We're looking for the trash fence...

I’m going to take a nap in like five seconds, but I just had to out this up… that is pretty awesome!

I edited the video from pulling the engine, the picture is a bit cloudy because the Go Pro fogged up in its waterproof case. (still learning how to use it) Its not that fascinating to watch, but its here just the same, so watch it you will!

Updated 2022: We no longer post to YouTube

First sail three nights, mostly motoring and arrive on diesel vapors.

Second, hail the Avalon Harbormaster. They will meet you out front of the bay in a run about. They will need cash, on the spot!

Then go to the fuel dock by winding your way all over the mooring ball field so you can get a port side tie.

Then come back out and head for your assigned mooring ball. Here were the instructions:

1. Go over past that large tourist boat turn right and go down till your 5 rows from the shore
2. Turn right at mooring ball 174
3. Go down to 182
4. Grab the stick for the bow line, pull that up and put it on your bow cleat
5. Walk the line leading astern hand over hand and pull up the stern line and cleat it off

Here’s how it actually goes

1. Go 5 rows from the shore. Five rows from the shore… how the hell do we count those rows that are blur of mooring balls from the shore… we’re approaching from the ocean… red right re-whatTF
2. Oh shit a yellow submarine (srsly!!), hard to starboard, quick turn turn right at mooring ball 174, shit, the guy in 174 has his boat sitting so far aft that he’s blocking the fairway, SOB!
3. Go down the next row and weave between bouys and back up to your row, go down to 182. Its obvious which one it is. 182 is the only ball between two boats, the others are wide open, but you need 182.
4. Grab the stick for the bow line, oops not close enough… reverse… ah shit we’re sideways.. abort abort!!!
5. Go around and come back in as you did before and this time grab the stick for the bow line… holy mother of mooring balls this thing weights a friggin’ ton! Run up help Dawn. Just tie whatever line you have in your hand to your bow cleat.
6. Walk the slimy stinky very slippery hard to pull line leading astern hand over hand and pull with everything you’ve got because now your sideways again and no on is driving. Quick run and back down a little and pivot the stern. Now go back to the bow and heave that line along your starboard rail. Put the damn thing on your jib sheet which and both of you grind that bad boy in.. whew at least we’re straight in the slip almost cleated off and sweaty and stinky.
7. Now cleat all the lines off correctly
8. Chat with neighbors who provded moral support while in fear of you smashing into their power yachts.
9. Shower
10. Drink Wine
11. Write Blog Post
12. Revel in the memories of another no-harm no-fail docking\mooring experience!

This track line from Coastal explorer is seriously just a summary line we were all over the place!

We are about half way round the island and on our way to Avalon. Just a couple more hours then some rest and then on to San Diego, which is German for....

We are safely around pt concepcion, passing Santa Cruz Island and headed for Avalon! It's 64 and sunny... Yay!

This shot of the Noyo River Bar looking West shows the narrow 90 foot wide entrance to the river. We had read that this was a difficult and possibly dangerous crossing that should only be undertaken in calm seas. After we had motored around Cape Mendecino in NOT calm seas we knew we could make this harbor in the daylight, which would be a new experience for us. We’d crossed all the other bars thus far in fog and at night. This would be easy.

I hailed the USCG they had an hours old bar report which said it was calm. it was foggy as we approached, they suggested we wait till high tide (2 hours) since the controlling depth (the low depth) in the channel is 6 feet 7 inches!! (we draw 6 feet). So with 2+ fathoms (12+ feet) uner our keel we crossed and headed for the Transient dock at Noyo Basin Moorage as drawn up in Charlie’s Chart. It was Sunday and no one was around and there was no contact info at the office so we just grabbed the “transient dock” and went for a walk around.

A few hours later the weekend guy from the marina says we have to move our boat because this slip is for a big 80’ fishing boat. “OK. Where should we go?”, we asked. “I don’t know, but you can’t stay here!”, was the reply. The weekend guy was a total jerk basically. Dawn was about to kill the guy! We had talked to Theo and Marion from sv Marionetta (who met up the coast) as we were on our walk and knew that they and sv Celtic Song were tied up on the other side of the river to the dock at Carine’s Fish Grotto. Since the guy from the Port was not helpful and had no suggestions, I call the restaurant and the Owner goes out and asks the two boats if we can tie to them! Celtic Song says no problem and we maneuver over and side tie to them. Whew, crises averted!

The backstory to that is that the marina lost 20+ slips in the surge from the recent Tsunami, so they were really short on slips. However that night sv Ventured came in (at night yikes!) and found a slip… so go figure.

There were several boats holed up waiting for the weather and to make repairs so we had a meetup at El Mexicano. I of course failed to take a photo, but here’s a list of boats in attendance.

• sv Celtic Song – heading to San Diego, had to come in to repair a muffler
• mv Chinatsu  - Heading South. They stop every day so the dogs can get off.
• sv Deep Playa – Who knows what they are doing…
• sv Marionetta – They are going to be in Noyo for a few weeks as they are waiting on a transmission to be shipped from England.
• sv Ventured – Another Seattle boat headed for the Baja Ha-Ha who we are hanging with at Monterey now. Good peeps!

The river is very narrow and windy and lined with wharfs on one side for the buildings that support the fishing boats. I thought it looked like the town in the Movie Popeye. But now that I googled that, it looks like my memory of the movie more than the actual movie. It was cool looking (and I didn’t take any pics!). However, it did rain a ton and we had to clean up some mold in the v-berth and get out the fans to keep the air moving, but all in all, it was a great place to spend a few days with all of the things we needed within a 1 or 2 mile walk away. Aside from the idiot at the Marina the people there were very nice!

We are now in Monterey taking pics of everything and waiting for the next window to jump down to San Simeon, Morro Bay, or San Luis Obispo which are North of Point Concepcion or maybe make it around the “Cape Horn of the Pacific NW” to the northern Channel Islands. All TBD as the weather is getting crappy again.. We’re going to do some projects here since its looking like our time in San Diego prior to the Ha-Ha will be limited.

We thought we were going to be stuck in Eureka till Thursday because the Englunds Marine that runs the fuel dock was closed for inventory. They were kind enough to sell us diesel so we could get out of town and try to make another jump down the coast before a real storm comes through. We got off the fuel dock around 2pm and motored into the wind and seas all night.

From about 5:30pm Saturday to 3am Sunday we had winds on the nose of 20-30kts and swell on the nose of 4-6 feet and occasional 8 feet as we rounded Cape Mendecino. All of that conspired to hour upon hour of being lucky to do 3 knots! It was never dangerous or particularly scary, just tedious and uncomfortable.

Originally planned to push for Bodega Bay which we hoped to reach on Monday morning before a storm comes through the area, but decided to go to Fort Brag Noyo River due to our poor progress. This is where we are now, at the Noyo Basin Marina. This was our first bar crossing in the daytime in good visibility!! Bar entrance is about 60 feet wide but its well protected and it was flat as we came in. Narrow windy river and awesome little fishing town to explorer... more on that later!

We will probably be here till maybe Thursday when the winds are forecast to return from the North after a storm front moves through.

I made another of my feature comparison spreadsheets this time comparing the features and prices of MPPT Controllers. ~You can see the MPPT Solar Charge Controller Comparisons on SKyDrive. I always use SkyDrive with IE.~

NOTE: Link lost due to bit rot.

Here’s a little sample of the data

Make	Model	Price Google Shopping	Max PV Watts (12V)
Morningstar	Sunsaver MPPT	199.00	200
Morningstar	TriStar MPPT 45	390.00	600
Morningstar	TriStar MPPT 60	478.00	800
Outback Power	FlexMax 60	520.00	900
Outback Power	FlexMax 80	599.00	1250
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 2000E	258.00	350
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 50L	407.00	700
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 3048L	456.00
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 3024iL	334.00	540
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 1524iX	222.00	270
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 2512i	198.00	350
Blue Sky Electric	Solar Boost 2512iX	197.00	350

I figured out why the ACR didn’t flip to combined in time… right out of the documentation:

Blue Sea Systems CL-Series BatteryLink ACR PN7600 Owner’s Manuual

Internal time delay prevents relay action for transient conditions, voltage must be within range for approximately one minute to cause closure, relay will open when overvoltage is detected for approximately 15 seconds.

The regulator definitely went from an acceptable charging voltage to an overvoltage situation in less than a minute.

(CLICK GRAPHIC TO ENLARGE)

Not sure most of you will want to read this, but to my fellow boaters here goes…

When we had the engine out of the boat to replace the fuel tank we also decided to upgrade our alternator from a 65Amp model to a 100Amp model and to add a Balmar MC614 three-stage external regulator to increase our engine based charging capacity. We also made changes to our battery configuration. We combined all of our existing batteries into one 660Amp Hour (Ah) bank instead of two banks of 440Ah and 220Ah. We also added a single dedicated 12V starting battery.

Our starter is wired to the dedicated starting battery and the alternator charges this battery first. When there is charge being supplied to this battery our Blue Sea 7600 Automatic Charge Relay (ACR) combines the house and starting batteries so the alternator now charges all the batteries. In order for the Balmar external regulator to control the alternator output properly it monitors the voltage of the batteries it is charging (see 1 above). The problem we experienced was our starting battery was being overcharged so much it started to boil the water off. Here is what we think happened.

The two key components in this are where the 12V Sensor wire (1 in the drawing) is attached, 2 the house bank or 3 the starting battery and whether the ACR has the batteries combined or not.

Originally we (myself and our experts) believed the 12V sensor wire could go on either bank since we believed when the ACR saw a charge voltage it would combine the batteries, the regulator would then see the combined voltage of all the batteries and adjust the output of the alternator accordingly. We had the 12V sensor wire attached to the House Bank (2).

We still think that at some lever we’re correct in our assumption, however we now believe there is a race condition where the following happens:

1. The Batteries are isolated because the house bank is not at full charge (Undervoltage on the ACR)
2. The Engine starts and the regulator is responding to the low voltage on the sensor wire on the house bank (2). It then tells the alternator to  output more power
3. The ACR can’t “see” the additional power from the alternator because the batteries are not combined so it tells the alternator to output MORE power.
4. Now the ACR wakes up (or its sample frequency is less than the regulator) and it sees too much current on the Starting battery and now does not combine the batteries because there is an Overvoltage situation on the starting battery.

The basic problem was the ACR didn’t combine and the regulator was getting mixed signals by monitoring a bank that was not being charged, since the ACR did not combine, while simultaneously charging the hell out of our starting battery. We believe this is what was happening at sea. We know for sure we have reproduced this at the dock.

In order to eliminate this we moved the 12V sensor wire from the house bank to the starting battery. Now regardless of if the ACR combines the battery banks or not at least the regulator is monitoring the voltage of the battery is charging when the ACR has the two banks isolated.

We tested this today and we were not able to get the regulator into an overcharge state. We’re going to test a few more times over the next few days. We’re also going to contact Balmar on Monday and Monty at Englund Marine is going to contact Blue Sea Systems to confirm what we believed happened and that our fix is correct and also just to check to see if they already know something about this happening before.

Another day another thing learned…. ya gotta love it! (DISCLAIMER: We’d love it a lot more if it weren’t foggy and rainy)