So here we are, in Camaret-sur-mer. And very glad I am too, I have to say 
It’s been an insane month!
First we had the regatta in Turkey , 2nd to 9th of May. Fantastic time, there were 10 boats, all eager to kick arse in the racing, and I have to say we did OK, 5 races, and Hakuna Matata (under my chaotic leadership) came 6th, 6th, 6th, 3rd and 1st. Devilish numbers, I tell ya. So the most important race we thrashed everyone by about 20 minutes. Result or what!
Here are some photos from the Kabestan Turkey 2009 regatta:
All up until the regatta, and for a few days after that we were frantically packing and moving stuff to my parents and Tingara. We now have SO MUCH STUFF on the boat, but it’s all useful. I think
Then, finally, on the 13th of May we set sail from Dartmouth and 31 hours later arrived into Camaret-sur-mer. The sail was ok, we motored most of the way, with just the main and the mizzen. The reason being that there was a storm coming and we really needed to find shelter and not hang about. We just made it too, as we were on the final approach to the pontoon, the gusts were quite impressive. I’ve also come to seriously love the shipping lanes. Because ships move about in there in a predictable fashion. Sailing through the English channel to the West of the lanes was a nightmare, ships everywhere, 30 knots, totally random directions and a thick fog. I hate fog. AIS is the best thing I ever bought (it shows big ships and where they are heading)
At the moment it’s blowing force 8, gusting 9, outside, which is an improvement on the force 10 we had yesterday. We set off tomorrow afternoon, across the Bay of Biscay. That’s not a grammatical error as far as I am concerned, I’d spell it ‘BAY’, quite appropriate.
My “Welcome aboard” mat just flew off into the hills, whatever next.
We’ve been repairing stuff. Apart from the engine being a bit funny and needing two bleeds (air somewhere, I’ve been through every nut twice), a ripped out midship cleat (no flimsy arrangement, I assure you) and a burned out steaming light, we seem to be ok. Oh, and the ‘Welcome aboard’ mat. With these winds I am expecting it took someone’s head off, heavy PVC arrangement it was.
And the wind generator has been a success, some photos attached. I am getting 10 amps out of it with this crazy wind.
Hope all is well with you all, Tingara out.
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- Fun fun fun!
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- Wind generator in action
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- The new wind generator
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- This thing is actually faster than Southern rail
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- The Admiral in action
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- The fog is coming.
Tags: Camaret, Marina, Northern France, Plan of action, Regatta
After an eventful 4 days sail we have moored up in Dartmouth! It is a fantastically beautiful place, the marina setting is very picturesque.
The point of this was to:
- Finally start our adventure!
- Check out what’s going to break after a few days of hard sailing
So back to work for the last few days, back on the boat on Thursday, stick the wind genny on the mast, and probably enjoy Devon for a bit, it really does look pretty good, I can’t believe that after 20 years in the country I’ve never been this far West.
Here’s a clip Yulia put together, check out the crazy amount of food we loaded up. This should be enough for 5 months or so.
Victualling means provisioning. Everything on a boat has a proper name, you know, otherwise it’s chaos Stone me if I know even quarter of all the crazy words, but you can usually get by on a few dozen. Even the little rope you tie your dinghy with has a name, it’s called a ‘painter’. Now you know.
Anyway, we were victualling the other day, 860 pounds (as in GBP) worth of food, believe it or not. You can’t beat Asda for some serious victualling! This should last us 6 months or so. Over the last few months we have tried pretty much every tin that is sold in UK, thinking that we can pick out some good quality tasty ones. In the end, we had to rethink our strategy as they were all pretty much inedible more than once a month after a night out. Maybe we are just too fussy, I am sure it wouldn’t last. So we just bought the following generic stuff, which we can mix with anything:
- Tinned beans (Red kidney and Berlotti)
- Tinned corn
- Tinned tomatoes
- Tinned salmon
- Tinned tuna
- Pasta
- Rice
- Sauces (Tabasco, Chilli, Mayo)
- A few dozen tins of good quality ham. This is the only meat product we purchased.
- Juices in cartons
- Roasted artichokes in jars. I just can’t live without that stuff. Yum.
- Other bits and pieces that make life good when dinner time comes round, of 40% variety
All of the above in industrial quantities, obviously. It took 3 massive trolleys to load up the boat, but we still have plenty of space, Tingara is a 9 tonne boat! So if you fancy some beans, you know where to come!
Tags: Brighton, UK, Victualling
All of the arrangements at work have been completed, I am free to go. The Admiral has another few weeks to work, so we will have to leave the boat in France for a while, so that we can come back, do the last few days at work (my last day is the 16th of April), have a leaving do, go to Kabestan’s Turkey regatta, and then carry on with the voyage.
So the plan is:
- 8th of April - Final provisioning of the boat and moving stuff onto the boat
- 9th to the 13th of April - Sail from Brighton to Brest
- 14th to the 16th of April - Finish up at work
- 16th April to 1st of May - Move stuff into storage/parents
- 2nd of May to 9th of May - Kabestan’s Y.C. Turkish Regatta
- 14th of May - Fly to Brest and carry on
Phew, I think staying in full time employement is a little bit easier than all this! Never mind
Tags: Brest, Plan of action, Regatta, Victualling, Work
I’ve been relatively lucky the last few years, or perhaps ’successful’ is a better word, at persuading The Admiral that hot water on the boat is just ‘never gonna happen’. Several reasons:
- It takes a tremendous amount of energy to get it warm/hot.
- You end up wasting a lot of water before you get to the hot stuff, the pipes are invariable very long. And you can’t really insulate the hoses, it’s just a huge amount of effort for very little gain
- You need to alter a cooling circuit on an engine, which in many cases involves cutting pipes and can be a one-way affair. So a lot of stuff to undo if you get it wrong
- The mixer taps cost a fortune, have you seen the prices for marine ones??? 80 quid and up!
- Hot water is for wimps
- As soon as you put hot water in, you have to put a shower in, you have no choice
- Shower is definitely for wimps
- And so on
However, the more we thought about setting out on a long voyage, particularly the one that does not involve frequent marina stays, the more the idea appealed. Not to me, obviously, as I am clearly not a wimp, but there we are, I reluctantly agreed.
I figured that it’s probably a good idea to do the whole lot at once, i.e. bite the bullet and factor in the shower. In addition to this, the water tank is pretty small on Tingara, we only take on about 200 litres, so at the very least I figured we’ll increase the water capacity by 50 litres or so. Regardless whether we can heat it or not, it’s still potable.
So, a few stages then:
- Shower tray
- Calorifier
- Hoses
- Engine coolant re-route to flow via the calorifier
- Other bits and pieces, such as extractor fan and taps
Stage 1 - Shower tray
- This is probably the most complicated and time consuming part of the project. Basically, it consisted of:
- Figure out where the shower is going to go, i.e. which floor panel in the heads will be removed and tray fitted
- Make a male 3-D mould, out of cardboard. Make sure it fits the space under the floor panel
- Sheath the male mould using resin and basic strand sheathing. Remove the mould
- Keep sheathing and applying resin so as to make the sides smooth and waterproof
- Sand down, apply a few more coats of resin
- Fit a wooden plate that will hose the pump to pump the water out. Not a good idea to screw the pump into the tray itself
- Run the hose out of the tray
- Fit the tray
- Seal around the edges
- Make a GRP floor panel to replace the wooden panel
- Drill a few holes in it so the water can drain
- Fit the floor
Stage 2 - Calorifier
The most complex bit here is to decide what calorifier to buy. I went for the SureCal one. Seems to be well priced and so far works really well. I went for twin coils, just in case we fit a stove later on that just might have a slow pump to heat the water (1st coil is for the engine coolant). The original idea was to fit it into the space under the cockpit floor, but then I realised that I’ll never be able to get to the engine, so that was that. Tingara doesn’t really have masses of space for a large calorifier. So I decided to put it high up in the quarter berth. This has several advantages:
- It keeps the space dry, as it’s always damp in there, due to very limited air circulation
- It still allows someone to bunk there, with the calorifier above their legs. Just about, but it will do, just.
- It’s close to the engine
There is one MASSIVE disadvantage
- The calorifier ends up being higher than the engine’s header tank. But this can be solved, see below.
The obvious disadvantage is that you lose the space, but then you are giving that space to drinking water, so that’s cool.
Stage 3 - Hoses
- These are pretty easy to run
- Hoses from calorifier to taps
- Hoses from water tank to calorifier
- Hoses from/to calorifier heating circuit from/to the engine
All are pretty easy, ignoring the normal bulkhead drilling and swearing, apart from the engine cut-in points. And, remember that for the engine coolant you’ll need to run high pressure hose, as it might just rip your normal hose to shreds when that engine water pump gets going at high revs. Any automotive stuff is good and pretty cheap. The rest of the hoses, in the low pressure areas, are just the normal hot water hose.
Stage 4 - Engine coolant re-route
What I went for in the end is a permanent addition to the circuit. So I pick it up off the engine block, before it goes into the exhaust manifold, and return it to the same point, just before the exhaust manifold, after it passed through the calorifier. When I have time I will get some valves and upgrade the permanent set up to a routable one, so that I can shut off the calorifier part of the circuit.
Stage 5 - Other bits and pieces
Taps I went for were the Plastimo ones. For some reason nobody stocks them, so it will take a few weeks to arrive, so plan for this
I put in a powerful extractor fan (bilge blower) in the heads. This has several advantages, it gets the moist air out and it makes a loud continuous noise, so that if you have an urge ‘to go’ you can do so in relative non-shyness
Photos of the process, they are pretty self explanatory
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- The sheathing comes in a nice roll, I bought plenty as it's always good stuff to have around
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- Cuts quite easily into whatever shapes needed. I was expecting it to all fall apart while being cut, but it didn't.
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- Polyester resin solution. Really good stuff to work with, but go easy on the hardner
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- Once the cardboard mould is sheathed and dried, it should peel off!
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- Some of the cardboard didn't come off well. Remember duck tape!
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- Some of the cardboard didn't come off well. Remember duck tape!
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- Tray drying nicely. That 'shelf' was a real pain, but it's cleverer than cutting the bulkhead!
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- That's where the shower tray will go
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- 40L beast. 1 kW heating element. Seems to do the job in about 30 minutes
This is our first post! Hurray!