Innehållsförteckning för January 2021 från Practical Boat Owner

Legendary solo sailor Jon Sanders has made landfall in his home country of Australia as he nears the end of his 11th world circumnavigation. The 81 year old moored in Bundaberg, Queensland, on 22 October before being required to self isolate on his Sparkman and Stephens 39, Perie Banou II while waiting for the results of a COVID-19 test. The solo skipper received a quarantine exemption from Queensland Health, subject to a negative test result, as he’d spent more than 30 days alone at sea since departing his last port of Tahiti. This last leg of his voyage saw him sailing through three large Pacific storm systems, with winds exceeding 65 knots. Despite sailing bare poled and dragging a car tyre to keep the boat facing into the wind and…

The Receiver of Wrecks is trying to trace the owner of an autonomous vessel which washed up on a remote Scottish island. The surfboard-sized Wave Glider was discovered among rocks near Heanish on the Isle of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides by a dog walker who reported the find to the island’s coastguard rescue team at the end of September. The vessel is made by the American firm Liquid Robotics and is used for scientific research as well as defence purposes. It is made of two parts: a 3.05m long float with an 8m umbilical cord which attaches to a 2.20m sub. This allows it to be powered by both waves and solar. The float houses the command and control unit, 980Wh rechargeable battery and solar panels as well as…

Volunteers who have made an outstanding contribution to boating in the UK have been recognised at the annual RYA Volunteer Awards. New for 2020, the RYA Honor Preston Award was awarded to the late Barbara Darling from Ripon SC and the National School Sailing Association. The award is presented to those who have made a significant contribution to increase the inclusivity of boating, in particular female participation. Anthony Forster from Shotwick Lake Sailing received a Lifetime Commitment Award for nearly 40 years of volunteering, while Kate Pounder, 23, received a Youth Award for her role as an instructor at Ballyholme YC. Leslie Downing was named the recipient of the Francis Eakin Award in recognition of her work to help people with disabilities experience sailing. Downing has volunteered at the Woolverstone…

NO POOLE HARBOUR BOAT SHOW Organisers of the annual Poole Harbour Boat Show have announced the event won’t take place until 2022 due to the uncertainty caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Poole Harbour Commissioners (PHC) said it needed to ‘refocus’ its resources on ‘core business objectives’. The CEO of PHC, Jim Stewart, said: “At this uncertain time, it is prudent that as a business we focus on our key harbour and port roles and responsibilities. Unfortunately for now, that comes at the cost of the boat show. I am confident that by making this difficult decision now, we will be better placed to move forward and face the challenges that lie ahead.” NOSS ON DART DEVELOPMENT Construction of the new floating £3.5m marina at Noss on Dart in south…

ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOUR ON THE BLACKWATER & COLNE Essex Police Marine Unit have increased patrols along the Rivers Blackwater and Colne following a rise in antisocial behaviour, particularly from people speeding on jet-skis. The unit recently added two additional police officers to its team. Acting Police Sergeant (APS) Paul Rawson said there were particular problems around launch sites including Point Clear, West Mersea, Wivenhoe approaches, St Lawrence, Heybridge Basin and Maldon. Police were recently given new powers to issue warnings and community penalty notices to people exceeding the 8 knot speed limit. APS Rawson urged those with photographic evidence of water-based antisocial behaviour to get in touch with the unit. ■ marineu@essex.police.uk FREE MOORINGS OPEN ON THE BROADS A new 24-hour free mooring for six vessels has opened on The Broads…

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 Self-isolating has never been a problem for me. In fact, I’ve been following government guidelines ever since 2005, when I bought my Sailfish 18, and two months later the sheet music for Neil Sedaka’s Solitaire. The two are not unrelated. Imagine the excitement of all my friends when I told both of them I’d bought a ‘six-berth family sailing cruiser’, which before the banning of irony in advertising was how the Sailfish 18 was marketed. The 18, it should be noted, was a whimsical reference to the length of something, but not a Sailfish 18, and manufacture eventually ceased following an…

We’re all familiar with the questions that arise when looking for a new boat. Is it the right size and does it need work? How does it sail and is it within budget? Next you might look at the specifications – LOA, waterline, beam and draught – and maybe drill down a little deeper on the engine, for example. The specifications give you a good framework, but more interesting is the information that’s hidden. Or, at least, appears hidden to the everyday boat owner. Aside from a test sail, much of a boat’s performance can be ascertained by looking at some calculations. Designers use a variety of tools when creating a new boat. Using calculations they can predict things such as stability, seaworthiness and speed potential under a range of…

Lightweight, planing motorboats are very susceptible to being blown off course when not under power. This is can be awkward when coming up a channel to a mooring and there’s a need to put fenders and warps out. It’s manageable when you have crew, but by yourself you may need an autopilot to help you out. The problem is that if you fall overboard the autopilot will just take the boat in the direction you’ve set until it hits something and you’ll be left in the water. Of course you can use a kill cord, but to get up to the bow or the stern you’ll need a very long kill cord that can easily snag. The answer is a wireless kill cord, such as the OLAS Guardian. You wear…

This boat had been laid up for some years and had been sorely neglected. Inside, all the seats and supports were rotten and their fibreglass cladding was either split or delaminated. Also the external fendering was loose in parts. The rudder hung loosely in a corroded mild-steel tube, which indicated that any bushes fitted inside the tube had disintegrated. While the hull was soundly constructed I have to admit I was not impressed with the original fittings and fit out. Fortunately the 10hp Beta Marine diesel engine had not had much running so, having built a Mirror dinghy and converted my last two boats while living on the Clyde, I was confident I could resurrect this craft. Luckily my garage was big enough to allow me to move her inside…

Marine engine mounts are designed to isolate engine vibration noise from the boat’s structure, but it seems all too often that manufacturers install engines on mounts that do not isolate as well as they could. My mounts were 13 years old and I wanted to make my engine quieter so I took the opportunity to replace them with ‘quieter’ ones. How do engine mounts work? The rubber bonded within engine mounts comes in varying degrees of hardness. Softer rubber gives better isolation but it has less load support and may allow more engine movement than hard rubber. Anti-vibration (AV) rubber hardness is expressed in ‘shore’ units from 30 at the soft end to 75 shore at the hard end. Before I could buy softer rubber AV mounts I had to…

When the sun shines it always seems to shine right on my chartplotter. This means I can’t see the top of the screen or much of the data being displayed. I considered various options and after some experimentation came up with a simple answer: a sunshade. I wanted one that I could adjust and even move out of the way, so I measured around the chartplotter and bought some precut strips of matt black acrylic from ebay. My aim was to make the shade slightly longer (5mm) than the chart plotter so I could fix some Velcro tabs. First, I put the acrylic along the top of the plotter screen and measured the start and the end of the curve. Next I bent the acrylic. I heated both sides between…

Help. Somebody has turned the thermostat down! Here in Annapolis, one day we were struggling to sleep in the sweltering heat, the next we were furiously digging out and airing ‘slightly mouldy’ duvets from the bilges. Where did I put that bag of winter clothes? It is like somebody has flicked a switch. There was no slow transition into autumn here. Breakfasts these days consist of hot porridge (or ‘gruel’ as my children meanly call it) and despite the reduction in temperature, Arthur refuses to wear trousers on the basis that he wore shorts right the way through winter in the UK winter, including a snowstorm. From the galley comes a menu of soups and casseroles and early dinners as the evenings draw in. It must be time to sail…

Sailing schools which offer sail and motor cruising courses have been ‘severely hit’ by restrictions introduced to control the spread of COVID-19. But the RYA says there has been an increase in people studying shore-based courses online and personal watercraft and powerboat courses. The uncertainty surrounding overseas travel has contributed to this rise, with more people holidaying in the UK. Many schools offered online shore-based courses during the first England-wide lockdown between March and June. But the delay in allowing commercial passenger vessels to operate meant sail schools were unable to run on-the-water courses until August. The RYA has also temporarily removed the requirement to live aboard for the Competent Crew and Day Skipper courses to assist training centres in offering secure courses. Some schools have also been able to…

Production is under way in France on what is being billed as the world’s first truly recyclable, solar-electric boat. The LBV35 catamaran is being developed by Ibiza eco-charter firm La Bella Verde and Les Sables d’Olonne boatbuilder Innovation Yachts, which is run by former Vendée Globe skipper, Norbert Sedlacek, and Marion Koch, who designed the prototype for the Open16 racing yacht. La Bella Verde’s founder, Maarten Bernhart, said the marine industry worldwide had to start looking closely at its impact on the environment which is why it was turning its attention to the materials, construction and lifespan of vessels. “There are currently around 20 million recreational vessels in the European Union and the United States of America; all built with highly toxic and nonrecyclable materials. All of these boats will…

The Canal & River Trust has extended its online passage booking service. Bookings can be made for Thames Lock, Braunston Tunnel, Saddington Tunnel, Blisworth Tunnel, Boston Tidal Lock, Newlay & Kirkstall Forge Locks, Bingley Three and Five Rise Locks, and Harecastle Tunnel. Passages through the Standedge Tunnel, Liverpool Link and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park waterways were already available via the trust’s website, canalrivertrust.org.uk. Boaters are still able to book by telephone if they can’t access the online service. The trust has also published its annual Boater Report, which reveals that its income increased by £6.1 million in 2019/20 to £216.1 million. Spend on charitable activities increased by £10.9 million, largely due to the emergency repair works at Toddbrook Reservoir after a dam wall collapsed in August 2019. Expenditure on…

The RNLI is hoping to raise £2.05 million through its Christmas appeal after reporting losing millions in income due to the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. The charity had to spend £1.2 million this year to ensure its volunteer lifeboat crews and beach lifeguards had the required PPE, like face masks, gloves and hand sanitiser. “This was money the charity hadn’t planned to spend, at a time when RNLI shops were forced to close and fundraising events were cancelled,” said an RNLI spokesperson. ■ RNLI.org/Xmas…

ROUND IRELAND RECORD Pamela Lee and Cat Hunt have made history as the first all-female double-handed crew to sail around Ireland. The pair left Wicklow SC in the early hours of 13 October for the start line at Kish lighthouse before heading south for a clockwise, 700-mile circumnavigation, keeping Ireland and all its islands and rocks to starboard. They crossed the finish line aboard their Beneteau Figaro III, Iarracht Maigeanta (Éire) just after 0300 on 17 October, with a time of three days, 20 hours, 29 minutes. Their record has now been ratified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council. FEE INCREASE FOR WINDERMERE LAKE USERS From April 2021, Lake Windermere boat owners will face paying upfront costs of £500 to cover legal fees when taking out a new contract…

Flotsam and jetsam Sam Llewellyn writes nautical thrillers and edits The Marine Quarterly. He is currently patching up a 30ft ketch It was two in the morning in the latish 1970s, and we were sitting round a bottle-covered table in Ireland. A farmer two places down said he had a boat, and he wanted someone to navigate it along the south coast to his summer house on the west coast. I said I would, having temporarily forgotten that I knew as much about navigation as a pig knows about football. Not much later that same morning I reported to his mooring in the river. At first I assumed I was seeing double because of the late night. But after a while I clocked that the boat was actually a catamaran.…

The coronavirus pandemic has focussed attention on the joys of motorboating, and the freedom it offers for family ‘bubbles’. And there is huge downward pressure on boat prices – fully specified packages in particular – meaning some options are cheaper and therefore more popular than they have ever been. But there are so many sailing areas – coastal and inland – and so many types of boat on offer from trailable RIBs and hard-shells to inland models, it can be hard to choose, especially for the first-time buyer. So what is behind all this buzz and what should potential buyers look out for? “Boat sales are off the charts,” says Kip Wasilewski of the US marine electronics specialist Carling Technologies. “In the States, going out on a boat is seen…

Last autumn two friends and I spent a few days pottering along the Charente river from Sireuil heading west and back. We were fortunate with the weather and the countryside was magical. We travelled along leafy tree-lined waterways, past rolling vineyards and medieval chateaus. The mornings brought a slight chill, and we’d wake up to the sight of a mist blanketing the river with dragonflies hovering inches above mirror-smooth water. After France had experienced its most brutal summer ever, the autumn temperature was perfect. Though many French locks these days are partially or completely automated, we found ours to be completely manual with no resident lock-keepers on site, so we soon learned how to transit them. Though at the time of writing, travel through France’s inland waterways may not be…

It was with considerable trepidation that my wife and I left our 45ft schooner Britannia all alone to face a Category 4 hurricane in a marina at Titusville, on the east coast of Florida, near Cape Canaveral, USA. The monster storm named Matthew heading our way had already wreaked havoc and caused many deaths in Haiti and the Bahamas, and it was now barrelling north with a projected landfall in the USA exactly at Cape Canaveral. From past experience we knew we were in for a severe hammering, because even if Matthew only passed nearby, the beast was so large, with very strong winds extending some 40 miles from the eye, it would still impact us. Wind speeds were forecast at around 100-150mph along the coast, with the possibility of…

The Down East 45ft boats, built in California in the 1970s, are beamy, heavy displacement ocean cruising boats. Yet they were fitted with navigation lights so puny I wouldn’t even consider fitting them on a dinghy! The port and starboard lights on Britannia, my own Down East schooner, were the tiny tear-drop style (also called sharks, or bird’s eyes) mounted on the hull below the toe-rail, only 4ft above the waterline. They could easily be temporarily obscured in even a moderate sea. The stern light was no better, mounted centrally on the transom. Add to these the original, tiny 10W festoon bulbs and the boat of her size had very ineffective navigation lights. The possible consequences of not being seen on a black moonless night doesn’t bear thinking about, yet…

PBO Digital is the best way to get the full magazine experience if you’re unable to buy your regular copy at the newsagent or supermarket. But it’s not quite as straightforward as simply browsing the shelves! 1. What device should I use? You can get a digital, or electronic, version of PBO magazine on a computer (desktop or laptop, Mac or PC), a phone, tablet or an eReader device. The options for desktop/laptop are limited in comparison to phones and tablets, but the bigger screen area and resolution may be an attraction. See the table below for options. 2. Which magazine platform should I buy from? For PBO Digital there are nine different digital magazine platforms available. Some platforms are like supermarkets, while others are like local newsagents with a…

I grew up messing about in small boats. My childhood summers were spent in a remote Highland sea-loch and there were toy boats to sail, then lilos, then an inflatable canoe, and of course our clinker-built 12ft dinghy (with Seagull outboard) which took us on expeditions all over the loch. I still have that boat, and to look at her now it’s hard to believe that our crew of two adults, three children and a Siamese cat wouldn’t hesitate to travel a fair distance aboard! We moved to Edinburgh just before my gap year, and I got my sailing dinghy, a 1962 12ft 6in Graduate called Lady Blue. She was old-fashioned even then, still with the rolled side-decks that everyone else was stripping out, and a wooden mast. I learned…

It is the time of year for pulling and heaving boat trailers around with the inevitable consequence of a ‘bad back’. After hauling out last autumn I suffered sciatica for about four months, which made me resolve to minimise the risk of it happening again. The handles on most trailer ball hitches are convenient, but only for one hand which means uneven loading of the spine when lifting and pulling with one arm. My solution is a simple handlebar. All you need is a piece of strong hardwood which fits through the metal loop handle on the hitch and is just long enough for a handhold on each side. If your ball hitch is the revolving type beware of it sliding along the wooden handle and trapping your hand. In…

Boaters are being urged to fit carbon monoxide alarms to their vessels after two men died on board the 9.14m motor cruiser Diversion on the River Ouse in York. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has issued a safety bulletin warning of the dangers of carbon monoxide as it continues its investigation into the deaths of Ronald Vincent Holmes, 60, and Stephen Jewitt, 63 on 4 December 2019. Initial findings have revealed the boat’s second-hand cabin heater had never been professionally checked or serviced. The fuel/air mixture was burnt in the heater and the exhaust gas was discharged outside, via a silencer, through an adjacent hull fitting. This silencer was not approved for marine use, was not gas tight and its connection to the exhaust pipework was loose, allowing carbon…

Natasha Lambert is attempting to become the first person to sail across the Atlantic using sip and puff technology on her Bavaria Nautitech Open 46, Blown Away. The 23 year old, who was born with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, will be sailing with the 2020 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), which was expected to have departed from Gran Canaria on 22 November bound for St Lucia. Her father, Gary, has developed the control system for the multihull, using open source software, and incorporating a sip-puff system that utilises a single straw, allowing Natasha to control both the helm and the sails. During the summer, Natasha and her team sailed Blown Away from her home port of Cowes to the Canaries, initially making short day sails ahead of the 1,008-mile passage from…

Owners of the Alan Hill-designed Tomahawk are being encouraged to join the owners association, which has just celebrated its 21st anniversary. The Tomahawk Owners Association (TOA) was formed by David Collinson, Mike Juer, Peter Llewellyn and Bill Garrod, who became its first commodore. It now has a membership of 50 and an active website, tomahawk25.co.uk, and social media following. To mark the anniversary, five of the previous six commodores attended an event at the Portsmouth Offshore Group Club House in Gosport, where a cake was cut and champagne drunk to mark the occasion. Current commodore Roger Bayliss said the website was open to anyone interested in the 25ft yacht.…

OFFSHORE WIND BOOM PLANNED Ambitious proposals to increase Scotland’s offshore wind capacity to 11 gigawatts (GW), providing energy to over eight million homes by 2030, has been announced by the Scottish Government. Currently Scotland has 5.6GW of consented offshore capacity, of which 1GW is operational. The Government has also adopted a plan identifying the east, north-east and north of Scotland as suitable areas for commercial-scale offshore wind projects, specifically the Outer Hebrides, Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands and the Moray Firth. The plan will inform the first seabed leasing process led by the newly devolved Crown Estate Scotland. NEW CHAIR FOR RYA SCOTLAND RYA Scotland has appointed Brian Wilson (pictured) as its new chair, taking over from Ewan Macpherson. Wilson, who has been a RYA Scotland volunteer for over 10 years,…

Living with the sea Marsali Taylor sails an Offshore 8M, Karima S. She’s a dinghy instructor and author of The Shetland Sailing Mysteries starring liveaboard sleuth, Cass Lynch. We take Christmas seriously. As soon as my mast is down and the kitchen cleared of ropes, then I do a special trip into town for the ingredients for my four Christmas cakes (normal, light, a stollen and the one which starts by boiling the fruit in five sorts of alcohol). Once the fruit cakes are safely ‘watered’ with brandy and maturing in tins, then I can start thinking about presents designed to lure a non-sailing spouse towards the water. Not that sailing gear does much good of course, to a natural non-sailor. Philip does have his own lifejacket, which has been…

Funny how small ideas in life often turn in to bigger ones. The Yodare challenge is definitely one of those. What started out as sailing around one solitary island in 2015 has now morphed into sailing round all the islands in England and Wales – that’s over 200 islands at the last count – although unfortunately I keep discovering more! So how did this sailing odyssey come about and what’s it like to take on the many varied challenges of the British coast in a 4m dinghy? In 2015 I turned 50 and, more poignantly, it was the point at which I’d lived more of my life without my father, than with him. He died of cancer when I was only 24. He was from a family of six siblings,…

Weather forecasting has changed enormously over the past few decades – there’s now a bewildering array of apps and websites that have the potential to give quite fine-grained data. But at the same time, the way in which we receive and interact with weather data has also changed along with our expectations. For example, despite the massive improvements in accuracy, forecasting still gets a bad press. Today’s predictions for six days’ time are as accurate as the 48-hour forecasts at the time of the 1979 Fastnet Race disaster and that ability continues to improve at the rate of a day per decade. Yet interpreting what a forecast will actually mean on the water still requires some understanding of the basic elements of weather systems. Weather is fundamentally created by the…

For standard mainsails, boom covers are essential and relatively easy to find readymade, or to make. But it’s a different story for in-mast furling rigs, which don’t need the boom protecting, instead the more awkward bit of the mast just above and below the boom. Each year we’d struggle to cover the mainsail tail, halyards, cleats and rope clamps with winterising covers on our Moody Eclipse 33 Aderyn Glas, which we keep in Greece. This is in an effort to minimise the damage from the late-summer sun as well as the winds and rain of the winter months. We have up to now used sheets of plastic and canvas, tied with ropes, wound around the mast and prayed that the winter winds don’t loosen the rope tension allowing the coverings…

Got a question? Email pbo@futurenet.com CORROSION Hull anode doesn’t seem to be doing much Q My 2004 Hanse 312 has been sailed on the East Coast and is moored in the River Orwell since we bought her in 2012. For the eight years before that she was sailed in fresh water. She’d been antifouled with VC17 M Extra from new and we have continued using this each year as it is easy to apply, washes off clean at the end of the season and gives a minimum thickness build up. We added a hull anode before launching into salt water but this has shown no erosion during the past eight years. It does seem however that the area around the anode is beginning to suffer from some form of hard…

Boat ownership is obviously the raison d’etre of this magazine, but it’s not for everyone and even those for whom DIY has been a religion, there comes a time when sharing responsibility might start to sound more attractive than being in sole charge of everything. Which is where shared ownership comes in. Boat sharing syndicates exist in all shapes and sizes, but how exactly do they manage to ‘run’ a boat reliably without it costing as much as a professional charter company? I spoke to Paul McGrane who organises the membership arrangements for a pair of boats: Bon Viveur I and Bon Viveur II, which are both based in France (boatsharefrance.com). He explained that each boat is afloat between March and November, and is owned by 10 or more people.…

Unless you have an autopilot, once you have worked out the ‘course to steer’ someone has to steer it. New helmsmen sometimes struggle to understand that the compass card stays still and they should steer the boat’s lubber line (A) to the number you want. The lubber line is at the front of a binnacle compass (B) and at the back of a bulkhead type (C), which also has its card markings reversed. Note how the lubber lines move (D) when we change course from 0o North to 030o. Steering compasses are often only marked every 5o so if your calculated course comes to, say, 243o round it up to 245o or down to 240o and plot that. Also make sure the helmsman can steer the course comfortably and is…