Overstuffed??

I have been closely monitoring the new stuffing I put in last month.

What I discovered was the box dripping about every 8 seconds - BUT the stuffing box was getting hot to the touch. That shouldn't be the case according to my research, the box should only get 15-20 degrees hotter than the ambient sea water temperature (67 degrees at the moment). So 87 degrees should not feel hot, warm yes, but not hot. Hot to the touch is between 130-150 degrees.

So how is it dripping, but so hot??? My theory is that the drips are from the water coming thru the threads on the nut, not from the stuffing, and the stuffing is not getting lubricated/cooled as it is too tight in there.

So it must be the 3 turns of PFTE packing was too much. I took one turn out and we appear to be in business now. I do not seem to need a drip though, with no drip things are staying warm and thus I can assume lubricated.

Methinks I will have to keep monitoring for a few more trips...

A Voyage of Discovery...

(10/17/2010) On Friday we say a ship come in the channel, then suddenly do an abrupt 180 turn - very strange! Then it dropped anchor just south of the shipping channel, and was shadowed by a small Navy vessel. In our 2 years here, we have never seen a ship anchor inside the Bridge Tunnel, something strange was up! Then on Saturday the boat disappeared, and on Sunday it was back, and at anchor!

It was a lovely sunny day today with gusty SW winds - we decided to take Silver Fox out and investigate! We had a lovely sail out and ate lunch on the way. Someone from the Ship came out to the fly deck and waved to us. The ship had Beluga Projects on the side, and was called Beluga Recognition. She had a red flag flying from her port flag staff, adding to its mystery!

We googled it all this evening, and found out lots of fun information...
(1) The Red Flag means it is carrying explosive materials!
(2) The ship is quite cool as it is partially WIND powered! It has a huge kite that it can deploy, to power it along and get 20% fuel saving cost!
(3) The ship is currently chartered by the US Navy.
(4) As I write this the ship has just pulled anchor and is heading out to sea towards the Panama canal.
(5) Full vessel and AIS information is available at this great site MarineTraffic.com.

More info on the ship here: http://blog.greenlogo.com/?p=11


Also on our sail back in the cut, we watched as the dredging continued and is in the cut/channel now.

Great fun!
Ralph Out.

Thimble Shoal Cruise, Sat Oct 2nd, 2010

Nice Saturday afternoon, warm (around 70), sunny and a NE breeze around 10 knots - pretty good for a relaxing cruise. The boat had not sailed since Earl (a month ago), due to our travels (Chicago - J/105 NA's & Rochester - M24 NA's), so Silver Fox was all buttoned away. We had to bring down sails, and take the boat out of hibernation, which took about an hour.

We headed out of the cut at the beginning of an ebb, but still flooding outside. The end of the flood here runs from south (the beach) North up the Bay, and thus was under us and we were making good speed over 6kn on the GPS. With good progress we decided to continue to Thimble Shoal light as it was a reach out and would be a reach back home too.

It was puffy, and the puffs must have been about 5 minutes apart, and were oscillating (may have been velocity too though).

Its a 12 mile round trip, and took us 3 hours door to door. Put the boat away as the sun set on a very relaxing and enjoyable afternoon.