this is the correct way to do it. Not sure if the battery has a stabilizing affect on it vs running stuff from it without the battery in the link.) The rectifier on my engine was wired backwards from the factory and was putting out excessively high voltage. It took putting a volt meter on it and playing with it to get it right when I wired it all up. luckily my gps unit actually started warning me about an over voltage condition and I was able to shut everything off quickly and start troubleshooting it, also my next door neighbor at the dock took an interest as this was going on and helped troubleshoot it. Took about 5 minutes to figure out and fix with his help.
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