Innehållsförteckning för May 2022 från Practical Boat Owner

Westerly’s ‘second most numerous boat and a fantastic family cruiser’, the Konsort, marks its 40th year in 2022. For many years, Westerly was the UK’s largest boatbuilder until their ultimate demise in 2000. By far their biggest seller was the Centaur with more than 2,500 sold – bringing sailing to the masses at an affordable price. This was considered a great starter boat but when Centaur owners grew in experience and family numbers the natural step up for many was the Konsort, Westerly’s second biggest selling craft. At 29ft LOA it came with either bilge or fin keel and a pilot house variant named the Konsort Duo. A total of 812 Konsorts were built between 1979 and 1982 with many still on the water today. Westerly Owners Association, the largest…

Australian yachtswoman Lisa Blair, 36, nearly died twice in the Southern Ocean in 2017. Now she is returning to these notoriously stormy seas for a three-month-long second attempt to sail solo, non-stop, around Antarctica in record time aboard her 50ft yacht Climate Action Now loaded with scientific monitoring devices and probes. Her secondary goal is to break the current record of 102 days, one hour 35 minutes 50 seconds held by Russian Fedor Konyukhov. In 2017, 72 days into her solo voyage and three quarters the way around Antarctica, Lisa’s yacht was dismasted in storm conditions 1,000 miles from land. Lisa saved her yacht, was given fuel from a passing container ship, built a jury rig and motorsailed to Cape Town, South Africa. Two months later Lisa re-started her voyage,…

Dedicated Golden Globe entrants will have sailed halfway around the world, prior to the circumnavigation start. The sole female contender, South African Kirsten Neuschäfer, completed her Cape George 36 refit on Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, before sailing 8,000-miles to Cape Town as a solo non-stop sea trail. After a brief break, Kirstin will cover 6,600 miles to Les Sables d’Olonne, France, ready for the Golden Globe Race (GGR) departure on 4 September. Australian oceanographer Mark Sinclair is still completing his 2018 GGR aboard Lello 34 Coconut. Mark had to stop in Adelaide halfway through the last race but as 2018 GGR has no finishing time, and he only made the one stop, he can rejoin under the ‘Chichester Class’. The return voyage will bring him to the start…

Flying hammerheads Ali Wood’s ‘Hull and keel prep’ article (PBO December 2021) reminded me of grinding back the keel on my Moody 33 MkI a few years ago: a filthy task made all the worse by her wide beam and short keel, which meant curling up into a ball to get under her! Ali mentions the Tercoo rotary blaster, which is just what I used to take the rust off after reading a review in PBO. It’s a fantastic tool and does the job as well as a needle gun. However I’d like to offer a warning to potential users. The yard I was working in was quite busy and everyone parked their cars close to their boats. I set to with the blaster only to be disturbed by a…

Sam Llewellyn sails a 30ft ketch he rescued from dereliction It was a bright, breezy day in the yard. There was the sound of power tools and voices asking other voices to pass the paint, and could they borrow a wrench, and had they finished with the hose. The sun sank behind the hill, and shadow covered the world. The voices stilled. As I walked up to the corner of the yard furthest from the sea I heard others, murmuring. At first I could not see where they were coming from. I had arrived among the hulks, a collection of festering derelicts, tarpaulins sagging with green algal pools, paint flaked or altogether gone. I was standing by something that looked like a Folkboat, running a hand along grey and mossy…

While there’s an estimated 10,000 people living on their boats globally, there’s a much smaller number actively cruising. Fewer still, since Covid turned the world on its head and kept cruisers at home. With lockdowns and border closures, quarantine procedures and PCR testing, travel has been a minefield. Changing regulations means constant uncertainty. If you are in your home port, best stay there until the storm clears. That said, there are a number of cruisers who were caught away from home and the choice to sit out the pandemic wasn’t an option. This is where we found ourselves in early March 2020 as we readied ourselves for the cruising season in South Africa. Far from our home in New Zealand and on a limited income, we couldn’t just sit out…

When friends of mine, who were keelboat racers, successfully restored a Hunter 19 cruiser and changed the rig I was impressed. If they could do it, maybe I could too – it seemed they’d started a trend. It began at the 2004 Squib Nationals when a couple of ex-Squib champions took pity on a Hunter 19 that was languishing at the back of Holyhead Boatyard. They bought the yacht and took it back to the East Coast. They restored it with a new interior and put a Squib rig on it before taking it cruising. At a more recent Squib Championships in Holyhead there was a layday due to strong winds and, during a discussion at the bar, it transpired that another unloved H19 was on a trailer which had…

“Abacon and egg roll started it all,” says skipper Alfie Moore. “We thought we’d run out of ketchup but then Stu found another bottle. We bit into our rolls at the same time, looked at each other and said, ‘yeah, we need this!’. It was going to be a good day… but then we spotted the dismasted vessel.” Alfie, together with wife Ceylan, mum Adele Jeal and friend Stu Finch, were crossing the Atlantic on their Fountaine Pajot Lucia 40, Coco. They were taking part in the ARC+, the sister event to the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, with a stopover in Cape Verde. Alfie, an electrical engineer, and his new wife, Ceylan, were on an extended honeymoon, having rented out their house in Croydon to start new lives as liveaboards.…

Like many readers, I was delighted when the editor decided to have her old Sailor VHF repaired for use. Compared to modern electronics the old Sailor just looks the business. For similar reasons the Tudor Rose still has her original Seafarer echo sounder. It’s the Mk2, the one with a rounded, grey, 1950’s style case. We thought it quite an extravagance at £25 in 1971. After 50 years it was still working except that its rotating flasher had grown rather dim. When it got bad enough I decided to have a go at fixing it myself. Nothing ventured, after all… One of the beauties of old fashioned kit like this is that it is built with nuts, bolts and screws so that it can be dismantled. I deplore the modern…

Email your projects and tips to pbo@futurenet.com including high resolution photos where possible. We pay at least £30 for each one published To get the best from your boat you need to set up the rig correctly and then tweak it as the voyage progresses and conditions change. Mainsail controls are essential, such as clew outhaul, Cunningham, kicking strap and halyard, but I find the adjustable backstay to be the most powerful of the lot. My Hanse 311 has what might be described as an 11/12 rig and originally came fitted with a split backstay adjusted by a rather poor 4:1 block and tackle (8:1 purchase). It had a lot of friction and little power. I found that it hurt my hands to pull it hard and I tended not…

Poorly discarded surgical masks could cause serious microplastic pollution, researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) have discovered. Growth and reproduction of marine organisms could be affected, too. Scientists estimate that the global demand for surgical masks reached 129 billion per month by 2020, while 1.56 billion masks were inappropriately released into the oceans in 2020. The masks’ main Polypropylene material “is a kind of commodity plastic that could fragment under the effects of heat, wind, ultraviolet radiation, and ocean currents,” said Dr Henry He Yuhe, Asst. Professor in the School of Energy and Environment. Dr He’s team investigated the release of microplastics from these masks in seawater and evaluated the chronic toxicity on copepods (Tigriopus japonicus), a small marine crustacean. As a result of this study, it is…

A rare Red Weather Warning was issued by the Met Office when Storm Eunice brought ‘extremely strong winds’ to much of the UK in February. The Needles on the Isle of Wight recorded a wind gust of 122mph on 18 February – provisionally the highest gust ever recorded in England. Among the many cases of minor damage sustained to boats across the country, two cruisers took a tumble at Netley Cliff Sailing Club; one member’s bilge keel 20-footer twisted off a trailer, suffering hull puncture damage, while a Hurley 27 ended up leaning on three boats. Shovelling and barrowing the several tons of shingle that the storm surge brought into the club back onto the beach was expected to provide warming exercise at the members’ March workday. The Emsworth community…

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. You southern folk get summer starting in April, I know, but up here April is daffodil month, with maybe the first tulips, and we can still rely on one last blizzard, the ‘lambie snaa’ in mid-April, to make the newly-born hill lambs cuddle close to their mothers. I can get the boat out and do the cleaning, polishing and antifouling, mast back, electric restored, cabin refurnished, but it’s still too cold to go far. May, though, May is the first summer month, and oh, Shetland is bonny at this time of year. The graceful Arctic terns have returned to chitter in the marina rock wall. There…

Our week-long narrowboat adventure from Whitchurch in Shropshire to Chester began when we stepped aboard Inca Wren, a 48ft narrowboat owned by ABC Boat Hire at Whitchurch Marina. We travelled as light as possible except for food stores, given the lack of shopping opportunities on our route. Indeed the engineer, who watched us curiously as we unloaded our cars, may have thought we were preparing for a round-the-world trip, such were the number of boxes, bottles and bags of consumables. He kept a beady eye on us as we edged our way toward the winding hole to turn the boat around, but at last we were on our way. The weather gods were kind and we set off under clear skies and with gentle breezes. The canal wasted no time…

Chichester’s Dell Quay boatyard had been Maximus’s home for two years – and felt like our second home too, since we’d acquired the Maxi 84 project boat. We’d spent long hot days scraping paint, fixing leaks, and shadowing experts as they talked us through seacocks and engines, and how we must – absolutely must – reinforce that bendy forepeak hatch (which we still haven’t done). There were many jobs left on the list, from fitting a bow-roller to replacing the running rigging, but we were out of time. Our three kids were now on their summer holidays and a long-awaited home-exchange in Chichester (from where we’d planned to do more boat work) had fallen through. “Shall we just launch and be done with it?” I asked my husband James. “At…

Last June we coated the hull of a Hardy Commodore 42 with eight different antifouling products (see PBO August 2021). The motorboat Raymariner, which is the test boat for Raymarine, is based in the Solent and is used three or four times a week for trialling the company’s electronics. The aim of the test was to compare traditional copper-based annual antifouls with a number of longer lasting and more environmentally sensitive alternatives. We applied three non-copper antifoul paints and three traditional eroding paints plus IP Ultra 300, which is a hard coating, and Coppercoat, which is a non-eroding copper-epoxy coating. Raymariner was lifted in January 2022 to have a transducer replaced, so we took the opportunity to compare the results after seven months of submersion. Tightening regulations These days, many…

These days it’s relatively easy to maintain phone contact almost anywhere in the world – but to do so from a boat utilising a satellite phone is expensive. Radio amateurs, meanwhile, can maintain contact between themselves anywhere on the planet for only the cost of their radio and an antenna. My daughter Liz and I recently completed a one year cruise of the islands of the Atlantic and Caribbean. By using amateur radio, for which I’ve been licensed for 66 years, we were able to keep in touch with radio friends throughout the world during our journey. Casual radio contacts invariably wanted to know about the boat’s radio equipment. From what I have seen of other cruising boats of similar size to ours, we shared similar facilities for living on…

My canal cruiser Osprey needed a nameplate, and around that time Lidl was selling a pyrography kit. So, being interested in it’s possible usefulness, I bought one to play with. There are better tools on the market than the one Lidl sold, usually configured to be held more like a pen, but I experimented and soon worked out how best to use it. The way I worked was to first find a font I liked which I then transferred to the wood in pencil, and did the same with the images of the Osprey heads. Then it’s just a matter of drawing over the pencil lines with the hot tool. So is it easy? It is after a little practice. My nameplate is made from a block of oak and…

Past commodore of Topsham Sailing Club, Kate Brodie, is embarking on a plan to sail around the UK via the Shetlands to visit Marsali Taylor this summer while her husband travels by bike. Starting this April, 61-year-old Kate will sail Hullabaloo, her Westerly Storm 33 cruiser, from Exmouth east towards Dover. Husband Graham, 64, secretary of the South Devon Cycling UK group, will cycle along the coast and they hope to meet each night at suitable ports. The planning will be flexible and part of the fun, adapting to the weather conditions. After Kate completed treatment for breast cancer, the couple decided to broaden their horizons and raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support – in thanks for the help Kate received online during treatment when conventional services were closed mid-pandemic.…

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 Sailing, let’s face it, is a leap of faith, and I’m not just talking about that time we were approaching a pontoon and the skipper shouted ‘jump!’, as the eight-foot chasm opened up wider than the world triple-jump record. As I have utter faith in my capabilities I passed the mooring rope to someone else and said: “Didn’t you hear? The skipper said ‘jump!’.” Truly, God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. For this just strengthened my faith, as the person I handed the rope to performed an athletic hop, skip and jump that would have got him fourth place in the London…

Cruisers of around 30ft can often become a ‘boat for life’. Having graduated from dinghies to small cruisers, many sailors decide that something around 30ft will give them enough space, headroom, comfort and seagoing ability to see out their sailing days. Sometimes a crew of young children may push them into something bigger for a while, but many sailors find that around 30ft is an ideal size for coastal and occasional offshore sailing. Budget is also usually an important factor. Some GRP cruisers around 30ft date back to the 1960s. But times change and precious few new models of this size are being built today. So if you want a 30-footer you’ll probably end up with a second-hand yacht and can be looking at age differences of up to 60…

 ‘Don’t worry, we don’t get hurricanes up here’. We were moored in Club Nautique Les Plaisanciers du Hâvre - Havre Aubert Yacht Club, on Îles de la Madeleine looking for a weather window to cross to Nova Scotia. The Madeleines are a dozen islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence, interconnected by sand bars that enclose large shallow lagoons. The 36-mile long archipelago is shaped like a giant fishhook. Narrow entrance channels and dredged fairways allow access to the ports. They are part of Quebec Province therefore the residents are French-speaking, although many are bilingual with English as a second language. The islands are particularly beautiful with green hills, red sandstone cliffs, white sandy beaches and blue waters – at least the waters look blue when the sun is shining!…

About SSB radio Single Side-Band (SSB) radio is the system used by yachts and ships for long distance communication. Originally, it enabled vessels to communicate over long distances between each other and the inland telephone system. In the UK this was via the coast radio station at Portishead – but that facility was abandoned when satellite communication became common. Many older yachts that cruised abroad retained their SSB radios, mainly for reception of news or to join weather nets. SSB is still used in remote regions. Some fishing boats still use SSB to communicate between each other if they are out of range of VHF. These vessels were licensed by the GPO and later by Ofcom. An operator’s licence was obtained from the Department for Trade and Industry after training…

Q I have a Volvo Penta 2003T with 950 hours running time. It starts perfectly and runs smoothly. There is no oil or water consumption and both fluids are clean. The normal top speed revs would be 3,200rpm. When propelling the boat, the engine has recently started to top out at 2,100rpm. Opening the throttle any further produces black smoke from the exhaust but no increase in speed. In neutral, the engine still revs freely to 4,000+ rpm with a clean exhaust. The boat was ashore recently while the hull was cleaned and new antifouling applied – but even before cleaning, there was far less fouling than usual. The shaft was checked, turning freely by hand, and the prop is perfect. I’ve changed the air filter, but to no avail. What…

Q I have a 25ft bilge keel yacht, it is fitted with a large Whale pump in the cockpit to service the engine compartment and cabin. I also have an electric pump with 5m of hose that can reach forward compartments, lockers and the lazarette plus a stirrup-type pump to reach into small spaces. A recent survey recommends I fit an automatic bilge pump but I’m wondering what the purpose of this is and if it’s an industry requirement? If a pump was fitted in the engine compartment it would serve to empty only a prop-shaft seal leak or raw water engine leak. I have no bilge as such – water would accumulate on the cabin floor. I don’t object to safety requirements but believe this could be overkill. In…

We pay for your published cruising stories and harbour updates. Email pbo@futurenet.com and include high resolution images if possible Being charter operators in Scotland, my husband Mark and I were accustomed to taking our main ‘summer’ holiday in the winter as the demands of running the company left little time for sailing in our home waters. For our January 2020 cruise we opted for a nine-day charter, starting from St George’s in Grenada, with our long-term sailing friends Susan and Ian Craw. We booked through Tenrag Yacht Charters. Our flight from Gatwick took 10½ hours, including an hour in St Lucia. At Maurice Bishop International Airport, Grenada, we were welcomed by a Dream Yacht Charters (DYC) rep and directed to a taxi for the 15-minute journey to the Port Louis…