Weekend sailing

Derek and I launched on Friday after work. Took us over an hour to setup and, becaue of trimarans refusing to point into the wind, it took us another 30 minutes to raise the main. After that, though, we screamed down Lake Washington. Some great sailing.

We docked in Kirkland and left the boat there for the night.

The next day Kat and I left to sail back down to Bellevue. The wind was fickle and we had to motor about half the time. Of course, right near the take out the wind picked up and it was fun sailing.

It's too bad there's so much cluster fuck involved in trailor sailing. That combined with the fickle NW winds has me thinking that I'll be selling this boat... the hassle just isn't worth the reward. But, I'll give it a few more weeks.

Local Boat Charters

This is a good list of places that do bare boat charters.

Mooring rules

In response to this email:

I'm trying to figure the rules regarding mooring balls on Lake
Washington. I've asked the towns, the police, the government, the
marinas without much luck (or, at best, contradictory information).
One marina said someone in the sherrifs department commented on taking
action in this regard in Yarrow Bay a few years ago. I know there
were some live-aboards there - so, I still didn't know what this
meant.

I have a small 17' sailboat that I'd like to put on a mooring ball.
If it matters I'd use the boat at a minimum once a week.

Is this allowed? If not then what about all of the existing mooring
balls in Lake Washington?

Is this illegal but seldom/never enforced? What are the consequences
for "getting caught" doing this?

I got this response:

Mr. Wiseley, Please call our office or e-mail me your phone number so we can discuss your question about mooring buoys. There is no one answer so it would be pointless to try and e-mail a response. If I am not in, any of our marine deputies should be able to assist you. Our office hours are 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM but we are in and out all day long. Thank You. Deputy Heath. (206) 296-7558.

Been trying to call all day without much luck. But I'll post their response when I get one.

In the mean time - I found some "rules". I'm not sure the order of importance but marine stuff seems to be regulated on a town, county and state level. Kirklands rules seem to not allow moorings but there are tons in the lake. The counties rules seem to allow them but there appears to be some permitting procedure (that's why I need to call).

Some links to the rules are on the King County Sheriff's Office Marine/Dive Unit page.

Working on the boat

Put on the tiller tamer mentioned below. Nothing like drilling holes in a perfectly good boat... always hate doing that.

Also rerigged the sail as it was rigged completely wrong... added a reefing line.

Added a sail feed - but, unfortunately, this will need to be taken on and off with each rigging - adding yet another step.

Put the letters on the boat to meet the beaurocratic requirements.

And - when I was all done - it was 2pm - kind of late to start sailing seeing as how it still takes me 1.5 hours to get to the launch site, setup and launch. Must find a mooring.

Solo Rigging/Reefing/Raising

The Windrider 17 is kind of a bitch to raise the main sail solo. Aparently trimarans don't stay into the wind like most monohulls. From a post on Kim's Windrider Yacht Club page I gather this is the solution. Haven't set this up yet though.

First, you install a tiller tamer: $30.99. Good instructions on how to do this here.

Then you install a Boomkicker K0400. Which is pricey but can be had at PYacth for $111.

To use the boomkicker you also need to have a boom vang. Which can be had at WestMarine for around $82.

Then, for procedure:

I've had luck with a boomkicker and vang. You can learn more about this product at the site below. It makes reefing and hoisting easier, but there's still the whole issue of heading up. For that I use a Davis tiller tamer (see other site below) mounted just behind the aft cockpit and just in front of the tiller shaft. This device allows me to hold a course without attending to the boat. Then I engage my 2hp Honda and head up without any crew to assist me.

So - total cost is about $223. What was that about a hole in which you throw money into? :)

NW Water Trails

Northwest Discovery Water Trail

Electric Motor

I'm trying to replace my 2.5HP 2 stroke engine with an electric. Here's my search so far... damn is this stuff complicated.

First - from Minn Kota I get this in reply to a question:

The battery weight would depend on what battery you purchase and how
many. We generally recommend any deep cycle marine battery, group 27,
100-105 amp hours. Your running time would depend on what model you
purchase. Generally, we say to figure out what the boat weighs fully
loaded once you have that weight we recommend at a minimum 2 pounds of
thrust for every 100 pounds of weight. None of our motors will go
faster to 3-4 miles per hour.
To figure running time you will have to get an idea of which model you
are looking at. The formula to figure approx. running time at high
speed is as follows:

Battery amp hours X 85% divided by motor amp draw at high speed =
approx. running time at high speed

OK - so the answer to that is:

boat                     350 lbs
max boat capacity        800lbs
total                    1150 lbs
total thrust lbs needed  24 lbs

According to the Minn Kota chart a RT50/S/C with 50 lbs thrust more than qualifies. $300.

Now for the battery question. How much battery am I going to need to motor for around 5 hours?

I went Von Wentzels excellent site and used his incredible spreadsheet to try to figure this out.

According to his spread sheet I only need one battery (such as a 12 V 245 AH AGM for $329 at 158lbs). There are cheaper options but not much below $200.

Can anyone reality check this for me?

Then - if you're doing a multy day trip - how do you recharge this. I don't think there's enough room for solar panels on the W17, wind generator is out of the question. So, I was thinking a small Honda Generator.

Price $800
AC Output 120V 1000W max.(8.3A) 900W rated (7.5A)
DC Output 12V, 96W (8A)

So - if using that Honda Generator, can I use the ChargeTek 500 12/24V 5A charger ($99) to recharge the battery? And, if so, how long would it take to recharge?

Summary of costs:

Battery:     $329
Charger:     $99
Motor:       $300
Total:       $728   - which is competitive 
                      with a Honda 4 stroke

Optional camp/sail recharging system
Honda Generator:  $800

Update 03/19/2005 - Thoughts on charging and battery capacity

So - reading Battery Town there are definitely some adjustments to be made to this - particularly - the number of batterys needed.

Using their formulas:
1 Battery @245AH / 42A draw from Minn Kota Rt50 = 5.8 hours.

But - you're not supposed to totally discharge a battery. Battery Town suggests 3 times the number of batteries that the math says you need. So - this would mean 3 245AH batteries to motor for around 6 hours. That's 474lbs of battery.

If you were using a 45A charger like the Samlex 12V/45A charger ($319) it would take AHs per day / charger amps * 1.2 (fudge factor) so:

245AH / 45A = 5.44 hours * 1.2 = 6.5 hours.

This means, on top of the now absurd weight and cost (and the batteries only last a few years), you'd be running a generator all night to recharge. This sucks and isn't do-able in reality (I mean, it is, but it's stupid)

So - if you're taking my recommendation (and there's no reason you should) this is my thinking...

Get an electric engine and one battery for typical day sail motoring (leaving dock, getting boat back on trailor, possibly an hour of motoring if the wind dies). Do no more than 50% discharges - that gives you around 3 hours of motoring. And plan on plugging it in when you get home.

Still makes a honda 4 stroke a virtual necessity for longer trips - it's the only thing that makes sense. This is why green hasn't taken off yet. :)

Solar Panel Research

Also - if you're interested, I did a bit of research on just running directly off solar panels. Which, of course, is not really possible.

Minn Kota Rt50:
Max Amp Draw: 42
Volts: 12
Watts: 12 x 42 = 504

Largest flexible solar panel comes in at 32 watts and is 56"x17" or 4.6'x1.4' and is $245. You'd need about 15 of these to run the Rt50 straight out. That's 96 square feet of solar panels at a very reasonable cost of $3,645

The largest non-flexible solar panel comes in at 64 watts, is 54"x28" or 4.5'x2.3' and is $394. You'd need about 8 of these for a total surface area of 82 square feet at a cost of $3,152.

Again - this is why the planet isn't green yet. :) We're getting there - but we have a ways to go.

---

Updated 03/29/2005
Hydrogen and Fuel Cells
Ok - this is becoming obsessive. But, if anyone is interested. Here's what I found out researching Fuel Cells as an alternative to batteries.

For a cost comparison of Fuel Cell vs Gas see this excellent chart. Gas costs per kWh is around $0.14 while fuel cells are around $4.00.

That's outrageous! I thought fuel cell costs might be double or something, but not 29 times more expensive. Man, the green movement has a lot of progress to make.

If this doesn't phase you and you still want to go fuel cell the best option I found was the AirGen

I emailed the manufacturer and they said it's average lifespan is about 5,000 hours. At $6.5K that's not a very long life. This thing will run flat out for about 10-15 hours on a K bottle of hydrogen (which costs around $30 for the gas plus whatever you're paying to rent/buy a K bottle).

Even if you were cool with all these costs and serious size issues (K bottles are huge, and the generator isn't all that compact either) you'd also have serious weight concerns. The generator is around 100 lbs and a K bottle is around 133 lbs.

In conclusion - I guess I was really suprised by how immature the green market is at this time. It's a got a long way to go before a capitalist system would adopt green energy over gas. It fails on all levels: size, cost, weight, practicle use, etc.

Sailing: Kirkland back to Bellevue

It was blowing 15 from the south - which meant a constant beat all the way to Bellevue.

One really strange thing about the W17 is it doesn't seem to want to point into the wind when you let go of the controls. On the monohulls I've had you can just let go of everything, start raising the main, and you're instantly pointing into the wind. This doesn't seem to be the case with the W17... it made putting up the main a nightmare.

Definitely need to add a top lift, roller mechanism and boom lock... would make this boat much easier to use.

It was fun beating up wind... but the wind died after the 520 bridge. Motoring this boat is hell. First - your head is like one foot from the engine. Second - the engine kicks up so much water that it's like taking a shower. It was a madening experience. Need to investigate an electric motor option.

Taking the boat apart was much easier than putting it together. Still need to investigate mooring options for this though.

Still not sure if I like this boat yet. At this point I can't see doing long trips in it... that has to change or the boat has to go.

Sailing: Bellevue @ 40th to Kirkland Marina Park

Brrrr.... after dealing with an hour of setup (need to work on that) and a disasterous launch (need to learn to backup a trailer) and getting blown over a log boom before we could get moving we had an absolutely freezing sail.

The boat doesn't fit in the Kirkland boat launch (bummer) - it's too wide. So we went down to Bellevue, at 40th, just south of the I90 bridge. We got a brief gust, enough to wake Kat up, then it died and we more or less drifted down wind in very light air, past Bill Gates house, to the 520 bridge. Then the wind turned, picked up to about 15 knots, right on the nose. We had to tack through the bridge, which was sketchy and then beat for another 1.5 hours in a very cold breeze to Kirkland. We're both hypothermic :)

Going to leave it at the Kirkland dock over night and sail it back down tomorrow.

The boat points so so. Definitely not like a monohull. And pushing it through a tack is a bitch. But it's a fun boat. Will be very nice once it warms up.