Note we do not have any financial arrangements or other interests in any the products mentioned here!
For just about every question, there are almost as many different opinions as there are sailors. And, most of these different opinions are in fact valid for the specific individual with their particular boat and their unique mission. That said, below are our opinions based on our experiences to date. We reserve the right to change them, or even admit they are wrong, at any later date :)
8. What sort of anchor do you use?
8a. What sort of snubber setup do you use?
13. How do you manage without a refrigerator/freezer, especially in the tropics?
16. How much fuel do you carry and use?
19. How do you keep warm in very cold places?
21. Do you use your windvane much?
23. What lessons can be learned from new cruisers starting out down the west coast?
24. What sailing programs do you really use on your computer?
26. How much fuel, water and electricity do you use?
27. What dinghy do you use/recommend?
29. What sort of batteries & battery bank do you have?
35. What do you do about lightning?
36. What do you use for electricity generation?
What we left off Hawk - 2000, Blue Water Sailing
Simple boat Systems - 2000, SAIL
First, we like BIG anchors. This photo shows why. Big anchors are your best insurance and let you sleep soundly.
On Hawk, we carry one main anchor on the bow, which for most of our time aboard has been a 110lb Bruce. On Silk, we carried a 44lb Bruce. We have had flawless performance with both these anchors, despite the fact that the Bruce always seems to do poorly in the anchor tests (which I think indicates a serious weakness in the anchor testing methodologies). On Hawk, we carry three other anchors stowed below: a 55lb Delta, a 40lb Danforth (actually a West Marine Hi-Tensile version of the Danforth) and an FX-55 Fortress. 90% of the time we anchor with only the Bruce. We have occasionally used the Danforth as a kedge, to hold us off a nasty dock, or to hold the bow into the swell in a rolly anchorage. The other two anchors we have only used once in Hurricane Lenny. We feel strongly that cruisers are much better off carrying one slightly larger anchor on the bow rather than two 'normal-sized' ones. This is a straight forward win-win as the one slightly larger anchor will give you better everyday holding and sailing performance is also improved by reducing weight on the bow. On the very rare occasions when we have needed a second anchor, there has always been plenty of time to get it out of the lazarette.
In November 2007, we sent our Bruce off to be regalvanized, as we have about every 5 years. It came back with serious cracks around the shank right where it joins the blade. I can only guess that they heated it too fast or cooled it to fast, as very little else could break a 110lb genuine Bruce. We had a welder look at it and he pronounced it unfixable. So, since the Bruce is no longer made, we are evaluating the available anchor options and have spent the last few months cruising with a copy of one of the 'roll-bar' anchors. We have carried a 55lb Delta for 9 years as a 'spare' main anchor, but when it came to actually needing it I realized that while I would be perfectly fine using it as a main anchor in most places around the world, I am not comfortable with it in Chile and S. Georgia. My lesson learned is that if I am going to the effort to carry a 'spare' main anchor it needs to actually be as big and capable as the main anchor. So, I will probably be replacing it also, hopefully with something that stows more compactly than the roll-bar anchors.
(Feb 9th 2008) We now have 3 months experience cruising Chile with a copy of one of the 'next generation Roll Bar' anchors. Our conclusion is that it is excellent in sand & mud bottoms where it can bury but that it is not as good as the Bruce in rock and coral bottoms (full report here).
We are using 3/8" G4 (high test) chain. My understanding is that the heat involved in the regalvanazing process destroys the high test heat treatment, so after regalvanizing our chain twice (we need to do it about every 5 years), it is now probably just regular strength chain. We carry two 150' lengths of this chain. We do this for three reasons: (1) It normally keeps the extra weight of 150' of chain out of the bow, as we find 150' of chain to be enough almost everywhere except the Pacific (it has 200' of 3/4" line on it). (2) In hurricane conditions it gives me two good pieces of chain to set two good anchors. (3) It gives me a 'spare' piece of chain in case I have to dump the primary rode sometime. Very occasionally we add the extra 150' to the main rode, for 300' of chain, in places with extra deep coral anchorages (e.g. French Polynesia) or where we need to med-moor or stern tie (the Med or Chile). Otherwise the extra 150' is stored lashed in the bilge . When we join the two sections of chain, we use a 'connecting link', backed up with a Spectra cord lashing (which is stronger than the chain). This connection runs smoothly through the windlass.
As anchorages have gotten more crowded, 3:1 scope has become the standard and accepted anchoring scope among the cruising fleet. Main anchors need to be sized on the assumption they will be used with 3:1 scope, which typically means a bit bigger than the manufacturer's recommendations.
Regarding anchoring etiquette - the first fundamental principle is that those who anchor first can ask those who anchor later to move if they have anchored too close for safety. However, it has been proven in the tight Caribbean and Mediterranean harbors that anchored boats can be packed in amazingly closely and they will swing together with no contact (assuming they are all using all/mostly chain rode and 3:1 scope) . So, the normal rule among the fleet is 'no harm, no foul' - that is you only ask someone to move if they swing so close you can touch them. If you do really believe someone has anchored too close, ask them pleasantly and politely to move. Don't yell - if you have to raise your voice they are probably in fact not too close. If someone asks you to move, do so immediately with a smile and a wave, even if you think they are wrong and an idiot. We have been asked to move three times, twice when (IMHO) we well clear of the other boat and could not possibly touch them, and the third time when the other boat had quite excessive scope out (they had 10:1 out) but in all cases we moved with a wave and a smile. In these situations, independent of the fundamental principle 'first in', I always figure we are better off moving away from someone who does not share our understanding of anchoring dynamics/norms.
The second fundamental principle is that cruisers help each other. One aspect of this is if you see another boat dragging, you should dinghy over and make sure the crew is aware of it and offer to help them. If there is no one on board the general rule is to let it drag and hope the crew will arrive if and only if it will not get into any trouble in the meantime. However, if it is getting into trouble - dragging down on other vessels, toward shore, or out to sea - there is an obligation to stabilize the situation. Just watching the boat drag into other boats or ashore is simply not acceptable. It's best to stabilize the boat in the simplest, quickest, and least invasive fashion - setting your spare anchor by dinghy upwind of the boat and tying the boat to that is usually the best approach. Other options are to tie them alongside or behind your boat, or or take their spare anchor and set it by dinghy if it is ready to go on their bow, or go aboard and let out more rode on their main anchor. Our experience is that individual boats are very idiosyncratic and that trying to start the other boat's motor and/or pulling up and resetting their main anchor should be a last resort. Note: It is actually an international maritime law that ships masters are required to provide assistance to other ships in trouble.
Getting slightly off topic, I was shocked when a singlehander called a VHF Mayday about 20 miles from La Paz (Baja) and not one of the 400-odd cruising boats around La Paz offer assistance (we were hauled-out on the hard). If I ever have to issue a Mayday I would certainly hope for a different response than that. The only acceptable response was for every boat afloat to offer assistance and for the net controller to then pick the three closest, fastest and biggest boats to go assist. Top of Page
We normally use a chain hook with 30' of 10mm (3/8") nylon climbing line. We normally put out enough snubber line so the chain hook is just in the water which leaves lots of snubber line on deck to be eased out if the anchorage gets bouncy. We make sure there is a big loop of chain (say 4') hanging from the hook. The hook will then never fall off the chain. We actually like that the hooks come off easily, in case we need to move quickly or we want to put out more chain. We start taking up chain and when the chain goes tight and the weight is off the snubber, we jiggle the snubber line and the hook will come off. This is easier and faster than the 'more secure' alternative of tying the snubber directly to the chain with a rolling hitch.
We have tried several methods of attaching the chain hook to the line. Currently we have a spectra loop (10mm single braid) through the chain hook eye, and the line is tied to that with a sheet bend. The chain hooks we get have a sharp ridge (where they split the sand casting I would guess) around the eye. That will chafe/cut the nylon line if you tie it directly (been there, done that, lost a nice stainless chain hook as a result). The spectra does not chafe (or at least it will take decades to chafe through). I had a bit of Spectra spare from an old checkstay when I was making up the chain hook so it cost me nothing, but even buying it new, two feet of the stuff would probably cost $6. With a stainless chain hook, you could grind/file/sand the eye smooth and then tie the snubber line directly to the hook. With a galvanized hook you would have to get it regalvanized after the grinding. In either case the Spectra loop seems an easier answer.
We do carry two chain hooks, both in case we lose one and because you can use two snubbers with long lines to the sheet winches to pull up the chain and anchor if the windlass breaks.
We also carry an ABI snubber plate for a 'storm' snubber but have only used it a few times, once in Hurricane Lenny. During the hurricane, we had both snubbers deployed and our normal snubber chafed through. Having the backup snubber already in place prevented us from falling back on the chain and damaging the windlass or (since we were tied stern-to the magroves) hitting bottom with our rudder.
A long piece of fire hose over the snubber provides chafe protection. This works fine except in really extreme conditions, when we put on a backup snubber (or the ABI). Top of Page
No. There are enormous administrative hassles associated with clearing guns into and out of foreign countries. In many countries Customs will take the guns away and only return them when you leave, which pretty much eliminates any conceivable benefit to carrying them. The one exception is in polar bear country where a long gun (shotgun or rifle) is widely recommended as standard equipment when exploring ashore in remote places. However, you still have to deal with the administrative hassles in the countries you stop at on the way to and from polar bear country. Top of Page
When considering whether or not to install refrigeration, carefully consider the following two points:
(1) Installing a refrigerator/freezer completely changes a boat's power generation requirements. Without one you can easily get by with a single solar panel, but with one you need to vastly upgrade your whole power generating and storage system and probably run a gen-set or motor several hours/day. We would rather take some minor inconveniences and keep our systems simple rather than have to maintain a vastly bigger power plant.
(2) The western 'refrigerated supply chain' for food is mostly unnecessary. Fresh eggs will keep for months perfectly well unrefrigerated, and most fruits and vegetables will keep for ten days or more. There are numerous tricks to maximize the length of time food will keep, which Beth covers in detail in her Voyager's Handbook. We had fresh food up to the last day of our 59 day passage from Cape Horn to Fremantle. Beth cans (with glass jars in a pressure cooker) meat, which preserves the contents indefinitely. She also cans homemade soups, chili, stews, etc., without extra salt and other preservatives and artificial colors/flavors, which is much tastier & healthier than store bought stuff. Top of Page
It is easy to build big tanks into a metal boat, so on Hawk we carry 200 gallons in integral fuel tanks. On Silk we carried 75 gallons. Both of these tankages are much bigger than absolutely necessary. As a long-term average we use about .75 gal/day. On passage we budget 1 gal/day for the expected length of the trip plus 10gal as a reserve to maneuver around the destination harbor, and the remaining fuel is a luxury which we can 'spend' 1/3 during the first half of the passage to find wind and avoid storms, 1/3 during the second half, and 1/3 for emergency usage. Our fuel usage is integrally tied to our electrical system/no refrigeration strategy - many boats run the engine an hour or two per day in the tropics to keep the fridge cool and the batteries topped up. Top of Page
There are three areas to pay attention to. First is clothing. We layer polypro underwear, under 'normal wear' mid-layers, under foul weather gear. Beth wears normal foul weather gear, but Evans often wears a Musto breathable dry-suit - in case he has to take stern lines ashore in the dinghy. Good hats, gloves and boots are essential. We have found all sorts of well designed hats. Evans likes a Vermont wool & sheepskin hunting hat and Beth likes skiing fleece caps. We have not yet found a perfect solution for waterproof and warm gloves. The Goretex models we have tried all leak. The best we have found are rubber gloves used by offshore fisherman (they look like extra big and heavy duty kitchen washing-up gloves) which have a thin fleece lining. Cold weather boots need thicker soles than the normal yachting boot. Evans has a pair of offshore fishing boots he bought in the Faeroe Islands that are perfect for him. Beth found most marine/fishing boots to be too small/tight in the calves, and has only recently found the perfect boot for her. The Muck Boot sells commercial grade work boots at prices much less than sailing boots. She has the 'Chore boot - mid-height', but the "muck master" would be great for those wanting a taller boot.
Second is a good cabin heater. We use a Refleks, which is a Danish drip diesel heater designed for the North Sea fishing boats. It's the heater of choice for all the charter boats in Chile and is extremely reliable and clean burning. We also have a 'bus heater' that runs a radiator off the engine cooling water. It was inexpensive, has proven completely reliable and produces free dry heat when we are motoring, so the boat is always warm and dry when we drop anchor if we have motored into the harbor.
Finally, insulation for the boat is useful both to hold the heat and to prevent condensation. Hawk has 3" of fire resistant polyurethane foam sprayed in everywhere above the cabin sole. The cabin sole has 1" of foam in it and in extremely cold climates we put inexpensive carpet over it. All the windows, ports and hatches have inside double panes (of 6mm acrylic sheet) which completely stops condensation. Top of Page
There is quite a bit of discussion about this in the various articles on Boats & Systems & outfitting. But the short answer is no, we have never felt the need on either boat for a watermaker. We believe it is critical for voyagers to adapt their lifestyle to their new seaborne environment, and part of that is learning to conserve freshwater. It is much simpler and more sensible to work with your new environment, and learn from and adapt to it, than to try to use fossil fuels and complex systems to bring your shore lifestyle to sea. It is just barely possible to take an ashore lifestyle out to sea, and we know a few people who have, but you end up with a boat that over the long-term requires too much energy generation and is time consuming to maintain.
Our primary source of fresh water is rain catching. We originally tried various tarp configurations to catch rain but quickly discovered that when it is raining hard it is often blowing hard and most of the water is blown off the tarps. At anchor we clean the decks with a salt water spray, let the rain rinse the salt off, open the deck water fills, put a wet towel just aft of them to create a dam, and the fresh water just pours in. Using the decks gives us much greater surface area than any tarp and we have frequently caught 50gals in an hour. If we are sailing with too much heel to use the deck, we catch water off the mainsail. If we are not close hauled and don't need a perfect sail shape we can either drop the halyard a little (and pull down on the cunningham) or top up the aft end of the boom a little, both of which create a gutter along the bottom of the sail from which the water will pour into a big bucket.
We can see the possible value of a watermaker for extended cruising in very dry areas (Baja, the Bahamas, the Red Sea) although even in those places water is available and at such a low price that a watermaker cannot be economically justified. One can only be justified by the extra convenience, and this can be difficult after you factor in the extra maintenance and gen-set running. We are puzzled by the cruisers who run watermakers in other places (most of the world) where free, clean rainwater is easy to catch. In Costa Rica we could catch 200 gals/week of rain water with almost no effort yet there were boats running watermakers anchored right beside us. Top of Page
On Silk we used our vane about 90% of the time. On Hawk it has been much less, somewhere in the 33%-50% range. We believe that a vane is one of the most important pieces of gear on a cruising boat under about 45'. It will steer offshore 24x7 reliably, quietly, using no energy and teach you to sail better by forcing you to balance your sails. There is nothing else you can buy that will do all that. For coastal sailing they are much less satisfactory as the wind direction is often less stable and the boat will be in danger of hitting something if it wanders off course.
On boats bigger than about 45' and especially high performance ones, a windvane will be less satisfactory - it will be less reliable because of the higher loads and steer less well. However, it is still essential that these boats have complete self-steering backup - either an entire spare autopilot and spare battery charging system (powerful enough to keep up with the autopilot), or a windvane. Backup to our autopilot is the primary role the vane has played on Hawk, along with saving fuel (less battery charging) on our longer passages. Top of Page
We have noticed three systematic deficiencies among the fleet of new cruisers starting out. One is a lack of preparation/equipment for long dead downwind runs in big swells/waves. Dead downwind in 20-30kts is very common along the main cruising routes, and you need a good boom preventer system and an easy to set/handle pole for the jib to sail well in these conditions. The second is inadequate self steering. The autopilots that people had were undersized for the quite vigorous steering required in big waves and swell. 9 out of 10 boats in one harbor had broken all their self steering and were back to hand steering, which is very tiresome on a double-handed boat. New cruisers outfitting their boats should make absolutely sure they have bulletproof systems in these two areas before moving on to spend money in other less critical areas. The third was a noticeable lack of fundamental navigation skills. Everyone was ok while their chart plotters were working and they could just 'point and shoot' but one boat's plotter broke and the crew had little idea how to navigate even though they still had a handheld GPS and a working depth sounder. Virtually none of the cruisers in one harbor knew how to convert true courses plotted on a chart to a magnetic steering course.
When we arrived in French Polynesia and met new cruisers who had just completed their first long (~3000 mile) passage, we noticed three additional common deficiencies. The first was not having a watertight plug for the foredeck chain pipe. On passage, reaching in ocean-sized waves & swell in over 20 kts, most boats will have a steady flow of solid water splashes over the foredeck. This will cause A LOT of water to go down an open foredeck chain pipe into the anchor locker/bilge. If your anchor locker drains directly into the ocean (and is completely sealed from the bilge) this is not too much of a problem (although we don't really like this solution for other reasons). But if your anchor locker drains back to the bilge at all, you will do a lot of pumping. On Silk we had a teak plug made up which exactly fit the shape of the chain hole. The chain attached to an eye on the underside of the plug which kept it firmly in place. On Hawk we have a neoprene plug (actually half a Nerf football) which we squeeze into the chain hole and we then wrap the outside of the windleass with plastic cling film.
The second was getting water into the engine, from either of two sources - a stuck anti-siphon valve or backfilling from the exhaust. Cruising boats tend to be very heavily loaded on long passages, thus low in the water, sailing downwind with big following waves that slam against the transom which can force water in through the exhaust. All the commercially available anti-siphon valves I am aware of are poorly designed and will stick closed after a short while of salt water drying in them. It is much better to remove the valve and put in a tall breather tube (see Nigel Calder's Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual for a discussion and drawing of this solution). The exhaust pipe needs either a shut-off valve that is placed conveniently enough that it is actually used, or a pretty tall loop (but you need to be careful not to put too much back pressure into the exhaust system). It's nice to have a convenient way to drain the water muffler, so in violent conditions water will not get thrown from the muffler back into the engine, but this is uncommon and not as necessary as replacing the anti-siphon valve with a breather tube and adding an exhaust shut-off.
Third, when running in downwind squalls/crush zones (+40kts), many people rolled up their jibs and ran with double- or triple-reefed mains. This usually causes an unbalanced sail plan (the main causes the boat to round up), which the autopilot or windvane has difficult controlling. After being forced to hand steer for a while, their crews are forced to heave-to or deploy a drag device in conditions where they could easily be making good miles. In these conditions, it is better to drop the main/trysail entirely and run with just a foresail, either a staysail or rolled up jib. This sail combination is much easier on the self-steering equipment.
In a recent study by a well-known marine insurance company of 150 sinking claims, several interesting statistics were brought to light. Probably the most interesting is the fact that for every boat that sinks while underway, four boats sink at the dock in their slips. There are two basic reasons for this. First, most recreational vessels spend considerably more time at the dock unattended than they do underway, and secondly when underway someone is onboard. This affords the possibility that the leak could be discovered and stopped before the vessel is lost. 50% of the sinkings were due to failures of below waterline through-hulls/hoses. Top of Page
1. XGate This is the compression/connection program we use for our Iridium phone. This speeds up our satellite phone by about a factor of 10. UUPlus offers a very similar service. We had to get a ‘USB to serial port’ adaptor as the Iridium data cable has a serial connector and the new laptop did not have a serial port.
2. Viewfax: This is a freeware GRIB viewer. We used to use MaxSea to view GRIB files but it is too slow loading and clumsy (and had a printer port dongle - the new laptop does not have a printer port).
3. WXtides32: This is a freeware world tides & current program, just as good or better than any of the commercial tides programs we have seen.
4. Weather fax 2000 and Mscan Meteo Fax: These are two very similar weather fax receiver/viewers. We mostly use GRIBs to get weather information, but occasionally in particularly tricky situations we will download a weather fax. It works by connecting any SSB receiver to your computer microphone jack with a simple audio cable. You have to run the computer off its own internal battery when receiving a fax, as almost all of the cigarette lighter adaptor and 110vt inverters produce a ton of RF noise which blanks out the fax signal.
5. Nebula: This is a windows interface for our Trimble Sat C. Sat C is viewed as an obsolete system but we like it because the equipment is industrial strength and very reliable, it produces free text weather twice a day all around the world, and offers a telex/e-mail service we use to give our families quick updates on our location.
6. StarPilot: This is a celestial and sailing calculator. Many people would not have much use for this but I like to identify the stars and planets, and find it useful for planning passages with moonlight and arrival/departure times for twilight. Top of Page
7. Skype: This is THE way that cruisers make phone calls. It's an internet phone service, about $.02/minute for international computer to landline calls. You find an internet cafe or wifi hotspot, use your laptop or their computers with a headset/mic and make your calls. Very clear sound quality and esentially no dropped calls.
(Feb 9th 2008) I just had a Microsoft windows crash and had to reinstall windows and all my applications. I tried to keep the program clutter down to a minimum, and installed: MS office, Skype, Viewfax, XGate, Nebula, WXtides32, Encarta & Britannica, and Turbotax. I did not install either of the weather fax programs as I have not gotten a fax in a while and also did not install StarPilot as I have not played with it in a while either. We still have MaxSea installed on an old laptop, but I cannot move it to my newer laptop because it has a printer port dongle and the new laptop does not have a printer port (only USB ports and I don't want a USB to serial adapter hanging from the machine all the time).
Our long term average for fuel (diesel) is just under .75 gal/day. When we are not trying to conserve fresh water we use about 5 gals/day, and when we are we use about 2 gals/day [or - to even the comparison with shore house usage - 6 & 3 gals/day if we used a fresh-water vacuum-flush head rather than the typical saltwater head]. At anchor we use about 50 amp-hrs/day of electricity and on passage about 100 amp-hrs/day. Our water consumption is pretty typical among cruisers (at least those without watermakers), our electrical consumption is very low relative to other cruising boats (200-300 amp-hrs/day would be more typical) and our fuel consumption is also low because we don't have to run the engine (or generator) specifically to generate electricity. We live a comfortable life and the stunning comparison for me is how much less we use than if we lived in a house ashore. The typical two car family uses 3.3 gals/day of fuel, [or - to even the comparison with boat usage - 4.5 gals/day to include the fuel used at the electrical generation plant], 150 gals/day of water, and 15 kwatt-hrs/day (1250 amp-hrs/day) - so 6 times our fuel consumption, 12 times the electricity and 25 times the water. Top of Page
On Hawk we have always used high-pressure air floor inflatable dinghies (a Quick Silver, a Zodiac and an Avon, with the Avon being by far the best) - for two reasons: (1) we don't like having the dinghy on deck during passage and the air floors roll-up relatively compactly and are easy to stow below and (2) in the high latitudes you can't tow the dinghy (because of high winds) but when you want to put out a stern line to shore you want to be able to get the dinghy over the side quickly, and we can just pick up the air floor and chuck it over. We have a 4hp outboard and all the air floors have planed extremely well with one person, but not with two. I believe with 9hp they would plane with two just fine.
We did have a solid fiberglass rowing dinghy on Silk, and made custom deck chocks for it, which held it very securely and we never had any real concern about it in heavy weather. It was both beautiful and a pleasure to row, and we intended to get one for before we realized it would block the view through our hard dodger. So, we switched to the high-pressure air floors. However, I think if one went to the same effort to make up some solid custom deck chocks for a RIB, it would be fine on deck while on passage.
We have friends who have been very happy with the aluminum and fiberglass floor RIBs, but not many people like the plywood floor boats. The RIBs tend to need dinghy wheels for places with tides but no dinghy docks. Our air floor is light enough we can just pick it up and carry it up the shore. If tied to the boat with a painter, our air floor inflatable will take off and fly in about 35kts and fiberglass RIBs will do the same in about 50kts, so in either case you need to really secure them well in windy places like Chile.
The 'perfect' dinghy is just not made, and, like any boat, they all entail some compromises, but my feeling is that the RIBs are best for those who want performance and carrying capacity and the air floor inflatables for those who want light weight and stowability. Both work in the high latitudes, though they each have their drawbacks. Top of Page
We have tried Gels and AGMs and are back to using 6vt wet cells (golf cart batteries) for four reasons: (1) they are 1/4 the life cycle cost of gels and AGMs (1/2 the price for 2x the life cycles), (2) they can be replaced anywhere, (3) they are impervious to accidental high charging voltage, and (4) their condition/charge can be tested cell by cell with a hydrometer to zero in on a bad/undercharged cell. We initially used Trojans, but after getting a bad battery and poor warranty support we have switched to the middle priced brands (like Interstate and LTH) which seem to be just as good batteries with similar warranties at 35% lower price. The 6vt batteries have generally thicker plates and thus longer life than 12vt batteries and are lighter/easier to move.
We have three battery banks: #1 is two 6vt batteries, for engine starting and emergencies; #2 & #3 are identical banks with four 6vt batteries in each (for a total of about 800 amp-hours). They are normally parallel connected for one large house bank. However, on long passage we switch from one to the other for house usage, so we have a complete bank fully charged as a back-up/spare in case the engine or alternators die. The engine bank is connected to the house banks with a Blue Sea battery combiner (a voltage sensing relay) so that it automatically gets charged when the house banks are charging.
See Battery Data for a collection of useful battery information. For a cruising boat at anchor regularly cycling their batteries (e.g. discharging them and then charging them), here’s the real world big picture on batteries as I understand it:
(1) Gels have roughly twice the price for half the cycles compared to wet cells. So, ¼ the ‘value’. There is not yet a lot of experience with AGM’s on cruising boats but the experience so far is somewhat worse than gels (according to my sources at West Marine, and in the cruising grapevine).
(2) 6vt batteries have roughly 33% more cycles than 12vt batteries and you can get about 20% more amp hours in the same footprint (but they are taller).
(3) When I was last shopping for batteries, Trojans were priced 35% higher than the second brands (like Interstate and LTH) but deliver (in our experience) very similar performance, quality and support.
(4) Usage/charging patterns will make more difference to lifespan than anything else. For example: (a) Discharging the batteries to 75% of capacity (25% left) will reduce life cycles by 30% compared to discharging only 50% (Trojan). (b) Battery life cycles are halved for every 10ºC of rise in average operating temperature above 20ºC, and battery capacity is halved in cold temperatures (MasterVolt). (c) Consistently charging a gel battery .7vt above the recommended voltage will reduce battery life by 60% (East Penn). (d) Undersized jumpers/cables or dirty/under-torqued connections can reduce capacity by any amount.
So, for best lifespan/value the clear recommendation is buy ‘second brand’ 6vt wet batteries, be sure to use the optimal charge/discharge regime (shallow discharges, full charges with equalization cycles), use big cables and clean the connections (and batteries) regularly, and keep operating temperatures as close to optimal as possible. This is the hardest one to control but you can keep them away from engine heat but also warmed in cold weather.
However, if you are mostly on a dock with a shore charger plugged in, or have a lot of continuous charging from solar/wind, so that you don’t really cycle your batteries, then gels and AGM’s make more sense. These batteries can have a 20 year maintenance-free lifespan if they are not cycled. BUT, this is a very rare situation for an active/anchored cruising boat.
Also if you are racing where the ORC regulations are in force then sealed batteries are ‘strongly recommended’ to avoid the possibility of an acid spill during a knock-down. I personally think this is a drastic overreaction to a minor risk, and I think the ability to accurately monitor wet cell condition (and so not set to sea with a potentially bad cell) with a hydrometer (which you can not do with sealed batteries) is valuable from a safety perspective and more than offsets the spill issue. Top of Page
Lightning is fortunately pretty rare offshore. You might see some crossing the doldrums and occasionally tropical line squalls have both water spouts and lightning. Lightning is much more common near specific coasts. Florida, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and Panama, Peninsular Malaysia on the Gulf of Thailand side, and the S. China sea off Borneo are particularly noteworthy spots.
We don’t do anything special regarding lightning. I have been convinced (by the science) that the little lightning brushes sold for mastheads are complete jokes and don’t do anything. There is some discussion about faraday cages (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) and putting handheld GPS’s in the microwave oven or wrapping them in tin foil. This can’t hurt, but again the science suggests it is not a perfect cure either, a direct lightning strike could fry the whole oven and everything in it. Metal hulls may act as partial faraday cages but we have know people to loose electronics inside metal hulls struck by lightning.
So, the bottom line is #1 fortunately lightning is rare offshore and #2 there is no sure fire method to prevent lightning damage, but using partial faraday cages (microwave ovens, other metal boxes, heavy tin foil wrapping, etc) is the most likely approach to be helpful. Top of Page
We started out with three different generating options (two engine alternators, solar panels, and wind generator) and have dumped the wind generator and added a Honda 4 stroke generator (EU1000i). The two main engine alternators (55amp stock alternator plus 100 amp Balmar) have been absolutely reliable and produce good power when we motor. We like the two smaller units better than a single bigger alternator for several reasons - redundancy, more balanced loads on the engine bearings, and the ability to use single belts on the alternators rather than the twin belts the bigger units require. The solar panel (80amp) has also been completely reliable and produces a good 3 amps in bright sunlight. We can safely leave it hooked to the batteries when we leave the boat and it keeps them from self-discharging. It even produces decent power in the summer high latitudes.
The wind generator was very disappointing in both power output, and also in noise/safety. Practical Sailor Magazine (July 2007 issue) did a four-day test of 5 different wind generators. The smaller units (29"-36" diameter blades) produced an average of 40 amp-hours/day and the bigger units (46"-47" dimeter. blades) produced an average of 64 amp-hours/day. This test included two windy days out of four and the wind generators were sited in a clear wind flow and not a protected anchorage, so these numbers are likely higher that would be seen in the average cruising anchorage. Despite that positive bias in the test, the output numbers are still quite low given the noise, safety, and mounting/windage issues associated with wind generators. The safety issue is that you have a set of turbine blades speeding at near supersonic speed right above the cockpit. We had a halyard swing into our blades and they shattered throwing razor sharp carbon pieces all over the cockpit. Also I would never feel comfortable leaving the boat with one of these units running, in case a gale developed and the unit self-destructed. If you are interested in upwind sailing performance, these units are also a problem as they need to be mounted up in the airflow and produce windage/drag.
The solar panel and the engine alternators have met our energy needs for nine years, but we recently decided to add the Honda (1000i) 4 stroke generator for three reasons. First, Beth has upgraded her laptop (faster processor and bigger/brighter screen) and it now draws 5 amps, which has significantly increased our daily usage when she is writing all day. Second, we are planning to spend the winter in the Beagle Channel, where there will be limited sunlight and we will not be motoring much so our normal generating capabilities will be reduced. Third, we were anchored next to a French boat (an electrical engineer - the developer of the NKE instrument systems) who had a Honda 4 stroke generator and we were impressed with it's low noise, small size, reliability/ease of maintenance, and efficient fuel economy. Honda has more powerful units but the 1000i is the lightest (easy to stow and move) and quietest. So far we have been very impressed with the unit but after this coming southern winter we will be able to provide more complete feedback on its performance. Top of Page
We believe that electronic charts and chart plotters (or computer charting) are a useful advance. They completely eliminate errors that can occur when moving positions between a GPS and paper chart. They also speed up decision making. However, because the GPS/plotter is likely to be on all the time, we are fans of a relatively small (5.5" diagonal), relatively dim (e.g. not sunlight readable) plotter screen, in order to keep the electrical draw down. We are not fans of large, sunlight readable, full color plotter screens as they simply consume too much power. While it would be nice to be able to see the plotter from both the helm and nav station, our experience is that UV, direct tropical heat, humidity and salt spray will kill even the most 'weatherproof' marketed electronics. Over 10 years, we have lost two B&G displays while they were protected under our hard dodger. We do have "course & distance to waypoint" repeated on our cockpit instruments so we always know where the route is. Things happen slowly enough on a sailboat that we have never worried about one of us going below to glance at the plotter if we feel the need. One obscure feature we use quite a bit on our plotter is, when in a storm anchoring situation, to zoom way in and have it put a 'track' (e.g. a little red dot) on the screen every 10 seconds. That gives us a graphical display of whether the anchor is holding or dragging.
So, our number one item is an energy efficient chart plotter in the nav station. In situations when you want a bigger screen (such as tricky long-distance route planning), using a laptop charting program makes sense as most of us will have a laptop on board anyway. We have MaxSea on a laptop and I sometimes use that for complicated route planning. We also fire it up when we are navigating in difficult waters and have the engine running (so the extra amps don't matter). There is also a 'free' 2-CD version of C-map's complete world chart catalog floating around, and many cruisers have a copy. (My understanding is that it was released some years ago by C-Map as a demo version of a big ship plotting program and C-map did not realize how useful it would be, even de-featured, to us cruisers).
A VHF radio is extremely useful (required in Chile) and would be our second 'essential' piece of equipment. We have tried a sting of different handhelds and not liked any of them (the batteries are never strong when we need them and the signal strength is low even when the batteries are charged). We eventually got a remote microphone on a long cord for the main (nav station) VHF - we bring it up to the cockpit when we think we might need it. Rather than the long cord, we could have installed a plug for it in the cockpit, but have found that cockpit plugs inevitably corrode.
Radar was very important before GPS and dead accurate e-charts. Cruisers used to navigate by sextant and radio direction finding (and often just dead reckoning) until they were close to their destination and then turned on the radar to find out exactly where you were. With GPS and dead accurate charts that's not necessary any more. Radar is still useful for collision avoidance in fog but in most of the world dense fog is quite rare, and AIS is a better tool for avoiding big ships (at least in developed countries, where the ships are required to transmit AIS signals). Radar is also useful for night navigation in places where the charts are not yet accurate, but that is a rapidly decreasing number of places (only Mexico and Chile in our recent experience). It is almost always possible to make the same night navigation using the depth sounder and whatever visual clues are available. So, we are ambivalent about radar. We find it useful two or three times a year but could easily do without it. We think AIS is a higher priority (but still not essential).
We don't think a radar screen at the helm makes much sense. There is the 'not truly weatherproof' issue mentioned above. In addition to that, in the foggy/rainy conditions when radar is most useful, I would not be able to see a helm screen very well with moisture on my glasses and on the screen, and if I am wearing gloves it would be hard to operate the controls. We have never found it inconvenient to pop down to the warm/dry nav station to see the radar. We do think a decent size radar screen makes sense, as you are going to be trying to puzzle out the radar return in difficult conditions, and it is not going to be on that much (you can use 'standby'/'sleep' mode) so the amp draw is not as big an issue as with the plotter.
We like sailing instruments (wind speed/direction) for two reasons - first they allow our autopilot to steer to wind angle which is very useful both when close hauled and when running very deep, and second it allows us to catch wind speed and direction trends earlier than we would without the instruments. But we have found our instrument systems to be more fussy than we expected (especially maintaining accurate speed calibration) and to be less reliable/require more frequent parts than we would like.
We like having a barograph to help us understand where we are in a weather system. A barograph is easier to use than a simple barometer.
We are not big fans of 'all in one' navigation systems because if one part of the system dies you have lost everything, and because as mentioned above we believe there are different optimal screens for plotters, route planning computers, radar, and instruments.
As to brand selection, the cruising sailor should pick products designed for the commercial market, not the recreational market. Our usage is much more like commercial usage than recreational usage (which is typically only about 10 weekends of usage a year), and if we have to replace/repair something we are often some remote place where it is quite hard/expensive. Just for example, that means RayMarine is low on our list and Furuno is high. Top of Page
“You can lose a ship anywhere. You can lose a ship in so many ways. And it isn’t trying to sail only easy routes that will save you, or adding auxiliary power – or hiring unnecessary tugs or tows. Fight the shore bastards and look after the ship all the time. That’s what you better do.”