Don Baker and I spent the weekend sailing and motoring over 60 miles. Our goal was to test various systems and explore the islands. We found the towing the soft bottom dinghy caused too much drag, the barbeque is great for grilling brats, and that I need to replace the last old section of VHF antenna cable as our transmitting power is not a full range. Above is a picture of our new boat friendly wine glasses that Don passed with flying colors after we made repeated tests. Note the calm water of the big lake. John Thode could have waterskied all the way to Canada.
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Made a quick trip to complete the final touches to the instrumentation. This will likely be the last of the hardware installation as anything else can be linked wirelessly to the ipad.
The photo above shows the old Garmin used for autopilot , boat speed,and storing tracks of our journey. (you can see a few on it now). Below the Garmin is the second station remote microphone and display. This connects to the larger recieved down below. This identifies and tracks the GPS location other vessels in the area and can link instantly to the coast guard sending the boats GPS coordinates. It's also boats VHF radio. On the left, the Ipad with INAVX application will do the serous navigation and routing. It has Weather forecast overlays, tides, and will connect to any instrument I add such as wind speed, engine monitoring, battery charging ....just about anything. Spent the night after a nice easy sail with some of the buddies at the marina. Found that Panta Rhei's new oven reaches 480 deg. and is a great pizza oven. I had the drive train checked out prior to shipping the boat to Ashland. I'm disappointed the mechanic missed what I now know should have been caught. Diesel engines on large sailboats are more than back-up systems, they can be used to motor the boat endless hours or even days. That's why I decided to install a new transmission in lieu of repairing it. Panta Rhei now has a completely new drivetrain from the engine to the propeller. The four cylinder diesel Kubota engine is know to be one of the most reliable engines on the market routinely running for 20,000 hrs before major overhauls. So now, it's just warming up. The new transmission / drive train runs silky smooth giving me confidence that it can easily push the boat all the way to the Bahamas should we never catch a breeze. Above is the transmission sitting pier. Below on the right is a photo as it comes up from behind the engine still attached to the bell housing . On the left below is the engine covered with boat cushions giving me a soft spot the lay while I removed the transmission. With this chore out of the way, our plan spend the rest of the summer and fall exploring the islands before we move on sometime next summer. No sense rushing as the Apostle Islands have a lot to explore. Somehow this link got dropped so I republished it.
Dead calm so we had a chance to play with the rigging and take this photo. Had I known we would be taking photos I would have wore my nicer boat shoes. Jim and Theresa are on a circle tour of Lake Superior.They hopped on Panta Rhei for a short sail but the wind did not cooperate. Summer has arrived on Chequamegon Bay, As of June 1st. The ice was still on the lake outside the bay causing the fog bank you can see below. Scott ant Ashland marina launched the boat and used the lift to place the mast on the deck for the short ride across the bay to Washburn. The plan was to do any electronics additions or modifications absolutely last as they quickly become obsolete. Below is the new VHF radio / GPS / AIS and DSC. What that means is that it identifies and tracks large ships, locates it'self and can instantly notify the coastguard of our exact location a a push of a button anywhere on the lake. This gives us the capabilities needed to be in the big water. it can also find it's way home if our main navigation unit fails.
Winter came early and hard. The bay is freezing over and the snow is falling. As you can see from the photo below, I needed to reinforce the area around the main post. The shrink wrap is pulling away. I'm not too concerned since I can go in an reinforce it next time I'm up. My shrink wrap job is far from perfect but I'm happy with the learning experience. Brothers Scott and Mark met me in Ashland to cover the boat. It's always news worthy when we get together for one of my projects. Fortunately nothing went viral. It was our first time Shrinkwrapping. Lots of things to do better next year but the boat is covered. PantaRhei is the boat covered in white shrinkwrap in the photo to the left. Chequamegan bay behind and Madeline Island off in the distance. I pulled the hatches and port lights (windows) to cut new Lexan this winter for replacement in the spring. Port Washington is the home port of Great Lakes Marine services. http://www.yachtworld.com/greatlakesmarine/greatlakesmarine_1.html They will be moving Panta Rhei north to Ashland saving us the 600 mile Journey. We will likely stay in Ashland a year or two as it's close to our cabin in Hayward. |
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August 2019
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