As I was showing Sasha how nice my fridge door fit into the fared hole in the front of the fridge box he said to me "you know you need to add another layer of insulation to the door, right?". Uuugh. It turns out husbands are a lot like Moms when it comes to being right about things. I thought it over and reluctantly admitted that a second layer of insulation would be a good idea so here we go...
Next I fared it smooth with the sander and knocked off the sharp corners.
Above is the damage from sanding, the final step was to take thickened epoxy and fill in the voids and continue to smooth and level the surfaces. One more quick sand for a final smoothing and one more coat of epoxy and the insulation portion of the door will be done.
Just when we thought we were done. Each cubby is about sixteen inches wide and twenty inches tall. We decided to skin the back and top sides of each cubby because those sides are insulated and we didn't want the insulation getting too beat up.
What a beautiful boat!!! It looks better than on the drawings and it looked very well on the drawings. This is one of the boats that makes me sorry for not being rich, at least rich enough for having one LOL. The boat was tested by Toby Hodges for Yachtingworld magazine on a good breeze and I don't resist to post some of his comments: "This is a yacht you want to take for a drive on all conditions...she fells fast and yet purposeful, a really sailing boat...This is a sexy design that sails as beautifully as she looks...the 15.98 is designed to encourage yachtsmen to pass more time at the wheel when sailing offshore...this yacht is... about how it makes you feel"
And as subtitle: the expensive and the "cheap" options LOL. The ARC is almost starting and this year we have some very interesting performance cruisers doing the passage, among them two Outremer 51 (picture above), a Neel 45 "racing", a Pogo 50, two Pogos 12.50, a Knierim 49, a Marten 49, a XP44 and a More 55.
It is going to be very interesting to follow the comparative performances of these boats (and others) and I mean the rich and the poor because their price tag is very different as well as the interior space and comfort. The cat and the trimaran offer an incomparably bigger living space with a price tag to match: 750 000 euros for the Outremer 51, and for the standard version of the Neel 45 538 000 euros. This are base prices, not including VAT and the Neel is not the racing version.
The Outremer 51 and the Neel are very different boats, a cat and a trimaran. The Outremet has dagerboards and therefore a good performance upwind, the Neel 45 has not and the upwind performance suffers, but this is a downwind passage and that is not relevant here. The price is also very different.
The Pogo 50 has a good cruising interior, on a zen way and it is slightly more expensive than the Nell 45, at 591 000 euros but offers a better performance, specially upwind:
The Knierim 49 is not very well known, it is made by a German shipyard (Knierim) that has made till know 3 49, a beautiful and fast yacht. I could not find prices but I would not be surprised if the Knierim 49 costed as much as the Outremer 51.
The Knierim 49 is a 13 year old Judel/Vrolijk design, a great design and a boat very different from the Pogo 50, that is a boat based on solo racers while the Knierim comes from the IRC cruiser/racer tradition and needs more crew to be fully exploited.
The XP 44 is a boat that comes on the Knierim 49 same line of design development. It's the smaller till now and compared with all the others, the less expensive boat at 358 800 euros. It has a great cruising interior for this type of boat and it will suit the cruising style of a sportive sailor. In fact there is one circumnavigating.
The Marten 49 is another gorgeous expensive carbon boat, designed by Reishel&Pugh. The design, like the one of the Knierim has already more than a decade but was also a very advanced design, with a lifting keel and a great cruising interior. Both boats weight about the same (9.5T) and the design is not very different (IRC derived). Both still look very nice and it seems time has not made wrinkles on these two, that remain beautiful sailboats, and of course, damn fast ones.
And finally the poor men's fast offshore performance cruiser, the smaller Pogo 12.50, at 253 488 euros, a boat that comes from the Solo racing tradition and is designed to be exploited with a small crew or even solo, if the sailor is a really good one. Fast, specially on the trade winds, with an interior that is functional and kind of comfortable in a zen way, it is the voyage boat option for the "poor" sportive couples.
Well, the Pogo is the cheapest boat that can be bought to sail really fast on passage but that seems to be changing with the More 55 being sold for comparatively less money. The More 55 costs about half of what costs the Pogo 50 and not much more than the Pogo 12.50 (295 500 euros). Let's reserve the boat performance till we see what really is able to do, but looking at the specifications and design, I would say it is a very fast one. The interior seems a good cruising interior, needing some improvements, but that is just the first boat.
I am convinced: the foils do work even on very nasty weather and the Open 60's (IMOCA) continue to lead in what regards significant technological monohull advances as they have been doing for some decades. Just beautiful the movie, some of this year's best sailing footage.
The ones that follow the blog knows that I don't give much importance to the Cruising Boat magazine boat of the year: the categories are too many, the boats are old news in what regards the European Market the number of testers are relatively small, not all professional and did not test a huge variety of boats each here because the boats available on the American market are not many. So why I am talking about one of those boats that are old news elected has boat of the year? First of all because I like it:-) but mainly because what they said about the boat: it seemed that it had strongly impressed more than one and instead of one of those bland test descriptions were you understand that the boat choose could be easily another one, this one is a strong one:
"In a building breeze ideal for sea trials, the Salona 44 performed sweetly on all points of sail
In the 22 years we’ve conducted our Boat of the Year contest, we’ve tested literally hundreds of boats, sailed thousands of miles and splashed across Chesapeake Bay in just about every condition imaginable. But we’ve never had a test drive as unusual as the one conducted for the 2015 competition on the Salona 44. When the judges boarded the boat, the water was glassy, the breeze nonexistent. But a front was coming; the western sky was dark and menacing, and closing in fast. A few minutes later, a solid 25 knots of wind, with higher gusts, lashed the bay: Breeze-wise, we’d gone from zero to 30 in record time.
The Salona 44, with its tall triple-spreader rig and feathery twin wheels, handled it with aplomb. Upwind and down, the boat was stiff and fast, ultimately topping off in double-digit boat speeds that etched a smile on the faces of everyone aboard.
On a power reach heading back to Annapolis, closing in quickly on the U.S. Naval Academy, one of the company reps asked, “Should I run the sheets?” He was ready to set the spinnaker, and no one doubted the boat could handle it. “Um, no thanks, mate,” we replied. We’d already found what we came looking for. A few days later, at the conclusion of our sea trials, the judges named the Salona 44 the year’s best Cruiser/Racer. Coincidence? Perhaps not....
But the Salona is built with a steel grid, so a lot of that weight is down low. It allows for a stiff structure with a light skin around it.. it’s vacuum infused. Moving around the boat was very nice; it had a solid motion. And it sailed beautifully.”
The judges were also impressed by the boat’s innovative transom — which swings up and out to reveal an incorporated boarding passerelle — the abundant handholds and the comfortable accommodations. Taken together, the sum of these many parts made the Salona 44 a winning design." http://www.cruisingworld.com/2015-cruiser-racer-nominees?src=SOC&dom=fb
One Australian Salona 44 has done several Sydney Hobart races with good results, particularly on the last one that was a particularly nasty edition.
Let's compare dimensions and try to understand how different will the new boat be versus the old one. First dimensions for the 10.50, all the measures in m, t, m2.
So what does this tell us? It tells that it is a more powerful and faster boat: Slightly bigger, more beam and more draft probably for an identical ballast, or slightly bigger. Also the chines will increase boat stiffness and will contribute to the bigger power. That extra power has a reflex on the sail area the boat can carry, about more 5%.
Regarding hull design that's the biggest difference and a remarkable one since the boat looks different viewed from behind and at the bow. Very curious the bow and the forward sections, designed to create lift and to drive the spray away. It is amazing the difference that some few years can make on cutting edge boat design. I have no doubt this boat will be a rocket and I am very curious regarding the first test sails. I bet that before the first boat hits the water they will have at least 10 sold LOL.
When we bought our thirteen-foot Whaler the Mercury 30 HP engine had two major problems. First, the hydraulic trim tilt pump was dead. Second, (and more importantly) it was not powerful enough to ski/ wakeboard behind. We found a solution when our friend "crazy Dave" offered to sell us his sinking dinghy with an E-Tec 50hp on the back.
Not sure what we are going to do with the half drowned dinghy, but we found a new home for the engine!
This is the final stage of a two-day yard project. Day one" trailer the old dinghy out and remove the engine and steering / throttle system. Easier said than done as it took a forklift to yank the engine off. Day two, splash the sinking dinghy and trailer the Whaler out. Remove the 30 HP from the whaler, retrofit the 50 HP onto the whaler. Uuuugh. Knew it was going to be tough and dirty but happy it's done.
Now we have a little plot of land, and although it may be small, we hope to grow lots of herbs. I'm starting with small cuttings, but i hope in a couple of months we'll be harvesting our own basil and rosemary for use on our pizza pie.
This boat could be built in wood, fiberglass or aluminum depending on the owner's preference (and pricing). An alternate profile was also developed. Click here to have a look.
Principal Dimensions LOA 60'-0" LWL 45'-10" Beam 14'-9" Draft 6'-0' (board up) 12'-6" (board down)
So many beautiful sailboats gliding effortlessly in light wind, or bashing their way through difficult conditions, so many beautiful interiors that it is difficult not to be agreeably surprised with the overall quality. All types of boats seem to sail each year a little better than the last year and the interiors that were some years ago designed on the "house" are today designed by some of the best design cabinets. More and more yachts are not designed by a single NA but by a team that he leads and includes many different specialists, from structural engineers, specialists in composites, specialists in VPP and CFD analysis rig and rigging specialists and designers, and the added quality that team work brought to the boats looks and functionality is evident.
This year the testing took place in Atlantic France (la Rochelle) and in Italy, in Santa Margherita. On most boats they had the chance to sail them in very light and medium wind, some even in strong wind.
Here is a master list of S&S 6-Meters sorted by name, design number and year.
Please note: + Design #40 was a collaboration between S&S and Herman Whiton + Design #44.2 were modifications to a Clinton Crane design (new rig) + Design #46.2 were modifications to a Clinton Crane design (new rig)
Impressive: It takes some time to be convinced that it is just a 35ft boat!!! What was already a very good sailboat in its first version, the 1050, become better with the 1060 and even better with the 1070: A great small voyage boat with a big offshore potential.
One of the most improbable projects around designed by a trendy Architect Greg Lynn that normally designs anything but boats in association with Courouble Design, a California Naval design firm, without experience in multihulls and with a short experience in fast monohulls.
I would not have looked at it twice if I had not looked at the guys that are behind them: HDS the French specialists in structural analysis, calculation and design....http://www.hds-design.com/
So what does Lynn after all?: the conceptual project. I tried to find information about that but without success, I mean the boat program. I found something but it is in Latin! No kidding, here: http://www.couroubledesign.com/?works=gf42-3
The shapes seem interesting if it will sail well or not it will be a bit as a mystery as its use. That's a racing boat? a performance cruising boat? One thing is certain I am curious about it and about its sailing potential. The boat is already on the water and it should not take long to know how it sails. Here's a video with the boat being towed.
And the good news is that we have a race not between two boats, as I feared, but between 4 boats. Surprisingly, at least for me, besides Stamm/Le Cam, Alex/Ribes there are two more competitive boats and teams. Not only Altadill/Munõz but Corbella/Marín are among the first. Corbella/Marín are leading at this moment. A Race that risked to be boring has been a very interesting one.
Also bad news, it seems to me that the boat of Riechers/Audigane is not able to follow the leading group. They spent a lot of money and time trying to make it a competitive boat for the next Vendee Globe but it does not seem that they have managed.
A very nice movie about last edition and the crews on this one.
For following the race, a tracker with good weather information: http://www.barcelonaworldrace.org/en/race-live/barcelona-world-race-2014-15-tracker
After launching, we motored for a few days just to get a feel for the boat and how a monohull moves compared to the large catamarans we are used to.
All that motoring quickly pointed out that we had a serious leak in the transmission - we were leaking about a quart of oil per mile! We headed back to Nanny Cay to anchor and borrow the chain hoist so that Sasha and I could wrestle transmission out of place and fix it. Come to find out, the shaft was corroded and pitted badly enough that it was not making a good seal.Sasha slipped on a speedy sleeve (a thin metal cylinder that fits tightly over the shaft and provides a brand new smooth surface) and we were back in business.
We motor sailed all the way to St. Thomas without a drip from the transmission!
Almost a week ago we lost our dinghy! We were motor sailing from Tortola to St. Thomas when all of a sudden Sasha called to me "Oh no, the dinghy's gone!". We turned around and spent 4+ hours looking for it. We sailed back to Nanny Cay, all the while factoring the wind and current to try and figure out how fast and what direction the dinghy might be floating along. We stopped and talked to local fishermen hoping they might have seen it. We put out calls on the radio to let everyone know that it was floating out there. We called the Coast Guard, St John National Parks, friends on every island to ask them to keep an eye out. No sign of the dinghy yet.
How did we lost the dinghy??
The tow line snapped and neither of us noticed.
Below is the tow line, and the bright yellow bit is where it broke.
After four days of using borrowed paddle boards to get around (with groceries and laundry) and still no word on our missing dinghy we decided to look around for a new dinghy and we found a boston whaler priced to sell.
The whaler was on her trailer on Water Island so we spent two days scraping and painting the bottom and waxing the topsides before we slipped her in the water this morning.
A sneak peak at the interior. More photos to come.
Contrary to the magazines boat's of the year this contest is more relevant: It is not only the testers of a magazine that chose the boat but testers from 10 European leading sailing magazines (one for each country). All boats are tested on the water in two rounds, the last one after being selected the finalists on each category.
This year there will be two alterations: Multihulls will not be in a special class but competing with monohulls in the different classes and a new class is introduced : Bluewater Boats. Regarding this last one, and taking into consideration the boats selected, it would seem to me more appropriated to call them Voyage Boats (that's the way the selected boats are called in Europe) but as the term is not used in the US, probably they went for a more dubious qualification. It would create some confusion since on the class of Luxury yachts there is also boats adapted to blue water sailing.
The Nominated boats:
Family cruiser:
Dufour 310
Dufour 310
Bavaria Cruiser 46
Dufour 310 GL
Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 349
Nautitech 40
RM 890
Performance Cruiser:
XP55
XP55
Corsair Cruze 970
Dehler 46
Jeanneau SF 3600
JPK 1080
XP55
Luxury Cruiser:
Euphoria 54
Euphoria 54
Euphoria 54
Italia 15.98
Moody 54DS
Wauquiez Centurion 57
XC35
Special Yacht:
A44
A44
Advanced 44
Astus 24
Pogo 3
Pointer 25
Saffier SC 33
Blue Water Cruiser:
Boreal 52
Boreal 52
Boreal 52
Rapier 550
Garcia Exploration 45
Ovni 52 Evolution
Southerly 535
The winners will be announced at the Dusseldorf boat show.
