I'm a little late posting this, but Nov. 2019 :
We SOLD the Katie Lee!
She is still in Houbihu Marina, Taiwan where the new owner plans to leave her for a while.
He also likes the name and plans to keep it named the Katie Lee.
I bought an old school bus and am converting it to an RV. We seem to be calling it "Da Boat". See the link above.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Monday, July 1, 2019
Tinypilot Installed and Working
Sean's Tinypilot is installed and steered from Okinawa, Japan to Southern Taiwan. I had a number of issues wit the rest of my navigation setup, but the tinypilot steered all the way.
I mounted the steering pump on the aft bulhead of the engine room below the water-lift muffler. There was a by-pass valve above. I replaced it with the new hoses. The 3rd hose is the vent and runs up to the wheel steering pump in the binnacle. The power wires run to a 30 Amp fuse on the forward bulkhead of the engine room. The control wires run through the bulkhead to the motor controller on the other side, in the dry, clean area.
The large motor controller mounted on the outside of the aft bulkhead of the engine room where there is little chance of getting splashed with salt water or worse. On the bottom are the 12volt power wires coming in and the 2 wires to the motor. On the top the serial control cable up to the tinypilot in the cockpit. I had to extend the serial line to about 6 meters. The other wire is the home-brew rudder position sensor under the aft berth next to the rudder post.
The rudder position indicator is just a precision potentiometer tied to the rudder post. The pot is wired as a voltage divider across 5 volts giving an output ranging from 0.1 to 1.1v a 10k pot is probably best. My 5k pot needed resistors added to each side to get the range set.
The tinypilot is double sticky taped in position on the front of the dodger. The serial cable and a USB power supply. I intend to add wire clips screwed to the hatch frame, but haven't finished yet.
A closer view of the tinypilot display and the Raspberry Pi Zero W under neath. It is currently running in the Access Point (AP) mode. So it needs to listen for UDP broadcast packets and forward the GPS and AIS data to the opencpn computer mounted above.
Opencpn and my Garmin 152H GPS are mounted at the top of the dodger enclosure. I thought they would be safe from wave splashes there. They are, but they white paint reflects a lot of light making them difficult to read in the daytime.
Normally opencn runs on an Orange Pi PC 2, an H5 cpu quad core 64bit ARM chip. But it's SD card memory is failing so I have backup Orange Pi PC Plus, (32bit) and also a Raspberry Pi 3B+ that is new.
In the past I've only run opencpn standalone. But with the Tinypilot I am trying openplotter on the RPI, but I don't have an evaluation of it yet.
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| My new Octopus hydraulic steering pump |
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| Sean's large motor controller |
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| Rudder position indicator before installation |
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| Keyboard and mouse for OpenCPN and Tinypilot |
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| Tinypilot and it's remote |
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| Opencpn and my Garmin 152H GPS |
Opencpn and my Garmin 152H GPS are mounted at the top of the dodger enclosure. I thought they would be safe from wave splashes there. They are, but they white paint reflects a lot of light making them difficult to read in the daytime.
Normally opencn runs on an Orange Pi PC 2, an H5 cpu quad core 64bit ARM chip. But it's SD card memory is failing so I have backup Orange Pi PC Plus, (32bit) and also a Raspberry Pi 3B+ that is new.
In the past I've only run opencpn standalone. But with the Tinypilot I am trying openplotter on the RPI, but I don't have an evaluation of it yet.
Monday, June 10, 2019
We have put the boat up for sale. 19 years of a pretend autopilot, and just now I have ordered parts for a real autopilot! Why did I wait so long?
We have hydraulic steering, which made it difficult to choose a servo-pendulum wind vane for steering, but we did choose a Cape Horn. I put a small tiller pilot on the wind sensor for the Cape Horn and let it be the autopilot. It worked ok for most wind conditions across the Pacific, but that was mostly downwind. It does not steer well if the wind is forward of the beam. Also the little tiller pilots only lasted about 15,000 miles each. That means the current one (the third) is due for failure any time now. Also it was very difficult to set and to disengage. Trinda couldn't manage it. One had to get on course, steer straight then tighten 2 ropes to the wind vane, and pull a cable like a manual choke that disengages the wheel, then activate the tiller pilot.
Therefore, I ordered an electric hydraulic steering pump from the the folks that manufacture most of the pumps for the brands of commercial autopilots. It is the Octopus 2.0 liter/minute 12volt pump.And a few other parts for the boat, like shackles and T-bolts, zincs and a new Mic for the radio.
I ordered a new, custom autopilot control system from https://pypilot.org. It has 2 major components, a course computer and a motor controller. The course computer is based on the small ARM computer boards that I have been playing with recently. It has a totally electronic 9-axis inertia motion sensor instead of the old flux-gate type of electronic compass that were so picky about placement. It can be easily integrated with opencpn, my favorite choice for navigation software.
A big reason for choosing pypilot is, since the boat is for sale and most new owners are very choosy about the brand of instruments, pypilot gets me equal or better features, possibilities for enhancement and does not make the choice of integrated system vendor for any potential buyer. It was also very inexpensive compared to the brand name stuff.
The pump is heavy duty and draws 6 to 8 amps normally but as much as 22 under stress. That meant I must use the large motor controller from pypilot.
The small motor controller is good for up to 3 amps. Several folks are using an old car windshield wiper motor with it's reduction gear to make their own wheel pilots and tiller pilots. If I can find such a motor I may try for a wheel pilot also. It might use less power when sailing in nice conditions. The small motor controller is in a case like the course computer will be in, only 1.5x2x3 inches.
The next problem was finding a hydraulic supply for the hoses and connectors to install the pump. Having no Japanese didn't help, but I did find one, "Only a 20 minute walk.", says Google maps! They must be young kids!
I did get it installed. The course computer needs to know the position of the rudder to keep from trying to turn past the stops and to adjust for currents and in general. I made a custom rudder position indicator from a precision potentiometer.
I hope to give more progress reports as I finish.
We have hydraulic steering, which made it difficult to choose a servo-pendulum wind vane for steering, but we did choose a Cape Horn. I put a small tiller pilot on the wind sensor for the Cape Horn and let it be the autopilot. It worked ok for most wind conditions across the Pacific, but that was mostly downwind. It does not steer well if the wind is forward of the beam. Also the little tiller pilots only lasted about 15,000 miles each. That means the current one (the third) is due for failure any time now. Also it was very difficult to set and to disengage. Trinda couldn't manage it. One had to get on course, steer straight then tighten 2 ropes to the wind vane, and pull a cable like a manual choke that disengages the wheel, then activate the tiller pilot.
Therefore, I ordered an electric hydraulic steering pump from the the folks that manufacture most of the pumps for the brands of commercial autopilots. It is the Octopus 2.0 liter/minute 12volt pump.And a few other parts for the boat, like shackles and T-bolts, zincs and a new Mic for the radio.
I ordered a new, custom autopilot control system from https://pypilot.org. It has 2 major components, a course computer and a motor controller. The course computer is based on the small ARM computer boards that I have been playing with recently. It has a totally electronic 9-axis inertia motion sensor instead of the old flux-gate type of electronic compass that were so picky about placement. It can be easily integrated with opencpn, my favorite choice for navigation software.
A big reason for choosing pypilot is, since the boat is for sale and most new owners are very choosy about the brand of instruments, pypilot gets me equal or better features, possibilities for enhancement and does not make the choice of integrated system vendor for any potential buyer. It was also very inexpensive compared to the brand name stuff.
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| Large motor controller |
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| Course computer consists of keypad,remote, display and IMU and Raspberry Pi Zero W |
The pump is heavy duty and draws 6 to 8 amps normally but as much as 22 under stress. That meant I must use the large motor controller from pypilot.
The small motor controller is good for up to 3 amps. Several folks are using an old car windshield wiper motor with it's reduction gear to make their own wheel pilots and tiller pilots. If I can find such a motor I may try for a wheel pilot also. It might use less power when sailing in nice conditions. The small motor controller is in a case like the course computer will be in, only 1.5x2x3 inches.
The next problem was finding a hydraulic supply for the hoses and connectors to install the pump. Having no Japanese didn't help, but I did find one, "Only a 20 minute walk.", says Google maps! They must be young kids!
I did get it installed. The course computer needs to know the position of the rudder to keep from trying to turn past the stops and to adjust for currents and in general. I made a custom rudder position indicator from a precision potentiometer.
I hope to give more progress reports as I finish.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Miyakojima Visit
It was a short visit in miyMiyakoj. We really only stopped because of the weather. And the only picture I took is not that much, no view.
We did have a good time. We met a very helpful Mr. Tomari who is chairman of the miyako Yacht Club. He helped us tie up, let me use his washing machine to catch up and laundry and gave us a ride to town. He even threw a BBQ on hisbohis for us. Trinda has had the flu the whole time here so didn't go. Salad, grilled steak, chicken legs and onions. Very nice.
The yacht club dock is over 2 miles from town with no transportation except taxis. We tried to get a taxi to the store but a cruise ship came in and reserved all the taxis for the whole day.
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| Me returning with the laundry |
We did have a good time. We met a very helpful Mr. Tomari who is chairman of the miyako Yacht Club. He helped us tie up, let me use his washing machine to catch up and laundry and gave us a ride to town. He even threw a BBQ on hisbohis for us. Trinda has had the flu the whole time here so didn't go. Salad, grilled steak, chicken legs and onions. Very nice.
The yacht club dock is over 2 miles from town with no transportation except taxis. We tried to get a taxi to the store but a cruise ship came in and reserved all the taxis for the whole day.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Sailed to Ishigaki
After only 2 years we left Taiwan for Japan. We planned to leave at 7am, but ....
I had started the engine the day before and let it run for 30 minutes to be sure all was ok. But this morning I got no cooling water out of the back! Back to the dock. I thought it might be the impeller in the raw water pump so I took it out to check. About 30 minutes and equivalent bloody scratches and cuts! No problem found. Ok must be the intake hose or through hull valve.
I took off the hose and blew through it. Yes, I was rewarded with a face of cold salt water. I put the hose back to the sea strainer and we took off. Made it to the next dock before it over heated again. Down to look in the engine room. More water in my face. I had not tightened the radiator hose enough. It had slipped off. Easy fix, just put it back and refill the radiator.
Off to catch up with Heinz who had been sailing in circles waiting for us.
Sailing was great the first 8 hours or so. 7.5 to 8 knots by the GPS. We had found the north bound current and a nice breeze on the beam.
But then the wind shifted, the waves got bigger and the current changed. Very slow, uncomfortable trip, hand steering cause the autopilot didn't like the wind angle and bouncing off the walls from the waves.
The engine kept over heating at much above an idle but we made it.
I had missed a little when I was putting the engine back together in Taiwan. I used a silicone liquid gasket for the heat exchanger/exhaust manifold and didn't get it on one side enough. It leaked exhaust gas pressure into the radiator. Be so an easy enough fix. I pulled off the flange, cleaned it and re-did it again. Works fine again.
I had started the engine the day before and let it run for 30 minutes to be sure all was ok. But this morning I got no cooling water out of the back! Back to the dock. I thought it might be the impeller in the raw water pump so I took it out to check. About 30 minutes and equivalent bloody scratches and cuts! No problem found. Ok must be the intake hose or through hull valve.
I took off the hose and blew through it. Yes, I was rewarded with a face of cold salt water. I put the hose back to the sea strainer and we took off. Made it to the next dock before it over heated again. Down to look in the engine room. More water in my face. I had not tightened the radiator hose enough. It had slipped off. Easy fix, just put it back and refill the radiator.
Off to catch up with Heinz who had been sailing in circles waiting for us.
Sailing was great the first 8 hours or so. 7.5 to 8 knots by the GPS. We had found the north bound current and a nice breeze on the beam.
But then the wind shifted, the waves got bigger and the current changed. Very slow, uncomfortable trip, hand steering cause the autopilot didn't like the wind angle and bouncing off the walls from the waves.
The engine kept over heating at much above an idle but we made it.
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| Side tied to Heinz in Ishigaki |
I had missed a little when I was putting the engine back together in Taiwan. I used a silicone liquid gasket for the heat exchanger/exhaust manifold and didn't get it on one side enough. It leaked exhaust gas pressure into the radiator. Be so an easy enough fix. I pulled off the flange, cleaned it and re-did it again. Works fine again.
Friday, April 5, 2019
Eating Out in Taiwan
The last few days we have been eating out to much. First at a friend's steak and pizza place, Doju's a couple nights in a row. They are nice kids, Way and Emilie. And several of our friends/acquaintances go there too.
Then today we went back to the Rock Garden Campground. We had been there several times last year. Nathan makes some nice pizza. Trinda has a J-Boo pizza. Sausage, pepperoni, bacon and ham with lots of cheese.
Because this is a 4-day weekend they have live bands playing most of the nights. Most of the younger people either rent tents or bring their own and spend the weekend eating, drinking beer and listening to the music. Lots of them also play some instrument.
Also a guy from up island, Hualien, Tw, brings pulled pork and smoked brisket. We got one each to go, as we are too old to sleep on the ground in a tent. We plan to eat them back home on the boat.
On the way back I stopped to take a few pictures of the valley and some dragon fruit plants. They look a lot like cactus.
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| Steak and salad |
Then today we went back to the Rock Garden Campground. We had been there several times last year. Nathan makes some nice pizza. Trinda has a J-Boo pizza. Sausage, pepperoni, bacon and ham with lots of cheese.
Because this is a 4-day weekend they have live bands playing most of the nights. Most of the younger people either rent tents or bring their own and spend the weekend eating, drinking beer and listening to the music. Lots of them also play some instrument.
Also a guy from up island, Hualien, Tw, brings pulled pork and smoked brisket. We got one each to go, as we are too old to sleep on the ground in a tent. We plan to eat them back home on the boat.
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| BBQ Brisket on the left and Pulled Pork on the right |
On the way back I stopped to take a few pictures of the valley and some dragon fruit plants. They look a lot like cactus.
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