Flash

Rockland Public Library

The SSB is fixed. At least mostly fixed. After exhausting every other possibility, the technician returned the theory of inadequate ground. He connected a new wire to ground in parallel with the old one and the transmit current jumped from 10 to 15 amps.

The primary ground is a strip of copper ribbon about 4 inches wide that runs from the antenna tuner to the through-hull grounding plate. The ribbon makes a ground connection and also provides a ground plane for radio propagation. The ribbon is old and worn. I found fragments of it in the bilge. Perhaps it was damaged by the work being done or by the lightning.

Anyhow, the SSB is good enough for now. I'll plan on replacing the copper ribbon myself. Meanwhile, we can leave Rockland tomorrow morning. The weather report sounds good. :)

So Very Very Close

Rockland Harbor, N 44 06.664 W 69 05.823

Everything works -- Almost. The new Furuno radar works, and the screen is much better and echoes easier to read than on the old radar. The new Raymarine wind meter works, and it too is much easier to read than the old one. The GPS to PC interface works. The ICOM 710 SSB works, I am able to send and receive email via sailmail. That's how I'm posting this blog.

We even relocated the GPS and the radar. Before they were mounted on the top of the wet locker. The disadvantage to that is that the screens were too far away to read easily and that all operations and button pushing had to be done down below. The helmsman would have to leave his/her station to operate the GPS or the radar. That's not the best practice. Our cure is to mount the GPS and the radar on a swinging arm. Now we can swing them out to the companionway door entrance and view them and operate them from the helmsman's station. We can swing the arm the other way to see them and view them inside when sitting at the navigator's table. It's a definite operational improvement.

The only thing that doesn't work (apparently) is the SSB tuner. The tuner matches impedances between the SSB and the antenna for maximum power transfer. It does this frequency sensitive adjustment on command from the SSB. It doesn't appear to be working because when I transmit, the radio consumes only 6-10 amps of 12 volt power. The minimum is 20 amps and before the lightning strike our old radio used 25 amps. The net effect is that the radio works but only at low power. I can send emails via a station in Nova Scotia less than 100 miles from here, but I can't contact really distant stations. Long distance communications is the whole point of SSB radio so we can't accept it in this state.

The Ocean Pursuits technician was out here 4-5 times today with different ideas for diagnostic tests suggested by the manufacturer ICOM. None of them worked. We'll have to continue tomorrow.

From Libby: I had a great time at the Farnsworth Art Museum, There were some Winslow Homer paintings, along with paintings by N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and James Wyeth with a tour given by Andrew Wyeth's granddaughter. It is a great collection for such a small town.

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A Cold Cold Day

Rockland Harbor

Today has been cold and drizzly. It feels like late October. But the forecast for the rest of the week sounds OK.

Well, we were gone for 10 days. The break was nice. It was certainly good for Libby and I to have time with the grand children. In addition, John and Cheryl had a good week in Washington, we got to spend a day with my sister Marylyn, and we also got to see friends, Jerry and Phyllis, Bud and Nan, and John and Mary Ann. I even got to spend a few hours at the West Charlton fire house shooting the breeze with the guys.

While we were gone, Ocean Pursuits worked on Tarwathie. They did a nice job installing the new radio, and the radar, and the wind meter. They had to take the mast down and put it back. They had to route cables and they did such a nice job that it is neater than when they started. There is still some work to do, so we'll be here at least one more day.

Should we sail south with Hurricane Ernesto heading North? No. We'll stay close by safe anchorages until it is safely past. We're also in no hurry to leave Maine. We could stop and visit Bath and/or Portland on the way south. We didn't see those places on the way up.

Our plans for September are loose. We had hoped to sail with John and Mary Ann in mid September, but that will be put back a month or so. We also had hoped to sail with Sten-Orjan from Sweden for a week, but he had to cancel also. Perhaps 2007 for him. I guess we'll go back down and spend more time in the Chesapeake. There are still numerous Chesapeake gunkholes that we haven't seen and others that we would like to revisit.

That means we'll be making a 3 day passage from Rhode Island to Cape May NJ sometime after labor day. Anybody want to go for a ride?

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Back On The Water

Rockland Maine

We made it back onboard Tarwathie by 1800 today. It sure feels good to get back on the water.

A longer blog can wait until tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if this blog gets through, it demonstrates that the SSB radio is fixed.

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A week off

South Burlington Vermont

We are in Vermont, enroute to Rome New York to babysit the grandkids for a week.

Tarwathie is in Rockland in the hands of Ocean Pursuits. They will hopefully repair the radar, SSB and wind instruments while we are gone. We also took advantage of the hiatus to take the sails to a sailmaker for mending.

No more blogs this week. If the SSB radio gets repaired, I'll post one on the 28th or 29th