Provisioning in Bezerkeley

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Bill Kinney

For those of you not local to the San Francisco Bay area, the “Berkeley Bowl” is likely new to you.  It is a local supermarket with two locations in the People’s Republic of Berkeley.  Originally located in an abandoned bowling alley, it is a local institution. Famous for its amazing variety of produce (eight different kinds of kale…) it also has a great selection of dried and bulk foods.  The dried and bulk section was the reason we were shopping there for boat provisions.

One thing is obvious to anyone who shops there.  There is one magic ingredient that is required to get the locals to buy your product.  It doesn’t have to even be a food product, just throw it in for instant sales. There are a dozen varieties of “hemp” granola, which seems pretty obvious…  but this one takes the cake…

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I am not even sure what “hemp milk” IS, but there are 4 different kinds…

Then there is the cheese counter.  I would not even hazard a guess how many different kinds of cheese they carry, but here is a fun one…

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No, we did not buy the boat glue…

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The Haulout

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Bill Kinney

Anytime a boat comes out of the water for maintenance and projects it is a traumatic time.  Traumatic to the wallet, to the schedule, and to the people involved.  That is double true for boats that are routine liveaboards!

Here is the list of projects from our June haulout:

  • All new Dyneema standing rigging
  • New topping lifts
  • New jib halyard
  • New mizzen halyard
  • New mizzen staysail halyard.
  • All zincs replaced
  • Bottom sanded, primed and painted with two coats
  • Rudder removed, cut open and inspected, relaminated, reinstalled
  • New freezer built and installed
  • Airmar  wx200 wind, barometer, heading, gyro, temperature instrument installed
  • New Simrad radar installed
  • Mizzen spreader lights installed.
  • Steaming light replaced
  • Propane system upgraded
  • Three sea cock valves replaced
  • Topsides painted
  • Max prop disassembled, greased, and reinstalled.
  • New name lettering on transom.
  • Instrument wiring completely updated to NMEA2000
  • Simrad Go-Free wifi installed

Some of these were big projects, some small. But now they are all done!  The biggest single job was the new rigging, replacing the 15 year old stainless wires with Dyneema.  I’ll write more about this later…

We lived on the boat up the ladder for the entire 3 weeks we were out of the water. All this was done at the Berkeley Marine Center. Cree, Julie, Carl, Eric, and the rest of the crew were great. Everything went as smoothly as can be expected with so many varied and complex projects going on at once.

 

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Shakedown

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Bill Kinney

So much work has been going on on the boat to get her ready, that she hasn’t had the chance to get out away from the dock and actually go sailing. That was fixed this past week.

A short trip up to Drakes Bay, about 25 miles up the coast was planned. A quick up, anchor for the night, and come back home. Enough to test most all of the systems, but nothing so long and difficult that if something didn’t work as expected we’d be too far from home.

Basically everything performed flawlessly. The trip up was a delightful sail. We saw 15 to 25 knots of wind the whole way. The boat handles the stronger winds better than ever with the new rigging. Less heeling, and more under control. I am very happy with the performance. The engine did what we asked of it, especially on the trip back home when the wind was less cooperative.

On the way back we did stop for a little bit and harvest some rockfish. We caught a limit of fish in about 45 minutes, into the new freezer they went.

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Give me them Old Time Charts! 06 July 2014

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Bill Kinney
One of the great things about not having anyplace special to be is… not having anyplace special to be!

Yesterday I had a couple minor things to attend to on the boat, and we decided to stay an extra day here and do a bit of fishing. The first question of course is where exactly to drop the lines. There are lots of places right around Point Reyes itself that are great spots. But, for better or worse, they are all part of a protected area and fishing is not allowed. The surrounding areas are mostly featureless sand, so off to the charts I went to try to find “fishy” structure.

It quickly became apparent that the modern vector charts, while perfectly suited for navigation, really weren’t going to be much help with finding the best fishing spot. The attached image shows what I mean. It compares the image from the paper chart of Drakes Bay with the exact same place on the computer vector chart.

Nothing about this spot on the vector chart would attract my attention, but on the paper chart the extended contour lines and especially the bottom characteristic note “rky” meaning “rocky” did get my hopes up. An isolated rock pile like this in the middle of an otherwise featureless sandy shoreline would surely attract fish.

And… it worked! Five rockfish in an hour. Four of them within 50 yards of the spot I picked based on the chart. Delicious.

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The Delight, and the Silliness, of Solar Power, 23 May 2014

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Bill Kinney
One of the great successful additions to turn Fetchin’ Ketch into a self sufficient long range cruising boat has been that addition of a pair of solar panels. They were a bit of a pain to install, taking a bit of clever engineering to have something that was secure, able to be easily folded down in case of bad weather, while still having good exposure to full sun. For several weeks all of the boat’s 12 volt supply needs have been met by the panels. In a typical day the batteries are drawn down about 4 or 5 percent in the early morning, and they are fully recharged by noon. Most of the load comes from the refrigerator. The LED lighting that I have installed throughout the boat uses almost no power at all. Everything works great… and who could complain about free power? It is an ideal solution for the boat where other sources of power are expensive, a hassle, or both.

Lets look a bit closer for other applications… Optimistically, on a bright sunny day my panels can make about 1.5 kilowatt-hours of power. Here in northern California I pay $0.14 per kilowatt-hour. So the panels have the potential of making about $0.21 worth of power per day. $6.30 per month. $75.60 per year. Free money!

Oh… wait… the panels and controller are not free. The panels cost about $700, the controller another $300. Wiring and other miscellaneous costs add another $150. I won’t count the cost of the batteries, because I need them anyway. Total installation cost: Roughly $1150. I’ll make my money back in 15 years. A staggering 6.5% investment return. Unfortunately, I am not eligible for the various tax credits and subsidies that make solar a more lucrative investment. I have to pay the full economic cost of the installation.

So remember when you hear your neighbor bragging about what a great investment his solar panels were, your tax dollars are making it so.

In other news, today was a two steps forward, one step back kind of day. I got several projects in the head complete, toilet plumbing, shower sump pump, and other such fun projects. Then what started out to be a simple adjustment of the drive belt for the auto pilot, turned into a major rebuild of the steering system as I discovered a broken bearing on the shaft of the steering wheel. Sigh. Oh well. Progress over all.

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Clipper Cove, San Francisco Bay– 20 May 2014

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Bill Kinney

There are four important rules of sailing: 1.) Keep the water out of the boat. 2.) Keep the people in the boat. 3.) Do not hit anything. 4.) Look good.

There is also a corollary to Rule #4, Do not be the entertainment. In the accompanying photo we somebody violating Rules 3& 4. Coming in late to Clipper Cove he anchored in a quiet part of the cove at high tide. By the time he woke up, the tide had gone out, and his boat had drifted over toward the beach, and as the tide kept going out he ended up like this:

Don’t be this guy!

Ooops…

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