[Public-List] The year in review

[Kris Coward]

2021 was Candy Cane's first year of reliable auxilliary propulsion in
quite a long time (maybe ever). Upon launching in the Spring, I noticed
that the motor was refusing to run, and the numer of blinks the
controller was giving decoded to "motor overheat protection". I think
I'd actually seen this a bunch before, but it was a large number of
blinks, so I tended to just figure that I'd miscounted some other error
that made more sense.

Anyhow, given that at launch, when the overheat blinks appeared, it was
about 5C out, and the temperature hadn't been above 10C in the 5 or so
months since the boat hauled, I thought "what if the overheat sensor is
malfunctioning", and made a point of bringing back my laptop and
programming cable the next day. Once in the programming software, I
flipped the overheat protection from "enable" to "disable", and I
haven't had a problem with the motor since.

I even cranked the motor up to just about full throttle one weekend in
September, to back off of some relatively soft mud I'd grounded on in
the Credit River, and it did the job without complaint.

Anyhow, the important part was that I was able to just plain go out
sailing a good many more times than I had since the gas engine quit (ok,
maybe only more than in any single year since the gas engine quit -- or
maybe any pair of years, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't outdo all
three years combined, though there's a good chance that I would've if I
hadn't spent the first month and a half of the season scooting around
the States to get vaccinated earlier, and then stuck in quarantine when
I got back).

I suspect that next year I might actually be able to put in a full
season of sailing again (doubly so since I also finally picked up a
generator, so my range under power isn't limited to what I can get from
the batteries -- and therefore my cruising destinations aren't limited
to "where can I get home from in time for the workweek, if the wind
decides to completely disappear")

-K

On Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 05:07:19PM -0800, Stephen Gwyn via Public-List wrote:
> 
> How was everybody's year, in terms of Alberg-ing?
> 
> Quasar had her rudder rebuilt in the spring, which took forever
> and cost a small fortune. We only went for
> a week and a half cruise (the child was a bit mutinous). A very hot
> cruise with not a lot of wind. A lot of time spent with one person
> steering and the other sitting in the shadow of the main.
> But there was at least some sailing every day, and the
> hot weather made the water in the PNW swimable.
> 
> SG
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-- 
Kris Coward					http://unripe.melon.org/
GPG: https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html