The Blue View - Learning the Lay of the Land

 

When we arrive in a new port, one of the things we enjoy most is getting the “lay of the land”. Where is the grocery, the laundromat; are there hot showers; where's the chandlery, the hardware, the fishing supply place, the guy that does welding? Depending on how long it's been since our last port, we always need to find some of these places, if not all.

We begin by asking the other yachties, checking Lonely Planet, searching online and finding the local tourist info center. If I can get a map, I can start learning street names and what road goes where. Before long, we have a pretty good handle on where everything of importance is and all the shortcuts.

Some ports have everything you need within walking distance. Hobart Town in Tasmania was a great port in this respect. Things were expensive, but you could find anything you needed.

It isn't quite as convenient here in North Haven. North Haven is a suburb of Port Adelaide, which is a suburb of the city of Adelaide. There is a chandlery, a pub and a few restaurants within a few hundred yards. The closest grocery is about a mile away. Anything else requires transportation. Today, I needed a hardware store, a building supply store, a larger chandlery, and an electronics supply place. Finding a tourist info center was also high on the list.

A new friend here in the marina has offered me the use of her car, but I decided to save that opportunity until I get a better feel for the area. I find it quite stressful trying to follow a map, read street signs, locate the store I'm looking for in heavy traffic, all the while trying to remember to stay on the left side of the road. This is a good opportunity to learn the public transit system.

Adelaide has a good transit system with clean, frequent buses and trains connecting everywhere. They have a good online route planning program, and I can buy an all day “Day Tripper” pass for a few dollars that allows me to ride all the buses and trains I can handle until 4 AM. I spent an hour or so planning all my route segments, and I was ready to go.

Well, as they say here, “it was no drama, mate”. I found everything I needed, didn't get lost, and found my way back home at the end of the day. All told, I rode five buses and one train, and never had to wait more than 15 minutes. The bus drivers were amazingly pleasant and helpful. On several occasions, the driver actually got up to help an elderly person with his or her packages (and no, I wasn't one of them). Once, when a young couple was having a very loud, profanity riddled argument, the driver warned them to lower their voices. When they didn't, he stopped the bus and told them he wasn't having them offend the other passengers with their language and made them get off – which they did without argument.

Once we get to know a port well enough to find everything without a map, it usually means w're starting to get itchy feet, and it's time to move on. I'm not at that point yet. I am liking it here just fine, and looking forward to sharing it with Marcie on her return. I am starting to feel comfortable enough with the lay of the land, however, that I may borrow Dee's car next time.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

Johnny Appleseed Day

American legend John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed was born in September, but we celebrate his day in March because it's planting season. Read more about Johnny while enjoying a crisp apple.

The Blue View - of Amps and Volts

 

Nine of Cups is happily parked in a marina near Adelaide at the moment. She is connected to shore power, and, for a change, I have no qualms about using a power saw or leaving my laptop plugged in. Having shore power is a luxury we don't often have, however, and when we are sailing or at anchor, energy consumption is always on our minds since we have to generate every watt we consume. So how much power do we consume and how do we make it?

Our biggest power hog is the freezer/refrigerator. When we were in Tasmania, NZ and Tierra del Fuego, trying to keep warm was a priority, and the refrigerator had no problems keeping things cold. Here in Adelaide during the summer, it's working hard to keep things frozen, and consuming a lot of amps. When it's cold outside, it requires about 36 amp hours to keep the beer cold and probably closer to 80 amp hours on a hot day. This translates to 432 watts and 960 watts a day, respectively. For comparison, a large household refrigerator/freezer combination draws around 4000 watts per day. One of the things I hope to accomplish while Marcie is in the States is to trim this hog down a bit.

Next in line in the power hog category are the laptops. We spend a lot of time each day writing, checking weather, communicating and watching the occasional movie. Then there's a bunch of small piglets... interior LED lighting, water pump, charging battery packs, anchor light, etc. And when we're sailing, we need power for the chartplotter, autopilot, radio, and navigation electronics.

So, tallying all this up, our power consumption ranges from about 130 amp hours, or 1.5kw at anchor on a cool day to about 2.4 kw sailing on a hot day. To put this in perspective, the average American household uses 11.5 kw per day.

To generate power, we rely primarily on our three solar panels and a wind generator. On a windy, sunny day, we can count on these to produce about 150 amp hours or 1.8 kw each day. So if it's a cool, windy, sunny day, and we're at anchor, we make more power than we need. If it's hot, calm, or cloudy, the solar and wind generator won't make enough power.

One option we have is a small, gas powered generator that I lug up on deck. It can pump about 30 amps back into the batteries, and can also provide power for the sewing machine or a power tool or two. The second option is to start the diesel engine and run it an hour or so. We try to avoid this option. Not only is it noisy, but running the engine with no load on a regular basis is hard on it, and causes a buildup of carbon.

Our goal is to consume only as much as we produce from the wind and sun… kind of like living within budget. We strive for “free” days when there is enough wind and solar to cover all of our power requirements … and then we catch a fish for sushi.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

National Be Heard Day

This is a day to celebrate entrepreneurs and small businesses who employ nearly half the workers in the US (higher percentages in other countries), work long hours, have less dollars to spend, get less attention and still have to compete with large corporations. So support your local Mom & Pop shop. Spend locally.

Alexander Graham Bell Day

It's also the day that Bell was granted the patent for the telephone. Talk about being heard!

The Blue View - Love to be Snubbed

 

When we were first learning how to sail, we took a “bareboat chartering” class in San Diego. It was a fun class, and we got to live aboard our classroom, a 36' Hunter, for the three days of the class to give us a taste of what was to come. On completion, we were supposedly qualified to charter a boat on our own. We were taught such things as checking the engine oil, the basics of anchoring and maneuvering a sailboat.

The sailboat we were on had an anchor with a short section of chain, and then a hundred feet or so of rope rode. Our instructor, who had sailed a bit in the Pacific, told us that this was fine for the San Diego area. Once we were in rocky or coral strewn areas, however, we would probably use all chain rode, and that the anchoring technique with chain was different than rope rode. We would use something called a “snubber”.

Well, it turns out that he was right. Cups has all chain rode, and we never anchor without using a snubber, a stretchy nylon line attached between a strong point on the boat (in our case a very large cleat) and the anchor chain. In strong winds, the anchor chain will stretch out almost straight, and as the wind and waves cause the boat to buck and jerk, there is no give in the chain, causing tremendous stress on the boat - not a good thing. Even worse, the sudden jerks on the anchor can cause it to break free from the bottom – even less of a good thing. The elasticity of the rope snubber reduces the sudden tugs on the anchor and the stress on the windlass and chain stopper.

Over the years we've gone through dozens of snubbers. We tried smaller diameter line, but found that these would snap when the weather got rough. We tried heavier line, but this didn't have enough stretch. For Cups, the perfect size is 5/8” three-strand line. Now we have two. One is about 25 feet long, and we use it in most conditions. The other is 60 feet long and is our heavy duty snubber for “batten the hatches, lash everything down, take the seasick medicine” kind of weather.

The biggest learning curve for us was how to attach the snubber to the anchor chain. We tried regular hooks, but occasionally they would fall off the chain. We tried a hook with a special retainer that was supposed to hold it in place. It worked well until one particularly bad night. In the morning, when we tried to raise anchor, the retainer had become jammed and it took half an hour with a hammer and pry bar to get it loose. We tried a rolling hitch, but sometimes after a bad blow it would jam, and then take several minutes with a screwdriver to get it free.

Then my old friend, Clifford Ashley, came to the rescue. I discovered an alternate version of the rolling hitch in The Ashley Book of Knots.

It's his knot #1735, and it's never failed us.

Days and Ways to Celebrate

A daily list of mostly obscure holidays and fun ways to celebrate them.

National Anthem Day

Written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812, the national anthem officially became our national song on March 3, 1931. Play it, hum it, sing it today. Here's some help with the lyrics, just in case. My favorite rendition? Whitney Houston.