Toews ‘r Us — a family sailing adventure

We need to be out of our place in just one week! Wow, time flies.

Marah is currently cleaning and packing up her room. Debi’s doing the last load of laundry from land. The boat is mostly ready; the major things are done anyway. Most of the things that remain are small items. Over ¾ of our 120 or so long list is complete. Debi got her major items done too - sails, tramps etc.

The plan was to move some stuff today, but it was raining and Debi didn’t want to get wet. No, that’s not it…we didn’t want our stuff to get wet. Tomorrow looks like the day. I’m glad that we’ll be on soon. I hate leaving the boat out there with no one watching it. Even though it is on a mooring for the time being (next few days).

Next week it’s back to Pepperel Cove. Our anchorage here in the Portmouth area. We’ve got a big new Rocna anchor to try out. It’s double the size of our previous Delta anchor. We shouldn’t be going anywhere once we drop that hunk of metal. The thing barely fit in my little beater truck.

The old trampolines were in terrible shape. So bad in fact that the week prior to putting on the second one, Cassidy fell through it and right into the water. I was right there, but she got soaked, scared and cold.

Making your own trampolines is a rather large project. Homemade items that are too large to be laid out in the living room are hard to work with. It was a real exercise in patience for both Debi and I, but we got through it just fine. What is it they say? “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

We used a ¼” mesh that we got at Sailrite. Our tramps are rather large so two sections of the fabric needed to be sewn together. We used their vinyl glue prior to sewing, making the job of keeping it aligned much easier.

We used Tenera Thread made by Gore. It’s basically teflon . It’s supposed to last for nearly ever, at least it will outlast the rest of the trampoline. This is good because I don’t want to put that much effort into RE-sewing a project. We used the double strand type, it’s twisted together and has a 15 pound break strength. We needed to use a #20 needle in order for it to work properly without getting bunched. Use the directions on the Sailrite site to set the machine up. We found the best price at Southern Textile Group.

Our broken down sewing machine was stretched to the limit, frustrating both Debi and I. After completing the first one at a cost of over 10 needles, a base plate, and a couple of other plates, I realized that the arm of the machine needed a slight adjustment. We completed the second tramp with only 2 needles and no other broken parts.

On edges we put in a 3″ fold and sewed it 5 times. We then put Shelter-Rite truck tarp material as a border, more for looks, but I’m sure it added some strength. We put in grommets just under every 4 inches or so and laced it in. I used a 3/16″ rope and cut it to lengths that would lace up ½ of a side. This way if a line were to break, it would only be a short section that would be affected, averting a complete failure.

It sounds pretty easy looking back on it, but the first one was a real bear. Once we got that one complete the second one was put together in no time.

The energy project has been wrapped up. The arch installed, wires run, solar panels put in, wind generators mounted, and it’s a wrap.

What do we have? I’ve been running our refrigerator and freezer for several weeks now and every day the batteries have been 100% charged before lunch. I know we’ll be using more energy once we’re on board, but those are the two biggest energy hogs that we have. Well I will be on board with 4 women, so we’ll just have to see if that fact stands. At least the women don’t look like pigs.

One thing that isn’t working as I expected is the diversion water heaters. When the wind generators go into divert mode, the load is at max and the generators bog right down and really haven’t been putting out the power required to heat the water. I’m going to play with it some more and come up with a workable solution.

What’s amazing is the amount of power that the solar panels are generating. I’ve got them wired in series and the controller is reading them at approximately 86 volts at mid day. They generate power on cloudy days, and right down to dusk. The Outback MPPT controller really does a good job in squeezing every last bit of juice out of them. These really are the highlight of the project. They can pour over 25 amps in to the batteries during the bulk charge.

Here’s the photos of our boat energy project.

Mike has been bugging me to write a post.  I thought it was time as well, I haven’t written one since last September. 

I really didn’t have much to write about until now.  It’s been a pretty quiet winter for the Toews girls.  Marah and Cassidy are doing excellent in school, Calen is nearly two and talking all the time and I have been puttering along making our little winter rental a home.  But alas, the time has come to move back again to our beautiful boat. 

I have procrastinated getting started on some of our sewing projects.   Mike is more confident in my sewing skills than I am.  We have started on our big sewing project, the trampolines for our catamaran.  We have finished one and have started on the other and I have to say, with all humility, I am quite impressed with how it turned out.  Who knew we had it in us?!   I thought we had bitten off more than we could chew with that project but Mike thought differently.   Making them ourselves is a tremendous savings.  I’ve also started mending the sail cover and making hanging bags for Mike’s tools and sailing instrument covers.  I still have to finish the second tramploine, mend and wash the sails, a grill cover for our new grill, and pack  up the winter rental before moving day.  

As much as we have going on, we are all excited about moving aboard Los GATOews.  She is a disaster area right now.  Mike has worked on her all winter with little projects here and there, making improvements.  I’ve helped here and there, whenever he needed a strong back for the job.  There are tools screwn about, dust, dirt and grime but nothing a little cleanser and elbow grease couldn’t fix.  I’m anxious to get started on her and get us moved on.

The excitement is building again and the Toews household is busy, busy , busy. 

We have a Lofrans Airon Windlass. They say it should be taken down every year and cleaned up. Of course if we did everything that needed to get done every year, I don’t think we’d have time to actually sail. I’m quite sure that ours hasn’t been done in years and years.

It’s not hard to do, and only took about an hour and a half. We weren’t having a problem with it; I just wanted it to work every time we needed it. In addition to doing the maintenance per the book, we also cleaned up all the electrical connections, which were extremely corroded. I’ve also ordered a new cord to replace the wired remote cord that was in rough shape.

My Father came up for a few days to be a heavy lifter during the power arch installation. Without his help it couldn’t have been done, thank you Dad.

The arch is pretty light, I’m guessing around 75 pounds and the main halyard was used to move it around. We hauled it up, put it in place and it didn’t fit. What? No, it didn’t fit. The feet weren’t sitting where they should have been. A nervous call to Redman Marine Manufacturing was placed, and a quick prayer was made, “please let him answer the phone.”

They recommended some gentle coercing. So we got down to the fine art of persuading. It took a little nudge, well more of a soft tug, actually it was a lot of force to get the foot pads to sit right where we wanted them. The forward legs had to be spread a little, the aft legs had to be brought in and pulled a little further aft. We had some planking to do the spreading and some ratchet straps to do the pulling. Once we finally got it all in place we marked it and then had to take it off, that’s right - it was just a dry fit for marking.

 Next came drilling and wiring. Drilling the holes - pretty strait forward, wiring well that’s a little harder, but generally not too bad. The starboard wind generator wire went the hardest, not sure why, but it was a struggle the entire way down. Thankfully my Dad, the “master boat electrician”, was on hand to do the pulling.

I figured a day to get it all done, so in typical boat work timing it took a total of two days. Why do all boat projects take twice as long as they are planned for?

Things have been incredibly busy. Big projects have been completed, new ones started and time has been slipping away.
It’s amazing how fast time creeps up. One minute it’s sub-zero, New Hampshire frozen winter, the next it’s May and 70 degrees (70 is long-john weather to my best friend, Kenny, in Florida).

We need to be out of our winter rental in just over a month, so it’s onto the boat then. We’ll be in great shape. Most of the major projects that we wanted completed are done. The other big ones, like new trampolines, are almost complete.

I’ve been pushing Debi to finish the small sewing items. The last major item that NEEDS completing is the engine maintenance. The injectors and heat exchangers went out to be cleaned - they need to be put back in. There are some other items that need to get done before we fire them up for the spring.

The Los GATOews Clean and Green Energy Project is complete. Although, I think that I’m going to make some minor improvements. I’ll catch you up on the details shortly.

The girls and I did some flight time in the simulator - they had a blast, so did I.