July 17th - How revolting!

Well, it wasn't quite an open revolt, but shocking, none the less. As
usual,
the day was pretty flat and uneventful. We motored on into the still
air,
sweating. Our watch rotations are working out pretty well, on our last
day.
As is our practice, we've got the main up, blade tight, to minimize
roll in
the swells by virtue of that great slab resisting movement by pushing
the
air as it tried to flop one side to the other. The wind, however,
while
apparently nonexistent, is actually a light breeze directly on our
rear, at
the same speed as our progress forward.

Thus, when we stopped to swim and do our afternoon bath, the wind
pushed the
boat forward from behind. We tried to heave to - make the boat stop
moving
by stalling it by turning the wheel one way but the sails the other,
but our
intrepid Flying Pig just kept going around in circles. Adding the
genoa to
the equation didn't change matters. So, we dumped the mainsail and had
a
great swim.

The wind came up as we were getting out of the water so we put up the
spinnaker, again, but this time, as it was nearly straight aft, we
also put
the main sail out to do a wing-and-wing. Unfortunately, the wind was
not
strong nor consistent enough, and the main interfered with the airflow
over
the spinnaker. As has been common in the daylight watch hours, all
hands
were on deck, and the actual watchstanders's responsibilities were not
strictly delineated. Whoever was in the cockpit tended to do whatever
was
needed, whether it was their watch or not. It was thus that Phillip
and I
found ourselves there, and Lydia and Erkki were sitting in the stern,
chatting, and Lydia doing some photo shoots.

By this time the winds were building and , the seas (what little there
were)
were becoming a bit confused (due to the shifting winds), and it
looked like
it might turn into a lovely downhill sleigh ride on spinnaker alone.
However, that meant that the main would have to be dropped. To drop
the main
requires going into the wind - a maneuver which would put the
spinnaker all
over the standing rigging and perhaps damage it. On the other hand,
one of
the common techniques to drop a spinnaker is to "blanket" (cover,
dropping
the wind) it with the main. It's a pretty simple process, but requires
some
detailed steering in order to make the mainsail do its job. In the
end, I
erred in not flopping the main over on the same side as the spinnaker,
which, as you will see, caused a little excitement.

Phillip and I made ready to drop the spinnaker. It's a maneuver I
commonly
single hand, by taking the halyard (the line which pulls up the top of
the
sail in one hand and the spinnaker in the other. However, first you
have to
get the spinnaker sock down.

Under a lot of pressure (lots of wind), the sock which makes such a
snap out
of dousing the spinnaker is a bit challenging to pull down. The other
common
technique (if you're not racing and don't have to worry about what
direction, at what speed, you're going) is to relieve the pressure on
the
sail by motoring downwind to the same speed - or as close as you can
come to
it - as the wind. So, when the main, which was on the wrong side of
the mast
for the purposes of our maneuver, didn't do its job, I started the
engine
and began to do the downwind maneuver. See above about the sail - (!)
- I
was doing a bit of steering to try to get the spinnaker blanketed.

Any change in engine state is cause for heightened attention on the
part of
the crew. Combine that with full throttle operation and strange
maneuvers,
and all hands jump to attention. Add to that inexperience in sailboat
terminology and anything other than the entirely flat water experience
we'd
had all this time, and Erkki, jumping in to help, became concerned for
our
safety when he saw Phillip struggling a bit in corralling the
spinnaker
sock, which was flopping around due to the sea state. As he was trying
to
help, he attempted to lower the spinnaker, but didn't understand
either
which line, or how to deal with it. Compounding what was later more
clearly
understood, Phillip was trying to direct him, being the guy on the
foredeck.
It's a little like the blind leading the blind, as Phillip isn't an
experienced sailor (while being a very experienced mariner, on which,
more,
later), so communicating what to do wasn't clear. What little I did to
attempt to assist, by identifying lines (while I was driving), it
turned
out, wasn't particularly helpful to his comfort level.

Given that we were originally going to re-hoist it, Phillip and I were
going
to simply lay it on deck, turn the boat around to drop the main, and
then
put it back up again. However, it was getting toward dark, and one of
the
general rules is that you reduce sail in the dark. If the wind were to
continue to build, it would be difficult to deal with the spinnaker in
best
conditions, but perhaps dangerous in the dark. So, I made the decision
to
stow it, rather than re-hoist it.

Unknown to me as I'd not been seeing it at the time, however, these
exercises had frightened Erkki, and, after it was over, he'd
communicated
the negative impact of that experience, without the root cause, to the
others. He didn't understand what was happening, what the purposes
were,
and, worse, stepped into a maneuver already in progress, where we
didn't
have the time to make explanations. Not surprisingly, that led to
something
other than an enjoyable experience. Add attempting to take confusing
direction from more than one source (Phillip and me, on opposite ends
of
the boat from him). Add the elements of fear, and you have the reasons
most
people leave sailing if they aren't incapacitated in some way, or have
responsibilities which force them elsewhere. Not only isn't it fun,
sometimes it can be dangerous. That it wasn't, at all, dangerous,
wasn't
evident without the background of what was happening. Of course, I had
not
seen any of this, and aside from the comments received by the others,
was
totally unaware of his discomfort.

So, he was very ready to get off the boat. Revolt #1. Our dawn patrol
watch
together was very good, and our discussions helped him understand how
we got
to the point he'd gotten involved as well as that, while
"exciting" (not
really, but not dull), not any more dangerous than walking around on a
moving boat can be, regardless of what 's happening at the time.
However...

We're now into the next day, and have pulled into Jacksonville. On the
way
in, before the shift change, I'd called around and learned about where
to
fuel, arranged rental car transport for us in the afternoon and for
Erkki
and Phillip to get home, and a place to tie up while we did some
running
around (see below).

You'll recall that our electronics haven't been behaving all that
well.
Erkki, being an extremely high-level electronics designer, and
Phillip,
being an extremely high-level mariner, have not been happy with the
state of
our electrical system. That's not to say that I am, but I'm a bit more
fault-tolerant, as that's just the way it is with older gear. Lydia,
on the
other hand, has an extremely low tolerance for anything which involves
waiting (Lord, Give me patience - but I want it right now!),
including,
perhaps, a warmup period for our radar, or effort, such as touching an
older
piece of gear which was designed to require manual activation for a
light,
auto-dark after a few seconds to preserve battery life. Thus, revolt
#2.
Well, mutiny might be a better word. This is already too long, so I
won't go
into technical detail, but it suffices to say that our electrical
system,
from the stuff already aboard, to much of the newer gear added
(including
the new and expensive radar) was either poorly installed, simply
doesn't
work properly, or, worse, or perhaps in addition, has underlying
issues
which were supposedd to have been resolved as we went but have gotten
worse,
instead. Easily said from the outside, the consensus was that
"something"
must be done, and worse, it was fatally dangerous not to resolve this
before
making another move more than 5 miles from shore.

While I don't agree (people have singlehanded safely and successfully
without even the charts and other backups we have aboard which are not
high-tech), I did agree that we had a problem. So, after fueling and
moving
the boat to where the Jacksonville Marine folks had so kindly allowed
us to
park for a while, and picking up our car, we went
to lunch and hashed (pardon the expression) out our difficulties,
first
attempting to identify the problem, and then possible solutions. It
was
agreed that we'd do some diagnostic instrument shopping and return to
the
boat for some inspection.

Again shortening the story, the best that can be said is that the
installations of electrical (including electronics) gear have not been
tidy,
professionally standard, or, in some cases, complete. Compounding the
difficulties is that there are transients, dropouts, spikes and other
irregularities in the supply of electricity to our electronics. Thus,
it is
impossible to properly assign blame to the instruments until those
gremlins
are slain. At that point we can determine whether any given instrument
is at
fault, or if those gremlins were causing the difficulties.
Unfortunately,
that's a massive job. Whether we park ourselves somewhere for a couple
of
weeks and hope that the next one who has his hands inside all the
electrical
areas does it better than the previous several, or I do it myself,
we've not
yet decided. Stay tuned.We hugged and grinned and said our good-byes
and
otherwise sent our crew off in my rental car for their trip home.

Finally, as we were about to go to bed, it was evident that the
refrigerator
and freezer were not making cold sufficiently. Investigation proved
that it
wasn't making cold at all. Troubleshooting revealed that it was in
protective shutdown due to inadequate voltage. How revolting.

So, we have our work cut out for us. More later.

L8R


Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
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