email at sea

All emails to me must be as follows if I am to pick them up at sea:

User Name: k9cwm@winlink.org

Subject Line: Must start with //WL2K space and then the real subject.

If you do not do this then emails will bounce as the server thinks it is spam.

Drum Roll - Inspiration II

Ok, just received the photos of Inspiration II from Signs by Dillon.  We think it looks good and we especially like the stern. Now I wonder what the bow Port side looks like.  A little more suspense since he did not send the picture.  Perhaps it is not finished?

Labor Day & Little Yellow

Labor Day has come and gone and with its passing the "end of the season" is upon us.  To that end I removed the sails from LY and all the gear except the sponge, paddle and the motor.  I will take her for one more trip around the lake on motor and then haul her for storage in the designated spot in the barn.  A good bottom cleaning is instore for her too.  It will be a real gas to get her out of the water and it may entail decoupling the trailer to push it out farther than the truck can go even with the 10' 2x12 planks (to keep the rear wheels from sinking into the muck).  If it goes smoothly then you will hear no more but if not prepare for a page full of details.

The new Craftsman metric wrenches came in today.  These are larger sizes needed for the Irwin 43 MkIII engine work.  I started arranging for the SAE tools bag and the metric tools bag that are soft sided (Harbor Freight 12" style)  so I can grab either bag depending on what I am doing.  The soft sided bags will not mar the gelcoat or sole of the boats.  While at HF I bought one of those 12" diameter 15" deep duck bags with the rope handles to hoist tools up the mast while I work on items aloft..  I am also starting to arrange all the electronic parts I want to take with us when we start our journey.  I'll report more on that in my electronics and system blog at http://watermanwater.tumblr.com/ .

The picture is from an era past while I was flying a C-310R eastward towards New Hampshire one morning and I was over Lake Erie (and Canada as I remember).

Moore Inspiration - of course!

We contracted with an artist to paint the name and hailing port on the stern and name only on the bow. I try to post the script and colors here but am not too sure it will portray what I think it will look like.

The name is Inspiration II and colors will be the black with grey shading.  The hailing will be Saugatuck, MI and that will be in black block letters.  The price comes out about to be about the same as vinyl lettering ±. We think it will look good on the grey gelcoat.  We should know pretty soon.  Inspiration II's picture is below and I will put an after picture when it is done.

Little stuff

We are almost constantly thinking of Inspiration II and in the process of preparing all the equipment, tools and items required for living aboard for 6 months or more.  Since it is a new boat to us we will over prepare but will put some in our storage we are renting since it is pretty close to where we will slip for a while.

I just bought some more sockets from eBay to fill in my Metric capability.  Now I need wrenches to fill the gaps that I never needed with the Rice Rockets which were mostly happy with <16mm p="" sizes.="">

Irwin Trivia

I f you would like to find out more about our boat you can go to here http://sailboatdata.com/view_builder.asp?builder_id=82  for all the models of Irwin.

I also came across this on SailNet   Quote "I have in mast furling that has worked well but last Sunday the main refused to unroll after only a few feet. I notice that the sail bulges out next to the portion under tension being rolled out, about 7 feet up from the boom for a stretch of about 10 feet. The winch simply cannot pull it out - and it should be pulled out by hand, ideally. The mast is slightly curved, but not too much to accommodate the furling system and has not malfunctioned before. I suspect the sail may have been reefed the last time with insufficient tension, but that is just speculation." End Quote.

I found the article interesting because the same thing happened to us last winter while delivering Nanita to Clearwater from Ft Lauderdale with the owner/captain.  Of course, it happened at night in 18kt winds and since we could not see because the spreader lights were defective, the sail jammed pretty good.  It was morning and in 6' seas before we could see what happened.  We had to wait until we reached cam waters near Boca Grande to fix the problem.  In retrospect we should have deployed the sails in daylight and in low wind conditions. Moral: know your systems well before you hit the big winds and waves.

Holland Marine called

We had a call from Holland Marine this morning asking what the combination was to the boat lock so they can get on the boat.

There is a little issue in the area of the windlass that we want fixed and Holland Marine was highly recommended by many of the people we trust and the price was reasonable for the scope of the project. They are also repairing the prop and cutlass bearing.

From the sound of things the winter storm cover has made it through the season so far and we hope it survives intact and can be used next year. the cover was originally designed for way up North winters and snow load.  It seemed a bit light for our way of thinking but perhaps we underestimated the strength.  It is not a full cover but keeps water, leaves and dirt out of the cockpit and the scuppers there and has closed forward and aft zippers.  As you can see, the boom keeps the tent in place.  All those little lines just wind around and around and around and the network is about 400' long all stretched out.