Electrical Power

 

Aside from the electric autopilot, when in use, the key drains on our batteries are the Waeco chest fridge, which we keep lashed in place on the saloon floor, and the GPS chartplotter and radar. Our cabin lights are all either halogen or LED, so use little power. The mast-head tricolour, by contrast, seems to use loads and I would love to replace it with an LED tricolour at some point. The only reason I did not do so during the re-fit was because they cost the better part of £500.

To minimise power consumption, we only use radar when really necessary and on passage keep the GPS chartplotter and other instruments switched off. We switch on a handheld Garmin Etrex GPS receiver every few hours to get fixes which are noted in the log book and every few hours plotted onto the paper chart. The intervals between plotting our position on the chart vary depending on the scale of the chart. They also become much more frequent as our destination draws closer!  

The fridge is the one electrical ‘luxury’ which we keep going: so nice to be able to have fresh dairy products and cold drinks on passage. Most new boats which I have been on come fitted with an upright fridge like one might have at home. This is not a good idea as the cold air will fall out as soon as the door is opened – along, I suppose, with everything else. A chest fridge is a much better option.

We have always had two deep-cycle batteries. One domestic and one saved for cranking the engine. These were replaced with two AGM Rolls batteries of 120 amps each. AGMs are more expensive than conventional lead acid batteries, but they will hold their charge for longer, charge more quickly and can be discharged down to 20% without the risk of any damage to the battery. In conventional batteries the lead plates will buckle if discharged to around 40%, which greatly reduces the life of the battery. Furthermore, AGMs should last a good ten years or so and any decrease in performance will be gradual, whereas conventional lead acid batteries can fail immediately and without any warning.

The plan had been to use both 120 amp batteries as the domestics and to wire in a third AGM battery, of only about 50 amps, but capable of discharging very high currents, as the cranking battery. At the time of writing (11^th November 2011) we have just acquired a 90 amp deep cycle lead acid battery after trouble starting the engine due to flat batteries, so we will use that as the cranking battery and add the 50 amp to the house bank. The more battery capacity the better.

Gulliver G is equipped with a massive Aero6gen wind generator, capable of cranking out 670 amps per week if the average wind speed hitting the blades is 12 knots. The efficiency of the windgen is expected to greatly reduce when sailing downwind due to a reduction in the force of the wind reaching the blades because of the forward motion of the boat (as should be the case on the trade wind routes). The plan was always to add a couple of large solar panels in the Canary Islands, where I imagined things to be much cheaper (which they are). We got lucky and were able to buy two second-hand 75-watt panels from another yacht for €250, regulator included. On a sunny day these should put out somewhere in the region of 50-70 amps.

 

 

Mechanical Propulsion

 

Gulliver G’s engine is a 28 hp diesel Yanmar 3GM which was installed about three years before we bought the boat – so about eight or nine years ago. If the reports are to be believed, Yanmars are amongst the best yacht engines as they are very well engineered and designed specifically for yachts, rather than being marinised versions of engines made for land-based vehicles. That said, we know of a number of Nicholson 32s whose original Betas or Watermotas are still ticking along fine.

We had to motor a good part of the passage to Madeira and found that at around 1350 rpm the fuel consumption is under a litre an hour. As our tank only holds about 75 litres and we carry 40 litres in jerry cans, this is good news. Averaging 4 knots in calms at those revs, it gives a range of about 500 nautical miles. Our tank is miniscule compared to most other cruisers, many carrying 600 to 1,200 litres of fuel. Then again, Gulliver G is a lot smaller than most other boats going around the Atlantic.

Not that motoring is fun: the engine is a tight fit for the totally un-insulated engine compartment. When trying to sleep off-watch in the saloon with the engine on, it sounds like someone is using a jackhammer right next to your bed. But, at least the engine works (touch wood)…

A lot of money was spent on the engine before we set off. Firstly, the fuel tank had to come out, receive some welding and get pressure tested. It transpired that a faint aroma of diesel down below was just that: diesel. A pinprick in one of the welded seams at the base of the tank was to blame, and explained why our bilge water was always red. Getting the problem fixed was brilliant as Gulliver G now smells completely sweet below decks. It also cost around £700.

Once the boat had been re-launched, in May 2011, Gosport Boatyard carried out a full service. They advised me that the engine mounts were all rotted through and should be replaced. Needless to say, they could only be replaced with excruciatingly expensive Yanmar mounts.

I was concerned about the potential for seawater to get into the engine on passage (it being below the water line), so had a new exhaust pipe fitted with a larger goose-neck and the anti-syphon valve moved to a higher location whilst all the other work was going on. The bill came to around £2,500 (excluding the work to the fuel tank).

All seemed to go well with the engine until we were about 17 miles out of A Coruna early one morning. Having spent three and a half days crossing Biscay in rough and rolly conditions, we knew that a gale was imminent (all the classic signs: falling barometer, a beautiful evening with mackerel skies and mares tails, which make tall ships carry small sails). I was therefore keen to wake Kate with the sound of the engine and motor in as fast as possible.

I switched to both batteries and pushed the button. A ‘clank’ but nothing else. My immediate thought was that the engine was seized. I pictured the cylinders brimming with water.

I will go into more detail in my account of Leg 1 of the voyage, but suffice to say nothing I tried – changing batteries, lifting two of the three decompression levers on the cylinders, bleeding the engine – would work. The thing was seized solid as an old iron sluice.

When the local boatyard, Marina Seca, came to repair the engine a couple of weeks after we had returned to the UK, they advised that the problem was indeed water in the engine and that people generally found it easier to replace the engine than to repair it.

Once I had recovered the power of speech, I advised that we were taking some time out from work to sail across the Atlantic and that there was no way we could afford to replace the engine. The boatyard promised to do the best they could as cheaply as possible.

To my huge relief, Marina Seca managed to fix the engine. This cost a little under £1,000, which included a new heavy-duty bilge pump as the old one had given up the ghost.

Note added 6^th February 2012: after ongoing problems with the engine (mainly difficulty strating), it now appears to have died completely. We had to sail into St David’s Bay, Grenada, where a test revealed low compression in all cylinders as well as more sea water in places it shouldn’t be! See ‘Repowering Gulliver G’.

 

 

Preparing Ourselves:

 

This may be described fairly briefly, because preparing ourselves for the voyage really only involved filling in some gaps in formal training.

It has always seemed to me that people who do not own their own boats tend to hold far more sailing qualifications than those who do. Why is this? Well, imagine you do not need a license to drive a car. Upon obtaining a car the more conscientious may undertake some basic instruction but it probably wouldn’t take most people long to grasp the basics and so long as one were generally able to drive oneself around without mishap, it is hard to see why many people would choose to pursue a formal qualification unless there were some other compelling reason, such as insurance.

Those who do not have their own cars, I would surmise, may be more likely to proceed with a full suite of lessons, right through to getting a license, as the lessons themselves provide an opportunity to drive and the license demonstrates, in the absence of one’s own car, that one is able to drive. Useful for hiring a car or borrowing some else’s.

To apply the same logic to boats: in the UK no formal qualifications at all are required to skipper a small sailing boat. Most boatowners are, however, likely to have undertaken a basic qualification, such as RYA Dayskipper, for their own peace of mind and that of their insurers. Royal Yachting Association qualifications are recognised as industry-standard throughout the UK and much of the world. Dayskipper will teach the essentials, like rules of the road, what the various types of buoy and their lights mean, how to read a chart and figure out one’s position on it, what direction to steer the boat in to get to where one wants to go, and tidal heights and streams. For a great many boat owners there is simply no imperative to progress the formal qualifications beyond a certain basic point.

The opposite is true for non-boatowners. Working their way up through the RYA syllabus (which goes something like Dinghies, Competent Crew, Dayskipper, Coastal Skipper, Yachtmaster Offshore, Yachtmaster Ocean) is often the best opportunity that they will have in the initial years to go sailing, probably in sailing school boats. Once they have the higher qualifications, this simplifies yacht charter and is also likely to open up opportunities to crew for those who do have their own boats (and who, despite their own lack of formal qualifications, are likely to be interested in the level attained by new crew).

And so it was that having obtained the Dayskipper qualification shortly after we bought Gulliver G and despite best intentions to the contrary, I had never completed any more of the RYA syllabus and Kate had not done any of it.

Not wishing to take risks through gaps in knowledge, and thinking that we would require further qualifications in order to get insurance for the voyage, we decided to pursue further qualifications over Winter 2010/11. I did Yachtmaster Coastal/Offshore theory by way of evening classes in London, immediately followed by the Yachtmaster Offshore practical during a frigid week of thick snow and frozen ropes in November.

Although Kate had not done Dayskipper, I felt that Yachtmaster Offshore theory was well within her grasp and she did that over three weekends at the Cruising Association in London, whilst I worked on the boat. As expected, Kate aced the Yachtmaster Offshore.

The final step was for us both to do the Yachtmaster Ocean theory course, again at the Cruising Association in London. As with the other courses, a great aspect of these classes was the other people on the course. Unlike the preceding courses, though, we found that almost everyone on the Yachtmaster Ocean had their own boats with plans of long-distance cruising. The bulk of the course is taken with celestial navigation, which involves lots of number-crunching, leafing through tables of figures in minute font and some trigonometry. At times I found it hard to see the wood for the trees, but Kate is much more a numbers-person than I and was soon firmly established as teacher’s pet, regularly assisting in the instruction of the rest of the class.

For me, the most nerve-wracking of the courses was the Yachtmaster Offshore practical, where one’s boat-handling skills really come under the microscope.

Because Gulliver G was laid-up ashore when I wanted to get the ticket, November 2010, I choose to do the course with the sailing school with whom I had done the theory, First Class Sailing. For the four of us taking the course, it involved three days of preparation with a sailing instructor and two days of examination with a separate examiner. The boat was a 37 foot Jenneau, very different to Gulliver G being a light-weight fin keeler with a wheel. All went well for my examination until it came to picking up a mooring buoy under sail at night in an icy force five. Here the difference in performance between the Jenneau and a heavy long-keeler, low freeboard, vessel like Gulliver G came to the fore as I found that in the Jenneau I kept releasing the sails too early. As soon as they were de-powered the wind would take the bows and we would rapidly swing away from the buoy which had been so tantalisingly close. Gulliver G is the opposite: heading into the wind to pick up a buoy, one has to de-power relatively early, otherwise momentum will carry the boat straight past the buoy.

The Yachtmaster Offshore practical was a week which I will always hold dear for the company of the three others on the course and the very colourful characters of our instructor and examiner. A favourite line from the latter, who had won his handicap in that year’s Round The Island Race in his Twister 28 (which he had sailed around Cape Horn a few years earlier) with his three sons as crew: “My sons think they’re better sailors than me. They’re not.”.

Despite coming in for some due criticism on picking up a buoy under sail, I got my ticket. But, the Jenneau handles so very differently to a Nicholson 32 that were I to do it again I would instead get a day’s preparation from someone who knows boats like mine and then get an examiner to come aboard my own boat for the exam. Doing the exam on your own boat would carry two key advantages: (i) more opportunities to impress the examiner by showing off your boat handling skills and (ii) quite possibly learning one or two tips and tricks which will help you get more out of your boat.

 

 

Money:

 

The Refit

 

We had paid for the work on the boat as we went along. During Gulliver G’s refit the respectable salary I made as in-house counsel was re-distributed amongst Gosport’s chandleries quicker than it came into my account. Realising the scale of our spending, the chandlers very kindly discounted our bills. Even so, some careful juggling of credit card and overdraft facility was required on a few occasions to avoid getting completely maxed-out.

One wet Saturday morning on her way into London for her Yachtmaster Offshore exam, Kate wrote off her BMW Z3. Fortunately Kate was unharmed and no-one else was involved. More importantly she still made it to the exam, her performance in which was impressively unaffected by the morning’s diversions. Every cloud has a silver lining; in this case it was the insurance pay-out, which covered the rigging work.

I didn’t keep track of how much the refit cost, preferring not to think about it, but the damage was somewhere in the region of £15 - £20,000. Of course, it would have been quite easy to spend much more – more batteries, more gadgets, a watermaker, all that jazz, but fortunately for my bank account I simply did not have time to buy any more stuff!

As soon as Gulliver G left Gosport in the early morning mist and light of 3^rd June 2011, bound for A Coruna via Cherbourg, spending declined drastically. Somehow we managed to clear all debts (except for the mortgage, of course!) before setting off on our voyage.

 

The Voyage

 

Before we set off some friends asked about budget – one knew of a couple who had budgeted £1,000 per month for a two year trip and spent the whole lot in the first year. Another friend mentioned a couple who had spent something like £1,500 per month.

We hope to keep spending far lower than that. Indeed, unless the engine needs a complete overhaul or something goes seriously awry with the rig I am not sure how it would even be possible to spend that much. We have found that even the smartest looking boats are very cost conscious and all serious cruisers spend the vast majority of their nights (when not on passage) at anchor, almost always at no charge. Note added 6^th Februaury 2012: the engine needs rather more than a complete overhaul! It needs replacing. These things are sent to try us…

So, the main costs should be food and drink, punctuated by the odd fuel or laundry bill, the occasional marina stay, chandlery visit and, at some point no doubt a haul-out for scrubbing off and anti-fouling. On passage we will not be able to spend anything. Even if a rather generous £10 per day is allowed for food and drink (£5 per day is far more likely), monthly spending should not be more than £500.

For a few years we had taken advantage of the low interest rate to overpay our mortgage. Whilst away we are paying the mortgage using the overpayment fund, which should be good for the better part of 20 months, freeing up the income which we make through letting the house to cover costs.

The house required some work to get it up to scratch for letting. Fortunately this was not expensive as it mainly consisted of packing away whatever nick-nacks, curios and clothes we could not bear to chuck, building a summerhouse to put most of it in (the other half, including a few hundred weight of books, going into our ever faithful and increasingly less studious study). From having spent all of our ‘spare’ time on preparing Gulliver G, as soon as we returned from A Coruna focus turned to the house and we certainly needed the full three months before going back out to the boat to get it all done. I dread to think how much of 2011 I spent brandishing either a paint brush or a roller.

By the time we finished clearing and cleaning and painting and panting the house looked far nicer than it ever had in all our years of living there!

 

 

In Conclusion:

 

By the time all preparations were complete we were so exhausted that it is hardly surprising that we spent most of our first week back on Gulliver G doing pretty much nothing.

I am slightly stunned when I think back to the frenetic activity which, over the course of a year, went into preparing for this adventure, whilst also balancing our demanding jobs and ensuring that we had some time free for friends and family. It was an absolutely non-stop onslaught of action and an interesting experience in itself. Everything just kind of happened.

The value of immovable deadlines in the project of preparing for an Atlantic Circuit in Gulliver G showed it’s worth.

Conversely, now that the adventure has begun we have no particular deadlines which may explain why at the time of writing (11^th November 2011) we have been at anchor in Puerto de Naos, Isla de Lanzarote, Isla Canarias, for 9 days doing very little except writing, perhaps a little excessively (for which I hope the reader will forgive me), about the journey before the voyage.