Innehållsförteckning för August 2016 från Practical Boat Owner

Email pbo@timeinc.com or write to us at the address on page 5. Photos are appreciated, letters may be edited. TAKING OUTBOARD THEFT ON BOARD It’s a steal I recently had my 20hp electric-start Tohatsu outboard motor stolen, which led me to consider what steps I could have taken to protect it. The outboard was bolted to the boat, and a locking cover was placed over the turn screws. I could have burned some identifying marks into the cover with a soldering iron, perhaps, or painted the cover in some garish manner that would inconvenience or deter an illicit seller. I discovered that a locking bolt cover is available, relatively pricey at £55, and my replacement engine now has one fitted; but could engine manufacturers do a little more to help…

Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) are useful things. Should you fall overboard, they will alert the coastguard via satellite with your position, which is all very well; but generally, the best chance of recovery comes from the boat you’ve just fallen off – whose crew won’t have instant access to your position data. That’s where personal AIS beacons come in. These, equipped with a GPS receiver, send an AIS alert to any nearby receivers, with a special prefix to the MMSI number which denotes a man overboard beacon. Then, all you have to do is to sail back to them – or so the theory goes. These beacons differ from AIS SARTs (Search and Rescue Transponders) in that those have to be SOLAS wheelmarked and are designed for use in a…

Calling sailing a sport can sometimes seem a little overgenerous. Ben Ainslie and his team leaping around the netting of an AC45 more than deserve to be called sportsmen, but for many of us the part of the anatomy which receives the most exercise on board is the posterior. Which is why as part of Red Dragon’s recent major refit we decided that something should be done about the cockpit seats. The old seats were teak slats laid on glassfibre, contemporaneous with her 1972 build date. For prolonged sport-sitting, cushions were essential to avoid the crew’s nether regions suffering from longterm corrugation. Add to this that many of the slats had started to split, and it was time for a change. We toyed with the idea of laid teak panels,…

Sacha, my Bénéteau 381, was fitted with good, solid and dependable B&G Network instruments as standard. When I bought her eight years ago, the surveyor said they were shot and needed replacing – but they weren’t, and they didn’t! The wiring was the problem, full of bad connections and bodges. It didn’t take me long to sort out the bird’s nest, and by cleaning and lubing the quick connections there weren’t any problems thereafter… …Until, that is, we went out on the first sail of the season. When we got out of the marina in Albufeira we found the wind direction instrument was playing up, with the wind on the starboard side failing to register. I dived under the console when we got back and checked out the connections: they…

www.dickeveritt.com Original Boat Owner’s Sketchbook volumes 1 to 5 are now available to download from www.pbo.co.uk/sketchbook priced at £4.95 each. A limited number of printed volumes 3, 4 and 5 of the original Sketchbook series are still available from the PBO Editorial office priced at £3.75 each, or all three for £10. Order yours by calling tel: 01202 440830 or email: pbo@timeinc.com…

The actual ‘sailing’ part of single-handed sailing is fairly straightforward. In open water you’ve got time to trim sails, navigate, put the kettle on and enjoy the ride. It’s when you get close to land and other boats that you really start to miss the crew. This is especially true of anchoring. In a clear anchorage there’s no real problem, with enough space for single-handers to sort themselves out. In a crowded anchorage, however, things get much more complicated. Dropping the anchor is relatively easy with practice, but recovery can be fraught, with the risk of drifting on to other boats while pulling the anchor up, not to mention the physical difficulty of recovering a weighty anchor without crew to motor up to the anchor or help with the recovery.…

Several times when skiing in the French Alps, I dreamt of having clear slopes to practise my skills without more confident skiers whizzing past on dead runs. Fast-forward to a pre-season Volos and switch the skis for a yacht and my wish had come true. Stunning deepwater bays and harbours, deserted apart from a few friendly locals, calm seas and a good sea breeze made cruising the Greek Sporades islands, in the northwest Aegean, quite a surreal experience. There were still plenty of challenges for a novice skipper – but rather than having to contend with tides, the busy waters of the Solent and ‘parking’ alongside bustling marina pontoons, I was mooring sternto against clear concrete harbours and anchoring in secluded bays with a shoreline tied around a rock. Fresh…

My boat has two water tanks under the forward berths. They are large and deep, holding 300lt each. A water meter is fitted into the pipework between the pressure pump and the accumulator, but it depended on being reset to zero every time the tanks were filled, and was never much good at telling how much water was left – and even less use after I fitted a take-off point before the pump to supply water to flush the heads. Last year the digital readout failed, so I looked at alternatives. I have fitted my holding tanks with Kus senders and gauges, but could not find correct-length senders for the deep-water tanks. I then discovered that Maplins sell Kemo battery-powered water level indicators that have 10 LEDs to show levels…

One of the most important points I have discovered about ocean sailing is that you must keep everything as simple as possible. Complex systems invite trouble when mixed with salt water – and complex systems are not easy for the non-technician to fix. It was a surprise to me that when it comes to fishing in deep water, simplicity still works better than complexity. I have crossed the Atlantic six times in my own boat as well as a few times in other people’s boats, and it has always been my practice to throw a line over on the off-chance that I will catch something. Over the years I have invested good money in various types of plastic lures with several hooks hanging off them, and in all those trips…

We’re just getting ready to spend a little time in marinas, which is always a source of consternation for us. We have a 40-year-old, 57ft classic ketch with no bow thruster. She has a modified fin keel (an almost full keel) and heavy displacement – so in other words, Aleria doesn’t manoeuvre very well in tight spaces. She is meant to be crossing oceans. That’s one of the reasons we really like to anchor out, but in reality we’re always going to have to get to a dock for fuel, water or overnighting in the absence of a safe anchorage at some point, so we have had to learn how to use what we have to get ourselves into tight spaces. Our boat doesn’t do very well in reverse. Aleria’s rudder…

Readers’ cruising destinations, near and far We pay for your published cruising stories and harbour updates. Email pbo@timeinc.com or write to the address at the top of page The rias on Spain’s north-west coast are undeniably fine sailing grounds, with fabulous scenery resembling Alpine slopes in places as the granite hillsides rise through pine forests to lofty peaks. There are numerous places where land links make a return home from the nearby airport easy, but Cangas has much more to offer. In its compact footprint, church bells tell the time in age-old fashion. We arrived in July as the St James Festival procession wound its solemn, swaying way through the town. The small marina is sandwiched between the busy fishing harbour, where everything from small boats to deep-sea stern trawlers…

News from your cruising area Send us your local news stories. Email PBO news editor Laura Hodgetts at newspbo@timeinc.com, tel: 01202 440825, or write to the address on page 5 CHANNEL ISLANDS CABLE-LAYING OPERATIONS Boat owners are advised that a new electricity cable is being laid between France and Jersey in late July and early August. The cable route will run in from seaward along the same line as the old recently removed Normandie 1, and pass south of St Catherine’s Bank into the Archirondel sub-station. During the latter part of the operation the cable ship Stemat Spirit will enter close inshore of Little St Catherine’s to lay the cable, before exiting out north of St Catherine’s Bank. To facilitate this, all moorings in the area of Little St Catherine’s…

‘Six hundred and fifty pounds!’ I spluttered. ‘To replace the canvas on the hood?’ ‘Minimum,’ the mate asserted. ‘That was the quote.’ ‘That’s daylight robbery. I could make one myself for far less.’ ‘Really?’ he replied, never one to miss an opportunity to save some cash. ‘And how would you do that?’ he asked, pouring me another half. Having explained the process over a couple more whiskies, and having been out-manoeuvred by a manipulative co-owner, I found myself agreeing to a winter project and shaking on it in front of a witness. Emerald is a 1972 Contest 31 built in the Netherlands and co-owned by John Cox and myself. Since buying her in 2013 and sailing her up to Oban from Southampton we have carried out a number of modifications,…

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 When I bought my boat Alestra, she was fitted with a Rutland 503 Windcharger. It was a bit noisy, but the only time I tested the output it seemed to be charging. On one occasion I left some accessories switched on, forgot to switch off the main battery switch and discharged a battery. The battery wasn’t charging quickly, which I put down to low wind speed: the charger will produce roughly 1A (12W) at a wind speed of 15 knots, so in a fine summer little will happen. The noise of the wind charger became…

We’d had a beautiful sail up the East Coast, starting out from Greenwich a few weeks beforehand on Greenwich Yacht Club’s annual cruise. It was my first proper season in Whimbrel, my pretty, cloud-grey, 40-year-old bilgekeeled Hurley 22. We decided to sail her up to Aldeburgh on our own, after the yacht club cruise had ended, to enjoy the ambience of a traditional seaside town, and I was looking forward to arriving by sea – something I’d had in mind for many years. It was late August and the summer had been awful for weeks, but on the day of our arrival in Aldeburgh, the weather was gorgeous; bright sunshine and a helpful mild south-easterly that eased us gently up the Alde. I’d got the tides just right for the…

Almost anyone who has put to sea will have encountered seasickness, either as a sufferer or a witness. Perhaps a well-planned sea passage with a strong crew became more arduous as the number of healthy crew members gradually reduced; or a day-sail with a non-sailing guest whose initial joie de vivre was overtaken by the quiet yawning and loss of colour that typically precedes the onset of nausea. It is no surprise that the word ‘nausea’ itself derives from the Greek word nausia meaning ship-sickness, for seasickness dates back as long as man has travelled by water. The complex human balance organ (the vestibular system of the inner ear) evolved over billions of years to cope with humans as self-propelled animals. This balance system has not yet had the time…

Let’s draw up a checklist of features you might want in your next boat. It’s going to be around 9m (30ft) long – the boat, that is, not the list. How about starting with good performance? That’s important to many people, because you can go further and have more fun on the way. But you don’t want a racing yacht. Whatever you buy should be stiff, well-mannered, comfortable and easy to manage short-handed. You also want it to be tough: fearing for your life or feeling compelled to check the bilges every time you nudge the bottom is not good for the nerves. You want an interior that’s bright and airy and that lets you see the outside world, yet which isn’t too modern or trendy. You would like a…