Lessons Learned in Nine Months

We have been out for nine months now and still learn something new every day, or relearn something by stupidly making the same mistake twice. Fortunately, we have recovered from them all and we are still in one piece and Sea Wings is still on top of the water. As we know that some of you reading this are planning to do the same thing, we thought it might be a good thing to pass on some of the things we have learned along the way. Keep in mind that we have sailed for years, owned too many boats and Lew at least has off shore experience, mostly racing. Yet, even with that background, we have been a little surprised at how different it is when you are doing it full time, and away from the comforts of home.

So we will try and pass on some of the things we have learned, what has worked and what has not, all learned through experience. Experience is knowledge gained from screwing something up so badly that you won’t be stupid enough to do it again. Here are some of the things we have learned………..

Preparing for Cruising by Chartering First or Battle of the Bulge

Many of us have used chartering in the Caribbean as a first taste of what it will be like if we go full time cruising. This will give us a taste of sailing in the area and we will see how our relationship will stand up to the test of 24/7 living in a confined space. Great. Except for one big problem (for us at least).

Chartering is party time. You have a beer or two with lunch. You have a beer or two to pass away the afternoon. You start the serious drinking with sundowners and party food. Then you dinghy in for a big dinner at the restaurant, and dance and drink into the evening. Every day for the whole charter. And you put on 5 lb for every week on charter.

Of course, this is no problem as you will be back at home, at work, at the gym, and those 5, 10, 15 pounds will melt away in a month or two because you are back to reasonable drinking, balanced food and good exercise.

When we started cruising full time we enjoyed it just like when we chartered. And as it is a very social lifestyle, we kept it up for months. And we both have the pounds to prove it. We have found that keeping trim/fit to be very challenging, probably the worst problem we have faced. And now after nine months we still find it hard to party/eat reasonably. Ooops, got to go, time for sundowners!

Salt . When you are sailing out of your own marina, or club or any ‘home’ base, you know that every time you sail you get salt on the boat. Usually just on the hull, or if you venture offshore on the deck as well, and maybe if the weather is really bad, on the dodger, mast, boon and sails. But then you are back at your dock and you pull out the hose and wash it all off, maybe scrub the decks, then lock it all up until you use it again.

Out here there is no ‘home dock’. Most of the time you are at anchor with no fresh water available for the luxury of washing down the boat. And now you are making longer passages in bigger waves and the salt is EVERYWHERE. Every surface on the outside of the boat becomes covered with salt. The deck, canvas, stainless, running rigging, fixed rigging, sails, instruments, you, everything. And, as you will anchor most of the time, there is little or no water to wash it off with. We are fortunate enough to have a water maker so we try to a least give it a sponge bath, but often the next day you are underway again and it is covered again. So it stays salty, and every surface you touch leaves salt on your hand. Everything stays wet as the salt absorbs moisture. Your stainless steel that was pristine at home now looks rusty after only a week. We absolutely had no idea how much salt gets on the boat.

Leaks: Your boat that never leaked a drop at home doing local sailing will now leak at places you never even knew existed. When you start pounding around in the ocean day after day, any place that can possibly leak, will leak. Know how to re-bed everything on your deck and bring along enough of the proper sealant to re-do it all. Then buy more sealant along the way.

Boats: You get to know your boat and yourself a lot better. I think a lot of folks wonder deep down if they have bought the right boat for the job. The how does it live part is pretty easy, you know that soon after you move on. It is how will it perform, and how comfortable will we be with her offshore. We read reviews and talk to other people about their boats, and then make a choice and hope it is the right one for us. At least that is what we did. And, fortunately, we don’t think we could have made a better choice. Now we have been out long enough that the waves that seemed so big last June don’t look quite so scary now and we can judge our boat a little more critically. We chose a Beneteau Oceanis 461 which is relatively light at 21,000 pounds, has a moderately large sail plan, and a very slippery hull designed by fames race designer Bruce Farr (our hero).

We knew the longer waterline would be more comfortable in bigger seas, but what we have come to really like is that with the light weight and easily driven hull. We can reduce sail early, sail her at less of an angle and still make 8 knot speeds to windward without trying hard. And higher if off the wind. We have found ourselves walking on similar sized boats with more sail up and the extra speed makes a big difference on a longer passage. And we are less stressed, less fatigued and it is easier on the boat as well.

Speaking of boat types, we have learned that Lyn and Larry Pardee are about as relevant today as is information on churning your own butter. I mean no disrespect as they have contributed in a big way to making cruising attractive to a great many people. What I am talking about is the fact that they traveled (travel?) in a 29 ft boat with no engine, no refrigeration, no furling sails, no outboard on the dinghy, no hot water, etc, etc. What we see out here is that the average boat is more like 40 feet and up and will have every convienence that can be packed aboard. Just about everyone has a fridge, most have a freezer, everyone has at least one furling sail, most have SSB radios, solar panels to run it all and at least half have wind generators to add even more juice to the old battery bank. Rare is the boat without a chartplotter, every one has GPS and backup GPS, Radar domes are everywhere and more and more boats are topped with satellite domes. There is a TV antenna on top of most masts, and now the big thing is to have a WiFi amplifier so you can access the internet from most anchorages on the boat. Anchorages no longer ring with the ‘clank, clank, clank sound of chain on a manual windlass, but the whir of powered windlasses and bow thrusters. And everyone has an engine, and almost every one of us would just as soon have an even bigger engine.

The long and short of it is that with furling sails and powered winches and weather routing at your fingertips, shorthanded crews (spelled couples) are safely going to sea on bigger and bigger boats and taking more comfort and convenience with them. No longer is it necessary to go to sea in a double ended lifeboat with only enough sail area for a major storm (Valiant, Wet Snail, etc) that takes twice as long to get anywhere and therefore has to be able to weather anything it encounters.

Everyone wants the latest equipment, especially electronics, so eBay is full of last year’s stuff at a huge savings. So more and more is available to those with lots of cash and those with not so much as well. Electronic charts are in many cases so accurate that you could almost do away with your depth sounder. OK, that one may be a little extreme, but the accuracy is really pretty startling.

Speaking of safety and comfort, we have found that NOAA forecasts are pretty much a Chamber of Commerce forecast. The seas will be higher and the winds stronger and from a less favorable direction than forecast. Count on it. It is never better than forecast, always less. So get weather from multiple sources and learn the weather patterns for where you are sailing and make your own judgement. Down here (Bahamas, Caribbean) everyone relies on Chris Parker and the first question in any weather conversation among cruisers is “What did Chris say this morning?”

Take as many spares as you have space for or can afford. The further you get away from the States the harder it will be to find parts and shipping becomes slower and more expensive. Always keep in mind, however, that if your gizmo has 10 parts, and you have spares for 9, it will be number 10 that breaks every time.

Here are some of the things that have worked for us and some that have not:

Furuno NavNet2 Radar/Chartplotter and C-Map NT Max charts: I cannot say enough about this combination. It is accurate beyond belief, has intuitive controls, a big bright screen and has not yet missed a tick. The C-Map charts have been spot on everywhere we have traveled, even to showing us in the right slip at most marinas. We have heard complaints about the charting used by the “biggest marine electronics manufacturer”, even to the point of showing the boat on land when it was obviously floating. Shop around but I don’t think you could find a better set up than this.

FourWinds II Wind Generator: This generator was on the boat when we purchased it and we took it off and stored it until we went full time. We have had some issues returning it to operation (many self inflicted) but the manufacturer support has been great and now that it is up and running, we love it. It is turning out the volts/amps in bucket fulls and is next to perfectly quiet. Yes, you can hear it but compared to any other unit we have seen yet, in comparison it is absolutely silent.

Raymarine Instruments: This has been a real mixed bag for us. We have a ST60 instrument package, a RayNav 300 GPS as a backup unit at the helm, and SmartPilot autopilot with an earlier (not “smart”) unit installed as backup. In the nine months we have been out the wind instrument and the brand new SmartPilot control head have both gone back to Ray for repairs. The RayNav 300 went on the fritz for the second time and we elected to replace it with a Furuno GP32 instead of having it reprogrammed.

So, on the whole, the Raymarine stuff has not been very reliable at all. But what takes the edge off of that somewhat is that the new SmartPilot with the gyro computer is sweet. It anticpates better, and therefore uses less battery, and by playing with the response ratios, you can get it to drive any way you want, or adjust it to best fit the wind/waves you are in at the time. And it does just as well in wind or compass mode. Nice.

Brookhouse Multiplexer: This little box makes communication between your instruments smoother and easier. This is particularly true when you have mixed brands of equipment. In our case all of these need to ‘talk’ or ‘hear’ one another:

Furuno Radar/Chartplotter, Furuno GPS, Ray wind, depth, speed instruments, Ray autopilot, laptop computer, Standard Horizon VHF and Brookhouse multiplexer. Everyone but Ray can talk NMEA (and some Ray can), the Furuno chartplotter networks thru Ethernet as well as NMEA, and Ray uses the proprietary SeaTalk system. All this comes together though the multiplexer which accepts and transmits sentences on both SeaTalk and NMEA so it all works together. Everyone is going to NMEA 2000 which should make this all easier, but for now this is one great item.

Lewmar Folding Steering Wheel : Probably the best investment we have made. On a boat with a walk through transom, you are going past that wheel a lot. Take our word for it, there is no substitute. Get one.

Shuttle Computer: This will not be of interest to everyone, but since I had a lot of time invested in it, I thought it was worth a mention. The Shuttle is a ‘small form factor’ size computer, about the size of a shoebox. The (seeming) advantage to it is that it uses all full size components (not laptop type) and therefore replacement parts can be had anywhere in the world, which might not be true with a laptop. So we installed a Shuttle and set it up with amps, digital decoders, home theater speakers, TV tuner, AutoCad, Microsoft Office, navigation software, thousands of movies and songs, etc, etc. And we backed it up with a second Shuttle and a laptop. All of this was Lew’s idea and in the first six months we were out it was a disaster. There were always just enough bugs that it never ran properly, then the backup Shuttle did not work, so we finally gave up, took my son’s advice and replaced the whole mess with a Thinkpad and have not had a moments trouble since.

Did you catch that the boat has amplified, decoded, surround sound? That is the level of comfort cruising boats are going to.

Garhauer Blocks: Boy, am I glad these guys are around. Their ball bearing UB series blocks are strong, good looking, free spinning and half or less the price of comparable Harken. I replaced the mainsheet system (was Lewmar) and the difference is night and day. Every block I purchase is now Garhauer.

Achilles HB-310 RIB dinghy: We bought an Achilles folding floor dinghy for our 25 ft boat in 1980. In 2004 it was still like new even after being used in salt water, in the pool with our kids, packed for months in a hot garage or boat, just generally rough handled. As Sea Wings came with an 11 ft air floor Zodiac, the Achilles reluctantly went on eBay and now has it’s second happy owner. The third time we used it the floor came unglued on the Zodiac so we got rid of it and replaced it with another Achilles which I hope will last nearly as long as the first. I am a happy man.

Nissan/Tahatsu 9.8hp two cycle: Fantastic, reliable and weighs only 57 pounds. Add 25 to 40 pounds for a similar four stroke. This engine has a great reputation and has performed faultlessly for us. However…….while this engine will push our dinghy with the two of us to around 18 knots in smooth water, this is rarely how you will travel once in the islands. Now your dinghy will be overloaded with provisions or parts or jerry cans of fuel, it will be blowing 20 , the wind chop will be 2-3 ft and you will have to travel over a mile to get back to your boat. This is more common than you might think. Get the biggest RIB that you can carry safely on your boat and the biggest motor it will handle. Period.

ICOM IC-M710RT Marine SSB: It took us a while to come to terms with using SSB as there are so many variables to both reception and transmission, but the radio has been great. We understand that ICOM’s latest model, the M802, has had a number of problems so finding a used M710 or M710RT (the RT has a remote control head) might be a better way to go. The M710 is used by Chris, Herb, and most of the Sailmail receivers. Good, tough, workhorse.

Rail Mount Solar Lamps: As you may know, Bob Bitchin of Latitudes and Attitudes fame spent about 12 issues detailing the refit of his boat with all the free stuff from his sponsors and advertisers, then offered it for sale and immediately started a multiple issue feature on building his new boat. Bob offers these lights for sale in his magazine and at the boat shows. They are promoted as great anchor lights (lower to the water so useful in Bahamas, etc), use no house bank power and are stainless steel. We stupidly bought two of these at the Miami show in Feb and by the middle of March they were rusty all over, by April only one worked, they go out by midnight so are useless as anchor lights, and do not put out much light anyway (only one LED). We have concluded that Bob is offering these lights for the sole purpose of financing his new boat.

So if you want this type of light, go to Home Depot and buy solar powered path lights. They are all plastic, use incandescent (brighter) bulbs, last longer, and are so cheap that you can just replace the whole thing when they fail. If you want to help pay for Bob’s new boat, just send him a donation and save the frustration of dealing with his lights.

Stainless Steel: Isn’t. See info on salt above.

Hardware Deals : We needed a snap shackle for the whisker pole and West had it for about $45 bucks. SailorMan in Ft Lauderdale had the same size for $25 bucks. We bought the cheaper one and after two days in the ocean the pin and spring were rusty all over the boat (see pic). Buy the good stuff. See info on salt above.

Look Bucket; A ‘look bucket’ is a Plexiglas bottom bucket that you use to check your anchor set, look for conch, lobster, etc or check out reefs before you snorkel or dive them. You will use this constantly down here and it is a must have. West Marine wanted $24 for one in the states which we thought was outrageous and reasoned that you only used them in the islands, that it would be cheaper to buy it here. We paid $39 for one in a dive shop in Nassau. Haven’t seen one cheaper and have seen them as high as $45. Get one in the States before you leave.

Provision before you leave : We have heard this and read this for years before we left and so loaded up with canned veggies and meats like we were on a survival mission. Fact is that we have been able to get about all we need in the Bahamas. Sure, some islands have only a small store with only essential items, but you can get it and it will just cost you more money.

The lesson for us is that we have a boat full of canned meat (awful) and veggies and continually deny ourselves the goodies at the market because we need to get rid of the stuff on board.

We now think a better way is to load the freezer with meat, stock up on items that are really more expensive down here like paper products, soda, BEER, and get fresh stuff as you go. Eat like you would at home, don’t eat like you are on a non stop circumnavigation.

We hope you will find some of this useful and maybe cut down a little on the learning curve if you choose to go for it and cast off the lines. We will do other ‘what we have learned’ updates in the future.

You will notice that there is nothing here about the ‘cost of cruising’, always a popular subject for those anticipating a trip south. We read probably 50 articles on the subject before we set up our budget. Some had good info, most not, but by taking in a lot of them you can get a ballpark idea of actual cost. What have we learned about a cruising budget in our nine months???? Make a budget, double it and keep a lot of cash in reserve. Seriously.