Lazy Days

When the winds are light and we are ghosting along on a broad reach, an aire of relaxation seems to come over the crew. 

Everyone seems so relaxed and the desire to sleep the day away comes over us all! 

Maddie and I take turns at the helm, usually dictated by how sleepy we are. I steer while she sleeps, then she steers while I sleep.  

We sleep in the cockpit with Morty, so we don't have to move very far when we trade watches. We simply nudge them to wake them and then curl up with the cockpit pillows.  

I couldn't think of a better way to spend the day!  

Reefing Tack Line

​Most mainsail reefing involves a tack hook and clew line to secure the reefed foot of the sail. Reef hooks are very secure and strong and offer little risk of allowing the sail to slip off.

The way they work is you slip the tack cringle over the hook and then haul in on the halyard to secure it. This works well on small light sails, but heavy sail cloth and/or high winds can make it nearly impossible to reach the hook. For this reason, tack straps have become a wonderful solution, aiding the sailor in securing the tack. A webbing strap with a ring hangs down and can easily be hooked onto the rams horn. Once secured, the halyard is hauled in and the sail is raised. This secures the tack in its reefed position.

While tack hooks are a standard, they do have a significant problem: they are hooks!

A flaked mainsail can easily lie under the tack hook, and if raised quickly, it can be pierced by the hook. This will create a puncture in the luff if you stop instantly, or a large tear if you raise the sail before you realize what is going on.

I personally pierced my old sail three times on my old tack hook. The last thing I wanted in my new laminate mainsail were luff punctures, so the hook had to go! This led to my current and very sail friendly tack setup, a tack line.

I used a length of dyneema (regular, not heat set SK75) for my tack line, and another length tied to the reefing tack points on the sail. The length of dyneema is tied to the goose neck on a strong attachment point with a bowline ready to connect to the sail.

On the sail, I tied a very fancy series of knots to the reefing tack points. The first set of knots is an interlocking double fishermans knot. This keeps loops from coming apart when the tack is loaded. The tails are then further knotted into the loops to ensure that these knots will never come undone!

I did not make grommets for these locations because grommets bulk up the loop considerably and I was concerned that they would be overly stressed passing through the tack ring and decided to simply tie a strong knot and keep the bulk of line passing through the ring reduced.

I tie the tack line tail to the loop via a sheet bend with a slip. If you do not include a slip, you will be hard pressed to untie the bend knot after a stormy sail. The slip gives you the ability to pull the knot apart if you are unable to untie it in a timely manner.

The sheet bend has a tendency to slip out, which is why considerable care should be taken to make sure that it becomes fully tightened as the sail is raised. If you see the knot slipping, simply tighten it a bit more and continue raising the sail. It will become incredibly tight as the winch pulls the sail into position and will not come untied under any situation!

Shaking the reef out literally becomes a matter of shaking the knot out, and raising the sail all the way.

This method makes reefing hardware very safe for your sails and provides a very secure method to attach your reefed tack point.

Ghosting

The questionable cold front, with its harsh cold breeze has retreated, leaving us with warm sunny skies and little wind. 

We are on a run towards our favorite creek in South River,  Harness Creek, and the light airs make for lazy days and slow passages.  

We raised Dill, our drifter and began ghosting along towards the mouth of the river. 

Our bottom is very dirty, so we are fortunate to be on a run at the moment. If we can time it right, we will be able to ride the tide up the river and into our favorite anchorage for the weekend.  

Storm Front

We're setting off for an 11 day sail for part two of our honeymoon flying the stay sail (Stanley) and one reef in the main (Marge) as we watch the weather front in the distance play out. 

This cold front was creeping towards us, but now seems to be retreating. 

Cold wind continues to blow onto us, sometimes close to 20 knots, then dropping down to 5 knots. It is unclear at the moment what this weather system is going to do, but we will continue to watch with our reefed sails. 

Solar Panel Wiring

Now that the solar panels are perched to collect the suns solar energy, it is time to write the system up and feed our electrical needs. 

I ran the wires from the panels to the battery switch, and then let my friend Bob Blood do the electrical connections. Bob Blood is an ABYC certified electrician and does gorgeous work that lasts! 

The solar panels lead to the charge controllers, which then feed the battery banks. These charge controllers are by Genasun and are significantly less expensive than other brands. They are made in the USA and have a reputation for being work horses, but they don't have the fancy display screens of other brands.  

Instead they have a single LED light that blinks. Slow, for ready; fast, for charging; stay, for charged; red, for fault. 

The solar panels are able to feed the house bank (315 amp hours and 12V DC) as well as the electric motor bank (210 amp hours and 48V DC).

The electric motor produces its own power while we sail, up to 4 amps at 48V DC! When we need to charge up the motor bank, we simply sail on a beam reach and bring up its charge! 

The solar panels are the equivalent of a trickle charge for the motor bank, but they can help float the batteries while at anchor for a long time.  

On the house side of our electrical system, the biggest consumer is our fridge. The fridge is 14.5 cubic feet with a freezer section and consumes a lot of amps! With the solar panels off, the house bank will drop to 11V when the refrigerator compressor turns on. With the solar panels on, the voltage stays at 12.3V with the fridge on and 13.3V with the fridge off (in between compressor cycles).

While we only have 100W of solar panels (at 12V DC), we also only have meager electrical needs. Our cabin lights and running lights are LED, and don't consume much electricity at all. Our other electrical needs are to power a small garmin chart plotter, depth sounder, and VHF radio. The only big consumer is our massive refrigerator. 

By keeping the systems in the boat simple, we are also able to keep our demands low, which allows us to spend less money on solar panels to power these electrical conveniences.