Yosemite

Published on May 6, 2009 in 2009 Cruises. 0 Comments

When not adventuring on ADAGIO we leap on such invitations as joining a retreat to Yosemite - and we were so lucky with the April weather. On Friday, it was snowing as we entered Yosemite by the 6200-ft pass at the Big Oak Flat entry. It was raining very wet, big drops when we unloaded in Camp Curry. Then by the time we were exploring around the Ahwahnee Lodge grounds before dinner the rain had turned to sun - which prevailed for the weekend.

Dinner that night at the Ahwahnee was as memorable as our last visit nearly 20 years ago. The main dining hall of the Ahwahnee may be the most glorious situation on Earth - for the task of eating. Then on Saturday morning the multi-family fun started….

Michael Daley, an Electronic Engineer recommendation

Published on April 22, 2009 in Technical Info. 0 Comments

The ADAGIO crew has had the good fortune locating exceptional marine services talent in various parts of the world - ranging from Hobart, Tasmania to Sitka, Alaska. Recently we had an especially good experience in San Francisco that I just want to mention briefly.

ADAGIO has two Electrodyne 70A, 24VDC brushless, roller bearing, heavy duty alternators. The Electrodynes function primarily as a backup to our 10kW Panda genset, but of course keep the batteries charged up if we are motor-sailing. Since we are accustomed to such as autopilot, radar, and fresh-baked bread, we like to be confident that a genset failure that we cannot repair at sea doesn’t cramp the electrical consumption too much.

So we inquired around our network of experienced Bay Area sailors for a recommendation of the best engineer to give the Electrodynes a thorough inspection. More than a couple of skippers recommended Michael Daley. Coincidentally we came across an excellent technical letter that Michael wrote for Richard Spindler’s Latitude 38 of February 2009 — specifically on the topic of alternator reliability. OK - that made it an easy decision.

Michael was at the gate of Marina Village Yacht Harbor within 1 minute of our 0900 appointment. Over the next seven hours Michael and I went over that whole end of the yacht’s electrical system with a microscope.

Today via email we received Michael’s invoice together with one of the more extensive reports of our experience. This is what we should expect from all the technical staff that work on our boats — but in our experience it is exceedingly rare. Here’s the report:

PROBLEMS REPORTED:

Electrodyne alternator produces rated output only at excessive engine RPM.

Belt-dust reported.

Field-coil connections are a concern.

TASKS PERFORMED:

1) Inspect installation: Installation was professionally and competently done, except for the field coil connections. These use bullet connectors, and they do not match the wire guage, leading to corrosion at the exposed wire ends.

2) Measure pulley diameters and calculate alternator-to-engine RPM ratio: The ratio is too low to allow rated alternator output at the desired cruising engine RPM.

3) Inspect belts for quality, alignment and tension: The port engine has high-quality belts installed, but the Starboard alternator belts are not well matched, and are standard quality. Tension is sufficient for operation at moderate output without significant slippage, but higher tension is suggested (see recommendations, below). The surfaces of the pulleys are not as smooth as they ideally would be for longest life and minimum dust production. (see recommendations, below).

4) The port alternator field wire is not a quick-disconnect connector, as on many alternators, but it is also not on the stud-connector that Electrodyne typically uses. The field wire emerges from a hole in the alternator cover, where it is crimp-spliced to a short piece of wire leading to the bullet connector. This is problematic. Alternator was purchased in New Zealand.

5) Consult with Electrodyne factory: Factory suggested that the unit had originally been fitted with an internal regulator, which was removed in New Zealand when Steve ordered an externally-regulated unit. The field wire stud was not installed, as it should have been, but the wire was simply routed through the hole in the rear cover. The factory suggested disassembling the unit in the hope that additional field wire was available inside.

6) Remove port alternator from engine completely for access.

7) Disassemble port alternator to access field wire inside rear cover.

8) Unfortunately, there was no more field wire inside.

9) Extend field wire using adhesive-filled, heat-shrink crimp splice to allow a service loop for future work.

10) Delete bullet connector entirely — is unit must be removed, there is now enough extra wire to allow it to be cut and respliced.

11) Reassemble alternator.

12) Reinstall alternator.

13) Swap two belts, which had measured different tensions previously, and adjust tension.

14) Replace splice on starboard alternator field coil with adhesive-filled, heat-shrink crimp splice and extend field wire to allow a service loop for future work. Starboard alternator had enough field wire left to work with without removing or disassembling it.

CONCLUSIONS:

To achieve rated output at preferred cruising engine RPM, the alternator pulley ratio must be increased. The crankshaft pulley diameter must be increased to do this.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1) Replace crankshaft pulleys (port and startboard) with a larger diameter. If possible, use an even larger diameter pulley that would allow the alternator pulley diameter to be increased also, which would result in longer belt life. Objective is to obtain 4800-5000 alternator RPM at cruising engine RPM. In any case, the alternator pulleys shoud be replaced, since the working surfaces are not as smooth as they should be.

2) Operate belts at a slightly higher tension than was found, at least until a larger alternator pulley can be installed. This will reduce slippage and dust production. The only downside is reduced alternator bearing life, and these units are beefy, and should provide long service life even at the higher tension. If a larger alternator pulley is installed, tension can then be reduced somewhat.

3) Replace regulator with Balmar Max-Charge, with optional battery temperature sensor installed.

4) Balance the alternator field winding resistances, as was discussed. The best way to do this is to run the engines at exactly the same RPM and balance the alternator output currents by adding resistance to the field winding of the alternator that shows a higher output until they are equalized. (I’d be glad to help with this if you like). Otherwise. a careful measurement of the filed resistances measured AT THE REGULTOR should be made, and these resistances balanced.

For any of your projects, you can contact Michael as follows:

Michael Daley
Redwood Coast Marine Electrical
1120 Brickyard Cove Rd.
Point Richmond, CA 94801(707)480-8517 (C)
(510)234-2827

Cruising guides and books for sale!

Published on March 16, 2009 in Books. 0 Comments

Adagio is preparing to sail west across the Pacific, so we have some 22 cruising books and guides available for sale.

Annotated by experienced cruisers as to the best routes and anchorages. Sailing Directions, Coast Pilots, Cruising Guides. Tahiti, Mexico, Pacific NW, Puget Sound, British Columbia, San Juan Islands, SE Alaska.

We have created a tabulation of all our books on offer — an Acrobat PDF file to ensure that everyone can read it without browser or Excel glitches.

Please contact us via email.  We are berthed in Alameda at Marina Village Yacht Harbor.
We also have for sale British Columbia, Canada Cruising Guides and Mediterranean Cruising Guides .

2009 Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart

Published on February 11, 2009 in 2009 Cruises. 0 Comments

Held every other year on Hobart’s historic waterfront, the 2009 Australian Wooden Festival was the best we have ever seen. The first day we watched the Opening Parade of Sail and Arrival of Tall Ships and Festival boats. Over 550 wooden boats were on display, and there were regular scheduled races out on the river. Activities for children and adults were abundant. Nine teams, mostly families, each built and launched a boat during the 3-1/2 days of the show. Teens formed school teams to build, launch and race boats of their own designs. This Quick ‘N Dirty activity, especially the race, was the most entertaining event of the show. Five Tall Ships offered on-board tours, and sailings during the festival.

Several of our friends were displaying their boats in the show. Antique model boats were on display. Excellent musical performances kept us entertained, while we enjoyed the delicious, mostly seafood, from the food stalls. At the Shipwrights’ Village we watched boat builders demonstrating the numerous skills required for successful boat building.

There is so much to see, enjoy and learn — see the festival website for a sampling.

University of Tasmania Radio Telescope & Grote Reber Museum

Published on February 9, 2009 in 2009 Cruises. 1 Comment

On February 11 we arranged, for ourselves and eleven of our friends, a private tour of the radio telescope that is located just 25 km from Hobart.

The 26 metre radio telescope dish was donated by NASA to the University of Tasmania early in the 1980’s, when NASA rationalized their worldwide operations.

Next to the radio telescope is the Grote Reber Museum which is a testament to the life of Grote Reber, the “Father of Radio Astronomy.” Reber was the first person to build a “big dish” antenna for the purpose of mapping the sky at radio frequencies. He discovered many discrete radio sources, and he mapped the band of bright radio emission from our Galaxy, the Milky Way [We thank the University of Tasmania for the above information, taken from the museum brochure].

A tour of the museum and telescope should be high on any visitors’ program for Hobart. It is a bit of well-kept secret right now — no doubt the word will spread.

Alice in Wonderland

Published on January 20, 2009 in 2009 Cruises. 1 Comment

What a hoot! The 2009 production of “Alice” at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens was major fun for the adults as well as all the children.

The Big Monkey crew are back again after their sensational 07/08 season of Pinocchio, this time to amaze young and young at heart with their adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic Alice in Wonderland. This masterpiece first published in 1865, is the timeless tale of Alice, a young girl who follows the White Rabbit down a rabbit hole. Alice has many adventures with turtles, cats, plays croquet with a flamingo and even attends the Mad Hatters Tea Party.

2009 MONA FOMA: Ansgar Wallenhorst at St. David’s Cathedral

Published on January 11, 2009 in 2009 Cruises. 0 Comments

One of the major treats of the 2009 MONA FOMA Festival of Music and Art in Hobart was the Ansgar Wallenhorst concert at St. David’s Cathedral. You have never truly heard that magnificent organ until played by virtuoso Wallenhorst.

Lucid Culture reviewed a similar 2007 concert at St. Thomas Church, NYC — a better review than we could write, so here’s the introduction discussing the performance of the same Franz Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue performed in Hobart.

Wallenhorst is a German organist and a devotee of improvisation, tonight proving himself in the same league as Olivier Latry or Pierre Cochereau. He gave the beautiful old Skinner organ here a workout it probably hasn’t had in years, using seemingly every pipe and every registration, no matter how obscure. Perhaps the glockenspiel felt neglected, but otherwise the venerable old instrument proved it can still whip up a storm for the ears. In almost 45 minutes, Wallenhorst played just two pieces, the first being Franz Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam. Liszt is famous for being the Pedro Martinez of the organ, i.e. having big hands and long fingers which helped facilitate the long jumps and massive chords which are his trademark. But melody is all too frequently an afterthought in his music: flights of dexterity and dazzling musicianship very often take precedence over content. Not so with this piece. It’s a flood warning, echoing back to Buxtehude and his contemporaries with its warm, major-key passages playing against eerie minor key melodies, macabre chromatics and tritones. By the time Wallenhorst wrapped it up with a scorching, fortissimo conclusion, he’d aired out the trumpet in the church’s ceiling as well as every rank in the flutes, reeds and the lowest, rumbling, subterranean pedal pipes. The intensity of the performance matched the knotty demands of the piece itself.

2008 Holiday Newsletter

Published on December 17, 2008 in 2008 Cruises. 17 Comments

Steveanddorothy

Aboard ADAGIO
The San Francisco Bay Area, California
December, 2008

We Wish You Very Happy Holidays and a Safe Harbor for the New Year

At the end of December last year, we abandonded ADAGIO to the Pacific Northwest winter, and flew to Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, for three months of festivals, boat shows, music, good friends and outdoor adventures.

When we arrived, the Hobart summer festival was in full swing for the month of January, followed by the “Taste of Tasmania“, the Cygnet Folk Festival and the Hobart Comedy Festival.

Being boat-less, we took the opportunity to explore by car and by tour boat. Most fortunately, our mate Adrian took us sailing aboard CAMIRA, and also for a tour by auto of lovely South Bruny Island. The weather was stormy and dramatic, which suited the photographers in the group. Dramatic skies, miles of beaches and rocky shores, southern hemisphere rain forests and albino wallabies.

We toured the dramatic rock formations along the seashores of the Tasman Peninsula, by a tour boat operated by “Sealife Experience“. The naturalist told us about the white bellied sea eagles that we saw nesting in the trees, fairy penguins in the water near the boat, seals and cormorants on the rocks and in the water. But the most interesting features were the geology of the shoreline. We were in an area where sedimentary layers meet volcanic dolerite. To paraphrase from Wikipedia: Volcanism, associated with the Jurassic breakup of Gondwanaland in the Southern Hemisphere caused the formation of many large diabase/dolerite sills and dike swarms. Tasmania has the world’s largest areas of dolerite, with many distinctive mountains and cliffs formed from this rock type. Locals have given these landforms names including the words, “pillars”, “needles” and “organ pipes”. The tour boat took us close to the rock face, and into caves, much more intimate with the shoreline than we would ever come with ADAGIO.

When we returned to Bainbridge Island, Washington, in April, spring was in the air, the icy docks were dry and warm, and the weather was perfect for bicycling. We followed our favorite shoreline routes several times a week, alternating days with working out at the gym.

We enjoyed watching David sail his Optimist dinghy at Port Madison, and Dorothy even volunteered to help man the “bock” one day of sailing camp. Steve bought David a radio controlled airplane, then got hooked himself. Every Friday evening we met other RC flyers at Battlepoint Park for a fly-in. The guys learned to fly the planes, we all learned how to poke a plane from below to disentangle it from a tree, and the guys learned about fast-drying epoxy and tape for repairs.

In July we visited with family, and Dorothy joined the wedding party for our niece, Elizabeth, at the historic and elegant Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. August brought our daughter’s birthday celebration. And then we were ready to depart for cruising in British Columbia waters.

Our first stop was Victoria, where we enjoyed the Victoria Splash! symphony performance on the inner harbor, the Dragon Boat Races and dance performances, the Canadian Air force Snowbirds air show, and the Victoria Wooden Boat Festival. When the winds turned from northerly to southerly, we sailed north to Nanaimo. This was a safe place to leave ADAGIO for a land tour to the west coast of Vancouver Island, and The Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Rain coast forest walks, miles of sand beaches full of surfers on a summer’s day, elegant dining, and an amazing boat tour to watch black bears turn over rocks on the beach and lap up pools of tiny crabs.

As fairly new members of the Ocean Cruising Club, we had signed up to join other members for a Rally cruise with 19 other boats in Desolation Sound, British Columbia. We had met our first OCC members in New Zealand, about 10 years ago. We were very warmly greeted by the Rally organizers, Lisa and Andy, at Cortez Bay. A grand BBQ brought the 70 cruisers together for the first time, and we made friends immediately. Several of the members were friends of other cruising friends, and we were happy to finally meet them in person. Mostly circumnavigators, we felt as if we were surrounded by giants, who were down-to-earth, and looking for a fun time together.

Each day we sailed to a different island, cove or inlet, and occasionally hiked to a freshwater lake for a swim. The weather was exceptionally fine. Most nights we formed a large raft of boats, with boats being berthed side-by-side, and every fourth boat setting an anchor and taking a stern line ashore. The logistics of this complicated operation were handled with great skill by Lisa and Andy. One night ADAGIO was selected to be the center boat in the raft, and the “party” boat for the evening. The Barrel of Monkeys choral group had been practicing for days, and they selected the bow of ADAGIO for their performance stage. All 76 OCC members climbed aboard, with drinks and nibbles in hand, to enjoy the show, increasing the depth to which ADAGIO settled into the water by a fair amount. We were pleased that people did not start dancing, and the evening was a big success.

One late afternoon, after forming the raft along the shore, our organizers led us out into the center of the channel for a dinghy raft-up in the sunshine, with everyone bringing drinks and sharing appetizers, singing, telling stories and spinning the super-raft around in great circles. We agreed that we were probably having more fun than we would allow our children to have.

We made many new friends and hope to join an OCC rally again in the future, with or without ADAGIO. Half of the members attending this year’s rally had chartered their boats in Canada. The other half arrived aboard their own boats.

After the rally, we sailed south to join our friends Ralph and Nan at anchor in Montague Harbour in the Gulf Islands. Ralph led us along the beach and forest trails around the park ashore, and we found more photography opportunities.

Back in Victoria, we toured and dined and visited with our new OCC Canadian friends. Rose and David took us to beautiful places we had never seen during our many visits to Victoria. We shared meals with Tony and Coryn Gooch and Shaun and Penny, as well as the intrepid single-handed circumnavigator Jeanne Socrates.

Hanging flower baskets were being removed from the gardens surrounding Victoria Harbour. Rain clouds appeared more frequently, and we began to plan for our passage south to San Francisco. Our wonderful friend, Joe Siudzinski of KatieKat, joined us aboard ADAGIO for the passage south. After a long wait, we found a solid weather window that would allow us to make our way safely the 60 nautical miles west through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and that also would allow us to round Cape Mendocino in California in safe seas and winds. When the decision was made, we sailed across the Strait, and entered the US in Port Angeles. The next day we sailed to Neah Bay to wait for an early morning departure. We safely negotiated the icy docks as we released our dock lines. As we sailed south down the coast of Washington, an enormous Mt. Olympus raised his snowy peaks. To avoid crab pot floats, logs and large ships and fishing boats, we headed offshore before turning south. We had a boisterious, non-stop four and 1/2 days passage, with only the communications gear giving us problems.

We had sailed and raced our own boats on San Francisco Bay when we lived in Tiburon for 12 years, but never aboard ADAGIO. The winds abated and the sun filled the skies as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Fortunarely, we had Joe handy to snap our photo.

Since arriving in the Bay Area, we have spent many (but not enough) days with our daughter and her family who have moved to Menlo Park. We will share Christmas with them, then fly to Hobart where we are looking forward to more festivals, Australia’s best Wooden Boat Festival, and the Ten Days on the Island Festival.

At our website, there are lots of photo galleries and earlier dispatches.

Queensland electrical storms

Published on December 4, 2008 in Technical Info. 0 Comments

Joe sent us the link to 64 picks of this early summer storm moving across tropical Australia. We had ADAGIO berthed in Brisbane from early to mid summer in 2001, experiencing the most exciting-threatening lightning storm of our sailing careers. We were very happy for ADAGIO’s extensive lightning grounding system - designed on advice from fellow Kiwi and lightning physicist Ewen Thompson, then of University of Florida’s Lightning Research Laboratory.

Universal Wish List for Christmas?

Published on November 11, 2008 in Technical Info. 1 Comment

We are using this free Amazon service — it’s really useful, and very quick and simple. Just add the button to your browser bookmark bar.