All ready to go!

After waking at the crack of 10 this morning, we raised the mast and got the boat all ready to go. Double-checking everything, passing our safety inspection and team registration, we feel prepared for tomorrow. The forecast is for it to start out light - 8-10 knots or so - then build over the course of the day. Will we choose the beach, where there is more breeze, or the rhumb line, a more direct route? I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I'm thinking that we'll follow the path of race favorites Team Ruff Rider, or perhaps zee out of town hot shots on zee French boat, Cirrus R. Live streaming on GT300.com... Start is at 10 AM!

On SPI!

After 7 hours of driving (thanks, Austin traffic!), 50 work emails (serious thanks to Stef for driving), and only one Monster, a beach condo has never looked so inviting at 2 AM. We made it! With the boat, too!

2012 GT300 Prep

I'm currently packing up and getting everything ready for the 2012 GT300. I hope to be able to blog durnig the race, and just want to confirm that I'll be able to do it from my iPad. Wish team Yost Auto good luck!

Boot Dryer!

After too many embarrassing moments involving the odor of my sailing boots and gloves (it gets hot and sweaty here in Texas!), I decided that there had to be a better solution than just letting them air out in my utility room, taking days to dry. Clothes dryer? Nah, probably not any good for the boots. But if only I could force that warm air through them...

I spent some time browsing online and found a number of ski boot dryers which might fit the bill. REI had one for $80, but it would only accommodate a single pair of boots, and no gloves. I also wanted to be able to dry two pairs of boots and two pairs of gloves, as my new crew and girlfriend would be moving in soon, and I didn't want her to suffer from the same offensive odors. Time to get out the PVC glue and build my own!

My basic idea was to use a hairdryer at low speed, with or without heat, connected to 2" PVC tubing which would tee off to smaller sections going to each boot or glove. I thought I could find a reducing tee going from 2" to 1" or 3/4", but none of the local hardware stores had such a fitting. This added a little bit of cost with separate 2" tees and reducers, but in the end I kept the whole project to less than $50, not including a ten-ish dollar hair dryer. Here is the final parts list:

3x 2" 90 degree elbows
7x 2" tees
8x 2" to 3/4" reducer
1x 2" rubber coupler with hose clamps
4x 3/4" 45 degree elbows
4x 3/4" end caps (to only dry 4 items)
1x hairdryer
1x Christmas light timer
1 section of 2" pipe
1 section of 3/4" pipe

I'm sure there are a dozen ways to make this work, but here is what I ended up building:

Basically, I figure the boots need a bit more airflow to dry in the same amount of time as the gloves, so I put the 45 degree bend in the 3/4" pipe in the two closest positions to the hair dryer on each side where they should get slightly higher pressure and flow. This should allow the air to get all the way into the toe box of the boots. I also designed it such that the the hair dryer extension provides support to the whole structure. I did not glue the tee between the hairdryer and main sections so that I could disconnect them, providing relatively flat storage of the two pieces. And the hair dryer is, of course, connected via the rubber coupler and secured with hose clamps. Here are a couple of action shots:

Initially I was worried about the glue in my boots and did not want to use heat from the hairdryer. On the low setting, though, the air does not get that hot, and it is further cooled in the plumbing, resulting in something not much hotter than 100 degrees at the boots / gloves. I originally set my timer for three hours with the hairdryer on low, but now I set it to only two hours before I go to bed, and everything is dry as a bone the next morning. After cleaning everything with MiraZyme and a few sailing sessions followed by my new quick dryer, my boots no longer smell. Problem solved just in time before my girlfriend moved in!

F18 Training Clinic

Yesterday, we had a training clinic for F18s put on by AustinCats.net and 2WireSailing, our local AHPC dealer. The forecast was for freezing temperatures, light wind, and clouds, but we were delighted as it was warmer than predicted (but still cold), with good wind (8-14, gusting as high as 18), and bright, warming sun for the whole day! The basic format was starting practice, tacks and gybes, then a few mock races. Until Stefanie, my new full-time crew, moves here from San Francisco, I've been sailing with Jim, a seasoned catamaran sailor. He and I teamed up for this training, and we both definitely learned a lot in the process. Here is some video of  Team FSM racing from the event:


Starts

• Good, pin-favored port tack
• Solo port tack
• Only boat not over early
• Over early
• Good start, right in the mix
• Another good start
• Excellent start, with Jim driving

Tacking

• Light air, not our best

Gybing

• In dying wind

Racing

• Not the prettiest windward mark rounding (very end of clip)
• Leward mark rounding at front of fleet
• Last minute tack and windward mark rounding
• Nasty mast bend on another boat, leeward mark rounding
• Tacking in the middle of the fleet with Jim driving
• Windward mark rounding (end of clip)
• Leeward mark rounding (end of clip)
• Close leeward mark rounding with Jim driving (2/3 through clip)
• Beating upwind,  header gives us a huge lead!
• Upwind (in the lead), mark rounding
• Downwind (in the lead), mark rounding, but troubles dropping the kite!
• Last windward mark rounding of the day
• Last leeward mark rounding of the day, overstood with an early douse (end of clip)

Overall, it was an amazing day! We followed the sailing with a review of all the video led by local catamaran sailing guru, John Tomko. I learned quite a bit in the Q&A, and look forward to putting it to good use when Stefanie moves here. After the talk, Philippe, AustinCats.net member and local francophone, made us an amazing meal which capped everything off quite nicely!

Cradles

When I first acquired my boat, it came with a couple of hull cradles made from some layers of foam wrapped in taped. These lasted a while, but they began to fall apart, and furthermore at only a few inches thick, they had a tendency to fold over and the hulls would come dangerously close to the ground. After some searching, I found this foam online:

http://sweetcomposites.com/Minicel.html

Minicel is a fairly dense foam which does not absorb water, so it is useful around boats. I ordered a "half bun" (I have no idea what a bun is) of 3" for just over $50, and the shipping was pretty reasonable, if I recall. Ideally I would have used a hot wire or something to cut it a little better, but I didn't have one and instead used an old steak knife. Aside from making a huge mess of static-clinging black foam bits, it worked pretty well. I also had to sand the surface of the cut a bit, as the steak knife left it pretty rough. I wanted to make them thicker than 3", though, so I ended up making two pieces for each side and gluing them together with my favorite adhesive:

Loctite PL Premium Polyurethane Adhesive! I had heard that the minicell could be hard to glue, so I decided to go all out. This stuff sticks to just about anything, so if it didn't work, nothing would. And just to be safe, I wove some bungee through the two halves, which also doubles as the line to secure the cradles to the hull when moving the boat around. Here are the finished cradles:

Well, almost finished. A friend told me that rough ground surfaces could puncture and wear the minicell at the bottom of the cradles fairly quickly, and he happened to have some extra rubberized diamond plate which he used for his cradles. I cut some to cover the bottom and approximately 1" up on each of the sides, then affixed it with a good amount of adhesive. The diamond plate did not want to bend very easily, though, so I had to make this a two-step process compressing first the front and back with weights - toolboxes, etc., and then the sides as the adhesive dried. After that, they were really done! Here they are in use:

You can't really see the diamond plate, though. In fact, this picture may have been taken before I added it. Anyway, they are now in full-time use, and they work really well. I no longer keep my boat on the trailer at the yacht club, and instead rest it on these cradles and my beach wheels... but more on that in a later post on my cradle cradles. 

Total project time was about 4 hours and cost about $75, which is a lot for something so simple, but hopefully I'll get years of good use out of them!

Projects!

So what has been keeping me busy lately? Projects! What projects? Here's a short list:

• Boom boom box
• Cradle cradles
• Boat upgrades... many boat upgrades
• Jib bag (I got a new sewing machine!)
• Extra-large trailer box

And more! Pics, build instructions, and more details to come!