Russian Takeover of Magnetic North

2012 12 10
Boring Old London Ontario

An interesting article in The Independent, a UK newspaper, discusses the changes that are occurring in the location of magnetic north.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/adjust-your-compass-now-the-north-pole-is-migrating-to-russia-2233610.html

Migratory Birds Lost on Their Way Home

Most sailors are aware that when their compass points to the north it is not pointing to the actual North Pole.  The compass points to Magnetic North and a sailor must add or subtract a correction to his compass to get a proper direction.

The correction changes depending on where the sailor is and every year the amount of the change varies.  It is not as complicated as it sounds but it is about to get a lot harder.

The information underlined says "004 1/2°W 1985 (8'E)"
It means Magnetic Variation was 4 1/2° in 1985
and changed by 8'E annually.
BUT that was in 1985. 

Printed nautical charts tell sailors how much correction to make to change a compass bearing or magnetic heading to a true bearing or the bearings used on most charts. The charts also tell the sailor how much the correction changes each year.  The change in the amount of correction to Magnetic Heading is called declination. You don't need to know this but it is quite a cool word.

The speed of change of the location of magnetic north is increasing at near alarming rates.  After decades of being virtually stationary the location of magnetic north is hurtling toward Russia.

Just now Magnetic North is understood by most scientists to reside somewhere off Ellesmere Island in Canada's far north.  Racing towards Russia at about 40 miles a year, faster than any time in recorded history it will not be long before magnetic north becomes the property of Russia.

So what.  Big Deal.  Let Russia pay to maintain the bloody magnetic north pole.  About time the Canadian Taxpayer might yell.

Tower this is Gulf Hotel on Final to Runway two eight.
No make that two five.  No, no, it is two two
Yes, that's it.  Two two, give or take two or three

Then you find out that Miami International Airport has just had to repaint the numbers of its runways.  At an airport the end of every runway has painted on it in big numbers, the compass direction to which the runway points.  This helps the pilots know which runway they are landing on.

At Miami the change in magnetic North is so large they have to renumber the runways.

NOAA, the American hydrographic and weather agency, publish cool calculators that many of us use to figure out declination.  This very month, NOAA has removed all their calculators from their website  and have published new ones.

According to the Independent some smart people fear that he magnetic poles will flip: north will become south and vice versa.  These people are not worried that the poles will flip in a few million years.  If their fears prove out the big flip could happen now.  Right now.

Should you be worried?

The government is not telling you about this problem.  What does that do for your comfort level?

For my part I am taking Chinese lessons.

Icom 802 SSB/Ham Radio Problems: Control Cable Corrosion aned Ground Plan issues

2012 11 24
London, ON Canada

All too often sailors are plagued with poorly working SSB radios.  Satisfactory service levels from a SSB/Ham Radio while at sea are hard to maintain.  If you want email and weather reports at sea you must add radio technician  to the panoply of skills that already crowd the sailor's somewhat schizoid psyche.

Of course rich guys will just buy a satellite phone and pay a zillion bucks a minute to enjoy online services that are as slow as his boat.  We have tried it both ways and when it works SSB kills satellite phone every which way.  Here is an aside: SSB email is the joy it is due to the generosity of Jim Corenman and a group of sailor/ham/programmers who have given us the sailmail suite of software routines and the Sailmail and Winlink2000 ham networks.  These guys have devoted hundreds and thousands of hours writing code and donating their systems and equipment so we lesser beings can enjoy safe reliable email and weather reportage.

Along the way to getting our system to work well we have learned a couple of things that may ease the installation, troublshooting or maintenance of your Icom 802 SSB.  Likely the comments are transferable to other rigs but our experience is with that most popular of SSB units.


Control Cable, Antenna Tuner, Antenna

When you hook up your SSB radio you will first connect it to an antenna tuner and then connect the antenna tuner to the antenna.

Control Cable: At one point our radio stopped tuning the antenna tuner.  This was a major bummer as the radio is useless with an untuned antenna.  It is agonizing trying to pinpoint the source of the trouble.  There are so many possibilities.  

In our case days of excruciating investigation disclosed the problem was the expensive ICOM control cable that connects the radio to the antenna tuner.  This is not the cable that carries radio signals. It is the other cable, the one with the stupid little plastic connectors on the end.  This cable is not tinned even though it is supposedly designed to be used on sailboats in the ocean and, for that matter, is so expensive the wires should be gold plated.

What happened was that all the little copper wires corroded.  They turned black.  The wires stopped carrying current at the voltages used by ICOM to control its tuner from the radio.  

The problem was in the middle of the cable far from either end.  Two of the wires were black.  They were black for ten feet.  I have no idea where the salt got through the plastic coating on the wires but somehow it did.  

To fix the problem I replaced the entire cable with CAT5 computer network cable, a supply of which I always have on board.  Everything has worked fine since.

Here is a beef with ICOM.  This stupid cable costs a fortune.  It is simple copper with a bit of screen for shielding.  Without the cable the expensive ICOM radio does not work.  The wire is not tinned and clearly the coating on the wires is not up to the task of protecting it.

Antenna: we stopped using our backstay for an antenna. There were a lot of problems with the backstay: connecting the antenna tuner was a problem and the wire from the antenna tuner corroded very quickly where it tied into the antenna.   I never liked the idea of using those insulators.  It always seemed to me the insulators were a weak point in the backstay and I was never comfortable with them.  Finally stainless steel is not a  great conductor.  You don't have to use the backstay, it just seems everyone does.  

Instead I made a copper wire antenna and haul it aloft using the old backstay.  To make the antenna I took a I took a length of old doublebraid halyard removed for replacement.  I took out the core leaving an empty sheath.  I took a 35 foot length of 14 gauge copper tinned wire and slipped it into the sheath of the old halyard.  Tieing one end of the old halyard to the pushpit I spliced the other end onto the old topping lift which had been rendered surplus when we installed a rigid boomvang to hold the boom.   

I think this has helped radio effectiveness and for sure it cuts down maintenance on the connection to the backstay.


Ground Plane

When you first get your SSB radio you will read a lot of confusing stuff about needing a ground plane as part of your antenna system.  It is confusing not because you are too slow witted to learn about it.  Too many of the the selfstyled experts online are not up to the task of explaining groundplane. 

Einstein told us "if I can't explain a concept simply then I don't understand it".

All you need to know is that you need a ground plane.  What is important is how you can easily get one.  Now here is where the "experts" really screw you up.  You will hear that you need 100 sq feet of copper glued to the inside of your hull.  You will hear you should use a sintered bronze dynaplate on the outside of your hull.  You will hear a lot of stuff.  Most of it you should ignore.

After years of doing it wrong (including labouriously installing 100 sq feet of copper and installing a dynaplate) and wasting money and time we found an inexpensive and easy to install solution to the ground plane problem.  It is a commercial product called the KISS ground plane.  

And no I am not some nutbar in cahoots with the guy who sells these devices.  Except for ordering the thing I have had no contact with him and he was a bit too fervent for my liking in that very brief encounter.  But fair is fair: his $140 KISS ground plane thingy solved a lot of issues for our radio.

Before trying the KISS groundplane my wife and I had determined to remove the radio from our boat.  We had had it serviced by two ICOM dealers neither of whom did anything other than charge us a lot of money.  It did not work.  It had not worked from the day it was installed.

After we installed the KISS ground plane our radio worked.  It worked well enough that we had email using sailmail on Winlink 2000 with a ham radio station in Halifax.  This provided clear reliable email and gribs updated twice a day all the way to the Azores.

Got that: clear reliable email and gribs over 1,200 miles of ocean.  For the first time in ten years of owning the Icom 802 the radio actually worked.

Looking it up you will see a lot of people think the device is a fraud.  We are inclined to think those people are the frauds.  Maybe they are just disgruntled that something they have worked so hard to make complicated has been demonstrated to be easy.

I like easy.

home again home again jiggity jig

21 11 2012
London, Ontario

Home again and glad of it.  

It is so unbelievably good to be home.  Sleeping in a real bed in a nice house, children and family close at hand, pets and a house to work on in the idle times.  The guys have reinvited me to the weekly beernight.  Fast wifi is available everywhere and everyone is online and connected 24/7.  

TV news is in English and available in every political flavour from FoxNews through MSNBC all the way to CBC.

We have food.  Real food not other people's food.  More than anything it is the food that left us feeling like a visitor whereever we went.  As good as much of it was it was not the food of home and never could be.  

So, warm bed, family and friends, communications, entertainment and good food.  Sounds like heaven.

Sort of.


The comfy house needs to be worked on, family members have needs and demands, there is nothing on any of the 200 channels on TV that a sane person of greater than 65 IQ would want to watch and our waistlines are inflating like a Thanksgiving day float.

In Canada booze costs 200 % to 400 % more than in most southern european countries.  Our government owned, fully unionized Liquor Control Board makes secret deals with a group of angry teetotallers who have formed a modern Temperance Movement called MAD.  The purpose of the agreement is to artificially raise the price of alcohol. 


Walking in our front door we were ambushed by a pile of notices from Revenue Canada, our erstwhile taxing authority in Canada.  The brain trust at this federal bureaucracy seems intent on keeping at least four civil servants employed full time in harassing us to file null returns.  Our family business corporation has done nothing and owned nothing for a decade but hey, maybe this year.

Typing this I am just back from driving a 1,000 kilo automobile to the nearest grocery, about a kilometre away, to buy a litre of milk.  I burnt about 1.2 litres of gasoline doing so.  The litre of milk was priced at $3.60.  Four litres of the same milk cost $4.23 so I bought four litres even though I only needed one.  North American is doing what it always does.  

But as always we look to the future. 

Esquimalt

10 11 2012
Esquimail, BC

Pronounced ESK WHY MALT this modest urbanity on the southeast end of Vancouver Islandis as close to sailing heaven as a person is likely to come.

Walking into Victoria today I sat for a while and watched seaplanes land and takeoff while a seal kept me company six feet off the shoreline.  Despite the five degree temperatures eight stalwarts of the salt headed out of the protected waters of the bay on which our daughter, a sub lieutenant in the navy, lives.

Here is what I saw on my mile long walk into the "big" city of Victoria. These pictures are all taken within one hundred metres of our daughter's condo.  When we get back to North America there is a whole world see from the deck of our boat.

Storms and Meteoras

2012 09 18
Enroute Parga out of Preveza

Flotilla Has Arrived
Orange Furlers are Flotilla Boats,
Travelling five or ten boats to a group
crew tend to be novices

herded closely by a charter company manager

Summer came to an end last week.  I blame it on Life Part 2, a Vancouver Cat, alerting us to a weather anomaly they found on Windfinder warning of high winds out of the south and south east.  

It was news to us but the other weather sites inexorably came into agreement.  The call was a good one and it was one heck of a blow.  Oddly enough by the time the  storm arrived Windfinder was assuring us there would be no storm.  So goes weather forecasting in Greece.

We were all Novices Once.
A virgin flotilla captain backs into the space beside us
 the day before the storm.
By virgin I guess I mean he has never been poked.
At this rate it won't be long.

On the day of the storm we left the free dock in Preveza, a rough concrete wall  completely unprotected from the south and east.

We set sail for nearby Vonitsa which offered a lovely large bay with fantastic protection to south and east, the predicted wind directions.   

We shared an enormous bay at Vonitsa with three other boats leaving everyone had lots of swinging room and lots of dragging room.  A good thing too as it turned out.

The storm arrived as predicted: a twelve hour stretch of malevolent strata cloud heavily embedded with CUs.  At three in the morning the wind was up to 75 knots and the lightning was so close to continuous it was like watching a baseball game at the Skydome. Meredith, teeth to the wind, held fast.  

Two of the boats in our bay dragged, neither to ill effect.  A handful of boats which began the night at the town dock in Vonitsa were seen anchored off our cove obviously having endured an unpleasant night with conditions serious enough to cause them to move off of untenable moorings in the middle of the storm.

Damage report on Meredith disclosed a buckle on the strap holding the fuel container in place in the dinghy had been smashed to polycarbonate pieces.  Sadly the fuel container had ripped loose and could not be found.  Not too serious as it was near empty of fuel.  Losing a full container of fuel would have been painful.  Serious damage did occur to the anchor, our venerable 45# CQR anchor which had developed a bend in its shaft.  

Due to the curve our CQR now finds it difficult to set in any bottom and we fear we must replace it.  The replacement will be another genuine CQR as this anchor has proven its worth.  

With the passing of the storm weather in the Ionian changed.  It became and remained cold and blustery, the sky heretofore clear became permanently full of cloud.  It was clear to us the long Mediterranean summer was coming to an end.

All we needed was for the wind in the Ionian to shift from SSE to N or NE and for the waves on the Ionian to die down after the storm.  That was to take almost another week.

While we waited for good sailing conditions we heard again from  Noel and Ceu on Life Part 2, that Vancouver Cat we seem to meet everywhere around the Med.  They  emailed to tell us they were on the island of Paxos and Corfu and wondered if we might like to rent a car with them and tour the monsteries of Meteora.  

A Monastery Built on Top of a Tiny Finger of Natural Concrete
Dozens of these are built on tops and sides of high slender concrete
fingers.  Amazing.

Never having heard of Meteora we were eager to fill the void in our knowledge.  Two days later Meredith was anchored off Pargas and we were crammed five into a eurocar.

Meteora was unbelievable, ie. if you had told me about it I would not have believed you. You can see why.

There is no way up.  

It was a cool way to spend a day.

On the way home we stopped at Meztovo an Austrian ski village set in the middle of Greece.  A lovely walk around and some cheese purchases finished the trip.

Back at the boat we figured conditions were growing too boisterous for the unprotected waters of Parga and we decided to sail to Lakka, a small anchorage on the island of Paxos for a look around hoping the winds would turn and the seas die down on the Ionian so we could sail to Sicily.

On the sail to Paxos, a mere twelve miles yet another spontaneous line of embedded thunderstorms pounced on us.  For half an hour we sat with sails furled and tied down as icy rain deluged the seas around us and wind raged about.  Nature's fury was to no effect and it ended as merely an interesting diversion for half an hour.    

The storm returned that night and wind and rain beset all the boats at anchor in tiny  Lakka.  When things died down we did not rush to get off the boat.  Rather we put away the dinghy and secured the boat to cross the Ionian choosing to make for Italy as soon as conditions allowed.

Weather had dramatically changed and we were concerned we not be imprisoned in Greece during an extended period of bad weather.  

Street in old Syracusa

On the morning of the second day after the storm the seas cooperated.  We departed Greece at first light.  Early on the third morning with only six litres of fuel left in the tanks we tacked into Syracusa harbour on the east coast of Sicily and dropped our crooked anchor into soft mud.  

The ordeal of the previous week were quickly forgotten as we strolled the streets of Syracusa, enjoying the Italian grocery stores which we found to be just this side of heaven compared to the quite properly Spartan offerings Greekside.

You are in Italy Now Boyo
More churches than bars

Most of the boats anchored in Syracusa were headed for Marina di Ragusa where would all spend the winter.  A party atmosphere developed in the anchorage and we met several boats known to us from various ports in the Med, all of whom had independently chosen the marina at Marina di Ragusa for winter mooring.

After four days of sightseeing we made the two day run to Marina di Ragusa on the south east coast of the island of Sicily.  We were surprised and pleased to be met on the docks by Yoshi and Fumi a pair of Japanese grandparents we first met in Almerimar in Spain.  This redoubtable couple have sailed Foxglove, their thirty foot Sparkman and Stephens design boat from Japan.

Yoshi and Fumi in the Town Square in Marina di Ragusa

Always a pleasure to spend an afternoon with these two.

Italy greeted us with all the finesse you could imagine or expect.  The marina staff at Marina di Ragusa,  on the south east corner of the island of Sicily are marvellous.  We get two or three emails from them every week instructing us on new events at the marina or close by.  Every event announcement begins with the menu to be served.   This is my kind of country.

Until next year.    

It is a Typical Greek Sunday

2012 09 16
Preveza, Greece

Sunday at only one of the Preveza Cafes.
There are hundreds.

Just past one on a dreary Sunday afternoon.  Every citizen of this country is in one one of three places: in a cafe, enroute to a cafe, working in a cafe.  Nothing else is open.  

Every shop, business and enterprise here has been closed up tight since Saturday noon.  Greeks close early on Saturday so they can prepare for Sunday rest.  Sunday is not to be taken lightly in Greece.  One must prepare.  

A gentle rain falls, detritus of a minor TCU that strolls gently along the pier that runs for half a kilometre along the water in this quiet tourist town.  Only gentle rumbles draw the attention of the alert to presence of danger in those dark bottomed billowing cumulus clouds.  It is a pleasant pace calculated to alarm no one.  In Greece not even the Gods screw with Sunday rest.

The Budget Committee and I have just returned from a cafe date with Alain and Marie, French sailors whom we met in Mahon and with whom we crossed the Mediterranean to Tunisia.  We were hearing about their adventures with Tunisian authorities, they having stopped before they got to Sidi Bou Said as dark was falling.  It was a humorous recanting of decent treatment by friendly police who did not know how to handle immigration.

The storm is past us, life is good.  Time for the next step: to Italy and home.

The Trouble with the Greek litre is that there is just not enough of it

2012 09 27
Siracusa, Sicily, Italy

Connie at some greco italian ruins in the middle of Siracusa

Greece is the only country in which we have sailed where there are virtually no fuel docks for boats.  Here you have fuel delivered to a quay in a minitanker.  There are many disadvantages: you have  wait. To several hours for the truck to arrive, many fuel nozzles are doctored to ensure you cannot not shut them off, the trucker "forgets" to zero the meter and so on. Yesterday we added a big one.

Keeping close track of our fuel purchasees aboard Meredith: location of purchase, amount of fuel taken on, engine hours at time of purchase is as close to a religious observance as I am likely ever to come.  Before our arrival in Greece our boat consumed two litres per hour.    Reliably unalterably 2 litres per hour was our consumption between fillups.

In Greece our fuel consumption rose to 3 litres per hour.  Between every fillup at every interval we began mysteriously to consumer 50% more fuel than we did when sailing non Greek waters.  Make that before we began filling up at Greek minitankers.

Our boat has just crossed the Ionian Sea westbound moving from the Greek island of Paxos to the Italian Island of Sicily.  We came into Siracusa on Sicily with tanks almost empty: only six litres of fuel in the tanks and our deck jugs empty.  Our tanks on empty we had a good basis for comparison.

When we motored up to the fuel dock in Siracusa we took on 135 litres of fuel which worked out to, you guessed it:  TWO LITRES PER HOUR.

So I am left wondering at what gives with the Greek litre.

There are 3189 Stories in the Quaint Little Village; These are Four of Them

2012 09 11
Vlidhi, Island of Lefkas, Greece

This Street in Galaxidi Could be in Cavtat, Croatia
based on Posts from H2OBO which is now visiting there

The past few posts should have established that we are in fact enjoying ourselves in the Med taking in all the sights and history and culture.  That we have not yet climbed on a plane and headed home was a good  clue as to the state of things aboard Meredith.  Like Malta, if we do not like a place we just haul anchor and leave.  Undisputably this is one of the joys of cruising.

Galaxidi Has Lots of Streets

This post will move us back onto a philosphic plane that is more to our liking.  We move away from the travelogue and back to episodes that we think demonstrate character of an area, or help those who come after us or give our location to family and boaters with whom we are traveling.

Galaxidi.

Galaxidi Has Streets and Streets and Streets

Galaxidi is a pretty town.  if you are anywhere near it on your boat you should give serious consideration to stopping.

Almost every town in Greece is pretty.  The houses are all white and tiny, built usually at water's edge in the crevice of two mountains or, under pressure of population growth, up the sides of those mountains like a white and blue vine.  The streets are winding and narrow.  

To a Greek there is nothing quaint about this.  This is how Greeks live.  

Add eight feet of snowfall a year and a freeze thaw cycle that would remove the molars from a sleeping polar bear and these towns could not exist.  in Canada they could not exist.  This does not detract from their beauty but I like to keep things in perspective.

If You Look Closely You will See the Mermaid
Watering the Bougainvillea

At the same time there is so much more to Galaxidi than sprays of bougainvillea and views of the sea.

Bougainvillea Really Are Prettty

The Approach To Galaxidi
Shoal Water Between the Islands

The original town of Galaxidi was utterly and completely destroyed by the Germans as they retreated out of Greece in the second world war.  Much flows from the story of the destruction of Galaxidi, relayed to me by several residents of the New Galaxidi.  Clearly the demolition of their home will not be forgotten or entirely forgiven. 

Quaint Galaxidi is not historic.  This quaint old style Greek village is perfectly modern, all new construction.  It's quaintness flows from its Greekness.       

If you mine the collective memory of its destruction, a vein that lies so close to the surface of the inhabitants of this town, you learn a few things.  

This May be the Only Pre WWII Building in Galaxidi

In WWII the Greeks, bordered by Italy and Germany on one side and Germany's Arab allies on the other, chose to align themselves with us, a gutsy play.  Italy invaded Greece, but being Italy began almost at once to be pushed back by gritty Greek fighters.  Finally to save Italian egos Germany was forced to commit troops and resources to shore up the occupation.   Germany then destroyed this quaint town when it began to fall to allied military pressure and its own fatally flawed Nietschean insanity.  I find Galaxidian (and Greek) character disclosed by the story of the town's destruction quite endearing.

You wonder how this village can be so accommodating to the German boaters who arrive every day in their big Bavaria 40 somethings, backing badly onto the free dock, using the free water and free electric and then  not eating at the local restaurants or frequenting the bakeries or markets.   You also wonder how the Germans have the nerve to even show up in this town that they destroyed.  I get that it was not them but their fathers who destroyed the village and that the sins of the fathers should not necessarily be visited upon the sons however were I German I would be embarrassed to ever come here.  It would be difficult for me to show my face in Dresden for similar reasons.

The Liberty Cafe

It Did Not Take a Rocket Scientist to Figure that This
Was a Good Bakery

 Of the local restaurants we preferred patronizing Mary's Liberty Cafe, located only steps from our bow on the dock.  The Liberty Cafe has been owned by Mary, a quiet unassuming woman,  for seventeen years, a fact she relays with a good deal of pride.  Obviously not all of the seventeen years have been easy and she is proud of her achievement.  These days Mary lets her son take charge.  He is eager and willing and is learning fast.  Our third night we shared drinks on the patio at the Liberty cafe and we left a tip.  A small tip as we find tipping is not always appreciated in Europe.  The young man was initially horrified that we had overpaid and came running after us, thinking we had left too much money by mistake.  When we explained it was a tip and that we appreciated his efficient service he faltered for a moment.  Really.  Struggling to control a wvering voice he explained that he was trying hard to learn how to run the business and that he worked hard to meet everyone's expectations.   He explained that now he could tell his wife that he was doing better.  "She is from New Jersey.  She will believe me now that I have a tip".

The Dockmaster 

The Dockmaster at Galaxidi.  Looks Can Be Deceiving.
This Guy is Talented at Docking.

Then there is the dockmaster.  He is superb at his job: marshalling visiting sailboats to the waiting docks of his town.  This is not an easy job given the fact that many visitors are inexperienced sailors medmooring to a dock that was constructed so it was perpetually in a crosswind.  Under his vocal tutelage boat after boat was landed with nary a hitch.  

The man never wore a shirt, never wore shoes, never was without a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in hand, never was inebriated and never spoke at anything less than full volume.  I think years of trying to make sense to tired cruisers has broken his volume control.  

The Master Surveys His Realm

Imagine sitting in blessed silence in your cockpit as a boat enters the quiet bay for a look around.  Moments later the dockmaster comes flying down the hill at full speed on his bicycle naked from the waist up yelling instructions at the top of his leather bound lungs to the poor boater.  He adopted us for some reason.  Once he learned our names he liked to use them.  Over and over.  "BAWB" he would yell, "BAWWWB".  I am going to the square to buy two litres of wine".  "CAWNNIE, BUS AT THE SQUARE.  BUS COMES AT 7 OR MAYBE 7:15 OR 7:30.  I DON'T KNOW FOR SURE BUT FOR SURE IT COMES".  

The Town Geese

Goose House in the Lower Right Corner

In the south east corner of the harbour at Galaxidi there floats a small wooden house.  It is for geese.  There are many geese, white of course, and they roam freely.  The town takes care of them.  


The Floating Heads

No fools the Galaxidians, they wear decent headgear to protect them from the sum.  They wear it all the time.

Every Morning These Two Swam Off the Point.
They always waved.

God we love Galaxidi.  

It's quaint too. If you like photos they follow.

SummertiiIIImmmme and the Livin' is Easy

2012 09 10
Frikes, Ithaca, Greece

We are here:

Today We are the Letter A

And it looks like this:

Arkoudi Is. on the Far Left, Lefkas Behind it and Meganisi to the Right

The View on the Starboard Side

Wind:          F2
Boat Speed: 3.5
Attitude:      Positive