Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Practical Boat Owner

To receive the editor’s monthly email newsletter, sign up on our website: www.pbo.co.uk Addressing a fundamental need You were right. The many of you, that is, who after visiting our last project boat Hantu Biru at her various boat show appearances, commented ‘you’ll miss her when she’s gone’. Ben Meakins and I lasted about five minutes before looking around for another project, cooking up our latest venture in a few bleak winter afternoons and sessions bouncing emails halfway around the world. The result is now in our garage/workshop, a 20ft plywood gaffer very much in kit form at present. You’ll find the full story on pages 26 to 29, but in short she’s based on an Essex smack, designed by an Englishman who now lives in Australia, comes as a…

PRACTICAL Working on the keel ■ The first task for the new project boat: levelling up the keel and preparing it for the first frames Plus ■ Kiwigrip – preparation, application and in use ■ Solid fuel heating ■ Removing reluctant studs ■ Building a boat, part one TESTED Handheld VHFs ■ We test the latest units for range and ease of usage AIS installation ■ Choosing and fitting a Class B transponder BOATS Corvette 32 ■ ‘Trawler-style’ motor-cruiser tested An Arctic role ■ Talking cold climes with more production-boat adventurers SEAMANSHIP Tidal coefficients ■ Can ‘going French’ help with your tidal calculations? CRUISING Cruising the Western Isles ■ The stirring sailing waters of this beautiful Scottish island chain PLUS Medical emergencies ■ Dealing with dramas on the water Contents…

Mad about the boat Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft) Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in Essex I’m elated, ecstatic, bursting with pride at the amazing response to my first-ever proper practical article published in last month’s PBO. For as far as I can tell it seems to have passed off without any major recriminations, consequences, legal action or personal injury. Result. Of course, I may be jumping the gun, cos as I write last month’s mag has only been out one day, and it may be that you haven’t made it to page 94 yet. But early signs look promising. Indeed, I’m so encouraged by the total lack of comment about how two friends, Mark Berry and…

Judging by the number of intrepid longdistance sailors I seem to bump into these days, chasing distant horizons in standard GRP production boats is catching on fast. As ‘off the shelf’ yachts get ever more capable, larger, more comfortable and – above all – cheaper, ever more sailors head off into the distance. Here’s just one example. I recently pitched up at a party near Dinard in Brittany thrown by a friend, Mike Johnson, who owns a Hunter Duette 23 twin-keeler. Of course, he doesn’t cross oceans in her – he sails her on the Rance and potters along the coast. Amongst fellow guests at the party I met a couple called Neville and Glenys Howarth, who had just popped over to see their old friend. Being naturally inquisitive, I…

Q I have two Maxwell 26 ST (self-tailing) winches for my headsail sheets. The sheets measure 13mm (they’re 15 years old, but still look OK), and the winches are suitable for sheets between 10-16mm, according to the specifications. The self-tailing ring holds/grips the rope OK when stationary, but when I start winching the rope pushes itself out of the ring, starting from where the rope leaves it (the tail end of the sheet) until it’s fully out of the ring and starts to slip. This means you can never winch with both hands as you always need one hand to keep a bit of tension on the sheet tail to keep it in the self-tailing ring. Do you know what’s causing this? Ludo van Senten Netherlands MIKE COATES REPLIES: If…

SEA SAFETY Keith Colwell is RNLI Community Safety Manager and author of the RYA Sea Survival Handbook BOAT BUYING David Harding is a regular contributor to PBO: his photo archive is at www.sailingscenes.co.uk CRUISING Stuart Carruthers is the RYA Cruising Manager and has sailed extensively SAILS Ian Brown of the International OneSails loft group is an expert on sails MASTS & RIGS Mike Coates worked in the spar and rigging business for many years SURVEY AND CORROSION Colin Brown runs a marine survey and consultancy company, CB Marine Services ELECTRICS Paul Holland is chairman of the BMEA and MD of Energy Solutions (UK) ENGINES Pat Manley is a diesel engine course instructor and marine author GAS FITTINGS Peter Spreadborough, of Southampton Calor Gas Centre, has 20 years in the industry…

After a pleasant cruise from the Netherlands to Cowes and back last summer, the entire crew of Suana (J-P, S and myself) agreed that some sun – and comfort – would be nice, and how about a week’s charter in Greece or Turkey? How this transformed into sailing a traditional Dutch flat-bottomed boat in Friesland, I cannot begin to explain. Some things in life are impossible to fathom, and it is best just to accept them and get on with it. And so it was that I found myself driving north to Heeg with J-P, looking anxiously at the weather and with the car heater turned up. It was early May, and summer had not bothered to arrive in Benelux. S would not be joining us, but instead our partners…

Great ideas and tips from PBO readers Email your projects and tips to pbo@timeinc.com or write to us at the address at the top of page 5. We pay at least £30 for each one published It was really rather annoying that after taking measurements from the Rocna website and making a mock-up with which we ran through all the scenarios we could dream up, we still ended up with a problem when we fitted the real anchor to our Moody Eclipse, Aderyn Glas. There is a law called ‘The Law of Unexpected Consequences’: it’s a law that engineers are trained to avoid by using formal protocols such as FMECA, where every possible failure mode is assessed for critical impacts. This is why, as an engineer well versed in such…

COST £0.00 I have struggled to raise someone up the mast on my Pegasus 800 as the winches are a bit light for such a task. To overcome this, I made a hoist out of bits lying around the garage and boat and tried it out recently. It was effortless, as I essentially walked up the mast just using my legs – and my crew liked it even more as all he had to do was take up the slack on my bosun’s chair and eventually lower me down. I used two pieces of 10mmthick plywood sandwiched together so that the 15mm-wide tape strap could be secured between the ply pieces. The tape (old sail tie) was threaded through a mast sail slug which ultimately slides up the mast and…

News and current affairs from the world of boating Steve and Kaz Pointon, with their 13-yearold son Harry, are celebrating the successful completion of a UK circumnavigation in their 8.5m (28ft) Moody yacht Tikka. The 11-week challenge covered 2,302 miles and raised more than £18,000 for charity. The trio from Cheddar, Somerset set sail on 4 June 2016 from Gosport and travelled anticlockwise, inviting family and friends to join them for a week’s sailing in return for a £100 donation to Action for Children and a requirement ‘to arrive with a sense of humour and adventure.’ For the final leg, British record-breaking yachtswoman Jeanne Socrates crewed for the Pointons while taking a break from her forthcoming solo nonstop and unassisted circumnavigation preparations. Tikka’s journey from Plymouth to Portsmouth was hampered…

GOTOP SKAGEN CRUISING SUIT For offshore cruising and coastal racing, waterproof and windproof, neoprene cuffs on jacket, foldaway hivis hood and reflectors. ■ Force 4 Tel: 0345 130 0710 www.force4.co.uk PRICE: £169.95 DAN-FENDER FENDER STEP Available in white, navy and royal blue. ■ Boat Gear Direct Tel: 01473 655541 www.boatgeardirect.co.uk OFFER PRICE £38.95 MCMURDO PERSONAL EPIRB McMurdo Fastfind 220 with GPS, minimum six-year storage life, minimum 24 hours constant transmission. ■ Jimmy Green Marine Tel: 01297 20744 www.jimmygreen.co.uk RRP £270, OFFER PRICE £175.50 INC VAT…

Flotsam and jetsam Sam Llewellyn is editor of The Marine Quarterly, www.marinequarterly.com, and author of nautical thrillers. Three years ago he bought a Corribee on eBay When I was small and fishing for pollack among the outlying rocks of Scilly, it was easy to feel somewhat lost. We would be in a heavy punt, my father rowing, us fisherfolk sitting facing aft on a plank balanced across the gunwales and little if any land in sight. Among the chief aids to navigation were the dog-ends of the Senior Service chainsmoked by my ex-naval uncle, strung out in a line across the inky swells with an empty packet every twenty butts. In our more enlightened age, such practices would raise eyebrows. Harmful to the health, would go the chorus. And not…

Voyagers: Harald and Claudia Petermann Boat: Bavaria Ocean 42 Pegasus Cruising: ...around the world It was about a fortnight after meeting the Howarths when – guess what – I bumped into another circumnavigator. I was wrestling with stern lines, mooring a chartered Hanse 415 to a quay on the island of Lastovo in Croatia, when a German chap hopped off the Bavaria next door to lend a hand. Then he returned to his yacht to find a facemask and snorkel so that our intrepid crew ‘Major’ Tim could check how close the bottom of our rudder was to the seabed. Charter operators have a nasty habit of raiding your deposit if they find you have bashed the blade. As we chatted, I asked where he had come from. ‘Oh, we…

My ancestors were all sailors, and apparently my first words were ‘da-da’ and ‘boat’. I lived on the East Coast and as a boy sailed the Blackwater, the Crouch and the Thames Estuary. I loved the endless soft green marshes from Shoeburyness to Bradwell, the mournful cries of the winter wildfowl and the infinite estuary skies brimful of larks on a summer afternoon. I lusted after smacks, bawleys, and barges, and was shocked to discover the fabled Mersey mud-berthed houseboats – those achingly elegant first-class racers from the early 20th century – with sheds on their decks. Thankfully they are all now sailing again and certified shedless. It was ace cabinetmaker Rick Hughes who first introduced me to Secret and her beguiling ways. His father commissioned her from Shuttlewoods at…

Q My boat’s Oxford Blue sheerstrake is showing signs of age after 16 years, seven of which were spent in high-UV parts of Europe. On GRP, is a two-pack catalysed paint superior to a single-pot paint, Toplac for example? My instinct tells me that a single-pot paint will be easier to maintain, what with the inevitable dings and fender rubs. However, if I can be satisfied that a trickier-toapply two-pack will bond better, be more durable, harder and maintain its appearance – colour retention and gloss – over a significantly longer period, then I’ll happily settle for a two-pack. Richard Hare, by email RICHARD JERRAM REPLIES: It is generally accepted that two-component polyurethane paints are more durable than single-component paints, which are usually modified alkyds. Two-component paints tend to be…

Q I have a Birchwood 29 Sedan fitted with a Mercedes OM636 engine. It has a Borg Warner Velvet Drive gearbox, ratio 2.10.1, driving a 15in pitch R10 propeller. My problem is that when I go over 2,200rpm the engine overheats. So far I have fitted a new impeller, cleaned out the gearbox oil cooler and all the water hoses, and also cleaned out the heat exchanger. Thereafter, I removed the cylinder head and had it pressure-tested, but the overheating still persists. I was wondering if fitting a smaller pulley to the intake water pump would solve my problem? Archie Reed Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford PAT MANLEY REPLIES: The water-pump pulley, unless it has been changed at some time in the past, will be correct and designed to run the pump…

Raymarine i70s Multifunction Instrument Raymarine’s latest colour multifunction instrument for sailing, fishing or cruising is the i70s. It is designed to be easy to customise, from traditional analogue dials to extra-large digital and graphical displays, offering the flexibility to display the instrument and navigation data that is most important to each user. The i70s allows for simple integration into any existing Raymarine instrument system, or users can create a network of i70s displays and sensors. A low-profile design features a 4.1in LCD screen, optically bonded for enhanced contrast and wide viewing angles. It is powered by Raymarine’s LightHouse navigational instrument software. The Raymarine i70s also allows for connectivity to the following onboard networks: first-generation SeaTalk networks using a SeaTalk to SeaTalkng adaptor cable, current-generation SeaTalkng networks and NMEA2000 networks using…

A. In harbour, halyards tapping against the mast can annoy people and cause damage. Tie them off to the shrouds, and make it very obvious if you do it to a neighbour’s boat. B. Hooks on the spreaders used to be popular. C. One temporary plastic hook was attached with cable ties and stayed like that for years! D. Some people stow them clear, or flip the halyard around the spreader ends. More and more electrical cables are fitted into masts. If they are not inside conduits, or have somehow got loose, they can tap, tap, tap all night long and drive you mad. E. Some people reckon they can hold their cables centrally, and pad them to a certain degree, by adding cable ties that stick out in all…

Email pbo@timeinc.com or write to us at the address on page 5. Photos are appreciated, letters may be edited. LED FLARES – A READER’S DAYLIGHT TEST Distressingly poor in daylight? ■ Your article ‘LED and laser flares’ (PBO July) was most interesting. Like many other boaters, I chose to replace my pyrotechnic red flares with an Odeo Mark 3 LED flare, a PBO Best Buy. Your article tested this and other electronic flares at night, but nowhere can I find any reference to the Odeo flare’s performance in daylight. Consequently we conducted a simple exercise to test the visibility of this flare at 1, 3 and 7 miles with a team from Gosport NCI (Coastwatch) on board my Beneteau Swift Trawler. This required the official approval and cooperation of Solent…

Monthly musings Yacht surveyor and designer Andrew Simpson cruises with his wife Chele in his own-design 11.9m (39ft) yacht Shindig. Read his blog at www.offshore-sailor.com Back ashore once more, and now stricken by nostalgia for those places we had visited and people we had met while in the Caribbean, I sought to ease my discomfiture by browsing through the hundreds of photographs I had taken over the preceding six months. A decade or so ago, mindful of both the film and subsequent processing costs, I remember myself as being downright miserly in the photographic sense. No longer. The digital explosion that has since emerged has blown away any restraints. In short, I have become profligate in my use of cameras – to the extent that picking the gems from the…

Voyagers: Constance and Cyril Andrieux. Stéphan Guérin Boat: Django 7.70 Cruising: Canaries and Martinique. Atlantic crossing And now – as the saying goes – for something completely different. While many long-distance sailors opt for moderate-to-heavy-displacement yachts from around 9.7m (32ft) upwards, others have very different ideas – especially the younger generation. So how about a brand-new infusionmoulded 7.70m twin-keeler with a wide beam of 3.0m, draught of 1.2m and weighing just 1,850kg? In other words, a high-speed flyer developed along the lines of an overgrown MiniTransat yacht. Constance (28) and Cyril (33) Andrieux told me they originally bought their Django 7.70 for a bit of gentle cruising and regattas. The idea of a transatlantic cruise came later, and they reckoned the Django was up to it. So they made the…

Q I have a Moody 30 dating back to 1976. The Autohelm was refitted after three years or more in dry storage. The control unit should match the heading of the boat’s compass, but when it came to the drive unit responding, the electric motor was whirring but the drive wheel and cone wouldn’t move. On examination, the cone and toothed driving wheel was stuck fast. I freed it up by gently using a pair of water pump pliers. After that, I could turn it by hand, but with some resistance. The electrics would not move it at all, using the dodge facility. To that end, could you advise me on what course of action I could take? The company who manufactured the unit (Nautech of Portsmouth) have been taken…

RIG REDESIGN FOR SHORTHANDED SAILING Towards the end of last year, a friend of mine found a boat of just the sort he had been hankering after for years. She was a 40ft (12m) steelhulled motor-sailer designed by Bruce Roberts; a cutter-headed ketch with a trawler-style hull, a long shallowish keel and a pair of supplementary bilge keels. Based on Roberts’s PCF (Pacific Coast Fisher) design, she had been built by her owner to meticulous standards over a period of six years before being launched in 2010. Then she was sailed from the East Coast to Devon where, for various reasons, she had sat on her mooring ever since. She was on the market for what appeared to be a realistic price, so we went to have a look. She…

Seeing boats blowing up does focus the mind somewhat. I geared up by finishing the Nasa gas alarm installation, putting the batteries in my Honeywell gas detector wand and liberally spraying all the joints in my fit-out with leaktesting fluid. I put the regulator on the gas bottle, and didn’t turn it on. I depressed my bubble tester and was alarmed to see bubbles coming out! Was my new regulator leaking? I scoured the Alde literature, and it said nothing about bubbles appearing before pressurising the system. I reasoned there must be air in the system and decided to try turning the regulator on, with both appliance isolator valves off, and let gas into the system. At that point I tested the bubble tester again and, to my relief, no…

COST £30 I often sail single-handed and picking up mooring buoys can be awkward, so I’ve constructed a lasso line consisting of a 1m length of 6mm chain with 12mm line woven through the links: its total length is 11m, leaving a generous 5m of line on each side of the chain. The chain is covered by a length of bicycle inner tube which is stitched at each end. The inner tube makes the chain easier to handle and less likely to snag, while the chain’s weight ensures that the loop sinks under the mooring buoy quickly. The method is to have a coil of line in each hand with the end under a thumb, with the chain and a short length of line being thrown as the loop. The…

The Yanmar 1GM10 is a great little engine, which starts first time and runs reliably: but there are one or two design flaws. The worst is that the raw water pump is sited over the top of a ferrous oil pipe. When the seals give way, as they tend to do with alarming regularity, you get salt water dripping onto the oil pipes – which, if unchecked, can cause them to corrode through quite quickly. When I noticed my water pump was dripping last winter, I serviced it to stop the problem happening again. I first rebuilt it seven years ago, replacing the bearings and shaft as well as the seals, and rebuilt it once since (three years ago), only replacing the seals as the shaft wasn’t too bad. This time,…