Christmas Update

Now Christmas is over (well mostly anyway) It really is time to start thinking about the coming season. We have some plans afoot. As per the posting earlier, there is some work to do before we launch but nothing too arduous. Easter is quite early in 2010 so we will, hopefully, be delivering to Plymouth over Easter.

The big thing for this season is to get to know Sarah G and also to do the qualifying passages demanded by the entry requirements of the AZAB. This is going to be twice the work for us as we will have different crew on the outward and return legs.

I will probably look to take a week off in June and do some sort of triangle with Matthew, my Brother and Audrey and I will have to do a long passage as part of our regular holiday, currently scheduled for August.

Bargain of the Christmas period was an EPIRB with GPS. I found it on the Mailspeed (no affiliations here) website. It is a posh one with built in GPS but was half price owing to the fact that it was one year into it's five year lifespan. Now all I need to do is find a similar bargain for an AIS transponder and all the expensive electronic expenditure will be done leaving us free to spend money on stuff that really matters.

We will go down to Emsworth on Monday and see how she looks and make sure the engine has survived the trauma of the recent cold weather.

Oh yes, time for another picture methinks! You can see some of the chips in the gelcoat that need repairing in this one.

The other thing to get our attention at the moment is the Aries Windvane. I have been looking at it recently and it is not as badly off as it originally looked. None of it seems to be seized thankfully. Nick Franklin has a web site with some notes on how to refurbish them that talks about the violent things you have to do if the main bearings on the servo shaft are seized. They do not seem to be seized though I am sure they need some attention. We need a new vane but that will be easy enough to make and it needs a thorough clean as well as having the lines replaced. It is a brilliant bit of kit. It weighs a ton and, according to the web site has only about 80 odd parts. We will have to spend a lot of time getting used to it though I am sure.

OT for this thing but a picture of our cat here.

Pictures of the boat

I am putting a couple of pictures here of Sarah G as she stands. That said, she is out the water now and has the mast down as well but I haven't visited since that. Anwyay, boats look better in the water with their masts up.

We also managed to find a bagain EPIRB. This has always been a piece of technology that I have liked the sound of and the opportunity to get a half price one with built in GPS simply could not be turned up.

I have been mentally compiling a list of things to do to get ready, both for the next season and the race in 2011.

Here is a taster of it!

1. Adjust/replace guard wires
2. Repair damaged hole in aft end of mast step
3. Fit and repair catches to cockpit lockers
4. Install EPIRB
5. Aquire and install AIS transponder. GRRR!!
6. Repair scratches and chips in gelcoat
7. Finish winterising engine:
i. change pencil anode
ii. replace primary and secondary fuel filter
iii. check exhaust coupling
iv. probably other stuff as well
8. Check all running rigging on mast while it is down.
9. Clean teak in cockpit.
10. Varnish teak toerail.
11. strip antifoul and apply coppercoat.
12. Valet sails
13. Change zinc anode
14. Ensure that propeller is adequately protected.
15. Replace broken breaker switches on panel.
16. Get her back in the water and get sailing!!

Of course, as is the way with boats, the list will keep growing. In fact:
17. get new longer oars for dinghy.
18. Check for damage to dinghy and repair.
19. Service and fit Aires windvane.

And so it goes on.

Time to knock off now and think about Christmas

Time to start again and a new direction

In true boring blogger fashion, this online diary now has a new direction to follow.

Since the last time a lot has changed and we now have a new home and, in particular a new boat.

Sarah Giddings is a beautiful dark blue Rival 34. As well as now having our dream boat (or as close as it gets anyway) we are also down to enter the 2011 Azores and Back Race starting from Falmouth on 04 June 2011.

This should be a chance to keep a diary of the run up to this auspicious event.

The entry was easy enough but the rules have started to prove a bit onerous. These sorts of race are classified as Offshore Class I by the International Sailing Federation which means you have to comply with a whole raft of rules and such like. Most of this is non contentious and is all good sense. Fundamentally, you have to have a soundly build seaworthy boat that is capable of completing the event in which you are entered.

There is however one bit that is causing me a lot of annoyance and others as well I think. Basically, there has been an update to the ISAF Class I rules which states that the carrying of an AIS transponder is now obligatory rather than merely recommended. While AIS is probably going to be a very good thing and I have been thinking about fitting a receiver I do not feel that sending broadcasts of your speed, course and such like is going to be of much use in the middle of the Atlantic. The expense is considerable with £500 odd for a transponder. Then, there is currently no way for me to display the AIS data on any of my instruments so we are looking at an upgrade of the radar or fitting a new plotter - all of which will cost quite a lot of money :-(

Anyway, I will endeavour to keep updates of how things go here.

At present, Sarah G is laid up at Emsworth and we have a bunch of more mundane work to do.

The big project is to get the antifoul stripped off and coppercoat applied as we had very good experiences with this on Kemara. The zinc anode needs attention, the guard wires need adjusting or some such so that they are not so slack. Finally, we are going to refurbish and fit the Aries windvane that she came with. I hope that is all we have to do this year though.

Time to Upgrade the Boat

We had loved cruising our Hurley 22 round the south coast and she had taught us a lot. I had never really been the owner skipper of a boat before despite having been sailing since the age of 7. Audrey, my wife, learnt nearly all her sailing skills in Kemara bar a couple of charters in the Ionian. We had however become tired of having to dismantle our sleeping accommodation to use the heads, not being able to stand up straight anywhere below. Finaly, a 17 foot waterline makes it just a bit too slow sometimes and we yearned for the extra knot or so and extra comfort afforded by a longer waterline length. Better still, my Brother expressed an interest in taking over Kemara so there would be no trauma of parting with a loved member of the family.

Next, fortune put us in the happy position of moving into my “in laws” house while they moved back to Jamaica and we were able to put our flat on the market and think seriously about what sort of boat would be what we wanted. I have mostly sailed in heavy displacement cruisers and have inherited a keen sense of the aesthetics of a boat. I have successfully passed these on to Audrey. This narrowed down our range of choices. I spent untold hours surfing the various websites looking at Vancouvers, Rustlers, Tradewinds and similar boats. My love of classic lines do not extend to wooden hulls and gaff rigs. Of course, all these boats were outside of the budget we had given ourselves. Once we knew that we would be in a position to actually realise our extension to our yottie dreams my obsessive surfing took on a slightly more definite angle and I stopped looking at the boats that I would get should Mr Camelot grace us with a few of his millions. A couple of moorings away from our Exe mooring was a Rival 34 and we always admired her lines though I knew nothing about these boats. An article a couple of years ago in Yachting Monthly extolled the virtues of the Rival 32 so some more research followed. It looked better and better but the reading I did on the web pointed to the Rival 34 being a preferable choice over the 32. I must say I liked the long counter a lot even if the accommodation was essentially the same. The late great Geoff Pack had sailed on on an Atlantic circuit and the pictures on the Owners Association website showed several ones in places that we really wanted to go to.

Last winter when we laid up Kemara, we managed to meet the owner of the rival near us on the Exe and we had a good chat with him. Predictably perhaps, he was a huge fan of the boats and firmly encouraged us to get one. I liked what I saw below which felt cavernous to us but would also feel impossibly cramped to the owner of a Bavaria 34. We felll back on the dismissive description of such boats as AWBs. At that time there were about 8 Rival 34s on the market and then a couple in the States as well. One, in Portsmouth looked very good for us. She had been reduced in price quite a lot but was not selling owing, I think, to being in relatively poor cosmetic order. We put the flat on the market and even accepted an offer. Of course, it was a good bit less than we might have got a year or so ago but it was enough. Just then, some other dreadful person put an offer in on that Rival and she was lost to us forever! I looked in more detail at the others and was itching to call up the brokers but, knowing what it was like for brokers to show what we called fender kickers – people who dream but do not have the money to buy a boat – kept me from actually picking up the phone.

The Importance of Rowing

On my two most recent cruises I was struck by the fact that I only twice saw someone rowing their tender to and from their boat. Modern inflateables are in many respects so much easier to row than the old floppy floored Avons of my childhood. Of course, small engine technology has advance enormously as well. I find it slightly sad, though, when every boat has the ubiquitous Mariner or Honda clamped to the pushpit. Bring back the oar is a battle cry I should like to hear from St. Peter Port to Fort William.

Rowing is supremely good exercise and will help you to continue sailing beyond the point where others have to swallow their metaphorical anchor. Of course, the style needed to propel a rubber duck through the harbour chop is going to be a far cry from the elegant style demonstrated at the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Care must also be exercised to ensure that rowing does not either worsen or lead to a bad back. Still, there is no doubt that it is a very good way to burn off extra calories.

We yotties should be able to feel a little bit smug that our enjoyment does ot contribute to global warming but this is not strictly the case. Eschewing the outboard will however go a long way to reducing our carbon footrpint as well as benefitting the local envirionment enormously with less noise a fewer nasties being released into the water.

If you are serious about dumping the oversized egg whisk, you will need to give some thought to how you are going to do it. Notwithstanding the benefits of more rigid bottoms, many modern inflateables are ill equipped for rowing. I despair of the piddling little oars manufacturers now give as a token to self sufficiency in the event of you forgetting check that there was enough fuel in the tank. Flat wooden transoms create a lot more drag than the old round tail shape. Of course, the ideal rowing inflateables are the very well made but rather pricey Tinker Tramp and Traveller.

You will get lots of admiration if you do leave the outboard behind and get around harbours the old fashioned way. It is much more in keeping with the spirit of our sport and more fun as well. Even if they don't row themselves, people will admire you for doing so. I look forward to the day when oar makers outnumber outboard stands at the boat shows. Finally, fuelling up the engine with choice food and wine is much pleasanter than buying a few litres of overpriced unleaded at the fuel barge.

© Roger Kynaston, 2007