Hello,
It is September 2018 and I am collecting information the D400 and 90% sure I will buy one (there is a 10% discount during Southampton Boatshow). You have the geonerator 8 years now and I was wondering if you are still happy with it. Would you mind to let me know what you think now about the D400?
Interesting – my Bebi owl also failed after I was caught in an electrical storm. No water ingress at all – and did not get hit by lightning. But maybe they just don’t like strong electromagnetic fields.
Unfortunately Bebi no longer exist, so no replacement for me….
would love to see what you’ve prepared. I have a 30 foot trimaran sitting on a trailer down in San Carlos Mexico. Want to lighten her up and solar up…your book will be read.
Held up by babysitting he says… be honest Abba, it was the highlight of your year!! ?
Very thankful.
Anyways, carry on sailing and all that jazz. Be safe!
Love.
Hello,
Miss you guys already , enjoy the warmth and the wonderful water. Noel I’m not going to tell you how fine the snow was at Red , just have to look on facebook.
Have fun see you soon.
Thank you so much for this very informative post. This winter I sewed up an asymmetrical plus sock from SailRite kits for the James Wharram designed Mana 24 catamaran I built the previous winter. Rigging for the new sail has been on my mind all winter but with your instructions it now looks mike it will be much easier than I thought. The Mana is a cat ketch, so no forestay or job/genoa to worry about. I like the idea of two guys, one to each bow, and one sheet to be switched from one side to the other when gybing. Again, thank you very much.
Hi
Interesting.
I have 10 inch pulley on prop shaft and had an alternator with small pulley attached situated above the gearbox . It sort of worked but had to have good boat speed.
Tried putting resistors in to excite the alternator to start a lower revs .couldn’t get it to work and be of much use.
however I am about to fit a new gearbox that is good to free wheel so am going to have another crack at it.
I think I will fit a permanent magnet alternator that will start producing current at low revs possibly with a 12 volt clutch that will engage when power is applied. coupled to rectifier
I believe this is similar to the air con units on cars.
We are circumnavigating so we do a lot of miles at night down wind so the wind turbine doesn’t do much. the solar is good but doesn’t cope altogether we end up running the engine for short periods at night. it seams we have more amps going out than coming in .Auto Pilot 5 amps ish freezer 3 amps fridge 2 amps laptop 3 amps charging phones AIS inreach etc on and on.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who has tried this .
You’ve captured some great photos of the Rockies and thank you for sharing.
Can you drop me a quick note to tell me where you are and when you will be back?
Heidi is asking about you guys and I’d like to put her mind at ease when she asks.
Thanks!
Sharon
Hi Noel and Céu, we enjoyed reading this section of your blog, especially since we too are keen to visit South America in 2020. Like you said in your write up, “it’s a big country.” We have lots of research to do. Thanks for the link.
Just to let you know. Your calculation of true wind is not correct.
You are in the wrong frame of reference. its the apparent wind vector added to
the boat speed thru the water. I.e. same frame of reference.
There is no wind on the bottom of the ocean i.e. Sog and Cog frame of reference.
I guess it depends on what you mean by TRUE wind. Is it the wind that you experience on the boat as you sit, not moving through the water, but drifting over land on the tidal current? Or is it the wind that you experience when you tie up to the mooring ball in that same current, and are now moving through the water, but not over land? To my mind the true true wind is the latter, so one then has to make adjustments for the movement OF the water, not just the movement through the water.
Love the underwater pics! We snorkel in rivers in Alberta sometimes now. And found a secret spot on Okanagan Lake that had hundreds of 7″ Kokanee Salmon babies to swim with.
(We put power bait onto fishing weights tied to pool noodles sometimes to lure fish and play with them while snorkeling!!!) ((Secret trick-awesome for kids!))
Plus I took the kids across the country by train (The Canadian) and spent August playing around Sandbanks, Bon Echo, Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa.
Plus we fly small parafoil kites now… training for the future!
Great information and excellent explanation! We keep our Gemini 105Mc in Deltaville, VA and sail her like a ‘beach cat’ with benefits. This season we fabricated/installed a simple Barber-Haul that really improved beam/broad reach with our Genoa. An asymmetrical spinnaker will truly enhance our experience on Chesapeake Bay. Thanks!! FJ Viola
Hi there.
Ive just found your website, what a goldmine of information !
I have just ordered a cat ( Lagoon 40 ) though Navigare on a charter deal, so our global sail away is still 7 years away and boy, I think I need 7 years, as reading your blog is a reminder that sailing is the easy bit.
The technical know how required to keep systems running requires serious knowledge. I read you article of generating power from the prop and to be honest, it could have been written in Japanese, as it went straight over my head but I have put an marine electrical course on my to- do list ! along with marine diesel engine courses.
hopefully we will get the chance to meet at some point, to hit home what I should be thinking about despite it being very early days. We will get 4 – 6 weeks on the boat pa so, its never too soon to prepare.
All the best and safe travels.. David & Aurora.
Everyone should know the simple vector wind diagram. Draw a vertical line for Boat Speed, perhaps 6 knots, make it 6 inches or cms. label it BS.
From the bottom end of that line, draw the apparent wind vector. This will be AW. You need to use an apparent wind instrument or guesstimate this angle for practice purposes.
On a typical BEAT, the apparent wind will be about 35 degrees. This wind will be strong on a beat, perhaps 15 knots. Draw a 15 inch ( or cm ) line from the bottom of your boat speed line at an angle of 35 degrees. Get a protractor!
Connect the two line ends and you have nice triangle. Measure the new short side and you have True Wind. Third side and third label, TW
In this case the true wind is about 11 knots. To find the True Wind angle, extend your BS line with a dotted line and look at the angle formed with the TW line. In this case the angle is about 48 degrees.
Do this excercise a few times with Apparent Wind beam reaches (90 degrees) and then figure out the technique for downwind angles. It should come to you easily if you start with the basic beating diagram and then widen your apparent wind angles. It’s fun!
Have a 3jh3e Yanmar in our sailboat with the Kanzaki KM3A2 transmission and Kanzaki KM3A1 Torque limiter. Wasn’t even aware that the drum looking device in between the prop shaft coupling and the transmission was a Torque limiter. Need to replace the prop shaft due to crevice corrosion in the area of the cutlass bearing. Since I’m replacing the prop shaft and shaft coupling, I was looking at the SigmaDrive CV joint that can replace the shaft coupling which is when I recognized a need to identify what the torque limiter is, and ended up reading your post, and the linked service manual. I have been advised that it would be best to just eliminate the Torque Limiter entirely since I am getting a new prop shaft, and lengthen it. Contacted Kanzaki Corp in Japan who referred me to USA based Yanmar service representatives. Our local Yanmar Service Manager, replied that “You can do away with the limiter. Most Engines don’t even have a limiter, so if its removed it certainly will not hurt anything.”. I was curious what your take about the advocacy of removing the Torque Limiter, given the service manual seems to indicate that shifting from reverse to forward under power can result in high loads and damage to the transmission. They are nearly impossible to find if one needs replacing, and cost over $2K for the assembly. One opinion I received was that removal would actually result in increased reliability. I certainly don’t want to remove the Torque Limiter if it could result in having to rebuild my transmission. Really would have liked Kanzaki to have provided support!
Gday guys,remember us……Tony and Sally ex Ron Glas!
We are now back on two hulls…where we belong….cruising the east African coast having had amazing adventures getting Ron Glas to Kenya.
Obviously Covid is seriously restricting the cruising and we are currently anchored up in Tanzania waiting till some other country allows us to visit
Came upon you looking for info on setting up our spinnaker!
Do keep in touch ,love Tony and Sally s/v Twende
Hi There,
Glad to hear Coppercoat is working well and hope it continues so! It seems to be very location specific. We just published a review of our experience of the last four years. Perhaps some of your readers will find it useful: https://coppercoat.brucebalan.com
Cheers,
Bruce
Thank you for a well-written, descriptive article.
We sailed an Outremer 55L for years but had to give it up as it became too much boat for us as we got older. However, we cannot stay off the water; so are buying a Gemini Legacy. We realize it is neither a real cat nor a speed demon. We are going to an asymmetrical to try to get some speed and your article was a very well written refresher.
Thank you.
Thanks for the review. I know from your cruiser forum post that your performance has change. Ours changed quite a bit as well. Our review is here: https://coppercoat.brucebalan.com
Cheers,
Bruce
s/v Migration
Hi Bruce, Yes, we have just given up on the Coppercoat and have painted over it with Petit Trinidad hard antifouling. We just got tired of scraping the bottom every few weeks.
I don’t know for sure – the main thing seems to be that the surface becomes fuzzy from UV damage. The parts that are completely covered by the heat shrink show no such damage. How bad the fuzziness has to be to indicate that it is dead, I don’t know – for that I go on the 10 year recommendation. I did have the old ones tested by Coligo when I changed the rigging last time and at that point it was still stronger than our steel rigging would be. That time when we replaced it, we covered the entire length of the new rigging with heat shrink tubing, so we now expect that it would last double the original 10 years.
I couldn’t agree more on the poor customer service. I have been dealing with the Seattle service center the last few years. I have finally given up on them and will buy a different brand of raft.
Welcome to Hampton. I get to watch the boats come into Hampton Creek, while sitting at my desk in the Hampton University Tower. Ironic part is that I watched your video on how to fly a spinnaker off a cat just last week as I have a new to me Gemini 105mc that my wife and I are outfitting for short trips around Chesapeake Bay. Not a blue water boat, but perfect for this area due to the depths.
You guys take DIY to another level!
Great work on the hard bimini and non-skid sidedecks.
I have sent you an email updating you on things ‘down under’ – hope to hear back from you!
Cheers Alastair & Judy
Now that this has been posted for a few years… I would love to know if there are any updates or further tweaks. I find the greatest challenge of my OpenCPN Pi setup is user interface. I have struggled to find the right input device for easy map interactions. A mouse is cumbersome on a sailboat and all the bluetooth type devices turn off after 20ish minutes of downtime.
Actually, when we upgraded our Pi to version 4 our X-box hack no longer worked, so now we are using a wireless mouse which occasionally falls onto the cockpit floor, but mostly seems to be ok. Maybe a wired mouse would tether the mouse so it could no longer escape.
Hello,
It is September 2018 and I am collecting information the D400 and 90% sure I will buy one (there is a 10% discount during Southampton Boatshow). You have the geonerator 8 years now and I was wondering if you are still happy with it. Would you mind to let me know what you think now about the D400?
Thanks in advance,
Rob
Yep, apart from that one time when we lost all the blades in a storm, it has been performing fabulously. Don’t hesitate to get one.
Interesting – my Bebi owl also failed after I was caught in an electrical storm. No water ingress at all – and did not get hit by lightning. But maybe they just don’t like strong electromagnetic fields.
Unfortunately Bebi no longer exist, so no replacement for me….
Congrats on the new car. Looks like lots of fun.
Nice! That’s sounds like lots of fun, but in Vernon this time of year? Won’t you only have time to unbox it only to have to store it away? ?
Tech issue, I then read how it is already stored. That sounds like reality alright.
would love to see what you’ve prepared. I have a 30 foot trimaran sitting on a trailer down in San Carlos Mexico. Want to lighten her up and solar up…your book will be read.
Held up by babysitting he says… be honest Abba, it was the highlight of your year!! ?
Very thankful.
Anyways, carry on sailing and all that jazz. Be safe!
Love.
Hello,
Miss you guys already , enjoy the warmth and the wonderful water. Noel I’m not going to tell you how fine the snow was at Red , just have to look on facebook.
Have fun see you soon.
What, you got a powder day just as we left!? And I am sitting here covered up trying to avoid sunburn. What the heck.
Great to hear you are both back on ‘Life Part 2’ – hope you have a great cruise, wherever it takes you!
Good to hear from you Alistair. Hope you are getting lots of sailing in. Did you have a good summer in the Med last year?
Noel
Thank you so much for this very informative post. This winter I sewed up an asymmetrical plus sock from SailRite kits for the James Wharram designed Mana 24 catamaran I built the previous winter. Rigging for the new sail has been on my mind all winter but with your instructions it now looks mike it will be much easier than I thought. The Mana is a cat ketch, so no forestay or job/genoa to worry about. I like the idea of two guys, one to each bow, and one sheet to be switched from one side to the other when gybing. Again, thank you very much.
Good luck, Rod, with your new boat and set up. Hope you get lots of sailing in.
Noel
Great post! Looks like you guys lead a busy and exciting life! Good thing you have all those Grandson’s to keep you young ?? love you guys!!! X
Hi
Interesting.
I have 10 inch pulley on prop shaft and had an alternator with small pulley attached situated above the gearbox . It sort of worked but had to have good boat speed.
Tried putting resistors in to excite the alternator to start a lower revs .couldn’t get it to work and be of much use.
however I am about to fit a new gearbox that is good to free wheel so am going to have another crack at it.
I think I will fit a permanent magnet alternator that will start producing current at low revs possibly with a 12 volt clutch that will engage when power is applied. coupled to rectifier
I believe this is similar to the air con units on cars.
We are circumnavigating so we do a lot of miles at night down wind so the wind turbine doesn’t do much. the solar is good but doesn’t cope altogether we end up running the engine for short periods at night. it seams we have more amps going out than coming in .Auto Pilot 5 amps ish freezer 3 amps fridge 2 amps laptop 3 amps charging phones AIS inreach etc on and on.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who has tried this .
You’ve captured some great photos of the Rockies and thank you for sharing.
Can you drop me a quick note to tell me where you are and when you will be back?
Heidi is asking about you guys and I’d like to put her mind at ease when she asks.
Thanks!
Sharon
Hi Noel and Céu, we enjoyed reading this section of your blog, especially since we too are keen to visit South America in 2020. Like you said in your write up, “it’s a big country.” We have lots of research to do. Thanks for the link.
Just to let you know. Your calculation of true wind is not correct.
You are in the wrong frame of reference. its the apparent wind vector added to
the boat speed thru the water. I.e. same frame of reference.
There is no wind on the bottom of the ocean i.e. Sog and Cog frame of reference.
I guess it depends on what you mean by TRUE wind. Is it the wind that you experience on the boat as you sit, not moving through the water, but drifting over land on the tidal current? Or is it the wind that you experience when you tie up to the mooring ball in that same current, and are now moving through the water, but not over land? To my mind the true true wind is the latter, so one then has to make adjustments for the movement OF the water, not just the movement through the water.
Hi Noel and Ceu!
Love the underwater pics! We snorkel in rivers in Alberta sometimes now. And found a secret spot on Okanagan Lake that had hundreds of 7″ Kokanee Salmon babies to swim with.
(We put power bait onto fishing weights tied to pool noodles sometimes to lure fish and play with them while snorkeling!!!) ((Secret trick-awesome for kids!))
Plus I took the kids across the country by train (The Canadian) and spent August playing around Sandbanks, Bon Echo, Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa.
Plus we fly small parafoil kites now… training for the future!
Life is Good!
Love your blog!
Maybe we’ll catch up somewhere soon!
Kids are travel-ready!
Great information and excellent explanation! We keep our Gemini 105Mc in Deltaville, VA and sail her like a ‘beach cat’ with benefits. This season we fabricated/installed a simple Barber-Haul that really improved beam/broad reach with our Genoa. An asymmetrical spinnaker will truly enhance our experience on Chesapeake Bay. Thanks!! FJ Viola
Hi there.
Ive just found your website, what a goldmine of information !
I have just ordered a cat ( Lagoon 40 ) though Navigare on a charter deal, so our global sail away is still 7 years away and boy, I think I need 7 years, as reading your blog is a reminder that sailing is the easy bit.
The technical know how required to keep systems running requires serious knowledge. I read you article of generating power from the prop and to be honest, it could have been written in Japanese, as it went straight over my head but I have put an marine electrical course on my to- do list ! along with marine diesel engine courses.
hopefully we will get the chance to meet at some point, to hit home what I should be thinking about despite it being very early days. We will get 4 – 6 weeks on the boat pa so, its never too soon to prepare.
All the best and safe travels.. David & Aurora.
Everyone should know the simple vector wind diagram. Draw a vertical line for Boat Speed, perhaps 6 knots, make it 6 inches or cms. label it BS.
From the bottom end of that line, draw the apparent wind vector. This will be AW. You need to use an apparent wind instrument or guesstimate this angle for practice purposes.
On a typical BEAT, the apparent wind will be about 35 degrees. This wind will be strong on a beat, perhaps 15 knots. Draw a 15 inch ( or cm ) line from the bottom of your boat speed line at an angle of 35 degrees. Get a protractor!
Connect the two line ends and you have nice triangle. Measure the new short side and you have True Wind. Third side and third label, TW
In this case the true wind is about 11 knots. To find the True Wind angle, extend your BS line with a dotted line and look at the angle formed with the TW line. In this case the angle is about 48 degrees.
Do this excercise a few times with Apparent Wind beam reaches (90 degrees) and then figure out the technique for downwind angles. It should come to you easily if you start with the basic beating diagram and then widen your apparent wind angles. It’s fun!
Have a 3jh3e Yanmar in our sailboat with the Kanzaki KM3A2 transmission and Kanzaki KM3A1 Torque limiter. Wasn’t even aware that the drum looking device in between the prop shaft coupling and the transmission was a Torque limiter. Need to replace the prop shaft due to crevice corrosion in the area of the cutlass bearing. Since I’m replacing the prop shaft and shaft coupling, I was looking at the SigmaDrive CV joint that can replace the shaft coupling which is when I recognized a need to identify what the torque limiter is, and ended up reading your post, and the linked service manual. I have been advised that it would be best to just eliminate the Torque Limiter entirely since I am getting a new prop shaft, and lengthen it. Contacted Kanzaki Corp in Japan who referred me to USA based Yanmar service representatives. Our local Yanmar Service Manager, replied that “You can do away with the limiter. Most Engines don’t even have a limiter, so if its removed it certainly will not hurt anything.”. I was curious what your take about the advocacy of removing the Torque Limiter, given the service manual seems to indicate that shifting from reverse to forward under power can result in high loads and damage to the transmission. They are nearly impossible to find if one needs replacing, and cost over $2K for the assembly. One opinion I received was that removal would actually result in increased reliability. I certainly don’t want to remove the Torque Limiter if it could result in having to rebuild my transmission. Really would have liked Kanzaki to have provided support!
Gday guys,remember us……Tony and Sally ex Ron Glas!
We are now back on two hulls…where we belong….cruising the east African coast having had amazing adventures getting Ron Glas to Kenya.
Obviously Covid is seriously restricting the cruising and we are currently anchored up in Tanzania waiting till some other country allows us to visit
Came upon you looking for info on setting up our spinnaker!
Do keep in touch ,love Tony and Sally s/v Twende
Hi There,
Glad to hear Coppercoat is working well and hope it continues so! It seems to be very location specific. We just published a review of our experience of the last four years. Perhaps some of your readers will find it useful: https://coppercoat.brucebalan.com
Cheers,
Bruce
Thank you for a well-written, descriptive article.
We sailed an Outremer 55L for years but had to give it up as it became too much boat for us as we got older. However, we cannot stay off the water; so are buying a Gemini Legacy. We realize it is neither a real cat nor a speed demon. We are going to an asymmetrical to try to get some speed and your article was a very well written refresher.
Thank you.
Thanks for the review. I know from your cruiser forum post that your performance has change. Ours changed quite a bit as well. Our review is here: https://coppercoat.brucebalan.com
Cheers,
Bruce
s/v Migration
Hi Bruce, Yes, we have just given up on the Coppercoat and have painted over it with Petit Trinidad hard antifouling. We just got tired of scraping the bottom every few weeks.
What do you look for to say it is dying?
I don’t know for sure – the main thing seems to be that the surface becomes fuzzy from UV damage. The parts that are completely covered by the heat shrink show no such damage. How bad the fuzziness has to be to indicate that it is dead, I don’t know – for that I go on the 10 year recommendation. I did have the old ones tested by Coligo when I changed the rigging last time and at that point it was still stronger than our steel rigging would be. That time when we replaced it, we covered the entire length of the new rigging with heat shrink tubing, so we now expect that it would last double the original 10 years.
I couldn’t agree more on the poor customer service. I have been dealing with the Seattle service center the last few years. I have finally given up on them and will buy a different brand of raft.
Welcome to Hampton. I get to watch the boats come into Hampton Creek, while sitting at my desk in the Hampton University Tower. Ironic part is that I watched your video on how to fly a spinnaker off a cat just last week as I have a new to me Gemini 105mc that my wife and I are outfitting for short trips around Chesapeake Bay. Not a blue water boat, but perfect for this area due to the depths.
Welcome to Hampton.
Brennan
You guys take DIY to another level!
Great work on the hard bimini and non-skid sidedecks.
I have sent you an email updating you on things ‘down under’ – hope to hear back from you!
Cheers Alastair & Judy
Now that this has been posted for a few years… I would love to know if there are any updates or further tweaks. I find the greatest challenge of my OpenCPN Pi setup is user interface. I have struggled to find the right input device for easy map interactions. A mouse is cumbersome on a sailboat and all the bluetooth type devices turn off after 20ish minutes of downtime.
Thanks
Actually, when we upgraded our Pi to version 4 our X-box hack no longer worked, so now we are using a wireless mouse which occasionally falls onto the cockpit floor, but mostly seems to be ok. Maybe a wired mouse would tether the mouse so it could no longer escape.