Back on Board
posted by John & Phyllis
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Our last extended cruise ended in the fall of 2003 when John and I hauled Morgan’s Cloud in Maine so that we could spend the winter at our house in Bermuda. We had a big decision to make: If we wanted to refit Morgan’s Cloud and keep on cruising, the house would have to be sold. But the house was a little piece of paradise on the water in Bermuda—not something we could afford to replace if we decided later that we had made the wrong choice.
After much agonizing, we decided to continue cruising and so we sold the house in the spring of 2004, moved into a condo with John’s mom, and started in on what we thought would be a one year refit of Morgan’s Cloud.
It is now the spring of 2008 and we have finally moved back on the boat, three years later than we expected. As most of you know, refit woes weren’t the only thing slowing us down, though we had enough of those. Family illness was also big on our agenda.
I have to admit there were many times during the past three years when we questioned whether we would ever get back on the boat. Though two short cruises—one to Newfoundland in 2005 and one to Maine in 2007—kept the goal fresh in our minds, the main thing we needed was perseverance.
Phyllis looking down on Morgan's Cloud anchored at Valley Cove, Somes Sound, Maine.
So here we are, living on the boat and cruising Maine—the truck we bought for the refit up for sale, our cabin in Nova Scotia (welcome haven during the last three years) well looked after by friends—working out the kinks that always appear after a major refit. And looking forward so very much to the people we hope to meet, the friends we hope to see again, the places we want to revisit and the new places we want to explore.
The moral of this story? Yes, we are ‘fortunate’ to go cruising but we aren’t ‘lucky’ (drives me crazy when people say that!). We’ve made some difficult decisions, given up some shore-based comforts, and worked very hard to make it happen. You can too if you want.
Labels: Rants and Musings
Risk Management, Hurricanes
posted by John & Phyllis
Web Site
Question, received July 11, 2008 [edited for brevity]: We’re in St. John’s, Newfoundland, waiting to cross to Scotland. We’re just about ready to go and the weather forcast is good for leaving. However, hurricane Bertha is just south of Bermuda. The current forecast is for her to weaken to 55 knots within four to five days, and stay well south of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
It seems possible for us to go now and if Bertha speeds up and heads northeast we could head for the Labrador Sea to get out of her way. Would you consider leaving a stupid choice to make?
Answer [with some changes and additions after the fact]: This is a tough decision, particularly since the weather, aside from Bertha, looks very good to head east and the summer is marching on with an eve-increasing chance of hurricanes. If I was in St. John’s in Morgan’s Cloud and absolutely had to get to Europe this year would I risk going? Perhaps, but as a general rule I don’t run with the bulls and I don’t go to sea in the same ocean as a hurricane. To me, the downside risk of both activities outweigh any benefits.
If I was heading for Greenland I would go but watch Bertha very carefully and divert for Labrador if she did something unexpected. However, on a course for Scotland you won’t realistically have that option after the first day or so.
Hurricane prediction is an inexact science at best. There is always a chance that a hurricane will do something completely unpredicted, particularly when it goes extra-tropical as it moves north past Nova Scotia. It, or an extra-tropical storm it spawns, could also easily accelerate to 25 or even 40 knots and overtake you no matter what you do. Admittedly, with the current jet stream position I’m guessing that Bertha will probably eventually die out north of Bermuda, but can you afford to take the risk of that being wrong? Only you can say. And before deciding, you need to ask yourself if you, your crew and your boat are capable of surviving storm force winds for several days.
Additional Thoughts: As hurricane seasons have got longer with more frequent and intense storms that come further north earlier, it is getting more and more difficult to completely avoid going to sea with a hurricane around and still make voyages.
However, there are two things voyagers can do:
1). Leave for west to east Atlantic crossings by the end of June.
2). Be prepared to scrap the entire plan of making the crossing if stopped from leaving by a series of hurricanes, and go the next year, but earlier.
Electrical systems and aluminium yachts
posted by Colin Speedie
Web Site
Two green lights and all's well
All of the yachts I have sailed over the last twenty years have been simple boats with fairly minimal electrical equipment. Not one of them (even up to 80ft) had an autopilot – sail training vessels often don’t, as they are set up to be sailed “handraulically” as we say over here.
So when we approached the planning for Pèlerin, we were mindful of our desire to have a simple boat, yet at the same time capable of meeting our wish for self-sufficiency at sea or in harbour. Another factor also nagged away in the back of our minds – the risks of electrolysis with aluminium, a subject upon which we’d heard a great deal of negative comment.
There is no doubt that there are risks inherent when mixing electricity and a material like aluminium, but we reasoned that Alubat have built thousands of OVNI’s over the last thirty years, and we’ve never heard of one disappearing! So we did our homework, and made a few changes, and trusted the builders to do the rest. Now that we have her afloat and working, we can make some initial comments on what we have found.
The first thing is that the wiring installation has been done with great care at the factory. OVNI’s, like most alloy yachts have a two wire insulated wiring system, which means that there is no earth to the engine or hull as in a more conventional GRP boat. Each wire goes out and returns to the positive and negative sides of the battery bank. As a result, extra care has to be taken to ensure that there can be no grounding to the structure of the boat that would set up a galvanic circuit. Every OVNI is fitted with a leak meter, which can be used to make a daily check that no stray currents are making their way to ground and thus compromising the boat. If when tested, there is any sign of a leak from either the positive or the negative side it should be possible to identify which circuit is at fault by working through every switch on the panel in turn to identify the circuit, and then setting about finding the leak itself wherever it is in the wiring.
This was very useful when it came to wiring up the new electronics such as the autopilot and the radar, as after each item was fitted the leak test could be conducted to ensure that no fault existed as a result. All electronic units had to be isolated from the hull structure during installation, once again to avoid any chance of leaks to the boats structure. We did, in fact, have a small problem during installation, which was traced back to a faulty AIS unit and rectified, so the leak meter is a vital component on this type of boat.
Another area which we approached with caution was the shore power circuit. Having heard of (and seen) the effects of galvanic corrosion on boats kept in some marinas, we were particularly aware that this was an area for concern for us. Not that we intend to base Pèlerin in a marina, but who knows where we may decide to overwinter her at times. We finally opted to fit an isolation transformer, a device that it is virtually unknown in Britain, at least, but by all accounts is common in the USA, and should be fitted to all metal boats, not just aluminium. Of course, we may never know just how effective the transformer is – if it’s working then we should see no problems, and I don’t suppose we shall turn it off to find out otherwise! It is a heavy and costly item, though, so we hope that it will prove its worth.
So far we are well pleased with our new home. Not that we haven’t had our share of glitches, but these have been overcome with support from the Agents. We have had her out in a maximum of 30 knots of wind so far, when she was stable, comfortable and easy to handle, so we’re looking forward to our first decent passage in her very soon, when we’ll be able to report back in far greater detail on our impressions.
[This post is part of a continuing series on the selection, building, and fitting out of an aluminum Ovni 345 by guest writer and very experienced offshore sailor Colin Speedie. You can read earlier posts in this series by clicking here and scrolling down to Colin's posts.
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Labels: Boats and Design, Equipment
Hard Dodgers, Another Option
posted by John & Phyllis
Web Site
Very experienced live aboard voyagers Lane and Kay Finley sent along a detailed description of their hard dodger, complete with photographs. The advantage of theirs over ours is that it is all hard with glass windows; much stronger and pretty much maintenance free. On the other hand, I like the larger expanse of window, fewer blind spots and curved shape of ours. Just goes to show that everything on a boat is a compromise.
Many thanks to the Finleys for sharing the information below:
"In the end, we designed and built our own hard top, using foam-cored fiberglass construction to achieve strength and lightness. The finished project is strong, safe to stand on, gives excellent visibility through GLASS, doesn’t ruin the lines of the boat and provides amazing protection from the weather.
Our navigation electronics now live under the hard top where they are protected from the elements and much more user friendly. We have also noticed that we get less ‘salt air’ inside the cabin.
Before undertaking this project, we took pictures of dozens of hard tops on boats that we saw sailing in New Zealand waters. The New Zealanders are well aware of the benefits of hard tops and you can see all sorts of creative designs in every port.
Since we consider our Annapolis 44 to have fairly elegant lines we were very cautious to adhere to a complementary design. After many drafts, we finally drew the final design to scale and then lofted the plans on our garage floor. We built the mould out of MDF plywood with inserts for the windows so that the 10mm safety glass would end up being set-in against a solid fiberglass lip and be flush with the exterior surface of the hard top.
This was a ‘female’ mould, so the interior surface was sanded smooth and then waxed to prevent the fiberglass resins from sticking to the mould. We laid up the required layers of fiberglass cloth and resin in the mould, and then placed the foam core (30mm medium density) over the fiberglass layers. At this point we laid up more fiberglass to the design specifications and ‘sandwiched’ the foam in place.
High Modulus, a composite engineering company in Auckland, made some recommendations for the engineering specifications.
The finished product, which also includes a dome light and reading lights in the ceiling, was fibreglassed in place and we re-painted the deck to finish it off. It has proven to be an excellent addition to the boat and cost approximately US$3000 in materials to build. Of course that does not count our labour. However, it was an interesting winter project and one that we are very proud of.
Check out Lane and Kay’s web site and their new video on cruising New Zealand due out in August.
Labels: Maintenance and Refit
Phyllis looking down on Morgan's Cloud anchored at Valley Cove, Somes Sound, Maine.
