September 18, 2006
Bon Voyage Estrella
We spent what was probably the last overnight weekend of the season in St. Helens last weekend. No real wind to speak of, but The higlight of the trip was seeing Adam and Kristina heading out on thier 1+ year voyage aboard Esrtella. Good luck guys, we'll be watching your site for updates.
Posted by mbnelson at 06:40 AM
September 04, 2006
Sail Racing Mobile Software
In my spare time i've been developing sail racing software for windows based handheld devices. Development is in the early stages, but the wind module may prove useful if you're looking for that little edge for your crew. Please email me at mbnelson@europa.com if you would like a free beta copy for testing or find the latest builds here.
Posted by mbnelson at 11:56 PM
August 21, 2006
Engine Coolant Continued...
After more investigation, the engine coolant problem was more serious than just air in the internal coolant loop. It turns out, after having a local radiator shop look at the heat exchanger, they found a leak! After the repair, we re-installed over the weekend and all seems fine as no trace of coolant in the engine compartment. We still need to take another trip to perform more thourough testing. Maybe a trip to Beacon Rock will sufice. In my investigation of marine cooling systems, I found they are very similar to a nuclear power plant cooling system.
Posted by mbnelson at 06:32 AM
August 07, 2006
Coastal Explorer - Google Earth
I just learned of a new feature today in Coastal Explorer. You can now export almost all navigation objects to Google Earth. This has many benefits including the ability to plan and plot routes with real time weather, see conditions at noaa bouys, and share your route information with friends and family.
To export navigation objects to Google Earth, simply click file->export, select the objects for export and select Google Earth KML file as the file type. Double click on the KML file and you will see all of your exported Coastal Explorer objects in Google Earth.
Posted by mbnelson at 06:41 AM
July 09, 2006
Engine Coolant
For the 4th of July we took a trip to Cathlamet Washington. The weather was nice, but unusally cool for this time of year. The marine layer bunred off about 1pm for the 3 day trip. We did encounter a small problem when we took the sails down as the winds were building to 30+ knots. As soon as we started the motor, the engine heat light came on so we put the headsail back out and made our way to the best anchorage we could find just east of cape horn. After checking the raw water strainer, themostat and installing a new impeller we found the problem to be air in the coolant system. We bled the air out of the system, had dinner and drinks and pulled anchor in the morning and headed to St. Helen's for the next night.
Posted by mbnelson at 08:31 AM
