Miss Megan

Well today officially marks the end of the sailing season for Miss Megan. Today was haul out day, and it's just 240ish days until launch day.

It was like the world knew today was a sad day. I moved Miss Megan over to the haul out berth early this morning. There wasn't a breeze, the bay was like glass, and everything was quiet. As I motored over 3 docks, a family of Swans did a swim past to mark the occasion.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be at the actual haul out as I had to work, this is the last moment I have of Miss Megan being in the water.

Every year I am surprised at how quickly the days are getting shorter. It is just September and it's starting to get dark by 7:30. This year I think I'm noticing it more because sailing season is drawing to a close. In just two weeks Miss Megan will be leaving the water for the winter. 2 weeks..... wow.

My second sail was with my son after work. We rushed to get over to the boat and get out since the daylight timer was ticking. The wind was meh, definitely under 10kn. Again, I lost the tiller once the sails went up, I think my mistake is being the one to raise the sails :) Anyways my son is a sailing instructor, so he better know what he's doing :)

For our first sail I put up the storm jib. I think it was a good choice seeing as it was the first time sailing Miss Megan, if only it was done on purpose.... :) This time out I decided to put up the jib, only I think it might be a 110% Genoa? Unfortunately, the previous owner of Miss Megan died and there wasn't a lot of information shared. I expect every sail I will learn something new about the boat. This time out it was I had no idea what the proper path for the foresail sheets were. We tried a few options, but nothing felt right. We also discovered that the foresail was overpowered and pulling us off course.

The 'learning opportunities' are just as important and the enjoyment. Each obstacle encountered and overcome means the next time out will be just that much better.

Again, the mouth of the bay caught us, and we struggled to get out for a bit, not as long as the first time but still long enough. Unfortunately, shortly after we got out of the bay the wind started to die down, we headed back in, but we didn't make it very far before the wind was gone and we had to resort to motoring back to the marina.

This time out we only sailed 11.24 km and really didn't make it much out of the bay. I am pretty confident that the speed being shown for the tracking isn't accurate. It shows the speeds for this sail the same as the first sail, I don't know how that is possible.

This day was a long time coming. A month almost to the day since Miss Megan was launched to get out for the first sail on Miss Megan.

I know there were good reasons as to why it took so long. Kids in sailing school, hesitant about solo sailing for the first time out, life.

None of that matters, sailing was had, it was simply great. Miss Megan was easy to sail, for the first 2 hours my daughter had the helm. Yes, my first time out sailing and my daughter was the first on the helm once the sails went up. She's probably a better sailor that I am anyways having her CanSail 4.

We ran into some shifty winds at the mouth of the bay which took some time to figure out but once we did we were off in a steady winds, 1 metre waves, and some heel to the boat which made for a great first sail.

Here's a track from the sail, total distance was 17.24km, the track says our tops speed was 2km or just over 1kn but I think the GPS speed calculation is off.

I was down at the boat a couple weeks back and a member of the yacht club and former Tanzer 22 owner stopped by for a chat. During our conversation he mentioned that the bow of the boat was sitting low in the water, he was concerned that Miss Megan was taking on water. I hadn't noticed any water, but I also hadn't noticed the bow was low, so I did a check, and I didn't find any water where water wasn't supposed to be.

About an hour later, just before I was going to head home, I remember reading a post on the Tanzer 22 Facebook group about someone else's boat sitting the same way. One of the possible causes of this was the black water tank in the bow was full. I checked the tank, but I couldn't tell if there was anything in it. I came back the next day with a big flashlight, I turned the flashlight on and placed it down on the tank, so the light beam was entering the tank. Luckily the blackwater tank on this boat is white so some light entered the tank, and I could see light bouncing of the water.

While I couldn't see the water, I could tell it was clear. I then did some digging and found some old photo's posted by the previous owner to the Tanzer 22 FB group. In the photo's it appears that he had a larger 2 stroke engine on Miss Megan, a bit more digging found out that he replaced that motor with a smaller 4 stroke 5hp propane motor. Clear water in the black tank made sense, it was being used as ballast to offset the weight of the motor. I assume he forgot about the water when he replaced the motor.

Now, how to get the water out. Since I was quite confident the tank didn't contain black water, I tried opening the through hull drain. The gate valve wouldn't budge, so the easy solution wasn't going to work, and now I have something else to work on over the winter. I could get a pump-out but that seemed rather expensive for not black water. A few more days of thinking and research, could I adapt a home for a manual bilge pump? Do I just wait until haul out and work on the gate valve? Then I found a possible solution, a battery powered liquid transfer pump. The pump was fairly cheap (about $20) on Amazon, so I ordered it.

Ok, now how to get the pump into the tank. The Saturday after the pump arrived, I got to work. I was able to remove the hose attached to the top front of the tank, I think it's a vent hose. With the hose removed I unscrewed the barbed hose adaptor (thank God it wasn't attached with 5200). Now the moment of truths, I took a sniff and there was no foul odour so clean(ish) water theory was looking really good. I tried the liquid pump to see if it would fit.... Success!

With the pump in the tank, I grabbed my bucket and turned the pump on and out poured clear clean water. I pumped out as much water as I could and safely disposed of the water (just in case) Miss Megan is now sitting much better in the water.

With that issue resolved the question is do I remove the black water tank and use that space for something I'll actually use?

The past few weeks I've been working on adding solar to keep the battery charged and switching over my running lights to LED. It took longer than it should have but this is a first for me and was a bit more complicated than I expected.

The LED switch over was easy, although I did run into a small oops. When I switched the stern light to LED everything was great. However, after I swapped out the old bulbs for the new LED ones put everything back together and flipped the switch nothing happened. My immediate thought was I broke an old connection when I pulled the bulbs since they were a bit stuck. Luckily that wasn't the case. After taking about the port and starboard bow lights I discovered that I had inserted the LEDs wrong. I wasn't paying attention and inserted the LEDs with the positive and negative lined up incorrectly. With the positive and negative lined up correctly I inserted the LED and proceeded to temporarily blind myself. I forgot to mention that at this point the sun was setting so things were getting dark, and I had left the bow lights powered on. Once my vision returned, I reassembled the Starboard light and did my best to not blind myself with the Port light. With everything back together and working that another item off the checklist.

If only the solar panel had been that easy. I blame my inexperience for the stumbles I experienced. I watched a lot of videos on adding solar to boats, I checked out some solar setups on boats at the marina I am in, and I spoke to a good friend who had just gone through this. Of course, before I did all this, I ordered a 50-watt panel with a controller off Amazon during Prime Days because it was 50% off. I wanted to go with a rail mount setup. Some people opt for Deck mount but that's just something else to get in the way. Now it seems there are 2 main ways to mount a panel to the rail. Both options use rail mount brackets, there are a number of brackets that can be used but they fall into 2 types, easily removable, and less easy. I opted to go with the easily removable so I could make adjustments, remove it for winter storage, and not having to risk losing another tool to the murky depths of the lake. Now the first option is to mount the rail bracket directly to the solar panel and then to the rail. Of course, using this option was not possible for me for a few reasons. The first being the frame of the solar panel was not wide enough for the rail mount bracket to feel secure. The second reason is that I'm not sure I could find a screw and nut combination short enough to fit, but honestly, I didn't look after reason 1. The second option to mount the bracket to the panel is to take two pieces of aluminum flat bar wide enough for the brackets and long enough to span the back of the panel. This is the method I went with, not only did the bracket make complete contact with the flat bar but it also allowed me to get the bracket attached securely using some loctite orange for a bit of extra piece of mind.

The first step was to determine what orientation I wanted the panel in since it's a rectangle. I decided to go with having the long side run horizontally, I felt it would just look better. Once this was determined I measured the width of the panel, doubled it and then purchased the length of aluminum flat bar. I went with Aluminum because the panel frame was Aluminum, it's light weight, and inexpensive, like less than $20 with enough left over to do a second panel.

With the flat bar purchased I cut it to length using a hack saw, drilled 2 holes in each end and mounted it to the panel. Simple right, wrong. First off despite drawing a straight line using a framing square, cutting slowly I still somehow managed to cut at a slight angle. Second, despite what you might read or be told, a nail set does not, I repeat, does not work as well as a centre punch. After 2 holes drill slightly off, I headed out and purchased a centre punch.

The next step was to drill the holes in the solar panel frame. Luckily the panel came with holes about 3 inches out from each corner on every side. With these holes I just needed to drill 4 holes. Since I couldn't use the centre punch on the panels, I mounted the flat bars using the existing holes in the panel frame and then used the holes in the flat bar as a guide for the drill bit. Being very careful to not punch through and hit the back of the solar cells I successfully drilled the 4 holes.

Next up was mounting the rail backets to the flat bar. I measured, measured again and laid out where the brackets would go. I then removed the flat bar from the panel, used the center punch to mark the holes and drilled 2 holes near the centre of each flat bar. With the holes drilled I mounted the rail brackets to the flat bars and then attached the flat bars to the panel.

The last step was to mount the panel on the rail, connect it to the controller and then the battery. Currently the battery lives in the port cockpit coffin. I am not sure if that is where I will keep it so the wiring is temporary.

The last part of my Boom topping lift was a simple line looped through a shackle on the boom topping lift cable and another on the bracket attached to the end of the boom and then tied off. To remove it I had to either undo the shackle on the boom end bracket or untie it. In both cases the topping lift had to then be attached to the backstay cable and threatened to slide up and get caught in the sail. A fellow marina member and former Tanzer 22 sailor recommended I setup an adjustable topping lift. That way I could slacken the topping lift so it wasn't doing any work, it would stay out of the way, and best of all nothing needed to be untied or unshackled.

I know there are adjustable topping lift kits available, but I happened to have an available block, and I knew I could put one together cheaper. The Clamcleat cost $17 and I think the line ran me another $5. had I needed to buy a shackle and swivel block they would have been just under $30 for the pair.

Here is what you need to assemble your own adjustable topping lift.

• Braided line
• Clamcleat with roller
• block (swivel optional)
• shackle (appropriately sized)

To create your adjustable topping lift attach the Clamcleat to the topping lift cable using the shackle. You will attach the cable to the roller end of the Clamcleat. Next attach the swivel block to the bracket on the end of the boom. Now tie your braided line to the cleat end of the Clamcleat. Next you will feed it through the swivel block and back up into the clamcleat going around the roller and then down into the cleat. Lastly trim the braided line as needed and tie a stopper knot in the end to prevent your adjustable topping lift from coming apart.



Now to harness the power of adjusting. When it is time to sail just pull the braided line free of the cleat and slacken the topping lift. You will no longer need to spend time fiddling around, a quick pull and you are done. What to hear something even better? When it's time to use the topping lift just pull it tight and snug the line into the cleat and it's done.

Barry if you are reading this, THANK YOU!