I am now back in Seattle and getting adjusted to this time zone.
Overall the last six weeks were very productive despite the original plan going out the window along with a few revisions too. I am somewhat disappointed with my race results but I am been able to learn some valuable things about both myself and the boat which will help down the road.
The to-do list on the boat is fairly short; sort out the VHF reception issue, modify the solar panel mounts and some sail recuts. The only item I broke was a single Harken 29mm block for the spinnaker tweaker, it likely hooked a lifeline and split so no fault of the block.
I head back to France the end of the month for the MAP and then to do my 1000 Mile qualifier. The qualifier has to be done before June 30 so things are starting to get a little close here but not too critical.
Probably the best part of the whole trip was all the great people I have met: the sailors, the race organizers, the people from Classe Mini and just people I met along the way. Everyone was absolutely great and made me, as a newcomer to both the Mini Classe and Europe, feel very welcome. I know I have made some fabulous new friends. A good example was my last Saturday in Lorient, a large group of us went out to dinner. By my count there were at least 7 countries at the table: Italy, France, New Zealand, UK, South Africa, The Netherlands and USA. Sitting in the middle of the table hearing conversions in a mix and variety of languages was pretty interesting and a great thing.
So now it is back to work here and get ready for the next trip and putting what I have learned to good use.
I have a bunch of new pics which I need to post, some from the sailing and from Monday when I walked around Paris. I had never been to Paris before (on the inbound leg of the trip I went straight to the train) so it was great to see with my own eyes all the sights I have only seen in books and on TV.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Leg 1, Mini Pavois
Am sitting here in Gijon, Spain after what was a little bit of a disappointing first leg. I had planned to stick fairly close to the rhumb line but when the wind freed slightly the first night I was a little too eager to hoist the spinnaker and when the lift never came, I ended up south of the rhumb line and paid dearly for the error.
There was a huge amount of animal life on the leg. Dolphins the first 24 hours, a little shore bird stopped off for a few hours rest on the second night. I managed to snap a picture but have not yet pulled it off my camera. On the second day there were lots of flies and bees which was quite surprising being over 30 miles offshore. Also, lots of small Portugese Man of War jellyfish, I had one get washed onto my foredeck which I had to be careful of.
On a positive note, the boat is plenty quick even in the light off the start. The new pic at the top of the page was taken shortly after the start while getting out of the bay at La Rochelle. Also I had no appreciable damage on the leg, which made things very simple here in Spain.
Leg two starts tomorrow. Right now the weather looks a bit light and unsettled for the first 100 or so miles. The planned course right now is to a light just north of Belle Isle and then to a buoy near Penmarch, south to a buoy off of the mouth of the Gironde River and then back to La Rochelle. The distance is 520 miles so more than double the first leg.
The event blog site should be updated regularily during the leg and each boat has a GPS tracker which appears to poll every hour.
There was a huge amount of animal life on the leg. Dolphins the first 24 hours, a little shore bird stopped off for a few hours rest on the second night. I managed to snap a picture but have not yet pulled it off my camera. On the second day there were lots of flies and bees which was quite surprising being over 30 miles offshore. Also, lots of small Portugese Man of War jellyfish, I had one get washed onto my foredeck which I had to be careful of.
On a positive note, the boat is plenty quick even in the light off the start. The new pic at the top of the page was taken shortly after the start while getting out of the bay at La Rochelle. Also I had no appreciable damage on the leg, which made things very simple here in Spain.
Leg two starts tomorrow. Right now the weather looks a bit light and unsettled for the first 100 or so miles. The planned course right now is to a light just north of Belle Isle and then to a buoy near Penmarch, south to a buoy off of the mouth of the Gironde River and then back to La Rochelle. The distance is 520 miles so more than double the first leg.
The event blog site should be updated regularily during the leg and each boat has a GPS tracker which appears to poll every hour.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Eve of the Mini-Pavois
So the Mini-Pavois starts tomorrow afternoon. Classe Mini approved my request to race which is a great relief.
The race itself has a blog page that should have pretty regular updates, here is the link to the english version: http://minipavois-2009-uk.blogspot.com/
The weather is looking a bit unsettled but it should be relatively benign for the first leg which is a straight shot to Gijon from La Rochelle.
The second leg could be more interesting both at it is over twice the distance and the late stages of the leg are close along the coast of Brittany.
Hopefully I will be able to get some stories and pics posted after leg one but it will depend on finding a cyber-cafe in Spain since I am leaving my computer here in La Rochelle. It may be that I will just post on my Facebook page since I will be able to access that with my phone.
The race itself has a blog page that should have pretty regular updates, here is the link to the english version: http://minipavois-2009-uk.blogspot.com/
The weather is looking a bit unsettled but it should be relatively benign for the first leg which is a straight shot to Gijon from La Rochelle.
The second leg could be more interesting both at it is over twice the distance and the late stages of the leg are close along the coast of Brittany.
Hopefully I will be able to get some stories and pics posted after leg one but it will depend on finding a cyber-cafe in Spain since I am leaving my computer here in La Rochelle. It may be that I will just post on my Facebook page since I will be able to access that with my phone.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Greetings from La Rochelle part 2
Ok now that I have the post I wrote in Pornichet posted, I can get on with telling the current story. I sailed down here on Thursday night, Friday morning, having a nice leisurely sail. Off of the Island of Yeu I managed to find a pretty good squall that was pretty much privately mine. The folks closer to the island got less wind and those outside got no change. I got a big blast, a big shift and a bunch of rain.
Since I have been here in La Rochelle, I am still waiting to hear whether Classe Mini will allow me to race the Mini-Pavois. I am hoping that they will. To that end I have been working on getting all the proper inspections and other required details done.
This race has a lot of the same boats which sailed in Pornichet with a few not here and some new boats here. According to the race director, there are at least 11 different countries represented here. Last night at dinner, our table was two English, two South Africans, one Norwegian and myself an American. As I sit writing this in my boat, I can here the Italians talking in the boat next to me. I am really enjoying meeting all the new people and making lots of new friends.
Also since I have been here, I am getting some of the problems taken care of on my boat. Today, Thomas the builder and I removed the rudders and their fittings and completely rebedded them and then reinstalled with nylock nuts so this problem should not arise again. Tomorrow, Thomas willl be back to do some work on the bow pulpit and fix a number of places where water is leaking in around screws. The folks from TEEM will also be here to install my proper sleeping timer and add a data port to the GPS. The data port will allow me to setup waypoints on my computer and then electronically transfer then to the Furuno GPS versus having to manually input them on the GPS' keypad.
The weather models for the race as looking rather interesting at this point with potentially north east winds to start,swinging to the NW later and then becoming highly variable. As the start is still 4 days away, I expect the models will change and then change some more before the start.
So, things are a little on hold as to whether I will be racing, which is tough, but the sun has been shining and I am getting the itmes that were problems taken care of on the boat so I am feeling a lot better because of boat
Since I have been here in La Rochelle, I am still waiting to hear whether Classe Mini will allow me to race the Mini-Pavois. I am hoping that they will. To that end I have been working on getting all the proper inspections and other required details done.
This race has a lot of the same boats which sailed in Pornichet with a few not here and some new boats here. According to the race director, there are at least 11 different countries represented here. Last night at dinner, our table was two English, two South Africans, one Norwegian and myself an American. As I sit writing this in my boat, I can here the Italians talking in the boat next to me. I am really enjoying meeting all the new people and making lots of new friends.
Also since I have been here, I am getting some of the problems taken care of on my boat. Today, Thomas the builder and I removed the rudders and their fittings and completely rebedded them and then reinstalled with nylock nuts so this problem should not arise again. Tomorrow, Thomas willl be back to do some work on the bow pulpit and fix a number of places where water is leaking in around screws. The folks from TEEM will also be here to install my proper sleeping timer and add a data port to the GPS. The data port will allow me to setup waypoints on my computer and then electronically transfer then to the Furuno GPS versus having to manually input them on the GPS' keypad.
The weather models for the race as looking rather interesting at this point with potentially north east winds to start,swinging to the NW later and then becoming highly variable. As the start is still 4 days away, I expect the models will change and then change some more before the start.
So, things are a little on hold as to whether I will be racing, which is tough, but the sun has been shining and I am getting the itmes that were problems taken care of on the boat so I am feeling a lot better because of boat
Greetings from La Rochelle
Has been an insteresting and somewhat stressful few days. On Thursday night I sailed from Pornichet to La Rochelle with a group of other Mini sailors. Overall was a very nice trip, took it very easy as my rudders were both loose, one more than the other and I did not want to unduly stress them.
Before I left Pornichet I wrote up a posting that I was not able to post, so here is that:
Yesterday the guys from TEEM arrived with two brand new batteries and another fuel cell. The fuel cell is an older model (140) that I will use while mine is sent back to the factory for repair. The one I had originally was the MaxPower 130 which is a brand new model, an evolution of the 110. It turns out that the methanol pickup was changed on the 130 and there have been numerous failures of the cap, resulting in the unit shutting down.
The batteries are ElecSol 100 carbon batteries and both were replaced as one or both were also defective. These batteries are a fair bit lighter that the typical lead-acid batteries but not in the league with the lithium batteries. However, these batteries also are not nearly as expensive as the Li-Ion ones either.
Today it is windy and raining here in Pornichet with the wind from the south-west. The weather pattern is alternating days of good weather and stormy weather. Tomorrow the forecast is calling for, in the wake of the front, sun and medium north-west winds which should be good for the delivery to La Rochelle. Ugrib is the program that most people seem to use which is generally pretty good. It sounds like most of the mini fleet will all be sailing to La Rochelle tomorrow en masse.
There is a Mumm/Farr 30 regatta here in Pornichet this weekend with ~20 boats. Most teams practiced yesteraday and it looks like almost all will be on the water again today. This appears to the be tune up for the Tour de France a Voile later in the year. The level of sponsorship/branding for these teams is unlike anything one sees in the USA in sailing. I think the boat whose graphics I like the most is the one sponsored by New Caledonia. Also here in Pornichet is a fleet of J80s as club boats. For a club boat this seems to be a pretty good choice, is simple, durable and still offers enough performance to be interesting.
Before I left Pornichet I wrote up a posting that I was not able to post, so here is that:
Yesterday the guys from TEEM arrived with two brand new batteries and another fuel cell. The fuel cell is an older model (140) that I will use while mine is sent back to the factory for repair. The one I had originally was the MaxPower 130 which is a brand new model, an evolution of the 110. It turns out that the methanol pickup was changed on the 130 and there have been numerous failures of the cap, resulting in the unit shutting down.
The batteries are ElecSol 100 carbon batteries and both were replaced as one or both were also defective. These batteries are a fair bit lighter that the typical lead-acid batteries but not in the league with the lithium batteries. However, these batteries also are not nearly as expensive as the Li-Ion ones either.
Today it is windy and raining here in Pornichet with the wind from the south-west. The weather pattern is alternating days of good weather and stormy weather. Tomorrow the forecast is calling for, in the wake of the front, sun and medium north-west winds which should be good for the delivery to La Rochelle. Ugrib is the program that most people seem to use which is generally pretty good. It sounds like most of the mini fleet will all be sailing to La Rochelle tomorrow en masse.
There is a Mumm/Farr 30 regatta here in Pornichet this weekend with ~20 boats. Most teams practiced yesteraday and it looks like almost all will be on the water again today. This appears to the be tune up for the Tour de France a Voile later in the year. The level of sponsorship/branding for these teams is unlike anything one sees in the USA in sailing. I think the boat whose graphics I like the most is the one sponsored by New Caledonia. Also here in Pornichet is a fleet of J80s as club boats. For a club boat this seems to be a pretty good choice, is simple, durable and still offers enough performance to be interesting.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Options
Well things with the Select did not quite go to plan. A few days prior my fuel cell stopped working and I was unable to get it repaired prior to the start. While it was working, it may have been masking another issue, that the batteries were not holding a charge.
So, after starting the race with what I thought were full batteries after 12 hours I was into major power conserve mode. This meant no GPS, no instruments, no VHF and most painfully no auto pilot. During the first night it was tough but not too severe since there were a lot of boats nearby to gauge off of both speed and direction.
The boat seemed to be going well although sail changes in the variable conditions were a challenge without the pilot.
By the next day, fatigue was starting to mount and my mood was starting to deteriorate. Was near the back of the fleet getting to the turning mark at Bourgenay. This was a lot due to sailing the boat earlier in the day to maximize solar panel exposure versus for performance. At Bourgenay, I was able to talk to the committee on the VHF and let them know I was having some power issues. I had already missed a couple of mandatory check ins due to not having enough power to transmit.
Once around Bourgenay it was a port tack favored beat back to Yeu. That went pretty well as I was feeling a bit energized to be heading back towards the finish versus away from it. Also the sun was shining which never hurts. Both were to be short lived unfortunately. As it got dark, the wind continued to build with the approaching cold front. Once clear of Yeu, I sailed for another hour or so on port before tacking to starboard for the long hitch out to clear Belle Isle and hopefully lay Groix which was to be left to starboard. Without a pilot, my only option was to tie off the tiller to try to get a little sleep. This worked ok but was not really too great for performance.
Shortly after sunrise, during a boat check, I found that the starboard lower rudder fitting was leaking. The leak itself was not too severe but I was very concerned with the possibility of the holes in the transon elongating which would have made the leak worse and likely damaged the rudder. At this point I did not even have enough electrical power to turn on the GPS to get a position fix. The sun did come out long enough to get some power out of the solar panels to get the GPS working and find my position. I still had a quite a way to go to get to Groix and was very concerned with coming back south inside of Belle Isle in the dark without any sleep, or instruments as there are numerous rocks and reefs here. If this were an area I knew well this might have been a non-issue but I had zero interest in piling my new boat up on the first race.
So, at this point I made the tough decision to head for Pornichet and withdraw. That still wears a bit heavily on me even now 48 hours later. The frustrating part was that the technology which was supposed to make a tough race easier completely failed me and I was not able to make up the difference.
Now I am faced with how to continue on from here. Classe Mini requires a person to have a C-level race completed before they do a B-level race. The Select was to be my C race before the Mini-Pavois which is a B race. Yesterday, I sent an email to the Classe to ask whether I will be allowed to race in the Mini-Pavois. I hope they allow it. If they do not I will be unable to race in the Mini-Pavois so will have to come up with a new plan to get my miles done. Also I may face late withdrawal penalties from the Mini-Pavois for dropping out less than one month before the race.
A technician from TEEM electronics should be here today to get my fuel cell operational and sort out the battery issue. Yesterday I bought a battery charger and it has been charging since 1430 and is still humming away trying to get the battery levels up. When I finished, they was not even enough power in the batteries to charge my cell phone. There are a few other items on my to do list but overall the boat came through very well.
Here is a link to website that has a number of pics from the race: http://www.imagesdemer.com/2bgal/disp_serie.php?id_album=133&stat=ok
So, after starting the race with what I thought were full batteries after 12 hours I was into major power conserve mode. This meant no GPS, no instruments, no VHF and most painfully no auto pilot. During the first night it was tough but not too severe since there were a lot of boats nearby to gauge off of both speed and direction.
The boat seemed to be going well although sail changes in the variable conditions were a challenge without the pilot.
By the next day, fatigue was starting to mount and my mood was starting to deteriorate. Was near the back of the fleet getting to the turning mark at Bourgenay. This was a lot due to sailing the boat earlier in the day to maximize solar panel exposure versus for performance. At Bourgenay, I was able to talk to the committee on the VHF and let them know I was having some power issues. I had already missed a couple of mandatory check ins due to not having enough power to transmit.
Once around Bourgenay it was a port tack favored beat back to Yeu. That went pretty well as I was feeling a bit energized to be heading back towards the finish versus away from it. Also the sun was shining which never hurts. Both were to be short lived unfortunately. As it got dark, the wind continued to build with the approaching cold front. Once clear of Yeu, I sailed for another hour or so on port before tacking to starboard for the long hitch out to clear Belle Isle and hopefully lay Groix which was to be left to starboard. Without a pilot, my only option was to tie off the tiller to try to get a little sleep. This worked ok but was not really too great for performance.
Shortly after sunrise, during a boat check, I found that the starboard lower rudder fitting was leaking. The leak itself was not too severe but I was very concerned with the possibility of the holes in the transon elongating which would have made the leak worse and likely damaged the rudder. At this point I did not even have enough electrical power to turn on the GPS to get a position fix. The sun did come out long enough to get some power out of the solar panels to get the GPS working and find my position. I still had a quite a way to go to get to Groix and was very concerned with coming back south inside of Belle Isle in the dark without any sleep, or instruments as there are numerous rocks and reefs here. If this were an area I knew well this might have been a non-issue but I had zero interest in piling my new boat up on the first race.
So, at this point I made the tough decision to head for Pornichet and withdraw. That still wears a bit heavily on me even now 48 hours later. The frustrating part was that the technology which was supposed to make a tough race easier completely failed me and I was not able to make up the difference.
Now I am faced with how to continue on from here. Classe Mini requires a person to have a C-level race completed before they do a B-level race. The Select was to be my C race before the Mini-Pavois which is a B race. Yesterday, I sent an email to the Classe to ask whether I will be allowed to race in the Mini-Pavois. I hope they allow it. If they do not I will be unable to race in the Mini-Pavois so will have to come up with a new plan to get my miles done. Also I may face late withdrawal penalties from the Mini-Pavois for dropping out less than one month before the race.
A technician from TEEM electronics should be here today to get my fuel cell operational and sort out the battery issue. Yesterday I bought a battery charger and it has been charging since 1430 and is still humming away trying to get the battery levels up. When I finished, they was not even enough power in the batteries to charge my cell phone. There are a few other items on my to do list but overall the boat came through very well.
Here is a link to website that has a number of pics from the race: http://www.imagesdemer.com/2bgal/disp_serie.php?id_album=133&stat=ok
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Getting ready for the Select 6.50
Hello from Pornichet. We are about 60 miles south of Lorient. Sailed down here on Monday night. To add a few extra miles of sailing, we went outside Belle Isle which is the first mark of the course for the race tomorrow.
The sail down was good aside from my pilot tripping the breaker and shutting down for a while. My boat appears to be plenty quick which is a very nice thing.
Since arriving in Pornichet the days have been a bit of a blur. Had to get the boat fully measured and get all the safety inspections done. Finished that all up yesterday afternoon with my sails all getting stamped by the head measurer for the class.
Today will be looking at the weather, snapping some pics of the boat for class mini, emptying the boat and getting some food and rest.
The race tomorrow starts in the afternoon. Right now it is looking like it could be a little light on Sunday but overall the weather is probably going to be a mixed bag.
Here are some pics I took during the measurement:
The sail down was good aside from my pilot tripping the breaker and shutting down for a while. My boat appears to be plenty quick which is a very nice thing.
Since arriving in Pornichet the days have been a bit of a blur. Had to get the boat fully measured and get all the safety inspections done. Finished that all up yesterday afternoon with my sails all getting stamped by the head measurer for the class.
Today will be looking at the weather, snapping some pics of the boat for class mini, emptying the boat and getting some food and rest.
The race tomorrow starts in the afternoon. Right now it is looking like it could be a little light on Sunday but overall the weather is probably going to be a mixed bag.
Here are some pics I took during the measurement:
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