Table of contents for February 2017 in Practical Boat Owner

with the editor To receive the editor’s monthly email newsletter, sign up on our website: www.pbo.co.uk Boat lovers: show your enthusiasm Boat show time is here again. With Christmas already a fading memory (something I’m struggling to imagine, sitting as I am writing this with BBC radio DJs playing a succession of seasonal songs of dubious musicality but certain commercial value in the background), thoughts once again turn to winter maintenance and, the hope of boat show exhibitors, upgrades. If you’re planning to buy a boat, you need to visit a boat show. At this time of year, London offers a selection of what’s available, but if you really want to root around the lockers and keels of the latest European offerings, Düsseldorf is the place to go. The show…

PRACTICAL Stringers and scarfing ■ Work continues apace on PBO’s Secret 20 project boat Plus ■ Yanmar winterisation ■ Detecting cracks ■ Installing an autopilot ■ Repairing a gearbox TESTED N2K instruments ■ Miniature multifunction displays Exploring Torqeedo ■ Electric boat motors: the clean-energy trend of the future? BOATS Botnia Targa 30.1 ■ The first brand-new Targa to be built in five years 34-36ft cruisers ■ Peter K Poland looks at some of the vessels set to take part in 2018’s 50th anniversary Golden Globe Race SEAMANSHIP Junk with jiblets ■ Optimising a traditional Chinese rig CRUISING English Riviera harbour hop ■ A sail around the coastal ports and harbours of East Devon Blue-water cruise security ■ Stay safe when sailing offshore PLUS The Purton hulks ■ The deliberately-beached vessels…

Flotsam and jetsam Sam Llewellyn is editor of The Marine Quarterly, www.marinequarterly.com, and author of nautical thrillers. Four years ago he bought a Corribee on eBay  Corribee refits are not exactly a chandler’s dream. Once you have made the interior habitable and the exterior seaworthy, and had a look at the sails and the spars, and renewed the standing and running rigging, and put on a winch and some jammers from eBay, that’s about it. But it usually seems like a good idea to take a wander round a boat show just in case. Electronics first? No updates needed. We are very happy with the current state-of-the-art dedicated onboard system, ie a Nexus 7 in a Ziploc bag running Navionics – the Nexus, not the bag. MemoryMap, a similar app,…

 It’s easy to take things for granted. As I recently interviewed a selection of intrepid 21st century ocean-hopping sailors, I realised just how much we now rely on clever gizmos, gear and electronic wizardry that didn’t even exist half a century ago. Today’s sailors are spoiled for choice – especially compared to foolhardy optimists like myself as I planned a 1968 transatlantic trip in a yacht that didn’t even have electricity, let alone all the modern machinery that lives off it. Of course, some sailors still like the idea of ‘basic’ cruising. This might be forced on them by limited budgets, or they could be purists who get an extra buzz out of scanning the horizon for a hoped-for landfall rather than watching a boat-shaped blob on a plotter screen…

There are many times at anchor, when the water in the calorifier has cooled down, that we wished we had some means to heat it other than by running the engine. Running the engine to heat the water is not only disruptive and inefficient, it also generates more heat in the boat, which leads almost directly to an increased desire for a shower. Then there’s the washing-up. We only have so many plates etc, and washing them in cold water doesn’t reach the Savoy standard we’re used to. So when Ian Bray published his article about building a solar water heating system in PBO February 2013 (‘Getting into hot water’), we were already convinced that solar heating was the solution. Ian had found a pump: this fact was significant…

It only took me a few trips of rowing my trusty tender up the busy River Hamble to my main boat to make me realise how much I missed the convenience and ease of my little outboard engine. Unfortunately it had developed a gearbox problem that was not going to be straightforward to fix. A friend kindly loaned me a Honda 2hp to tide me over, but I never feel comfortable borrowing other people’s equipment. I always worry something might happen to it, so I decided I needed to sort myself out with a replacement engine pretty quickly. However, it turned out to be a bit of a case of ‘buy in haste, repent at leisure’. I saw an advert for a Suzuki DF2.5 on the Isle of Wight, the…

SEND US YOUR STORIES Email news editor Laura Hodgetts at newspbo@timeinc.com, tel: 01202 440825 News and current affairs from the world of boating Round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards has announced the return of the iconic boat Maiden, which she skippered to glory with an all-female crew almost 30 years ago. In 1990, Edwards sailed into the history books by leading the first all-female crew to the finishing line of the Whitbread Round the World Race (now the Volvo Ocean Race). It had taken four years of blood, sweat and tears and a battle against a sceptical and sometimes hostile male-dominated sport to even get to the start line, but Maiden won two legs and came second overall. This was the best result for a British boat since 1977 and it…

Email pbo@timeinc.com or write to us at the address on page 5. Photos are appreciated, letters may be edited. Reclaiming the personal water craft You have just anchored up a quiet creek, and suddenly the peace is shattered by some bloke with attention deficiency syndrome – ie, he wants everyone in a 10-mile radius to know he’s arrived. ‘Whoohoo! Look at me, everyone! I can do doughnuts! Wheee!’ We’ve all come across inconsiderate jet-ski riders and, although they are a minority, they’ve given the group as a whole a bad name. Slipways everywhere carry ‘no jet-skis’ signs. They are about as welcome as a trials bike in a country park – but, unlike the knobbly tyres on a bike, they cause no lasting damage to the marine environment. No anchoring…

Monthly musings Yacht surveyor and designer Andrew Simpson cruises with his wife Chele in his own-design 11.9m (39ft) yacht Shindig. Read his blog at www.offshore-sailor.com  February. Not exactly a month to be viewed affectionately by sailors in the northern hemisphere. The days are short, the weather cold, and if it wasn’t through the companionable pleasures brought by PBO, pretty much a dead month for those who would prefer to be afloat. Actually, for Shindig’s crew this is blatant hypocrisy since by the time this issue hits the shelves, we should be back in Grenada, the southernmost of the Windward Islands. Such are the stresses to which sailing journalists are hostage. And it will be time to move on for, no matter how delightful a place – and Grenada excels in…

It’s an age-old dilemma – you’re beating west in a rapidly faltering tide, and the approaching headland is looking no more appealing. What you need is a place to wait out the foul tide and get some rest. While a town quay or marina (and the accompanying pubs) might be a tempting diversion, heading into port could add a number of miles to the trip and extend it by up to a day – and that’s where passage anchorages come in. Many of these will have been used over the centuries by working sailing vessels awaiting a fair wind or favourable tide. While they won’t have the same shelter as your favourite hurricane hole, or the facilities of a town quay, in the right conditions they can let you catch…

In the March 2016 issue of PBO we tested 10 teak cleaners. One of those was unconventional in that it didn’t show an immediate improvement. Boracol is instead a biocide and wood preserver: it works by killing off the mould and algae that lives in the wood, allowing the teak to maintain its own protective silver-grey layer once the organisms in the wood have died off. You paint a coat onto damp teak, wait until it’s nearly dry and paint on another coat. This is then left for some days, ideally with a little rain, whereupon the wood will turn a uniform silver-grey. We applied it as directed and left it. Ten months later, we returned to see how it had got on. The rest of the cockpit seats had…

Nautical know-how Seamanship tips from PBO readers and experts Send us your seamanship tips. See page 5 for how to contact us After reading ‘Learning to manoeuvre in tight spaces’ (PBO August 2016) I thought it might be an idea to add this note, which applies to motorboats rather than to yachts with big keels. Daniel Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician who lived in the 18th century. He described the conservation of energy with respect to moving liquids and said that the faster a liquid moved, the lower the pressure it created on its surroundings. This fact was used in the measurement of blood pressure for over 100 years after Bernoulli first described it, but it entailed sticking tiny glass tubes into the arteries of patients – not the smartest…

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 CHANNEL ISLANDS MAJOR REMEDIAL WORK Work began on 4 December 2016 on the replacement of the St Helier Marina’s 35-year-old storm gates, as part of Ports of Jersey’s ongoing investment programme. During the three-week replacement period, access to and from St Helier Marina was limited as work was being carried out from a large barge and involved diving work. Access to the marina was also limited to a period of one hour either side of high water. The operation of the traffic lights was adjusted to reflect the limited depths in the marina entrance. Along with the gates, the major works programme will include replacement…

 Mad about the boat Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft) Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in Essex  Everyone knows Ted Heath was a bit of a sailor, but Harold Wilson wasn’t even Prime Minister when he outlined the plans for the Sailfish 18 as he urged Britain to embrace ‘the white heat of technology’ in his famous speech at the 1963 Labour Party conference. It’s all there in black and white, and I quote: ‘We are redefining and we are restating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution. But that revolution cannot become a reality unless we are prepared to make far-reaching changes in economic and social attitudes.’ East Germany responded with the Trabant 601, but British…

WIND DIRECTION In the words of pilotage guru Peter Cumberlidge, ‘For good shelter most headlands need wind directions slightly better than perpendicular to the trend of their weather shore.’ That means, in the case of Start Point, that anything from north-westerly to westerly is OK – but if there’s any south in the wind you’ll start to get some swell working around the point, and a diversion to Dartmouth might be on the cards. Carefully check the forecast for your stay. As you’re likely to be staying a maximum of six hours, chances are everything should be ok – but, on the other hand, that’s a long time to roll your masts out in an untenable anchorage. Don’t forget that night breezes and the interface between sea and land breezes…

Flexofold Composite propeller Flexofold Composite is a two-blade folding propeller designed specifically for saildrives. Its composite construction offers a practical solution to dezincification from electrolysis, a common problem caused by galvanic currents from dissimilar metals in the boat or stray currents from shore power installations. This frequently affects bronze propellers, which are often the part of a boat which has the best electrical connection into the water. In addition to immunity to electrolysis, the propeller also features a protective torsional hub and a new mounting system designed to absorb impact from centrifugal force and enable easy mounting without the use of special tools. The propeller is available in diameters of 15-18in in various pitches. The recommended retail price for a 16in Flexofold Composite propeller is r1,269 (£1,079). ■ www.flexofold.com International…

Got a question? Email pbo@timeinc.com Here’s just a selection of the latest questions from PBO readers. Email or write to the address on page 5 and our experts will answer your queries ELECTRONICS Electronic pilot information Q I have Navionics software (not that I’d sail without paper charts and instruments), but pilot books etc are essential if I wish to sail in areas unknown to me: are electronic versions of pilot information available? Andy Dodds, by email CHRIS ELLERY REPLIES: Pilot and port information is available on plotters that use Navionics cartography if Platinum Plus is purchased, and C-Map-compatible plotters if you use Max cartography. If you don’t have a plotter, visit www.reedsnauticalalmanac.co.uk as they produce a digital version of their almanac which has extra online features, and you can…

Send us your real-life experience – and win a painting of your boat!* After a prolonged break from sailing due to work and family commitments, my wife Penny and I decided it was time to get back on the water. The children had all left home, and we found ourselves looking longingly at different boats and dreaming about the day we could sell up and sail. At the end of 2015 Penny found the perfect starter boat, a Westerly Konsort which turned out to be the first Konsort built, bearing hull number D1 and sail number KT1. One promising survey later we were the proud owners of Bohemia, and following a move to Haslar Marina in Portsmouth Harbour spent a wonderful season relearning the fundamentals and enjoying summer days on…

A few tips on making hot drinks afloat A. Making hot drinks in rough weather is a great morale booster, but it can be hazardous. Wear oilie trousers and boots to protect yourself from spilled boiling water. And if there is a strap for the cook, make sure you have enough slack to get to one side. B. Mugs on a wet tea towel (or non-slip mat) in the washing-up bowl in the sink will make pouring hot water safer and less messy C. Hand the drinks up to the cockpit in the washing-up bowl. D. Many ocean racers and blue-water cruisers have some form of small fullygimballed gas stoves. These can be used to heat food, or boil water, in the worst conditions. There are loads of different designs,…