Yeah, it’s got a Hemi!
We’ve had many great weekends for sailing and racing this winter, but this week and next have been reserved for off the water projects to get Spadefoot ready for Pacific Cup in July. First up, was a big one. We’ve had Spadefoot for 1.5 years and the boat came with a nice trailer, but up until this point we’ve had no way to tow Spadefoot without borrowing a vehicle. That worked for local stuff, but not so practical for trailering the boat to California and leaving the vehicle there for 2-3 months. Problem solved…
Yeah, it’s got a Hemi.
With the towing issue out of the way we got serious with upgrading the electronics to suite sailing to Hawaii. That meant installing a Victron battery monitor so we can tell how our battery is doing (a carbon foam 110Ah Firefly Oasis arrives on Tuesday, if you were wondering, and a small 33Ah AGM battery will ride along as the backup) and verify our solar panels are working. Yes, we also got most of the solar setup installed. The bracket across the stern is there, one panel is mounted and running through a Genasun GV-10 MPPT charge controller. A second Genasun arrives on Tuesday with the battery and I’ll add the second panel next Friday. The way the panels are setup they can be rotated somewhat to improve the angle towards the sun and by having them run through separate charge controllers, if one panel is shaded the other will still produce maximum output. We saw 4.25 amps out of the one 70W panel today. That’s pretty good for March.
Charging!
Last up for the weekend was installing the B&G Triton instruments. Man, NMEA 2000 makes it so easy. We got the displays mounted and powered up, no problem. We also connected an Actisense NMEA 2000 to 0183 converter which will allow the Pelagic autopilot to interface with the wind direction for apparent wind steering and allow the instrument data to broadcast over the iAIS WiFi hub so we can see the instrument data on our iThings. Next weekend we are hauling Spadefoot out to install the knotmeter and lowering the mast to install the wind instruments.
Two Triton displays…
It’s not always so easy. The two solar panels arrived a few weeks ago. Just a small dent in the box and this…
Will you have any ground tackle for the Pacific Cup?
Hi Chuck,
Yes, we are required to have an anchor, 200′ of rode, and chain equal to at least half the length of the boat. Boats over 30′ must have two anchors. Most competitors fulfill the requirements with a Fortress anchor for at least one of those.