11/5
Whoa. Twentieth day southbound from Seattle and "tings" finally got hot today. We’re beginning to feel clammy laying in the bunk, and after 15 minutes of working on some mindless, neverending boat task. I’m sitting here in a T-shirt and safety harness at 8 p.m. writing about clamminess.
We're at 22 degrees north, about 3/4 of the way down Baja. We will cross the 21st parallel tomorrow, also known as the Tropic of Cancer. That, my friends, is the official tropics. 21 degrees north to 21 degrees south.
For the past 11 years the only real heat on this boat has come from a bag of firewood or a lump of coal. You'd be amazed how fast a 50-lb. sack of wood can go up a 3" stovepipe at 48 degrees north. And 10 minutes after the fire goes out, the boat is cold again.
The 13 years before the recent eleven were Hot, Hot, Hot. Somewhere deep inside I can recall bad feelings about the too-hot heat of those years sailing in the tropics. But it’s pretty deep down right now. I’m not complaining about this new hotness, this sweat dripping off my forehead.
No, for now I’m happy as a clam … a hot, clammy clam … to be back in the tropics.
We're dong 5½ knots on a flatish sea, headed south and east, and it's gonna be hotter tomorrow.
We’re using a towing generator to supplement the power we get from Woodwind’s solar cells. It’s a small propeller on a 5-foot steel shaft, with 50 or 100 feet of line tied to a generator. You tow the propeller behind the boat and as it spins … viola, electricity!
It's a 1980s-vintage gizmo, heavy, noisy and inefficient by modern standards, but it works well, with a few idiosyncrasies.
The biggest problem is stopping the propeller from turning so we can bring it in. One way is to stop the boat, but that’s easier said than done, especially at sea. So, the preferred technique is to send down a cone shaped "something" along the line. Also easier said than done. We've used cut-up buckets, old cut-up road pylons, cut-up pieces of heavy rubber. Some work better than others, but even when you have a good system you still have to devise more, because the “cone chokers” have a way of dropping overboard while you’re fumbling with a wing-nut and hanging off the stern, or popping right off at the propeller end.
Once the “wing-nut skipper” has the charging gizmo working, there’s no listening to the shortwave radio due to electrical interference. Also, there’s no fishing while that spinning prop is chopping up the water behind the boat. So, it's get the batteries all charged up, set the cone choker, pull in the spinning dervish and set a fishing line. Then we hope to catch a small tuna, sierra, dorado, or mackerel before the batteries go down. Easier said than done.
Bruce
We're at 22 degrees north, about 3/4 of the way down Baja. We will cross the 21st parallel tomorrow, also known as the Tropic of Cancer. That, my friends, is the official tropics. 21 degrees north to 21 degrees south.
For the past 11 years the only real heat on this boat has come from a bag of firewood or a lump of coal. You'd be amazed how fast a 50-lb. sack of wood can go up a 3" stovepipe at 48 degrees north. And 10 minutes after the fire goes out, the boat is cold again.
The 13 years before the recent eleven were Hot, Hot, Hot. Somewhere deep inside I can recall bad feelings about the too-hot heat of those years sailing in the tropics. But it’s pretty deep down right now. I’m not complaining about this new hotness, this sweat dripping off my forehead.
No, for now I’m happy as a clam … a hot, clammy clam … to be back in the tropics.
We're dong 5½ knots on a flatish sea, headed south and east, and it's gonna be hotter tomorrow.
We’re using a towing generator to supplement the power we get from Woodwind’s solar cells. It’s a small propeller on a 5-foot steel shaft, with 50 or 100 feet of line tied to a generator. You tow the propeller behind the boat and as it spins … viola, electricity!
It's a 1980s-vintage gizmo, heavy, noisy and inefficient by modern standards, but it works well, with a few idiosyncrasies.
The biggest problem is stopping the propeller from turning so we can bring it in. One way is to stop the boat, but that’s easier said than done, especially at sea. So, the preferred technique is to send down a cone shaped "something" along the line. Also easier said than done. We've used cut-up buckets, old cut-up road pylons, cut-up pieces of heavy rubber. Some work better than others, but even when you have a good system you still have to devise more, because the “cone chokers” have a way of dropping overboard while you’re fumbling with a wing-nut and hanging off the stern, or popping right off at the propeller end.
Once the “wing-nut skipper” has the charging gizmo working, there’s no listening to the shortwave radio due to electrical interference. Also, there’s no fishing while that spinning prop is chopping up the water behind the boat. So, it's get the batteries all charged up, set the cone choker, pull in the spinning dervish and set a fishing line. Then we hope to catch a small tuna, sierra, dorado, or mackerel before the batteries go down. Easier said than done.
Bruce
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