Yachting

EXPERT OFFSHORE

MAY 2016 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com 23

‘Learn to

use any

new kit’

E

very ARC boat has to pass

an equipment check to

make sure she’s carrying

the minimum safety equipment.

‘They give you a long safety list

and you just have to buy the

right kit,’ said Cliff Crummey,

skipper of AWOL. On that list was

something he, and many others,

didn’t regret spending money

on: radar. ‘We tracked squalls on

radar using MARPA,’ said Cliff.

Slawomir Szulc, on the Ovni

445 Nomad, reduced sail if a

squall came within three miles.

Having used a text-based satellite

phone on a previous crossing,

Slawomir invested in an Iridium

775 satphone. With a simple

iPad app, he could email and

browse the web, albeit slowly,

and get accurate forecasts.

Bavaria 41 Slipper 1’s crew

regretted not having their

comms fully set up well before

departure. ‘We should have run

the satphone and laptop for at

least three weeks continuously

before we left,’ said William, ‘to

debug the whole system – and

debug the owner.’ He also had an

unpleasant surprise with Slipper

1 ’s lifelines during the ARC safety

check: ‘We found some broken

strands of wire under the plastic-

coated guardwires.’

Richard’s Jeanneau Sun

Odyssey 45.2 Why Not blew out

her cruising chute. ‘We’d had

it up for two days and it was

wrecked in seconds by a squall,’

Richard recalled. ‘I couldn’t

believe it, it was a beautiful sail.’

David Everett, sailing Pisces,

a Contessa 32, was full of praise

for the Twistle rig. ‘It was

excellent. We could furl away

both sails at once and sail dead

downwind easily. In 13 knots

true it would power us at our

hull speed of six knots.’

‘You have to expect the unexpected’

N

o matter how well prepared

you are – or think you are

• there will be problems
  that you couldn’t have foreseen.
  Almost every yacht
  sustained damage or
  breakages of some
  sort. After identifying
  power as a priority,
  David Prothero and
  William Shaw, co-
  owners of Bavaria 41
  Slipper 1, spent about
  £4,500 on a charging
  system, including
  two alternators, a
  smart charger, new
  400Ah batteries and
  a Watt&Sea hydro-
  generator. On the
  trip from La Coruña
  to Las Palmas the charging
  system worked faultlessly, until
  the Watt&Sea connector plug
  failed (the plug enables the unit

to be removed when in port).

With plug and socket replaced

in Gran Canaria, they set off,

but by the end of the first day

the Watt&Sea was

making a racket,

which, on arrival in

St Lucia, turned out

to be a loose plug

connection.

Their power

struggle wasn’t over.

‘We think a positive

wire came off one

alternator,’ said

William. ‘The other

alternator then

cooked the battery

bank, leaving us

with 10 per cent

of its capacity.

We could only run the autopilot

and instruments for six hours

between charges.’

Another boat to experience the

unpredictable was Dawn Chorus,

a Southerly 42. ‘Sadly my mum

passed away when we were

mid-Atlantic, near enough right in

the middle,’ co-owner Dawn Kelly

said. ‘If we’d been anywhere else

I might have got home in time.’

Finally, sails aren’t immune,

as Tim Aitken found out on

Braveheart. ‘The webbing tapes

holding the clew of the mainsail

chafed through. They were only

five weeks old! We ended up

bolting the clew back on.’

Skipper Cliff

Crummey, 55,

sailed AWOL,

an Elan

Impression

444

David Everett removes the sheets from the pair of headsails used with Pisces’ ‘excellent’ Twistle rig

After webbing parted,

the crew of Braveheart

bolted the clew back

onto the sail

William Shaw, 71,

co-skippered Slipper 1,

a Bavaria 41

Photo: Graham-Snook.com

Photo: Graham-Snook.com

Photo: Graham-Snook.com

Photo: Graham-Snook.com