Outfitting a cruising yacht can be expensive! Especially if you fall down the rabbit hole of buying all the latest and greatest gizmos and gadgets.
In this video, we discuss the Top 10 buying regrets that we have had after having owned Wisdom for 7 years and outfitted her for blue water ocean passages. The goal is for you to learn from our mistakes so that you can be spared the expense that came with this lesson.
Our staysail setup involves three stays:
the inner forestay
two check stays
All of these stays attach 2/3rds up the mast, between the spreader and the cap shrouds. They kind of serve the purpose of a second spreader in terms of mast rigidity as it is a second attachment point, but without the added complexity of intermediate stays.
When we sail in heavy weather, we reef down to this point on the mast by flying only our staysail and double reefed mainsail. This keeps the forces lower on the mast and closer to the center of the boat, providing us with a balanced sail plan and comfort in uncomfortable times.
Having synthetic standing rigging means that our stays are immune to corrosion problems. Most of the end fittings that connect our stay to the mast are bronze, but these three toggles to the inner forestay area were all stainless steel.
Can you spot the crevice corrosion?
I spotted this flaw in the Azores right before we were leaving during my routine aloft inspection of the rig. We decided to go because in the Azores, everything is Metric and trying to get Imperial sizes there is a nightmare!
The corrosion was in the length of the metal, not across it. This meant that it was weakened but not completely broken.
We sailed on with the stress on mind that our toggles could fail and sailed about 1800 miles to reach mainland Portugal, where we soon hopped on a plane to fly back to the states to visit family.
The plan was to bring easy to buy bronze toggles back with us from the States rather than to mess with all the red tape to import “yacht parts” into Portugal.
Propellers are something that you don’t always think about while sailing. These little machines play a huge role in how your time on the water will be spent!
This video shows you the ins and outs of propellers and also helps shed some light on the mystery of prop walk.
Having a soft shackle at the end of your line is a great asset. A soft shackle lets you securely attach a line to something without the need for a knot. This means that anyone can connect the line without you needing to check their work for a proper knot.
What could fail with a soft shackle on an eye splice? Easy: someone could drop it overboard!
The best way to make a bullet proof soft shackle is to have it permanently attached to the end of your sheet. Making the soft shackle integral to the sheet itself!
Propellers come with all different numbers of blades. In general, the more blades you have, the more thrust you will be able to generate. For a fuel burning engine, this is the only concern. For an electric motor on a sailboat, there are other factors to consider.
The ideal number of blades is an odd number. On a smaller boat, 3 blades; if the boat can fit it, 5 blades.
The reason an odd number is ideal is because this keeps the same number of blades exposed to the water around the keel the same which makes regeneration of power from the motor a lot more uniform.
When a propeller spins behind the keel, the blades exposed to the water will oscillate as such:
2 blades: 2,0,2,0,…
3 blades: 2,2,2,2,…
4 blades: 4,2,4,2,…
5 blades: 4,4,4,4,…
When an even number of blades spin, the propeller will oscillate between all the blades showing and then two of the blades hiding behind the keel.
When an odd number of blades spin, there will always be just one blade hiding behind the keel. This will oscillate between being up or down blade behind the keel, but the number of blades exposed to the water will always be one less, not two, than the number on blades on the propeller.
This means that an even number of blades will oscillate in power while an odd number of blades will remain steady and constant while you sail.
