Sailing Australis

Seven people on board an English-registered yacht have been rescued by the Alderney lifeboat……

This 170-mile race to St. Malo from Cowes, which dates back to 1906, has always been one of the most popular races in the RORC Season’s Points Championship and with over 100 boats there will a spectacular send off from the Royal Yacht Squadron Line this Friday. *3 Days, 70NM* Retired (lost rudder,…

Installing a stainless arch, solar, radar and other equipment

Since we bought the boat in Q4 15 we’ve been very busy fixing, replacing and upgrading the equipment on the boat. Some jobs were now being delayed or deferred due to restrictions with current setup and limitations of my own capability to take on certain jobs. The existing bimini and spray hood although functional were looking tired and needed to go, as part of this we started to think seriously…

Boat Performance – Polars, VMG and Weather Routing

When planning a route to a destination and setting off towards that destination it is important to not only ensure you plan a safe route, but also plan your ETA to allow you to make plans and adjustments for your intended arrival (arriving at night, tides, reefs etc).

This is where you want your weather routing to give you an advantage ideally taking wind, wave and current data into account.  You…

Three planned projects came together through research, further understanding and necessity.

My GPS is the legacy Raymarine GPS connected to the SPX helm computer which in turn is on the old Seatalk 1 network, as I mentioned in previous posts since I upgraded the nav instruments and installed the Seatalk NG network, the pick up and transmission of the legacy GPS from seatalk to seatalk NG was slow, 60-120 seconds. This resulted in the i70’s issuing an alarm ‘NO GPS’ until the messages started coming through on the network.

The accuracy of this device once working was significantly out, my Bad Elf Pro+ giving accuracy within a couple of feet and the legacy device out by a couple of boat lengths.

With regards to instruments over WiFi I want Maxsea/MacEnc and the iPads to be able to get the speed, depth and wind data as a minimum, I bought a vYacht multiplexer for this however, when I researched AIS I discovered a device that actually accommodates these needs and more.

The Vesper Marine XB-8000 Class B AIS Transponder with Built-in WiFi and NMEA 2000 Gateway gets good reviews and for good reason, just in summary see their comparison chart below (I was initially looking to buy the Raymarine AIS650 which in fact is not too dissimilar in price)

XB-8000 Transponder Navico NAIS 400 Comar CSB 200 Garmin AIS600 em-trak B100 Raymarine AIS650 Full receive of all Class A and B AIS data and transmission of Class B AIS data Anchor watch triggers an alarm if you drift outside a configurable circular zone AIS Man Overboard (MOB) alarm triggers if a crew member falls overboard (works with any manufacturer AIS MOB device, not included) WiFi enabled (802.11 b/g) Can simultaneously connect to 5 wireless devices Dual WiFi configuration allows connection to an existing WiFi router or can create its own WiFi network Ability to connect to computers via USB Galvanic isolated USB protects AIS and computers from possible damage and allows USB to be used at all times Waterproof, can be externally mounted Power consumption 3.5W 3W 6W <20W 3W 3W Certified NMEA 2000 Controls silent mode features remotely via iPhone, iPad, Android Interact with standard applications on iPad and Android Provides a NMEA 0183 to WiFi 802.11 b/g gateway (routes NMEA 1083 data to WiFi and USB) Provides a NMEA 2000 to WiFi 802.11 b/g gateway (routes NMEA 2000 instrument data to WiFi and USB) SD card slot available Interfacing to optional chart plotters and displays (NMEA 2000) Interfacing to optional chart plotters and computers (NMEA 0183)

In addition to ordering the XB-8000 I also needed a N2K to Seatalk NG cable and the VHF splitter with an additional splitter to device cable.

                                  Fitting this was a very simple job, I managed to find a mounting position in the cabinet that houses the 12v junction box, I wanted the XB to be near to the end of the VHF antenna cable leading down from the mast, VHF radio and Seatalk hub that I recently installed, you can read about that project here

  (Above: You can see the light blue Vesper XB8000 mounting inside the cabinet)

Once again this was a well-timed project, when I pulled the VHF antenna from the back of the iCom radio, it fell apart so I had to clean up and re-fit the antenna screw on fitting. In addition, the positive lead to the radio was not fully connected. I now realize that these issues were the cause of a lot of what I thought was interference when the radio was on and very low range (I was planning to ditch the iCom thinking it was just shite)

The antenna lead repaired, I connected this to the splitter, took one lead from the splitter to the VHF and a second to the XB-8000. Plugged in the GPS antenna and connected the N2K to the Seatalk NG box. Connecting the wiring was a two-minute job, I did add an inline 1amp fuse.

Watching the Victron to get a view of the power draw showed minimal sub 1 amp consumption

The XB is a WiFi hub in its own right, in the short term I’ll leave it like this while I configure everything and then will link it into the boat WiFi hub. I installed the Vesper watchman app on the iPhone, connected the iphone to the XB and started playing.

The app immediately started showing other boats in the vicinity and other useful info such as the GPS position and NMEA data stream.

My plotter (vintage E80) showed the GPS pick up very quickly as did the i70’s.  Update: I have now fitted two new plotters, you can see the Furuno TZTouch2 install here and the Raymarine e97 install here.

Update: This past weekend I linked the XB-8000 into the WiFi hub (Dovado), there were a few steps involved using the Macbook.

You need to connect your laptop to the XB8000 via USB to go through the changes in setup in order to connect it to an existing WiFi hub.

After downloading, installing and connecting the USB I hit my first minor issue, that being my Mac did not see the XB-8000 as a device. To rectify this I had to download the USB drivers which you can get hold of here Vesper USB drivers.

You may need to change your security settings on the Mac to allow installation of an app from a non-certified location: (on the mac got to preferences, security)

                            Once installed I restarted the Mac and cranked up the app which, first time round crashed on me, but second time worked and allowed me to select the XB.

From here plain sailing in scanning for the Dovado and logging in, keep an eye on the IP address as this will be assigned by default via DHCP from the WiFi hub and you’ll need this as well as the port to connect iNavx, MacEnc etc when logged onto the WiFi network. You can always find this on the WiFi hub admin page under connected devices.

Testing again was seamless, all works well and I get my instrument data across the wireless network.

The iPhone apps also work without issue.

Note: Given the IP address is issued via DHCP you may need to scan your wireless network to locate the address that has been assigned to the XB-8000. I use a free app on the iPhone for this, you can link to it here on the app store.

We’ve started publishing our ‘raw’ photos on Instagram and our projects and activities on YouTube, visit our YouTube channel at Sailing Australis

The post Vesper Marine XB-8000 – Installing AIS, GPS, WiFI and VHF splitter appeared first on Just Sail.

Exciting… we caught the bus up to Pittwater on the evening of Friday 30th to start our journey,  pick up our Oceanis 50 and bring it down to its new home in Sydney Harbour.  That evening we ate at the yacht club (PAYC) and stayed on the boat in order to get prepared for a reasonably early departure Saturday morning.

Using Maxsea Timezero (see a short review here) running in a windows virtual machine on my Macbook Pro, I downloaded the weather files, set the planned route and kicked off the weather routing module which also gave me the best departure time for the pending weather.

The winds were N-NE, gradually developing over the Saturday from 10kn to 25kn (just around the time we were schedule to put the boat in its berth) the water was quite lumpy with a large swell, perfect second sea trial weather.

We motored up most of Pittwater, the wind wasn’t working in our favor and we wanted to make hay while the wind was kind, once we hit our easterly heading, both main and genoa were set!!

We covered around 26NM, departed around 1000hrs and arrived at our berth at around 1500hrs

Maxsea did its job well however using the USB based GPS hammered the battery meaning I had to plug it in down below… this lead to my research into alternative GPS options (see my review of the Bad Elf Pro here)

This will lead to the replacement of the e80 with something I can wirelessly send routes to…

  Originally posted 2015-10-31 13:46:24.

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Australis was starting to get a dirty bottom which not only sounds unpleasant, it looks unpleasant and can have a significant impact on the performance of the boat.  If left untreated, it can also start to have a physical impact.

The last time we had this done was about 12 months ago when we had the Australis hauled out for the hull wrap, which you can read about here

Seeing your boat at this type of angle (when not in rough seas) is a little daunting, it took a couple of attempts for the team to get the frame settings right before they successfully pulled the boat out. (winch cover drifting off in the process)

The weight in the back of the boat was apparent.

This was a quick haul out, clean, antifoul, prop-speed and new anode job, out Monday morning, back into the water Wednesday morning.

Inspecting the undersides, you can see the barnacle growth, interestingly the through hull fittings on the starboard side were completely blocked whereas those on the port side were relatively clear.

The level of growth wasn’t bad, it was worse when we picked the boat up from Pittwater in May (after its upgrade fit out you can read about here) but those klingons clearly didn’t like the local conditions.

The Propspeed was showing sign of accumulated growth, a lesson learned here as I was advised to ensure you run the engine and spin the prop at least once every couple of weeks.

You can also see above the anode has been doing its job.

And the newly applied anode and Propspeed make a big difference…

The newly applied Altex No. 5 will do for another year, next time out of the water we will soda blast back to the base as we have noticed a bit of flaking where previous work did not adhere correctly.

You may recall when we first pulled the boat out for the survey back in 2015, there was some bubbling at the fore edge of the keel, this was caused by an electrical short, in fact, the poor wiring for the Raymarine wind vane at the base of the mast.  The repair they did at the time to this wiring failed again a few months ago.  I did notice some bubbling, too small to require repair but I’m hoping this is now resolved as I have the mast wiring replaced in May.

All in all a job well done, however, we did once again suffer some minor damage, it seems that our efforts to protect the wrap will always mean we’ll be incurring costs to either protect it or patch it, fortunately, the damage on this occasion is to the protective strip we added to the toe rail (actually to protect from fender line rub)

A simple repair, this tape is readily available at the chandlery

Australis was back in her berth as planned, just in time for the heavy winds that once again came in the same afternoon, gusting up to 70 knots.

We’ll keep an eye on the underside for the next 12 months and report back.

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