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All 'decked' out for Christmas |
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Video of s/v Toyot's 2007 Light Display What's not evident from still photos is that the lighting is animated so the colors sweep or scroll up and down the sails in various patterns. To really appreciate it look at the video above. Yours truly and Toyot...
And a few stills at different times in the display.
Some of my videos over on YouTube s/v Toyot's current Christmas display of lights
Toyot's original animated Christmas display
Coverage of the Alexandria Christmas Parade of Lights with a short interview of me and a mention of me winning best in Parade!
The Gaffney's come sailing...
My sail down to see the Tall Ship Gloria from Columbia. She was anchored off Mt Vernon...
Toyot's 2007 trip in the travel lift after haulout for bottom paint and some odds and ends
July 28th video of a sail I took with my Uncle Mike, Aunt Sil, and Mom.
Pop & I sailing
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How did I make that Christmas Display? Well, I didn't save any pictures of when I made the original 'net' sails. They are basically copies of my sails I made several years ago from a plastic garden fencing, a lot like the orange snow fence they use around highways, except in a dark green. It came in a 4 foot by 100 foot roll. So each sail of approximately 8 x 25 feet is made of two pieces of that fastened together with hundreds of wire tires, and the edge reinforced with line. They are raised the same way as the normal sails with the halyards. In 2005 I stripped off all the miniature lights which proved fragile and troublesome and replaced them with larger C7 bulbs. Got a nice reel of 1000' feet of 18 gauge wire with a C7 socket every 12 inches.
The C7's have several advantages, one is that since they are wired in parallel you can cut the runs to any length. They screw in so they don't fall out as did the miniatures in high winds when the 'sails' would whip around. And even if a C7 breaks or somehow comes out the rest of the string will stay lit, again unlike the miniature lights.
Dad spent lots of hours helping with the redo again.
Thanks Pop!
The display is controlled from a PC running below deck. The PC has a digital I/O card in it that provides 48 software controlled 5 volt outputs. This card's ribbon cable is broken out to a series of RJ45's on the box up in the bow, each low voltage cable carries a ground and 5 switched 5 volt outputs. Then up to 10 of these low voltage cables each run to one of the high voltage control boxes on the left. These PC power centers we (Dad & I) disassembled and we added 5 solid state relays to each. They were a handy case to build the control relays into, had breakers etc. already in place
The software looks like a spreadsheet. Basically the columns are time increments and each row represents on control channel. Fill in the right squares and you've got a show!
There is of course more to it than that. Since I don't have a extension cord a few miles long I need a generator to run this 'at sea'. And... The PC doesn't like the dirty power coming out of the generator so there's also a inverter on my boats' house battery bank and the PC runs from that, while a charger for the battery banks feeds them from the generator.
s/v Toyot Toyot, my 1969 Westerly Cirrus. Sail #222 Hull
#9674 Some narratives on the ongoing restoration of your Webmaster's 1969 Cirrus, TOYOT.
VintageSail.com's 'normal' content and links...
Owners & Their Boats I'll be glad to link to your page with photos of
your boat, or email me photos and a description and I'll post them
here. Your Webmaster Mark Matarella's 1969 Westerly Cirrus 22 Mayol, Dahlgren Magnus' Cirrus Suhaili, a 1973 Longbow Ketch A Centaur? I think, Larry Lauer's Lahni, a Westerly Centaur, Dave Barber Second Wind, a Westerly 22 and her restoration The restoration of a Centaur, Levera by Richard Robinson Drinian, a 1974 Berwick and her restoration Shorebird II, Craig Anderson's Warwick from Escanaba, Michigan Ariel, Walt and Nancy and Sophie's Westerly 22 Dasboat, Stephen Ames Centaur Zeeotter, Gerard Versluis's Westerly Dreamer a Pentland of Daytona Beach Florida Links to outside content...
Pop and I on Toyot on the way out of Washington Sailing Marina...
A shot of my new Mainsail, with the Dutchman system. I also added a 55% genoa and CDI roller furling.
Toyot tied up in Oldtown Alexandria, Virginia My Previous Christmas displays on Toyot1999-2000
1998
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