Norwegian Steam: Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 9

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Noon Report -- Cabo-Hawaii Day 9

We caught a tuna! Mid afternoon we rigged up the hand line and a couple of hours later Gay reeled in a small tuna on the yoyo. We ate most of it for lunch today. Delicious and much appreciated. When caught, the fish was a silvery blue and weighed about five pounds. I think that is just right. I don't know how we would handle anything a lot bigger. Incidentally, Gay used a green and orange artificial squid bait.

Our day's run was 131 miles and we are 1578 miles from Honolulu. The wind is in the ten to fifteen knot range and is about 20 degrees abaft the beam.

I had been worrying the last two days about our ability to recharge the batteries which supply us with electricity to make water, run the refrigerator/freezer, the HF radio email system, the Garmin 4212 chart plotter and our navigation lights. Keeping them charged is absolutely critical. I ran the engine two days ago and brought the charge from about 53% capacity up to close to 80%. I intended to let it run a little bit longer, but then Pete accidentally sped the engine up by bumping the throttle handle with his shin. I turned it back down almost immediately, but noticed that the display on the alternator regulator had gone crazy. I stopped the engine, restarted it and saw that now the regulator was not even turning on, it's display dark. Why? Sudden spike in voltage due to increased speed? Just another regulator gone bad at random? No answers but a lot to worry about.

This morning the battery bank was down to 60% capacity and I needed to make a decision. Either I could fix the problem, or we would have to cut back radically on our already frugal use of electricity. I got out all my electrical tools, ready to trace the whole charging system. I opened the engine compartment, stared at the alternator and saw immediately that a wire had broken. Stroke of luck! I swaged a terminal to the wire, reconnected it, and now the regulator lit up. I will run the engine tomorrow, because that is when I project that the batteries will be at 50% capacity.

At 1800 UTC, June 12, 2012, our location is 23 42.252 N, 129 38.778 W.

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Norwegian Steam, the vessel

Norwegian Steam is the name of our 35' sailboat. She was designed by Ted Brewer. About 40 hulls were constructed by Miller Marine on Bainbridge Island, Washington between 1976 and the early 1980s. It is rumored that additional hulls were constructed in eastern Canada. Because many of these boats were completed by owners, there is a very great diversity in the fleet. To learn more about the basic design, you can find information about Ted's Jason design on his web site.

NS was completed by Alan with the help of friends, some of them professionals, over many years. She has been sailing since 2001. She differs from most (perhaps all) other instances of the Jason design in that her mast is 6 feet taller and she is rigged as a racing cutter, with large overlapping staysail. This rig design was inspired by the work of John Illingworth, the great English yacht designer and sailboat racer.

Norwegian Steam, the name

The phrase, Norwegian steam, may originally have been somewhat pejorative. When a vessel was powered by sails or by oars instead of by a steam or diesel engine, it was said to be powered by "Norwegian steam", the implication being that the Norwegians were so poor they could not afford engines for their boats. As time passed, the Norwegians themselves adopted the phrase to indicate a "can-do" attitude or doing whatever it takes to get the job done, even with limited resources or under adverse circumstances.

During the great era of America's Cup racing in J-Class yachts, the term took on a slightly different meaning. Many of the American defender boats had Norwegian crews and thus were said to be powered by Norwegian steam. A website has been dedicated to this bit of history.