Water (drinking)

Drinking water. I plan on 3 litres per day for all consumption and to use sea water for washing. For an 8 week passage that means 168 litres + a contingency of 20%, so 200 litres. That is a lot of 2 litre bottles! So I could use the boat tank but I am not sure of the 'health' of it. It is a bladder tank of unknown age, maintenance and volume. I mentioned this to a friend and they have been considering the same problem. Their approach is to remove the tank in the keel void on their Twister and fill the space with 1 litre tonic bottles of fresh water. If a bottle becomes unviable: leak or contamination, then they have only lost 1 litre. So cabin sole on Louisa up and bladder inspected and I have a plan. I will pump the tank out and put in a hull liner then fill the void with 5 litre flexible water bags. I will install a hatch in the sole and I am hoping to get about 50 to 100 litres in this space. A note of caution, a 5 litre flexible water bag becomes inflexible with 5 litres of water in it. With 4 litres it remains flexible and can conform to the available space. In addition I have a 30 litre canister for collecting rain water and about 70 litres of bottled water in other stowage.  

To improve water efficiency when cooking I have found the optimum pasta to water ratio by volume to be 2:1 pasta to water. After approximately 2/3 of the cooking time I add the sauce. I am working on this for rice. A tip I was given was to use a silicone spatula as this can be used to wipe any pot or pan virtually clean thereby optimising energy and water consumption and reducing washing up. I have also worked out that adding 10% sea water to water for cooking removes the need to add salt. This ratio is also suitable for rehydration but needs to be used with care. I anticipate that any rain water recovered from sail run off will be contaminated by sea salt but I will try and keep this to a minimum.

I like drinking black tea but tea is a mild diuretic and boiling water uses meths and evaporation increases. So I'll try and limit myself to 2 mugs a day. I also like hot chocolate but I'll save that for motivational purposes.

Keeping track of consumption will need to be a routine task.

 

Catastrophization

Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you're in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.

I am at that stage where I am trying to work out what might go wrong and how I would deal with it. This is causing me sleepless nights and unstructured worrying thoughts.

An example of this is the rigging. What is a stay breaks, or worse the mast comes down. It can happen and several boats in the GGR suffered this fate but they pitchpoled in the southern ocean. So risk assessment time. 

1. stay failure: possible but not too serious if caught early. Controls, reduce load on rig and reduce risk by heaving too in storm force winds, check rig regularly and run with inner fore stay rigged. Recovery, repair with onboard parts.

2. mast failure: this is unlikely and if it did happen it wouldn't be fatal unless part of the rig punctured the cabin and hit me or trapped me in the cabin. Controls, as above. Recovery, rig spinnaker pole with storm jib and make for port of refuge.

Whether it will help me sleep better or not I don't know but I intend to formalise this process by working through a range of scenarios.

A short cruise and preparations continue

 A fabulous drift / sail down the river Medway in company with the Deeper Waters group. First go with the cruising chute for my crew and it largely worked. I still need to sort out the tack. For a brief moment we were in the lead, but it wasn't a race!

Work continues on preparations. Forepeak grating dry fit is good so glue up and install next.

Radar reflector was mounted on the mast, it is sort of straight.

Looking good in the afternoon sun, we are still in the first half of January! Loads of other smaller jobs including first fit of modified staysail, midships cleat (need longer bolts and backing blocks), spare windvane oar fits and lifting block attached. Cold but happy.

Preparations and tender maintenance

 Preparations continue, the job list is static at 26 jobs to complete but I have the Garmin tracker just about sorted out. https://share.garmin.com/SVLouisa. Messaging with the family is partially working. I wanted to get some heavy weather practice so went out in an F8. Three reefs and all seemed good, made progress downwind and limited progress upwind. 8 hours in the middle of winter and no other boats about was great. I don't think there has been much sunshine around since I was last down but the solar panels are holding the batteries up well. The inner jib needs modifying which I think I can do myself.

Louisa was looking fine in the morning gloom when I left her.

This visit to the boat was as much about maintaining the tender as it was about Louisa and sailing. When I was last out the gunwale started to come adrift so I devised a new rubbing strake made from 1/2" water pipe and insulating foam. 

I think it worked well, it is held on with cable ties and seems like an improvement.

Offshore preparation and ongoing maintenance

 As part of my offshore preparations I have been sorting out my safety gear. I have had an immersion suit for a couple of years but couldn't get into it when I was on Mischief in the cabin, there just wasn't enough room. I tried again on Louisa and it took a few minutes. 

The boat was on her swinging mooring and despite being near 0C outside I was very warm in the suit.

Another job I progressed was re-installing the self steering gear following giving it a service. 

It went back on very easily and I tested it in the river both upwind and downwind in a F7 with 2 reefs set. It worked flawlessly so very happy with that.

On the maintenance list was a mid season scrub, the hull wasn't too badly fouled but the water line is getting bad. I pressure washed the hull and scraped the waterline but will wait until spring to apply antifoul. The Seajet Shogun 033 was holding up well so that is what I'll use again.

There has been an old salt's tale that mixing chilli powder with antifouling makes it more effective. A good friend of mine assures me that barnacles don't have taste receptors but chilli has more than just flavour / heat. To put my mind at rest this same friend cleaned the prop with sand paper and got a very nice finish. We found the manufacturer's  name on the prop and above it (port side) I applied chilli loaded Lanoguard grease, on the other blade Lanoguard grease was applied.

  When she is next on the scrubbing dock we shall see if their is any discernible difference.

So a successful, albeit cold, weekend.

New Sails

 New sails arrived and with there being no wind it was an ideal opportunity to fit them. Testing them will have to wait for a breeze.

The main sail has a deep third reef and the logo looks great.

The spare gooseneck is a great fit and when the main gooseneck has been welded up ti should be an even better fit. 

More progress and new plans

 It has been a long time since my last post and here are some of the reasons:

A storm jib, I'll need that for my planned trip to Newport, RI, USA in 2022. 

During the last four months I have been trying to get sea miles under my belt while completing preparations for JC 2022. The start date is 8th May 2022 and I still have almost 60 items on the to do list. I have closed out over 30 of the larger jobs including: additional winches, rigging overhaul, re-bedding windows, RF systems, electrical systems, replacement running rigging, ordering new sails, solar panels, weather proofing and sleeping / stowage arrangements.

My plans for the trip are in their early stages but I intend to follow a more southerly route so that I have ports of refuge such as Azores and Bermuda to run to rather than the shorter Northerly route. Ice and fog scare me and the storms are normally more frequent and severe on the northerly great circle route. My estimated passage duration is 40 days but this could well be longer.

Work left to do includes: fit and tune new sails, service and refit the Sea Feather self steering gear, strengthen the gooseneck fitting and generally secure the boat for offshore sailing.