The Boat

Another frequent question concerns our experience with the boat and the various systems: what worked and what we would do differently next time? Obviously every experience is different, and a tradewind cruise is not the same thing of sailing in the "roaring forties", anyway here is what we can say:

WHAT WORKED, WHAT DIDN'T

THE BOAT: we chose an OVNI mainly in view of the aluminium hull's strength, and picked the 385 (which is in reality a 40-footer) simply because it was the largest we could afford, while we were not particularly attracted by the lifting-keel.

The size: only one-fourth of the Rally fleet was in our same size-range, all the others were bigger, some much bigger and obviously more capacious and faster.
This size turned out to be near the limit for two people to handle without the help of electric winches, and still it was insufficient to stow all the stuff needed in a two-year voyage plus the food stores. It would have been difficult to accomodate another person (plus the extra stores!), expecially on passage.
Our average speed has been exactly 5 knots, one of the fleet's lowest, while the larger boats were averaging between 6 and 7 knots, with a top of nearly 9!

The lifting-keel has been almost useless, just useful in few shallow passes to reduce the risk of touching bottom, while the places suitable for beaching the boat or anchor in very shallow water are almost non-existent (or dangerous!) in coral-fringed shores.

SAILS: sailing most of the time with the wind not more than 30 degrees from dead-astern, we soon discovered the ease and comfort of sailing with the genoa alone, easily handled by one person from the safety of the cockpit; the problem was light winds, below 12-13 knots apparent, when we needed more sail area and our heavy genoa had a hard time remaining inflated in the ever-present swell.
Several Rally yachts had twin-headsails (twin yankees, to be precise), poled-out, and in light conditions they were averaging one knot more than us; the disadvantage is tricky to set or take down in variable wind conditions.
Another option is sailing goose-winged, a solution we used often but requiring two people ready to quickly reduce sail when the un-avoidable squall shows up.
We were planning to use a gennaker in light wind conditions, but its limit is somewhere between 10 and 15 knots where this sail quickly becomes a handful and taking it down is a slow process: we should have used it on a furler instead.
We were counting a lot on the cutter-rig especially for strong-wind sailing, but our oddly-shaped self-tacking staysail turned out to be impossible to set properly and it was not worth the hassle of tacking the genoa around the babystay.
The full-batten mainsail with conventional reefing just worked flawlessly (when we used it, that is!) and reefing from the mast was not too difficult.

ENGINE: our 50HP Volvo Penta (professionally checked before the departure) behaved without a glitch during the whole voyage, just like the Maxprop feathering propeller.
The engine was over-dimensioned, and THAT'S RIGHT!! Spare power allowed us to maintain control in a few tricky situations while giving us a decent economical-cruising speed.

NAVIGATION SYSTEMS: our navigation systems were based on the Raymarine range, in order to take advantage from the integrated instruments' ability to share data between themselves, and this turned out to be a blessing, but also a curse, because the "seatalk" data bus is also used to power the various instruments and a fault in one of them may put out of service the whole instrument chain, as it happened to us when we capsized.
Our two radar/chartplotter displays were of an old model, but had the important feature of being able to be networked and share the charts and the radar data, a solution we would hardly do without and only recently became available in Raymarine's mid-range displays.
The radar was invaluable not only for the obvious uses, but also to detect incoming squalls in time to try and avoid them and, very importantly, to overlap the radar picture with the electronic chart to detect the chart's positioning mistakes which are none too exceptional for charts surveyed in the 1800's!
Unfortunately our radar was not very good at detecting the ubiquitous small wooden fishing boats that we met everywhere, even very far from shore; maybe a more powerful (but bigger...) antenna would have helped?
Our electronic pilot ST6000+ with hydraulic actuator has served us big-time, and the high-end Smartpilot remote was a bit overdone but generally handy.

ON-BOARD COMFORT: our ENO gas oven, a cheapish model, worked flawlessly; due to the gas-bottle locker's limited size we could only carry 2 camping-gas bottles and 2 italian-threaded camper-type bottles and, except in Australia where we had to buy a local bottle, we have been able to refill either one or the other type everywhere around the world, each bottle normally lasting about one month.
The Isotherm seawater-cooled refrigerator is the system that most troubled us during the voyage: the very expensive control unit (250 Euros!!) broke 4 times until we found the problem and solved it by powering the cooling-water pump through a relay rather than straight out of the control box (this has recently been solved by the manufacturer).
The coolbox itself was on the small side and quite likely poorly insulated, nevertheless the power consumption wasn't too bad.
We didn't have a freezer, both for space and for power consumption issues, and we envied the crews of the larger boats that could enjoy frozen meat in the middle of the ocean...
We didn't have neither central heating nor air-conditioning, the first because we didn't think we needed it, the second because the power requirement would have been prohibitive. We only had a small electric heater that was precious against the Australian Queensland's cold nights and fans which greatly helped to keep the cabins' temperature under control. Many of the larger boats had airco, and used it a lot, if and when their generators were working....

right, the ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS: our domestic battery bank was made-up by 3 lead-silver (a.k.a. low-maintenance) 100Ah batteries, plus an identical one for engine starting: bigger batteries would have been desirable, but there was no space in the battery locker.
In theory with our typical consumption while at sea we needed to recharge at least twice a day for at least 3 hours in total; this was usually relieved in part by our Aerogen wind-generator (until we had to stop using it, late in the voyage, due to the vibration caused by worn bearings) and by our 100-watt solar panel.
In the really good days, we could use the engine for loading even less than one hour per day.
We did not have a diesel generator, mainly due to space issues and gensets turned out to be by far the biggest cause of failures on the boats that had one: some even resolved to replace the damn thing during the voyage, and still had problems afterwards!!
If we ever have to do it again, we would certainly try and squeeze a genset onboard, but it's essential to run-in the system before leaving for good and making sure the system is accessible for maintenance and repairs!
Some of the smaller yachts had a portable gasoline-powered generator which was mainly used to charge batteries while at anchor; better than nothing for sure, and potentially useful as a backup in case of failure of the main engine.

COMMUNICATIONS: keeping in touch with the other boats, talking to family and friends back home, getting weather forecasts, updating a blog or a web-site, hailing that passing ship which seems to be on a collision course and, touch wood, calling the cavalry in case of an emergency: the modern communications systems have a solution (or maybe more than one!...) to all these requirements!

SSB RADIO: although the SSB radio is rapidly being superseded by satellite-based systems on board the big ships, it's still the main long-distance communication means between yachts at sea, and the two daily radio appointments to collect each yacht's position, followed by half an hour of good old-fashioned chat (how's the weather, what did you fish/eat/read, whatever) were often the event of the day. Expecially in the longer passages, where the fleet was spread over several hundred miles, communication was sometimes difficult and in these conditions our Sailor 4500 turned out to be one of the best in the fleet (where Icom's were the majority).

E-MAIL VIA SSB: once the expensive SSB radio is installed for other reasons, it makes sense to be equipped to send and receive e-mail through it; the more popular service was Sailmail, mainly due to its competitive price (250 USD per year), followed by Mailasail which was sponsored by the Rally organisation. To handle e-mail on the SSB you need an (expensive!) Pactor modem, and the connection is somewhat of a black art in which some crew had more problems than others. We had no big problems with Sailmail and were able to connect from almost everywhere; furthermore, the Airmail software works also with satphone or direct internet connections when available, which is handy to keep all mail in one place.

SATELLITE PHONE: many yachts, ourselves included, had a sat-phone on board, in most of the cases an Iridium, with Inmarsat a distant second. our handheld Iridium with the standard-issue external antenna worked reasonably well, although the voice quality was frequently awful and it was not uncommon to lose the signal on long calls due to the satellites' motion.
Unfortunately the subscription is not cheap, but for a long voyage like this it's a worthwhile expenditure, while it would be too expensive for coastal cruising with the occasional passage out of GSM coverage.

GSM TELEPHONE: once near land, we almost always had GSM coverage (only exceptions the Tuamotus and the Maldives, plus few indonesian or Thai island too far from land).
In a tour around the world it is essential to have a 4-band telephone (the 4th band being used mostly in the Caribbean) or more exactly a stock of 3 or 4 telephones, as they are very exposed to accidental damage!
Absolutely essential to buy local SIM-cards, usually available for few dollars and with a minimum of fuss, which give much cheaper tariffs for calls back to Europe compared to using our European subscriptions.

INTERNET: many crews' first concern when arriving in port was to find an internet café from where to handle e-mails but mainly manage web-sites, blogs and photo-albums, or perform on-line transactions and other on-line activities requiring fast and unexpensive connections. In reality we seldom had to resort to internet cafes as most ports (or businesses near ports and harbours) make wi-fi available for a price (not always cheap!) and often with a poor connection quality, but nevertheless allowing to connect from the comfort of the boat. An amplified external aerial was often essential, though, and a lot of time has to be allocated to activities that at home would be done in minutes!
Updating a web-site from afar turned out to be an impossible task, while it's much easier to keep updated a blog that accepts updates by e-mail. There are also yacht-specific position-reporting web-sites, like the Yachtplot one which was offered by the Rally.

VHF RADIO: useless at sea when the other yachts went quickly out of range, the VHF radio was used a lot for inter-yacht communications in harbour as well as to communicate between the boat and the crew ashore.
Our top-of-the-range Icom radio turned out to be rather poorly built, and even worse was the external command microphone, which wasn't up to surviving the elements in the cockpit!...

NAVTEX: simple, relatively cheap, works by itself and draws little power, but unfortunately its usefulness is greatly impaired by the haphazard quality and timeliness of the information broadcast by several Countries. Pity, because reception offshore is normally good and it would be a very handy way of getting weather forecasts.

AIS: this system is mandatory only for ships above a certain size, which broadcast and may display ship's name, position and course info on compatible radar screens (ours was not compatible). We did not have it so we had to rely only on radar, but anyway the biggest use of this systems is to learn the ship's name to be able to call them by radio.
Given the reasonable price we would certainly install one in the future, preferably one of those that also transmits the yacht's position to make sure to be seen on the ships' radar screens!

SNAIL-MAIL: the good, old fashioned mail still has a use, not only for the huge number of postcards that we sent home (most of which did actually arrive...). On several occasions we packed and shipped home gadgets, presents and other small stuff that was accumulating onboard, both to free-up some space and also for the happiness of those at home!
 

CONTINUE READING...

Webmaster: Gianfranco Balducci - email: gfbalduc@tin.it

Last Update: 11/11/2014

The Shaula4 website (text and images) by Gianfranco Balducci is licensed under a
 Creative Commons by-nc-nd/3.0/ Attribution - Non commercial - No derivative works 3.0 Unported License