Travel 2014-2015 | Red Ranger | Team Red Cruising

Competitive Rock Climbing

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 07:26:00 -0400

I shouldn’t be surprised there’s such a thing as competitive rock climbing. As a sailor I know that if there are two sailboats going approximately the same way, it’s a race, pure and simple. Maybe not so cutthroat competitive as America’s Cup or Volvo Ocean Race, but… All it takes is two and it’s a race.

We’ve raced Red Ranger. And lost. Indefatigable beat us bloody when they popped a spinnaker. The yankee is no match for an assymetric spinnaker. Now we want one, too. Joie de Vivre showed us a “clean pair of heels” via better sail trim (and a newer mains’l.)

Competitive sailing — with similar boats on the same water — is obvious. How can you compete in rock climbing?

It turns out that there are three common “disciplines” in this sport. Two that make some sense to me are “sport climbing” and “speed climbing”. The third part of this — “bouldering” — is just magical to me because I can only solve the simplest bouldering problems.

I’ve seen some videos of USA Climbing speed climbing “comps”. It appears that there’s two copies of a standard route and everyone goes head-to-head in that route in pairs. Maybe it’s single elimination, maybe double elimination. I’m vague on the details.

The James River

Sat, 07 Mar 2015 20:24:09 -0500

After a lot of winter — more than we would have expected for city that’s in “The South” — we were happy to take a good long walk along the James today.

Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nghV4SdxgPM. This is what the James River looks like when it’s in Spring flood.

The outing was a quest for the fabled “Manchester Wall.”

Eventually, we succeeded, but the wall deserves a separate video.

Indeed, the wall has its own web page; see Manchester Wall. It has its own Wikipedia entry; see Manchester Wall. The links to the climbing guide are mostly broken. Here’s the current climbing guide.

The Rock Gym

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 20:57:42 -0500

Since it takes two to climb, how did we get these pictures? Glad you asked. Rock climbing is all about puzzle solving. And that’s your little puzzler.

Top rope climbing is a two-player team sport — one person actually does the vertical ascent part — the other person belays them. The climber has a rope (as a sailor, I flinch from the term “rope”) from their harness through a fitting at the top of the route and back down to the belayer on the ground. The belayer, in addition to their harness, has a device to put some friction on the rope. We use ATC-style belay devices — they’re cheap and efficient and have no moving parts to break. As sailors, we like their elegant simplicity.

There’s a little call-and-response that’s a standard part of this kind of technical rock climbing. The climber asks “Belay on?” and the belayer checks everything before announcing “On belay.” Once that’s established, we can move on to the risky part of the transaction. “Climbing?” the climber chants. “Climb on,” the belayer replies and the ascent begins.

Richmond Sights

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 07:01:20 -0500

It appears that they do this on purpose: they shoot under the railroad bridge, then — somehow — raise the bow up and drop their heads into the water before hitting the next waterfall.

The railroad bridge is after some flat water in the middle of the sequence of rapids.

I know that the upper section is the “Hollywood” rapids. I’m sure the kayakers have names for every feature. I’ve seen some charts with circles and arrows and labels.

Here’s the view upstream from the railroad bridge. You can almost see the Hollywood rapids in the top of the picture, near Belle Island.

As a sailor, I’m more comfortable looking at that stretch of water. I’ve seen things like that in the ICW. It has no Aids To Navigation (ATONs) so it’s obviously dangerous. But it’s flat. All one color.

Here’s the view downstream.

Yikes.

It had been raining for several days, so the water level is up a little. You can’t see the rocks.

We’re looking forward to spring floods to see how the river changes. We’re not looking forward to next year’s hurricane season. In the past the 14th street Mayo bridge has been under water.

Closing the Circle

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 20:05:08 -0500

A few years ago, one of the bigger boat jobs was adding a second electric bilge pump. See A Manifold of Bilge Pumps. At the time, it felt epic because it was a job that was safety-critical. As in “your life depends on doing this right.” Or maybe “Do this wrong and die.”

We’ve read enough to know what happens when a boat has an unstoppable hull-breach. Water over the floorboards. Batteries flooded. No radio. No lights.

We had tackled a few safety critical jobs before this. The sink drain hose, for example. Rebuilding the seacocks. But those are big, static, heavy-duty pieces of hose and bronze. The seacock could be closed to keep water out, and that was that. Simple. Done.

Not so with an electric pump.

The Worrying Budget

The bilge pump involved much more worry than the seacocks. In some ways, it also involved less worry.

More worry came from many sources, starting with its electical side — is it hooked up right? I decided to wire it permanently to the house batteries, with only a small fuse. (Eventually this became two fuses, a main 200A fuse to protect the big wires, and the little 10A fuse to protect the pump.)

Merry Christmas from Red Ranger

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 19:01:04 -0500

It’s still early, but, we aren’t doing much on Red Ranger this season. We’re parked on the hard in Deltaville.

Working life is interesting. That was the point, more-or-less.

What’s very important is the “I don’t have any career aspirations” part of working. If it’s fun, that’s cool. Otherwise… No thanks.

In my previous incarnation (pre-cruising,) I would listen to managers spin yarns of advancement and riches and glory. It could all be mine if I would just put in lots more hours and lots of travel and do things that I found difficult and unpleasant.

And it never worked out well. It was stressful, and unpleasant, and there were neither riches nor glory. For me. The managers didn’t do too badly. I didn’t do as well.

After many years of thrift and economy — and more than our fair share of luck — we’re able to make choices in where and how we work. Floating Leaf makes her Tiny Quilts. They’re hanging in the Urban Farmhouse coffee shop in Scott’s Addition at 3031 Norfolk St. She also works part-time at VCU; she does what she like — helping people solve technology problems. Since it’s part time, stuff just won’t get done. She’s no longer salaried; there’s no casual overtime.

Things you can’t store on a boat

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 10:43:55 -0500

#1: Leather.

It mildews rapidly unless you’re airing it out constantly.

Here are CA’s gloves that we wore last winter as we worked the boat south.

These were bagged to prevent them from getting wet in their storage locker.

Whatever spores were in there loved the dark confines.

Many of the clothes are in our apartment now. The rest should probably be laundered as part of winter layup.

I think all of the shoes and boots are off the boat. We kept some nice-looking shoes aboard in case we had weddings for funerals to attend. They didn’t fare so well. They were rarely worn, and suffered from some mildew. They were shoes, though, so hard cleansers work out fine.

The paper books are bagged. But I’m starting to think that they may all benefit from some airing out while Red Ranger sits on the hard.

Plus, there are some tools that might be helped by some oily wipe-down.

GPSNavX and Yosemite

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 19:41:15 -0500

Upgraded the laptop to Mac OS 10.10, Yosemite.

This leads to many software upgrades.

It leads to GPSNavX not working at all.

Sigh. The Involuntary Upgrade. Unpleasant, but necessary.

I went to the App Store and plunked down my $59.99 for the latest and greatest version.

I open the new version and…

NO WAYPOINTS!

NO TRACKS!

NO ROUTES!

ALL GONE!

Remain calm. Breathe.

I am a professional.

But...

EVERYTHING’S GONE!

Stop shouting. It will be okay.

The Commodore asks her calming, soothing question:

“What was the last thing you changed?”

THE SOFTWARE!

“Stop shouting,” she says.

Okay. She’s right. Stop shouting.

I went to the documentation and found that the files reside in a hidden folder: my ~/home/Library/Preferences folder. A folder I didn’t know existed.

The five relevant files are in there, with dates in the past and sizes that indicate that all is not lost.

What to do?

Well…

I can hack around. Or I can remain calm and email the tech support folks.

The answer came within minutes.

Let me emphasize that. Within minutes they responded with a simple copy the files to a new location.

Winterizing

Sun, 02 Nov 2014 22:27:06 -0500

Sigh.

The fun thing (two weeks ago) was ascending the mast to examine someone else's lighting. They had a short. Somewhere. I want aloft to look around. It didn’t seem to be up there. The Aqua Signal was clean and tidy. Bulbs looked good.

Sadly, they’d looked at the wiring at the base of the mast. On a Whitby, it’s a connector block in the forward head. Wiring was good up to the block. And it looked good at the top of the mast.

That leaves just the 56’ of wire going up the mast as the likely cuplrit. They decided that perhaps they could continue hanging and all-around white light from their mizzen rather than use the mast-head all-around white light.

The rules are clear: “where it can best be seen.” Masthead clearly meets “best”. Any white light above the dodger would also be visible all around the vessel and would constitute a workable “best”.

Some folks don’t like using the masthead light because power boaters aren’t in the habit of looking up.

I couldn’t solve — or even properly diagnose — their problem. But I got to play aloft. That was fun.

Southbound Farewells

Sun, 26 Oct 2014 16:47:06 -0400

In Deltaville this weekend, we visited with boats heading south: Bellatrix, Joie de Vivre, Island Time and Rovinkind II.

All heading south.

All except Red Ranger.

We’ll be traveling with them vicariously.

Joie de Vivre will be heading offshore to make St. Augustine in one big outside run. The weather starting on Sunday looks favorable for them to try that.

Bellatrix will be picking their way down the ICW starting Sunday. If you want to know more, check out the October 2014 edition of Spinsheet Magazine. Page 84 to 86.

Rovinkind II is going to make some repairs before heading south. Island Time is almost ready to head south after considerable work getting everything shipshape after sitting on the hard for a few years.

Red Ranger is getting cleaned up prior to haulout.

Lifesling Container

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 22:11:48 -0400

There are some important lessons learned in safety here. Very important.

One of the first pieces of safety equipment we bought for Red Ranger was a Life Sling 2. It’s a tidy container with hook and loop strips (Velcro™) that fastens neatly to the taffrail or lifeline somewhere.

Most folks have one or so, and they mount it well aft.

At the Whitby Rendezvous I saw Virginia, owner of Morning Light, having her crew deploy the Life Sling before setting out. She carefully removes the vinyl package from the taffrail when arriving. Before departing, she has the crew attach the container to the taffrail so it’s available.

“Why does she remove it?” I wondered.

Back on Red Ranger, it was immediately obvious why she removes it.

The vinyl cover rots in the sun. It is — figuratively — eaten by the sun. Figuratively eaten.

Our cover was literally flakes of vinyl. If we so much as touched it, vinyl chunks dropped onto the deck and into Jackson Creek.

CA replaced the top of the LifeSling 2 cover.

Clever Menehune Solution

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 22:34:11 -0400

We'll call this the “Menehune Modification” to the Whitby/Brewer fuel tank vent issue.

For non-sailors the essential issues are these:

Your boat has some fuel tanks. Red Ranger has one. Sister ships have as many as three.
A fuel tank needs an air vent. Fuel going in will displace air, which must go out. Conversely, when the engine is running, fuel goes out and air must go in.

Now comes the difficult marine architecture issue.

Where does this vent go?

The not-always-obvious answer is “Above The Level of the Fuel Fill”. On many boats, the fuel fill is a deck fitting. That means that the vent must be above deck level.

This isn’t always an easy thing to do. To rise above the deck, the vent hose has to go through the interior somewhere and pop out through a pleasant-looking vent fitting on the side of the cabin.

On the Whitby’s — sadly — this hose went aft, to a fitting that was below the level of the tank. Below.

Let me emphasize the below-ness of that.

You’re filling your tank with diesel. Floating in pristine, protected, wild-life-filled waters. And when the fuel gets near the top of the tank, some will splash around down there; some of that splashing is into the vent line. Where air is rushing out as the fuel rushes in.

Now you’ve got a hazmat cleanup issue: diesel floating on the water.

A Liferaft Demo [Updated]

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 16:13:55 -0400

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What a liferaft looks like

This is what it looks like when you inflate a small ~~4-person~~ six-person life raft.

What’s important here is that it’s (a) small and (b) small. While it clearly looks like it might remain upright, there are issues.

In horrifying, scary weather, this may not be terribly useful. The line could be stripped out of your hand in a big wind. It might flip over, making it nearly useless. Clambering into it in confused seas may be difficult.

It’s only “better than nothing” when there is — indeed — nothing left to do. Any alternative strategy to survival looks better than messing around with this.

We’ve heard of Whitby folks who hit something in the water, stove in the side of their boat, couldn’t staunch the flow of water, climbed into their dinghy and floated from from the Whitby as it sank. The dinghy proved every bit as useful as a liferaft.

Since a dinghy (to an extent) can be rowed, it’s possible that a dinghy might have been better than a difficult-to-maneuver liferaft.

Seeing this was helpful as a way to reinforce how small a liferaft is.

Whitby-Brewer Rendezous

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 15:49:04 -0400

When we bought Red Ranger, we didn’t realize we were buying an entire family.

2010. We tried to sail to Galesvile, had a number of problems. We sailed back to Deltaville, got in the truck, and drove to Annapolis.

2011. Did not attend.

2012. A really great trip.

2013. Another really great trip.

2014. CA is now “Coordinator” for the Rendezvous. But. Since I have a new day job it’s not a brilliant idea to take two weeks off to sail up to Galesville and back to Deltaville. So we drove.

Two weeks?

Well. It can be done in two long days. If the weather is perfect. If we were lucky enough to have this perfect weather, we could leave Saturday and arrive late Sunday night. If, however, there was any kind of less-than-perfect weather, we’d be late.

In order to run the meeting, we do need to be there on time. That means leaving plenty of time to get there including waiting for weather to change.

Topics

This year we had seven boats, just shy of 50 people. Presentations included:

Ford Lehman engine topics (and any other diesel power plant) with Bob Smith of ADC, Kilmarnock.
Wifi issues. Intereference is the norm, and will only get worse.
Refrigeration design and refit for Island Time. BTU’s matter: properly size the compressor and evaporator.
iPad navigation from Gerry O’D. Some of the best choices to use your iPad as backup chart plotter and voyage planner.
Mark and Diana Doyle’s “Frugal 50” list from OTW Chart Guides.
The state of the web site.
Life-raft demo: John C. pulled the rip-cord on Menehune's old life-raft.
Cruising Stories from Janus.
The Cruise Director’s problems and solutions from Island Time: comfort is easy even in a tiny boat galley.
No-Spill Fueling solution from Menehune. Reroute the vent line! The long run to the transom is a terrible idea. Route the vents above the fillers using the starboard hanging locker and the port lazarette.
Boat Paperwork.
Status of Wick and Monique’s refit.
The story of Allegria’s broken shaft: have a puller, have a surface-supplied SCUBA, don’t panic. It can be done without a haul out. The the root cause analysis included a discussion of a failed engine mount on Allegria, Island Time and Dream Ketcher. Check your engine mounts!

Whew.

Visiting with the Whitby-Brewer family. Boat tours. Shared meals. A quick business meeting. A delightful three days of boat fun.

Marina Life

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 07:14:53 -0400

There’s a middle way between cruising — sailing all the time — and living at a marina and moving the boat rarely if ever.

This is Island Time. Just launched after several years on the hard. It’s a Brewer; a sister ship to the Whitby. She’s quite a bit like Red Ranger on the inside. The single mast sets her apart.

We’re struggling. It was a beautiful weekend. We did a few piddly little jobs around the boat. Sailing might have been more fun.

The web of connetions: Island Time, Motu, Sojourner, Pandora. Some are headed south for the seasonal migration. Pandora is actually headed north for more refit.

Liquid Therapy has relocated to a different marina. We visited with them and went to the world-famous Donk’s Theater in Matthews. A house band and a long list of performers. Everyone got in two songs.

We’re looking forward to the Whitby Rendezvous. The last two years, it was the jumping-off point for our Southerly Migration.

This year? A little different.

The Leaks

Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:06:16 -0400

After replacing the chainplates, we have not been able to get the deck totally watertight.

We’ve been applying liberal volumes of various goos: mostly Boat Life Caulk.

Yes, it discolors a little. It bonds to almost everything (excepy polyethelyne). It makes a durable, watertight seal. It’s not wonderfully flexible, however.

A skilled technician can apply a neat bead. A finger dipped in soapy water can even out the surface.

But.

Some of these applications were not watertight in heavy rain. The suggestion from some is that this caulk gets hard enough that the normal working of the rigging will break open the bond in places.

What’s better? Some suggest butyl tape.

We bought a 40’ roll of tape from SailRite, and we’re trying it out on the starboard side.

Warnings

This is tenacious stuff. It’s “tape” in it’s structure. But this stuff was not like working with duct tape or masking tape. This was like someone squirted a bead of putty onto a strip of backing paper and rolled it into a spiral. It seems to stick to both pieces of backing paper equally well, and it’s a crapshoot how it will peel off.

Interior Renovation

Sun, 14 Sep 2014 11:53:08 -0400

Maybe renovation is a bit too big for this. The Red Ranger has two long, fixed portlights that let in a lot of sun. And heat.

In the summer, these need to be covered to keep the interior livable. It’s that or air conditioning.

And we ripped the AC out because it was only usable at a dock. For the last two years, we spent minimal time at a dock.

Now that we’re at a dock more-or-less full time. AC might be nice. But “nice” also includes “expensive”. The power isn’t free and the machinery must be maintained and it’s storage that’s lost to us.

Here’s the old covers with a weird fastening that I devised.

This is what CA did using snaps and a single piece of fabric.

Shady in the summer when we need shade.

A little late this year, since summer’s almost over. But it’s ready for next summer.

A tiny optimization — finally

Sat, 06 Sep 2014 10:53:06 -0400

One day I (finally) noticed something odd about the winches on Red Ranger. This is one of the many things I thought about when I have four hours to sit on deck and watch the ocean. You have time to think about — well — everything.

I noticed that the feeder arms of our self-tailing winches all pointed inboard.

Winches — for the non-sailors — all wind one way: clockwise. The self-tailing feeder arm should lead the line around the jaws and from the winch to a useful cleat.

Here’s what I (finally) noticed.

The huge yankee sheets feed from the aft into the winch. [“Aft?” you ask. “Isn’t the sail for’rd?” Good observation. We have a turning block back there to provide a clean approach to the winch.]

One the port side of the boat, the sheet went around the winch drum four times clockwise, over the feeder arm, took a final 180° turn through the jaws and down to a cleat. A fair lead.

One the starboard side, the sheet went four times around, then over the inboard-facing feeder arm, and did a full 360° wrap all the way around the jaws where it collided with itself before trying to find a cleat. Awkward.

Other Neighbors: Cruinneag III

Sun, 31 Aug 2014 10:50:59 -0400

Check out this work of art:

An amazing restoration, lasting several years here at Deltaville Marina.

That’s a lot of wood. And a lot of loving care to restore it to sea-worthy condition.

Temporary Neighbors: Ocean Research Project

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 06:55:57 -0400

Start with any of these links:

http://oceanresearchproject.org

https://www.facebook.com/OceanResearchProject

http://www.cruisingworld.com/gallery/how-to/green-wakes/matt-rutherfords-ocean-research-project

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-04-19/sports/bs-sp-outdoors-matt-rutherford-ocean-research-proj-20140419_1_plastics-matt-rutherford-cabin-fever

http://www.allatsea.net/matt-rutherford-launches-ocean-research-project/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lesleyann-coker/matt-rutherford-sailing_b_3306143.html

http://yachtworldheroes.com/?p=1458

Apparently, the transmission died on Ault. They were in the slip next to us. Very cool. Very.

Sadly, since we’re weekenders now, we can’t really help very much. Cash donation to the 501(c)(3) is about all we can do nowadays. Once upon a time, though, the F-150 would have been the greatest thing to ferry them around for a few days to drop the tranny off, pick it up, and resupply as necessary.