Gearing Up for Going Out

This past winter we concentrated on gear we thought we should have for our Bermuda adventure including safety items, necessary toys and things on our "electronics" list.

We added an auto pilot system which was absolutely essential considering we only had a crew of two.  Having to drive the boat manually for 5 days straight, shared between two people would have been dangerously exhausting.  We also added AIS (Automatic Identification System) which turned out to be very useful, especially at night.  The module has to be programmed by the company you buy it from, in our case MTS.  They put in information about La Vida Dulce including the boat's name, LOA (length), Beam (width), Draft (depth), location of AIS antennas on board, MMSI #, USCG documentation # and our boat's call sign.  All this stuff gets broadcasted along with our GPS location so other ships can see where we are and contact us if necessary.  From their display they'll be able to tell who we are, where we are and what direction and speed we're going.  We'll also get this same information about them.  On more than one occasion this turned out to be very useful and we were able to contact large ships that were on a converging course with us and verify that they were aware of our presence.  AIS in conjunction with radar made sailing at night do-able.  Another thing that got a lot of use was a remote microphone with full controls for the VHF radio.  The radio is mounted below at the Nav station and having this mic mounted at the helm made life easier and safer.  We had used a hand-held VHF radio before but it's range was very limited, just a few miles at the most.  Our main radio has up to 25 watts of power and it's antenna is mounted at the top of our 59' mast.  We routinely made contact with other ships over 15 miles away.

One of our big concerns was getting a life raft for the trip.  We looked into buying one but there are a few things that held us back.  A life raft for off shore is built to higher standards than one for coastal or inland waters.  The floor is insulated, the material it's built from is more rugged, it has a canopy and a whole list of additional stuff to keep you alive in harsher conditions.  This is all good but it comes at a hefty cost.  We wanted a six man raft and the price for that is over $4000.  On top of that they're required to be sent back to the factory every one to three years to be inspected.  If we bought one now it'd have to be sent in shortly after we leave in 2014.  Another option for us was to rent one for this trip.  We looked around and all the ones we saw were about $65/day.  That comes to around $1365 for this trip alone.  Yikes!  That's a pretty good chunk of change and would go a long way towards ownership.  Tough call.  Then we got a note from one of the other guys going on the trip with us and he found a rental place in Norfolk that gave us a six man raft for $550.  I jumped on that!  The one we rented was in a satchel and we stored it in the cockpit locker.  We kept it loose in there thinking we wanted to be able to get it out in a hurry.  This turned out to be a bad idea because that satchel weighed about 90 pounds and during that storm on the return trip it really got knocked around, tearing loose both the depth sounder module and the diesel heater.  When we invest in our own life raft I think we'll get one in a canister and mount it somewhere up on deck.

We invested in an EPIRB.  This is a cool little device that when activated sends out a radio beacon that interfaces with the international search and rescue satellite system.  The idea is to get responders going within the first 24 hours of a disaster, the time period of highest survivability.    Our EPIRB is manually activated, which means we have to unclip it from it's mounting bracket.  Once unclipped it automatically begins sending out it's signal.  There is another type that begins when immersed in water.  I guess that's good if you forget to unclip it or something.  Maybe one less thing to think about.  Personally I think I'm gonna be concentrating on that little EPIRB if our boat is going down.  I'd probably rip it right off the wall.

Other safety items we added were personal harnesses/lifevests with tethers and jack lines.  Jack lines on our boat are attached just aft of the bowsprit at deck level and run along both sides on the cabin top.  They terminate at padeyes mounted on the outside of the cockpit coaming.  There's another pair of jack lines in the foot well of the cockpit.  The idea is that you wear a harness at all times when topside while underway.  The harness is attached to the jack line by a tether that's either 3' or 6' long.  If you need to go forward from the cockpit you stay clipped in at the cockpit until you're clipped onto the jack line going forward.  On some boats the jack lines run along the deck on each side.  We chose to run ours along the cabin top to keep the tether point in closer to the center of the boat in case someone fell, hopefully preventing them from going overboard.  Our harnesses are also our life vests and will automatically inflate when submerged more than 4". We were faithful about using this gear and not taking any chances.  The harnesses were kinda hot though so in mild weather during the day we didn't wear them in the cockpit.  We did stick to our rule about wearing them at night and for going up on deck at any time.  We had two instances in particular when the harnesses paid for themselves.  The first time was when the mainsail blew out.  Jeff and I were on deck in pretty nasty weather getting the main wrapped up and secured to the boom.  Waves were breaking over the bow and more than once I was up to my knees in water.  The second time was on the trip home from Bermuda.  Cheri went up on deck during a squall with 45 knot winds to untangle the out-haul for the staysail.  Only with good harnesses, tethers and jack lines would we have even considered going out there in that kind of stuff.

We had intended to get a single side band radio (SSB) which is a high frequency radio capable of communicating around the world and is also able to send and receive e-mail messages which is very handy for getting up-to-date weather information.  Our cash reserves dried up before we got that far though so we fell back to plan B and rented a satellite phone.  It seemed like a good idea as an alternative to the radio but in actuality we had a terrible time getting a signal and were only able to make one call the entire time we were out.  Before we head out in 2014 we're getting an SSB.

One other thing we did to prepare for our trip to Bermuda was finding a place to stash our dinghy.  Up until now we've been storing it in the dinghy rack at the marina when not in use or pulling it behind the boat when going out to anchor somewhere.  That has worked fine for on the Chesapeake Bay.  Out on the ocean though it's a whole different can of worms.  You don't want to tow it because it'll slow you down a bit which can really add up to extra time on an extended cruise.  More importantly, in rough weather the dinghy can break free and be lost or damaged.  Many boats have davits but for ocean passages you don't really want to have the dinghy hanging off the back of your boat either.  There's a danger of following seas, large waves, breaking over the stern and causing damage to the dinghy and your boat.  The safest place to stow it is up on deck.  Our dinghy is an inflatable with a hard, fiberglass bottom, is over 10' in length and weighs more than 80 pounds.  Not something you're gonna just yank out of the water and toss up on deck.  I could use the mainsail boom as a type of crane but it's tethered by the mainsheet and a bunch of other lines and would be limited in height and swing.  I've been mulling this over for a while and came up with something that would work better for me.  I picked up an old spinnaker pole at a yard sale.  It's only 14' long but is plenty stout at 3" in diameter.  I put together a 6:1 block and tackle with 75' of 7/16"double braid line.  I also had Atlantic Spars and Rigging build me a double D fitting that looks like a fat figure eight, made of 3/8" stainless steel rod (see the middle picture).  This fitting goes in one end of the spinnaker pole and our spare main halyard attaches to the top of it.  From the bottom hangs the block and tackle attached to a harness holding the dinghy.  The other end of the pole mounts on the mast just to one side of the boom.  I now have a fully functioning derrick that extends out far enough over the side of the boat to easily hoist the dinghy using a three point harness.  It's very handy to be able to hang the dinghy off the side of the boat several feet off the water to allow it to dry before stowing it away.  This also is a good way to prevent algae growth on the bottom of the dinghy when it's not in use.  To stow it we haul it up over the lifeline and set it on the cabin top just under the main boom.  I've set up two four foot 4x4's to act as a cradle to keep it off the deck and allow airflow underneath.  These are only temporary though and I plan to eventually make something that's permanently mounted and sits a few inches higher.  Our dinghy deflates and folds in on itself to just the size of the fiberglass pan and neatly stows inside the zip-top bag it was delivered in when we bought it.  There are a few things we need to add at the mast to make everything work smoothly.  We need a line clutch for the primary main halyard to free up the one winch on the starboard side of the mast.  We also need two 6" cleats to tie off the two control lines; the line from the block and the secondary main halyard that hoists the pole.  For now these lines get tied off to the mast pulpit, the safety railing on either side of the mast.  When not in use we store the pole on the lifeline stanchions using Forespar spinnaker pole mounts.  The first time I used this system for launching the dinghy it was kinda cumbersome because I had to figure everything out as I went along.  The second time it went much smoother and really showed it's value.  Once we have everything in place I think this will be a really nice addition to the boat.  It provides a good safe spot for storing the dinghy and doesn't block the view at all when you're seated at the helm.  It's fairly simple to launch and recover, even with just one person doing the work.  It also gives us a second use for the pole as an inexpensive whisker pole for the genoa, something I've been wanting for some time now.  Two birds, one stone.