A new boat!

Like a hermit crab for a while now I have been feeling like I have outgrown my shell, she feels too small and not exciting enough... Well I have just bought a new boat, or at least I will have in a few days when the bank processes my money transfer!

In my last post I had a list of a bunch of desired features of a new boat, most of which did not make for a cheap boat. Looking back over the list I think I have ticked most of the boxes, or at least the boat has the potential to tick them one day.

Thinking some more about it I guess one of the main goals is to be able to lift my sailing average on coastal passages from about 50-60% up to 70-80% so good light airs and windward performance are important. Also more space for a fully separate toilet and shower and at least 2 separate cabins and room for a kayak and a decent hard dinghy on deck was needed.

Those fellow boat nerds out there will immediately recognize the dreaded lines of an old IOR Two Tonner. yep.. Hrmm OK so they roll like pigs down wind don't they? err yep.. and.. they Broach at the blink of a hat right? (slightly red faced).. Yes so I am told.

Well that's the negative, the positives are the fantastic heavy air windward performance,  the huge amount of room, the strength of all alloy construction and good light air performance. Did I mention that I could also afford her, a big factor for someone with a simple lifestyle and aversion to debt like me, and I can afford to do what is needed to make her a simple fast cruising boat.

She wants a proper interior with insulation (one day), new rigging (urgent), a bigger engine (eventually), a redesign of the cockpit area plus dodger, and the sailing gear sorted for shorthanded work.

Strong 6,5 and 4mm Aluminium, exceptionally
well built by Noel Wilde in Melbourne.

A basic but functional interior. Those chainplate stays look annoying and she will drip condensation everywhere in tassie... 

One day maybe a lift keel could be retrofitted, so I will build the interior to suit a centerboard case in the distant future.

The bad downwind habits may be able to be improved by dropping the spinnaker before the wind gets over 15 knots and reverting to my slow trundling downwind with a poled out headsail. A wind-vane and auxiliary rudder will also help. A friend of mine has a boat with a couple of dagger-boards down aft for running. Apparently they also help considerably...

Anyway no rush, I will sail her for a few years before I do anything to drastic, She is quite serviceable as she is, It will take much time and money but I think she could be a great fast and fun cruiser to sail offshore and inshore.

Oh, by the way I now have an exceptionally tough, go anywhere red yacht for sale at a giveaway price to the right adventurous soul...

Edit, Snow Petrel has just sold, the new owner is Dean, he will cruise around Hobart way, learning the boat before heading off further afield. Sad in some ways, but it opens up a new door, and now I can afford to do some of the improvements to Sunburst.

Cheers

Ben

A tale of fire and ice

Well, not really much ice, more sort of rain and some cold wind but hey.. got your attention. But the fire, yep a real fire on the boat!

Intentional of course, and nicely contained in the welded metal firebox, nicely warming the boat to 29 degrees, and warding of that icy weather. Finally after many years of procrastination the wood heater is on the boat, and working exceptionally well.

It replaces the smelly little Taylors diesel heater that I never really bonded with. In fairness I did buy it from a garage sale for $100 and it really needed a bit of an overhaul, a very small diesel leak used to develop when it heated up and it gave of a slight whif of diesel... Yuk. 

This wood heater was of my own design, (or rather adapted from my friend Adrian's design). It is just big enough to fit a normal sized log, and has a  mesmerizing window, a secondary burning chamber, and enough controls to keep a concord pilot busy. 

I love it, I love the slightly smoky warm fug inside, the flickering of the flame through the door, and the radiant heat. 

I love the hot kettle simmering away on the top. I love playing with all the controls, stoking it, lighting it, and the lazy way the smoke curls out the chimney. Shame it has taken 6 years to build, and now I have it installed just in time for summer...

See the post on welding stuff for details of the tools I used and a photo of the door being made, I managed to source some heat proof glass to fit inside the scrap stainless steel door. It's welded up from 6mm (1/4") mild steel plate (that I also got from adrian, thanks mate!), and it weighs a ton.

The installation is not quite complete. Hopefully soon the stainless steel heat shields will be fitted instead of the cheap galvanized one, and some tiles will be glued on the floor. I also need to make a new stack top, the old one was washed overboard in the knockdown on the way to Antarctica. And finally weld up some fiddles and guards. But all in good time, I guess I have until next winter!

Maybe amongst this hive of activity I will find time to post a few things on here, my apologies for the long lapse. Some time soon my old man will get his website up and running about his book "Snow petrel". So soon I can post a link to that, and with luck it may stop him harassing me to put something about the book on here...

Ohh, Important stuff I nearly forgot, Playing with fire is something most of us grow out of when we are about five, I clearly have not yet achieved this level of maturity. However I am very careful about shielding, and do not leave the fire unattended. I was told by a firefighter that wood can slowly change into a more flammable state after years of exposure to "safe" temperatures. Then one day it bursts into flame at the same safe temperature it has always been exposed to. A homemade wood heater is also liable to nasty antisocial habits like belching carbon monoxide, flames, and hot embers, or worse. Be careful... 

A tale of woe... Oh and RAIN

Well It's raining outside, and I have antifouling to put on Snow Petrel... Forecast - rain on and off for the rest of the week. I should have put the paint on yesterday morning before the rain started, but I hadn't primed any of the bare metal patches (only some small pinholes 1-2mm diameter) so I did that instead.

So now if I can get the bottom dry enough for one coat of antifouling I will be right. If not well, I'd rather not think about that, be positive, you know.

On the plus side I have taken off the tiller and planed it back and reshaped it. It has always been a bit of a hefty lump of wood. Rather ugly but strong. I have never gotten around to doing anything about it because I want a telescopic fancy aluminium tiller so I have always seen this as a temporary tiller. Anyway I decided I needed to have at least one nice looking thing to cheer me up and I have planed it down to a nice shape and started varnishing it. As soon as I started planing it I realised they did a nice job of laminating the tiller with alternating light and dark strips... WOW it's going to look great. I have put alot more taper into it and it will fit the hand better then the original old lump of wood.

It's amazing what hides under the old grey wood...

I have spent alot of time investigating stray currents because they may be the cause of some of the failure of the base layers of paint. I think that it is mostly due to the old age of the bottom paint and million layers of old antifouling but I want to eliminate any stray currents before I strip all the paint of and start again. It would be heart breaking go to all the trouble of doing this and then find the new paint coming off as well... So if anyone has any tips on a good stray current meter or using a multimeter to find leaks let me know. Some interesting sites on stray currents; this one seems very good, Yacht survey - and I would like to find out more about these meters and if they are any good or just a dressed up multimeter (I have heard one fellow around here swear by them). What other options are out there for testing? I guess my anodes have started working for the first time in 7 years or so so that makes me slightly suspicious. But they still aren't working hard.

I also would like to hear from anyone with information about sandblasting vs. mechanically cleaning with a sander. Or other options such as ultra-high pressure water blasting, soda or dry ice blasting. More research for me before the next slip in six-eight months time...

Anyway the sun is peaking out... time to head down to the boat

Cheers

Ben

BTW what does the rest of the world call coming out of the water, we call it slipping the boat.

A long time...

I just looked at the date of the last post and realised what a long time it's been since I last posted. Well I kind of knew it has been a long time, and I have written two big posts (and re-written them at least three times), But for certain reasons (which I may or may not reveal) I have not posted them yet... sorry.

So I am kind of firing this off to let you know I am still alive. (I am) But I did have abit of a fright the other night, seeing lots of water in the bilge I tasted it to see if it was fresh or salt, (kind of more fresh, not salty so had another taste to check) and looked for the leak. I couldn't find any leak anywhere so I pumped it out and went home...

Light-bulb moment at 10pm, cooling water from engine, antifreeze... toxic? Panic google search YES IT IS TOXIC!! !@#$%

Anyway to cut along story short Karen drove me down (I was suffering from extreme hypochondriac syndrome) I got some samples from the bilge and some salt water I stuck them both in the freezer and they both froze OK. Also the Cooling water was still full and very green (the bilge water wasn't green) so I think I am not going to die (from that anyway).  Many lessons learnt here, many that I should have learnt when I was two, like don't swallow anything unknown.

But seriously I was surprised that 30mls or so of antifreeze can be fatal, but relived that the cure was strong alcohol... so I decided I'd better have lots of the cure just in case.

As well as rewriting posts and trying to poison myself I have just put Snow Petrel up on the slip (the hard? for you Americans). I decided to try slipping her closer to town this time (Kettering where I keep her is 40 mins drive away). So I had to sail her up. With all the weed on the bottom it took much longer than I had planed, and had to motor sail to keep her moving... very sad... It got dark and I learnt that my masthead light wasn't working... Another job to do...

Anyway today she went up and after three hours on the end of a water blaster all the flora and fauna making their unwelcome home on the bottom of my boat were evicted and the bottom was clean (it was pretty bad, kind of glad I don't have a photo...). The reason for such bad fouling, paint detachment - the epoxy paint sealing the old antifouling away is starting to fail badly after 6 years, and much of the 18 year build-up of paint was blistered and loose, with weed growing through any cracks.

So really I think this means a sandblast job to remove the assorted antifouling paint build up on the bottom. Unless any of you have any better ideas... While I am at it I should make all those modifications to the boat underwater that I have planned. I will get around to describing some of these in later posts.

Cheers

Ben

Snow Petrel... The boring details

A few keen observant and possibly quite bored people have noticed the extra page added to the blog.. well done! It's next to the videos page on the top of my latest rambling blog if you aren't one of those observant ones..  I kind of slipped it up there to see what would happen. I wrote this a few years ago to go in the back of a book my old man was writing, Its incomplete, caustic and a few things have changed since then, but if you have nothing more important to do, and are curious it is up there... I plan to slowly add stuff to it, but may well not get around to doing so, maybe this blog is my attempt to add to it... Any comments on the page can be posted here.

Cheers

Ben

Videos

Hello,  I have added a video page, to access it click on the video button next to home in the top ribbon panel just under the header, It has a couple of short videos made by my little brother Matt, I think they are very good, but then I am a bit biased... They also show how you can make anything look dramatic and scary if you put in the right music. You can post any comments regarding the videos here if you feel so inclined.

Cheers 

Ben

Snow Petrel, an introduction

Snow Petrel in very open ice

Snow Petrel is a 34 foot (10.15m) steel yacht that has been my home and transport for a few years. She is strong and simple, the two of the most important qualities in any offshore boat.

She has taken me south from Tasmania to Antarctica and may be the smallest boat to sail to East Antarctica (the bit that doesn't include the antarctic peninsular).  
See the videos page.

I have sailed ever since I can remember, starting on my grandparents 34 foot ketch and then sailing my parents 45 foot gaff ketch. I Raced dingys as a kid and then did some some offshore racing. 

NZ Maid, My parents Herreshoff Mobjack

I went to sea as a navigating cadet when I was 17, sailing (steaming..?) around the world on  P&O container ships for 6 years, and getting my chief mates ticket.

Needing a change I jumped onto a square rigger as mate for two seasons around the pacific... A lovely ship. Soren Larsen

After sailing my 26 foot Warsash one Design (something like a Folkboat) across the Tasman singlehanded I have now settled in Tasmania. Since then I have done a lot of yacht deliveries across the Tasman and around Aussie, sailed to South America, and run an old open 60 charter boat on the Antarctic Peninsular, and more or less rebuilt Snow petrel (a never ending job, still not complete). See Snowpetrel The boring details for more information on the her.

Soren Larsen

Reiger

I will try to put up the odd post now and then, hopefully my writing style will improve with practice, please forgive any grammatical and spelling mistakes, writing is not a strong point...

Also be aware that there are many ways to sail an ocean, many ways to set up an ocean going boat and many valid opinions, I tend towards the crude and cheap options, but understand that those with better budgets may prefer other solutions. I also try not to get to set in my ways and always reserve the right to change my opinions without notice... Keep an open mind.

Fair winds

Ben Tucker