Wednesday, August 12, 2020

San Diego: winded



 


Kasey telephoned yesterday afternoon and asked if they could start work on GANNET today rather than tomorrow.  

Simon, who works for Kasey, appeared at 9:30 this morning.  After making certain that it was connecting with my phone via Bluetooth, he installed the OpenWind transducer at the masthead.

The black object is it with its supplied base.  The photo is looking aft from the bow.

The other images are screen shots of two pages from the OpenWind iPhone app.  As you can see the app can show pitch and roll as well as wind speed and direction and by using the iPhone’s GPS, SOG and COG.  

With everything moved from the starboard side of the interior so I could slither aft to retrieve part of the running back stay adjuster GANNET is heeled to port.  About pitch I am not certain why she is down by the stern.  Perhaps she isn’t.  There is a way to calibrate that.  I’ll see when her interior is again stowed normally.

He then removed the masthead tricolor/anchor light.  The anchor light has not been working.  In tests back at the shop they determined that both anchor light and tricolor come on no matter how wired.  As many of you know, GANNET’s masthead has been in the water three or four times.  Masthead lights are not meant to have that experience.  It will be replaced.

About half of the standing rigging has been removed and taken to the shop where replacements will be swaged.  The mast is held in place by the running backstays, the forestay, opposite lower shrouds, and a halyard as an upper shroud.  

Simon looked at GANNET’s hinged mast step and realized how easily her mast can be lowered and asked why the rigging wasn’t replaced with the mast down.  I told him to ask Kasey.

All this took only three or four hours.  I am told the new furling gear will not arrive until Monday, but progress has been made. 



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am curious as to how much you expect to use this new wind instrument vs just using the windex or just sticking your face into the wind?

Webb said...

I don’t know how much, but I do like to quantify what I can rather than have and provide in my writing subjective impressions. I think I am pretty good at estimating wind speed, but I prefer to report a reading, which may or may not be accurate. In addition while down below it is useful to be able to read wind angle, particularly with the wind far aft which may result in an accidental gybe. Also on GANNET it is not unusual that i would put my face into the wind and get a fateful of water.

I expect that probably half or more of my sailing has been without electronic wind instrument. None on EGREGIOUS or CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE and sometimes broken on RESURGAM, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA and GANNET. They aren’t designed to go into the ocean and I’ve put the mastheads of four boats there.

So by far not essential, but interesting.