Gone sailing; back soon.

'Allo, 'allo.

 A man's got to know his limits, if only to give them a push now and then.

Like Wales run by the French

More when I return in a couple of weeks.

UPDATE 13.11.20: Back from an educational time, but swamped with work. Will post some lessons learned in a week or so. Boating ain't cheap.

Slick or sleet: The horrors of Haulout 2013

While this was taken on November 1, a day later than Hallowe'en, it illustrates how even a "moderate" gale of 40 knots or so can create havoc in the channel just outside of my club's basin. Conditions like this are not particularly rare.
Photo copyright Eric Jacob.

What could be more appropriate for an October 31st post than to list the horrors of hauling out? As I write, there's a warning of a 45-knot (gusting 60) gale that's supposed to lash Toronto while I am herding a bunch of Halloweenies on a search for sugar. And I still have a boat in the water.

But first, the equally windy tale of the boat that is not still afloat.

Every baby needs a cradle.

Usually, I am driving a safety boat over the two days of my club's launch and haulout process. This year, some welcome work meant that while I could test a new foul-weather jacket under real-life conditions (it passed with high marks), I would not be able to actually be on station for the Saturday haulout. So my wife and I put the cradle up (above), brought the boat over to the seawall, and I wished her well with a 0700 h call (still mostly dark at 0700) in increasing wind and rain.

Funny, this worked in the spring...

First bit of horror came with the realization that the former sling marks (see red tape on top pipe rail) have altered, no doubt because the new engine and gear aboard has shifted the center of gravity. Mrs. Alchemy was called over to  consult.

No one looks happy, a bit of a theme in a cold gale.

 Eventually, air got under the boat...

This will change yet again when I shift that load of lead "trim" out of the bow.

Note the "cinch belt" keeping the slings from sliding around and terrifying the villagers.

Once down, it was clear that staying mostly still at a dock does the bottom paint no favours.

Ew.

On the upside, with a number of the larger boats (ours is a large boat, but has never been among the club's larger boats) off to winter digs featuring a TraveLift, there's some welcome space between the boats and I don't have to put the ladder off the stern.

Most of this will in fact dry up and flake off. Or I will fix the power washer which has blown a gasket.

A rare, if semi-obstructed, side view of Alchemy. The paint job's holding up thanks to Mrs. A's summer two-part touch-ups.

What big fenders you've got!

 So as the weather got worse...

And out of focus.

...and worse...

Not present...the 20 foot surge over the end of the runway at Future Boat Club Killer Airport.

 ...the decision to defer the small boat retrieval out of the Western Gap until a calmer Sunday was taken, and a sodden but successful Mrs. Alchemy splashed home before hypothermia took hold.

Whoops. Time for a brushdown.

The boat bottom is surprisingly mucky, as is the prop. I will apply some elbow grease to see if this is, as I suspect, superficial fouling. 

Dermabrasion, steel boat style

Meanwhile, the Old Girl is still afloat. I'm scheduled to haul out for Valiente's winter storage at the redoubtable Uli's Pier 35 on Sunday afternoon, but the above-noted gale tonight and tomorrow argued for some seamanlike prudence in the form of lashing and doubled dock lines.

Boom lashed, tiller lashed, bimini lashed and boom pointed at direction of gale.

After a pump-out of the existing rain and some lashing of the bimini frame and tiller, I checked the state of charge of the batteries (100%) if the bilge pump needs to work while the power is down (or the power cord is worked loose). I know from experience that water WILL sluice down the mast, particularly from the expected SW direction of the gusty weather.

Bow lines doubled.

Doubled springs and stern lines and reposition big ol' fenders.

Midship spring and doubled bow lines to port.

We'll see if she's still there on Sunday. I would think so.

So while I didn't have the time for a late-season sail, my boat partner Clive did, and apparently enjoyed himself.  I'll keep my fingers crossed that the boat will be undamaged when I return on Sunday and that the Hallowe'en Gale is more treat than trick.

Not seen: the actual sailboat sailing in the south-eastern part of the harbour. Looked nice.

UPDATE: November 3, 2013: Aside from the climatic dice-rolling that saw the overnight temperature in Valiente's cabin dip to 0.2C, the lake did not seize and Sunday was bright and only faintly breezy. A good day to redline the engine (based on some possibly fictional idea of "blowing out the carbon/oiling the rings, etc.) and get to Valiente's winter quarters for the 40th time.

Behold a rare video, taken by boat partner Clive. It is very boring, except for the fact that it demonstrates how slowly one should move when tugging four and half tons of sloop.

Blurry because it was very much dusk at this point. She's pointed more or less into the wind for a change.

After some intense and Clive-aided cradle assembly, Honda genset-running and sling-positioning, and a measure of the usual standing around and waiting in the surprisingly busy confines of Pier 35, the old girl was hauled without incident, rapidly winterized in engine and bilges, and will be visited in a few weeks for further lashing and prep. Despite a degree of under-utilization this season, which was predictable due to various workloads and external events, she had a good summer, and the new standing rigging is keeping the mast up and the sails pulling.

The real sea monsters

The good ship Alchemy does not feature, as do many recreational sailing vessels of her dimensions, a multiplicity of perforations in her hull. This is due to the perspicacity of the original owner and the designer: I had nothing to do with the cleverness, except that I appreciate fewer holes in boats for reasons less obvious than "less likely to sink".

Hey, two centimetres is still above the waterline, right? Dubious to me, but very common on all sorts of vessels.

As said, she does not have a whack of thru-hulls. Below the waterline, there is one "innie" in the form of a standpipe and two "outies", the head sink drain and the galley drain. This is not the usual state of affairs on boats.

This is from an Ericson 38: Too close together for my taste, although the rationale was probably "this is the only place one can reach".

This is, as depicted below. Everything that needs a drain or an inlet gets its own hole in the boat, some above but quite a few, alarmingly, below. I have changed a couple of seacocks in the water by plugging them from below, replacing the seacock, and knocking out the plug with a length of dowelling. It's never been a dry or soothing task.

A sea chest on a fishing boat: The idea is to have single valved hole in the hull from which several valves for various needs (engine cooling, washdown, keeping fish in a box alive) may be drawn. One hole in means just one hole to plug if things get over-damp. Missing: a softwood or rubbery plug on a string.

But there are options. Behold, above, the sea chest. This is a venerable sort of below the waterline grated box that allows in a controlled fashion outside (hence "sea") water to be made available for engine cooling, the flushing of heads, fire hoses, etc. The above model on a relatively small vessel is, in my experience, not the usual setup.

Proper thruhulls screw to seacock with flanged bases, which in turn are bolted to glassed in pads. (c) crusingonstrider.us

This is. Individual thru hull fittings screwed into seacocks, a nautical term for a bronze, brass or plastic valve, which is closed by (typically) a quarter-turn of its handle.

The usual choices made on modern yachts (and "1988" denotes a modern yacht, just not a particularly current one) is to punch a hole in the hull where needed, to insert an appropriate bronze or pretend-bronze or plastic thru-hull, and to top it with a bronze or plastic seacock, a sort of valve with a handle. This is to address the irony that while a boat is meant to float in the sea, there are many reasons to bring controlled amounts of the sea or the lake into the boat.

Such reasons include the cooling circuit of the diesel, either in the "raw" form, where sea water is sucked through the engine by means of an engine-driven impeller, or in the confusingly named "freshwater cooling", where the seawater is used in something called a heat exchanger (a sort of radiator) to transfer the engine's excess heat from a closed and pressurized circulation of antifreeze to the sucked-from-outside seawater, which is then propelled out of the boat with the pressurized exhaust gases. It's a generally robust system, even if the glycol mix in the sealed engine circuit isn't really "freshwater" at all.  The point of the glycol is twofold: Firstly, antifreeze, "Dex" or glycol is more effective at absorbing and yielding up the waste heat of the engine than is straight water. Secondly, it is less corrosive than fresh water (in terms of engine metals) and quite a bit less corrosive than seawater, which yields its salts and other crud-making substances at the relatively low temperature of 155F or so. If a diesel has to work inside a watery jacket, it manifestly prefers that jacket to be under boiling temperature, but not much...175F to 190F is typical.

S/V Alchemy's easily accessed standpipe withT-fittings for head, engine and A/C, plus a spare for saltwater supply to the galley. Also seen are the fuel tank manifold/valves to the right.

You may consider the following depending on the layout of your boat: a standpipe. Above is the one on Alchemy. It's essentially a vertical seachest, with the important distinction that the top of it is customarily well enough above the waterline of the boat to permit service and cleaning...without hauling the whole hull out of the water, or, conversely, going to a place with impressive tidal ranges.

Super-duper standpipe (c) setsail.com/Steve Dashew. This shows the strainer elements close to the pipe, plus a similar "cap" as to Alchemy's.

A standpipe is a straight metal pipe either welded directly to the hulll or screwed onto a thru-hull base. It can be secured by bracing if needed. As noted, it extends above the waterline and is capped with a gasketed (again, usually metal) cap. It resembles the old style oil fill tubes on the sides of North American houses from when oil was a common furnace fuel.


Down the pipe, below the waterline, are welded-on T-fittings threaded to take sea cocks. Put in as many as are required and can safety fit in regards to access.

The standard approach, but who wants to dive under the boat to remove a couple of screws?

The advantages are many in that you have only one "intake" hole in the boat. Fitted with a hinged screen or filter, you can, should you suck in fish and/or debris, open the top cap, see what's down there, and use a length of dowelling or a small-calibre weapon to clear the entire standpipe.

Getting there, but you still have to dive on the boat. Why not a heavy spring on that little door? It's a plot by skin divers.

An alternative, "belt and suspenders" approach would be to have a single, large seacock near the centerline/midpoint of the boat (to ensure it is always below the waterline, even on points of significant heel). Then, you could tap an appropriate pipe with the required T-fitting and smaller seacocks for raw water intake, A/C, seawater domestic supply, and head, and fit it to the seacock. Then, if a T-fitting fails, you can shut off the main seacock and fix it (or reroute its hose to a spare fitting) while underway.

There is no particular reason that the seawater intake must be forward of the engine, other than that forward is usually deeper in the water and less likely to be above the waterline or in agitated, bubble-filled water if the boat is heeled sufficiently. Getting "gulps" of air in the raw-water intake circuit could indeed lead to problems, so you have to figure out the angles. Generally, making the lowermost T-fitting on a well-placed standpipe the engine cooling feed would do the trick.

As for positioning, you can "hide" in under saloon stairs or inside a piece of galley cabinetry, just as long as you can reach all those seacocks/shut-off valves and can look down the standpipe to both see blockages and deal with them.

The standpipe in my steel motorsailer saved my engine when I noticed the engine temperature rising despite the proper functioning of the engine pump. I shut down the motor, looked down the standpipe and saw that we had sucked in a large, thin plastic bag obligingly occluding the raw water intake.  I was able to push it down and out with a stick designated for this purpose, and we resumed motoring with no further incident. 

Typical, but no good for steel without some way to keep the metals apart.

Some methods of stopping this sort of thing happening are above; most sailboats have a simple brass strainer of the type pictured. Others have rather more massive perforated grates for sea chests.

Arr, that'll keep ye out, Squiddy. (C) www.sbmar.com

Many folk are aware that a bag or a particularly gnarly weed or even small creature will get munched in the engine's water pump, which contains a fast-moving impeller capable of Cuisinart-like execution. To keep macerated "bits" out of the surprisingly delicate engine cooling passages, however, a further measure is needed:

Increasingly common on boats "pre-engine" and "post-impeller", this basket filter can save your engine if you suck in a bag or a significant amount of sealife or vegetation. (C) Colin Speedie

I have one of these on the plastic sloop, and have removed plant and animal life that would have otherwise entered the engine to no good end.

A relatively common sight on boats is the bronze raw water strainer. Here's Groco's factory-fresh version:

The Groco model. Aside from plastic versions made by Vetus et al that resemble coffee basket filters, Perko and Groco seem to have the market cornered.

Mine is made by the Perko company. There's not a lot of difference, except the Perko unit seems to me to be more sturdy and better physically supported. As part of the endless reengination process, I've had to service mine to maximize its critter capture qualities. First came a wash of the heavy acrylic housing.

This was opaque with greenish residue before a hearty soap-n-swill.

Then came the removal of some old, dry seaweed. The system works!

The filter works as advertised. Even in Lake Ontario, sea muck abounds.

I gave a light scour to the brass parts. It doesn't have to look like a Viking's tankard.

Don't expect that hatch floor to get cleaned. It's headed for the bin.

 And then back onto the backing board that bolts to the engine room's forward bulkhead:

I'll leave the Brasso rub for another time.

The fly in the ointment of all this wonderful diesel-aiding cooling process and planning and design is, like the fly itself, an invertebrate. And, without being overly dramatic, it may pose a greater threat to cruising than world economic collapse, rampant yacht piracy or even nautical zombies.

This is what's left when you gobble the top three tiers of the ocean environment.

I'm talking about jellyfish. The New York Times says they are taking over, and while I was aware that they (and a few other oceanic nasties) were taking advantage of human rapacity of their predators to breed like, well, jellyfish, I hadn't realized the extent of the problem.

Most of us, outside of certain Pacific island nations and Australia, where most of the wildlife seems bent on killing the inhabitants, likely do not consider the humble jelly, a varied and diffuse collection of species that have been doing their glutinous thing since the Cambrian era, a significant threat to human safety, or, Neptune forbid, the cruising lifestyle. Most of us would be mistaken.

No matter how downtown you think you are, do not place on genitals.

Here's the issue: the jellies are taking over because we've eaten a large percentage of what eats them.  Needless to say, this has implications for the overall health of the oceans, which some folk already believe is deeply compromised, and implications for little boats that wish to, say, motor through the doldrums.

We're gonna need a bigger filter.

Now, as humans, once we identify a problem, even the problems we can clearly originate in our own actions as a species, we tend to have solutions, some brighter than others. Or at least more stabby.

And who's to say our time-honoured traditions of eating our problems won't help here? But you can't catch everything, and as a person who wishes to dive coral reefs in the Pacific, I have to wonder about what's not eating this little fellow, and did he bring his friends? And, having turned the oceans into nutrient-free lubricant, will they find a way to leave Earth?

One wonders what the standpipes on Enterprise are like? Nice bits of kit, one hopes.

The future of "it's what's for dinner".

So the problem of jellyfish jamming up the cooling circuit occupies my mind. I may have to modify an existing strainer for the standpipe so that if I ever "inhale" some little deadly creature parts, I can use some sort of nautical Q-Tip to ream out the pipe and send it far away from my beloved diesel.

Oh, and we need to eat these buggers, too. And these excitable bastards. Along with rapacious fishing practices and a general curtailment of human population, of course. I like to think I'm fair.

But not when it comes to the cooling circuit? No compromises.

Ad astra

May require TLC

At any given point in time, I have friends and acquaintances either shopping for a new boat, trying to sell an old boat, or both at the same time. Clearly, I travel in rarefied circles. On the other hand, the demographics of sailing have made it a great time to buy a lightly used sailboat. While it's still not a casual purchase by any stretch, there hasn't been a greater disconnect in my memory between "dollar per foot", the measure that held when I got my first boat in the late '90s, and actual sailing enjoyment. Compared to, say, owning a cottage or riding horses, or even having two kids playing hockey past the age of 12, sailing pretty much anything under 35 feet looks reasonable as a proposition. And seeing as so many people who got into boating in early middle age in the '70s and '80s are now, due to age, illness or death, leaving boating behind them, the market is soft like fog.

New boats aren't getting cheaper, but the number of people who insist on having a new boat is even smaller than the number of people a) with money and b) with time getting into the sport/lifestyle/what have you in the first place: not many. It's cheaper by far to buy a slightly beat-up, or even a ghetto-fabulous, product of the Disco Era, to chuck out the plaid upholstery and just to go sailing As Is.

Ask me whether I would prefer to sell my first boat at a significant loss, or just pay a guy with a barn a few grand to stow it, hermetically sealed and ultrawinterized, until we return. It's a toughie...I've finally got it working properly!

Now for reasons I feel might be overjudged, my constant immersion in things boaty (even old, steel boaty) means I get asked to evaluate boats, to go look at boats on the hard by way of a "sub-survey", or to render my ignorance apparent by giving my limited and provisional thoughts on Yachtworld ads.

If you are expecting this to sell your boat, you may be doing it wrong.

Yachtworld, for those who haven't looked for a boat to buy or sell since the mid-'90s, is the Craigslist of boat vending: You'll see everything from junk (a.k.a "project boats") that should be an artificial reef to sheik's playthings. As a resource for both vicarious window-shopping and comparative research, it's invaluable, but it has also introduced into the once-clubby world of boat brokering an element of arbitrage.  That is, the local market for a particular boat model or line is now, thanks to the fact-checking abilities of even the average potential boat buyer, now a worldwide market. It is even more economical in certain areas to have better-built or more highly regarded sailboats shipped or trucked from "the cheap area" to one where those models are commanding a higher price, and to put the savings into something useful, like new sails.

There are many places where you can "pre-shop" for boats, and given the particularities of even something as common as, say, a Catalina 30, which is arguably the Honda Civic of production boats, there's going to be a lot of variation between year, "mark" and variable internals and even layouts.

Comes complete with parrot, treasure map and leftover treenails.

A surprising number of boats are semi-customized, either at the factory per request (this is particularly true of smaller-run, higher-value models) or are even one-offs, either custom-made to a commissioned or purchase design (like Alchemy is, although it clearly does not conform in some respects to its designer's drawings), such as the famous Bruce Roberts line of largely home-built (or home-assembled) boats, or are "from scratch". These singular efforts are often hard to sell, because their virtues were commissioned by clients with individual notions of what makes a good sailing vessel, and what they themselves wanted to see aboard. These are sometimes not the same thing.

So after seeing some pretty dire ads full of too much varnish and not enough below-the-sole plumbing, I developed the idea of what might make a decent boat ad. I may be in somewhat of a different headspace than most people when I evaluate "boat goodness", but cosmetics and anchor-themed antimacassars do not usually rank high.

With that in mind, I present the advertisement for S/V Maclas, currently on the hard and for sale in La Paz, Mexico.

Arguably "the money shot", this proves the boat in question can float, in calm water, in the morning. A good start.

Keep in mind that I am not shopping for this vessel, nor is anyone I know wanting an aluminum 43-footer with several clearly custom elements that would baffle many production fibreglass boat shoppers. Nor do I feature it because it's got several ideas similar in execution to my own boat, and is clearly made for offshore and not the regency of the finger.  I would say, however, that the website put together by the sellers has most of the elements I would want to see in terms of specifications and "hard looks under the hood" that, were they in more boat ads, would, I think, sell more boats. I can't vouch for this boat as it is rather unlikely I will ever see it; its ad, however, we can examine as an example of what I deem decent selling.

Line drawings or blueprints are like X-rays: they show a boat's good bones.

When you are considering a custom one-off, there is no real provenance other than maybe reputation. If you buy a Bob Perry one-off, it's probably going to be good. In this case, the sellers linked to the original designer, a person I hadn't heard of, but whose boats I pretty well instantly liked.

I can't see gaskets on those lids, though.

Now, this is a pretty unadorned cockpit, but it does show the potential buyer the on deck stowage and the optional tiller steering. You'd be surprised how many boat ads omit the cockpit, and yet its layout is near the top of what gives a boat its inherent appeal, being the nerve center and all.

Who doesn't appreciate a bit of trim?

Because this is a custom, offshore design with unexpected features like aluminum construction and  a transom-hung rudder, it's got to be acknowledged that its "weirdness" factor will put a lot of people off immediately. Fine. If one is not put off, however, details like the presence of a trim tab on said rudder will be very interesting indeed. The sellers realize they have an unusual property here and Yachtworld or dealing with a typical brokers would have yielded too many false positives and window-shoppers. You either want to see the fine tailoring or you don't.

A ladder on the rudder. Yes, I like this.

Speaking of which, an exhaustive list of specifications is never a bad thing. You never know what element of a boat's construction or measurements will attract a potential customer. One thing I like to see is cleaniless behind hatches and panels, and clear labelling.

I can't tell if this won't explode if you switch on everything at once, but it's a lot tidier than some setups I've seen.

I have found that while a certain amount of disorder and even grime is inevitable on some boats, if that boat and that crew are going any distance, dirt and clutter will try to kill them eventually. You want a clean and well-lit access to all critical systems; the absence of this is, unfortunately, a hallmark of some modern production boats. That and unsecured cabin sole panels.

Enough to make an amateur diesel mechanic weep, this access is similar to that on Alchemy: Just insert arms and tools!

Similarly, one can learn much from peering into the customarily dark recesses of exhaust outlets:

There is a little bit of staining on the stringer beneath the lower doubled hose clamps, but this is otherwise near-spotless.

Me, I would have doubled hose clamps on every part of exhaust line, but these are clearly stainless clamps and the area is very clean and, I would guess, easy to reach.

It's important, particularly with integral tanks, to have easy access for service and cleanouts.

These sellers clearly understand that any potential buyers are going to want to poke around in the guts. I am showing my readers only a fraction of what they've posted to indicate that if you want to sell a particular boat, you have to take particular care to cover the bases.

The fuel manifold could stand some labelling, but the setup looks good.

I have learned over the years that ocean-spanning small(ish) yachts will only resort to kitty-raiding repairs when absolutely necessary. They must be as shore-independent as possible, as well as having sufficient spares and know-how aboard to fix or jury-rig gear without off-boat aid. That's why they tend to front-load the bulletproof or at least commercial-grade equipment. That's also why you have photos that show clean installations of critical gear.

Would I steer you wrong?

With any custom design, you're going to get "original owneritis", wherein the decisions of the person who commissioned the boat are reflected, for better or worse and in light of subsequent events, in the current boat's gear. Such would be the case with this foredeck hatch. I understand the logic of putting in a hidey-hole for gear, and I know that doggable hatch is both effective and (ruinously) expensive...I just don't get why there's such an implausibly wee hole there.

Perhaps it's where the kellet elf lives?

Lastly, some ads, frankly, fudge their numbers. Headroom is exaggerated, number of useful bunks is doubled, draft is only sketchily reported.  As with all used vehicles, there is a temptation to roll back the odometer. This hour meter is pretty well what I would expect to see, and the owners weren't afraid to take a shot of it. I think that speaks to their desire that any potential buyer knows their boat to the depth of detail that they themselves appear to.

Seems plausible to me for a 1998 distance cruiser.

You are very likely, dear reader, to want this boat, or any boat at all. You are likely either boated up fully, or maybe came here thinking of a different kind of alchemy. Nonetheless, if you ever have call to read a boat ad, and do not see one resembling the detail provided comparable to that of S/V Maclas, you should carefully consider why that is, and perhaps pass by. I wish you fair hunting.