ACE New Spinnaker

ACE has a lot of trouble downwind in light air (<5 knots) because her spinnaker is fractional and doesn't have the sail area.

We ordered a oversized spinnaker from Durk Steigenga in Nova Scotia.

We will take a rating hit with it, but it will make up for it when the winds are light (which seems to be a LOT).

Here is a picture of the 1,000 sq ft spinnaker in Durk's garage/sail loft

Durk is now starting to work on a new asymmetric chute for big Still Time.

ACE Electronics Diagram

ACE Electronics

ACE is a 1994 MUMM 36 with top of the line B&G Hercules processors and displays for her time.

At 21 years of age, the displays are showing their age.  One of the bulkhead displays is dead, one of the mast displays has some condensation and will die soon.  We looked into replacing these displays and they are about $2,000CAN each!

The B&G Hercules 690 processor and performance processor are very expensive.  All instruments are connected to them.  The processors calculate lots of other sailing data from polars.  We do not really use these advanced features, but should.

We have sensors for:

• wind
• speed
• depth
• temperature
• compass
• forestay load sensor

They are all working fine.

Replacing the processors, displays, and transducers would cost $20-30k.

So we have decided to go with a hybrid approach of old/new and bridge the data between them.

Two B&G Touch 8 chart plotters mounted on the bulkheads. 

http://www.bandg.com/de/Products/Zeus-Touch-8/

Two of these port and starboard on the bulkheads to replace existing failing displays.
Will be nice to display chart and/or sailing data here.

Check of the B&G marketing on SailSteer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdi88CMg0QU

I think we will use the laylines view ALOT.

These will be networked via Ethernet and connect to a WIFI bridge to all them to be controlled form a tablet/phone (and my Pebble watch).

http://www.bandg.com/de/Products/WIFI-1-Module/

B&G V50 VHF with AIS:

http://www.bandg.com/de/Products/V50-Fixed-Mount-VHF/

AIS will integrate to the chart plotter(s) via NMEA 2000

B&G V50 remote mike:

http://www.bandg.com/de/Products/H50-Wireless-VHF-Handset/

This will be a welcomed addition to the cockpit for convenience and safety.


The interface from the processors to the new devices will be done with an Actisense NMEA 0183/2000 bridge:

http://www.actisense.ca/collections/nmea-0183/products/ngw-1-nmea-2000-gateway

This will feed all instrument data to the new devices include advanced sailing data from the processor(s). 

This will also feed waypoint and GPS data back to the processors via NMEA 0183.

This hydrid system will give us the best of both worlds.  As the sensors and displays die we will replace them with the latest and greatest using NMEA 2000.


Yesterday I went down to mockup chart plotter placement:

Port

Starboard

Lots of room for wiring behind the bulkhead:

Starboard

Port

ACE Shrinkwrap Door

Two months after the fact, we got a door installed on the stern of ACE (with the help of Jenny and Peter).

I had to get on the boat to measure the footholds and mockup the new chart plotters.

We also added some shrinkwrap to the stern to fix parts that had been ripped by the wind.