Fingers crossed. Steve Appleton, Jupiter’s owner (2 berths down), will keep an eye on things. Frank’s lines are doubled up, and she is bows-in, so should be ok.
Corpus Gale Warning
Frank
Cooking Up A Storm!
Well, I will be. Because I have retired the Plastimo Atlantic Oven and in its place is a brand new, stainless steel, super shiny Neptune 4500.
Made in England, it is from Bolton by Leisure Products, who made the Atlantic many years ago.
Swapping was quite straightforward, as the widths are the same, 470mm at the gimbals. The Atlantic is pretty grotty – it was rusty in 2013, and is now set to be recycled.
Charting Frank’s course from Camariñas to St Croix
I have started to work on the video of Frank’s crossing from Camariñas to Corpus Christi. There are three legs to this part of the 4-leg trip, after crossing Biscay in November 2014: Camariñas – Porto Santo (Feb 4 – Feb 12 2015); Porto Santo – St Croix, USVI Feb 12 – March 8 2015); St Croix – Port Aransas, Texas (Dec 24 – Jan 16 2016).
I used an Inreach Satellite Tracker/Messager (since bought by Garmin), and this has a complete record of my route and sms/email messages. I cannot speak highly enough of this little marvel.
So here are the routes and some messages and notes that I made, between Northern Spain and St Croix. I will add more detail in subsequent postings as I work on the video, and then I will work on the final leg through the Caribbean, into the Gulf of Mexico and to Port Aransas, Texas.
WiFi Extender (update)
UPDATE: The lovely Bethany at GMN has replaced the unit. I have tested it and it appears to work, so next opportunity I will install it.
Another bit of dodgy tech!
The satcom system worked fine for phones and emails at sea. Expensive airtime, mind you! And a pain to get a reasonable package. My Iridium Pilot came with an Optimizer which works to compress and reduce unnecessary files for email and web browsing at sea.
The marina wifi is pretty crap and Frank’s berth is quite a ways from the wifi hotspot. So I ordered a refurbished RedPort Wifi extender from GMN on rush delivery back last year. Of course, it did not work – it had not been checked or tested. So it went back on RMA and eventually came back, whereupon it went to the back of the line.
Finally, last weekend, it floated to the top of the “to-do” list.
The lights lit up, but the discovery bit, where the Extender appears on the Optimizer menu, did not work.
You can’t see it because it ain’t there.
Cue email..
Ticket Number: 2019073110000983
Hello Colin,
I think that Optimizer is an older version that has been end of lifed. Do you know what hardware model the Extender is? It will say on the back of the Extender. Either wXa-EXT or wXa-EXT V2
Bethany Headrick
GMN Customer Care
—
Global Marine Networks, LLC
3224 Wrights Ferry Road
Louisville, TN 37777
Web: http://www.globalmarinenet.com
Tel: +1.865.379.8723
Email: info@globalmarinenet.com
—
07/31/2019 14:15 – Colin Bastable wrote:
Hi.
I bought a Halo extender. It was defective and RMAd.
I have connected it to the Optimizer.
Plugged into LAN port. WLAN, LAN and Power blue lights on at Optimizer.
Two blue lights on, and flashing red, orange and two green lights on Extender.
No Extender option appeared in the menu.
I then updated the firmware from 1.3xxx to wXa-102 v1.63b8
Still no Extender option.
See attached screengrab.
Please can you advise me how to get the Extender option to display?
Thanks
Colin
—
At this stage, I am beginning to suspect that what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate between the Optimizer and the Extender. We shall see.
Wind vane and Sailtimer finally up mast
When Frank was having her keel dropped, at Hooking Bull in Rockport back in 2016, because this necessitated having the mast down, I planned to install a SailTimer Wireless Wind Instrument which arrived long after the mast was back up and Frank was in her new berth in Corpus Christi Marina
This week, Matt Sebring of Coastal Bend Yacht Services has mounted it, along with a Windex (the one mounted when at Hooking Bull lasted a week, when a pterodactyl (I am no ornithologist, but they are big-assed ugly monsters that share the marina with the boats) decided that the Windex did not belong on the top of the mast.
It took so long for me to get around to installing the Sailtimer that they have redesigned it – I should have waited until now to buy it. But next time I am at the Marine I can see if it actually works, and also see if the Windex has survived..
Stbd port
Last August I repaired the port side forward port (the big one), rebedding the glass in marine silicon in the alloy frame and repairing the porthole in which it sits. That port was leaking water on the galley side. It seems to be dry now, so this last weekend I did the other side, which leaks water into the chart station, ruining anything not waterproof in the desk and so on.
Gaps filled and epoxied..
Gaps in port frame before thee repair.
The port before repair
For some silly reason I can’t find or did not take pics of the frame, nor of the finished job, but I will add them later. Neither repaired job is perfect – I need to clean up the silicon from the glass, but it will keep the water out. Four more to go, two each side (smaller).
1800 Miles from Tortola
I have several hours of video from my solo Atlantic crossing, and have been too busy to create a video of this 2nd leg of my sail from Gosport to Corpus Christi, Texas.
Four years and three months ago I was heading to Tortola, BVI. I came across a short video clip, and turned it into this short message relating the solo sailor to starting up a business: there are many talented sailors, but only a few are “the willing”. Likewise in business.
It is not really a “Frank-Just Frank” video, but without Frank I would not have been there. BTW, I never did get to Tortola, heading instead to St Croix, where I immigrated to the USA and parked Frank for a few months at St Croix Marine
Webasto heater exhaust repair
I have not posted for a long time, but I have been busy on Frank.
A recent project has been replacing the exhaust pipe on the Webasto Airtop 2000 ST heater.
The pipe was corroded and split in many places.
The heater takes a small feed from the boat diesel tank. So I need the diesel exhaust to be safely outside the boat.
The heater has been installed backwards – the warm air is supposed to be sent for’ard, but it is sent sternwards and then ducted to the saloon.
Not sure why it is setup this way: there is a hole in the rear bulkhead that is evidence that the heater was once installed to Spec.
Anyway – the heater still does not work (it did work for a while, albeit briefly, and only for a minute or so, until it overheated and cut out). The fault indicator suggests that I need a new glowplug.
Anyway – the exhaust is fixed. I just need to turn the unit around. So I will remove it, service/clean it, and re-route the ducting.
Weather Watch
I have not been sailing for a couple of years, but this time of year I check the weather every couple of hours.
In August of 2017 Frank had a near miss when Harvey hit Port Aransas/Rockport, just across the bay from Corpus Christi. I had considered using a marina in pretty Rockport, with wooden slips, but decided on the Corpus Christi Municipal Marina because it has floating, concrete slips which might offer better protection against hurricanes.
We were driving back from Atlanta when Steve, who has the lovely Halberg-Rassy 35 (Jupiter) parked next to Frank, texted me and asked if I needed him to prep Frank for “the storm”. What storm?? We were just across Texas border, headed to Austin, so I hung a left and headed to Corpus via Houston.
We took off Frank’s sails and dodgers, doubled the lines, and headed home. Frank survived. A week before, she had been out of the water across the bay at North Shore Boatworks where she would have taken a hit.
I have left the sails and dodgers off, as I am not planning to go anywhere soon: the bay is too shallow for a relaxed cruise and I am doing a leisurely refit.
Corpus Marina has a robodial warning system, and this week I had a call with a recorded message to check lines for “the storm”. I called: “Do you mean Isaac, which is a week away, or that “no-name” mess 95L which is just off the Yucatan peninsular?” The nice lady thought it was Isaac, which was headed in a straight line, instead of curving up towards the North West. But there were seven to choose from!
Storm season
As Florence sits atop the Carolinas, no-name is pouring rain onto Corpus. We have had lots of rain, so the rivers will be full, but the wind looks manageable:
Meanwhile, I am hoping that Isaac, which is now called “the remnants of Isaac”, stays down and dissipates somewhere near Jamaica. Hopefully, the weather gods will have their eyes on other places for the rest of the season.
Repairing Leaky Ports
The windows leak when it rains, as well as when the sea is bumpy. At first I thought it was just the frames, but eventually I realized that, as well as leaky frames, the putty holding the glass in the aluminum frames is rotten.
This results in a wet boat inside, and as the two biggest villains are over the chart table (starboard side) and the galley (port), I get wet charts, wet electronics, wet logs (as in “Captain’s Log”). A good reason to buy waterproof notebooks, btw.
Having just upgraded the coolbox, I decided to reglaze and refit the port over the galley. My first effort was done in the dusk and dark, and it was not very good. So in the morning, I started again. Because the glass slides into the 2-part frame, it is quite a challenge to get the 3M marine silicone to stay in place whilst sliding in the glass. Hopefully, I will discover that it is waterproof.
I also repaired the hole, where the frame sits. The outer skin had partially separated, so I mixed up some West System epoxy and used it to glue the skin back, clamping it into position.
Some pics:
