In-Depth, Aluminum Boat Design & Selection, Part IV
By Guest Writer, Colin Speedie
Index
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
What Has Worked So Far—Domestically
What Has Worked So Far—On The Water
Keeping The Water Out
Shoal Draft Cruising
What Has Worked So Far—Domestically
Well, we’ve finally moved aboard and are on our way, and although we haven’t
travelled very far yet, or even in the direction we had initially planned,
it’s a definite relief to be off. This is largely due to the “summer” the
South of Britain has been enjoying—certainly the worst in terms of relentlessly
poor weather in my memory. And even though it’s early days yet, we have
had the chance to evaluate some of the equipment we have chosen for domestic
life aboard, as well as the general layout. After having agonised over
the minutiae for so long in the planning stage, it’s been a little nerve
wracking waiting to see whether we had got it anywhere near right.
Well, it’s good to report that so far it’s far more good than bad. The interior layout works very well, and the saloon is comfortable and airy with lots of natural light and ventilation. The Webasto heating system (in August!) is excellent, and coupled with the insulation makes the boat cosy and warm even when the temperature drops very low. The only condensation we have seen at all comes from the aluminum inner surrounds of the hatches, which is something we knew we’d have to tackle somewhere down the line, especially as winter nears.
As we have a lot of computer equipment aboard for our work (consultancy and photography), when we are in harbour mode we tend to use a lot of amps. But we were determined not to have a diesel generator or to use the main engine for charging when at rest, so we have tried to maximise power creation from renewable sources, whilst at the same time minimising our consumption. And we’re really impressed with our power generation from a combination of wind and solar at this stage.
We have an articulated solar array of 90 watts mounted on our OVNI arch (what a brilliant structure that is) and we have fitted two 48 watt semi-flexible panels on the deck forward of the dodger. Add to this an 80 watt panel that we bring on deck in harbour and orientate towards the sun, and you have a powerful combination which makes a substantial contribution to our day to day needs. The Superwind generator, whilst not the quietest unit of all, has an amazing output—it’s not been unusual to see 10 to 15 amps output when the wind is fresh, although like most of the larger units it is weak below 8 knots of wind. The upshot of it is that we have never once had to run the engine to charge the batteries at rest—so we’re close to our goal.
The Force Ten cooker that was specially ordered at great expense works well, but seems to suffer from small weaknesses that let it down at times. But the oven is great, the burners are powerful, and once we have ironed out the bugs (mainly to do with a temperamental thermocouple) we think it will give a long life of good service. The only really negative thing to say about is that the supports supplied for the gimbals are far too flimsy. John & Phyllis found the same problem with their stove (see this post), and have very kindly sent me the drawings of the ones they had fabricated as replacements, and these are far more substantial. We’ll definitely replace ours this winter.
All in all, we’re very happy indeed with our new home. We’ve still got
a few reservations about the galley layout (linear down the starboard side)
once out on the water, but other than that we’ve few complaints, and we’re
looking forward to getting some real miles under our belt.
Back to Index
What Has Worked So Far—On The Water
Well, now that we’ve had a chance to sail our new home a little, we can give our first impressions on the OVNI as a yacht in her own right, as well as on some of the equipment we have added.
So far our view is overwhelmingly positive. She sails well and is easy to handle with a very comfortable, soft motion. We are still learning how to get the best out of her, but with lots of practice and tweaking it’s coming. Upwind she is reasonably fast, but there is no point in expecting her to sail too close to the wind—any attempt to pinch and the speed drops off dramatically. It is far better to sail her a little bit free and keep the speed, and thus VMG, up. Our choice of a true cutter rig with a yankee instead of a genoa works well and we only lose a little speed in very light airs. But the ease of handling and far more effective sail shape when partially rolled is a big advantage. The strongest breeze we’ve had her out in going upwind has been up to 30 knots, when she handled very well indeed under staysail and triple reefed main.
Off the wind she excels, and is both fast and amazingly stable. As soon as the wind is abaft the beam we’re raising the centreplate, until it’s fully up when running, and by then she is steadily reeling off 8 knots plus. But the best part is how easily this is achieved—she is not at all hard work and doesn’t need driving to maintain a high average speed, the two of us being able to handle her with ease. We’re sure she will prove a relaxing and comfortable passagemaker, well able to keep up high average daily runs.
We have opted for single line reefing led aft, despite some reservations on my part but, with practice, and after swopping most of the blocks for much better Harken gear, we’re finding it a good choice. The only bugbear is with the stackpack mainsail cover, which makes it impossible to see whether the blocks are fully home, or whether there is a bight of cloth trapped awkwardly, which sometimes means going on deck to check, which to some degree negates the whole point of single line reefing. We’re marking all of the lines at the clutches and at the mast so that we have a better idea of what is going on. On the whole I’d prefer a simple lazyjack system so you can see the reef as it is being made and have a separate mainsail cover for use in port.
The deck layout works well and everything falls easily to hand, with the winches in particular being exactly where they should be, close to the helm. The mainsheet set-up is not my favourite, being on a track mounted ahead of the sprayhood, but it works OK. The addition of the Wichard Gyb’Easy has been a great success, slowing the boom effectively on its “slackest” setting, working as a preventer on its tightest—we really like it.
The Windpilot self steering is the simplest and easiest of these gears that I’ve used (I’ve owned boats with an Aries and a Monitor and liked them both); it was steering the boat smoothly and effectively within five minutes of connecting it and it certainly suits the boat. It performs well even in light airs and seems to need far less tweaking than other gears, although some of this may be due to the stability of the boat.
The only area which is taking some time to get used to is handling her under power at close quarters. She has quite high freeboard and with her small plate can be a handful in a crosswind and, compared with most modern fin and spade rudder boats, she has a large turning circle. There is very little propwalk owing to the prop shaft being slightly offset where it is welded to the skeg to facilitate the removal of the shaft, although the fitting of the Kiwiprop has improved matters. Going astern takes me back to long keelers, where the direction she chooses is sometimes a bit of a lottery. In all cases, the answer is to keep some way on and hold your nerve and, as Louise has more of that than me, she does the vast majority of the boat handling these days. We’re getting the hang of her, but today’s tight marinas still fill me with dread.
The overall impression is one of immense strength, which is very reassuring.
Down below in a seaway is uncannily quiet, partially due to the insulation
(a must in our view) but also because there are no creaks and groans. And
there is nothing better than to have confidence in your boat when the going
gets rough and we already have that in spades. So far, so good!
Back to Index
Keeping The Water Out
Having sailed our boat a little, we’ve now embarked upon the finishing-off process. In some cases that means fixing the obvious deficiencies, in others identifying potential problems before they become apparent, and then (hopefully) coming up with the right solutions.
John and Phyllis’s adage of keep the rudder on, the mast up and the water out, is a good one. Well, we’ve always been confident of the first two due to the build quality and strong rig of the OVNI, but the latter has raised some challenges. Nothing desperate that could sink the boat (!), but water has a habit of finding its way in via unexpected places, as we know from bitter experience, and in a modern, shallow-bilged boat, even a few gallons is to be avoided. That amount in really rough conditions can easily find its way to sensitive electrical systems and cause failure, so we’ve taken a serious approach to eliminating any potential source of water ingress.
One of the first things we tackled was putting effective seals around all of the cockpit and stern lockers. This may seem obvious, but the boat had no seals as standard; a somewhat puzzling deficiency on a boat likely to be used offshore. We experimented with a couple of different mouldings before finding one that was perfect for our needs. We then sourced some much more robust and effective locker lid clamps that hold the lids down tight on the seals. As we have no watertight bulkhead aft, any water that could get into the cockpit lockers would find its way to the bilges pretty soon, so we’re glad we’ve cured that.
A common complaint on the OVNI is the positioning of the engine vents on the stern, where any solid water striking the transom could easily find its way below via the ducting into the engine compartment. So we had a cowl made that shields them effectively to deflect any water away from them in all but the worst conditions. And for the really rough stuff we incorporated a slot in the base where a blanking plate can be inserted and fixed in place with an attached marine screw to keep all water from getting to the vents. The engine is still able to draw sufficient air from the casing and bilges to run fine with it in place, but obviously we’ll limit that to emergencies.
The plumbing installation is good in terms of keeping water out of the engine, with a good anti-siphon device on the inlet, and a good swan neck on the exhaust, but we’re currently trying to source a shut-off valve for the exhaust system that we can mount in a way that it can be easily accessed (a real challenge) or perhaps operated remotely using a cable. So far we haven’t found what we want, but we’re still looking.
When we had Pelerin built we specified welded aluminum wave breaks around the two forward hatches, to divert solid water away from the seals. We’ve yet to test these out in earnest, but from previous experience they should do a great job, and eliminate the common problem of leaking seals when solid water goes over the deck. What we didn’t do was have similar wave breaks made for the saloon roof, but we may make some in wood in the future if we think they may be necessary.
The factory made dorade vents on the coachroof are really good, and we have blanking caps for all of them, so they are as good as they can be. As is the swan necked wiring conduit for all of the cables exiting the mast. Both benefit from being part of the welded structure of the deck, and thus far less likely to leak in any case; another plus for aluminum construction. And we still haven’t drilled a single hole in the deck, though we have had to be fairly inventive in some cases.
We’re aiming for the skipper's nirvana if at all possible: bilges that you dust from time to time rather than pump dry, and in this case, every little bit helps!
Reader Comment:
As owner of OVNI 445 No.2, I am interested in your solution for the cockpit lockers...It is on our to-do list as the current lack of seals is not good...We are fabricating a similar vent cover in aluminum; yours looks nice in stainless.
Response:
I sourced our seals from the excellent Seals + Direct here in
the UK (www.sealsdirect.co.uk)...Look
at moulding ETS 58, which makes a good fit on the rim of the lid base,
and should only need some Sikaflex or similar material to finish the seal
on the tight corners...The stainless vent is fine, and the finish is good,
but as is always the case with aluminum, we had to fit it with care to
avoid corrosion, so your approach in alloy may well be the best one.
Back to Index
Shoal Draft Cruising
On the face of it, one of the main attractions of the OVNI range is their shoal draft and beachability. We’ve all seen the photos: parked on some deserted islet with an impossibly azure sea far in the background. The theory looks enticing, but how far does it reflect reality? Undoubtedly, it can be done, and indeed these boats are designed to dry out, but how often will they do just that?
Well, undoubtedly it depends on where you are—it’s probably not a great feature in an area of deep water and few beaches. And maybe that’s part of the reason we haven’t dried out in anger yet—we simply haven’t been in the right place. The one time that we really could have used that ability this season was when our feathering prop got damaged in Ireland. But with little forward drive and no astern, and confronted with a sea of the softest mud with not a hard patch in it, that was not an option.
But we have thought about it and planned for it. And probably after we’ve dried out a few times we’ll feel much more confident, but at the moment some doubts persist. The first being that (ideally) we’d want to know the state of the bottom where we were going to dry out, just to be certain that there are no dangers or obstacles lurking there. The second would be the need for calm conditions and little traffic—no bouncing 12 tonnes up and down on a hard packed bottom if the wind comes onshore, or some maniac in a speedboat is charging around making a wake. But we did see another OVNI on the beach this summer changing his anodes, and as they had probably saved the best part of £500 by not hauling out at a yard, we’ll definitely be doing so—it’s only a case of where and when.
But being able to take the ground isn’t the only advantage—the OVNIs have true shoal draft, and that can be a real benefit. Our old boat drew 7ft, and so when the wind got up we would generally get in as close to shore as we dared to anchor to gain the maximum shelter from the windward shore, but often times we would still be well out and in the full strength of the wind. On Pelerin, with our plate and rudder up, we have been able to get far closer in, which has not only given us much better protection from the wind and sea (and thus more comfort), but also being inshore of other boats diminishes the risk of being dragged down on to. It also means a more horizontal pull on our anchor cable, which is all to the good.
Having a lifting keel encourages exploration, too. When in water where we think we might touch the bottom, we simply put the keel lever on the hydraulic pump in the ‘up’ position, then if the board does touch, it just lifts, which takes a lot of the jitters out of creek crawling. And on two occasions we were able to get into shelter in advance of bad weather by being able to reduce our draft to the minimum, where before we’d have been waiting for the tide to rise for several hours to get in, by which stage it might have become impossible.
And on the night when the visitors' mooring we had been directed on to
dragged due to some unforeseen problem at seabed level, the lifting keel
really proved its worth. As is the law of Murphy this happened in the remote
arm of a river at 0400 just as the rain had set in and the wind was beginning
to rise, and the first we knew was the bump of contact with the boat astern
of us. There was no time to waste, so we soon had the engine fired up,
got ourselves clear of the other boat and dropped the mooring. The river
was full of moored boats, so we motored quietly round in circles while
we gathered our wits and switched all of our navigation gear on, which
is when the plotter failed—Murphy again. The one possible option to anchor
looked to be a bight outside the moorings that we’d looked at on arrival
but discounted as being too shallow at low tide. So, feeling our way in
with the plate ‘in neutral’, we went in as far as we could, dropped our
hook, pumped up the plate and rudder and, happily, settled down to a quiet
night. At low water in the morning we had around 1ft of water under us,
and more swinging room than we had expected. So next time, we’ll trust
our own gear, make more use of our shoal draft and stay autonomous—as
we should have done in the first place.
Back to Index