Nugland

The mice had gotten to the Loy’s lovely mainsail cover, but they had some extra Sunbrella™ that matched them stashed away. I was able to sew some patches on with my trusty Kenmore 1946 Zig-Zag sewing machine. Not exactly beautiful, but it does the trick.

‘Sailing the Centennial’ is a pretty wonkish little piece on, well, sailing the Centennial. More informational than entertaining, but I’ll update it as I learn more.

I put up a page of ideas for people who sail in the ‘Pages’ area (links to the right, or here). It’s a ‘Page’ because I plan on updating it as new stuff occurs to me. Enjoy?

We got down to the marina on Sunday and were able to button the Centennial up for the winter.

The Loys had provided a nice tent sort of thing to cover the cockpit. It should keep snow and rain from causing too much trouble for us.

Barely pictured in the right of the above image is the catamaran “Recess” out of Ann Arbor (go figure). My parents figure that she’s probably owned by one of their teaching colleagues. She’s about the same length as Centennial, but over twenty feet wide (by my guess). Kind of intimidating, really.

Here’s a pic of my budget GPS Chartplotter. $300 from eBay. It runs Windows 2K on a ruggedized Pentium III 500 tablet computer left over from some Department of Fish and Wildlife survey or another. (It’s a WalkAbout HH [Hammer Head] 3, FWIW.)

It has a GPS receiver and runs SeaClear GPS chartplotter software well enough. I could easily add a USB DVD reader and some speakers, and that would turn it into the Centennial’s entertainment center as well.

We took the boat out of the water last Sunday, which went well. My parents came out to help, which was their first chance to see her in person. I think they liked her (they certainly said all sorts of nice things).

We only managed to take her out once all year, but that was OK. The real accomplishment was to get everything set up and tested in anticipation of lots of sailing next year (I now know that there is nothing important that needs to be fixed before next season, which is a great feeling).

That said, there is a lot I’d like to accomplish:

• Replace the tragic deck hatch with a small dog-house. This would allow one to stand up after using the biffy to pull one’s trousers up without banging one’s head.

The existing hatch was a very simply constructed one that was, I’m guessing, intended as a place-holder back in 1980. It was never replaced. A dog-house would also make a nice little seat on the deck while underway.

• Replace the porta-potty with a Lavac head — and plumb it in the Great Lakes-legal manner.

This would lower the head seat-height to a normal level, and the Lavac commodes have a reputation for not being smelly (they seal up completely when closed).

• Fix the Shipmate heater. Sadly, it clogged up the last time we used it (and, sadly, we needed it that night). Should be do-able.

Centennial spent all of its prior life on a mooring, which made shore power hook-ups semi-irrelevant. Slips (with power included) are remarkably affordable and convenient at Meinke’s on Lake Erie, so I added shore power. Pretty cheaply, I must add.

The inlet you see above was less than $60 from eBay, and the inside bits were all off-the-shelf home equipment that I got cheap at Stadium Hardware.

The main trick I pulled was to use a 20 amp GFCI outlet on the inside (the cord and the plug are rated for 30 amps, so I was conservative). Them are the outlets you see in people’s bathrooms, the ones with a circuit breaker built-in, which makes sense on a boat. I got the one with an LED light that indicates if the breaker has tripped, which should be nice.

We also got the shrouds (the wires that support the masts) all correctly tensioned and ’safetied’ (meaning: I put clips on them so they don’t unwind themselves) as well.

The cord will arrive this week.

Jo and I went down to Meinke’s on Friday night. We checked out my wiring job (all the lights work correctly!) and sacked out on board.

This morning (Saturday) we got up, made breakfast, and motored out onto Lake Erie and hoisted sail. We were able to do all the things we tried. Neat-O!

We sailed up wind, we tacked back and forth on a beat, we sailed on a broad reach, we dropped the main and sailed some more, we put the main back up (with a reef), we sailed down wind (wing-and-wing, even, for a bit), we found the marina again, and we were able to dock! With a minimum of either drama or comedy, even.

There is a steep learning curve, what as the Centennial is not a member of the Tupperware™ Fleet, but we’re good enough at it already to, oh, escape from zombies anyway.

Good times. In my circle, we observe ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’ a little differently.

More pics here (from my camera) and here (Jo’s iPhone pics).

Click the above if you want to show Centennial Pride at the Stop&Shop. Or wherever it is that you buy your necessities. All profits go to CafePress.

We got the last sail — the main — on today, and we took a crack at hooking up the mast-head lights (won’t know if that worked until we are down there in the dark, but it feels correct).

Sailing next weekend? Looks like it.

There was light wind — and that right on the Centennial’s nose — so I was able to get the Mizzen put on (’bent’) today. The lazy-jacks seemed to work OK, and the sail cover was easy to get on.

Don’t know if I’ll be sailing on Saturday, but we’re darn close.

Gives a good idea of scale.

This was an iPhone snap; I toned it a little.

As Mark Best tells us, it is every boat-owners dream to get their boat in the water before Labor Day.

And not taking on any water (as far as I can tell). (There’s a boat across the channel, a little powerboat, that has a bilge pump that kicks off every five or ten minutes; Centennial is drier than that, for sures, anyway.)

Sam and I got quite the ride getting her from the launching slip to B-106 where you see her now. She is a complete pig under power. Learning to handle her in a marina is going to be, er, entertaining. A concerned (and experienced) boater jumped aboard when I was struggling and took the helm. He did about as poorly as I had been doing (which, secretly, made me feel a little better). We did get her berthed eventually. I did lose a shoe (!) fending off of a dock (and that was a dock an entire channel away from B-106), but I have lots of shoes.

Poor Jo had to cool her heels on the dock while we suffered. We couldn’t even hear her advice.

Back tomorrow to putz around with the sails. Very happy.

Wow, there’s a sailboat. We contracted for mast-hoisting service, they showed up, and everything went together from there.

The stays were all the correct length, and all the turn-buckles pinned in fine. The ropes were correctly run. The wires all pulled through. Jeez, September 5th. All ready to go in the water.

Awesome.

And there it is, all painted. In person, the bottom paint doesn’t look as red as it does here; more coppery. And less blotchy, actually. The copper in the paint makes the camera go kinda’ nutty.

I am so pleased with how it came out.

(The photo is another quicky HDR, BTW.)

This is actually an HDR composite of 3 bracketed shots. It’s not a perfect job, but it was my first HDR, and it was done quickly.

Went down and started painting the bottom (no, ‘bottom-painting’ does not involve a submissive in any way). I used the Interlux VC17m stuff that was so scary sounding, but, with a few precautions, everything went great.

I wore long gloves and a face mask, and had a ball. That stuff isn’t as fussy as you’d think from reading the page after page of instructions and warnings. Had time to get a coat of varnish on the cockpit brightwork as well.

Sam and his buddy came by and helped us get the leeboards back up. It was a lot easier than taking them down, and not just because we had two more people helping; this time we used the ropes that lift them normally to lift them into position. Also: they weren’t dirty and gross.

The VC17m bottom paint turns out to be a fussier proposition than I had originally imagined, so there will be some extra preparation before getting it on.

We did get a chance to sand and varnish some of the cockpit brightwork. It’ll need another two or three coats, but it looks a lot better already.

This week wasn’t one of many accomplishments on the Centennial front. There were other, real-life things that took up time, and the one visit to Curtice didn’t accomplish much.

We did get our Ohio boat registration sticker. Even that seemed up in the air for a few minutes: The published requirements make a big deal about needing an HIN (Hull Identification Number) before you can have a Ohio sticker. The Loys built Centennial without registering as a commercial boat manufacturer (which is completely normal), so they had no business putting a HIN on her.

The Coast Guard doesn’t require a HIN when they hand out Documentation, which Centennial has, so I wasn’t anticipating too much trouble with the Ohio authorities, but the computer system that the nice lady at the Maumee Bay office uses required a HIN. I stood my ground in the nicest way I could manage (think: in the way that you patiently explain to a cashier that he has given you the wrong change), she called Columbus, and they straightened her out.

$63 later, we were all stickered through March 1st, 2012.

At the boat, we did manage to paint the boot-stripe on the rudder (first coat, anyway), but I had forgotten about the bob-stay chain and left it in Ann Arbor, so that didn’t go back up. Also forgotten was the need for more galvanizing spray paint, so the bowsprit side-stays were left alone as well (not to mention the Danforth anchor, oops). That left the new bulbs for the various masthead lights.

The Centennial has three important masthead lights: a navigation tri-color light (required when underway at night), an anchor/mooring light (required when anchored or moored at night), and a ’steaming’ light (required when running the ‘auxiliary power’, in our case, a 25 H.P. outboard (that is actually mounted inboard, but, whatever)).

We had procured some replacement bulbs, but only one (for mooring) was found to be the correct type. The real discovery, once we took everything apart, was that the existing lights are a mess (and use some odd-ball bulbs). Sigh. The wires that run the 40 feet of the mast aren’t in the greatest order, either.

Oh, well. I ordered some (affordable) replacement fixtures (that will take the spiffy LED bulbs I bought). Some patient work with my trusty multi-meter may turn up the three wire-runs I’ll need to hook them up. If it turns out the two good leads we’ve already identified are all we’ve got, I may have to try and run another. Or re-do all three for confidence.

And that was that. We did also discover that working on the boat when it is really windy is really annoying. Annoying even without thinking about the fact that sailing when it’s really windy is really fun.

Over the weekend we were able to get the shrouds, stays and halyards back onto the mast. The new leather on the shrouds looks great, and the halyards are cleaner. I’d post a pic, but I left my camera in Ann Arbor.

The bobstay chain came down (after much struggling with the shackles) and we were able to re-galvanize it and take a link out (it was sagging a little, and the turn-buckle was almost all the way in).

We’ve also got the wedges and shroud turnbuckles ready to go, so I guess it is time to get the masts hoisted (scary, huh?).

This composite kinda’ pleases me, so I share. Joanna took the ‘old’ pic. Also (from Comments) some pics of the shrouds:

And: