On Winter Sailing

You might imagine that an article about winter sailing would gush over the beauty of the sea in winter, the peacefulness of a perfect mooring, or the abundant wildlife that seems to come alive after the last boat has been pulled out of the water.  While these scenes are inspiring, they are not the reason we sail in winter.  The true reason we sail in winter is, quite simply, that we don’t have much choice.  Either we sail in winter (or rather, cold weather) or we only sail 4-6 months out of the year.

We still haven’t decided if that would be such a bad thing.

And yet, when I come home after a winter sail, I find myself defending the practice to dubious friends and family, saying things like, “We’ve got heat on the boat, you know!” and “As long as you’re well-equipped and you can choose your weather windows, it’s fine.”  But the question we’re still asking ourselves is whether or not we should try to distinguish between “fine” and “actually enjoyable”.  My argument has always been that it’s better than staying at home, but Patrick has begun reminding me that those are not our only two choices.

But before dismissing the idea of winter sailing, here’s a short chronicle of what a typical 3 day weekend sail actually looks like here in southern Brittany.  This is for my mother, who asked, “What do you actually DO when it’s that cold? … Just hunker down around a space heater in the boat for 3 days?!”  (She lives in Florida…)

Weather: completely overcast grey skies, 15-18 knots of wind, daytime highs 3-5° C (37 – 41° F) with wind chills below freezing.  But no rain !

Day 1: 

Left the port of Vannes at 10:00, hoisted sails at 10:30 after passing out of the narrow channels, and headed out of the Morbihan Gulf on a lovely beam reach and smooth seas to the island of Hoedic.  Averaged 7-8 knots (thanks to a well-timed current…).

Lunch in the cockpit en route.  Okay, we hid behind the dodger to get out of the wind, but it was still lunch in the cockpit.  Salmon quiche warmed on the stove, salad, white wine, fruit, chocolate pudding.

Arrived Hoedic 13:30.  We were the only boat in the small 5-slip marina.  We were later joined by 2 other ships-of-fools.

Rigged up shore power and investigated why the auto-pilot was dead.  After 30 minutes of tracing wires, we found a plug that had come undone in the back of the repeater unit (probably knocked out when we shoved one-too-many fenders into the cockpit locker).  Works fine now although I have to now re-do its sea-trial calibration process.

Wild oyster hunting on Hoedic Island.

The tide was rising fast, so Robert and I headed out to gather some wild oysters for dinner.  Patrick started investigating a navigation program glitch (the Automatic Identification System works fine on the free software OpenCPN but not on our very expensive MaxSea).  Benny curled up with the newspaper (with the space heater at her feet !)

Repairs and leisure time.

  

The nav problem partially understood, we headed off for a walk around the island, finishing at a warm pub for a drink before dinner.

Beautiful walks around Hoedic.

We lingered a bit too long in the warmth of the pub and Patrick and Robert opened oysters in the dark.

Opening wild oysters is hard work...

Dinner!  Oysters for starters, followed by winter stew (sausages, cabbage, carrots, potatoes), cheese, wine, chocolate cake.

Dinner !

Once the dishes were cleared away, Benny introduced us to a ridiculous children’s card game called Dobble that had us all in stitches before long.   

Lights out.

Day 2:

Up at the crack of 9:30.  Breakfast: tea, brioche, toast, butter, jam, yogurt, fruit.  Personal hygiene time, tidying up the boat, and getting the latest weather report.

11:00  Caught the tide for a 1 hour downwind sail to the island of Houat for a picnic lunch in one of our favourite anchorages, the Treach Salus beach.  It was quite grey and depressing, so I didn't take photos.  Here's what it looks like in summer, though !

Treach Salus in better times.

Lunched in the saloon.  Shrimp cocktail and devilled eggs, potato and smoked haring salad, white wine, cheese, fruit, chocolate cake.

14:00 took the tide back into the gulf.  It was a close reach in near-freezing temps with +15 knots of wind, so we put a reef in the main and put up the smaller jib (easier to tack with).  After a few tacks around the rocks of Houat, we made it across the bay on one tack, but then had to short tack for about 1 hour from the entrance of the Gulf to Monks’ Island (Ile aux Moines).  But all that tacking kept us warm ! 

Cold hands, warm hearts ?

18:00  Arrived at Ile aux Moines and tied up to the floating pontoon in the small harbour.  Surprise – shore power has been cut off for the winter.  Tried out the new diesel-powered heating system and discovered we like it even better than the oil-bath radiator. 

Patrick and Robert continued their investigations of the AIS MaxSea.  I got the latest weather report on the VHF radio and calculated the tides for the following day. 

Time for drinks and dinner preparation.  On the menu, a southern specialty, Chicken and Dumplings, made by yours truly, served with garlic green beans, bread, cheese, red wine, and ….drum roll….chocolate cake.

After the dishes were done, we continued our Dobble tournament until 10:30.  Lights out.

Day 3

8:30  There was a stiff breeze and Robert reported that it was really cold out.  This was an ominous announcement from someone who loves the cold and feels unwell when the temperature gets above 15° C (59° F).

We cast off the lines at 9:30, still uncertain about whether we would motor a direct route home or short tack into a stiff headwind for an hour.  After getting into the main channel, we decided to sail.  It was a good decision – great fun with tacking every 5 minutes, so we didn’t feel the cold. (Much.)

10:30 Motor on, sails down, heading home for the bridge opening at 11:00.

11:30 Tied up back home.  Said goodbye to our companions and put the boat in order.  Home, food, shower, nap, cleaning, laundry.

16:30  Walk back to the boat after realizing that I forgot to turn the cooking gas valve off….

Summary:  We did some good sailing, fixed a few things on the boat, and had a fun couple of days with good friends.  Not too bad and certainly nothing to regret.  Would we do it again?  It’s tempting to say no and draw the line at sailing in sub-freezing wind chills, but the truth is that we will probably do it again, simply because the pull of sailing outweighs the discomfort.  Of course, I’m now spending my non-sailing days dreaming about sailing in places where you don’t have to make these kinds of choices… the Atlantic Islands (Madeira, Azores, Canaries), the Caribbean, the South Pacific, etc. 

For more articles on winter sailing, visit The Monkey's Fist !

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In Again

Spray is back in the water again, resting comfortably in home port.  We got a good signal from the new depth transducer and there were no blub-blub-blub noises coming from the through-hull fitting seals, so we're declaring a victory.

New epoxy, paint, and wax.

Up...Out...Down.

Home, Sweet Home.

Yesterday, less than 24 hours before launch, was a good day to try out a number of desperate last-minute tricks, like trying to set gel-coat repairs with a hair dryer (12° C outside but dry), and touching up white scratches in blue gel-coat with a blue felt-tipped marker. Laugh if you will - it looks pretty good !  This morning, the gel coat was dry, if not hard, and the ink …well, I’ll let you know how that fares after she gets wet. 

The biggest novelty for us was a new way of mounting the anode on the propeller shaft. 

I learned the term “sacrificial anode” as a child in introductory science classes, but I’m beginning to suspect that, when applied to boats, this term implies that one must perform sacrificial rituals to get the damn things to work, or rather, to stay in place.

Last August, we dutifully clamped a new 25 mm anode on to the propeller shaft before we launched the boat.  We tightened the screws as hard as we could and put a liberal dose of sikaflex on them.  It couldn’t possibly move.

What we did not realize at the time is that when anodes corrode, they often corrode on the side touching the metal to be protected, which is to say, from the inside out.  That perfectly fitted 25mm hole of the anode clamped around the 25mm propeller shaft in August corroded away over 4 months, leaving the anode free to slide along the propeller shaft. 

If you’re lucky, this situation will simply lead to some strange noises and vibrations, but the anode will stay in the same general area.  If you’re unlucky (as we always seem to be), the anode will start moving up and down along the propeller shaft until it causes real problems.  Ours somehow defied gravity and got lodged at the upper end of the shaft and carved out a place for itself in the fibreglass when we put the motor in gear ! 

Bad anode mounting.

This time, armed with advice from several friends and forums, we tightened the anode screws, pounded the two anode halves together with a hammer and then retightened the screws.  We did this repeatedly until it wouldn’t budge anymore.  Next, we put some tie-wraps on the shaft on either side of the anode so that even if it got loose, it couldn’t slide.  To finish the job, we put sikaflex in the screw holes, along the edges of the two halves and around the shaft to prevent as much water from entering as possible.  We hope this will lead to an immobile anode that will corrode from the outside. 

Good anode mounting ... ?

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Naked Again

We’ve stripped off all the old anti-fouling paint (but honestly, is 4 months really “old”?) and have prepped the epoxy layer for new bottom paint… the good stuff this time. 

Removing the last of the "old" bottom paint.

Apparently, you can’t (or shouldn’t) put just any anti-fouling paint on your new epoxy layer.  We had followed the advice of a few friends who recommended putting on the cheapest stuff we could find, since you always have to re-paint every year anyway.  I think you can probably get away with that if you’ve got 20 years of build-up between the hull and the cheap paint layer, but for the first layer on new epoxy, we’ve found out the hard way that you really need something that will hold.  We’re using Soromap AFC Performance Hard Matrix this time, which we’re told will match up nicely with the Soromap epoxy layer below.  And yes, it’s 3 times the price we paid for the cheap stuff.

Hull, before and after.

The next debate is whether it is necessary to put on 2 layers of bottom paint, or just one.  Another friend told us that he has tested the 2-layer hypothesis by putting down just one layer and then making a test patch with a 2^nd layer to see if there is any difference one year later, and reports that there is not.  I suspect we will let fate decide.  If it doesn’t look like we’ll have enough paint for 2 coats, we may just put a 2^nd coat around the water line and use that as our “test patch”.  Otherwise, I’m pushing for a full 2 coats.

Keel, before and after.

Which brings me to our latest frustration: no 2 people agree on the best way to do something.  We are bombarded with advice, all conflicting.  For newbies, this is a very frustrating situation.  I met up with a friend in the boatyard yesterday who was pulling his hair out over an electrical problem.  “These kinds of problems really drive me crazy because I don’t understand anything about electricity.”  WELCOME TO OUR WORLD, I thought !  We aren’t comfortable with ANY of it: electricity, plumbing, epoxies, silicones, hull work, instruments… all of it is bewildering to us.  He then told me that our problem is that we’re perfectionists and that we have to learn to distinguish between what problems you can just live with and what problems you really have to attend to without delay.  I suppose it’s like running:  you have to learn what little pains and discomforts you can run through, and which ones you really should stop and take care of.  But the only way you learn that is by pushing through all of them and getting injured.  Is that where we are?  As it is, we now have LESS confidence in the boat than we did in the beginning, since it seems that every time we go out, something breaks, sometimes with spectacular and stressful consequences.  When will that end?  We’ve definitely got the boatyard blues right now. 

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NASA Clipper Duet Depth Transducer, Part 2

Hint: top cap screws off (with heat and a hammer).

We ran into a couple of new “knowledge gaps” with the removal of the old transducer and installation of the new one.  A guy from the boatyard told us to dig out the old seals around the through-hull fitting and remove the whole thing.  After puzzling over this for awhile, Patrick called the NASA Marine Instruments guys, who said, “whatever you do, don’t remove the through-hull fitting.”  The fitting is made to go in once, and if you need to change the transducer, you simply unscrew the top black cap and remove the transducer.   

Sounds simple, but the black cap had also been sealed down and was not going to come off without a struggle.  After several muscle-straining attempts, Patrick came up with the brilliant idea of heating the cap with a hairdryer and gently tapping the sides of the cap with a hammer.  That did the trick.

Now the question was how to put it all back together again, where the biggest mystery was what kind of sealant to use.  Boating forum searches and a call to Guru Bob suggested that two types of sealant would be needed: one that makes a water-tight seal but without bonding pieces together for eternity, and one that bonds for eternity or until you have a go at it with an ice-pick.  Those two sealants are, respectively, mastic silicone and sikaflex 291.  The diagram shows a cross-section of the through-hull fitting with the transducer inside (gray) and where we applied the sealants.

Cross-section of transducer in through-hull fitting.

Old transducer out; Clean through-hull cap for re-use.

After the old transducer was removed, all traces of the old sealant were removed from the through-hull fitting and everything was cleaned.  The sides of the new transducer head were then loaded with mastic silicone.  Patrick opted for a tight spiral pattern, squeezing out mastic like toothpaste around and around until the surface was covered.  The transducer was then passed through the through-hull fitting FROM THE OUTSIDE.  There seems to be some debate about this, but we chose this method because it makes more sense to have any excess on the outside (water side) than on the inside.  When you do this, the excess oozes out around the transducer sides, but once it dries, you just remove the excess with a cutter.  This gives a water-tight bond between the transducer head and the through-hull fitting.

New transducer in place and excess mastic silicone cut away.

For good measure, Patrick added a small bead of Sika 291 to bond the top of the transducer head to the bottom through-hull cap.  In principle, this can be removed with a razor or scraper.  If we ever need to change the transducer again, I anticipate lots of swearing and perhaps a bit of blood-loss as a result of this step.

Next, the top cap of the through-hull fitting was screwed down onto the bottom cap.  Patrick chose not to put any mastic silicone on the threads as our predecessors had done, but instead put a layer around the outside (clear) to fill the gap between the top and bottom through-hull caps.  That should be easier to scrape off later if needed.  Finally, a new bead of 291 (white) was run around the bottom of the cap to reinforce the bond between the hull and through-hull fitting.  The final touch (a special feature for spatially-challenged Patrick) was to add a red arrow to indicate the direction for unscrewing.

New transducer in through-hull fitting.

After re-running and connecting the cables, Patrick had the courage to test it again to make sure it was clicking, and proudly reported that it was.  He reported all these steps to me while I was lounging around on a white sand beach in the 84° F / 29° C Florida sun, reminding myself of why I wanted to live on a sailboat in the first place.

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NASA Clipper Duet Depth Transducer, Part 1

Click-Click-Click !  That’s the sound of a new depth transducer working – the most beautiful sound we’ve heard in a long time !  With the bad luck we’ve had lately, we fully expected the worst.

The new depth transducer.

Having little experience with these creatures, here’s what I learned after calling NASA Marine Instruments in both England and France (who, curiously, provided exactly the same advice).

1.  Re-initialize the system to its default settings if you think the problem may be in the instrument rather than just the transducer head.  How to do this is not provided in the instruction manual, so here it is:  (NOTE:  this will reset your total trip log to ZERO !)

• With power off, hold down and press the TOTAL key and the ILLUM key simultaneously.
• Turn the power on
• Continue to hold about 4 seconds, then release both buttons simultaneously.
• The display should read ALL SET, then LOA.  It has now been reinitialized. 

2.  Put your ear to the transducer and listen for the clicks.  If it is not clicking, the transducer is not working.  Hurdle number 1: borrow or buy a new transducer, plug it into the display unit and listen for clicking.  If you do hear clicking, you aren’t out of the woods yet.  You need to verify that the display unit is also functioning.  You can check the display unit by rubbing the palm of your hand on the transducer (as if polishing it).  The OUT should change to random numbers.  This is where we declared victory earlier today.

In our joy, we went ahead and pulled out the old transducer cable and passed the new one in its place.  Our next challenge is to figure out how to (gently?) remove the old transducer from the through-hull fitting without damaging the through-hull support that we would like to reuse.   

The through-hull assembly we hope to re-use.

After studying this at home, I realized that the black screw cap has to be slid onto the cable of the new transducer BEFORE passing the cable through the boat to the display unit.  Merde ! Oh well… it wasn’t a difficult path and we’ll just have to take it out and re-pass it after putting the cap on.  On to the next hurdle.    

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Inspection Day

The New Year's Day incident definitely left a few marks (pretty impressive ones) but today's inspection showed that the damage was all cosmetic.  It's going to take more than a few dabs of anti-fouling paint, however, to patch her up.  The most frustrating news is that the echo sounder seems to be dead, and changing it will mean we will have to keep Spray out of the water until we can get the right model / parts.  I had hoped, naively, that the problem was the result of algae build-up.  I am going to check for corrosion in the coaxial cable itself and then try changing the gain threshold to see if I can get any signal out of it (in air? will that work?), but I am aware that these are the actions of a desperate (ignorant?) boat owner.  Stay tuned... 

Spray's underbelly versus metal oyster tables in 40 knots of wind.

Lead keel after 21 days exposed to seawater.

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Chronicle of a Mooring Failure Foretold

After talking with the crew who rescued Spray when she broke away from her mooring on New Year's Day, we’re beginning to piece together what happened.  (See Out with a Bang 2)

Before we left the boat moored in the river, we knew that there was a risk of gales over the 10 days we intended to leave her hanging from the buoy.  But we had not anticipated a double-depression with Force 9 winds blowing straight up the river with no wind break of any kind over a +24 hour period.  First mistake.  We put out two new 14mm nylon lines with rubber hoses as chaffing gear, leaving enough scope on both lines so that the buoy could run well in front of the boat and not be held vertically.  The rubber hoses were fixed into the lines with tie-wraps so that they wouldn’t slide. 

The original mooring configuration.  Looks so flimsy now in retrospect...

The theory is that one of the lines was simply cut by chaffing on the (rusted) buoy ring.  The rubber hose evidently put up a brave fight but was no match for the rapid swell.  The other line, it appears, was cut by the anchor, securely fixed in its davit.  The wind and currents pushed Spray from different directions, putting her at a 90 degree angle to the buoy and pulling the line over the exposed anchor blade.  There was no chaffing gear there and it must have gone quickly.  Did not see that one coming…

For mooring in calm weather and when we are on the boat, I think our 2 line system is still trustworthy.  It’s easy to tie up to a mooring using this configuration without acrobatics of any sort.  However, to reduce chaffing further, we may replace the rubber tubing with some sort of fuzzy fabric protection, which has the added advantage of being more flexible and would allow us to tie a bowline or simple round turn directly on the mooring ring.

But for the rough stuff or anytime we intend to leave the boat unattended, we need something better.  After reviewing several books and web-sites, our favourite system that seems both sturdy and relatively easy to put into place is a slight modification of the bridle shown in the photo below, posted on the French site Hisse-et-Oh by internaute "margotte". 

Next time, with slight variations

The bridle loop is fixed to the mooring buoy with shackles (swivel would be best).  The shackles are connected to the line by two plastic hard-eye splices. The line is protected on the boat side with rubber tubing (or one of the new fabric versions), with one branch of the loop passing through the davit bow roller and the other branch fixed to the cleat (passed around the cleat with a locking figure-8 line over it).  For this bridle, we may upgrade to 14mm (4400 kg resistance) polyester (Dacron) lines instead of nylon. 

In practice, we would still use our simple out-and-back lines to tie up, then attach the bridle arrangement by leaning over the bow to fix the shackle, or by simply putting everything in place and fixing the shackle from the dinghy before going ashore.

To know how this story ends, we have to wait until 22 January when Spray will be hauled-out and inspected for damage.  It’s been a useful experience and one we will try not to repeat !  

For more articles on anchoring, visit The Monkey's Fist !

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Out with a Bang 2

After our last adventure (Out with a Bang) we thought we could sail smoothly into 2013.  It was not to be.  Announcing the news to our local friends went something like this:

Us:                   “Hey, did you see the article in the newspaper on Wednesday with the headline ‘An Intervention by Maritime Rescue Service in 40 knots of Wind’ about a sailboat that broke away from its mooring and ran aground on the mudflats of an oyster park?”

Friends:           “Yes…ha ha… idiots don’t know how to tie up a boat for a gale…”

Us:                  “It was Spray.”

Friends:           various sundry explicatives.

We discovered this when we climbed aboard Spray on 2 January to move her to the port of Vannes (out of harm’s way for the winter gales…) and realized our mooring lines had been replaced by an elaborate web of lines and knots.  What was left of our mooring lines was in the cockpit.  A friend had told us about the article in the paper that morning, and we, too, laughed.  “Ha ha …can’t be us.  We’ve got 2 heavy mooring lines protected with rubber tubes.”  A call to the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (SNSM, our maritime rescue service), confirmed ‘twas indeed Spray.

The mooring lines added by the SNSM.

What was left of our mooring lines.

 Here’s a translation of the newspaper article:

An Intervention by the SNSM in 40 knots of wind

It is perhaps the last intervention of 2012 for the SNSM in the Morbihan Gulf.  This afternoon around 15h00, the crew was called out to the Auray River.  In gale-force winds (> 40 knots), a lovely 10.5 meter sailboat parted from its mooring buoy and ran aground in the oyster park in front of Fort Espagnol.  To get the boat out of the oyster park and prevent it from running aground on the coast, a boat and a semi-rigid zodiac (rib) and 6 crew members were called to the zone.  A diver was required to enter the water to help extract the boat.  The intervention lasted two hours.  The sailboat was towed and re-attached solidly to another mooring buoy in the river.

Patrick’s first reaction to the article was “Did you see that? They said Spray was lovely!”  In response to my glare, he continued, “Well, they could have said a sailboat owned by two idiots who don’t know how to tie up for a gale.”

And that’s the frustrating thing.  We thought we HAD tied up for a gale.  In 10 years of sailing on 25 different boats with 25 different skippers, we could never have imagined that our 2 new 14mm lines protected by rubber hoses could get sliced through in one storm.  The string of our mainsail tarp also got sliced in two…and that was cotton string rubbing against supple plastic !   A friend who looked at our mooring said we should have tied a bowline knot in the tube itself around the ring of the mooring buoy to eliminate as much chaffing as possible.  Oh sure, seems obvious now.

Oyster Park where Spray decided to spend her New Year's Eve.

Spray is now nestled down in the much-protected port of Vannes, tied up at the dock with water and electricity, an easy 15-minute walk from home.  There was no apparent damage, no water, no fissures or cracks, but we now have to have her taken out of the water and inspected by an expert from our insurance company.  If you’re wondering (as most of our friends were) the bill from the SNSM is 800 Euros ($1040 USD), most of which the insurance will pay. The oyster park manager says he didn’t have much damage, just a few of his oyster tables pushed over, which he can put back in place without too much trouble. 

One friend said, “No damage, no injuries, well-insured, and happened in winter when the sailing sucks anyway …pretty lucky !”  Another says Neptune has apparently decided to offer us an accelerated training course in the vagaries of the sea for 2012.  I sure hope that was the final exam. With time and distance (and whiskey), we’re beginning to get over the shock and add this to our ever-growing list of “at-sea experiences”.  Live and learn..

Out of the way of winter gales in the port of Vannes.

For more articles on anchoring, visit The Monkey's Fist ! 

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Out with a Bang

It was only meant to be a short out-and-back trip to the Port of Crouesty to replace the heating system.  Three days and one call-for-help later, we made our way back to our mooring in the Auray river with a new heating system and a burning desire for a long quiet holiday.

The new heating system (Webasto) was supposed to arrive at the electronics shop on Friday -  Monday at the latest.  Tuesday morning, we sailed the one hour down to Crouesty for the installation, with plans to return to the gulf on Wednesday morning with the last of the incoming tide.  There were special weather bulletins warning of near-gales (Beaufort 7 with gusts) but our gulf, protected by a larger bay, doesn’t usually see the full force of such gales and we knew we could manage a little “rodeo” if we had to.

The system never showed up.  The electricians went ahead and removed the old system on Tuesday afternoon and confirmed that the system would arrive early Wednesday morning.  We decided we could put off our return until Wednesday afternoon with the 2^nd incoming tide.

Wednesday morning came and went with no deliveries.  After delaying as long as we could, we decided to leave and make an appointment to install the new heating system in early January.  Patrick informed the electricians, who apologized for the delays and wished us happy holidays.

We cast off and headed into the channel with a 17-knot headwind.  The channel is rather narrow, with shoals and rocks on either side (see image below).  We decided to motor out of the channel and then, turning north to head into the gulf, we would have a tailwind that would give us a smooth sail home with just the genoa headsail.

As we reached the penultimate channel marker, the engine sputtered and died. What the !*%$?  We tried to restart it twice, pulling out all the tricks we’ve learned over the last 4 months without success.  After the 2^nd try, I told Patrick we needed to get the sails up fast.  We were already drifting outside the channel towards the rocks.  He went below to try one more trick to restart the motor while I prepared the mainsail.  After flailing around to unzip the lazybag and get the halyard ready to run, I realized we were no longer facing the wind but had been blown onto a broad reach … impossible to hoist our heavy mainsail at 90 degrees to the wind.  I didn’t know if we could point into the wind sufficiently with the genoa alone, but we didn’t have much choice.  With a loud snap, the genoa unfurled rapidly in the stiff wind.  I winched it in flat and Spray responded immediately.  The answer is YES, we can point into the wind (rather well, in fact) with just the genoa, although it’s not particularly stable or comfortable.

The Crouesty Channel - site of our first "incident".

With the boat now manoeuvrable and headed back into the channel, we were out of immediate danger but were still “in a pickle”, as we say back home.  Patrick called the Harbour Master on the VHF radio to tell them we were coming back into port under sail.  They responded immediately and told us they would have a boat meet us at the breakwater to help tow us into a slip.

As we headed into the port, it dawned on me what had happened.  The electricians had removed the heating system the night before, which runs off the main diesel fuel reservoir.  They had opened up the fuel line that feeds the heating system and didn’t close it off, thinking they would be installing the new system before we left. Oops. As soon as we got the boat tied up, we looked at the reservoir, and sure enough, the diesel valve was closed and the intake tube to the absent heating system was open to the air. 

The culprit.

Patrick went to express his strong disappointment and returned with a very pale electrician and his manager.  They re-attached the old pump to close the fuel circuit, allowing us to use the engine while waiting for the new heating system to arrive.  But it was too little, too late, and we’d missed the ingoing tide to the gulf.  We decided to sit it out another night in port and head back into the gulf the next morning

But later that afternoon, the electrician showed up proudly displaying the new heating system that had just arrived.  He was willing to work late and start again very early the next morning and assured us everything would be installed by 10:45 am, allowing us to catch the last of the tide.  At noon, they finally finished.  I calculated that we would have about 2 knots of current in the nose, but with 21 knots of wind on a broad reach, we decided we could push our way through.  It was a bumpy ride, but we made it back to our mooring just as a squall arrived.  We prepared the boat and waited for a break in the weather. 

When the dinghy was loaded and ready to go, I looked around at the sky and saw a steel-grey front headed our way.  I wanted to wait it out, Patrick wanted to try to outrun it.  I lost the battle but won the war in the form of a moral victory, which, truth be told, is only of minor comfort.  It was, by far, the STUPIDIST thing we’ve ever done. (Patrick, too, now admits this.)  As soon as we were in the middle of the river, still 5 minutes from shore, the grain overtook us.  The waves built up behind us and we were surfing, fighting to keep the dinghy at an angle to the waves so that we wouldn’t be flipped sideways or swamped from the waves breaking behind us. Pelted by wind-driven hail, visibility was nil and the only thing we could do was to follow the waves.  There was no way to aim the boat where we needed to go without turning over.  After several long minutes of white-knuckle petrifaction, we made it to an anchorage area where several large boats provided enough of a wind shield that we could redress the direction of the boat to head to the dock. 

I felt sick.  Patrick said “Woo Hoo !  We made it !” 

Later that night, we both realized that every muscle in our bodies ached from the stress.  We agreed that this whole adventure was an important learning experience, not to be repeated if at all possible.  And thus ends 2012 sailing with Spray.

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Cold Weather, Warm Camaraderie

This week’s outing was our first winter-weather trip on Spray, complete with watery eyes, heavy frost and icy mornings.  It was also the trip where we discovered that our on-board heating system is dead.

Spray with frost on her boom and ice on the docks.

In port, we have two different heaters we can use running off of shore power:  a fan heater that heats up fast and chases away the humidity, and an oil-bath radiator that gives off a steady (and quiet) heat for the night.  When we’re at anchor, however, we have to rely on the boat’s heating system, which runs off the diesel fuel for the boat.  It worked well a month ago (when we didn’t need it), but stopped working now that it’s really cold.

Alone on Hoedic Island ... with shore power !

But when you have neither shore power nor on-board heating on a cold night, the next best thing is to be rafted up in between two big friendly boats with warm saloons and crews.  We met up with two boats from our local sailing club (Aldiana, an Oceanis 323, and Argo, a Romanee) and spent a lovely evening moored at Belle Ile, bouncing between the three boats:  drinks and munchies on Argo, back to Spray for dinner where we could heat the boat with our own cooking, then over to Aldiana for desert, and a quick jump into our winter-weight sleeping bags back on Spray.

Sailing with other boats means photos of yours under sail !  Thanks, Argo crew !

In between the cold weather and warm camaraderie, we actually managed to fix a few things.  Since the weather has turned cool, we noticed that the GPS takes almost 20-30 minutes to home-in on 3 satellites necessary for a position fix.  I suspected condensation and a bad contact, and after heating, drying, and insulating the connection to the antenna, things work brilliantly.*  I’ve been complaining for some time about our schizophrenic auto pilot, and after moving a 12 kg anchor that was just below the flux gate compass and re-doing the entire sea trial calibration (swinging the compass, auto-learn process), things work very well.  Having a reliable auto-pilot is a huge relief when sailing short-handed.  Patrick bravely fixed the toilet for a second time.  He replaced the pump assembly a couple of weeks ago and everything worked well for 3-4 days before seizing up again.  (For the more curious among you, the answer is NO, we do not put anything down the toilet that has not first passed through our own bodies.)  After reading some helpful hints on sailing forums, he dumped a bottle of cooking oil down the pump assembly and that seems to have done the trick.

Our 5:25 pm sunset and a late arrival into port this week also gave us the opportunity to realize that none of our running lights were working.  They had been working well a few weeks ago. When the electricians came to check out the heating system, they found some very unorthodox mingling of wires between our AIS system and the running lights, including one completely melted wire. Once the wiring got straightened out, we had to change the bulbs that had been fried during some mystery power-surge.  That, of course, meant climbing the mast and changing 2 bulbs.  Long story short:  wrong bulbs and stuck light-cover casings meant FOUR trips up the mast in very cold weather.   

Winter not only brings cooler temperatures and shorter days but also storms, and Spray’s mooring lines suffered severe chaffing over the last 2 weeks during several gales that had her tugging and bobbing on her mooring ball.  If we hadn’t had the protective garden hose on the mooring line, it would have been cut in two.  Of course, we always have 2 mooring lines attached, just in case…  We’ll be very glad to move Spray into the port of Vannes at the end of the month !

Winter storm chaffing.

Today the high temperature is 2 C (35) and we’re enjoying a cozy day at home…getting price estimates for boat heater replacement.  They don’t make replacement parts for our 20 year old heater anymore, so it looks like we’re in for a new system.

Just think, starting in 2013, we’ll have a boat docked a comfortable 15 minute walk from home and all her systems and sails will have been recently repaired !  Glass half full, glass half full, glass half full…   

*note:  this issue was resolved several months later when I discovered the notion of TTFF:  time to first fix.  The fact that the GPS was taking forever to get a fix when we first fired it up in cold weather had nothing to do with the cold weather or condensation, but the fact that we weren't sailing as much in the cold, and thus, had not turned the GPS on regularly.  When you turn on the GPS, it has to download a lot of information.  If you've turned it on recently, those updates are relatively fresh and take less time.  If you don't turn it on for a week or more, you'll have to wait. (Some sources say up to 15 minutes... we waited 30-40 after leaving it off for a month.)  

For more articles on winter sailing, visit The Monkey's Fist !

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