Table of contents for July 2016 in Practical Boat Owner

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Peter K Poland crossed the Atlantic in a 7.6m (25ft) Wind Elf in 1968 and later spent 30 years as co-owner of Hunter Boats. He is now a freelance journalist and PR consultant. As the years fly by and production lines pump out ever more new boats, the stock of second-hand cruisers just grows and grows. Well-maintained elderly GRP yachts can still be sailed with the same brio as when they were first launched and, unless they sink like a stone or burn to a frazzle, they should last forever – so sailors looking for a capable cruiser in the 31-33ft size bracket are spoilt for choice. The lifting-keel yacht is one type that’s highly regarded by many modern sailors. These combine the ability to cruise in…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sticky Stapylton has a Yachtmaster Ocean ticket, runs Arrow Yacht Enterprises and is an RYA Yachtmaster Instructor. During his long career he has sailed most seas and oceans of the world. A while back, the Yachtmaster offshore preparation and exam was a seven-day course during which we were assessed by the boat’s bosun, a very experienced Yachtmaster instructor. On my course, the passage took us east from the Solent to Shoreham and then across the Channel to Fécamp, almost into the Seine estuary, along the Normandy beaches, round the Cotentin peninsula, a foray into the Channel Islands and then back via Weymouth and the western entrance to the Solent. ‘Fings ain’t wot they used to be!’ I was on watch with the skipper of the day for…

Why do we carry pyrotechnic flares on board? Is it to attract attention? Gone are the days of firing off a parachute flare and hoping for the best: assuming your VHF radio and DSC are working, it’s much more effective to make a distress call. A flare is a good backup, but comes at a price – they are dangerous to use, especially at night on a pitching boat and with crew unfamiliar with how to work them. For a lifeboat crew, actually finding the casualty can be tricky, especially in a crowded area or at night – and that’s where handheld red flares come in. A parachute flare is a useful attention-grabber, but it’s no use as a locator beacon as it will be hanging high up in the…

The predominant winds in the west of Ireland during the summer months are south-westerly, although prolonged periods of westerlies have been seen in recent years. We’ve sailed both northwards and southwards without difficulty at different times, but the patterns are less predictable than they once were. Things to know before you go As the Republic of Ireland is in the EU but is not a Schengen signatory, it’s easy for UK citizens to visit without becoming ensnared in red tape. The tricolour is the official courtesy flag. It is convenient for non-EU foreign nationals to check in at Crosshaven as Cork is a port of entry. As it is also home to the Royal Cork Yacht Club – the oldest yacht club in the world – it’s an interesting place…

Great ideas and tips from PBO readers Email your projects and tips to pbo@timeinc.com or write to us at the address at the top of page 5. We pay at least £30 for each one published As PBO columnist Dave Selby will no doubt attest, the Sailfish is a multifunctional boat. As such, many items on board fulfil a number of roles. My design for the cabin table on my Sailfish 18 allows it to slide forward for easy access to the cabin. It also slides aft to allow access to the keel winding gear and the portable toilet in the bow. The table sits in its home-made sliding mechanism on a shallow (50mm) box which is a snug fit on the keel case for reasons of stability: careful measurement…

The rivers Ore and Alde make up a single stretch of water that winds its way from Shingle Street to Snape Maltings, passing by the pretty East Coast towns of Orford and Aldeburgh. Local legend has it that there are around 11 miles of navigable water within the Ore and Alde estuary but the extremities are strictly ‘dinghy at low water first’ to see where the gap in the mud is. There are many safe anchorage opportunities for deep-draught craft. Outside the river, in calm offshore weather, it is possible to anchor south of the Shingle Street Martello Tower while awaiting the tide. Inside, one may anchor anywhere clear of the fairway, avoiding underwater cables and pipelines marked on the shore and avoiding moorings, as ground chains run at right-angles…

My luck had ground to an ignominious halt, as had Keppel’s engine. The worst thing about it was that we were drifting a couple of hundred metres off rocks not far from Les Sables d’Olonne on the French Biscay coast. It was summer 2011, and the diesel bug that I’d been in denial about for months had struck with a vengeance. The background is the classic scenario. Due to Janie’s illness during the previous year, Keppel was enjoyed for just one month. Pottering around France’s Atlantic islands and neighbouring coast (see PBO January 2012), it had been a lovely latesummer cruise in almost perfect sailing conditions, and that was the problem – it was too perfect. We hardly used the engine. By the time Keppel laid up in Rochefort in…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Norman Eastwood bought his Jeanneau 45.2 Mary Lou for his 60th birthday. He sails from Marmaris and cruises the Aegean and southern Turkish coast with his wife Jila. The Jeanneau 45.2 has an upper rudder bearing contained in a robust galvanised steel fabrication, a set-up shared with several other Jeanneau boats of the 1990s, I believe. The 50mm stainless rudder stock is supported by two widely spaced bearings with the steering quadrant fitted between them. There’s a weakness, however, in that the upper bearing is seated on a horizontal plate: water sits on the plate and in time the galvanising fails and corrosion sets in. The problem is compounded by the fact that the structure is difficult to see and corrosion takes hold unobserved. This year I…

HANDY GALLEY IDEAS How important is the galley on a cruising boat? Well, in my opinion, it’s very important! It is the heart of the boat. It provides warmth, nourishment, confidence and, sometimes, much-needed love and encouragement. To achieve this, the galley needs to be very well maintained, clean, safe and ‘easy’. Accordingly, the galley in our Westerly Oceanlord has evolved over the last 15 years: let us fill you in on the details. When choosing our boat, we carried out a great deal of research to decide upon the type and layout that would best suit our requirements. We wanted a well-built boat that was a good sailer and which would see us safely through rough waters, and the galley needed to be U-shaped for safety and ease. As…

Part of the charm of visiting the west of Ireland is stopping at islands en route. Some of the islands are no longer inhabited, but offer rich archaeological and natural experiences. Others are very much alive, with people still living mostly traditional lives where it feels that time has stopped. It’s refreshing to step away from the complexities of the modern world and enter this realm of a different era and a different way. All of the islands in the west are part of the Gaeltacht, or native-Irishspeaking region. Most people also speak English, but the place names and signage are most often only in Irish. Valentia, Kerry Valentia offers a small town, a big pontoon, and loads of things to explore. From the oldest evidence of life on earth…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dudley Campling, formerly a custom painter with Iron Horse motorcycles, started sailing in 1979 until Hurricane Gonzalo in 2015. He now lives in Portugal. Having owned wooden boats for many years, I found myself constantly fighting the influx of water through seams, hatches and portholes. The potential for leaks in wooden boats is enormous, and although I was able to keep on top of it, I eventually decided that I’d had enough. Trusty Cap Horn, my first wooden yacht – a 21ft Brittany-built cutter, built in 1933 – was a love affair, but she leaked like a sieve. Crossing the Atlantic in 1983, she leaked so badly after a storm that it was advisable for the person who was not on watch to sleep with one hand…

Soon after launching my boat at Wivenhoe at the beginning of last year’s season, I went to drain the engine’s manifold as there was still the possibility of a frosty night in late April. The raw-watercooled 2QM15 Yanmar diesel engine is sited in the cockpit of my Cox motor-sailer Misty Lady, with only a few blankets and the glassfibre hatch cover between the top of the engine and the bright blue sky. I opened the cock, but no water came out. This was unusual, so I removed the plastic drain screw and poked about with a bit of bent wire, but to no avail. Leaving the plug out, I started the engine – but even with full pressure applied, no water spurted forth. The diesel ran quite happily and the…

Fancy something a little different on two hulls? David Harding tests two practical cats that are anything but mainstream Most people who have been around in boats for more than a year or two will recognise a Wharram catamaran from a mile away. A Wharram simply couldn’t be anything else. To many of us, it feels as though those distinctive Polynesian-style double canoes (to use the preferred terminology) have been around forever. They started to appear long before most production cruising yachts, let alone production cruising multihulls, and they get everywhere. Over 10,000 sets of plans have been sold over the past 50-plus years, many to home-builders. Wharrams have been built in sheds, garages, workshops and living rooms the world over. They have also sailed the world – and not…

Send us your local news stories. Email PBO news editor Laura Hodgetts at newspbo@timeinc.com, tel: 01202 440825, or write to the address on page 5 SOUTH-WEST TRANSAT YACHT COLLISION A French yachtsman was forced to abandon the Transat bakerly solo transatlantic race on the second day, after his boat crashed into a container ship. Maxime Sorel’s Class40 yacht VandB suffered damage to its bowsprit and suspected damage to its rig, although the skipper told the race control on 3 May that he was ‘safe and uninjured’. At the time of going to press, Sorel was en route to La Trinité sur Mer, or Lorient, to assess the damage. Twenty-five boats set sail on 2 May on the 3,050NM passage from Plymouth to New York. The fleet is divided into four…

A few years ago, all the data that told you how your boat was getting on was confined to a few small LCD screens in the cockpit. Then came chart plotters and with them the ability to network instruments so that you could display your speed, depth and wind information on their screens. And then came the tablet. At a stroke, chart plotting became much cheaper – and you could carry it with you in the palm of your hand. However, it still relied upon the GPS chip in the tablet; and to get a fully-featured system, people started wanting their boat’s data transmitted to the tablet. And so, along came devices like Digital Yacht’s iAIS, which connects to the boat’s NMEA network, multiplexes the data and transmits it over…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR After a boyhood spent punting and motor-launching around Christchurch Harbour, Trevor Cherrett spent 30 years cruising England’s inland waterways before going back to the sea in his Bristol-built traditional harbour launch Morgana. It is 0930 hours on a wet, windy August morning at Lydney Docks, and I am saying goodbye to Alan Keef on his newly-built 10m (33ft) steel ‘tug yacht’, Union Jack – very favourably reviewed in PBO August 2015. Sooty clouds are blowing in gusty showers from the west, and the lofty Severn bridges keep disappearing into them. I would not contemplate venturing forth today in my cabinless harbour launch, and even Alan is having a quick second thought about setting forth. Nevertheless, he sticks with Plan A and casts off from the dockside bollards.…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Daria and Alex Blackwell are blue-water sailors currently based in the west of Ireland. They are the co-authors of Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way and the best-selling Happy Hooking – The Art of Anchoring. Daria is a USCG-licensed captain and Alex is a Master Mariner. The west of Ireland is one of the few as yet unspoiled cruising areas. Taking in some of the southern and northern coasts, it covers roughly 400NM of coastline with many bays, harbours and islands to visit. The Cool Route Things are changing in the west of Ireland. Whereas there were only wisps of marinas just a few years ago, there are now several strung along the west coast, and more in the planning stages. In addition, an EU-funded initiative called the…

A knot can reduce the breaking load of a rope by half, while a splice reduces it by only 5-10%. It is useful if you can splice your own ropes, because it is the weakest link that counts. The key to splicing in a braided rope is taking it far enough back into itself; this causes friction, and the rope tightens itself. Splicing will work only in new ropes since the fibres will still be flexible. Splicing technique and core materials There are two splicing methods for double-braid ropes: one in which you need the cover of the rope to strengthen the eye splice (for ropes with polyester and polyamide cores), and another where you don’t (for example in high-performance fibre ropes). It’s very important to understand why this distinction…

Who doesn’t enjoy exploring the upper reaches of harbours, rivers, creeks and estuaries? Slipping along between the reeds, salt-marshes or tree-lined banks with the birds and perhaps a few fish for company, we can find ourselves in waters that are rarely disturbed by man other than, perhaps, the odd canoeist. That’s until a yachtie anchored downstream gets inquisitive, decides that it’s too far to row all the way up the creek, puts a noisy petrol outboard on the back of a load-carrying tender that has the hydrodynamic efficiency of a breeze-block, and – well, you get the picture (and the sound). Hedley Bewes admits that he was one such yachtie. A well-known face on the Hamble and the man responsible for building a good number of David Thomas’s designs including…

Readers’ cruising destinations, near and far We pay for your published cruising stories and harbour updates. Email pbo@timeinc.com or write to the address at the top of page 5 ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Simpson has sailed all his life and owned several types of boat. He has crossed the Atlantic single-handed three times and earned his living teaching sailing to others around the world. The Straits of Hormuz from the Gulf into the Indian Ocean are undoubtedly an extremely busy place for large crude carriers. More than a quarter of the world’s oil passes out through this narrow channel. Strangely enough, as a sailing coach in Oman I became a regular visitor through these straits. We’d just finished our biggest yacht regatta in the Middle East at that time (part…