wind sensor working… now time for a sail

Well it's working now! The wind sensor that is. And I'm very pleased with it.

There was one difficulty, and that was threading the wire down the inside of the mast. My idea was to attach a screw to some whipping twine and drop that, then attach the cable and pull it through.

Helen was at the bottom of the mast trying to hear how far down the mast it got. It never got to the bottom, that's for sure. 

So then I tried taping a screw on the wire itself and dropping that. With a lot of jiggling it ended up at the bottom of the mast and then I could solder the connections and route the wire though to the display.
Then we needed to calibrate the sensor. So this time Helen went up the mast and I touched the relevant wires together and hey presto… we had a working wind sensor.

This final step we did before going out for a sail.

The winds were light -- 9-12 knots but enabled us to get very close to across the bay and back. A really enjoyable sail.

When we got to the turning point, we hove-to for lunch (hence the tiller tied to starboard).


Elisabeth came with us, and enjoyed the sail too.

With slightly stronger winds maybe we can get past Cape Pyla in a morning. We'll have to see how having a wind sensor improves our sailing.

I realised that just having that sensor helped my confidence. Although I've had Liza for just over a year now, the way a twin keel boat sails is really quite different and some things I am still getting used to.




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