GETTING READY TO SAIL TO MAZATLAN; THE BATTERY SAGA
Thursday, 10 November 2005
We are back on the hook in front of the Arcos Hotel in La Paz. It is certainly cooler out here than in the marina and the dinghy trip to the dock is only a few minutes long. We are now alone on Vilisar essentially for the first time since last May (I exclude the seven weeks we spent up at the rancho). While we have enjoyed everybody who has visited us and look forward again to visitors when we get farther south, it is amazing how big the boat suddenly became and how late we slept this morning.
For some inexplicable reason (No, no! Really! This time there is money on the account!) our new Dresdner-Bank ATM card has not been working and we are now down to a few pesos. Kathleen has been in email contact with Sabina – she’s our friend and guardian angel over there in Frankfurt - and received feedback that they blocked the lost ATM card but forgot to take the block off when they gave us the new on. So, technology is great as long as you don’t let any people near it! Kathleen has headed off to try it out. If she gets money out we might buy a six-pack of beer for the voyage and maybe even fill up on diesel. No money, no beer.
Over breakfast coffee we talked about where we wanted to be by the onset of the hot weather next spring. At the moment, Costa Rica has the edge over some other ideas like Ecuador and the Galapagos Archipelago. It is still early days in this year’s cruise. Who knows, we might want to stay longer in some place along the way, some place like San Blas or Acapulco. AS I am wont to say, we have a vague plan to circumnavigate the world and we adhere to it rigidly. But we both agreed that we do not want to spend the hot season aboard in the tropics. We both loved the ranch and perhaps they might take us back. If not, there are other options too.
It will depend too upon which kids will be visiting with us, i.e. Antonia (16 next month) and William (14 by then) or William alone. Antonia will have her driving licence by then and is talking about a summer job. Of course, although I will miss having her here, I approve of my children starting to work early so they can support me in my dotage.
We talked too about how fast they have all grown up and are out in their own lives already. At 16 Andrew had a summer job and we have only seen him (all too) briefly since then: last summer for a week in Dallas and last Christmas for a week in Evanston. Suddenly they are gone. I guess, like most parents, we shall have to start visiting them.
So far I have not succeeded in getting more photos on the blogsite. But if anyone wants to see lots of photos, let me know at ronaldjbird@bigfoot.com and I shall share them with you. I have started using Kodak Easyshare as a cheap (free) way to store photographs and share them with others. We are without a camera at the moment since our expensive Olympus 5060 zoom got a spray shower on a crossing from Bahia de los Angeles to Guaymas last summer and gave up the ghost. And the several hundred photographs I had already taken of Baja are either somewhere on the boat o=in CD Rom form or somewhere hiding in my hard drive.
This afternoon I shall complete a couple of little projects around the boat in preparation for the voyage. For one, I need to adjust the attachments at the tack of the big, new, red drifter-sail. People who saw us coming into harbour in late afternoon a few days ago said we looked stunning. I just want to shorten the tie so it doesn’t jam up in the sheaves at the top of the mast.
I expect that we shall be using this drifter a lot since one’s main problem in a sailboat seems to be not too much wind but too little. The drifter is much bigger than our other headsails together. It is of lighter-weight material, of course. Still, I am glad that its luff-length allows me to hank it on atop of the Yankee/working jib and therefore cut down on the sail heaving and rolling and packing and hanking on and off, etc. etc. If the wind picks up beyond 10 or 15 knots, I shall have to pull it down, hank it off and use the Yankee.
The forecasts for the “lower crossing” of the Sea of Cortés are for northwesterlies during the day and southerlies during the night. We want the former. If the winds turn to the south we shall simply heave to and wait for new winds. We don’t want to run the engine if we can avoid it; it’s hot and noisy and is currently using too much oil anyway (must have that looked into in Mazatlán or Puerta Vallarta). When crossing from Loreto to Guaymas last spring, the wind dropped in the night. Since there was still a lot of leftover chop around from the windy days previously, we were left rolling around in mid-crossing. There was not enough wind to keep the sails filled and each time we rolled the mainsail slapped and cracked like a bullwhip. I found this so annoying that I doused the mainsail thinking we would just do without it until morning. Unfortunately, without the sail we began to roll even more and things began to fly around in the galley that up until then had stayed put. I quickly put it back up and stuck earplugs in my ears. I considered motoring but we had decided we wouldn’t and we stuck to it until the heat built up during the daytime and no wind appeared. On this trip I shall keep the red drifter up when we are windless. It rustles but does not slat in the same way. I read about this in a book by Larry and Lynn Pardy.
The battery saga
"Ronald Bird" wrote:
Made it her yesterday but had to motor all but tow days. Will blog soon.Can't get the batteries (deep cycle or starter) to charge above 12.2 volts. Why is that? Do I need to adjust regulators?
Ronald
From: "Big Wig" To: ronaldjbird@hotmail.comSubject: RE: Are you there yet?Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 20:51:36 GMTRon:
Are you having problems with the solar power or the alternator power?
If you are talking about the solar, check in the engine room to see if the green charging light on the solar charger is lit, also make sure that the plug from the solar panels is plugged in all the way.
If you think it is the alternator, make sure that the green light on the alternator regulator is lit when the engine is running, if it is, check your ammeter located on the panel below your main breaker panel. How much current does it read.
Check "Both" scenarios with your main battery switch in the 1, ALL and 2 Positions. Also check the voltage to your main breaker panel with your main battery switch in the 1, ALL and 2 Positions
When we have this information we might be able to figure out what is going on.
Joe
”Ronald Bird" wrote:
Hi
The light on the solar panel regulator is burning during the day. The light for the alternator regulator burns green when the engine is running. The same is true for Switch Positions 1, 2 and ALL/BOTH. The voltage never rises above 12.2v (I tested the deep cycle batteries with the voltmeter and they say 12.2v. After the first while of running the alternator when we left San Carlos the batteries registered 12.2v and never got any higher even after 15 hours of motoring.Yesterday and today we are at a dock and have 120v shore-power and the voltage on the electrical panel has climbed steadily from 12.2v to now 13.4v. Yesterday I turned the 120v charger off for an hour or so and the voltage on the panel registered 12.2v again.I am wondering if the voltage regulators can be set up higher, i.e. if they are in fact blocking the import of charge and need to have a higher ceiling. I think I can do it on the alternator regulator by taking it off and adjusting something at the back. Don't see any way to adjust the solar panel one, though.Any ideas?BTW, I went shopping for batteries and have found a big 12v battery with 285 minutes of RC (reserve capacity). It does not say deep cycle on it but local people tell me that, with 12v batteries (unlike 6v batteries) there is really no difference between deep cycle and normal, they're basically the same. What's your opinion?
Regards
Ronald
Ron
Thanks for the contact info, hope you made it okay.
Solar: It sound like your solar system is doing okay. From the limited amount of information that I have, I would have to say that your batteries are dragging on the charge.
Alternator: The green light on the regulator tells me that the Alternator and its Regulator are working. The voltage staying at 12.2 is not good. I needed the current readings from your alternator to really know what is going on with it. The current meter for your alternator is below your Main Distribution Panel.
Scenario 1: (Volts > 13) & (Amps < 10) = Batteries "Charged" & "Good", Alternator "Good"
Scenario 2: (Volts > 13) & (Amps > 10) = Batteries "Low" & Alternator "Good"
Scenario 3: (Volts <> 10) = Batteries "Low or Bad" & Alternator "Good"
Scenario 4: (Volts < 13) & (Amps < 10) = Batteries "Unknown" & Alternator "Bad or Set Wrong"
If scenario 4 is the closest to what you have then, you might have to adjust your Voltage Regulator. On the Left Side in the Middle of the Front of your Regulator, you will see a small (3/8"x3/8") Box with a small adjustment screw in the middle of it. With your meter being watched, (preferably a digital meter) adjust the screw slowly in whichever direction raises the voltage from 13.7 to 14 Volts. 13.9v is a common charging voltage. Your current meter should rise with the voltage.
Joe
10Nov05
Dear Joe
Well, we tuned up the batteries on shore power for a couple of days and then went back out on the hook. The alternator regulator did not light up at all probably because the batteries were fully charge (they were 13.4v when I unplugged and dropped to 12.5v after an hour or so). I turned the solar panels onto their faces and we turned off all the electrical uses on board for the night. AT sunrise the voltage was at 12.2v again.
Am I right that that indicates the batteries will not hold a charge? Did you change the voltage meter on the main panel to read the batteries (Bank 1 & 2) separately? Or are they now being read (together or separately) from the wind generator voltmeter? I did not have time today to check the output of the generator but I shall do that later and make sure the pulley is tight enough, etc.
I did find a blue square with a flathead screw in the middle and will try adjusting the regulator up. (Solar regulator doesn't have one on the outside at least.)
With the sun on the panels this morning we were back up to over 13v voltage; I could use my computer but it would not actually charge it up from near zero
Ronald
Can the batteries be saved? Will Joe be able to come up with a solution? Will Kathleen and Ronald make it across the notoriously calm Sea of Cortés? Will bankruptcy under the new U.S.A. bankruptcy act condemn them to penal servitude (what kind of servitude?) in a neo-con galley?
Check out this blog in a few days. If we make it to Mazatlan all will be revealed.
FINAL TWO DAYS OF SAILING TO LA PAZ (INCLUDING COOKING A TUNA Á LA CHINOISE); MEETING BOB FERGUSON; THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT
Wednesday, 09 November 2005
Final two days of sailing to La Paz (including cooking a tuna in the Chinese fashion)
Although the wind does occasionally pick up form the southeast during the night, there is really no swell and we have no cause to worry about a lee-shore problem. The nights and the early mornings, however, are definitely getting cooler. The cool wind blowing down the forward hatch causes me to pull the blanket over my head to keep warm.
After leftover spaghetti for breakfast we decide to sail out of our anchorage on very light northerly early-morning zephyrs. It is also an opportunity for Kathleen to have a go at recovering the anchor and managing the sails to get us going since I can give her some tips while Laila handles the tiller. As a rule I never use the windlass to pull in the anchor and chain. The arm, back and shoulder effort required seems to be more demanding than simply pulling in the whole lot like a fishing net. Without the help of the engine, if there is no wind I use the windlass, if at all, only to break out the anchor from the mud or sand on the bottom. Kathleen tries both the windlass and the pull methods but, in thirty feet of water, has to give up. I see this morning that I have actually made using the windlass more difficult to use because I have secured the spare (CQR) anchor by a rope around the rope gipsy. This has probably added a lot of friction. So I get the anchor in by hand and resolve the windlass issue by finding a new way to lash the second bower anchor.
I notice that, for such mundane problems, there are a lot of expensive solutions around. I could buy some expensive bronze or stainless-steel hardware and/or special harnesses for securing the anchor. And I am sure they are all quite good. But whenever I am tempted to buy something I try to review the situation once again. Usually, if the problem is simple, there is also a simple solution to it. In nearly every situation where hardware is an option, rope will do just as well. In fact it is often better and surely a lot cheaper. For example, I wanted to make sure the anchor chain would not at any time while we are travelling leap off of the chain gipsy. I could have found a metal hook or shackle. But in fact all I needed to do whenever I stow the anchor for travel is to tie a light line from a small padeye on the foredeck to the chain links. We have a ditty bag full of various light line so there was no need to buy anything. A lot of things that sailors “need” are really at most “could haves” and it’s worth having second thoughts.
The wind refuses to pick up and although at 1.5 knots we are having a very relaxing sail, we are never going to make anywhere tonight unless we throw on the Lister. This we do at about 1030 and make for Isla Partida.
The time we used up trying to sail (90 minutes) will be needed later if we are to make an anchorage before darkness falls. The sun sets now about 1740 and all is dark by 1830 at the latest. If we cannot make Caletta Partida, the big extinct volcano crater that separates the two island parts, there are a couple of coves a little farther north that will do although they provide less all-round shelter.
About 1700 Kathleen reels in a beautiful, 26-inch Mexican Black tuna fish. I cut dress the fish and cut off two big fillets before sliding the big carcass back into the deep to feed the crabs. I am getting better at cleaning fish. This one anyway has a skin rather than scales which makes it all much easier. It still find it best to strip off completely and then use buckets of water to sluice myself and the decks down of the dark-red blood.
It is clear that the sun will be down before we can get to the Calleta Partida and we alter course for Ensenada Grande. We get the Bruce down in clear water over white sand in more-or-less the last light. We set the solar-powered anchor lights and I head below to cook the tuna.
I use the Chinese method to cook the tuna fish; Albert Pang taught us this in British Columbia a few years ago and you can even see the fish he used on his photo website that includes pictures of Vilisar (www.aphotograph.com). First you steam the fish (normally a whole fish but in our case a very big fillet) for a very brief time with buttons of ginger root and onions slices on it. Do not over-cook! Then the water is drained, the fish is placed on a platter, and given a generous covering of finely-sliced ginger and green onions. As the final step, the oil that one has been heating in a saucepan until it is quite hot (but not smoking) is poured over the fish. The inside of the large piece of red fish-meat was still rare. The whole thing tasted even better than the tuna fish in red wine. Since before we caught the fish I had already made sweet-potato salad and spicy Mexican lime and tomato soup (created out of the leftover spaghetti sauce), we had a three-course dinner. I wonder what the poor people are eating tonight!
In the night the wind blows first in gusts from the island (easterly) and then, while we are sleeping, swings around to the west and blows into the harbour. I am woken by the small waves bouncing the boat around. I decide to read for a while to see if the wind will get any stronger. In fact, after a while it abates altogether. We are clearly getting into southern-Baja weather where the Pacific westerlies, the Coromuel Winds, blow uninhibited by mountains across the low-lying isthmus bringing cooling breezes at night. These winds are named for Oliver Cromwell, believe it or not. English and Dutch pirates and privateers used to lie in wait around the southern tip of Baja until the Spanish bullion galleons would come from Manila.
We get up on Sunday morning determined to make La Paz today. It is still some twenty-five miles away. We sail out of the anchorage again using our big red drifter and soon get up the main and staysails to eventually reach 3.5 – 4.0 knots. This is fun but we shall never make to La Paz by dark. This is the downside of deadlines! A perfectly good sailing day but we have to throw on the engines to get somewhere. Normally we would simply go with the wind.
In the afternoon, however, as we clear the island and have the La Paz peninsula in view, the wind drops to nothing and the sea becomes like a mirror. We put up the awning and motor, motor, motor. A wind comes up again as we head for the dogleg harbour entrance. I have always wanted to sail into or out of La Paz instead of motoring and we get all the sails including the drifter up. We must make a wonderful sight for the hotels and marinas along the way. And we are even making 2.5 knots against the strong ebb current. Laila learns about range lights on the way in. But we are in a race against the sun which is now heading to the horizon. On comes the engine to help the sails. Eventually we drop anchor in ten feet of water off the Hotel Arcos and the Municipal Pier at 1730. We park not far from Jack on S/V Dream Catcher, whom we last saw in Puerto Escondido last May just before he was to fly out to Chicago to visit his mother. “Hi, kids! (he is in his forties but calls everybody ‘kids’) Howja doin’?”
We secure the boat and head for the pier in the dinghy. Laila has invited us out for a farewell dinner and we have chosen to go to Rancho Viejo for roasted beef (assada). We debate whether we should check in an email café to see if Bob Ferguson has arrived by bus from Ensenada. We are not actually expecting him until tomorrow and so decide to check in the morning. This is too bad since he actually spots Vilisar’s red sail coming into the harbour and thinks he sees the three of us walking past his hotel. He only resists calling out because three are three of us.
The next day his emails tell us he is staying at the Arcos Hotel and we dash down to make contact. It is great to see him; the last time we were together was in London in 2001, shortly before we left to take up the voyager life. At that time he and Lena, his wife, were living on their 85-foot steel canal barge at St. Katherine’s Dock next to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.
We convince Bob to give up his hotel room and move aboard. After the dinghy ride out, he convinces us to spend two nights in the marina. There we have access to showers and “indoor toilets” and can run our errands a little faster than we can with the dinghy.
We have a lazy two days with Bob. Laila decides to catch the Tuesday afternoon ferry to Tompolobampo and carry on by bus to Mazatlán and eventually to San Blas. We hang around and chat and catch up on what our kids are doing and why our ex-wives hate us so much.
Speaking of ex-wives, my ex is disgusted that I seem to be having too much fun and not working hard enough. Because I am not working my guts out in a career path – at 64- I am of course immature and feckless and have no idea at all what it takes to raise children. In other words I am a bad parent AND a clearly sub-standard personality. Of course, as I hasten to tell anyone who cares to listen, including ex-wives, anyone can do exactly what I’m doing. And if maturity, in a financial sense, means making means fit ends, I am doing a terrific job. Most middle-class people I know have stressed out their credit cards, their bank lines and their nervous systems.
The anti-war movement
Many of us foreigners and many intelligent Americans as well have been appalled at what the United States has been doing in the Middle East and elsewhere since George W. Bush became the U.S. president in 2000. There are many Americans who oppose the government’s policies but no effective opposition. Why is this? Of course, when both houses of Congress are in neo-con Republican hands and the mass media are unlikely to criticise a neo-con, it might be understandable. I have often thought too, that with the ending of national service (the draft) by the Nixon Government, middle-class boys have no fear of being killed or maimed and their parents have therefore little reason even to pay attention to what their government is doing in far-away places like Iraq.
I like to read Empire Notes (www.empirenotes.org). The author is part of the anti-war movement and has expressed some ideas that I like in the following:
Radio Commentary -- Polls and the Antiwar Movement
The latest Gallup poll shows 55% saying Bush's leadership has been a failure and 54% that the war on Iraq was a mistake, down from slightly higher peaks earlier. Polls consistently show 60-70% of Americans in favor of withdrawing some troops, with support for immediate withdrawal about half that.So why does there seem to be an almost total lack of serious opposition to the war among mainstream circles (as opposed to criticism of the way it's being handled, which is universal)?
An article by Harriet Erskine in the Spring 1970 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, recently referenced by the History News Network, may help shed some light on that. Writing near the height of the Vietnam War, she looked at records of public support for World Wars I and II and the Korean War, as evidenced through polls of those times.Her conclusion was that World War II was the only one that saw consistently high levels of support from the American people during its prosecution. Perhaps most relevant, although just initially only 20% said the Korean war was a mistake, by February of 1951, only eight months into the war, 50% thought it was a mistake. Later, as truce talks stretched out and the war bogged down into a highly destructive stalemate, that number went into the high 50 percents, even over 60% in one poll.As Erskine pointed out at the time, only months after the highly successful Moratorium events of Fall 1969 and months before the resurgence of protest over the bombing of Cambodia, these disapproval numbers for the Korean War were higher than any seen by the end of 1969 for the Vietnam War.
Do you recall learning in school of how public opposition forced the United States to end the Korean War and how the war transformed the nation's consciousness, creating a Korea syndrome that kept it out of major interventions for decades?
No?
I think the lesson is clear and can be encapsulated in two points. First, "opposition" in public opinion, as expressed in answers to poll questions, means very little; what matters is political opposition, things that genuinely make it more difficult for those in power to continue on their course, or that make alternatives seem preferable.
Second, closely linked to the first, is the source of and reasons for opposition. That first poll, shortly after the Korean War began, asked people if it was a mistake for the United States to "defend Korea." Throughout the horrors of U.S. bombardment of North Korea, which made the bombing of Vietnam seem light by comparison, the mounting numbers who opposed it still viewed it as the defense of Korea – as do the vast majority today.We defended Korea from the Koreans, as we later defended South Vietnam from what Adlai Stevenson termed "internal aggression" by the people of South Vietnam. And yet, for a variety of reasons, that story broke down and, by the early 70's, almost nobody believed it. So complete was the breakdown that it took a 20-year propaganda campaign to rewrite the story of the Vietnam War, starting with Reagan and a spate of Hollywood movies and ending when John Kerry reported for duty at the Democratic Convention last year. Even the seemingly overwhelmingly successful first Gulf War and a spate of supposedly humanitarian interventions in the 90's were not enough to completely rewrite the story.
There is no doubt that the vastly greater commitment and perseverance of the Vietnam antiwar movement as compared with the current one had a great deal to do with the immediate threat to activist students posed by the draft, something that is certainly not going to happen again. But it is equally true that much of that fervor came from two other sources – horror at what was being done and belief that society could be dramatically transformed.
Today, right now, in our movement, we have some of that first component, though I would argue not enough, and we have little or none of the second. The Vietnam movement managed to help spread the first widely through society, though the majority clearly rejected the second. Our antiwar movement has largely failed even to spread the first. By so failing, we not only have a harder time ending the war, we lose the potential to use the horror and the failure of the war as a starting point for transforming society.
Thursday, 10 November 2005
We are back on the hook in front of the Arcos Hotel in La Paz. It is certainly cooler out here than in the marina and the dinghy trip to the dock is only a few minutes long. We are now alone on Vilisar essentially for the first time since last May (I exclude the seven weeks we spent up at the rancho). While we have enjoyed everybody who has visited us and look forward again to visitors when we get farther south, it is amazing how big the boat suddenly became and how late we slept this morning.
For some inexplicable reason (No, no! Really! This time there is money on the account!) our new Dresdner-Bank ATM card has not been working and we are now down to a few pesos. Kathleen has been in email contact with Sabina – she’s our friend and guardian angel over there in Frankfurt - and received feedback that they blocked the lost ATM card but forgot to take the block off when they gave us the new on. So, technology is great as long as you don’t let any people near it! Kathleen has headed off to try it out. If she gets money out we might buy a six-pack of beer for the voyage and maybe even fill up on diesel. No money, no beer.
Over breakfast coffee we talked about where we wanted to be by the onset of the hot weather next spring. At the moment, Costa Rica has the edge over some other ideas like Ecuador and the Galapagos Archipelago. It is still early days in this year’s cruise. Who knows, we might want to stay longer in some place along the way, some place like San Blas or Acapulco. AS I am wont to say, we have a vague plan to circumnavigate the world and we adhere to it rigidly. But we both agreed that we do not want to spend the hot season aboard in the tropics. We both loved the ranch and perhaps they might take us back. If not, there are other options too.
It will depend too upon which kids will be visiting with us, i.e. Antonia (16 next month) and William (14 by then) or William alone. Antonia will have her driving licence by then and is talking about a summer job. Of course, although I will miss having her here, I approve of my children starting to work early so they can support me in my dotage.
We talked too about how fast they have all grown up and are out in their own lives already. At 16 Andrew had a summer job and we have only seen him (all too) briefly since then: last summer for a week in Dallas and last Christmas for a week in Evanston. Suddenly they are gone. I guess, like most parents, we shall have to start visiting them.
So far I have not succeeded in getting more photos on the blogsite. But if anyone wants to see lots of photos, let me know at ronaldjbird@bigfoot.com and I shall share them with you. I have started using Kodak Easyshare as a cheap (free) way to store photographs and share them with others. We are without a camera at the moment since our expensive Olympus 5060 zoom got a spray shower on a crossing from Bahia de los Angeles to Guaymas last summer and gave up the ghost. And the several hundred photographs I had already taken of Baja are either somewhere on the boat o=in CD Rom form or somewhere hiding in my hard drive.
This afternoon I shall complete a couple of little projects around the boat in preparation for the voyage. For one, I need to adjust the attachments at the tack of the big, new, red drifter-sail. People who saw us coming into harbour in late afternoon a few days ago said we looked stunning. I just want to shorten the tie so it doesn’t jam up in the sheaves at the top of the mast.
I expect that we shall be using this drifter a lot since one’s main problem in a sailboat seems to be not too much wind but too little. The drifter is much bigger than our other headsails together. It is of lighter-weight material, of course. Still, I am glad that its luff-length allows me to hank it on atop of the Yankee/working jib and therefore cut down on the sail heaving and rolling and packing and hanking on and off, etc. etc. If the wind picks up beyond 10 or 15 knots, I shall have to pull it down, hank it off and use the Yankee.
The forecasts for the “lower crossing” of the Sea of Cortés are for northwesterlies during the day and southerlies during the night. We want the former. If the winds turn to the south we shall simply heave to and wait for new winds. We don’t want to run the engine if we can avoid it; it’s hot and noisy and is currently using too much oil anyway (must have that looked into in Mazatlán or Puerta Vallarta). When crossing from Loreto to Guaymas last spring, the wind dropped in the night. Since there was still a lot of leftover chop around from the windy days previously, we were left rolling around in mid-crossing. There was not enough wind to keep the sails filled and each time we rolled the mainsail slapped and cracked like a bullwhip. I found this so annoying that I doused the mainsail thinking we would just do without it until morning. Unfortunately, without the sail we began to roll even more and things began to fly around in the galley that up until then had stayed put. I quickly put it back up and stuck earplugs in my ears. I considered motoring but we had decided we wouldn’t and we stuck to it until the heat built up during the daytime and no wind appeared. On this trip I shall keep the red drifter up when we are windless. It rustles but does not slat in the same way. I read about this in a book by Larry and Lynn Pardy.
The battery saga
"Ronald Bird"
Made it her yesterday but had to motor all but tow days. Will blog soon.Can't get the batteries (deep cycle or starter) to charge above 12.2 volts. Why is that? Do I need to adjust regulators?
Ronald
From: "Big Wig" To: ronaldjbird@hotmail.comSubject: RE: Are you there yet?Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 20:51:36 GMTRon:
Are you having problems with the solar power or the alternator power?
If you are talking about the solar, check in the engine room to see if the green charging light on the solar charger is lit, also make sure that the plug from the solar panels is plugged in all the way.
If you think it is the alternator, make sure that the green light on the alternator regulator is lit when the engine is running, if it is, check your ammeter located on the panel below your main breaker panel. How much current does it read.
Check "Both" scenarios with your main battery switch in the 1, ALL and 2 Positions. Also check the voltage to your main breaker panel with your main battery switch in the 1, ALL and 2 Positions
When we have this information we might be able to figure out what is going on.
Joe
”Ronald Bird"
Hi
The light on the solar panel regulator is burning during the day. The light for the alternator regulator burns green when the engine is running. The same is true for Switch Positions 1, 2 and ALL/BOTH. The voltage never rises above 12.2v (I tested the deep cycle batteries with the voltmeter and they say 12.2v. After the first while of running the alternator when we left San Carlos the batteries registered 12.2v and never got any higher even after 15 hours of motoring.Yesterday and today we are at a dock and have 120v shore-power and the voltage on the electrical panel has climbed steadily from 12.2v to now 13.4v. Yesterday I turned the 120v charger off for an hour or so and the voltage on the panel registered 12.2v again.I am wondering if the voltage regulators can be set up higher, i.e. if they are in fact blocking the import of charge and need to have a higher ceiling. I think I can do it on the alternator regulator by taking it off and adjusting something at the back. Don't see any way to adjust the solar panel one, though.Any ideas?BTW, I went shopping for batteries and have found a big 12v battery with 285 minutes of RC (reserve capacity). It does not say deep cycle on it but local people tell me that, with 12v batteries (unlike 6v batteries) there is really no difference between deep cycle and normal, they're basically the same. What's your opinion?
Regards
Ronald
Ron
Thanks for the contact info, hope you made it okay.
Solar: It sound like your solar system is doing okay. From the limited amount of information that I have, I would have to say that your batteries are dragging on the charge.
Alternator: The green light on the regulator tells me that the Alternator and its Regulator are working. The voltage staying at 12.2 is not good. I needed the current readings from your alternator to really know what is going on with it. The current meter for your alternator is below your Main Distribution Panel.
Scenario 1: (Volts > 13) & (Amps < 10) = Batteries "Charged" & "Good", Alternator "Good"
Scenario 2: (Volts > 13) & (Amps > 10) = Batteries "Low" & Alternator "Good"
Scenario 3: (Volts <> 10) = Batteries "Low or Bad" & Alternator "Good"
Scenario 4: (Volts < 13) & (Amps < 10) = Batteries "Unknown" & Alternator "Bad or Set Wrong"
If scenario 4 is the closest to what you have then, you might have to adjust your Voltage Regulator. On the Left Side in the Middle of the Front of your Regulator, you will see a small (3/8"x3/8") Box with a small adjustment screw in the middle of it. With your meter being watched, (preferably a digital meter) adjust the screw slowly in whichever direction raises the voltage from 13.7 to 14 Volts. 13.9v is a common charging voltage. Your current meter should rise with the voltage.
Joe
10Nov05
Dear Joe
Well, we tuned up the batteries on shore power for a couple of days and then went back out on the hook. The alternator regulator did not light up at all probably because the batteries were fully charge (they were 13.4v when I unplugged and dropped to 12.5v after an hour or so). I turned the solar panels onto their faces and we turned off all the electrical uses on board for the night. AT sunrise the voltage was at 12.2v again.
Am I right that that indicates the batteries will not hold a charge? Did you change the voltage meter on the main panel to read the batteries (Bank 1 & 2) separately? Or are they now being read (together or separately) from the wind generator voltmeter? I did not have time today to check the output of the generator but I shall do that later and make sure the pulley is tight enough, etc.
I did find a blue square with a flathead screw in the middle and will try adjusting the regulator up. (Solar regulator doesn't have one on the outside at least.)
With the sun on the panels this morning we were back up to over 13v voltage; I could use my computer but it would not actually charge it up from near zero
Ronald
Can the batteries be saved? Will Joe be able to come up with a solution? Will Kathleen and Ronald make it across the notoriously calm Sea of Cortés? Will bankruptcy under the new U.S.A. bankruptcy act condemn them to penal servitude (what kind of servitude?) in a neo-con galley?
Check out this blog in a few days. If we make it to Mazatlan all will be revealed.
FINAL TWO DAYS OF SAILING TO LA PAZ (INCLUDING COOKING A TUNA Á LA CHINOISE); MEETING BOB FERGUSON; THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT
Wednesday, 09 November 2005
Final two days of sailing to La Paz (including cooking a tuna in the Chinese fashion)
Although the wind does occasionally pick up form the southeast during the night, there is really no swell and we have no cause to worry about a lee-shore problem. The nights and the early mornings, however, are definitely getting cooler. The cool wind blowing down the forward hatch causes me to pull the blanket over my head to keep warm.
After leftover spaghetti for breakfast we decide to sail out of our anchorage on very light northerly early-morning zephyrs. It is also an opportunity for Kathleen to have a go at recovering the anchor and managing the sails to get us going since I can give her some tips while Laila handles the tiller. As a rule I never use the windlass to pull in the anchor and chain. The arm, back and shoulder effort required seems to be more demanding than simply pulling in the whole lot like a fishing net. Without the help of the engine, if there is no wind I use the windlass, if at all, only to break out the anchor from the mud or sand on the bottom. Kathleen tries both the windlass and the pull methods but, in thirty feet of water, has to give up. I see this morning that I have actually made using the windlass more difficult to use because I have secured the spare (CQR) anchor by a rope around the rope gipsy. This has probably added a lot of friction. So I get the anchor in by hand and resolve the windlass issue by finding a new way to lash the second bower anchor.
I notice that, for such mundane problems, there are a lot of expensive solutions around. I could buy some expensive bronze or stainless-steel hardware and/or special harnesses for securing the anchor. And I am sure they are all quite good. But whenever I am tempted to buy something I try to review the situation once again. Usually, if the problem is simple, there is also a simple solution to it. In nearly every situation where hardware is an option, rope will do just as well. In fact it is often better and surely a lot cheaper. For example, I wanted to make sure the anchor chain would not at any time while we are travelling leap off of the chain gipsy. I could have found a metal hook or shackle. But in fact all I needed to do whenever I stow the anchor for travel is to tie a light line from a small padeye on the foredeck to the chain links. We have a ditty bag full of various light line so there was no need to buy anything. A lot of things that sailors “need” are really at most “could haves” and it’s worth having second thoughts.
The wind refuses to pick up and although at 1.5 knots we are having a very relaxing sail, we are never going to make anywhere tonight unless we throw on the Lister. This we do at about 1030 and make for Isla Partida.
The time we used up trying to sail (90 minutes) will be needed later if we are to make an anchorage before darkness falls. The sun sets now about 1740 and all is dark by 1830 at the latest. If we cannot make Caletta Partida, the big extinct volcano crater that separates the two island parts, there are a couple of coves a little farther north that will do although they provide less all-round shelter.
About 1700 Kathleen reels in a beautiful, 26-inch Mexican Black tuna fish. I cut dress the fish and cut off two big fillets before sliding the big carcass back into the deep to feed the crabs. I am getting better at cleaning fish. This one anyway has a skin rather than scales which makes it all much easier. It still find it best to strip off completely and then use buckets of water to sluice myself and the decks down of the dark-red blood.
It is clear that the sun will be down before we can get to the Calleta Partida and we alter course for Ensenada Grande. We get the Bruce down in clear water over white sand in more-or-less the last light. We set the solar-powered anchor lights and I head below to cook the tuna.
I use the Chinese method to cook the tuna fish; Albert Pang taught us this in British Columbia a few years ago and you can even see the fish he used on his photo website that includes pictures of Vilisar (www.aphotograph.com). First you steam the fish (normally a whole fish but in our case a very big fillet) for a very brief time with buttons of ginger root and onions slices on it. Do not over-cook! Then the water is drained, the fish is placed on a platter, and given a generous covering of finely-sliced ginger and green onions. As the final step, the oil that one has been heating in a saucepan until it is quite hot (but not smoking) is poured over the fish. The inside of the large piece of red fish-meat was still rare. The whole thing tasted even better than the tuna fish in red wine. Since before we caught the fish I had already made sweet-potato salad and spicy Mexican lime and tomato soup (created out of the leftover spaghetti sauce), we had a three-course dinner. I wonder what the poor people are eating tonight!
In the night the wind blows first in gusts from the island (easterly) and then, while we are sleeping, swings around to the west and blows into the harbour. I am woken by the small waves bouncing the boat around. I decide to read for a while to see if the wind will get any stronger. In fact, after a while it abates altogether. We are clearly getting into southern-Baja weather where the Pacific westerlies, the Coromuel Winds, blow uninhibited by mountains across the low-lying isthmus bringing cooling breezes at night. These winds are named for Oliver Cromwell, believe it or not. English and Dutch pirates and privateers used to lie in wait around the southern tip of Baja until the Spanish bullion galleons would come from Manila.
We get up on Sunday morning determined to make La Paz today. It is still some twenty-five miles away. We sail out of the anchorage again using our big red drifter and soon get up the main and staysails to eventually reach 3.5 – 4.0 knots. This is fun but we shall never make to La Paz by dark. This is the downside of deadlines! A perfectly good sailing day but we have to throw on the engines to get somewhere. Normally we would simply go with the wind.
In the afternoon, however, as we clear the island and have the La Paz peninsula in view, the wind drops to nothing and the sea becomes like a mirror. We put up the awning and motor, motor, motor. A wind comes up again as we head for the dogleg harbour entrance. I have always wanted to sail into or out of La Paz instead of motoring and we get all the sails including the drifter up. We must make a wonderful sight for the hotels and marinas along the way. And we are even making 2.5 knots against the strong ebb current. Laila learns about range lights on the way in. But we are in a race against the sun which is now heading to the horizon. On comes the engine to help the sails. Eventually we drop anchor in ten feet of water off the Hotel Arcos and the Municipal Pier at 1730. We park not far from Jack on S/V Dream Catcher, whom we last saw in Puerto Escondido last May just before he was to fly out to Chicago to visit his mother. “Hi, kids! (he is in his forties but calls everybody ‘kids’) Howja doin’?”
We secure the boat and head for the pier in the dinghy. Laila has invited us out for a farewell dinner and we have chosen to go to Rancho Viejo for roasted beef (assada). We debate whether we should check in an email café to see if Bob Ferguson has arrived by bus from Ensenada. We are not actually expecting him until tomorrow and so decide to check in the morning. This is too bad since he actually spots Vilisar’s red sail coming into the harbour and thinks he sees the three of us walking past his hotel. He only resists calling out because three are three of us.
The next day his emails tell us he is staying at the Arcos Hotel and we dash down to make contact. It is great to see him; the last time we were together was in London in 2001, shortly before we left to take up the voyager life. At that time he and Lena, his wife, were living on their 85-foot steel canal barge at St. Katherine’s Dock next to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.
We convince Bob to give up his hotel room and move aboard. After the dinghy ride out, he convinces us to spend two nights in the marina. There we have access to showers and “indoor toilets” and can run our errands a little faster than we can with the dinghy.
We have a lazy two days with Bob. Laila decides to catch the Tuesday afternoon ferry to Tompolobampo and carry on by bus to Mazatlán and eventually to San Blas. We hang around and chat and catch up on what our kids are doing and why our ex-wives hate us so much.
Speaking of ex-wives, my ex is disgusted that I seem to be having too much fun and not working hard enough. Because I am not working my guts out in a career path – at 64- I am of course immature and feckless and have no idea at all what it takes to raise children. In other words I am a bad parent AND a clearly sub-standard personality. Of course, as I hasten to tell anyone who cares to listen, including ex-wives, anyone can do exactly what I’m doing. And if maturity, in a financial sense, means making means fit ends, I am doing a terrific job. Most middle-class people I know have stressed out their credit cards, their bank lines and their nervous systems.
The anti-war movement
Many of us foreigners and many intelligent Americans as well have been appalled at what the United States has been doing in the Middle East and elsewhere since George W. Bush became the U.S. president in 2000. There are many Americans who oppose the government’s policies but no effective opposition. Why is this? Of course, when both houses of Congress are in neo-con Republican hands and the mass media are unlikely to criticise a neo-con, it might be understandable. I have often thought too, that with the ending of national service (the draft) by the Nixon Government, middle-class boys have no fear of being killed or maimed and their parents have therefore little reason even to pay attention to what their government is doing in far-away places like Iraq.
I like to read Empire Notes (www.empirenotes.org). The author is part of the anti-war movement and has expressed some ideas that I like in the following:
Radio Commentary -- Polls and the Antiwar Movement
The latest Gallup poll shows 55% saying Bush's leadership has been a failure and 54% that the war on Iraq was a mistake, down from slightly higher peaks earlier. Polls consistently show 60-70% of Americans in favor of withdrawing some troops, with support for immediate withdrawal about half that.So why does there seem to be an almost total lack of serious opposition to the war among mainstream circles (as opposed to criticism of the way it's being handled, which is universal)?
An article by Harriet Erskine in the Spring 1970 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, recently referenced by the History News Network, may help shed some light on that. Writing near the height of the Vietnam War, she looked at records of public support for World Wars I and II and the Korean War, as evidenced through polls of those times.Her conclusion was that World War II was the only one that saw consistently high levels of support from the American people during its prosecution. Perhaps most relevant, although just initially only 20% said the Korean war was a mistake, by February of 1951, only eight months into the war, 50% thought it was a mistake. Later, as truce talks stretched out and the war bogged down into a highly destructive stalemate, that number went into the high 50 percents, even over 60% in one poll.As Erskine pointed out at the time, only months after the highly successful Moratorium events of Fall 1969 and months before the resurgence of protest over the bombing of Cambodia, these disapproval numbers for the Korean War were higher than any seen by the end of 1969 for the Vietnam War.
Do you recall learning in school of how public opposition forced the United States to end the Korean War and how the war transformed the nation's consciousness, creating a Korea syndrome that kept it out of major interventions for decades?
No?
I think the lesson is clear and can be encapsulated in two points. First, "opposition" in public opinion, as expressed in answers to poll questions, means very little; what matters is political opposition, things that genuinely make it more difficult for those in power to continue on their course, or that make alternatives seem preferable.
Second, closely linked to the first, is the source of and reasons for opposition. That first poll, shortly after the Korean War began, asked people if it was a mistake for the United States to "defend Korea." Throughout the horrors of U.S. bombardment of North Korea, which made the bombing of Vietnam seem light by comparison, the mounting numbers who opposed it still viewed it as the defense of Korea – as do the vast majority today.We defended Korea from the Koreans, as we later defended South Vietnam from what Adlai Stevenson termed "internal aggression" by the people of South Vietnam. And yet, for a variety of reasons, that story broke down and, by the early 70's, almost nobody believed it. So complete was the breakdown that it took a 20-year propaganda campaign to rewrite the story of the Vietnam War, starting with Reagan and a spate of Hollywood movies and ending when John Kerry reported for duty at the Democratic Convention last year. Even the seemingly overwhelmingly successful first Gulf War and a spate of supposedly humanitarian interventions in the 90's were not enough to completely rewrite the story.
There is no doubt that the vastly greater commitment and perseverance of the Vietnam antiwar movement as compared with the current one had a great deal to do with the immediate threat to activist students posed by the draft, something that is certainly not going to happen again. But it is equally true that much of that fervor came from two other sources – horror at what was being done and belief that society could be dramatically transformed.
Today, right now, in our movement, we have some of that first component, though I would argue not enough, and we have little or none of the second. The Vietnam movement managed to help spread the first widely through society, though the majority clearly rejected the second. Our antiwar movement has largely failed even to spread the first. By so failing, we not only have a harder time ending the war, we lose the potential to use the horror and the failure of the war as a starting point for transforming society.
posted by rjb @ Thursday, November 10, 2005
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