Better weather at last

Finally it looks like the weather is improving.

Here's hoping I'm not speaking too soon.

The constant cold and wind has made any sailing pretty miserable, even with a comfy wheelhouse.

It got to the point where it seemed pointless to go anywhere, as we just ended up bundled up down below, huddled by the diesel heater, wherever we went.

Staying down below to keep warm sort of defeated the object of going anywhere in the first place.

Miserable

The weather has to improve soon...

No sailing this weekend just gone.

The forecast for the next week or so does not look encouraging either.

A bit of a surprise

It was all pretty calm while we stayed at Newtown Creek over the weekend.

The plan was to leave just before ten, leaving plenty of time for a comfortable sail round to Southampton, getting back in time for easy tides as we came alongside.

The forecast, according to windfinder.com, was for 12-15kn winds, steadily increasing over the course of the afternoon. I had checked the weather again that morning before we left.

With the mizzen already up, in preparation for getting the main and foresail up smartly after leaving Newtown, Arctic Rose suddenly became somewhat more of a handful than expected, just when starting to navigate through the narrow channel out of the creek.

Looking at the sudden jump in wind speed on the chart from the day, it's easy to see why.

What should have been a comfy sail turned into a bit of a lumpy ride, with us fighting wind over tide up the Western Solent - I'm sure I saw 30kn on the gauge at one point.

Needless to say, Patch was none too impressed with my planning skills and I never got any tea until we  reached the relative calm higher up Southampton water.

Back at Newtown creek.

I've been away travelling for work, hence the silence.

Back now, and what better place to head for, to enjoy a bit of tranquility, than Newtown creek, on the Isle of Wight?

This picture was taken on Saturday evening, it speaks for itself.

Foggy Yarmouth

What a difference to the last time we were in Yarmouth.

I was expecting substantially better weather as the day wore on, but we eventually had to set off back to Southampton in the murkey grey.

The ship you can see out there is the Islay Trader.

December weather

A somewhat belated Happy Christmas and new year to everyone.

Now that's all over, things should start getting back to what currently passes for normal in my life.

Suffice to say we had our fair share of weather during December.

The picture shows the wind and waves over at Leape, near Beaulieu, the other day.

Solar project continued...

So the solar project ended up taking a bit of an unexpected turn here.

As you can see, the picture shows my iPhone being charged by a few D size regular batteries, with some electronics in a tupperware box all connected to a USB socket.

To step back a bit, the solar project started with Patch and I unable to charge our various devices while at anchor for a few days earlier in the year.

There were two main issues, firstly no mains power to run the chargers themselves, secondly no battery power to use for charging anything as the batteries were not holding their charge that well anyway.

We have fixed the battery power issue, and have now installed a 12V - USB connector so we can charge gadgets. But the core issue of conserving battery power while at anchor remains, to some extent anyway.

My thinking had been to create a solar panel that was capable of directly charging a device, such as a mobile phone, with no intermediate battery to charge. The solar chargers I've previously tried have been useless.

I've made good progress with the solar powered charger already, as you have seen in a previous post.

Anyway, the core issue at hand in crafting the solar charger had been to create a stable 5V for the USB socket from the solar panels I was making.

My thinking being I could create less than 5V with the necessary amps easily enough in almost all reasonable light/cloud conditions and this could be 'pumped up' to 5V with some electronic wizardry.

With some help from my mate Ian over at embedded adventures, he produced this little beauty which does the job perfectly (I deny any knowledge about carnivorous robots).

I had originally used a handy array of batteries to test Ian's device. This got me to thinking that keeping a few batteries around, and using these in a stand-by gadget charger would work as well as, maybe even better than, the solar plan.

The result, you can see, will probably be more useful than the solar panels I was planning, as D cells are ever present in all kinds of places I may need to charge my iPhone. While travelling for any time with no access to mains power comes to mind as a likely scenario where I could use this charger, especially when flying places.

I still intend to make a solar version, as I have a few of Ian's gadgets left, but I can already see that making it sufficiently robust, yet portable, will be a challenge.