Our Inverter Blows Up!

Unbelievably, after only two months of operation, our Xantrex Prosine 3000 inverter blew up! Again! I just called and got ANOTHER RMA# to return it. They say it could take up to four weeks to get it fixed up.

Grant Ball, who re-did all the wiring on the entire boat, installed the inverter and did a bang up job. He is a true expert in these things and I can't think of anything he could have done better - or different - to have prevented this issue.

The only thing remotely possible that could be wrong with the overall boat wiring is that we are running off of two shore ties and it is possible although nor probable, that there was an unbalanced neutral current resulting from being out of phase between one of the circuits.

Finally! An Autopilot!

In my opinion, an autopilot is the most important piece of equipment, next to an EPIRB, to have on a sailboat. To some it may be considered to be a "comfort item," but to me it's a requirement.


I have fantasized for years about getting something like the Norvane self-steering Windvane as it is my opinion that a servo-pendulum (that is, a non-electronic) system is the most fail safe way to go.


However, to install one I would have to give up having a swim ladder in the back of the boat and would have to be very careful dragging a dingy so I finally convinced myself that an electronic autopilot was the best choice.


Unfortunately, when you get into boat as big as Clarity (at 22,000 lbs), you can't just go the easy way and buy a wheel pilot like the Autohelm 4000 (now called a SmartPilot X-5) which work nicely for boats with displacement up to 16,500 lbs.


Therefore, effectively the only choice I had was to go with a hydraulic steering device. I settled on the ST70 SmartPilot X-10 Linear Drive System for Sailboats by Raymarine that I ordered today.

We get a new inverter

Being a webdood, it is important that I maintain the ability to run my laptop and to connect to the Internet from the boat.

This is our top of the line Xantrex Prosine Wave Inverter / Charger 3.0 (aka the Prosine 3000).

It produces a pure sine wave at 3000 watts.

It is by far the most sohisticated piece of machinery on the boat.

For unknown reasons, it blew up in the Bahamas this year.

This is our warranty replacement:

Stranded Naked/Cheeseburger in Paradise Party

On July 3rd, an Epic Party is Planned

Looking forward to this years Cheeseburger Beach Party July 3, 2009 hosted by "Stranded Naked" houseboat owners. It's a day of free cheeseburgers, hot dogs and drinks and marks the beginning of the Abacos Regatta. The hosts are big Jimmy Buffett fans so his music will be blasting the entire day and night.

The party looks like a blast and, so I've heard, is the highlight of the summer for many boaties.

Here are some photos and more information from last year's party to check out.

Promise to post photos and an update after we have attended.

shannon norrell

Good Weather Software, Email over Satellite

Have been hanging with some folks who are preparing for a run from Bahamas to Bermuda, then to Sweden. They use MaxSea for weather http://tr.im/qm1T

They also use Iridium and, per my suggestion, uuplus.com to capture email over satellite as they go.

Sunday at Nippers

Nippers is Legendary

Every Sunday, on Great Guana Cay, a party of epic proportions takes place at a place called Nippers. Although not all that "Bahamian", in the sense that most folks attending are boaties from the surrounding islands, it is a "must experience" Bahamas agenda item.

We arrived in 30 knot winds and dropped anchor. Our big 70lb Bruce did not do the job against those wins and waves and we began to drag. Thankfully the windlass worked well and I was able to pull up the anchor without breaking another finger.

After almost crashing into a boat on a mooring (as in, I had to read out push us away. One more inch and it would have been major smashage), Julie almost fell overboard trying to grab a mooring ball with the boat hook. In fact, it pulled the boat hook all the way in and she had to let it go as the boat bounced over the top of the can. Thankfully, an angel appeared in the form of a Moorings captain in a bad-ass, brand new looking dingy. He handed her the rope tied to the ball and we were cleated in minutes. I later bought him his drink of choice when we met up at Nippers later in the day.

The one rule of thumb, apparently, to be followed on a visit here is not to drink more than two "Nippers" or "Guana Grabbers" as they are beguilingly potent. In fact, after we walked through the jungle and up the hill into the Nippers establishment, there were four football-player-sized fellows trying to ply a passed out friend from a chair into whiich he had fallen into a shaded pit sort of area. He had not minded the drink limit restrictions and was more passed out than any drunk I've ever seen. Eventually they got him in a chair and, on my suggestion, made him drink a glass of salty pool water so he would throw up. It worked like like a charm, but was not pretty.

The layout of nippers is fantastic. It is is three stories high, with two salt-water pools; one cascading into the other and sits on the windward side of Great Guana Cay Island on a white sand beach. The frozen drinks truly are ass-kickers and mot folks have theirs either in one of the pools or out in the crystal-clear blue waters of the Atlantic. Lots of "hot bodies" abound (mine not included) and there was surely some topless showmanship going on.

We decided to spend the night on the mooring ball and head in the next morning, so I ordered my third "Nipper" drink. I don't know what's in them but i tell you, four would not have been a possibility.

The girls had a great time playing in the sand, we had a nice dinner at Grabbers (on the Leeward side) and motore out in the dingy for a rough night on the ball with seas averaging 3, surging to 4 or 5 feet at times and winds of at least 35 knots all night.

Next morning leaving, we heard a high-pitched squeal which I somehow knew was a loose alternator belt. I tightened her up as best as I could but we couldn't realistically run the boat over 1500RPMs, which would have made for a s-l-o-w return home. Thankfully the wind was still howling at 35 knots at just the right angle, so we dropped the ball, motored out a bit to get past the anchorage and sailed all the way back, averaging 6.5knots with just the jib up.

One bit of ~"fun" that happened along the way was we hit a squall where the winds gusted to 50kts and we had horizontal rain. Julie went below and I was left to fend for myself at the helm. Not being ablew to see AT ALL, I had the wise idea of putting on Mackenzie's dive mask to deal with the rain -- worked like a charm.

At some point, i plan to post some photos and vieos we took that day at Nippers.

"What's that Smell" - More Major 'Tingums Busted

What is that Horrible Smell?

Julie says to me after the electronics guy left? We looked in the engine compartment and the bilge was completely filled with diesel fuel. Turning the bilge pump on appeared to have no effect (and was otherwise not a nice thing to be doing in a marina anyway).

The next morning, Julie and I are walking to find a bank (recall I had to give all of my cash away to "Karma" and a friend of mine, Captain Anthony Edgecombe, happens to drive by. He is not only a 500 ton captain, but a diesel mechanic and a hell of a nice Bahamian to boot.

We had actually attended church with him the previous Sunday in Treasure Cay to celebrate fathers day.

Anyways, he drove around to buy a smallish bilge pump, gathered some tanks, and helped me to pump out what we figure was at least 20 gallons of diesel fuel out ofthe bilge. We took the cans into town and paid a fellow with a service station $1.00/gallon to dump the fuel into some big 55 gallon tanks he has there.

Next day, Anthony came back and helped me to finish emptying the bilge and to diagnose the two pumps I have in place. One is "always on" and has a built-in float valve on it (to tell it when the water level is rising in the bilge). It appears to be seized up and is the reason the bilge was not automatically emptied.

Prognosis: Automatic Bilge Pump is Busted. This sort of pump, with the built-in float valve, can only be foun in the states, says Anthoony.

Next, we pulled the "Manual Bilge Pump", which is supposed to come on only when you throw a switch and diagnosed it. It turned out to be also dead and full of water inside of it's electroics compartment.

Prognosis: Manual Bilge Pump is busted. The good news is that this sort of thing can be bought in March Harbor, so Anthony runs me over to the store and I get a 1000 gallon/minute pump for I think about $259.00. He installs it and we are good to go for the moment with at least a manual bilge pump that will work just fine so long as we are on the boat to keep an eye on the bilge. It will not work for periods of time where we are away from the boat so the automatic-float-valve type will definitley need to be done ASAP.

Gas Tank Problems

So as to why the bilge filled with fuel, that remains to be answered. Perhaps the fill hose to the tank has a loose hose clamp or the vent cap is loose. Who knows? Unfortunately, to get to the fuel tank, you have to remove four big golf cart batteries first so that will have to wait for another day. I tell you one thing, when I have the boat retrofitted this winter, I am going to have a gas guage installed! (Can you believe there is no gas guage? That's just crazy man)

Bahamas Update - A Major 'Tingum is Broke

The Inverter is Busted

Inasmuch as we are having problems with brand-new $3,500 Xantrex Prosine 3.0 I installed earlier this year on the boat, the very first thing we did on arrival in March Harbor was to call over the expert in inverters, a fellow who owns "Merlin's Marine Electronics."

He showed up right away and went to work. After disconnecting everthing except the batteries, we found it to appear to be working and "ready to invert".

We then went and bought a power strip, cut off the ends and connected that directy to the inverter (so as to bypass any potential wiring problems that might otherwise exist in the boat).

The minute we hit the "Please Invert" button, a loud explosion (like a firecracker) came from within the inverter which, he says, was probably a transistor blowing up. Just to be double-sure, we reset her and tried again. Same loud pop.

Prognosis: Inverter must be returned to the manufacturer

So we wired the boat to bypass the inverter completely. He was kind and only charged me a service call fee of $50 and was on is way.

We have A/C while we're at the dock so we have air conditioning and the kids can watch videos, so things aren't all that bad -- I just have to remember to either run the engine periodically or to charge up the batteries using a regular automotive-type battery charger I bougt here in town ($144.50)

Some Background - why Sailing?

I have always loved sailing. I grew up in Orange County, California and had the opportunity to learn how to sail at the SeaScout base in Newport Beach. They trained us in Lido 14 sailboats and we once crewed the famous Argus Tallship over to Catalina Island.

When I was about 20 years old, on a visit to the Bahamas with a buddy, we made a promise that we would someday return via sailboat to truly explore the over 2000 islands and atolls that fascinated us.

Our relationship subsequent withered and we lost touch after he got married and moved to Colorado, but the promise remained and somehow lived on.

Later, when I was 26 and had the chance to sell off my half of a mortgage lending and escrow business to my partner, I took it.

As a result, I found myself with a little cash (I think it was about $15,000) and in a position to be able to take some extended time off. I was as yet unmarried so decided that, if ever there were to be time to make a trip such as this, that time was now.

I decided to fullfill the promise

So, I bought an old Ford F150 pickup truck, packed it up with what I thought I'd need and headed out alone, driving from Mission Viejo, California to Miami, Florida. I had no plan, per se; only that I would try to buy a boat once I got to FLorida and sail it over to Florida.

There were many adventures on this trip, and suffice it to say that I did, in factg, fullfill the promise and sailed single-handed around the Bahamian Islands for the better part of a year. Along the way I learned what it meant to be thrown overboard while the boat is on autopilot under power (I swam real fast), what it meant to be dismasted and also that Loran (my sole means of navigation) doesn't function at all in the Bahamas (doh!).

I learned a lot and had tons of fun on that trip and, although I eventually returned to the workaday life, sailing continued to be a part of my life over subsequent years.



Check out this startup I did some front-end work for a few years back. Type in the name of any artist you're into and you will be listening to them in seconds!

And so it begins

Our family decided over a year and a half ago that we would embark on a sailing adventure that would take us around the world.

During that time, I have continued with my work as a Senior Software Engineer in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara), California - mostly working for Microsoft writing Sidebar Gadgets for Windows Vista.

By being extremely frugal, we were able to save up enough money ($30,000) to purchase a 1973 41' Gulfstar Ketch sailboat in Florida. As one can imagine by the price, this is by no means a new boat and, in fact will require several major repairs before we go anywhere.

Although we had long been anticipating the day when we would set off for Florida from California to meet up with the boat, nothing could have prepared us for the harsh reality of actually doing it.