Sailing fun

Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever.

The Banjo is a minimalist boat.

That's how I wanted it to be and I stuck to my objective right through the build process.

The biggest killer on a multihull is WEIGHT. Weight serves no purpose on a trimaran. It only makes the boat slow. Excessive weight on a multihull can even be dangerous in extreme weather and sea conditions.

I am obsessed about heavy stuff finding it's way onto the boat. Keeping things simple saves a lot of weight.

The galley has a single burner gas stove. Trimarans don't heal much, so there is no need for the stove to be gimballed. I bolted an aluminium pot (with it's base cut out) onto the ring of the stove. That will act as a pot and kettle retainer in rough weather or when the boat is being driven hard.

The sink is a small s/steel prep bowl sunk into the galley work surface. No plumbing in the galley. The sink is emptied by pouring the water over the side. Water comes out of a large collection of bottled water. No pumps, no leaks, no blockages.

The heads are also spartan. Another s/steel prep bowl for a washbasin. Again no plumbing. Water straight out of a bottle into the basin. Pour it over the side when done. The loo? Bucket and chukit. There is a built-in toilet seat and a bucket slides underneath it. It has never blocked, has no evil smells and amuses my children no end.

The main cabin has two bunks. (there are two more in the forepeak). To starboard, as one enters the cabin, is a small nav area. The chart table will NOT take a folded chart. Chartwork is done on one of the bunks. There is a VHF radio and that's it. We will use handheld GPS's for navigation and a sat phone and laptop for communication with Race control and the outside world.

Up on deck is a speedo/ echosounder unit.

There is a small autopilot for helping with helming duties. We are sailing two-up.

Our electronic needs will be fired up by two 45 watt solar panels mounted on the stern, feeding into two 105 deepcycle batteries.

To ease the drain, navlights have LED bulbs, ditto the cabin lights.

All the electronic stuff making their way onto small boats? Mostly there because the owner wants to play with gadgets, just like kids with computer games and playing on cell phones.

The Banjo disappoints a lot of folk because there are none of the "must have" gadgets on board. It does make for a nicer boat, cause you just hop on board and SAIL the blooming thing. And FAST!

In the food department we wil be sailing in the "Express" division.

We are planning on leaving with frozen pre-cooked dinners for the first four nights. (put into a cooler box with frozen bottled water as ice) Then we must move onto a collection of simple one-pot meals and my co-skipper has advised me that he is good at fishing. So I've scrapped stocking up for two dinners and replaced them with the fish he still have to catch.

Look out for us on St Helena. We are the two skinny guys.

No Papers, No go. And That's Official.

And Sir,

Tell me, do you have a license?

No license, no sailing.
We had the SAMSA category A survey done this week. A bit late, I hope not.

Gordon came from PE to do it. He is one of the Algoa Bay Yacht Club members who does this for the club fleet. I have known Gordon since 1979 when I first joined ABYC. Having this piece of government bureaucracy done by a fellow sailor and not a government official, is a great help.

Anyway, all went well and it was nice catching up with news from my old stomping grounds, ABYC.

You see that weird object in the background? It's a money tree. A little wire-craft tree with some brass coins tied into it. A financial guy gave me some years ago. Look carefully, there are not many coins on it.
It's a good reflection of my back pocket after the SAMSA survey.

Liferaft service, about R4 000. EPIRB another R4 000. Flares, lights on lifejackets, charts, upgraded First Aid Kit another R5 000 odd Rands.
So far most of the spend has been on making the boat safe. Hopefully we can now get onto making the boat fast. Except that money tree is bearing no fruit!

We must still order the spinnaker. THE spinnaker. The ONLY ONE!

And pay for the family's passage on the mail ship, and the insurance, and some antifouling and some, and some and another few Rands here and there.

Having empty pockets makes boat preparation easy. You can't buy it, therefore you don't have to install it.

Compass error

Compass Error.

We also swung the compass this afternoon. That's to check if the ship's compass might be out by a few degrees due to any metal influences onboard the boat.
Whatever degrees it might be out by, is referred to as compass deviation. Then you also have the difference between true compass and magnetic compass. That called compass variation.

You have to take both variation and deviation into account when calling for a compass course to be steered. The two together is called COMPASS ERROR.

It takes a while for the concepts to sink in, but I still recall Johnny Walker drilling it into our heads way back in 1978 at the old Port Elizabeth Technicon where he presented his navigation courses.
"VARIATION WEST, COMPASS BEST, etc" "VARIATION EAST, COMPASS LEAST". To this day, I draw a little diagram on all my charts. On the stormiest of nights, a glance at the diagram will ensure that all is well at the navigation table.

I was confident that the Banjo would have very little deviation, if any at all. I had carefully planned the positioning of the radio and instruments and all the cabling during the building process to ensure we are free of compass problems.
The abscence of an inboard motor and alternators etc. also helps. Many years ago I came to within meters of putting a boat on the rocks in thick fog off Hout Bay due to and inboard motor and alternator throwing out a compass.

There are three or four different ways to swing the compass. I placed a handbearing compass on the cabin top, on the centreline of the boat. Thats about as far away from anything as you will get. Then motored on the various headings and got Jamie to call the readings out so I could compare it with the ship's compass.

We had a big problem. The compass was out by 180 degrees!
"No Jamie, read the numbers on the inside circle, not the numbers on the outside circle!"
That solved the 180 problem.

Then we were out by 20 degrees!
"No Jamie, the little lines with no numbers next to the 90 means 100 degrees, not 80! Gee my boy, which way do you count at school!"

Then got that one waxed.

The compass is spot-on. Shoo! Anyway, at least so close that no one can steer on any of the deviation that might be there.

The course to St Helena is 310 my co-skipper tells me. Magnetic, or True? Ah dunno! He never told me.

I made a special effort to check 310 degrees.
It's fine.

(the picture shows us doing our thing in front of the house. That's Jamie on the cabin top, reading out the handbearing compass numbers for me.)

It's a family affair.

It's spring tide so I will use the bit of help from mother nature to pull the boat out of the water tomorrow afternoon just after work.
The boat comes out at the village slipway 200 meters down the road. We use a launching dolley for that and pull the boat out with the family car and tow it onto our driveway. Then it becomes a real pleasure to do all the 100 tiny little jobs which require another two hundred trips on and off the boat and into the garage to cut and trim and drill.

St Francis Bay has water restrictions at the moment (serious draught) and it will be frowned upon to use a hose to clean off the marine growth from the bottom of the boat. So, despite the cold weather, Jamie and I donned wetsuits this afternoon and got stuck into cleaning the bottom BEFORE the boat comes out. Tanya and Rosie declined the invite to have the entire family in the water.
Flip, it's still winter! That water was cold.
Jamie was a big help. And surprisingly keen. Mom stood by and handed out cups of coffee and hot chocolate as we came out of the water.

On Saturday I bolted all the new fittings and deck hardware down. Except the spinnaker foreguy rope clutch. Reason, when it came to bolting it on I noticed that I never sealed the edges of the holes after I had drilled through the core the week before!

Dammit.

Rosie and Arthur

Horses for courses

Did a lot of work on Saturday and cleaned up.

Sunday was horseriding day.

Rosie went to ride at a beginners training showjumping day. (that's one event) In Port Elizabeth. We all went to watch.

Now going to ride in another town is just like going to an away regatta.
All very exciting packing and getting there. Great fun while the event is on. But.......................... all the time you have it in the back of your mind that afterwards you must pack up all this lot and still get the horse (the boat) back home. And it's going home where things normally goes pearshaped. I.e. trailer wheel comes off, delivery trip home with the boat always turns out to be a headwind, etc.

Luckily none of that happened and all went well. The horse she rides is called Lizaar. I call the thing Bizare.
She had two clear rounds and in the third round the horse stops short of the 3rd last jump. Not a sausage is he jumping. She gives him a smack and over it goes. Kinda like you have to put in an extra tack to clear the weather mark in a sailboat race.

Two jumps to go. Over the next one, but the horse is now really acting Bizare. He spots the exit gate and takes a sharp right out of the arena. Like when the guys at the back of the boat misreads the sailing instructions for shortened course and heads the boat for the finish line and leaves out the last mark by mistake.
On the way to the exit gate Rosie loses it and starts to slide off the horse. Some chick catches her at the gate and slides her back on again. Almost like a man overboard, but not quite.

So they miss out on the last jump and gets a no score for that round. We're all happy that she gave the day her best shot and try hard not to laugh about the bizare incident with Lizaar (Bizare).

Great day out.

Oh, yes. I now know why the boat's outboard engine is refered to as how many horsepower.
"horsepower" taken from horses. An ouboard engine is as tempremental as a flippen horse.

And all those hot girls at the riding. In those tight riding pants. Gee.........they've got terrible panty line problems. Well, most of them.