Scott’s Weblogs

First Race of 2007 season

I took sea puppy out with a new crew member today for the first race. Elizebeth did great.. She didn’t get sea sick and was handling lines and helping by the end of the day.
We really didn’t put a huge ammount of effort into the two races but we took 2nd place in both. We also did very well off the start line both races.

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Static thrust test on Sea Puppy

Ok I have recieved the inline scale I purchased and have tested for static lbs of thrust that my 4hp johnson outboard provides on my sailboat. The scale is rated from 1 lb to 3000 lbs in 1 lb increments with a digital readout and is certified. I tested three times to make sure it was consitent. I also created a bridle from the aft deck cleats to tie the scale to so that thrust was measured by pulling on a line that ran down the center of the boat from the bow to the center of the transom.
at an idle 15 lbs of thrust +- 1 lb
at half throttle 60 lbs of thrust +- 2 lbs
at full throttle it varied by about 10 lbs ranging from 120 lbs of thrust to 130 lbs of thrust. This was not a variation from one test to the next but a variation within each of the three tests while at full throttle.

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Sunday Sail on Sea Puppy

I took Sea Puppy out by myself. Winds 15 to 20 gusting to 23 or so. Seas about 1 ft.. what a blast.. on a beam with half the jib reefed and two reefs in the main I was still doing 7 knots. Measured the wind with the anemometer that Miriam gave me for christmas 🙂 I wasn’t trying to push it hard there for I reefed fairly early. Also with sustained gusts that were runing 7 to 10 knots over average wind speed I reefed more for the gusts than the sustained winds.

As always when by myself I ran the jacklines and clipped in if out of the cockpit. Mostly it was a pretty slow day. I just enjoyed the clear blue skys and nice winds.

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Sailing on Walkabout

Went out today with Jay on Walkabout.. what a gorgeous day.. so bright and clear it almost hurt with the temperature hitting the high 70’s. We were only going to go out for about 2 hours. 6 hours later we get back…. Just awesome day.. 12 knots of wind and flat seas..
I took lots of video with my digital camera.. we saw dolphins several times during the day for extended periods.. once I download the video I will edit it and post a short movie clip. Dolphin video

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Sailing Sea Puppy 3-11-07

Took Sea Puppy out by myself today… calm conditions.. maybe 8 knots of wind and less that 1 ft of seas… almost flat.

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Sailing Sea Puppy

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I took Sea Puppy out today and sailed about 6 miles down the coast and back. Conditions were about 9 to 10 knots of wind and 1 ft seas. Wind from the S/SE and seas from the N/NE. Ben took out Winds of Freedom and Angela had Valkyr out also. Needless to say Ben walked away from Angela and I as if we were standing still. A beneteau First 36.7 is a fast boat points like a banshee. It was unreal watching him pointing higher and going much faster than either of us could go. It almost looked like he was sailing in much different wind than us. On the other hand Valkyr and Sea Puppy amazingly seem to in that wind range have very similar performance. Valkyr is a Down East 38 so she has a much longer waterline and with the cutter rig a lot of sail area, on the other hand she is a heavy cruising boat. Upwind I can almost hang with her. I can point higher than she can but at a cost of about a 1/4 knot of speed compared to her. On the same heading upwind I was maintaining speed as long as I was hand steering. Using the autopilot slowed me down enough that she would creep ahead. ( the auto pilot was doing a lot of work correcting the course because of the seas being following seas. I could adjust for this better than the autopilot.) On the way back in running down wind Sea Puppy just zipped home. We walked away from Valkyr at a steady clip. The weight on Valkyr really started to count against her as apparent wind dropped off downwind.

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Walkabout day

I went out with Jay on Walkabout Thursday. With the wind between fifteen and twenty knots out of the N/W it was an awesome day for sailing. With clear blue skies and maybe one ft of swell it was both intensely beautiful and very relaxing. Boat speed was a constant 8 to 9 knots with Walkabout just zipping along smooth as silk.

It was good for me to get out.. I really miss being out on the water as much as I was last year. The last four months or so have seen me only getting out a couple times a month. Food for the soul!

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Electrical work day on Sea Puppy

I spent the day on Sea Puppy modifying my led light arrangement for the interior lights. I also wired up a fan in the aft cabin.

Here is the new arrangement in the head/nav station. I have two led’s one white and one red on a 3 way rocker switch. On white/off/on red. The red leds are for keeping night vision when sailing at night.

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I also put a red led fixture with a on/off rocker in the galley area.

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Tiller Pilot Woe’s

Well as I talked about sunday I have started to have a problem with my TP-32 tillerpilot. It is acting erratically in changing course and on one occasion it changed course by itself by 30 to 40 degrees.

I just finished speaking with Simrad tech support and so far I am very impressed. It took about 3 minutes total to go from dialing their 800 number to talking to a tech support person. About 4 minutes talking with him describing the problem and he passed me off to a customer service rep to get a RA# to send the pilot in and get it looked at.

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Arial shots of Sea Puppy

I found some arial shots of Sea Puppy sitting in her slip at the marina. Pretty cool what you can find on the internet. I’m not sure if these are satellite or from a plane. I would think a plane.

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2007 Feb 11th Sunday Sail

Not much wind to speak of today and the air temp was around 50 degrees. I wasn’t real sure it was worth going out sailing but sometimes you just need to get on the water. Lee volunteered to go with me so off we went. 🙂 well after we get the engine started “off we went”. I’m getting really tired of outboards.. or at least mine.. I haven’t had many of them and the ones I have had were someone else’s for a quite a few years before I got them, so maybe a new one would be more reliable. I have my doubts though. I don’t they like me in general. Always stopping just when you need them or not starting when you want them to start. After about 40 minutes of fiddling and playing with it I finally got outboad started. Squirt of carb cleaner into the cylinder and put the spark plugs back in and it started right up on the first pull. 🙂 so I cheated, but it worked.

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