Slow Dance Going "Green"

March 29, 2012

Slow Dance Going "Green"        

What's new with Cap'n Lynn and Slow Dance?  Well....lot's, actually.  I am striving to Go Green; to make it possible to NEVER have to run an engine in order to charge the boat's "house" batteries.

          Former owners Bob and Janet Houle (he's likely related to an energetic and creative resident of my former home island, Islesboro, Maine) installed two large solar panels on the hard top bimini that shelters the cockpit.  Together, they are rated at 200 watts output, which I can't yet intelligently quantify for you, but is quite a lot.  However, even here on the GA/FL line, the sun doesn't shine EVERY day, and of course it plain just goofs off for half of every day, sunny or not!

          So I installed a wind turbine generator on a "tower" on the starboard stern.  The Air Breeze turbine and tower are both manufactured by Southwest Wind Power (SWWP) of Flagstaff, Arizona.  I spent a night in Flagstaff on my motorcycle trek last summer, and was struck by the friendliness of the people I met.  I also jogged & fast-walked on a marvelous miles-long wide exercise path the city maintains.  I wish I had visited the SWWP manufacturing facility there, but last summer I was riding fast on two wheels, enjoying the break from chipping paint on Simba, and still six months away from re-discovering sailing and catamarans.  (My first cat was a Hobie 16.)  Slow Dance wasn't "on my card", yet.

          If there is at least six mph of wind, the wind turbine goes into action.  It's hum is music to my ears, for it tells me it's producing amperes of electricity that flow into the batteries which store it to later dole it out to power the fridge, lights, nav instruments, and other boat equipment. The turbine's tune varies between a mere purr, a strong hum, and a "gentlemenly" howl.

          Of course, once installed, I was eager to measure the turbine's output, but in order to most efficiently connect it to the boat's system, I spurned the amp meter that came with the unit in favor of one with an "external shunt" (thank you, Ken Holland!) .  I therefore had to wait a week or two before a neat outfit, the Meter Center, could provide me with a shunt and meter with the scale I wanted (O-30 amps).  In the meantime, whenever I heard the turbine start to really hum, I would grab a handheld electrician's meter, reach into the hole in the wall I term my "Electric Locker" and clamp the meter's  yellow "claws" around the positive wire from the "Humming Bird" ( – that's what I'll call it!) – and craning my neck would attempt to see the LED readout on the meter.  Of course, my bird would invariably develop a sore throat, or a need to visit the turbine toilet, by the time I was poised to record its output, and I would miss the moment of momentous output (but, as when a boy fishing for perch in Armonk's Wampus Pond, I would jump to jerk the pole each time the dobber bobbed, I kept that meter with its claws close at hand.

          Finally the new meter (and shunt) arrived.  I mounted the meter in a hole I had created in the nav station panel and attached the wires running to the shunt which I had previously installed.  Somehow, I continued to keep my cool and following the electricians' "best practice" procedures, carefully mounted and wired the shunt on the electric locker's ceiling, while lying on my back with pencil flashlight clenched in my teeth.  I wired a fuse holder between the shunt and the positive battery buss, and popped in a "slow blow" fuse, thus closing the circuit and hopefully producing a reading on the meter out at the nav station's electric panel.  I pulled myself out of the electric locker, ready to scramble the dozen or so feet to the electric panel, but was stopped by an absence of any sound.  There was no howl, no hum, not even a darn purr, from that bird on top of that pole outside. Darn!  I picked up my tools and started to think about lunch, when I thought I heard a whisper.  I snapped my head around so my parabolic ears were directed toward the stern...  Yes! I heard a whisper, and then a hum!  I jumped down the steps into the nav station while staring toward the amp meter.  I saw it was alive, its needle quivering around the number 5! The discreet hum rose to a HUM, and the needle shot up to 10.  Ten amps!  Then it climbed to 15!  Wow!, Money in the bank...Hagan-Das Rum Raisin for all!

          I was ecstatic.  I quickly cleared equipment manuals off the nav station chair and sat there for an hour, watching the amp meter needle dance to the music of the Hummer.  The needle soared as high as 22 amps (wind must have gusted to near 30).  This was serious electricity production, auguring a Green Future for Slow Dance.  Great news, great fun, and a fitting reward for the planning and careful execution of the installation of the Humming  Bird and its tower. 

          And it wasn't many days before it occurred to me that, like pets and my Alpacas, a solitary wind turbine would likely be happier, (and hopefully even more productive), if it had the company of another of its ilk.  Humming Bird #2 is due to arrive at the boatyard tomorrow.

Amazing! Slow Dance is now waltzing about her very own HURRICANE MOORING!!

 

April 16, 2012

Amazing!!  -– Slow Dance now on her very own storm mooring! 

A few weeks ago, I and Ken Hix, a St. Marys boatyard acquaintance and good friend from Breckenridge,CO,  were discussing future cruising possibilities and where we might find safe havens from hurricanes.  One safe spot could be right here on the North River in St. Marys, Georgia, Ken said.

It seems that a few years ago the former manager of the St. Marys boatyard had placed two very substantial mooring "anchors" in the river for his own boat and that of a friend.  The anchors, weighing well over 1000 lbs,  were composed of a number of inch-thick steel plates about two feet square held together by a stainless steel eye bolt which was shackled to a number of links of large ship anchor chain (my mushroom anchor mooring in Maine had such chain which Earl and George of Islesboro Marine termed "Coast Guard chain").  A 1 ¼ line ran from the chain to a mooring ball on the surface.

Ken said the current manager of the boatyard wanted to have nothing to do with the moorings and that Ken had taken possession of one mooring which was in deep water (10 ft. at low tide) and that the other was in shallower water, making it unfit for large monohulls like his, but he thought it might be fine for my shallow draft (3 ft.) catamaran.  Ken added that he doubted there was a robust enough line running up from the anchor to which I could attach my boat, but that last year he had participated in the "rescue" of what was once the oldest working tugboat in the country, right here close to the boatyard, and had thereby obtained several very heavy hawsers.  He had installed one on the mooring he was using and that I could have one if I wished.  He suggested I ask the present manager if I could take possession of that mooring.

I immediately told Ken I would love to have a hawser.  The yard manager told me I could have the mooring and Ken brought me the hawser which was over twenty feet long, almost three inches in diameter, and had a huge eye with a thick steel thimble to prevent chafe spliced into one end.  I bought a very large swivel of one inch steel from Searsport (and now Portland) Maine's very successful marine outfitter Wayne Hamilton.  The swivel will allow the boat to swing and turn without kinking the hawser.  I attached the swivel to the hawser's eye with a one inch shackle and will use two 7/8 inch shackles to attach ¾ inch lines forming a bridle fastened to Slow Dance's bows.

Ken Hix said our two strong moorings now give us peace of mind.  I concur, and will add that this comfort extends to whenever Slow Dance is back here in south Georgia.  I say this because recently my boat was hauled so that I could attach a metal grounding plate to the hull for the high frequency radio I shall soon install.  Several days after I re-anchored in the river,  Slow Dance dragged anchor on a calm day.  Turns out the chain had wrapped itself into a large ball around a modest size tree branch (no, we don't have an underwater forest growing in the North River:) and somehow another segment of chain was wrapped around the anchor itself and prevented its flukes from digging into the bottom mud. 

So now scarcely a day passes that I don't go up to the bows to relish the sight of my robust mooring bridle, shackles and swivel and that mighty hawser disappearing into the depths.  And when hurricane season arrives in late August, I'll stand on my cat's bow trampoline and shout into the wind, "Bring it on!"