Category: Cruising

One of many loading sessions involving numerous winched loads up to the onshore 5m deck level. We have lost track of the weight that we have onboarded but there are a few more shipments of this kind to come. So long as a dorade doubles up as a periscope we should be alright.

We have a 450mm trapeze but nowhere to swing to. As the time for last minute tasks begins to expire it’s a question of finding scraps of raw materials to fabricate parts. There was just enough 6mm and 12mm steel bar knocking about on the floor to form the trapeze for the passarelle.         We are part way through making the 25mm steel pin for the transom so we are just missing the bit in the middle, the gangway and wheels.

So we wondered if it were possible, and if it proved to be so, how long it would take a family crew to manage a 60ft yacht and take it from ‘barely coastal’ to circumnavigation readiness? This excludes the many hours of packing up the shore life which eventually became a seriously high pressure job which we currently do 5am-ish to 9pm 7 days a week. We have no idea what day it is because it’s always the same; checking through a project deadline and ticking off tasks every three hours or so – and unlike the IT world this

Leaving the sinking ship…..a laboratory experiment on yacht crews We spent a few days at the Hamble School of Yachting to gain the Sea Safety, Sea Survival and First Aid Certificates required by the ARC. In the pictures we are learning to abandon ship, deploy a liferaft, minimise cold shock, manage a casualty, righting, boarding and maintaining a liferaft, and to put the human body into shutdown for longer term survival. Sea Survival, taught by ex-military specialist John, was excellent. All crew attended and the teenagers found it to be a brilliant and rewarding experience. Admittedly they no longer want

The Ship’s Cat is not going sailing with us and is moving out having packed his belongings. Crew morale will plummet without the ship’s cat chattering away throughout the day. How many other ‘hobbies’ require the total sheding, or shredding, of one’s daily existence. That’s the jobs gone, cars gone, house gone and now the Cat – there is no going back and the months ‘to go’ have slipped rapidly through weeks and now to hours as time becomes ever more compressed!

The more parts that become obsolescent the more we get used to sourcing materials and making replacements. We are forced to learn more about our boat and develop our own parts. In this case the Lewmar 2000 windlass from 1990 required a new friction ring so the search for a suitable plastic to take the load bearing, that was easily machined and had low friction/excellent bearing qualities took us past nylon and delrin to a new material, Acetal. We have plenty spare for further bearing applications but cutting this at sea would be a challenge. Advanced plastics from Bay Plastics

It was some time sgo that we made the cooker fiddles and we always knew that fitting would be another 5 minute boat job, or about 4 boat hours all going well. Drilling the top mounting holes in sheet steel without being able to run any cooling fluid was a nightmare as the cooker cradle heat hardened and all of our HSS CNC bits found it hard going. Then the need to drill at a lower level necessitated the removal of the cooker hobs, microwave and gimballed cradle. We are now trialling cobalt tip drills.          

Cleaning the keel ready for anti-fouling now that we are within our paint window (less than a month until immersion which is the survival time for Trilux 33 out of the water – the joys of aluminium). Everything and everybody get’s covered in blood red splashing about in the toxic red swimming pool as we take care not to contaminate the ground. High pressure washing didn’t cut it so it’s hard labour with scrubbing pads. When this paint dries on you it can only be explained away as a having been a busy night out in the dark without garlic.

We are finally working on deck and sorting out the garage in some late spring sunshine                     And we are onboarding fuel conditioner for 20,000 litres of diesel, a large where’s-this-going tub of hydraulic oil, and Christmas decorations (we are allowing one box of Christmas bits and baubels)           And as part of the Christmas planning we are adding cockpit harness points with a 6 tonne / 15,000 lb working load which should hold a couple of crew with or without extra turkey (pictured with a swiftly