Wilderness Cruising | Nautitech Open 40 blog

The autopilot is made up of an electronic compass, a controller, and an arm -  a kind of piston that attaches to the steering quadrant. The response is how quickly the system moves the rudder back and forward to keep the boat on track. I'm writing about this as we went through a set of setting cables, this can be unnerving when you are out sailing on the ocean and suddenly have no steering, but that's another story. Anyway, we are not the only ones to see broken steering cables. So what's the issue? It could be wear and tear, but we have now done more than double the miles on the new cables than we had on the old ones, and they are still in good shape, so we must be doing something else right. We are careful to keep the right amount of tension on the cables. Too tight and the steering will feel stiff, too loose and the cables could slip out their tracks. We keep them greased where they run through pulleys and the quadrant, but the main thing we do is balance the boat, and t...

This is our spinnaker, and how we sailed across the Pacific. When we bought the boat we didn't really know how to sail, we hadn't taken our day skipper, and were very much still beginner's. I have one video when we were still a light boat doing 10kts in the Solent. I turn to Fung and say " 10kts! We'll cross the Atlantic like this ".  It turns out we did cross the Atlantic, but not like that. We were the last boat in the final rally organised by Jimmy Cornell, we arrived dead last, and were so slow that our fellow cruisers wondered what happened to us. It didn't look that way when we departed Mindelo. After our first 36 hrs we were on for 200nm days. It wasn't to be, and after the katabatic winds left us we wound up almost a day behind the fleet. We didn't realise it at the time, but the boat was not yet ready for down wind sailing! As a catamaran, downwind should be what we excel at, and we do, but the thing that caught us out was lig...

So our water maker finally broke down beyond repair. We made several mistakes in selecting and installing this particular watermaker. Having one of these units malfunction is not a nice experience. In fact it could be pretty serious depending on where you are. The reason is you need water is to drink. Having one of these units means you can spend pretty much an near unlimited amount of time out in remote areas. Boats do need consumables of course, but with a good watermaker onboard, all you need is food, and fuel. So to setup for 2 months it can be pretty easy, 3 months possible, but you have to work harder and plan better.  Our fuel tanks hold 215 litres each, this lasts us around 1-2 months before they are below half. We could use less diesel, but we like hot showers. When it comes right down to it, we don't actually need the diesel to live, just live more comfortably. Coming through the Pacific we toped up 80 litres in Marquesas, our next top up was Fiji over 4 months later. Our...