Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i Practical Boat Owner

The UK Government has confirmed it is illegal in Northern Ireland to refuel private pleasure craft with red (marine) diesel in any tank used for engine propulsion – with effect from 1 October 2021. The Cruising Association, through its Regulations and Technical Services group (RATS), has been keeping abreast of the situation in order to advise yacht and motor cruisers on the new protocols. RATS has reviewed the UK Government document ‘Fuel Duty changes for private pleasure craft in Northern Ireland that use diesel’ and created a helpful guidance document, which has been approved by HM Revenue and Customs: www.theca.org.uk/rats/red_diesel_use_in_EU The change in the law is to meet the UK’s obligations under the UK-EU withdrawal agreement. Now diesel-powered private pleasure craft in Northern Ireland must only use fully duty-paid diesel…

The Maiden Factor has announced global logistics company DP World as its new title sponsor, ahead of the launch of a World Tour aimed at driving education and empowering young women. The partnership will build on Maiden’s previous World Tour that came to a halt in 2020 due to the pandemic. The 58ft Maiden, a restored 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race yacht, sailed more than 33,000 miles, visiting 23 destinations in 12 countries, raising awareness and funds for schools, charities, and organisations committed to the education of girls. The new tour, which begins in December 2021 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, will focus on encouraging participation and education across science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects. Maiden Factor founder Tracy Edwards said: “When we first rescued Maiden in 2017…

A voluntary no anchor zone will be introduced at the popular Dorset beauty spot of Studland Bay from December 2021 and extended in June 2022. The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has warned that if sailors fail to comply with the new voluntary no anchor zone (VNAZ) at Studland Bay Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) then it will consider introducing bylaws banning anchoring altogether. From 17 December 2021, boat owners will be unable to anchor off South Beach. The no anchor zone will be extended further north and east from 1 June 2022. The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) has warned: “The approach gives little time to determine impacts on or from recreational boating.” […] “As the MMO’s plans currently stand, there is a risk that users will have no means of mooring…

I probably have to take responsibility for sailing without a masthead aerial radio all this summer. The thing with non-sailing spouses (NSSs) is this: you’re used to them being intelligent and competent in normal life, and it really goes against the grain to treat them like total rookies the minute they get on a boat, with constant explanations of the obvious, and checking their every move. Last autumn, at mast-off time, I’d pulled the various up-mast wires through the cabin, and I left Philip, my NSS and Karima’s official electronics expert, to pull them out on deck, wind them up and secure them to the mast, while I leapt about unscrewing bottle screws. I did, as skipper, give a quick look over and approved their neatness. What I didn’t clock,…

Well known for beautiful beaches and rugged sandstone vistas, the coast of New South Wales makes for some magnificent sailing. I’ve been cruising it for decades and it’s always an invigorating challenge that takes some planning for there are few safe harbours along the way. The coast is exposed to the Tasman Sea and the coastal winds are notoriously inconsistent, ranging from thrilling to frustrating and, on occasion, downright frightening. With no prevailing winds to rely on, yachtsmen are often at the mercy of complex currents and sudden weather events, including the abrupt southerly change fondly known in the Australian vernacular as a ‘southerly buster’. There are also ferocious weather events called East Coast Lows – intense low pressure systems that form off the coast. But sometimes you get lucky,…

The 2021 Southampton International Boat Show was a keenly anticipated event. Two traumatic years had passed since the last Southampton show in 2019 and before that the final curtain had descended on the London Boat Show in 2018. UK exhibitors and boat show visitors had been suffering from withdrawal symptoms for a long time. However, all has not been at a standstill for the UK marine industry. After a serious slowdown during the first Covid lockdown in spring 2020, new and used boat sales grew by 50% year-on-year between June and December, reports British Marine. “Last summer we heard about the staycation effect and a boom in sales for leisure marine businesses,” said chief executive Lesley Robinson. “However, I’m delighted that these anecdotal stories are now backed up with empirical…

As young lads in the 1950s we went to many of the big exhibitions held at Earls Court and Olympia. Regular annual ‘must-see’ events were the Motor Show, Motorcycle and Bike Show, and the Schoolboys’ Own Exhibition. It’s not that we were particularly interested in any of these subjects, it was just a good day out and we could ride there on our bikes. One year a bunch of us cycled up to Earls Court for a day at the Boat Show. In those days, the salesmen on the big stands prevented anyone going aboard the show craft If they looked like time-wasters, which we lads whose combined wealth was about a fiver certainly were. They even turned away adults if they didn’t look the business: you really had to…

Step by step Fitting the seacock…

Having acted as boatswain for Lyme Regis Sea School for the past 25 years I have spent a great deal of time re-threading halyards that have broken or been pulled out of masts by overenthusiastic students. The traditional manner to replace them involves lowering the mast, attaching a small, weighty object to a length of fishing line, inserting it at the halyard’s pulley, partially erecting the mast and feeding the weight down the inside of the mast using gravity and vigorous shaking, then trying to catch the line where the halyard should emerge at the bottom with a piece of bent wire. The nylon line is then tied to the new halyard which can then be pulled through the mast. The method generally works but usually requires that the mast…

Classic sail training fleet arrested A fleet of six classic yachts, including three 1959 Morgan Giles 43ft sail training vessels built with no expense spared for the Britannia Naval College in Dartmouth, lie chained to their berths at Chichester Marina for non-payment of mooring and storage fees. The writs, served by the Deputy Admiralty Marshal, were pinned to the yachts on 27 August, and cannot be moved until the debts and legal expenses have been cleared. Failure to do so will lead to a forced sale by auction. The three Morgan Giles 43s, together with three other classics, are all that remains from what was a 12-strong fleet built up by David Foster to provide commercial day-sailing yacht charters under the banner Classicsail.co.uk. One of the last occasions when sails…

Six men have been charged with drug trafficking offences after a motoryacht with £160million-worth of cocaine on board was seized off the south coast of England. British national Andrew Cole, 32, from Stockton on Tees, County Durham, and five Nicaraguans Billy Downs, 49, Denson White-Morales, 34, Edwin Taylor-Morgan, 40, Brynie Sjogreen, 38 and Ryan Taylor, 42 were arrested on 9 September, following the seizure of the Jamaican-flagged Nordhavn 76 Kahu – sailing from the Caribbean. The operation took place 80 miles south of Plymouth and was led by the National Crime Agency (NCA) supported by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Border Force. Kahu was escorted back to the UK mainland where a ‘deep rummage’ search revealed the large haul of Class A drugs, described as weighing more than 2…

Sunseeker International is to install biomass boilers on two of its premises that will see the yacht manufacturer use waste timber arisings as a source of renewable heat. The project, in collaboration with AMP Clean Energy, will see Sunseeker, which produces around 1,360 tonnes of usable timber arisings from its boat building operations in Poole and Portland, processing the waste timber to provide a source of renewable heat to two sites, resulting in savings of around 1,200 tonnes of carbon each year. AMP Clean Energy installed a 500kW biomass boiler at Sunseeker Technology Centre in Poole and a 1MW biomass boiler and ancillary equipment at Osprey Quay in Portland, supplying heat to both sites under a 20-year energy supply agreement. The move will see Sunseeker replace fossil fuel systems as…

After 25 years of helping young people to achieve their potential through the sport of sailing, John Merricks Sailing Trust is to close. Trustees have announced their decision to dissolve the charity, and apply its remaining funds to a purpose that will continue to honour the memory of Olympic dinghy sailor John Merricks, who died at a tragically young age in a car crash in October 1997. The charity’s residual funds (approximately £200,000) will be gifted to one or more organisations that can provide a lasting legacy that will respect the Trust’s purpose to help young people under the age of 25 to achieve their potential through the sport of sailing. The Trustees are inviting applications from individuals, other smaller charities and sailing organisations that can accept their donation and…

SOUTH COAST AND CHANNEL ISLANDS £9.5MILLION GRANT FOR MARINE DEVELOPMENT IN PLYMOUTH Plymouth City Council has been awarded £9.5million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the development of 20 marine science, research and technology businesses creating 464 jobs, while enhancing the tourist and events economy. The Plymouth Sound National Marine Park is not intended to place any extra restrictions on water users, instead enhancing the city’s ability to host events such as Fastnet, America’s Cup and the World Power Boat Championships in an environmentally sensitive way with a view to long-term benefits for residents and tourists alike. HYDROGEN FUEL INNOVATION An ambitious project to develop and demonstrate the provision of hydrogen fuel for marine transportation in Portsmouth Harbour has been awarded £1.5million by the Department for Transport. Led…

The prize-giving of the Maldon Town Regatta is a bit like an episode of Midsomer Murders without the murders, the disappointing lack of which was raised in a recent very acrimonious parish-council Zoom meeting, which had it been in person would have gone some way to redressing the woefully low body count that is a stain on Maldon’s reputation, not to say an embarrassment. For some it’s a matter of civic pride, while others blame the local undertaker for not sponsoring a trophy for the under-12s section of the crabbing competition. Over the years this has provided priceless publicity for sponsor farmer John, whose bacon smoke-house provides the bait. Headlines included “Boy unwell after eating raw bacon” and “Re-count demand: ‘pushy’ parents deny crab con.” The local regatta prize-giving, you…

Refuge Bay also harbours a unique slice of wartime history. For it was from a secret camp high on the cliffs that men of Z Special Unit underwent commando-style training for a daring raid on Singapore Harbour during World War II. Led by Major Ivan Lyon of the Gordon Highlanders and Major Jock Campbell of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 11 Australian and five British men were selected for Operation Jaywick. They sailed a captured Japanese fishing boat from Refuge Bay all the way to the Singapore Straits, some 4,800 miles away. Disguised as Malay fishermen, they anchored MV Krait off the island of Pulau Panjang and from there launched two-man collapsible canoes and paddled more than 20km through darkness into the heart of enemy territory. In Singapore Harbour they…

Former Premiership footballer and £1million cancer charity fundraiser Francis Benali was one of the many new people taking to the water at the Southampton Boat Show. PBO’s Ali Wood met a windswept Francis and wife, Karen, after they’d just been out for a spin on an Agapi 950 powerboat. Benali, Agapi Boat club’s newest member, will be taking advantage of the training on offer, hoping to get his RYA Powerboat Level II qualification in the next few weeks. Premier Marinas signed him up precisely because he didn’t know anything about boats. “We’re delighted that Franny is coming onboard,” said business development director Andy Mills. “We wanted to work with a first-timer to show how quick and easy it is to get out on the water.” Despite living locally and spending…

The year started off badly with the UK once again in lockdown, so planning a long sailing trip was done in rather uncertain circumstances. We felt very privileged to be in a position to enjoy a fabulous four week sailing holiday in Scotland during June 2021. Having considered other attractive options like Ireland, which were ruled out by Brexit and the pandemic, we recalled enjoying a previous cruise to Orkney in 1995, so decided that it was time for another visit. The best time to head north would be June where we’d get the benefit of almost continuous daylight. However, with Scotland still under Covid restrictions, this would take some planning; eating out would be difficult, plus we’d be sailing through a fairly remote area to get there. With everything…

My daughter, Liz, and I were on Wild Bird, my Vancouver 38P, en route to meet friends at the port of Bastia in Corsica. With a few days to spare until another friend was due to arrive there by air from the UK, we decided to visit Mallorca. The last holiday that my late wife and I spent together had been at Puerto Pollensa at the north-west point of the island. We found it to be such a delightful place that I decided to stop off here to show Liz what it had to offer. Approaching from the west, we rounded the lighthouse on Cap de Formentor and joined some other boats at anchor in the bay where they were sheltered from the westerly breeze. We anchored between the shore…

We inherited a 1976 Avon Redcrest made from Hypalon, which is a tough rubberised fabric, but the Leafield A4 inflation valves with rubber bungs were soft and sticky and no longer airtight. Everyone assured us that Avon Hypalon boats really do last a lifetime so we decided to upgrade the valves. Preparation We bought new Leafield C7s together with Hypalon solvent cleaner, three large Hypalon discs like very large washers called valve doublers, adhesive and a valve spanner. The instructions called for a temperature of 18°C-25°C and relative humidity of 30-60% – a bit of a challenge in our unheated garage in mid-February – so I built a temporary tent within the garage, using a cheap tarpaulin. A small fan heater got the temperature up and a portable oil-filled radiator…

My boat has a very large cockpit, and I very much like steering while I’m sitting on the coaming and leaning back on the guardrail. Installing a padded guardrail cover is essential if you wish for a bit of comfort. There are quite a few padded guardrail sleeves on the market, but all of them share the same disadvantages: • Too short (most of them are about 1m long, but it is difficult to find longer ones, and of course, impossible to find them made to measure). • Too soft and with a rather small diameter, which provide insufficient cushioning (mostly made with air conditioning pipe insulation, which degrades very easily as well, leaving ugly black flakes). • Too expensive (no comments here, we all know…) The intention was to…

The UK’s leading carbon monoxide (CO) research charity, The CO Research Trust, has revealed that many people may be exposed to ‘low level’ CO poisoning in the built environment and within the boating world. Boats have small living spaces, much the same size as a small bedsit. However, they are also sealed containers, essential for keeping water out, but also equally effective at retaining gases and fumes. Many boats have multiple potential sources of fire and CO. They may also have multiple engines and appliances for cooking, heating and lighting. Some of these will be powered on or in use whilst occupants are sleeping. The charity is running a research project in conjunction with the London Fire Brigade, which will be carrying out 1,758 visits to people living on boats…

Pip Hare, Shirley Robertson, Dee Caffari and Tapio Lehtinen are among the sailing stars confirmed to inspire the next generation of Junior Offshore Group (JOG) sailors. JOG has launched the Sailing Legend Series as part of its new youth programme, Generation JOG, aimed at those aged 25 years and under. Throughout the autumn and winter months of 2021/22, Generation JOG members will have the opportunity to attend a series of exclusive webinars for free, where they will have the opportunity to ask questions, gain tips, and find out about upcoming plans. Vendée Globe veteran Pip Hare kicked off the series on 18 October 2021, followed by Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson OBE and Volvo Ocean Racer Henry Bomby on 16 November; offshore yachtswoman Dee Caffari on 14 December 2021 and…

Wick’s Isabella Fortuna On a recent trip to Wick in the far north of Scotland I happened to notice the old lifeboat house door ajar. So I stuck my head round the door, and found this 1890 Fifie fishing boat inside. The volunteers there were happy to show me round despite the fact that they were just about to leave for the day. According to the local Wick Heritage Society website, the Isabella Fortuna is an example of a traditional Fifie fishing vessel and was built by James Weir of Arbroath. For 86 years, generations of the same Smith family fished with the Isabella from Arbroath. She was retired from the sea in 1976 and restored over four years by a man called Hobson Rankin. Apparently she is put in…

This is true. Honestly. There we were, Dahlia and I, trundling along off the Isle of Mull in a flat calm, when we saw something swimming between us and the shore. I know what whales look like, and it wasn’t a whale. I know what porpoises look like, and seals, and people, and it wasn’t any of them either. It had a head, and a sort of serpentine back end about 10ft long, though it might have been four or it might have been 12, and it was swimming in a westerly direction. The west coast of Scotland is of course prime sea monster country. Your basic Scots monster is called each-uisge, the water horse. There is an account of one off Loch Hourn, spotted by a parson in the…

A boat trip on the Thames is always a treat – and none more so than when an autumnal sun is shining and the leaves on the riverside trees are turning golden brown. And such was the day when I arrived at the picturesque town of Wargrave (on the Thames) to try out the Viking Seamaster 27 that was being sold by Val Wyatt Marine at that time. I soon found it easy to appreciate the allure of a relaxed cruise on inland waterways and realised why so many boat owners and their families opt for this peaceful pastime. Viking Mouldings was established in 1970 by three ex-Seamaster employees. Then – when Seamaster finally closed in 1979 – the Viking team bought the company, greatly increasing its range in the…

For years my wife, Ann, and I have been Greek Mediterranean cruisers – we keep our Moody Eclipse Aderyn Glas in Preveza, but haven’t been able to visit since the start of lockdown. So we now also own a canal cruiser near our home in Wales, which has taught us that there are things you don’t get at sea, even in the Greek Med: you don’t get low bridges; tight turns; a bank to tie up to and good Welsh pubs for lunches. This was Osprey’s first adventure northward. We went aboard mid-August and spent the first night in the marina at our base at Goytre. And it was freezing! What’s happened to the hot Augusts I remember from my childhood? It was so cold that next morning 0600 we…

Seacocks can be a daunting topic for a new boat owner. The small valves on the boat’s hull which allow water to flow through are arguably among the most important fittings on the whole boat. They’re used for a range of purposes, such as letting water in to cool the engine or letting water in and out to flush the heads or drain a sink. If a pipe fails, the seacock is your first line of defence, able to close off the hole in the hull. Depending on the situation, they may be left open or closed. For example, seacocks in an engine cooling system are almost always left open, but should the engine overheat it’s likely the seacock will need to be closed if you have to remove and…

After a season on the water and two years in a boatyard, Maximus’s antifouling was old and flaky. We’d been given the 28ft Maxi 84 by reader Daniel Kirtley, and one of the first things he suggested we do was scrape the paint back to the bare hull. Not a job to be taken lightly! Arriving at Dell Quay in Chichester, we drove past rows of tightly packed boats, the first few sporting gleaming topsides and newly primed hulls, later ones flaking antifouling and old varnish. Some were missing masts, others missing keels. There was one keel without a boat that was periodically moved around the yard. Each week I’d wonder where I’d find it and if it would ever be reunited with its hull. Maximus was about as far…

ENGINES What to do with old diesel Q I have a 1989 Oceanis 320 that I bought in Greece in 2009. I spent two months restoring her, and then had two months wonderful sailing in the Ionian, after which I had her hauled out, originally just for the winter. For various reasons I’ve not been able to sail since. Consequently, the tank is now full of 11-year-old diesel. I’ve topped it up two or three times meanwhile, to avoid leaving air in the filling pipe, in the hope of at least limiting diesel bug, but my question is, what procedure would you recommend when I return to the boat to sail? Would it be best just to pump the whole lot out (hoping that the boatyard has somewhere to put…

The western Mediterranean coast of Italy, including Sardinia, is beautiful, and a place that historians dream of, but it’s not the place for a budget cruise. In 2018, a one-night stay in a port on board our Sourtherly 115, Hermione, cost us t100. This prompted much anchoring and a frantic search for places that were under t60… which led us to Syracuse. An ancient city This ancient Sicilian city, founded by the Greeks long before Christianity, has a natural Grand Harbour protected by an island peninsula that has housed some kind of fortification at its tip for thousands of years. You have to call up the port authority to gain permission to enter the harbour and if you wish to anchor they’ll give you the coordinates for where you may.…