Subject: R-27/OB Video/photos - Maiden Voyage to PNW - Edmonds to Mystery Bay-Marrowstone Island to Port Townsend/Port Hudson and Return transiting Portage Canal both ways.
The first leg of our Maiden voyage has been completed with success. 😀
There were 4 people onboard (1st Mate, Son, grandson and me, Oh and a 5th person, our 6 yr old Wire Hair Fox Terrier Jake).
I suspect we also had several hundred pounds of gear stowed away in various places along with 1st Mate's full size wheel chair stowed easily in the cockpits center locker; its large wheels removed and stowed with the folded chair to make its transport easier and to take up less space. Even with the chair stowed in this locker there was tons of remaining space. 🙂 1st Mate's gear had been packed in a large oblong duffle-bag-like holder (it was big and heavy) and it stowed quite easily in the cockpit's starboard locker with little room remaining. My son and grandson had a ton of camping gear with them as they were intending to use tent and camping gear when on Morrowstone Island at friends property.
We had a full 40 gallon fresh water tank, zero gallons in holding tank, 5 gallons in Webasto diesel fuel tank and 150 gallons of fuel to start off with.
With all the above 'stuff' onboard the boat continued to list slightly to port at dockside, just as it did/does with close to empty tanks and no gear and two adults onboard; one on port and the other on starboard.
Note for any interested parties wanting to know weight of the R-27/OB with kicker motor - John Livingston was wanting to know this weight for some reason.: When our boat was delivered and lifted to the water the lift scale pegged the boat's weight at 8,300 lbs.... and interestingly enough the next day when RT wanted to haul it back out to examine something on the hull it weighed just over 8,000 lbs....... very weird as to why the difference.... maybe a wet hull makes the boat lighter in some weird way :lol:
For our outboard voyage the wind was at maybe 3 mph, water was calm/flat with hardly a trace of chop and swells were pretty much absent. Tide was not strong and was with us at times and against us at times. Visibility was a good 10 miles and we had sun and few clouds.
For the first leg of the voyage the boat's speed was moderated (engine break in advise) between 12 to 38 mph with 25 mph being the best for me noting the boat was brand new. I reserve higher speeds for when I'm more familiar with the boat's speed behaviors.
First let me say unequivocally, that this R-27/OB is absolutely rock solid at 15 to 38 mph and in fact its mpg improved by some 0.3 when going from 20 mph to around 30 mph..... which is something that caught me by surprise. 😱
The boat's bow-up attitude never bothered me at all and IMO was never an issue for me. At lower speeds I tended to sit while at the higher speed, for better forward view, I stood with left leg on the fold out bar step and right leg on the liner's molded step which left about 6" between my head and the roof line.
I noted that at around 10 to 12 mph the water slapping on the hull is quite noisy. This sound goes away fairly abruptly once speed picks up above 12 mph.
The Yamaha throttle lever is very stiff and not easily moved. This is good and bad. Kenny Marrs showed me how he holds the lever. Don't hold the lever at the top. Hold it's stem/lever and have the inside part of the right hand resting on the control box at base of lever. This provides a fulcrum from which to move the lever back and forth and to better find the neutral position. It takes a bit of practice to operate the throttle lever in this way and I found Kenny's advice good and helpful.
Oh.... and did I say how sweet this boat is.... it's awesome and hopefully RT's Kenny Marrs will not be upset with me by saying it's Kenny's favorite RT boat model. 😎
I tended to use the Autopilo's Heading feature for longish straight stretches with the occasional 1º adjustments at times. I would have configured a 'Safe Course' on the chartplotter but having mistakenly left my Garmin G2 Vision card in my now long gone traded-in R-21EC's chartplotter (darn it - and this will cost me $250 for making that stupid mistake - BTW, I'm told RT keeps these cards in stock).
The most harrowing part of the trip was navigating into Kilisut Harbor. Geeeesh.... what a tortuous weaving task it was with very shallow waters. Grandson was amused with the name of the small island to our Port side as we entered - Rat Island (48.086355, -122.736006). :lol: My son kind of freaked out a bit (told me later he did) thinking we were going aground several times. I placed faith in my Garmin depth reading and chart display but the low depth alarm did sound several times which is what made my son concerned for me and the boat. No one was yelling at me which was good as that sort of behavior doesn't make it any less harrowing for me. I dropped off my Son and Grandson at the Mystery Bay State Park's dock with ease. There was a R-31 sitting at the dock as well 😱 with 4 guys having a very merry time in the cockpit -- they looked as if they were fishermen.... but don't know.... we waved to each other as we moved of to exit Kilisut Harbour and into Port Townsend Bay.
As we exited Kilisut Harbor leaving the military Indian Island Naval Magazine (a guarded facility as is much of Indian Island) to our port it was obvious a westerly wind had developed since we were at the same point less than an hour ago. I figured it was a good 20 mph wind and the waves were hitting my port bow frequently. I pointed the boat's bow more into the waves making my direct course to Port Townsend/Port Hudson off some but this gave a better ride. I brought the boat's speed down to around 8 to 10 mph and that felt comfortable. We continued this way over to the Port Townsend coastal area. The Port Townsend-Coupeville Ferry sighting gave me a good land sighting for where Port Hudson was.
OK.... now this is the 'fun' part (if some might call it fun - I don't).
As we entered Port Hudson and looking for my reserved slip #11 I had to contend with a 20 mph westerly wind and the #11 slip I had been designated was on the lea side. Every time I approached this slip the wind was so strong that as I slowed to get alongside the dock finger (stern in as I wanted a starboard tie in order to safely get my 1st Mate's wheel chair off the boat and for 1st mate to more easily get off the boat via the rear platform/door), the strong wind blew me away from the dock finger.... bloody annoying as I was doing all this solo. In the end I gave up trying to stern in for a starboard tie up and decided to go bow in with a port side tie. I tried once but again I had to abandon it as I kept being blown away from the dock finger as I got close to it. After several failed attempts at docking several fellow boaters arrived at the #11 slip and yelled out if I needed help. You bet I said. I got the boat's bow in and nudged it to the dock side and the dock aids grabbed my port side bow line and held onto it while I had the F30 turned to starboard and applied some rpms. This forced the stern over to the dock side and a dock aid grabbed my stern line and both bow and stern lines were made secure with the boat now nicely secured/hugging the dock. That bloody westerly wind would make it nigh impossible for me to dock safely had it not been the help received from the friendly boaters. When I jumped off the boat and shook several hands they told me I was not the only one to have issues docking as many other had the same experience prior to my arrival. This made me feel a bit better and less embarrassed.
BTW... with the boat tied up I wanted to know just how much force the wind was placing on the boat. As the boat was moved away from the dock side by the wind and with the lines stretched out to their fullest, I tried manually pulling the boat back to along side the dock. I have to say it was extremely difficult. The side force on the port side of the boat must have been very high. The R-27/OB has little side cross sectional area compared to much larger boats so for a larger boat this kind of wind must have been huge making docking for them much harder than for my R-27/OB.
I will think more than twice when making Port Hudson my safe harbor when there's a strong westerly wind. Also, I suspect they also get strong southerly winds at times too.
We ended the day having a very enjoyable Crab Risotto at the Port Huson's Pub-like restaurant --- with me downing a large glass of beer in short order. :lol:
The temp was chilly so I had a chance to turn on the Webasto heater.... by golly, it churns out a lot of heat. 1st Mate was very happy with that.
I had my GoPro mounted in front of the helm and slightly off to starboard pointing forward. I had a large SD card 128GB installed and I simply set Video on and let it go for much of the voyage. It captured several 4 GB video files which I found interesting but will likely post edit to make smaller segments and upload them to my iCloud later, along with some photos for others to view/download as they wish.
I have installed a Rite Fill flow meter in the raw water line leading to the head that measures/records gallons sent to the head for flushing. It now reads 6.23 gallons. :roll:
There were two issues that bugged me.
1) My Garmin was showing I had some number of fuel gallons remaining (and was less than 150) yet my Yamaha display was showing I had a full tank. I must figure out what was causing this. I believed the Garmin readout as when Kenny Marrs filled my fuel tank we set it to be 145 gallons for good measure.
2) The aft bilge area seem to get a lot more water than I was comfortable with, and when using manual to operate it no water was being pumped overboard. The pump simply spat a stream of water back into the bilge. This aspect alarmed me. I got down close to the aft-most bilge pump to examine things and found the rotating cap was not tightened/turned clockwise enough. Once I corrected this by pushing down on the cap and turning it clockwise the pump operated properly and pumped the bilge water overboard nicely and quickly. The question remains, why so much water was there in the first place. It was practically dry went we set off from Edmonds. Was a lot of water getting into the cockpit when running at speed ? .... dunno.
Later....
The first leg of our Maiden voyage has been completed with success. 😀
There were 4 people onboard (1st Mate, Son, grandson and me, Oh and a 5th person, our 6 yr old Wire Hair Fox Terrier Jake).
I suspect we also had several hundred pounds of gear stowed away in various places along with 1st Mate's full size wheel chair stowed easily in the cockpits center locker; its large wheels removed and stowed with the folded chair to make its transport easier and to take up less space. Even with the chair stowed in this locker there was tons of remaining space. 🙂 1st Mate's gear had been packed in a large oblong duffle-bag-like holder (it was big and heavy) and it stowed quite easily in the cockpit's starboard locker with little room remaining. My son and grandson had a ton of camping gear with them as they were intending to use tent and camping gear when on Morrowstone Island at friends property.
We had a full 40 gallon fresh water tank, zero gallons in holding tank, 5 gallons in Webasto diesel fuel tank and 150 gallons of fuel to start off with.
With all the above 'stuff' onboard the boat continued to list slightly to port at dockside, just as it did/does with close to empty tanks and no gear and two adults onboard; one on port and the other on starboard.
Note for any interested parties wanting to know weight of the R-27/OB with kicker motor - John Livingston was wanting to know this weight for some reason.: When our boat was delivered and lifted to the water the lift scale pegged the boat's weight at 8,300 lbs.... and interestingly enough the next day when RT wanted to haul it back out to examine something on the hull it weighed just over 8,000 lbs....... very weird as to why the difference.... maybe a wet hull makes the boat lighter in some weird way :lol:
For our outboard voyage the wind was at maybe 3 mph, water was calm/flat with hardly a trace of chop and swells were pretty much absent. Tide was not strong and was with us at times and against us at times. Visibility was a good 10 miles and we had sun and few clouds.
For the first leg of the voyage the boat's speed was moderated (engine break in advise) between 12 to 38 mph with 25 mph being the best for me noting the boat was brand new. I reserve higher speeds for when I'm more familiar with the boat's speed behaviors.
First let me say unequivocally, that this R-27/OB is absolutely rock solid at 15 to 38 mph and in fact its mpg improved by some 0.3 when going from 20 mph to around 30 mph..... which is something that caught me by surprise. 😱
The boat's bow-up attitude never bothered me at all and IMO was never an issue for me. At lower speeds I tended to sit while at the higher speed, for better forward view, I stood with left leg on the fold out bar step and right leg on the liner's molded step which left about 6" between my head and the roof line.
I noted that at around 10 to 12 mph the water slapping on the hull is quite noisy. This sound goes away fairly abruptly once speed picks up above 12 mph.
The Yamaha throttle lever is very stiff and not easily moved. This is good and bad. Kenny Marrs showed me how he holds the lever. Don't hold the lever at the top. Hold it's stem/lever and have the inside part of the right hand resting on the control box at base of lever. This provides a fulcrum from which to move the lever back and forth and to better find the neutral position. It takes a bit of practice to operate the throttle lever in this way and I found Kenny's advice good and helpful.
Oh.... and did I say how sweet this boat is.... it's awesome and hopefully RT's Kenny Marrs will not be upset with me by saying it's Kenny's favorite RT boat model. 😎
I tended to use the Autopilo's Heading feature for longish straight stretches with the occasional 1º adjustments at times. I would have configured a 'Safe Course' on the chartplotter but having mistakenly left my Garmin G2 Vision card in my now long gone traded-in R-21EC's chartplotter (darn it - and this will cost me $250 for making that stupid mistake - BTW, I'm told RT keeps these cards in stock).
The most harrowing part of the trip was navigating into Kilisut Harbor. Geeeesh.... what a tortuous weaving task it was with very shallow waters. Grandson was amused with the name of the small island to our Port side as we entered - Rat Island (48.086355, -122.736006). :lol: My son kind of freaked out a bit (told me later he did) thinking we were going aground several times. I placed faith in my Garmin depth reading and chart display but the low depth alarm did sound several times which is what made my son concerned for me and the boat. No one was yelling at me which was good as that sort of behavior doesn't make it any less harrowing for me. I dropped off my Son and Grandson at the Mystery Bay State Park's dock with ease. There was a R-31 sitting at the dock as well 😱 with 4 guys having a very merry time in the cockpit -- they looked as if they were fishermen.... but don't know.... we waved to each other as we moved of to exit Kilisut Harbour and into Port Townsend Bay.
As we exited Kilisut Harbor leaving the military Indian Island Naval Magazine (a guarded facility as is much of Indian Island) to our port it was obvious a westerly wind had developed since we were at the same point less than an hour ago. I figured it was a good 20 mph wind and the waves were hitting my port bow frequently. I pointed the boat's bow more into the waves making my direct course to Port Townsend/Port Hudson off some but this gave a better ride. I brought the boat's speed down to around 8 to 10 mph and that felt comfortable. We continued this way over to the Port Townsend coastal area. The Port Townsend-Coupeville Ferry sighting gave me a good land sighting for where Port Hudson was.
OK.... now this is the 'fun' part (if some might call it fun - I don't).
As we entered Port Hudson and looking for my reserved slip #11 I had to contend with a 20 mph westerly wind and the #11 slip I had been designated was on the lea side. Every time I approached this slip the wind was so strong that as I slowed to get alongside the dock finger (stern in as I wanted a starboard tie in order to safely get my 1st Mate's wheel chair off the boat and for 1st mate to more easily get off the boat via the rear platform/door), the strong wind blew me away from the dock finger.... bloody annoying as I was doing all this solo. In the end I gave up trying to stern in for a starboard tie up and decided to go bow in with a port side tie. I tried once but again I had to abandon it as I kept being blown away from the dock finger as I got close to it. After several failed attempts at docking several fellow boaters arrived at the #11 slip and yelled out if I needed help. You bet I said. I got the boat's bow in and nudged it to the dock side and the dock aids grabbed my port side bow line and held onto it while I had the F30 turned to starboard and applied some rpms. This forced the stern over to the dock side and a dock aid grabbed my stern line and both bow and stern lines were made secure with the boat now nicely secured/hugging the dock. That bloody westerly wind would make it nigh impossible for me to dock safely had it not been the help received from the friendly boaters. When I jumped off the boat and shook several hands they told me I was not the only one to have issues docking as many other had the same experience prior to my arrival. This made me feel a bit better and less embarrassed.
BTW... with the boat tied up I wanted to know just how much force the wind was placing on the boat. As the boat was moved away from the dock side by the wind and with the lines stretched out to their fullest, I tried manually pulling the boat back to along side the dock. I have to say it was extremely difficult. The side force on the port side of the boat must have been very high. The R-27/OB has little side cross sectional area compared to much larger boats so for a larger boat this kind of wind must have been huge making docking for them much harder than for my R-27/OB.
I will think more than twice when making Port Hudson my safe harbor when there's a strong westerly wind. Also, I suspect they also get strong southerly winds at times too.
We ended the day having a very enjoyable Crab Risotto at the Port Huson's Pub-like restaurant --- with me downing a large glass of beer in short order. :lol:
The temp was chilly so I had a chance to turn on the Webasto heater.... by golly, it churns out a lot of heat. 1st Mate was very happy with that.
I had my GoPro mounted in front of the helm and slightly off to starboard pointing forward. I had a large SD card 128GB installed and I simply set Video on and let it go for much of the voyage. It captured several 4 GB video files which I found interesting but will likely post edit to make smaller segments and upload them to my iCloud later, along with some photos for others to view/download as they wish.
I have installed a Rite Fill flow meter in the raw water line leading to the head that measures/records gallons sent to the head for flushing. It now reads 6.23 gallons. :roll:
There were two issues that bugged me.
1) My Garmin was showing I had some number of fuel gallons remaining (and was less than 150) yet my Yamaha display was showing I had a full tank. I must figure out what was causing this. I believed the Garmin readout as when Kenny Marrs filled my fuel tank we set it to be 145 gallons for good measure.
2) The aft bilge area seem to get a lot more water than I was comfortable with, and when using manual to operate it no water was being pumped overboard. The pump simply spat a stream of water back into the bilge. This aspect alarmed me. I got down close to the aft-most bilge pump to examine things and found the rotating cap was not tightened/turned clockwise enough. Once I corrected this by pushing down on the cap and turning it clockwise the pump operated properly and pumped the bilge water overboard nicely and quickly. The question remains, why so much water was there in the first place. It was practically dry went we set off from Edmonds. Was a lot of water getting into the cockpit when running at speed ? .... dunno.
Later....
