Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Cruising Helmsman

NEW South Wales Beneteau dealer Flagstaff Marine has been announced as the agency for Beneteau’s latest range of catamarans called Excess. Beneteau are claiming that the Excess range is a modern, aesthetic, efficient yacht that is both fast on the water while looking good. Simplicity is the essence of its design utilising a light interior with lots of window space on cedar and white blend woodwork. Its high aspect ratio rig provides the speed, combined with light construction using titanium and dyneema rope. As its signature, all Excess hulls are in a deep gray colour. On the spacious aft cabin the bimini roof can be slid out of the way providing a clear view of the sky or closed to provide protection. Currently there are two models released: a twelve…

GIANT BABY BENETEAU Beneteau’s Oceanis 30.1 may be the smallest yacht in its cruising range, but boasts trailability and large living space for her size while focussing on simplicity to remain stylish and beautiful. The design is based on a balance between reducing the boat’s size but increasing the deck and interior space by precious centimetres, which really make the difference in terms of living space and comfort. With an overall size of under 9 metres by 3m and a light displacement of less than four ton, the Oceanis can be trailed by road by a professional, without having to deal with an extra-wide load. If you prefer to go to your sailing grounds by canals and rivers, the lifting keel and rotating mast version opens limitless destinations. While perfect…

TOUTED by successive federal governments in Oz, since the mid-nineties, as environmentally friendly and non-damaging to engines, E10 is anything but that. E10, or standard 91 RON (research octane number) unleaded, blended with ten per cent ethanol, has drawbacks that make it particularly unsuitable in a marine environment. The main one is known as phase separation, which occurs because, like diesel, ethanol is a hygroscopic fuel or one that attracts moisture. In fact, petrol needs to have only 0.5% water content or five millilitres per litre in it before the ethanol will absorb this water and separate from the petrol. The ethanol/water mix sinks to the bottom of the fuel tank, right where the fuel line pick-up is located. The carburettor will then draw in this mix and obviously the…

MY bloodshot pin-propped eyes have just logged 4,867 images into my brain of snapshots of our time in Tanzania. While the visual onslaught has left me cross-eyed and numb, the catalogue of moments spun in succession makes me realise how different an experience our time has been from the average khaki-clad tourist. I knew our cruising experience would be different for us when we set sight on east Africa. Stripped of our palm-fringed beaches and string of pearly isles, I expected that our panorama would be replaced with a long stretch of bone-dry red dirt and parched baobab trees. That we would have to slip into safari-mode as we tootled off with a bunch of other gawping cheetah-spotters to trek through world-class game parks. Given the extremely high cost of…

SHOESTRING SAILOR – NO MORE LUGGING LAUNDRY Carting the washing ashore, finding a laundromat, getting the right change, waiting for the wash to finish and then having to use a dryer as well because wet laundry is heavy to carry back to the boat: this is all a chore no one looks forward to. It is expensive in both time and money and the dryer part is an environmentally unfriendly option. Many boats now carry a washing machine to avoid this drudgery. The machines cost very little but, without huge water tanks, you would need a desalinator. You would also need AC power provided by your choice of a big battery bank and inverter or a genset. This will all cost a lot of space and a minimum of between…

STRADDLING the equator, an equivalent distance of California to Maine, lies the 17,000 island nation of Indonesia. This is a magnificent archipelago of steaming jungles, exotic flora and fauna and teeming metropolises. This is the home of countless dialects and cultures. In his epic tome ‘The Malay Archipelago’, published in 1879, the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace states “like the stars in the sky you could not see all of these jewel-like islands in a lifetime.” Reading this was sheer literary narcotic. I wanted to know more about this 19th century literary and scientific icon and his travels throughout Indonesia. Wallace explored Indonesia by a variety of watercraft: a small sailing prahu, steamships and, the mainstay of inter-island commerce even today, the pinisi. A pinisi is a sailing vessel of…

Identifying a lot of old wires that seemed to run at random became a large part of the job. As I am no longer young and flexible, getting in and out of the engine space was more than simply an inconvenience. So I bought a tone set to track the wires. This comes in two parts: part one is a tone generator that is attached to one end of the wire you want to trace. The other is a receiver that whistles when placed near the wire. With this you can trace a wire in a pipe or in a bunch; the closer to the wire the louder the tone. A later check with the same sender, but this time set to continuity, confirms the wire run. There are several…

THE most common question we get asked at Eco Boats is from boat owners who are trying to find out if it would make sense to replace the petrol or diesel motor in their boat with an electric motor. The answer to the question as to whether an electric motor is right for your boat is different for each boat and each owner, how the boat is used and what the performance and range expectations are. You could write a book if you wanted to cover every aspect of the decision-making process that precedes converting your boat to electric. But, without going into too many specifics, it is easy to outline a few recurring themes that apply to everyone. We have outlined the most common decisive factors for you in…

IT IS safe to say Australians are a well-travelled nation of people. When you are cruising internationally, it’s not unusual to come across other Australian boats. The ear-pricking sound of that household adenoidal accent can drift across a dock before seeing the raggedy national flag flicking sporadically from a backstay. However, you know you are a very, very long way from home and in an exotic corner of the world when: there is no other Australian boat in sight; you need to fend off icebergs wearing sunglasses at 1am; you’re required to carry big game rifles, capsicum spray and flare guns to defend yourself from polar bear attack; Beluga whale bubbles reverberate through your hull; you hove-to in awe of a passing procession of blue whales; you go ashore and…

I SUPPOSE it was to be expected. We were to take the granddaughters sailing for the October long weekend so a few days earlier I went to the yacht and gave all the systems a thorough check out, this is the glass-half-empty part of me. I was surprised and delighted when everything worked well! So with great excitement and expectations we arrived on a glorious Saturday morning and, after loading all the goods, toys and food, I turned the start key. A disappointing silence; not even a dull click! What had happened during the past three days? No it was not a flat battery, so plans of going to our favourite beach were hastily changed. Pulling the boat apart with two bored people hanging around asking questions was not an…

HAVE you ever had a defect onboard and you discovered it was for the least likeliest reason that caused the problem? Even after some protracted fault finding and occasionally getting side-tracked? I thought I was pretty good at diagnostics as I spent 22 years in the Royal Australian Navy taking charge of things “going round ‘n round and up ‘n down”. There were not too many things that stumped me. I went through one of those processes of elimination on my Clansman and the result was so far out of left field that I thought it was worth sharing with you. To set the scene: I had a new Lombardini engine installed by a mob of marine mechanics: no names, no court martials, about seven years previously. I had disagreements…