Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2022 från Practical Boat Owner

Twenty-five boat owners on Southampton Water have given up their moorings due to the three-fold price hike by Associated British Ports (ABP). Terry Welsh, Commodore of Cracknore Hard Sailing Club, said: “We had a collective meeting on 26 April with all the clubs of Southampton Water, and 25 individual mooring holders have been forced into giving up their moorings.” As reported in last month’s PBO, reader John Bigg, who has a 27ft trimaran at Ower Lake, Calshot, saw his licence fee increased from £225 to £675 without consultation. Marchwood Yacht Club has 140 swinging mooring sites licensed by ABP and fears the price rise seen by individual mooring holders will soon be extended to clubs. John Hodgins, membership secretary, said: “This threatens the viability of our club. We are not…

Eight youngsters set sail from Southampton aboard Prolific, the Ocean Youth Trust South’s flagship, after winning the MDL’s Sail Training Awards. Luke Harley (14), Sam Harley (12), Maya Milenburg (12), Beth Eason-Taylor (18), Oliver James (13), and Tallulah Tulloch (17) completed a five-night voyage which departed from MDL’s Ocean Village Marina in April, sailing to Cowes and then across the bay to Poole. When inclement weather kept them berthed in Poole, they explored ashore and completed various aspects of the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) Competent Crew qualifications. They circumnavigated the Isle of Wight, arriving in Cowes to enjoy games on the beach. Back on board, the young people practised essential seamanship skills, including man overboard recovery drills. “I’m proud of this voyage, in that it encapsulated why sail training exists:…

Tom Cunliffe recently wrote in, asking if I’d already featured his YouTube channel Yachts and Yarns, which I’d not. I suppose it might be because he’s such an institution I assumed most PBO readers who spend time on YouTube would already be aware of his channel. But then it struck me that, as our online readership is more demographically and geographically diverse than the print readership, perhaps my assumption was incorrect. So for the benefit of my non-Brit, non-boomer readers: Tom Cunliffe is a vastly experienced and well-read sailor, merchant mariner, sailing instructor, Yachtmaster examiner, writer and broadcaster. At the time of writing his channel has 133 videos and 26,500 subscribers, which puts it between Sailing Cadoha and Vet Tails’ Sailing Chuffed in terms of popularity. It certainly deserves more…

For starters, there’s the big ferry just to get here. It takes 13 hours and it can be a wonderful passage from Aberdeen, seeing the hills of Scotland and getting up at 0500 to watch Fair Isle slip past. It can also be the sort where you head for your berth with a good book, and she’s just rolling nicely when the stabilisers judder in. I enjoy those wild journeys too, though I’d like a lee cloth. Philip, my non-sailing spouse, isn’t so enthusiastic. However flat calm it is, he knocks himself out with Stugeron beforehand. Once you’ve made it here there’s a wonderful choice of ferries to go on, and you can check them out on shetland.gov. uk/ferries. Dedicated island-hoppers determined to tick them all off will need at…

When RS Sailing, the world’s largest manufacturer of sailing dinghies, announced it would be building a planing electric RIB a few years ago, some ‘expressions of surprise’ were heard from the marine industry. RS changed the sailing world with its high performance dinghies which took the principle and the fun of the planing skiff concept into a much larger market than it had ever been before, but an electric RIB was surely too far outside their areas of expertise – wasn’t it? Established motorboat manufacturers were – and still are – struggling with the energy transition, as designing a boat that is quick to charge, has a usable range, but also has enough grunt when needed to get planing with its heavy batteries is a mind-bendingly big ask. Packaging it…

Much like few great rugby tales ever start with the words ‘I sat down to a salad and glass of water’, no great adventure story should start with ‘I opened the laptop and completed my e-C1331’. However this is the post-Brexit position we find ourselves in nowadays as yachtspeople wanting to visit European shores. So how do we make it as stressfree as possible? The formalities You will need to be connected to the internet, firstly to send the form but also, unless you have knowledge of every UN/LOCODE you will visit, you will need to look things up. Make sure you have your Small Ships Register (SSR) numbers to hand, your hull identification number, call sign and details such as vessel name and type, port of registry, registered number;…

How Return Link Service works Galileo, the European Union’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constellation, became operational in 2017. This allows technology with a Galileo-enabled receiver to use global satellite signals for positioning, navigation and timing. For the last decade or so, when we found ourselves in grave and imminent danger, we’d reach for our personal locator beacon (or any other emergency position indicating radio beacon we might have to hand) and then go through the activation procedure: find some open sky, deploy the antenna, point it skywards, make sure the unit is attached to us by lanyard, press that activation button and then, if we had done it correctly, we’d hear it beep and flash as confirmation that it was actively sending our radio signal into the great beyond.…

Plastic sextants In the mid-1970s I sailed a small boat from the UK to Tahiti, crossing the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific. My primary navigation tool was a plastic sextant, with timing provided by a quartz-crystal bedside alarm clock, itself a very new invention. My shipmate had a very expensive metal sextant. We navigated separately, but compared noon positions every day and were invariably within four miles of each other. I know from my apprenticeship in the merchant navy that if two officers took sights from the bridge of a tanker, a steady and high platform compared with a yacht, and were within seven miles of one another, they got full marks. In the 1970s there was no GPS, and even the earlier satellite system, Transit, that gave on average one…

PART 2 Rarely do we get to choose how our boats are powered. The usual scheme of things is we choose a boat on a myriad of parameters, of which one is the propulsion system. But having talked about diesel inboard engines and their replacement last month, perhaps a few words on other types of installation wouldn’t go amiss. Conventional power units for cruising yachts, and I use the word ‘power’ to encompass electric power as well, usually drive through a propeller shaft or a sail drive. Of these two, a conventional propshaft drive is the simpler and cheaper to maintain. Saildrives have bellows and seals that require regular checking and replacement and are principally made of aluminium that’s permanently under the waterline – requiring a degree of monitoring that…

I do enjoy a hot shower in my boat and my current vessel, a Trusty T23 displacement motorcruiser, heats the water from the engine up to at least 80°C and it can also achieve a similar temperature from the electric immersion heater when solely on shore power. There are three taps on the boat: one in the cockpit, one for the kitchen sink and one in the shower. The first time I showered, I realised something was wrong. The water went from freezing cold to scalding depending on whether the fresh water pump was on or off. Worryingly the change was very sudden, making a shower impossible. The scalding hot water was also potentially dangerous, especially if my grandchildren were on board. So I had two problems to solve. The…

I’ve always been environmentally conscious and with an increasing concern about climate change, converting my new-to-me sailboat to fully electric propulsion was an idea that just wouldn’t leave my mind. Added to this I used to run a small solar panel company and seven years ago was awarded the Guinness World Record for the fastest solar powered crossing of the English Channel. (Full story coming soon – Ed.) This was on Dart 15 beach catamaran hulls covered in over 100kg of rigid solar panels connected directly to electric motors with no heavy batteries to slow it down. Boat choice When I was able to buy my first proper sailing boat for our family three years ago it made sense to try to go electric as quickly as possible. I was…

Our Jersey 36 semi-planing motorcruiser has superb offshore handling and manoeuvrability, with quite low air draught so she’s the perfect package for a mix of river and sea work. We keep her at St Olaves on the Norfolk Broads and have easy access to the sea. All of these simple and very cheap fixes had the same basic aim: to allow this reasonably-sized boat to be handled single-handed in confined spaces. Some of them might work for your boat too. Accessibility made easy We have arranged this simple non slip pontoon gangplank that has a permanent galvanised steel handrail so the very young or old can be helped aboard. Eyebrows raised Polished stainless steel channel screwed and siliconed above opening ports stops ingress of water if they’re left open in…

The four-way touch panels for the Jabsco Deluxe Flush electronic marine toilet can play up leaving you literally in the… mire! They are hard to source and cost over £100 if you can find one. The good news is that you can replace them with four ordinary push switches for under £10. The panel has no electronics as such – it merely tells the controller that a button has been pressed. Any momentary switch will do the same job. Here is what you need to do to fix it. Buy four ‘momentary-on’ panel mounted push switches. I got 10 for £10 on ebay. Remove the touch panel. It’s on a long cable so you can pull it out a reasonable amount. With a sharp knife carefully cut around the rear…

UKSA’s new Youth and Mental Health Ambassador, Dee Caffari, shared her top wellness tips to mark Mental Health Awareness Week. The Isle of Wight-based charity and maritime training provider appointed Dee to help young people affected by falling below the poverty line, having less time outdoors, school closures and reduced employment prospects. As the first woman to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world in both directions, and the only woman to have completed three non-stop circumnavigations, Dee has been tested both mentally and physically. Her tips to help deal with mental wellness and resilience are: ▪ Connect with other people: “Spending time with friends or family allows you to feel that connection.” ▪ Be physically active: “Get outdoors, breathe in the fresh air and be active. You’ll feel better…

Falmouth Classics will return from June 17 to 19 for three days of racing, a parade of classic boats and the small classic boat parade. Teamac marine paints and coatings is sponsoring the Saturday race and more than 100 boats are expected to participate, including luggers, pilot cutters, Falmouth working boats, gaff and Bermudan rigged cruisers and dayboats, with the oldest dating from 1881. This year marks Falmouth Classics 35th anniversary. The event coincides with the Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival. ▪ falmouthclassics.org.uk…

Much like Quint in the movie Jaws I’m beginning to think I’m gonna need a bigger boat. It’s not that sharks are a particular problem in Essex – unless you’re buying a used car – it’s more that I made the mistake of turning on my TV the other day when Salvage Hunters wasn’t on, which led me to the conclusion that what with one thing and another and things being how they are, as well as this and that and so forth, it’s probably a good idea to go sailing for quite a long time. And I have to say I’m not the only one, as it seems everybody on land is aiming to get as far away from it as possible, resulting in booming sales of Pot Noodles,…

Sailors who look around 21st century boat shows won’t come across a single big volume British yacht builder. The occasional Oyster, Rustler, Swallow Baycruiser or Cornish Crabber is about all you will find. And the cost of setting up a modern production unit is so high that I can’t see any UK sailing boatbuilder now achieving the market dominance still enjoyed by British motor yacht builders such as Princess and Sunseeker. But it was not always that way. As the GRP revolution accelerated into the 1970s and beyond, Britannia ruled the waves. Westerly, Thames Marine, Moody, Macwester, Nicholson, Rogers, Russell Marine, Parker, Hunter Boats and many others dominated the aisles at British Boat Shows. The late lamented Earls Court boat show used to bulge at the seams. Even before the…

Not so long ago locating a crew member who’d fallen overboard in anything other than the most benign of conditions was a massive challenge. But thanks to personal locator beacons (PLBs) and personal AIS units this has fundamentally changed. PLBs are small devices, typically fitted on a lifejacket, that send a distress message, including GPS position, via satellite to a coastguard operations centre. They work in a similar way to emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRBs), but usually require manual activation and have a shorter operational battery life (usually 24 hours). A newer type of gadget – personal AIS – both triggers an alarm on board your boat (usually via DSC) and transmits an AIS position that can be seen on your chartplotter and on those of other vessels. In…

McMurdo was the first company to adopt the much awaited and frustratingly delayed Return Link Service (RLS) system, integrating it into their FastFind PLB. The next to arrive, roughly a year later, was the ACR’s ResQLink at the 2021 METS trade show, winning a design award for manufacturing and engineering (DAME). These are the only two beacons currently offering the Return Link Service. RLS is a major development which gives anyone who has activated a PLB a reply confirming that their beacon signal has been received and help is on its way (see panel, previous page). Both units are a similar size. The FastFind has a rubberised bumper around the bottom and feels more robust than the ResQLink, which is texturised hard plastic. Antenna deployment The FastFind has the antenna…

✓ Can be cheaper, particularly, at the smaller sizes, than a comparably powered inboard engine. ✓ In the event of a breakdown can be swapped out for a replacement very quickly. ✓ For planing motorboats, a petrol outboard offers lighter weight and often higher performance than an inboard. ✓ Quickly removed so one engine can be regularly used on several boats. ✗ Usually lives ‘outdoors’ on the boat so can suffer from corrosion and rapid deterioration and be a target for thieves. ✗ Spare parts can be surprisingly expensive. ✗ Smaller outboards will not have an alternator so will often offer zero or limited battery charging ability. ✗Struggle to provide propulsive power where it is needed for displacement sailing yachts. For a small, high performance motorboat, the excellent power to weight…

Why do we change our engine oil? A seemingly innocuous question I was asked a few months ago. Because we do? Because its dirty? Because the handbook says so? It got me to thinking and to do some research because it’s not such a silly question! Oil in our engine is there to lubricate, to prevent our engines wearing, to cool it. Basically the moving parts of the engine ‘float’ on a thin film of oil which is pumped around the engine by a pump from the sump. This oil is also sprayed on the underside of the pistons to help cool them and to lubricate the piston rings and where they come in to contact with the cylinder walls. To do all these things it has to remain stable…

Spending weekends and holidays afloat used to engender some reticence within my household. A working toilet to replace the bucket, together with a roll-down modesty screen fitted above the main bulkhead opening to the forward cabin helped, but it was not until I tackled the sleeping arrangements on board that the enthusiasm for more than day sailing returned. Pre-1980s narrow girthed classic cruising yachts like my own 27ft Rhodes 6 tonner Sea Jay make great sailing boats, and their single berths either side of the main saloon are very comfortable in a seaway. But what about at anchor or in the marina? My wife had no interest in overnighting in such antisocial circumstances until I came up with the bright idea of making a quick and simple double bed convertion…

Got a question? Email pbo@futurenet.com Here’s just a selection of the latest questions from PBO readers. For more expert advice, visit pbo.co.uk/expert-advice/expert-answers ENGINES Calling the ‘Engine Whisperer’ My boat is in Albufeira Q Marina and I recently had an engine fuel problem which we sorted with the help of Stu Davies. Changing the secondary fuel filter has always been easily done, but the primary filter has always been problematic. We fitted a new secondary filter but we couldn’t prime it with diesel. After two hours we managed to get enough diesel into the filter for the engine to run intermittently, and after another 30 minutes the engine was running fine. The primary filter was then. fitted but no matter what we did no diesel was reaching it. We sucked and…

One sunny day in the summer of 2020, between various Covid lockdowns, our canoe sailing group set off from Lydney Yacht Club down channel. Now, generally speaking on these occasions, whatever the plan is gets heavily modified due to the unpredictability of conditions or equipment failure. And indeed, this was no exception, as Phil had forgotten to bring the lee board for his canoe Vermont, rather essential particularly for upwind sailing. However, we put the canoes together at Lydney and with our concerns evaporating in the summer breeze we set off. We had a north-easterly breeze so sailing downwind the absence of lee board was neither here nor there, so Phil and I kept our concerns about tacking back home to ourselves – contemplating the use of a paddle, perhaps…

A compass stolen from Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s boat shortly after he returned from his record-setting global circumnavigation in 1969 has been handed in to a museum. The 32ft Bermudan ketch Suhaili was on display in Rochdale when the vessel compass, binnacle and mounting went missing. Now 53 years later, it has turned up at Holyhead Maritime Museum, where staff contacted Sir Robin, who has agreed to the compass being displayed there this summer. It is attracting much interest. Sir Robin told PBO: “The widow/divorcee handed it in to Holyhead Maritime Museum and the curator contacted me via my website and told me it had been left with them with a short note saying her husband had stolen it 53 years before. I asked him to send me a photo and…

The 120ft expedition yacht Kahu, which was used to smuggle £160million-worth of cocaine from South America to the UK, has been sold at auction for £473,500. Border Force and National Crime Agency (NCA) officers intercepted MY Kahu on 9 September 2021 in waters near Guernsey. The six crew were arrested. British man Andrew Cole, aged 33, of Stockton-on-Tees, awaits sentencing while five Nicaraguan sailors have been cleared of smuggling the cocaine. Seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the NCA instructed Wilsons Auctions to sell MY Kahu on 27 April, with no reserve price. The motor yacht, built in 1979 for the Royal New Zealand Navy, was converted in 2010 into a pleasure craft and has travelled the globe. Wilsons Auctions’ spokesman Mark Woods said: “After 24 hours of competitive…

Email pbo@futurenet.comand include high resolution photos where appropriate. Letters may be edited. Alkylate petrol in outboards Regarding the warning against the E10 petrol for 4-strokes outboards (PBO, June 2022 issue). As I understand it, the fuel leaves some sort of ‘dirt’ in the carburettor when left for a while, after most of the fuel has evaporated. Ordinary petrol has never been free from this problem, but with rising ethanol content, it appears to have become worse. I have a 2-ton sailboat with a 6hp, 4-stroke Tohatsu on her stern. Since 2018 I have only been running that engine on the very clean, but not cheap Alkylate petrol. This almost odourless fuel makes the engine run very cleanly, and the spark plug stays clean even though the engine hardly gets time…

Over the years we have mended quite a lot of boats. It has been what some might call a learning curve, though a franker way of describing it would be that during 35 years we have moved from knowing damn all to still knowing damn all. The principal technique used has been trial and error, with more error than trial, and the lessons of experience replaced by a blind faith that things will work out in the end. Probably. Anyway. Now we are afloat again, and it is a good moment to draw some conclusions, however temporary. Good things first. A new engine is a splendid thing, particularly if it is made by Mr Beta and (as this one did) replaces something that started its life in a clapped-out Japanese…

Are you legally allowed to tow? Last year, the UK Department for Transport (DfT) introduced new rules for towing a trailer with a car, enabling drivers who passed their driving test from 1 January 1997 to tow trailers up to 3,500kg Maximum Authorised Mass (MAM) without the need to pass a car and trailer towing test. MAM is the weight of the trailer including the maximum load that can be carried safely when it’s being used on the road. Most cars have a maximum weight they can tow. This may be listed in the handbook or the vehicle’s ‘gross train weight’ may be recorded on the vehicle identification number (VIN) plate on the car. The gross train weight is the weight of the fully-loaded car plus fullyloaded trailer and must…

Fitfully sleeping in the forward cabin as we headed down the Spanish coast, a loud bang had me scrabbling to the cockpit, “Is it them?“ I asked my husband, Martyn, who was on watch. I was answered by another bang. Orcas were attacking our rudder and the wheel was spinning madly. It was pitch black and we couldn’t see anything but occasionally could hear a blow and a swish. It was terrifying. We’d been aware of orca attacks happening all the way down the Portuguese Atlantic coast as we headed down last September. The orca reporting group on Facebook was full of encounters – from Porto to Cascais to Sines… many reports of broken rudders and boats needing to be towed in. We’d felt lucky to have avoided them so…

ACR ResQLink View PLB ■ £317 (without screen or RLS £276) This personal locator beacon has a small LCD screen which fundamentally improves the user experience. The return link service (see panel, top right) pings back a confirmation that your distress altert has been received. The PLB425 is supplied with fittings to attach to a lifejacket or to a belt, or around your arm. The estimated battery life is five years. Alternatively, the lower cost ACR ResQLink PLB400 without the screen or RLS is available from £276. Fastfind ReturnLink PLB with RLS ■ £353 The FastFind is a reassuringly sturdy unit. The rubberised sections make it easy to grip, and it comes with a wide array of alternative fitment options to fasten this to your lifejacket or onto a belt…

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…

The biggest issue facing sailing yachts with outboard motors, whether they are electric or internal combustion, is getting the propeller deep enough so that when in rough water it can still drive efficiently. Units mounted on the stern of a sailing boat suffer from hobby horsing where the propeller is lifted in and out of the water in rough seas as the boat pitches up and down with the stern, and therefore the propeller periodically leaving the water entirely. The last thing you want in a rough sea off a lee shore is intermittent drive, or even worse the engine overheating and failing due to loss of its water cooling pickup. Some smaller yachts have an outboard fitted in a well inside the cockpit to overcome this by bringing the…

The galley I planned to have in my small yacht, Old Duck, was to be a simple portable box, equipped with bare necessities, but even having fairly limited cabin space I still wanted to have a water tank and sink. There was already a small sink in place on the starboard side across the ‘galley’ area. The size of it was adequate, except by being very shallow it was not of any real-life use, particularly at sea. What I found interesting was the plumbing – or lack of it; the sink was equipped with a drain including a seacock and bronze thru hull but there was no water tank anywhere in sight nor a pump/tap installed to get any water into the thing in the first place. Galley remodelled I…

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to sail. When I was five years old my father bought me a Star pond yacht. It captured my imagination. I sailed it on a flooded gravel pit until the sails were worn out. It was put on a shelf in the garage and forgotten about for many years until I re-discovered it at the age of 10 or 11 during one long school summer holiday. It was in a poor state, but my mother made a new set of sails. I painted it, re-rigged it then took it down to Milford beach at Milford Haven for a test sail. I launched it from the Hot Water slip tied to the end of a fishing line. It sailed beautifully, bobbing…

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Second-hand batteries from Tesla Model S cars are easy to buy. Mine cost £800 and I have subsequently seen several for sale for £850. I’ve not seen them sold ‘tested or warranted’. But I have made a video you can find on YouTube that explains some simple tests you can do on them. As these Tesla batteries use lithium-ion chemistry, you have to be careful they don’t get wet, overcharged, physically damaged or discharged too quickly. In any of these situations they could enter thermal runaway, combust and start a fire. That said, they’re in many ways much more stable than petrol or gas. I have been very careful with mine and not had any problems over the last two years. For future batteries though I’d probably buy a more stable…

I needed to ensure the house battery on my river cruiser Osprey could be charged once the starter battery had finished charging. Osprey’s outboard motor only puts out about 6A (on our Moody Eclipse 33 Aderyn Glas we’re more used to 70A from the engine’s alternator) so there would have to be a bit of management – charge the starter first and only then start charging the house battery. Later I’ll add a solar panel but in the depths of winter at the time this didn’t really seem a sensible option. Battery to battery trickle chargers are expensive. So I dug into my electronics knowledge and rediscovered Schottky diodes. The problem with an ordinary diode is that the forward voltage drop is significant enough to prevent the house battery from…