On A New Tack

I forgot to mention in our last post that we are being joined by our friend Jared K. for the trip to Savannah. We’re glad to have him aboard and help with the watch rotation, but we’ll keep him slightly anonymous so that his work doesn’t find out he is working extra-remotely from home… After the unfortunately eventful trip down Adams Creek to Beaufort, we topped off our diesel tanks and Jerry cans at Town Creek Marina.  Shout out to them! Easy access and the price of diesel was under $4/gallon! The only down side, was that the nozzle was the diameter of my arm, making filling the Jerry cans a nightmare and even the main diesel tanks were no picnic.   We found a nice spot to anchor in Beaufort (great stop, by the way), visited the local brewery (of course!) and met up with the OCC Port Officer Diane to pick up the couple of items I had sent to her. We didn’t get to stay very long since the weather was looking to get more and more unfavorable as time went on.   We found (wh...

PredictWind Blog Entry - November 30th, 2023 Sidenote: I’m trying something new for our  PredictWind  Blog. Instead of having multiple places to post blogs, I’m going to start posting all of these to our regular blog site,  OnANewTack.com  and then link to that from the PredictWind Blog.  This will allow a couple of changes that I think will be beneficial.  First, the impact to you, the reader, hopefully will be trivial and have more positive than negative. You will have to click a link on the PredictWind Blog to see the entry, but at least now you will be able to comment or ask questions. For us, it’s just one place to write to! We are on our way South again after a great stay in Oriental. Friends Erik  and Jean ( Sailing Knot Shore ) put us up at their dock for the stay, which was very helpful given the very low temperatures and our fondness for not freezing at night.  I went up to PA for my HS Reunion, which was actually a great time, then a st...

Update: 7 Oct 2024 Before we get to the blog article, which I wrote in March of 2023, I want to let you know that I just found out about Google's NotebookLM, which is an AI powered tool that allows you to create a Podcast style audio piece based off of whatever input you provide, in this case, the following article. Here is a link to the "podcast" it created . Honestly, I'm blown away! Original Article follows... Introduction  I received a list of questions from Steve and Lisa Heidenthal (Hull #13, Sla'inte) about how we set up our boat, where we purchased things in SA and instead of just answering them for Steve, I thought I might as well make a blog article to also help others. All of these answers will be from the following perspective: sailing the boat over from SA to where-ever having the boat built with strictly 230V/50Hz power If the boat is being shipped, I wouldn't suggest buying much in SA, as you will have an easier time finding more options (and us...

Introduction We are about 370 NM from Fernando de Noronha, Brazil on our Atlantic crossing from Cape Town to Grenada and with a few miles under our belts (3400, give or take), we have formulated a good understanding of, and some opinions on, the Oxley Levante Wing sail. As a reminder, the Levante is the lighter of the two wing sails that Oxley make, with the Bora being the one designed for stronger winds. Oxley Levante being flown somewhere between Cape Town and St Helena Use on a Vision 444 (or other boat without provisions to cam lock two lines by each aft winch) First, it takes some getting used to and to make it work at its best/easiest on the Vision 444, you will need a few additional blocks and lines. I have these blocks ordered and ready for pick up in Grenada and will post a video to YouTube( youtube.onanewtack.com ) detailing the setup once we have it in place. On the plus side, these added pieces will also be very handy for flying the asymm off of a bow, or to transition from...

 A few people have asked for more details about out network on-board.  Instead of trying to describe it, and because I should have one anyways, I decided to create a Network Diagram. So far, the network has been working great.  On occasion, the 2.4 GHZ radio in the MNC-1250 stops responding, however I am working with their tech support to get to the bottom of it.  We have that device mounted upside down to the "ceiling" of what I call the network area in the owners cabin.  I have a suspicion that it maty be overheating as it it not sitting in the orientation it was designed to be in.  As it turns out, I have a spare 12v computer-type fan that I am going to wire into the 12V fuse block in there and mount it to the router and see if that makes a difference.  I also went into the configuration settings and turned down the output power of both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, since the signals do not have to go very far to cover the boat.  This should also...