S/Y King Malu

Cold, wet and thundery

2012-01-25T11:07:00.001+02:00

It's cold, wet and thundery here in Cyprus. Not the weather for being outside doing woodwork or in King Malu sanding woodwork with the for'ard hatch open letting in the rain.

So today I will try to rebuild the position plotting system having moved it to another server. Basically when you click the button on the spot device it receives a code at the control centre and you can configure it to send out either SMS or emails to whoever you want. One of the addresses will be a specially set up gmail account.

So I will then download that formatted email message, setting it up to check every 15 minutes for new emails, extract the lat/lon and using gmapez plot the position on Google maps, which displays at the top of this blog.

We are very impressed with the Spot Locator system buying into the technology very early on. Recently Spot have brought out a new system called HUG, which is specifically designed for boats.

This system can be integrated into the yacht system to also send alerts if the boat is stolen and also four monitors for things like battery, water increase in the bilges or other sensors of your choice.

For'ard cabin

2012-01-23T18:33:00.003+02:00

The previous owner had a fire onboard. He and the boat were very lucky to survive. He had no smoke alarms and a fan in the for'ard cabin caught fire during the night when he was asleep. This caught the wood alight and in the process doing damage to the to a significant amount of the woodwork. The fire put itself out, but the woodwork looked really bad. He never bothered much with it as the for'ard cabin was not used as a cabin but as his workshop.

We have now started on the interior restoration, so I have removed the front of the locker in the for'ard cabin and will be working at replacing and upgrading. I have also started stripping the varnish off the wood to re-varnish. In the saloon the varnish is matt, whereas in the cabins it's a mixture of gloss and matt, so when I re-varnish I will make it all matt.

The Fein Multimaster is really coming into its own - not only did I use the saw blade to cut out the old panel in a way that would have been impossible with even a jig-saw, but the sanding attachment allows getting into the ridges and corners of the cabin.

It's going to be a long task doing the woodwork, so watch this space...

Sailing boots

2012-01-22T11:13:00.001+02:00

I'd been looking for some yacht boots for some time. I was unwilling to spend a vast amount of money on something you wear very occasionally in the Med but wanted something for when I really needed it.

Last year I decided I would spend some of the birthday money relatives send on some yacht boots and went up to the Mailspeed Marine Trade Counter to try them on and see what was available. I eventually chose some of the new neoprene boots from Yacht Boat Company.

Mailspeed Marine now have them on special offer... £25 less than I paid for them at £39.95, so grab yourself a bargain!

Sails... bolt rope repair

2012-01-21T19:07:00.000+02:00

We have a new genoa and main sail on order and they should arrive on Wednesday. These are being made for us by one of the premiere sailmakers in the UK, but banded with our own Malu Marine brand. These will be the first of the new brand sails so we are really looking forward to seeing them.

The old genoa was not too bad, but had an 8mm bolt rope and the new Furlex needs a 4mm bolt rope. So there were two options: 1. Send it to the UK and get them to change the bolt rope 2. Do it ourselves. We opted for #2. Yesterday evening Tim was up till midnight unpicking the bolt rope and then this morning I joined him. So by lunchtime it was unpicked. It was a phenomenal amount of work. I calculated that we (and Tim did most of it) unpicked between 5,000 and 8,000 stitches.

After lunch we attached the new bolt rope and pulled it through and then using our trusty hand sewing machine re-sewed the new bolt rope in place. Next weekend will be sail weekend. We'll check the new bolt rope on the genoa fits and then take King Malu out for a sail with the new Malu Marine sails. Let's hope the weather is good... it's been pretty awful recently and we're due for another storm this week.

Cleaning metalwork

2012-01-19T18:22:00.009+02:00

The children of friends of ours do the deck cleaning for us. This is a weekly task and involves two things: One, a complete clean of the deck, using detergent and water and secondly cleaning the stainless steel and aluminium and all the other metalwork on the boat.

Normally it takes about one hour for the deck clean and a second hour is spent on the metalwork. However, we're waiting for a new sails which should arrive within a week and so we haven't been out for a few weeks and the deck hasn't needed cleaning. So... Jacob and Marie have been busy with cleaning the metalwork.

Cleaning the metalwork takes a lot longer than an hour, and involves a lot of what we in the UK call 'elbow grease' in other words, hard work. So I bet the kids are looking forward to sailing again so that it will be half deck clean and half metalwork!

Varnishing, EPIRB and 200V switch

2012-01-16T19:48:00.010+02:00

We're slowly moving from phase 1 to phase 2 of the restoration of King Malu. The deck work is mostly complete, we have ordered a new suite of sails and so we are starting to look at the cabins.

The most obvious part is what the saloon looks like. The cabins are seen only by us, but when we invite guests on board they see the saloon. In general the saloon looks pretty good. We need some new upholstery and a carpet, but the lockers are solid teak and look smart.

Notice the bolt cutters behind the steps. These are a critical safety tool every yacht should have available. If you loose your mast you need to be able to cut the rigging free quickly.

Anyway... what didn't look so good are were the steps down into the saloon and the teak behind the steps. So the first thing to tackle was stripping and re-varnishing that area.

We used some cheap triangular sanders we bought from Lidl plus a Fein Multimaster. The Fein Multimaster is new and expensive, the sanders from Lidl are at the opposite end of the cost spectrum. In combination they worked well. The Lidl sanders for the large areas and the Fein for the detail. What the Fien was particularly good at was the gaps between the teak tongued and grooved boards. There is a rubber linear piece that takes sand paper for doing exactly that. We highly recommend this tool.

We then used a Sadolin water based clear varnish. On the teak woodwork I put 4 coats and on the steps I put 8 coats. The steps took a bit more work. We removed the old anti-slip, which was no longer anti-slipping and replaced it with Treadmaster. We kept the metal anti-slip tread holders and we are very pleased with the result.

At the end of 2011 we also bought a McMurdo EPIRB and fitted that.

It is fixed in place very close to the steps, as in an emergency you need to get and deploy it quickly. It won't do any good being in a locker if the yacht sinks!

The EPIRB will automatically start transmitting when it's in salt water, so you might wonder if water coming in through the companion way will set it off. This is not a concern as there is also a magnetic switch in the unit, with a small magnet in the bulkhead fitting, so it has to be removed from the fitting as well as be immersed in water to set it off. There is also a way of setting it off manually.

We bought the McMurdo EPIRB from Mailspeed Marine in the UK. Dave Somers is the representative we deal with and he is both helpful and very knowledgeable.

The McMurdo G5 Smartfind Plus is a 406MHZ Epirb designed to operate with the COSPAS-SARSAT international system, but is also fitted with a 12 channel GPS receiver. This addition ensures that the exact position of a casualty is relayed directly to the emergency services.

Finally... the last thing we did was to fix the Sterling 220V Automatic Switch in a new place in the saloon locker above the chart table.

This switch is a great device. It automatically swaps between shore power, generator and inverter, but in each case makes sure the power is clean and stable for 10 seconds before connecting it. You can buy it from our store at Malu Marine.

Malu Marine

2012-01-10T21:31:00.000+02:00

We found that many of the world class specialist marine products that we need to restore King Malu are not available in Cyprus. So we imported them ourselves. Around the marina people started asking us about them, so we decided to set up a company that would supply and install these specialist products.

We have launched a new website malumarine.com to sell them but the best way to buy them is to talk to us. Email richard-at-malumarine.com or tim-at-malumarine.com or phone Richard on 99313751.

Sails are custom made, both for the yacht and to match the sailing style and desires of the owner. Getting sails right is a complex business. We have learnt how to measure yachts for new sails and can quote on replacement sails or repairs to your current sails. We work with one of the UK's premiere sailmakers, so the quality is world beating! See options on our website.

Marine electrics can be complex and we are now the Cyprus distributor for Sterling Power, who are quite frankly the best in the world for marine electrics. They are certainly not the cheapest, but on a yacht or power boat reliability is paramount.

Life Jackets

2012-01-10T19:02:00.005+02:00

I don't usually repost things, but I came across this training video and feel that it is something that everyone who sails should see. We have always worn lifejackets, but sadly not everyone does.

We bought two types of life jackets for King Malu from Mailspeed Marine in the UK.

We bought Mailspeed Marine Charter Lifejackets for guests (link to the right). We have not had an problems with them and our guests have been comfortable in them.

To both types we added military grade light sticks which we tied inside with a lanyard. The military grade light sticks are guaranteed to last for 12 hours, and are worth it compared to the 'party' type light sticks you can often find on ebay.

We bought Secumar life jackets for the permanent crew (link to the left).

These are more comfortable and if you are wearing them for along time are worth the extra cost.

Whatever type of life jacket you use... remember to do up the crotch strap!

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Changing the propellor

2011-12-31T18:45:00.019+02:00

We are working with a company to produce an electric drive for King Malu, but in the mean time we have a 20 HP Honda outboard on the back. Not exactly pretty, but gets us into and out of the marina!

We bought the outboard from Mailspeed Marine in the UK. They are a great company to deal with.

They don't advertise the 20HP on their website, but give them a call and they can supply it... and arrange delivery wherever you are in the world.

Anyway... this morning was very still... the water like a mirror. So this is just the day to turn King Malu around and change the propellor. The reason to change the propellor is that a couple of weeks ago we noticed that at times the motor suddenly races but with no apparent change in speed through the water. We believe this is caused by a breakdown in the bonding between the rubber shock mount in the propellor and the propellor shaft.

We disconnected the remote belden cables to control the outboard and then lifted it up so that Tim, on the jetty, could get at the propellor. I remain on King Malu as the gopher... to go and get any tools he might need.

20 minutes later and the new propellor is in place! I hadn't expected it to be so quick. I thought we might fight getting the old propellor off, but it was a very easy piece of maintenance.

We also took the opportunity to remove any growth on the bottom of the outboard. Keeping it in the water is not the best for it, but we have no choice.

The old propellor shows the state of the growth on it.

So having changed the propellor we took King Malu out for a tial motor in the bay. You will notice if you look carefully two differences between the old and the new, and I don't mean the state of the growth on it. The shape and pitch of the blades is different. The new propellor has a much shallower pitch. This should give us greater pushing power and more control at low speed. It was slightly disconcerting to have higher revs than we were used to with the old propellor, but the control was certainly better. It was impossible to tell how much change in power we had since the sea was so flat.

Fitting new Furlex

2011-12-02T20:51:00.004+02:00

King Malu came with a terribly old Goiot furler. It had long lost its bearings and was running on a grease slide between two plates. Having jammed on us a few times and the last time when we really needed it to work smoothly, we eventually decided to replace it with a new Furlex unit. This meant changing the genoa as well.

In for a penny, in for a pound, we invited Paul and Vicky Lees out from Crusader Sails in the UK to teach us how to measure boats for new sails and to advise on what we needed for King Malu.

Hence... a new Furlex. In Cyprus and Lebanon you can buy the Furlex direct from us at Malu Marine.

We first thing to do was remove one side of the v-backstay and loosened the turnbuckle as much as possible on the other side. We marked the turnbuckles with blue tape so we knew where we needed to come back to when we re-tightened them.

The next thing to so was secure the mast, so that when we removed the old forestay/furler it would not do damage. Friday had very light winds so that was an advantage, but we took the wire genoa halyard to a u-bolt on the deck and winched it tight.

It was then possible to remove the bottom pin from the old forestay.

The original forestay had been mounted onto the rear hole on the anchor roller, which meant that all the tension was being taken on two deck screws. Paul thought this a bad idea, and so did we, so we decided when we put the new Furlex back it would be on the middle hole.

We then took the forestay/furler and tied it off to a cleat on the pontoon ready to drop it onto the pontoon.

I then went up the mast and secured the top of the forestay to the spinnaker halyard and removed the top pin. I being at the top of the mast with the standing rigging not bow tight was slightly strange. I am used to the motion of the boat beneath me, but not the mast slightly rattling on top of the boat!

We then lowered the forestay/furler onto the pontoon. Paul had warned us that the luff tube of a furler bent like crazy and it certainly did!

Tim and Sid and I had read through all the instructions the night before, but fitting a Furlex for the first time, it's pretty critical to follow the instructions to the letter. Having got the old furler/forestay to the pontoon the first task is to measure it and calculate cutting figures for the forestay and luff tubes.

This is easier said than done. My old woodwork teacher always said 'measure twice, cut once'. When fitting a new forestay this is even more critical. One mistaken cut and you wait for a new forestay to be delivered!

We measured, we checked each other, we looked again... eventually it was clear and we got the measurements we needed. It would certainly be easier a second time.

The luff tubes fit together really easily, although the instructions fail to mention there is a right way and a wrong way up for the luff tubes. It is important to have the metal infils over the joints not plastic.

Before fixing the top of the luff tubes and the forestay it's important to put on the top swivel, and as Paul said, make sure it's the right way up! The instructions also say to tape it to the sail feed slot which is also a good idea to stop it sliding around.

Then you feed the forestay through the extrusion. The end is annealed, so it should thread easily, but in our case one of the strands wasn't caught well so we had to cut it back a centimetre or so to thread it through.

The top of the new forestay/furler looks really smart and much more secure.

Finally the bit we have been waiting for... or dreading... cutting the forestay to length. A new sharp hacksaw blade did the trick.

The instructions look easy and the parts to join it to the rigging screw also look easy. Too easy. But threading and a wedge over the centre wire proved far from easy.

The instructions then say to bend the outer wires over the end of the wedge. Actually this was the bit I worried about most. The wire stands were so thick I could not believe they would bend over.

However, Tim plus pliers and we had a very much neater end than I was ever expecting.

Two spanners and some gentle, or not so gentle, tightening and the forestay is attached to the rigging screw.

The tape to the right of the finished join is to hold in a pin which we have glued in place till the glue sets.

Finally fit the bottom swivel. The instructions don't say so, but we found out by trial and error that the forestay may appear too short at this point. When hoisted and under tension we found it was perfect.

Hoisting back up and securing the bottom pin proved much easier than I expected. The luff tubes bent like crazy again, but worked fine.

Wow, does this look smart compared to the antiquated Goiot furler we had.

Next, it's back up the mast to secure the top pin. We used the spinnaker halyard to haul it up. I then secured it at the top, lowered the halyard slightly on the luff tubes and Tim was able to winch up such that the top eye aligned with the masthead eye to about 1 millimetre. Fixing the pin through was therefore trivial!

There was only one problem and that was the old guide block for the genoa halyard. Not only had it seized and was being worn through by the halyard acting as a cheese cutter, but it was too low.

With the halyard at this angle it would put undue strain laterally on the luff tubes and forestay.

So, up the mast again and this time to fit a new halyard guide. The problem is, where I really wanted to fit it there were old holes from a previous guide, which would meant I could not secure it properly. So I mounted it about 5 centimetres lower than I really wanted.

That's a new safety harness I have on. Bought for working at height on building sites, thus much cheaper because it didn't have the word 'marine' attached. It is very much more comfortable and made working at height significantly easier. Sid said I was moving around the mast much quicker and more lithely than before.

Here's what the halyard looks like at the correct angle. To shallow and the halyard will wrap around the luff tubes, too acute and it will stress them laterally.

Then it's time to reverse the process and tension the rig again. And remember to use lock nuts to secure the turnbuckles...

...or if you have the other type of turnbuckles, using mousing wire or a split pin to secure it. It's amazing the number of boats we see in the marina without mousing. If the turnbuckle is corroded in, you may get away with it (as we did) but if they are relatively new, then a vibration in the rig can unwind it. Not what you want to happen while you are sailing!

We found that for the same apparent tension we were approx 1 centimetre different on the mast rake. As a cruising boat I'm sure that won't matter!

Finally we fitted the new drum and furling line. The two halves of the drum didn't quite match so we had to file them down so they clipped together. Paul had warned us this might be a possibility. Getting them to clip together took quite a bit of filing, but was worth it eventually.

The furling line itself is led out of the middle of the drum, perpendicular to the forestay. Getting that angle right determines how well (or otherwise) the line feeds onto and off the drum.

Gentle morning sail...

2011-11-20T17:32:00.000+02:00

8 nautical miles

The wind was light, so Tim and I decided a gentle morning sail was in order, and we headed out north for 4 miles then turned round and headed back again. However, the wind dropped as we came back so we motored much of the way back. As we were mooring, we noticed that the engine 'clunked' rather badly going into reverse, so we turned the boat round and moored stern to, and then adjusted then forward-reverse gearbox setting. All in a day's work!

Deck Hatches and Tachometer

2011-11-19T21:01:00.028+02:00

Wind looked high and unstable so we decided on a day's boat maintenance.

One of the problems we wanted to fix was something that had become apparent with the rain we had over the past couple of weeks, and that was that the deck hatches were leaking. Jacob and Marie, who clean King Malu, had mentioned that they thought the hatch above the saloon was leaking. This seemed very strange to us, since we had recently replaced the acrylic in the hatches and sealed it carefully with Sikaflex 291i. During the week, however, we noticed that the Sikaflex had not adhered to the acrylic and that when you pressed the acyclic you could see water between the window and the Sikaflex!

We talked to others about this problem and one person suggested that there is a known problem with Sikaflex and hot temperatures for making it fail to cure properly. Maybe this was the problem, though we only changed them recently and we didn't think the temperature was that high when we did it. Whatever the reason, the Sikaflex 291i hadn't adhered and Tim could push the windows out with his fingers!

We were recommended to try Hyperseak 50, so that's what Tim and Jacob spent their Saturday doing - removing the acrylic, re-masking it and then resealing the hatches. We'll know how effective it is when it next rains.

I (Richard) am working 3 day weeks till the end of the year and so decided to try and find a way of making some kind of tachometer for the Honda outboard, pending doing this for the new electric inboard, which should arrive soon. So I worked out the relevant NMEA sentence and tried sending that to the Raymarine C70 we have on board. I tried everything, but never responded at all. It appears that the C70 only responds to tacho sentences on the Seatalk line, and making a Seatalk interface was definitely not what I want to do right now, expecially as the language is not pure NMEA so would make it more difficult in the software too...

So I decided to try a different approach. The Honda 20HP tacho output gives pulses from a separate coil on the generator, which basically give an AC voltage between 6 and 100 volts depending on the RPM of the engine. So, I decided if I rectify that and smooth it with a 100uF capacitor and then voltage divide it down I should have a DC voltage between 0 and 5 volts that can be displayed on a LED bar graph. I used an LM 3914 IC to display this and 6 high brightness LEDs. Wasn't quite trivial to make it work, but it did work fine eventually (you need both a 12v and a 5v supply for the IC, so two regulators were needed). So that was how I spent my Friday afternoon and Saturday.

Windguru got it wrong!

2011-11-12T18:16:00.002+02:00

Tim and I have been watching the wind predictions on Windguru for Larnaca all week. Earlier in the week it was showing strong winds so I had suggested calling off sailing today. Yesterday, however, the prediction showed the wind abating somewhat down to 12-15 knots, so we decided that we would have a go.

Crew today was Tim, me, Jacob, Dave and Yanis. When we got to King Malu the wind felt a bit more than 12-15 knots. Looking on the wind meter it was showing 15 and up to 20 knots... which looked OK though so we thought we would still go out. We would use a small amount of genoa and a mizzen sail to hold her steady.

The wind was from the north so getting out from the berth was non-trivial but Tim managed that manoeuvre pretty neatly. I was at the stern watching to fend off the boat behind us, but King Malu came back gently and the bow thruster pushed her round.

As soon as we are moving I insisted the crew get their lifejackets on. Normal practice on King Malu is to put life jackets on as soon as we leave the marina, but not until we are outside. Today with the wind the way it is I want people wearing them earlier.

So why don't we put them on as soon as we board? If you fall in they will self-inflate, pretty much instantly. If you are manoeuvring close to another boat and have someone in the water with an inflated life jacket, that person cannot dive down to avoid getting squashed. This actually happened to Tim once so it is a very real possibility.

Anyhow... we came round into the main channel with no problem, then headed out of the marina... white horses everywhere. 28 knots wind from the North. Tim handed the helm over to me and I pushed out into the chop.

Sorry, let's try that again I try to push out and then hit the chop and the 20 HP Honda outboard didn't make headway against this chop at all. Full throttle, no movement - partly due to cavitating, partly due to lack of power because of propellor position. Anyway there was no way we were going to make it so I turned back for the marina and handed the helm back to Tim to get ready for berthing.

But... we didn't turn and the waves were now driving us onto the sea wall protecting the marina. Tim had the outboard full in reverse but to now avail we were edging slowly towards the marina wall...

So I said we would just have to use the genoa and sail ourselves off. We have ordered new suite of sails including new furlex, but that won't be here for a while, so we're still on the old cranky furler... which jammed! So I rushed forward to try and unjam it, to see that the rope holding the furler in place had totally jammed up the furler. I did what I could and ran back to the cockpit to get the safety knife to cut the snagged rope.

We're now about 3 metres from the sea wall...

I must have un-done it enough as a couple of metres of the genoa came out and pushed us round. We were back-winding the genoa like we do to help turn us when tacking. Much more power in the small bit of genoa than a bow thruster!

So we headed back to the berth. We have this extremely awkward berth to get into and out of so either I helm and Tim is at the bow directing or the other way around. Today since he was helming I was at the bow directing.

Coming into the berth, with the wind from the North just makes it even worse as all the boats are pushed together and you have to squeeze them apart to get in. I pointed one way, I hear the bow thruster going, but we're not moving the right direction!

A very small pocket of the genoa had not furled back correctly so we are still sailing. Tim told me later he had the motor full in reverse and we were still moving towards the quayside! We eventually get all the lines attached and refurl the genoa.

Interesting experience and showed everything worked as it should (the theory at least) but also the importance of checking your genoa is running free before you even leave your berth. Of course, even testing beforehand, it could still jam when you need it.

We then went off to the club for a coffee. Yanis, who sails quite a lot, said it was interesting watching us, because we all moved so fast in that situation - each regular crew member doing what's needed. That is because we are all dinghy sailors who have moved up to yachts.

He also mentioned that safety is one of the things he sees as very important to us on our yacht. Too true!

Sorry, no, we don't have any photos of this as it was all a bit to quick to stop and take snaps.

Sunday Sail

2011-11-06T18:35:00.003+02:00

11 nautical miles

Upgrading the VHF radio to include AIS

2011-11-05T19:36:00.006+02:00

We kind of had hoped to get a bit of a sail today, well, I had anyhow, but turned out the whole day was taken up fitting our new Navicom RT-650 VHF radio. We had an old Icom non-MMSI radio and for some time we intended changing it to one that included MMSI, but recently it had been proving more and more unreliable, so we ordered the new RT-650.

Why the Navicom RT-650? Well, it's not just an MMSI compatible marine band transceiver, but also includes two extra 'goodies' - an inbuilt AIS receiver and an MOB bracelet so that when someone is on watch alone, particularly at night, then the watch-keeper wears the bracelet and if they fall overboard then the entire crew is woken up and alerted. Sounds like a simple job, be done by lunchtime...

The first problem was that when we connected the new radio it didn't work. Part of the problem with the old one turned out to be dodgy wiring from the previous owner. He had just twisted wires together and taped them up mid-way along a cable run. Salt water had got into the joint and corroded the wire badly. This horrid twisted joint was hidden behind a waste water pipe so not visible! Tracing and finding the fault took some time and then replacing the old wire with a new cable through a rather tortuous route took longer still.

Next problem was to get the radio to receive GPS signals and send AIS signals. Also easier said than done. The manual, though in English, is somewhat spartan and didn't explain that the GPS input is locked to 4,800 baud whereas the AIS output is switchable and defaults to the normal 38,400 baud. However, the Raymarine C series chart-plotter will either do 4,800 baud or 38,400 baud not a combined send at 4,800 baud and receive at 38,400 baud to be compatible with the Navicom.

Eventually I downgraded the output of the Navicom to 4,800 baud to match the Raymarine, but this is not a good solution as the higher traffic of AIS means it is possible some data will get lost.

Next problem was that the MOB bracelet didn't work - turns out the battery needs charging. But it is a 5volt unit, not 12 volt so needs a separate charger.

The solution for the future may be to build a Seatalk to RS232 or RS422 converter, since Seatalk works at 4,800 baud, and use this to feed the GPS to the Navicom leaving the AIS data at 38,400. Seatalk is basically electrically very similar to RS232, but with 0 being 0 volts not minus volts. Because we only have positive voltages on the boat converting will be a little more difficult. Also, the data standard is not quite the same as NMEA so some translation necessary there too. Anyway... that's for another day... or another way.

We're hoping to sail to Beirut the week beginning the 13th November, so getting everything ready for the trip, and one of those things is having a decent working radio on board.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Sailing to Nissi Beach

2011-10-29T19:34:00.009+03:00

37 nautical miles

I (Richard) am in the UK. At 9AM the phone rings. 'Hi, Tim here... just to say it's the two year anniversary of acquiring King Malu and Sidney, Anna, Jacob and I are on our way to Agia Napa...' Sounds like they had a great sail. Wish I'd been there.

Today we had a wonderful sail. Tim, Sidney and I sailed all the way to Ayia Napa. We started off in a Northerly wind around 10 past 9. On the way we saw a MASSIVE Sailing ship, "Running On Waves", and Tim took some photos. Around 11 o'clock, in 17ish knots of wind, we rounded Cape Pila, and got our speed up to 7.4 knots!!!!!! A RECORD!

On the way in towards shore we passed a fish farm, and then tacked. At this point the wind started switching every which way as predicted. Then we ate while going past Nissi beach, headed back to Cape Pila, saw a flying fish or two, and headed back towards Larnaca in the distance.

Then (once again as predicted) the wind died down to an unsteady 4.5~8.5 knots coming from dead ahead of us. Finally it died out completely. Tim started the motor and we motored. We were worried about there not being enough fuel, but it worked out fine.

After the wind changed again dramatically, we unfurled the Genoa for a bit. We berthed King Malu without mishap. Tim says that once we have the new sails, which he has already ordered, we'll be easily doing 8 knots in a good wind. Can't wait!

Tomorrow I will practice taking her in and out of the marina with Tim.

-Midshipman Jacob

SAGA3 - Beirut to Antalya

2011-10-24T03:12:00.005+03:00

325 nautical miles

'We had a great sail to Antalya. Just the 3 of us. We sailed at 9.5 knots most of the way. A total of only 50 miles motoring as the wind was right on the nose for a short way.' - Tim

8 October 2011

2011-10-19T22:04:00.000+03:00

14 nautical miles

1 October 2011

2011-10-19T22:01:00.000+03:00

23 nautical miles

18 September 2011

2011-09-18T21:58:00.000+03:00

19 nautical miles

Gentle morning sail

2011-09-10T19:50:00.001+03:00

20 nautical miles (route incorrect, more towards Cape Pyla)

Tim was flying to Dubai this evening so we only went for a short sail. However, the new asymmetric spinnaker is amazing...

To start with there was no wind at all so we motored out and anchored and Tim and Jacob swam and cleaned the growth off the outboard. Meanwhile there were loads of boats moving around the bay so I played radar - tracking targets with MARPA as this is something I want to hone as a skill.

Then there was maybe 4 knots of wind so we thought we'd try and see what the new asymmetric made of this: 2 knots SOG! The wind increases slightly to 6 knots and we did 4 knots SOG. We are definitely trimming the sails better and King Malu is sailing faster.

Lunch was amazing. Now we have two gas cylinders we are more prepared to use the gas and Tim cooked pork fillet with apples and salad with blue cheese sauce. My mouth waters thinking about it as I write up the blog.

Coming back we have 11 knots of wind and we're doing more than 6 knots SOG. We decide to furl the asymmetric since I am not feeling great and it needs quite a lot of energy to furl this smoothly on the magic furl.

All in all a wonderful sail.

Monday sail

2011-09-05T19:47:00.000+03:00

25 nautical miles (route incorrect, missing sailing north)

Our guests for the day were Mark with his two daughters Emily and Marie. Marie had just completed a contract testing samples of water and such like in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil disaster, so we very used to being on and off boats, though being treated as 'the scientist' on board is very different to being on a sailing yacht. Much quieter than a work boat!

There was no wind, so first stop was to find somewhere to anchor and let the girls have a swim.

Emily is just starting her career as a singer/performer on Broadway - couldn't really be more different to her sister who is a naturalist/scientist. She was catching some sun before returning to 'the big apple' to look for work.

Although Mark is from the mid-west, he looks as if he could have been born on a boat.

It didn't take long for the two sisters to find the laying in the sun place on board and lie there and catch up with old times.

They referred to Tim and me as 'the two captains'. That's a phrase (captain) I still don't really get used to.

And this is to show they did all really have a day out together sailing!

Oh and I should mention the stowaway we caught on board clinging to the lifelines...

Friday sail

2011-09-03T19:42:00.000+03:00

19 nautical miles

Our guests for today's sail were Mark, Lois and Anahita. Mark grew up on boats. When many of us took the bus or train to go to school, Mark went by boat. He lived in a small island just off the mainland of Canada. It was a very pleasant sail.

Sunbathing sail

2011-08-27T19:25:00.000+03:00

27 nautical miles

This is one of of gentle sails. Some people tell horror stories of their sailing 'adventures'. We have some of those too, but we like to introduce people to sailing like it is most of the time... gentle and very enjoyable.

Sidney is one of our 'regulars', when he's nor off playing golf that is...

Anna has been a couple of times...

Jacob, our midshipman, is always with us... when he can...

Mark, a colleague from the UK, was out for the first time. If you feel a little queasy... keep your eyes on the horizon!

The stern deck is coming into its own now as the weather is cooling slightly and the sun not burning quite so much. Earlier in the season the bimini is a must!

Now both stern and foredeck can be used for sunbathing.

20 August 2011

2011-08-20T19:21:00.000+03:00

17 nautical miles

Our guests for the day with Nader and Billy along with the regular crew of Tim, Jacob and myself. It was a really enjoyable gentle sail.

Sailing with my son

2011-07-30T20:55:00.000+03:00

16 nautical miles

My son Tim is over for the summer. He has finished his degree and next year does his PGCE. I inveigled him out today for a sail. Unlike my older son who likes boats, Tim is more a landlubber and his summary of the day was 'boring' but than hastened to add boring was not that bad!

The first thing this morning was to repair the genoa. The previous owner of King Malu didn't do very good maintenance on her for the last few years and the genoa was one of the places he cut corners: The sacrificial cloth which should protect it from the sun had perished and he hadn't replaced it. This meant that the edge of the genoa is somewhat sun perished. The rest of the sail is fine. We have added sacrificial cloth, but this is now really part of the sail rather than an extra, in that it is holding the edge of the sail together! Anyhow... what this means is that there is a tendency for the edge to rip and need repairing, which is what we did first thing this morning.

We then went down to the marina. Tim (sailing Tim rather than son Tim) took her out and used the new bow thruster to nudge her out. We tacked south hoping to go over the Xenobia but couldn't get that close to the wind and so tacked round to the north. We then put up the gennaker/asymmetric spinnaker and sailed well, doing 5 knots in 7 knots of wind. Actually we seem to be sailing King Malu much better now, and the whole day we sailed close to 5 knots sometime touching over 6 knots. Tim said that it would be great to get that speed on a long passage, as we would get about 120 miles per day.

Tim (son Tim rather than sailing Tim) said that he really liked the bimini which gives a lot of shade and with the open sides the wind keeps us reasonably cool.

It was a great sail.

I took her back into the mooring and having the bow thruster gave me much more confidence: Because we needed steerage we had come it with enough speed for steerage and usually had to use significant reverse thrust to stop her in the berth. If we got it 100% right it was impressive. If we didn't (and this was much of the time) then we would have some sort of difficulty.

So with the bow thruster I brought the speed right down navigating around and knew I could turn her as I wanted to nudging her into place without having speed for steerage. She behaved exactly as I wanted and though Tim said I could have done it faster I prefer slower. King Malu accelerates slower than she decelerates, hence I much prefer to have her slow and nudge the speed up than to have to use reverse to slow her down. Anyway, I was very pleased with the berthing and it meant Tim just stepped off onto the floating dock and took the lines to moor her. Much easier than two weekends ago!

Adding a bow thruster

2011-07-29T20:57:00.004+03:00

With our new permanent berth being really awkward to get in and out from, and with both Tim and I having had problems berthing we decided that a bow thruster was needed, so we lifted King Malu and so we went down to see Costas at Damianou Marine and bought a Quick 4kw bow thruster.

We got him to arrange for professional fitting of the thruster tunnel and we ran the ancillary circuits and then he commissioned it. We added two extra 100 amp hour batteries to power the beast.

By the time it was finished it all looked very neat and because we did this in the summer when the boat yards are quieter we lifted the boat, got the work done, did all we wanted and returned King Malu to the water 7 days later!

Wind from the north

2011-07-17T16:34:00.002+03:00

6 nautical miles

The wind was predicted to be from the south and gentle in the morning (6-8 knots) and stronger in the afternoon (12-15 knots). The intention had been for a gentle sail with two friends of Tim's - Paul and Panny. However... when we got to King Malu we saw the wind was from the north, which is very unusual for this area and was 15 knots gusting 20 knots. We decided if it settled a little lower, maybe 10-12 knots gusting 15 we would sail, otherwise cancel for the day. Panny is not a sailor so unsettling her on her first sail would not be a great idea!

After about half and hour or maybe 45 minutes it did reduce so we decided to try a sail. Just as we were about to leave the motor boat next to us arrives to moor. They have quite a difficultly mooring so we are concerned. The new place we have for mooring is not good. It's really for smaller boats than ours, for instance the chain to which the mooring ropes is only about 1-2 metres away from the boat, to the angle is way to steep for us and we have to use centre mooring rather than end mooring. Actually there are no lines even attached to the chain - a couple of weeks ago Tim dived and attached one line, but is is temporary and we have made two new lines, but need to get someone to dive to attache them to the chain.

Anyway, back to the northerly and getting out of the marina... Our first attempt failed as the guide line for the centre mooring line had not been let go and we were therefore still secured to the pontoon. When we returned we changed the way this is secured so that we will see this line and not miss it. But... that was not all the problems... we don't yet have an inboard so manoeuvring is difficult. In reverse King Malu will always turn to port whatever you do with the wheel since the prop-walk on an outboard makes steering in reverse pretty difficult. We also have no bow thruster.

First problem was that the northerly was blowing the bow round as we reversed out. She just clipped the pole - fortunately just the anchor. Then trying to do a three point turn we had to fend off the sea wall, which broke one of our boat hooks. Still, we got out OK.

Out of the marina on the sea the wind was stronger as you would expect, it was 18 knots, gusting 25 knots. At least that's what the wind instrument told us. So I decided to hand steer as I could spill wind when the gusts came through rather than letting the autopilot hold course and giving our guests a rougher ride!

After tacking to come back the wind dropped a little, but was still gusting quite a lot. Coming back into the marina at just after mid-day it was 'like Piccadilly Circus'. Piccadilly Circus is a square in London where there is always loads of traffic coming from every direction. In our case there 4 or 5 boats coming out, one just ahead of us going in and a whole fleet of them behind us trying to get in.

With the new mooring position you have multiple turns the final one with very restricted space and a boat either side, that gives very little space, it's the fenders that hold us apart, there is no actual space! Too slow and you lose steerage, too fast and you have problems with the pontoon or another boat. Now remember we still have an outboard which has a long throttle cable so fine adjustments to speed are difficult.

Let's just say I didn't do the manoeuvre very well. But thankfully didn't do any serious damage to us or any other boats or to the pontoon! Just after we secured the wind changed 180 degrees and so we were trying this just before a wind shift where the wind is unstable anyway.

Problems with the gennaker

2011-07-16T19:28:00.006+03:00

17 nautical miles

Jacob and Marie are our boat cleaners - every week they go down and swab down the decks, clean outside and spend a couple of hours doing some polishing of the metalwork. Polishing the metalwork is an endless job and since it has not been done for many years needs a lot of hard work to return the stainless steel to looking bright and shiny. We have one requirement for this: Being teenagers Jacob and Marie must be together for safety.

So, since Marie was away at camp this week, Jacob encouraged Anji, a adult friend who is staying with the family to come down with him. When he got back his Mum asked her how it was. Her reply was something along these lines, 'Well, it was rather stressful, lying in the sun on a yacht reading and watching someone else do all the work...' We thought she should see King Malu in her element and invited Anji to sail with us today.

First stop was round to the anchoring area north of the port for a swim. This time we anchored easily. Partly this was due to the wind and partly due to paying out the chain carefully so the catenary was always drooping correctly.

After the swim and a drink we set sail. The temperature gauge was showing an air temperature of 31.6C so drinking enough to not become dehydrated is a critical part of sailing in the Med. The wind was light - maybe 6-8 knots to start with, from the south east, so we set the new gennaker and headed off towards Cape Pila. King Malu was sailing beautifully, I think we have got the knack of how to set the sails now. We were getting about 4 knots SOG in 6 knots wind.

During the morning the wind freshened to about 12-15 knots. Glorious sailing. Then time for a tack to return. To do this with the gennaker you have to furl it on the magic furl and then tack and then unfurl. We tried furling and found the bottom joint had seized. The gennaker should furl from the centre to the ends, but with the bottom seized it furled from the bottom up, leaving the top somewhat of a mess. We needed to drop the gennaker to the deck and get it stowed as quickly as possible. I started the motor and headed King Malu into the wind. Bad move. The top of the gennaker now spilled out balooning and making it very difficult to control. I took her 30 degrees off the wind. Now it was just difficult! We dropped the sail to the deck, Tim almost falling on the sail to keep it from balooning up and damage, then get it into the sail bag and below without any damage.

Whereas we had been thinking of sailing down and back up the coast for a bit, we decided we had enough and headed back to the marina under genoa and main.

Returning to our mooring also proved difficult, especially because there was an extra guest yacht moored alongside the sea wall. The turn that is normally difficult became impossible without a bow thruster or very still water. We ended up grabbing the boats either side and walking ourselves in. Definitely not an elegant way to moor and would have been even more difficult in stronger wind.

Then it was back up to Tim's flat to sort out the gennaker. We never did find out why the lower joint had seized, but it had seized solid. We sprayed everything with WD40 and made a note to remember this as part of our regular monthly maintenance.

The second thing we wanted to do was sew a sleeve for the rubbing strip for the dinghy. Mick watched the 'Larnaka men's sewing club' in action.

I think this was actually the longest seam we have done.

We then returned to the marina to fit it. Mick remarked that the dinghy was now looking very Greek, with the blue rubbing strip and the white hull.

The dinghy has been an ongoing project, and it's still not finished. When we inherited King Malu, she came with a wooden tender in somewhat poor state of repair. We cleaned it up and did some repairs to the wood, including adding buoyancy tanks. Then some friends from Alpha Divers fibre glassed and gell coated it.

It's nearly ready for use again as a tender, but still a little more TLC needed.

Sailing with the family Robinson

2011-07-09T23:55:00.008+03:00

15 nautical miles

No, not Swiss family Robinson, but Northern Irish family Robinson were are guests today: Peter, Rachel, Sam, Bella and Naomi.

The wind was low, 6-8 knots coming from the south east so we raised as much sail as we could - new gennaker, main, mizzen and mizzen staysail and headed south. Aim was to tack round sailing over the Zenobia, wave to our friend Chris who runs Alpha Divers, and then head out towards Cape Pila.

The Zenobia was a Swedish build roll-on roll-off ferry that got into difficulties and then capsized and sank on her maiden voyage in 1980. She now rests on her port side in approximately 42 metres of water and has been named as one the The Times top ten diving sites for wrecks in the world.

Chris, who, as I said runs Alpha Divers, is a friend of ours and the Robinsons and was out diving the Zenobia early in the morning. Early morning is a good time to dive and a bad time to sail due to lack of wind. Diving doesn't excite me, but Sam, the eldest son of the Robinsons has dived down to, but not into the Zenobia.

Alpha Divers do a lot of diving of the Zenobia and depending on diver experience and capability can even take divers inside the wreck: It's like a tour of a ferry - the bridge, the restaurant, Duty Free shop, chain lockers, life shaft, engine room and even the vehicle decks where you can see over 100 trucks still full of sunken cargo!

Last year Alpha Divers were dive support for a film crew making a film about the Zenobia wreck. The Official Zenobia Documentary looks at the ship and its history - why did a modern ship on its maiden voyage sink? Was it sabotage from Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, was it some sort of insurance issue or was it just a plain old technical failure? The documentary that Chris acted as dive support for asks and answers these fascinating questions. Well... I guess it's more fascinating if you dive the wreck!

Summer has finally arrived. It's hot and somewhat humid, though the humidity hasn't risen to its normal dripping wetness of the summer. That, no doubt, is to come.

Replete in live jackets the crew and guests lounge around the deck enjoying the shade of the bimini and the cool breeze coming of the Mediterranean Sea.

The wind picks up to around 12-15 knots and Bella and Sam are given a chance to steer the yacht, since we have dropped the gennaker and are now sailing on just genoa, main and mizzen.

Relaxing for Rachel is lying with a book, preferably a book resting on the stomach of her oldest child!

Lunch off the Dhekelia Power Station and it's time to head back. Well... not back, but to a mooring north of the port where a lot of yachts drop anchor and let their crews swim.

At 12-15 knots Tim and I are concerned about our anchor holding. We have two anchors - one that fits in the pulpit and the other that we have in the sail locker for overnight mooring. The one in the pulpit is a plough anchor. It is both slightly small for the boat size and tends not to set too well on the sandy bottom around Larnaca.

We drop anchor in just over 3 metres of water, with 20 metres of chain. This should be plenty for a good catenery and hold firm, but strangely King Malu will not settle head to wind, but almost continues sailing without any sails up, dragging the anchor as she goes. There are yachts all around this anchorage and we are concerned about hitting them. We try three times to set anchor amongst the other boats and fail.

Eventually we set the anchor in 2.1 metres of water but much closer in. This time the boat comes head to wind, but in 2.1 metres Tim and I are concerned about any anchor slip as we only have about half a metre under the keel and the last thing we want to do is ground the boat. So everyone who is swimming is told the must come out of the water quickly if told to do so and I set an anchor alarm at a few metres. Everyone except Rachel and I jump in and cool off.

A minute later and the anchor alarm goes off. I reset it. About 3 minutes later it goes off again. I cannot see a slippage - I am watching points on the shore I have lined up, but nevertheless it's enough to worry us so we call everyone in and head back to the marina.

We will need to find some way of securing the bigger anchor close to the pulpit so we can use it for day sails I think/

After the Robinsons have left Jacob, Tim and I fit a new bilge pump which is vey much smaller and will go right down to the bottom of the bilge and hopefully keep out bilges a bit drier.

We also fit the new table we have bought for the saloon. This is the first step in the interior cosmetic upgrade. I know a table is more than just cosmetic, but it certainly is a start to making the interior more habitable.

500 miles... new Gennaker... repaired bilge pump...

2011-07-03T14:50:00.000+03:00

4 nautical miles

We had hoped to try our new gennaker yesterday, but what with moving berths there was too much on for us to get the time to attach the new gennaker which we got from Crusader Sails to the Magic Furl. So, first thing this morning we attached one end of the magic furl to the railing on Tim's balcony and then stretched it out right across his flat (it's a big flat) and with Tim tensioning it and Erika winding and me making sure it wound correctly we wound it onto the magic furl.

So what are the differences between a gennaker and an asymmetric spinnaker? Wikipedia comes to the rescue...

The differences that distinguish a gennaker from an asymmetric spinnaker are blurry; they are both high camber downwind sails. One difference is the amount of camber, which dictates the points of sail. A gennaker is optimal for a beam reach, while an asymmetric spinnaker is optimal for a broad reach or run.

So then down to King Malu and try it out this morning while the winds were low. But before that I went up the mast to fix some new spreader protectors over the ends of the main spreaders. The last thing we want to do is to damage this brand new sail!

We went out and tried unfurling and re-furling - it did much better than the old asymmetric we used to have, partly this is because it was cut to work with magic furl and partly because the old asymmetric was actually a cut down full spinnaker and partly because it is a brand new sail. Anyway we were very pleased with it. The shape is better, and it pulled better in 6-7 knots of wind we were getting more than 4 knots SOG with only the gennaker up.

We did try the genoa with it briefly but need to work out the lines better to try it again in the future. Yes, Malu Marine is the name to watch. It's the name of the company Tim and I have formed to supply specialist sailing equipment that is currently unavailable in Cyprus.

When we got back to the marina Tim berthed the yacht as he wanted to try in the new mooring. He took it about 1 knot faster than I do into the marina and round into the main waterway. With the extra turn before the new mooring we slowed down well on that, so I will do his speed rather than mine in the future. The old mooring had only two turns to slow with, the new mooring has five turns to slow, so we can come in slightly quicker, like many of the other boats in the marina. It's just I have this fixation with trying not to hit the floating dock!

We did about 4 nautical miles today which just tipped us over the 500 mark to 502 nautical miles we have sailed in King Malu. We are both becoming much more comfortable with her, so we expect the next 500 to go very much more quickly as we will try some longer trips.

Anyway, we then looked around for a small job to do before lunch and decided the manual bilge pump was to be that job.

The manual bilge pump has been leaking ever since we had the boat. I don't know if it was original or had been replaced, but the pump housing which takes the inspection hatch moved whenever you pumped it which in turn moved the inspection hatch which then leaked water into the engine room. Not a good idea!

We had tried replacing the inspection hatch but that didn't help at all.

About a year ago we had bought a new Henderson/Lavac Mark V pump for the for'ard heads since that had been leaking and we thought best to just replace the whole unit. But... although it claimed to be a Henderson/Lavac Mark V it wasn't the same size and the pump wouldn't fit. However, the inspection hatch did, so we replaced that from the new unit and the old one stopped leaking. Hence we now had a new Henderson Mark V pump with an old inspection hatch.

The Mark V bilge pump appeared well and truly fitted to the bulkhead so the thought of changing the whole thing was somewhat daunting. So what we did was replace the front housing from the old one that moved when we pumped with the front housing from the new one. This worked wonderfully... no more water in the engine room!

The 'new' Henderson Mark V pump we are still keeping as parts, though less than 50% is now new.

Another gentle day sail...

2011-07-02T18:50:00.002+03:00

19 nautical miles

The day started early... well... early for me, at 7:15 picking up Tim, Sidney and Jacob and going to the marina. We needed to move the boat to a new berth. Hopefully this will be our permanent berth. If you zoom in on the map above you will see we left from one berth and returned to a different one. That's not totally correct, it's just we didn't do a spot location at the new berth before we left.

Anyhow, the new berth is at 90 degrees to the old one, which means that prevailing winds will now be on our beam instead of our bow. We'll have to wait and see how this affects us. Early in the morning, before the wind gets up is the best time for manoeuvring round the marina, so we tried both a bow to and stern too mooring. It's nothing like as easy to get in and out of this new berth, but no doubt it will become 'home' as we get used to it.

Sidney didn't come with us for the day but a business client of Tim's called Vladimir from Russia joined us for the day.

Some sailors like to tell of their horror stories. We like the nice days sailing and this was one of the best. 7-9 knots in the morning and 15-20 knots in the afternoon. Gentle and just the thing to unwind and the end of a hard week.

And... a great lunch out in the yacht near Cape Pila. What more could you want?

Night sailing and tornado...

2011-06-25T21:25:00.009+03:00

54 nautical miles

Tim and I want to build up our night hours so we decided to do an overnight sail last night. The passage plan had been to broad reach south to Cape Kiti and then close reach south west. Then when the predicted wind turn happened around 5am to tack and turn north onto a close reach. The aim would be to see the new fishing harbour at Zygi just after dawn for breakfast. Then we would gybe around 6am and run back to Cape Kiti, have lunch while sailing, and finally a beam reach back to Larnaca Marina.

When we arrived at King Malu around 10pm Tim had all the sails ready for hoisting and so the rest of the crew - namely me, Jacob and Jörn got aboard, lifejackets on and we set off. This was the first time manoeuvring around the marina after dark so I was taking it carefully.

The first problem we noticed was the port and starboard navigation lights were not working. Great. That's all we need. Expected it to be a blown bulb. Navigation lights are the only non LED lights we have on the boat. It wasn't that. The wiring for the breaker panel is due to be renewed very sortly, maybe a wire off there. It wasn't that. Check power at the panel in the for'ard cabin and it's fine there, so it means it is somewhere between the for'ard cabin and the lamp unit. Eventually I traced it down to a corroded joint at the bow lamp fitting itself.

So we enjoyed the night for a short while and Jacob and Jörn (Jörn is Jacob's dad) went off to sleep in the for'ard cabin, Tim settled to sleep in the saloon and I took first watch. The wind was 11 knots 230 T so looks like the passage plan will work perfectly.

Tim had barely settled than he is up concerned that the bilge pump is making a lot of noise. We had been working in the engine room and adjusted the prop shaft so maybe the bearing there is leaking. But it isn't. Next thought is that maybe there had been extra water in the bilges and the pitching of the boat was just running it down to where it can be pumped out. We therefore manually pump out and Tim heads off to sleep again.

Less than 20 minutes later the bilge pump is on again. Maybe the pitching is pushing water back into the bilges. We pump out again and Tim goes off to sleep... again.

40 minutes later and the bilge pump is making noise again. So this is serious and we look round to try to locate the problem. Do we really have a leak on one of the through hull fittings? Checking those after dark isn't fun.

Eventually we trace it to a leaking fresh water tank seal and since the fresh water had been slightly over filled by Jacob earlier in the day this is where the extra water is coming from. Relief and Tim goes off to sleep again. Why does he get up? Well the saloon sea berth is just above the bilges so it's the noisiest place for hearing the bilge pump cut in. We do need to add an indicator in the cockpit so we know when the bilge pump cuts in.

The wind is still a steady 11 knots and from the same direction. We have genoa, full main and full mizzen and King Malu is nicely sailing along at 4.4 knots. That's slow for her, but the waves are choppy and holding her back. Still the sail plan feels comfortable and I am enjoying it immensely. At this stage I should have thought about Jacob and Jörn in the front cabin, but they seemed to be sleeping peacefully so I do nothing. If we had moved them to the stern cabin the ride would have been slightly less rough.

The plankton are being kicked aside by our bow wave as we plunge into the waves resulting is sparkling phosphorescent flecks cast out from the yacht as she surges through the water. That and the millions of stars overhead seen clearly because of the lack of light pollution make for a wonderful night alone with God.

About 45 minutes after midnight I spot a radar target on our port bow and track it to ensure it will pass astern of us. The wind has picked up marginally to 12 knots but our boat speed down to 3.9 knots. The waves are really impacting us.

I had been trying to give Tim a full 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep but he appears on deck so we change watch.

About an hour and a quarter later I wake and so we change watch again. The wind is still 12 knots and the waves must be slightly kinder as we are now up to 4.7 knots. I spot a ship on our port bow about two miles off and watch as she crosses ahead safely. I hand steer for quite a while, just for the sheer pleasure of doing so.

An hour later the wind has dropped three knots though the direction is still the same, but the waves must also have reduced as we are now up to 5.1 knots. I reduce the sensitivity of the autopilot and notice that the wheel is moving between two positions back and forth. So I try something: I turn off the autopilot and lock the wheel mid way between the two two points. I am fairly sure we are well balanced and having just read Joshua Slocum's account of his round the world passage without autopilot or wind vane I am interested to see how King Malu performs. I watch the wind indicator and the compass. She holds her course, weaving back and forth only slightly as she is knocked by the waves but holding true to her original course.

Just before 4am Tim comes on deck, we tack and head back towards the shore. Our aim still to see Zygi fishing harbour. If the wind holds we'll nearly get to Limassol. Tim relieves me on watch and an hour later the wind shifts and he starts the motor to motor sail. By the time I come on deck again at 5:26. I had asked me to called around dawn so I could see the sun rise over the Mediterranean.

On the starboard side... sunrise. On the port side... less than half a nautical mile away was a huge great car transporter. Tim thought they had seen us as they had slowed from 15 to 3 knots. While I watched both we and they changed direction (defensive sailing?) and they picked up speed again to 12 knots.

The wind had dropped to under 5 knots and it's now more motor than sailing. We'll not make Zygi, Tim has turned to be west of Cape Kiti. We discuss motoring more west towards Zygi, but if the wind does drop more still we are faced with a very long motor back to Larnaca and we still only have a 20 HP Honda outboard to drive us. Actually the Honda outboard is amazing. I think we ran it for nearly six hours and used only 10 euros of fuel.

Sometime around 7am we make some fresh percolated coffee and Jacob and Jörn appear. Sadly Jörn has not had a good night and is looking unwell. Normally the best way to revive Jörn is some good coffee, but this doesn't have the desired effect and he is sea sick.

Since the winds are light and about 120 degrees off our starboard quarter we decide it's time for all the light downwind sails and hoist both the asymmetric spinnaker and the mizzen stay sail. We get another knot of speed out of this and King Malu looks like a ketch should, flying more canvas than a regular modern sloop! The motor revs are cut back and it's only assisting now, not the primary part of the propulsion.

A hour or so later Tim cooks breakfast, a feast of fresh tomatoes, cucumber, fried Haloumi and pitta bread.

I don't have the pitta as it seems flour products give me indigestion early in the morning. Jörn decided to give all food a miss and takes a shower instead.

We turn slightly more eastwards still towards a way point a mile or so south east of Cape Kiti. It's very shallow around that cape with shoal waters. Tim has run aground even on his trimaran so we are being careful. More careful than we need to be, since we pass another yacht motor sailing well inshore of us.

Jacob watches as she passes. It appears the yacht is moving very fast, but since we are it are both doing 5 knots then the apparent speed is about 10 knots.

We pass Cape Kiti. The wind generators behind Pervolia are easy to see. Jörn remarks how they spoil the landscape and I remember how my parents said exactly the same thing about the pylons crossing the South Downs when I was a child. He doesn't like them either, but both are a necessary part of 21st century life. I wonder what the island looked like one hundred years ago.

Jörn remarks how he does like to see the island like this from the sea. Some day I long to circumnavigate... not the globe, but the island.

Since the waves have now all but disappeared we are able to sail again rather than motor sail. Silence returns to the yacht. Not that the outboard is noisy - far from it, it's probably quieter than an inboard diesel as Tim remarked while we were sitting chatting in the cockpit.

Tim and Jörn lay out in the sun. Not many minutes later Tim decides his legs are cooking in the hot Mediterranean sun and so I fetch a sheet from the cabin to allow his legs not to roast.

It's a leisurely gentle sail now, such a pity Jörn is still not feeling well enough to enjoy it.

Tim trims all the sails and King Malu is sailing so well we phone Claire and Erica and suggest they come down to the fishing harbour just south of Larnaca and we will sail inshore for them to photograph us. We don't have any photos of King Malu sailing except those taken on board.

I look at the chart plotter, checking depths and positions and work out a route. It will need a gybe to bring us to about 160 degrees on port tack to bring us inshore, then another gybe to 160 the other side for a run past them to photograph us, then a quick turn out. It's going to be fairly shallow, but should be OK.

As we gybe onto the port tack for the final run Claire manages to catch us on camera at the end of the lens just as the spinnaker fills with wind.

I am glued to the instruments. We have about seven knots wind and hardly gusting at all, which is good. The swimming buoys are now about 30-50 metres on our port side and I must not under any circumstances go into that area.

We have a preventer on the mainsail. Years ago I had done an accidental gybe on a yacht about the same size as King Malu and it had frightened me enough to never take chances. Of course, at that stage I had much less sailing experience than I have now, but experiences like that stay with you for years. Actually, seeing how much easier I found it to hold the course within a few degrees was encouraging to me.

But now I am totally focused on the wind... and the depth... and the chart plotter... and the swimming buoys... and a power boat that is moored... and a couple of ribs skidding about. Tim and Jacob are responsible for the sails, I'm going to remain focussed on helming.

Then... SLAP... what was that? Sounded like someone with a huge hand slapping the water just off our starboard bow. Tim points to the start of a tornado that has touched down about 25 metres from us on starboard quarter. I glance over, but am still glued to the instruments. We are now at 3.2 metres depth which does give 1.6 metres under the keel but that's not a lot of space for manoeuvring on our port side, especially with the swimming area that side too.

Suddenly we are knocked over to 30-40 degrees as the tornado sucks air towards it. The wind indicator spins right round. OK, what do do? The 15 tonne yacht is behaving more like a dinghy! It stabilises on our port bow so I throw the wheel over taking us directly into the wind hoping to spill as much wind as possible. Tim shouts for the safety knife which Jacob passes him and he slashes the spinnaker sheet letting the sail fly freely. I shout to Jacob to let the main sheet fly and Tim quickly removes the preventer so that the main sail can go where it wants. I start and engage the motor so that whatever the wind is doing with the sails flying free I still have some steerage.

In a few seconds it is all over and we are stable again. Albeit with a spinnaker flying loose, which Tim furls as quickly as possible. We find the sheet he had slashed shredded about 30cm. Who knows what stress that was under when he slashed it! There is a small tear in the spinnaker where it slashed across the shrouds.

The wind is now 12 knots gusting 15. It has nearly doubled in as many seconds as the wind speed.

I don't think I want to go through that again, but it was good to know how King Malu behaves. When 15 tonnes of yacht gets kicked over to 30-40 degrees in just a few seconds I wondered if she was going to go further, but she didn't, she came back and seeing how we as a crew behaved was good too. I realise she wasn't behaving like a dinghy as had we been out in the Wayfarer we would all be in the water by now! I had lost my first boat, a Mirror sailing dinghy, as the result of a tornado coming through our sailing club about four miles north of where we are now.

Since there may be more tornados we drop the main and mizzen sails and decide to motor back to the marina. Just as we arrive at the marina we find a committee boat moored a few hundred metres away from the entrance and yachts with full sails bearing down on us. We give way and get into the marina.

When we are moored I find that the sudden bounce to 30-40 degrees had knocked the floorboards in the stern cabin out or their normal resting place and so put them back, but other than that King Malu looks none the worse for the experience.

All in all it was a very enjoyable sail.

20 Jun Sail

2011-06-20T20:52:00.008+03:00

14 nautical miles

Afternoon sail with a friend Derek and Tim. The wind was predicted to be very light. Questionable if sailable at all - 4 or 5 knots at most. But it turned out to be brilliant sailing weather 11-12 knots constant dropping as we returned to the marina to 8 knots.

Of course... when I say dropping to 8 knots was we returned to the marina it then picked up again to 12 knots as we arrived inside the marina, which meant I failed in two attempts to moor King Malu stern to and ended up mooring her bow to. Oh well... when we get the new internal drive it should be easier.

This was a sail both Tim and I needed, we had spent the weekend doing work on the yacht and needed this nice gentle sail around the bay to unwind. It was extremely restful.

Working out how to fix the motor

2011-06-18T21:49:00.000+03:00

The company developing the electric drive chain sent over a model the size of the new drive and with the mounting plates. The aim of this is to work out how to mount it before we are manhandling a motor weighing over 100kg!

We went out looking for shock absorber mounts and found two alternatives - one 5cm and one 7cm high. We thought the 7cm would be the right ones.
We took out the old mounting rafters and turned them around to become rafters for the new drive.

The motor is normally mounted centrally in the engine room, but our engine room is offset to the port side due to being a centre cockpit ketch, hence the motor needs to be mounted offset. So... to check alignment we bolted a piece of timber to the suspension mounting plates and hey presto... looks great... couldn't do it that easily with the real thing so the polystyrene mockup is proving its worth!

What we did find was that the 5cm shock absorbers would probably be the right size, much to our pleasure.

Now the amazing bit. We removed the model and put a wood dowel in the front to simulate the drive shaft and it lined up perfectly. Couldn't have fitted better.
Now that made a very encouraging day. Now we just wait for the real thing!

29 May Sail

2011-05-29T20:52:00.002+03:00

12 nautical miles

21 May Sail

2011-05-21T20:50:00.004+03:00

16 nautical miles

Early start to the day. King Malu always looks like she is sleeping when you arrive and see the windscreen cover over her. The low sun adds the effect that she is slowly waking up.

The auto pilot allows us to go around the boat while she is sailed by the computer. It always looks strange to me though seeing the cockpit totally empty.

Whenever possible we let everyone have a chance at steering the boat.

David's daughter is wearing a way oversize jacket to try to stay warm. Often the weather looks sunny and bright, but in the spring it can still be quite cool out on the water.

Sail away...

2011-04-25T21:50:00.008+03:00

18 nautical miles

This was a quick morning sail that Tim took, with friends from South Africa, while Richard is in the UK. It would have been longer, but Tim's mum is seriously ill in hospital and so he needs to be with her.

Yes, Raymarine C70 the chart plotter is back in place. Damianou Marine Electronics Ltd, which are the Cyprus distributor for Raymarine are great. They checked it out, found it needed new motherboard and some other components, did the repair and returned it to us within a few days!

Plotter problems...

2011-04-16T21:25:00.011+03:00

We replaced our chart plotter earlier this year from the Raymarine A70 to a C70. progressively more it kept crashing. Last thing you want from a chart plotter. It kept saying 'Improper Cartridge Removal' even when we hadn't touched the cartridge. To start with we thought it was something we were doing wrong with the cartridge, and talked to our local Raymarine dealer from whom we bought it.

Eventually we came to the conclusion there was something wrong so removed it today and took it back to the dealer for him to look at it. I (Richard) am away for a month in the UK, since my son is getting married so it's a good time for this.

Sails?

2011-04-16T20:42:00.004+03:00

13 nautical miles

Today was a sail with two purposes: Give some guests a taste of sailing and try out the new magicfurl on our asymmetric spinakker. Currently we have 5 sails in our wardrobe: main, mizzen, genoa, mizzen staysail and asymmetric spinakker. The asymmetric had a sock for dousing the sail, but because it was old and worn every time we used it it ripped the sail.

Tim had seen magicfurl from Crusader Sails and thought this would be the answer. So we bought it... but... it needed a bowsprit and the cost of that was quite high so we decided to cut down our spinakker pole and make a bowsprit out of that.

We took a section out of the middle of it and then used a shackle to clamp it to the deck. The loop it goes through was constructed out of a piece of stainless steel we inherited with the boat. The bobstay is a 3:1 block and tackle which we also inherited with the boat, albeit with new rope.

The magicfurl itself was fitted to the end of the spinakker pole with a couple of shackles.

We cut the spinakker pole carefully with an angle grinder and then remounted the joining piece that was formed from the two parts of the original pole.

What we did though was to mount the two end pieces at 90 degrees to each other so that the end over the water was vertical to take the magicfurl and the end on the deck was horizontal to clip into a shackle attached to a loop on the deck holding it in place. We also added a cleat on the side for the bobstay line.

Basically at the start of the day you run out the bowsprit and hoist the asymmetric and then whenever you need it you unfurl and furl with the magicfurl... sitting comfortably on the liferaft on the foredeck.

It looked beautiful and added a knot of speed to our sailing.

The deeper red ring is from a patch to the sail put there by the previous owner. In fact it's a pain as it's double thickness and so tends to bunch up on the magicfurl.

Sailing with a bowsprit seems to give the boat class. One of the old masters and it keeps the asymmetric away from the furling genoa, which was the main purpose of the project.

It was much easier running out the bowsprit and unfurling and furling the asymmetric that the previous method with the sock.

We found you could just fly the asymmetric at 80 degrees apparent wind and really only filled well at 90 degrees apparent wind. We will be testing more in the future.

We did find that we had to be careful furling it - not put too much pressure on the sheet or it reverse furled. When this happened we had to clear the problem the following day.

The day sailing was very enjoyable.

Our guests brought food and drink - we provided the boat.

Hopefully more photos later from the day.

So what of future sails?

A mule... (proper name is 'main backstaysail') something like the the inverted triangular sail on Good Fortune. Some people suggest adding a half wishbone pole to it. Some people rave about it. Or we could go bigger with a Fisherman's staysail or a gollywobbler or gollyker. But Tim showed me something more interesting and we have lost the link: a pair of dihedral sails for downwind sailing. He also talked about a kite sail (and a kite cam, but that is very different). We might also need a riding sail... this hobby is interesting in the various options. I am very glad we have a ketch which gives us opportunities to play with the rig.

Marie joins us sailing

2011-04-01T23:15:00.039+03:00

17 nautical miles

The spot positions didn't really do justice to where we sailed, so I photographed the screen of the chart plotter to show. I believe there is a way to screen capture from the chart plotter, but I have not found that yet, so the image sadly has the moire patterning of a photo of an LCD screen.

A new crew member today - Jacob's older sister Marie. I had taught her to sail a couple of years ago and although she enjoys sailing, doesn't talk of it in quite the same way Jacob does, so I had forgotten to invite her. We rectified that today and she came out to see how a very much larger (than the 5 metre / 16 ft Wayfarer) boat sails.

We sailed out, did a couple of tacks for practice then off into the bay. We then thought about sailing back to the dinghy sailing club to see what they were doing, but it didn't look like there were any boats out. We hove too for lunch.

The wind came almost exactly as predicted, building during the morning then dying away by just after lunchtime so we didn't sail too far, not wanting to motor back. Jacob wanted to see if we could see the Xenobia wreck by sailing over it, but with the water the way it was (ie choppy) we would see almost nothing. You really need very still water to see the wreck.

One thing we found is that the roller furling jams and is difficult to use at times. This is because the bearing at the bottom of the has broken losing all the ball bearings and the unit is no loner repaired to get a replacement. Last year it didn't jam as much so we shall try to find a solution.

Overnight sail

2011-03-26T17:27:00.042+02:00

65 nautical miles
(12 hours night sailing, average speed 3.8 knots, max speed 8.2 knots)

This was our first night sail on King Malu.

We had hoped others might join us, but in the end it was just Tim and me. Which meant... since we had enough food to feed two more crew, we had way more food than we needed. This was especially true since we came back before rather than after lunch on Saturday.

We left the marina just before 5 pm, having spent longer dropping off the 'day crew' because our friend Chris had a problem with batteries, so we lent him two of ours.

This meant we had just about an hour of daylight before sunset. We checked all the navigation lights and set back to enjoy the sunset.

One of the pleasures of sailing is seeing the beauty of God's creation - from sunsets, the stars without the clutter of 'light pollution', moon rise over the sea and dawn coming up. These were all pleasures we could see on this night sail. I was particularly impressed by he stars. I don't think I had ever seen them so clearly in my life. I could see the main stars, some dimmer ones and constellations.

As we sailed we did see 'sky glows' from the cities. I don't know how far we were seeing, but it looked like we saw the sky glow from Limassol. Though it was beautiful from a distance, the excessive energy waste from over illumination not only robs people of the beauty of the stars, but costs a huge amount. The un-necessary over illumination in the USA, for instance, reflects 4% of the total energy used, or about 5 million barrels of oil per day.

The plan was to push out south east, then wherever we had got to by 2am to turn and head for home. 2am being approximately the half way point by time. Since the wind was from the south west we had a glorious beam reach out from the marina. To start with the wind was at about 8-12 knots and we were gently sailing along at about 3.5 knots, which is reasonable for a ketch of 15 tonnes.

Originally I had planned spaghetti bolonaise for the crew, but since Tim was still on a diet, I just cooked up scrambles eggs and ham, with pitta bread for me (Tim was not allowed the bread on his diet). I had also got an apple pie for desert... expecting two or three to eat it, but it had thawed so had to be cooked. This was the first time we had used the oven on the boat so it smelt slightly of burning plastic. However, it tasted good when it was cooked and was obviously something relatively easy to cook onboard.

After dinner we put on our 'foul weather gear'. Not that the weather was foul, just when the sun dropped the temperature dropped and the wind on the sea made it feel really cold. Around 8pm Tim decided to take a two hour shut eye and so I took the first watch. Sailing along in King Malu with the stars as you don't normally see them and nobody else on deck is something magical. I wish there were some way to capture this and share it with people, but you have to experience it for yourself to know what it is like.

Around 9:30 the wind started to pick up and King Malu started to increase her speed. It felt to me like she was finally saying thank you to be back in her element. I was seeing wind speeds of 13, then 14 knots and boat speeds of 4, 5 and finally 6 knots. It was gusting quite a lot so steering through the gusts was fun. I decided that when it reached 15 knots wind I would call Tim to reduce sail. We are both conservative sailors, so having reduced sail after dark is what we both consider prudent.

Just as I saw the wind gauge hit 15 knots and was about to call Tim, he came on deck and we thought about furling the genoa slightly, but I decided I would rather drop the main totally and sail on genoa and mizzen sails. She balanced beautifully on that and Tim looked at the max speed on the GPS and found that before we had reduced sail I had actually touched 7.1 knots SOG.

Actually, both Tim and I were very tired when we started the sail, so after an hour in the cockpit together, we tacked and I put my head down leaving Tim sailing alone. When I got up a couple of hours later he pointed out to me the golden crescent of the moon rising over the sea. We swapped watches and he headed for a lie down. When we are sailing two handed the person off watch sleeps in the saloon so they are ready within a few seconds to be on deck and help if needed. It allows the person off watch to sleep on port or starboard side depending on the tack we are on.

The wind hand turned and so through the night whenever we changed watches we also tacked... it was not coming from the north west - exactly the direction we wanted to sail.

The radar worked well: We had it set to be doing 20 rotations every 3 minutes so you got a snapshot of what is happening every three minutes. On transatlantic passages it might be possible to be longer than that, but since are in an area with a small amount of commercial shipping we feel it prudent to check every 3 minutes. At one stage when I was on watch I noticed three targets, one of which looked like it had a CPA (closest point of approach) that was closer than I could judge by eye, so turned the radar on to continuous and use the MARPA tracking to do all the calculations. It turned out to be a tanker than was on a reciprocal course to us and passed by about 2 miles off. With AIS (one of our next additions) we would have known even the ships name and passage plan.

As we were heading back the boat was pitching somewhat into the waves and I needed to use the toilet. Not an easy task with foul weather gear on and as I found out... a quick way to make you feel sea sick! Back on deck I threw up and then offered to take the next watch so I could hand steer to take my mind off it. An hour later or so Tim came back up to see how I was and we swapped watches. I went below, but felt worse down below and came up on deck and threw up again. This time I decided that drowsing in the cockpit was a better option. Drowsing? Well... I slept quite deeply this time and it is probably exhaustion that made me sea sick, since I have only been sea sick once before and this week has been frenetic with only a few hours sleep many nights. I had started off the sail already very tired!

While I slept, Tim sailed and I woke to find that he had started the engine and was motore sailing to allow us to get closer to the wind. Since the wind turns somewhat round Larnaca bay anyway this meant that he could keep pinching the wind more and more till we were able to motor sail directly towards the marina. A few miles out the wind pick up and had turned enough that we sailed the last few miles without the engine.

I took the helm as we came towards the marina. Another yacht was sailing northwards past the marina entrance. Both of us were on port tack, they were slightly more to windward of us, so we had right of way, but I changed course to allow them to pass since we were wanting to go into the marina. Suddenly they turned towards the marina itself and furled the genoa. So, that meant now they were ahead and had right to go into the marina... but no they decided to motor across the marina entrance. Meanwhile a yacht and power boat were coming out. We furled our genoa and I went port-to-port with the power boat towards the marina. This other yacht now suddenly uses power and tries to push us to increase speed. No! Now they are the overtaking boat so they should keep clear and we have right of way. We motored in and moored easily.

What would have been better is that if after getting to the waypoint south west of the marina we were heading I had then turned more southerly from a beam reach to a close hauled. This would have turned us back towards land and therefore close hauling northwards would have been a better return passage.

But all it was great: Aall our best sail to date.

Sailing with friends

2011-03-25T17:28:00.002+02:00

15 nautical miles

Tim, me, Jacob, Alec, Mark and Anna were the crew. We had invited them all for the night sail also, but they declined so we had a really pleasant sail out towards Cape Pila and back. One thing we should do is more teaching others to sail when they come out. Jacob has learnt a lot, but somehow we forgot to let the others take a turn hand steering to learn how to feel the wind and sail the yacht.

Chris's Windlass

2011-03-20T17:00:00.000+02:00

As if working on out windlass wasn't enough we spent the day getting Chris's windlass working. Ken had cleaned it all up and we did the electrical wiring. Chris said it hadn't sounded so good in a few years!

Of mizzen backstays and windlass breakers...

2011-03-13T21:28:00.003+02:00

8 nautical miles

Morning sail with Tim, not too far so that he could get back to the clinic asap if needed. Seems like Tim's mum is on the mend, but still not home and fighting fit.

We started with main, genoa and mizzen sails. We hadn't put up the mizzen for a while. It gave us almost another knot of speed. There is only one back stay on the mizzen mast which gets changed from side to side when we tack. Getting it round behind the end of the mizzen boom is a pain. It looks possible that we can put up two backstays and move them in and out to make that easier.

When we got back to the marina we did a couple of odd jobs and then Tim's mum rang to find out if he would be coming to help her with lunch. Sound like she really is on the mend.

After lunch we started to move the windlass breaker to from the side of the navigation station to the back. The reason for this is that it's too deep and so the panel won't go back on with it on the side panel. Sadly in doing this we cracked the back panel... well... I say sadly but I am not too unhappy about it as I really want to renovate the nav station and so a cracked panel just says 'do it sooner rather than later'. Personally I think we should do it in mock teak to match in with the rest of the saloon.

Chris's Engine Day

2011-03-12T21:42:00.006+02:00

Not really working on King Malu, but helping Chris at Alpha Divers out. We have been re-wiring his boat and today he had the engines lifted in.

Blowing away the cobwebs

2011-03-06T21:22:00.005+02:00

9 nautical miles

Yesterday we spent the day helping Chris at Alpha Divers rewiring his dive boat. So today we had to get out and sail. Tim's mum is not well and in a clinic so we didn't want to go far.

What is our hull speed?

2011-02-27T20:50:00.001+02:00

12 nautical miles

The wind started off light, so we motored round to the north side of the harbour, anchored and made coffee. Tim took a swim... well... not a voluntary swim, he wanted to remove the growth from the outboard motor. We had sprayed it with anti fouling, but we are still seeing growth - mainly see grass - and he rubbed this away with a soft brush.

The forecast said winds of between 12 and 17 knots (Bft 4-5) from about mid-day. So we sailed off towards Cape Pila. One thing we wanted to do was rewire the windlass control box, but I didn't really want to do that while at anchor since if anything went wrong the windlass would not work. So... we had a few hours sail and then turned for home.

On the way back the wind picked up as per forecast and we were touching 5 knots with just main and genoa. At one point Tim started the outboard to see if we could get the yacht up to hull speed. The formula is 1.34 x square root of length of waterline. The waterline of a Nicholson 39 is 30 feet, so the square root is 5.47 and multiplied by 1.34 it is 7.34, ie the maximum speed we can expect out of King Malu is 7.34 knots.

Adding the outboard added about a knot, so we got up to about 6 knots but no faster. I think we have had about 7 knots at one stage in the past, but it was interesting to see. King Malu seems to cruise happily between 4.5 and 6 knots from what we have so far seen. But we have only been sailing her 5 months now - seems a lot longer - so still trimming the sails and experimenting. Certainly today the tell tails were flying straight and true.

When we got back we did re-wire the windlass and it all looks a lot neater now.

No sailing today... just helping a mate

2011-02-19T20:07:00.001+02:00

Today we went down and helped Chris from Alpha Divers with his boat. The refit he is doing is a task not to be undertaken by the faint of heart and so we are helping with the electrics. It's going to look great when it's finished.

Run for coffee

2011-02-18T12:06:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, very early in the morning Tim and I will take King Malu round to the anchoring site for a coffee.

On this occasion we were joined by Mick, a friend from Birmingham.

To get to the small boat anchorage you have to pass through the large ships anchorage. When when you get there, sitting sipping coffee looking out over the Mediterranean is peace personified.

Mast Steps

2011-02-13T21:02:00.000+02:00

Tim and I went down to fit the mast steps. Yes, I know it would have been wiser to do this before fitting the radar, but, well... it's done now and another job off the list!

It does mean that even I (Richard) can get the sail cover off, as I had previously had to clamber onto the toast racks to reach the top of the sail cover. One time doing that I had slipped and fallen. I didn't do any damage, but showed we needed something to make it safer.

The mast steps we fitted are folding and so clear any ropes when folded away. The old ones further up the mast as fixed, which makes it easier to climb.

Another little task we completed were the loops inside the sail locker to the 'quick to get' ropes. We also fitted the throwing line there for safety.

I cannot remember where we saw this idea, but as soon as we did, Tim believed it the best thing for King Malu.

Sitting drinking coffee after doing these little jobs we saw the Sea Scouts rowing round the marina. The interesting thing about this is the wearing of life jackets. Everyone wearing one, but the leaders not done up, so would slip out of it just as soon as he fell in. Not exactly a good example!

A really enjoyable sail

2011-02-12T21:00:00.003+02:00

13 nautical miles

We first motored up to the Larnaca sailing club and moored to do a little bit of work on the boat. We had bought some extra folding mast steps to enable us (or me in particular) to climb the mast without having to stand on Tim's shoulders to get to the first step. Now why didn't we do this before fitting the radome?

We were very careful to make sure we mored away from the gas and oil pipelines in this area. There are all sorts of dire warnings on the chart about this. The new chain markers were good so we could (at last) tell how much chain we had deployed.

We sat and had a coffee and watched the club boats out sailing before going for a sail ourselves.

We tested the radar, using the MARPA system to track speed, direction CPA etc of targets. I also re-arranged the display to give what we want: Because the display is not that large we want some of the text data displayed larger than the default so we can read it easily from the wheel. One thing that we want to see easily is the LAT/LON numerically. This is because Oscar Charlie (the VTS system for sailing into Beirut) and others call you up with 'Vessel at position ___ traveling at ___ knots in direction ____, please identify yourself'. So we need to know the position easily and clearly to know if they are referring to us.

All in all, a very enjoyable day.

Fitting the radar

2011-02-05T21:51:00.004+02:00

When we purchased the chart plotter we agreed a buy-back so that we could upgrade to one with radar at a later date. Today was the later date! Time for the old big ugly non-working JRC radome to be replaced with a new Raymarine radar system.

Getting the old radome down proved easier than I hoped. First, we let Jacob go up the mast to secure a line to the radome and to loosen the threaded rod that was holding the supports. I was concerned that the nuts on the threaded rod might be corroded and so prove extremely difficult to move. Jacob found them to be not much more than finger tight. Which was worrying for different reasons.

Then I went up the mast and knocked the threaded rod through and we dropped the old JRC radome to the deck.

Then we needed to connect the cable to the radome. This is pretty easy to do if you follow the instructions... however Raymarine had not stripped back the screen braid enough which must be in contact with the metalwork of the radome, so we stripped it back further to make good contact.

Next was to fit the new bracket to the mast.

Raymarine have a very easy to fit method for mounting the bracket to the mast: There are four solid clips that you mount to the mast and then the bracket fits into those four clips. The clips are each secured with four pop-rivets. So, what I did first was to bolt the clips to the bracket and take that up the mast and mark and drill the holes on the mast. Then rivet the clips to the mast without the bracket attached.

Then we attached the radome to the bracket and fed the cable down the mast while the new radome was hoisted on a halyard.

Finally I bolted the bracket (with the radome attached) to the clips and it was all secure. Well... not quite finally... I then attached the extra safety strap for the radome.

Then run the cable through to the new chart plotter, connect it up and hey presto we now have radar!

The new chart plotter is slightly bigger than the old one, but looks smart in the panel. The radar worked first time it was turned on!

Waves against wind

2011-01-29T00:07:00.002+02:00

6 nautical miles

Tim had been in London for Thursday and Friday and we discussed over the Internet what we would do. He suggested sailing Sunday not Saturday, but I had invited Jeremiah and Elliott from the office so checking the weather we decided to chance it. Our fear was that it would be cold and slight rain so not very pleasant. As it turned out there was sun for a greater part of the day. But...

Overnight there had been strong winds from a different direction to the wind this morning, so the wind and waves were coming from different directions and the wind was light at about 5-7 knots. What this meant was that not jus pitching through the waves the boat was rolling a lot too. This affected Elliott and he got quite sea sick. When Jacob too god sea sick we decided enough was enough and headed for the marina.

We then cleaned up, had lunch and fitted the final two turnbuckle covers. Finally, took out quite a lot of the anchor chain along the dock, measured it and put coloured markers on the chain to let us know how much we have let out.

A shockingly good sail

2011-01-22T00:07:00.003+02:00

22 nautical miles

Today was a brilliant sail. Having put up the genoa with its new sacrificial edge we sailed out and really enjoyed ourselves.

But then Tim said the fateful words, 'We haven't had our incident today, what went wrong?' A few minutes later Jacob was in the cabin and he heard a clicking sound in the cabin. It appeared to be coming from the VHF transceiver while it was turned off! It couldn't be so I got Tim to try listening too... yes, it was coming from the turned off VHF transceiver.

Removing the antenna connector from the transceiver Tim got a severe shock. The VHF antenna which was arcing, every few seconds and that was the clicking sound we heard. The measured voltage across the antenna (while disconnected from the VHF transceiver) was in the order of 120 volts AC. The ONLY unit capable of this voltage was the Inverter, so I totally removed the 12 volt power from this and the arcing/voltage disappeared.

During this time the Inverter had been left in remote mode and the remote had it turned off.

When we got back to the marina I investigated further and could not reproduce the fault, but did find that with the 13 amp plug disconnected (ie nothing connected to the output of the inverter) there was a 136 volt AC potential difference between the earth on the output of the inverter and the negative (ie low voltage earth) on the 12 volts of the inverter.

This is obviously extremely dangerous and would explain why the RCD on the shore power would occasionally trip. It would also explain why the Automatic Switch failed, caused by a high earth potential where it would never expect such a voltage!

Interface boards and water filters

2011-01-15T17:36:00.000+02:00

Tim is in the UK at the London Boat Show today, so no sailing. No doubt there will be loads to report from that show. I remember about 3 years ago going to the Southampton Boat Show and having a whole day wandering round looking at boats and different parts. The only thing is that Boat Shows are better enjoyed in the company of someone else. So you can discuss the different boats and gadgets and whatever.

We are trying to get an onboard computer system working for monitoring the new electric drive and doing various other things like converting SeaTalk to NMEA, chain counter, Navtex, backup navigation computer etc. And of course being a computer for blogging and the like. The 12 volt LCD screen has what looks like a normal connector, but the size is just slightly different to those available here. There are two standards, both have 5.5 mm outside diameter, but one has 2.1 mm inside diameter and the other 2.5 mm inside diameter. Those available on the island have 2.1 mm, which means they don't fit. I was looking for some other wire to connect up the interface box and I came across a number of 5.5 mm power connectors. Sadly they were all 2.1 mm inside diameter too!

One of the problems we have been having is the fresh water pump continuing for quote a few seconds after we turn off the tap. We have traced everything and cannot find a leak anywhere. We thought last time that maybe there was an air lock somewhere so we flushed it and it did seem to work slightly better. Today I fitted a new water filter and found there was an air lock. I tried flushing it, but cannot seem to get rid of it, in fact the air lock seems to re-fill up after I have flushed it. This is strange, I would have thought if air is getting in, then water is getting out, but we cannot see a leak anywhere. We'll just have to investigate further.

Short 8 mile sail

2011-01-08T23:49:00.083+02:00

8 nautical miles

The day started with very low wind and despite the forecast I wondered how much sailing we would have. Today it was the three 'regulars' - me, Tim and Jacob. We rigged and cast off as soon as we could to be out sailing for as long as we could.

The wind started off as just a gentle breeze of around 10 knots then quickly rose to between 12 and 15 knots, which is a moderate breeze of Beaufort 4: King Malu was flying along at 5 knots. Although the wind was in that range the sea state had not grown to anything like one might expect for that wind speed because the day before we had almost no wind at all. We had full genoa and full main up. Tim remarked that it felt like she was sailing better having cleaned and put new anti-fouling on the hull. The growth wasn't that bad so it is probably just psychological.

The wind was from the north and therefore quite cold. I had on my Gill offshore jacket, Tim hand on a light sailing jacket and Jacob was in t-shirt and shorts. It is pretty obvious who feels the cold the most and who feels it the least. I also put on a knitted beanie to try to keep my head warm.

Keeping warm was the order of the day, so Tim went below and turned on the generator to make some coffee. That was something I was really looking forward to. I was sitting at the wheel and suddenly the wind comes up to over 25 knots, King Malu starts heeling and the autopilot fights to maintain course with a large course correction. Just at that point Tim turns the switch turn off the generator. At the same instant all the Navionics including the autopilot dies. I grab the helm, which was still turned significantly leeward and turn her back into the wind to reduce the heeling. Tim quickly comes on deck to drop the main and partly furl the genoa so we are sailing under reduced sail.

With Tim at the helm I then go below to try to find out why we have lost Navionics power. Nothing seems to be wrong. All connections look like they are still good. The sudden high wind had blown over one of the solar cells and Tim wondered if that had shorted something and made it quit. I didn't think so, but as I was checking the switch on the solar Tim shouted that power had come back. What I had done was to cross feed the domestic and navionics bank so we were now using the domestic power for navionics, which isolated the fault to somewhere in the navionics bank. We had two 1/2/both switches, which means we can quickly reroute power from the domestic bank either to navionics or to engine/generator start.

We checked the outboard motor and it started with no problem, but because there was nothing obvious
we turned for home. It might be a minor problem, but it would be good to check it out. The wind was still around 25 knots (Bft 6) and the waves coming up and this was rattling King Malu quite a bit. Suddenly the snap shackle on the genoa sheet flies loose. I try to hold her on course, but we have now lost motive power, so she will start to spin. With the tension suddenly released on the sheets and the furling line they somewhat beautifully tangle themselves.

Tim goes for'ard to try to reattach the genoa sheet, while I try to sort out the mess between the furling line and the sheet. Jacob was helping Tim. Both have life jackets on, but not safety tethers. As King Malu spins and was bucking I think to myself that this was not the place I really want to pick up a man-overboard. The furling line and genoa sheet suddenly untangle themselves resulting in the genoa flying out with full power, Tim still holding it, nearly falling over Jacob and then letting go so now the full genoa was flapping over the yacht and watching this I was doubly concerned about someone going overboard.

I furl the genoa and Tim manages to attach the sheet and we are back to stable again. Both incidents happened in a matter if minutes and although it was concerning it was actually encouraging to see how we acted as a crew together. For the future we will always have safety tethers on deck when the wind reaches 15 knots so that they are readily available should we need them if the wind comes up suddenly.

There were a couple of rips in the genoa along the leach, so when we get back to the marina we call Charmiane to arrange for her to put in a sacrificial cloth along the leech which will strengthen it a lot. The sail itself was basically sound. The problem was that the leech was unprotected for some time while the previous owner had removed the sacrificial cloth and so it has now become sun damaged.

On the way back in we see another yacht Daphne coming out. Some of the crew are in wet weather gear and some not. A few minutes after we are moored we see Daphne coming back in. This time all the crew are in wet weather gear!

By midday the wind had dropped back to 12-15 knots again and Lauren came down to join us for lunch and Tim rustled up a lunch of scrambled eggs, sausages and Cyprus bread. Although the incidents lost us some sailing time - we had expected to get to Cape Pila and back - it was actually encouraging to see how well King Malu behaved in these conditions and to have given the crew a chance to try out some minor incidents in what the Beaufort scale describes as a 'Strong breeze'.

After lunch we fitted the final pieces to make the cockpit look complete - a couple of Pioneer marine speakers. Since we had removed the old ones we had gaffer taped up the hole and two ugly gaffer tape pads were not exactly the most beautiful... actually they were eyesores! Now with the bimini and splash hood finished the gaffer taped looked even worse. Should have been a few minutes job since the old speakers were the same size - 8 inch - but... the original ones had a wider lip so we had to enlarge the holes in the cockpit to take the new speakers.

Tim remarked about the trip these speakers had taken: You couldn't buy 8 inch speakers in the UK, so we had bought them in the USA and had them delivered to a colleague of his there. They were manufactured in Japan before even getting to the USA. Tim's colleague had brought them to a business meeting in London where he had collected them and taken them on their final leg to Cyprus.

I must admit the sound quality of these speakers is superb.

Epiphany lunch

2011-01-06T18:13:00.000+02:00

Tim and I went down early since the forecast was for low to minimal wind. Our intention was to turn King Malu around. Since we had the outboard motor we had always moored bow-to because reversing was such a pain.

Over the last few weeks and particularly in the last week we had discussed how we could reverse in. The problem is the prop-walk. In reverse King Malu steers to port whatever you do with the helm. So what we had discussed was how to position the boat to take account of this port prop-walk.

What we did was reverse out, with a tight port turn. The turn to starboard forward so that we were positioned for a port turn back into the slot. It worked perfectly. I must admit I was apprehensive of the manoeuvre. Then we clipped the repaired gang plank back in place.

We had invited Erika, Sue and Tim's two daughters Lauren and Claire to lunch, along with Sidney. The four girls had said they were only coming if there was a gangplank in place. No way were Erika and Sue coming on board if they had to leap onto the bow of the boat. So there was a lot invested in turning her around!

It was nice now that King Malu is in a state to have lunch parties on board.

Launch 2011

2011-01-03T18:59:00.001+02:00

We arrived by about 8:30 and prepared for the launch. The wind was getting up a little so we decided to go into our berth for'ards rather than stern to.

When Nickos arrived he put King Malu onto the crane and then went for a coffee. This wasn't just the Cyprus way (everything with a coffee) but we needed time to put anti-fouling over the places where the stays had been and on the very bottom of the keel which had been on wooden blocks.

Then it was time for the launch. The crane proceeded at its ponderous slow speed to the wet dock.

The sky is grey and overcast and looks like rain. Despite this, I am thrilled to see her returning to the water.

Finally the moment of truth, as Nickos directs his assistant, King Malu takes to the water again. She returns to her natural environment and once again looks like a little ship.

Somehow this always concerns me - Will the sea cocks hold? Will we have water flowing in? Of course, the probability is high there will be no problems.

Ready for the water

2011-01-02T23:26:00.000+02:00

Today we removed all the 'clutter' from King Malu. The new year resolution being to sail more and maintain less. We spent way too much time restoring her in 2010 and so 2011 should be a year of sailing.

Of course... we still need an inboard motor back on her, but hopefully that will be early this year.

I did some more work on the interface system for the onboard computer this afternoon. I spent ages looking for some connectors in a glass jar. Eventually I asked Sue if she had seen them. She hadn't. Then I mentioned they were fiddly plastic and metal bits in a peanut butter jar... she instantly told me where they were!

Teak oil, clean hull & clean filters

2011-01-01T18:42:00.000+02:00

So today we finished all the work for the dry dock: I started the day by finishing sanding around the stanchions and under the toe rail. That all had to be done by hand. Meanwhile Tim found another use for pastamani - to clean the hull topsides.

I then put on two coats of teak oil and then we went for lunch. After lunch, a final coat of teak oil, Tim finished the topsides and we cleaned the water filters.

We then set about sorting what we want to keep onboard and what we want to remove. Most of the paint and a significant number of tools will be removed. The plan is to return King Malu to being a sailing boat rather than a project boat.

Onboard computer

2010-12-31T12:17:00.000+02:00

We have been building an onboard computer system. The Linux boot works fine, but Windows 7 keeps crashing. Also the case is getting warm. Getting warm in the middle of winter is worrying... how hot will it get in summer? So I have mounted an external SATA and power connector on the case and now mounted the solid state hard disk outside the main case, which will allow me to cut a hole in the top of the case to allow better circulation from the CPU fan. Tim's IT guy suggested that the problem with it crashing was due to the display adaptor device driver - so I found the Intel CD and installed new drivers. Let's see if its more stable now.

Sanding toe rail

2010-12-30T19:11:00.003+02:00

Tim took a day off and together we went down to king Malu with the intention of finishing sanding the toe rail - which we did! We also changed the anode on the propeller shaft and gave the anchor an extra coat of Hammerite.

Sanding toe rail

2010-12-24T23:05:00.007+02:00

Well... the suposed beautiful varnished teak toe rail wasn't... beautiful that is. I had taken a break between coats 2 and 3 of the varnish (of 5) and during that time the hot Mediterranean sun had bubbled the varnish and it wouldn't take.

So... one of the teaks is to sand off the varnish and oil the wood. The plan had been for Tim to use the bigger sander to take off the majority and my to use a new triangular one for the detail. But after 2 minutes the head fell of the big one. Both the thread on the head and on the motor had torn and it could not be used. So we decided to epoxy the head to the motor and work out a long term fixing later.

We carried on with the smaller triangular sander. 2 hours work (we planned on only 2 hours per day) and about 25% of the toe rail is finished. So the job looks manageable.

Tim also put a second coat of Hammerite on the anchor. This is a silver colour: The first was dull green, so we should know when the top coat wears away from the change in colour.

No more work for a couple of days... it is Christmas after all!

Antifouling

2010-12-23T23:59:00.002+02:00

The first job is a quick sand over the whole hull to allow the new antifouling to adhere to the old. We had been told the paint partly chemically bonds and partly physically bonds to the old and so cutting in slightly helps.

We had put on two coats of antifouling last year so I am slightly surprised that it had gone all the way through to the epoxy skin coat in places. I wasn't too pleased about that. It means antifouling will be a significant annual cost.

We had a little of the black left over so I rollered that over the places where it had gone through. This means that we should have three coats of antifouling on the hull now, and because the new is blue not black we should be able to see when it goes through.

We had bought 'moon suits' this year as the antifouling is pretty wicked stuff and we think its prudent to be as careful as we can. Last year I got some on my skin and used thinners to remove it, only to find the thinners stung like crazy... hmmm.... not a good idea, moon suits are better!

Jacob (now 11) is wearing an adult suit, with masking tape at suitable places to hold it in check.

Having Jacob and me together works well: He does the lower reaches and I do the higher reaches.

This year it was even better we also had Tim about, cleaning the propellor and running around getting paint and a hundred other things to keep us going (like coffee).

The blue looks significantly better than the black. Tim and I are really pleased with the result.

By 14:30 we have finished. King Malu looks amazing again. On the other hand... I don't!

I can hardly recognise myself in the photo. Showing the photo to family afterwards they reckon I look Egyptian. I don't really know why.

Even wearing a 'moon suit' googles and a face mask this is not a clean job! But... we did it in a day. So that was very encouraging. It means we can do an antifouling over a weekend liftout next year if we want.

We still have a number of messy outside jobs to do. We want to sand down the toe rail. The varnishing of it didn't work and we want to remove the varnish and use oil instead.

10 days till she goes back in the water... must remember we have to do antifouling under the bracing points...

Lift out

2010-12-22T23:30:00.001+02:00

Plan is to arrive at the marina at 13:00, have sandwiches onboard and then lift out at 14:00... tight because I have an airport run at 15:30 and another at 16:15. And... of course... everything is running late!

So, we talk to Nickos and he hopes to lift before the end of the day. If all goes to plan, maybe 15:00 to 15:30. So we go to the club for a beer and then round to King Malu.

When we see Nickos lift the boat ahead of us we let go the lines and motor round to the wet dock to be next in line.

It's around 15:15 that Nickos is ready to start lifting us. The flights from the UK are running late so I do have a few minutes and Tim and Jacob will stay with the boat.

The for'ard mooring lines have to be let go and the straps walked underneath the boat ready for lifting. Since the wind is from the east, the tendency is for King Malu to drift over to the port side.

I just about see her starting to be lifted before I have to leave and go pick up relatives at the airport.

I never get to see the barnacles growing on the hull except on the photographs Tim took.

The was a line of barnacles along the water line. That is something we can keep under control.

The anode is pretty encrusted too... no surprises there, as is the propellor. We'll have to try getting some anti-fouling for the propellor to keep it cleaner next year.

But the strange bit is the the growth under the stern above the propellor. We have no idea why the growth was there.

Nickos power washed it down and that took off almost all of the growth and slime and then Tim and Jacob cleaned where the straps had been removed the slightly firmer encrustations.

We were the last boat out before the Christmas break and we will be the first boat in after the break. So Nickos put us opposite the workshop and left the crane just a few metres back (to give us clearance around the boat).

Antifouling

2010-12-11T18:54:00.002+02:00

Big storm last night. Winds reached 49 knots... that's beaufort 10! King Malu looks fine... so today we went down to Ocean Marine at Limassol to get some more Awlgrip antifouling to put on the hull when we lift her out. We got deep blue this time so when we put it over the black we will have an indicator of when it has rubbed away.

Then in the afternoon we made a couple of rings (looking just like hoopla rings) to go behind the speakers for the cockpit.

Gentle day sail

2010-12-04T21:57:00.011+02:00

4 nautical miles

4 hour sail, in very light winds.

We went first to the mooring spot north of the harbour for a coffee, then out for a very gentle sail.

I tried out the autopilot tacking today - always better to try things in very light winds before you urgently need to do the process. So I hit the buttons and let the autopilot tack us and I managed the sheets. Meant that one of us can tack the boat alone.

Oh and I got a new phone too... having drowned two phones I decided to get a waterproof and shockproof one with some money I had been given for my birthday. One the right is a photo of the chart plotter giving a more accurate track of where we went (the Spot Locator points are only every 30 mins or so... and only when we remember to press the button).

What I got was a Samsung B2100 from Amazon.co.uk. The reason for that is that it is waterproof to 1 metre and shockproof... a real hardy phone.

I'm pleased with it in all respects except for one... it's a pain to sync with my computer!

Dodger finished

2010-11-30T18:58:00.000+02:00

Yesterday evening Tim and I spent an hour finishing off the dodger: Sewing in the clips for the cover for the plastipane. We particularly wanted to cover the plastipane as the Mediterranean sun really destroys it making it somewhat opache over time.

This morning very early (7:30) we went down to fit it. We're really pleased with the result. You can also see the lazy jacks we fitted over the weekend.

Lazy Jacks

2010-11-27T17:25:00.001+02:00

The primary task today was to complete the lazy jacks for the main sail. We have been getting tired of trying to flake the sail when we drop it, and with the new bimini it got even more difficult - we had to close the bimini to flake the sail. OK, maybe it is lazy, but we believe the easy way is often the safer way.

So we went down at about 8:30 and I went up the main mast to fit two cheek blocks for the lines for the lazy jacks. The mast is aluminium, but even still drilling through and pop riveting the cheek blocks in place was hard work. I did a bit of drilling and took a pause and did a bit more and took a pause. Suddenly I realised why I needed to take pauses... each time I drilled I was holding my breath! You can only hold your breath so many times before you need a pause. Funny things we do when concentrating!

Anyway by mid-afternoon the lazy jack system was in place. The ropes are knotted rather than whipped at this stage. We had time for whipping the ends, but decided we would sail tomorrow and check that all the lengths are correct before whipping them.

Then we went back to Tim's flat and did some more sewing on the dodger. We managed to get the velcro edges round the window. That was a task and a half. We had fitted the plastipane window already and folded back the edge and used basting tape to hold in place and then more basting tape to hold the velcro in place... that makes 2 layers of Sunbrella, 2 layers of basting tape, 1 layer of plastipane and one layer of velco to sew through!

The dodger is now heavy and unwieldy, so there was me and Erika holding and guiding the dodger and Tim winding the handle of the sewing machine. Dodger is not quite complete, but is another stage further on!

Playing boats?

2010-11-21T18:30:00.002+02:00

5 nautical miles

Mobile phone rings at lunchtime...

'Are you playing boats this afternoon?'

It's Neil, a sailing friend who used to live here and now lives in the UK.

Our plan had been to do some work on the boat, maybe work on the lazy jacks... but... as we were walking along the quay to the mooring we realised the wind was perfect for a sail. So, changed plans immediately.

We only had a couple of hours before we would lose light so we quickly prepped the boat and were off. It was a lovely way to blow the cobwebs out after a weeks work.

As we were heading back and just getting ready for the marina, Neil's mobile rang... It was Paula, his wife... 'Can't speak now, we're just preparing to dock...' Now he'd already admitted that if we did sail while he was over here the rest of his family might turn green with envy, so what a time to call!

Great sail.

Making template for dodger

2010-11-07T13:42:00.003+02:00

1 nautical miles

Two things for today - since we really did have no wind today - firstly to make the dodger template and secondly to try and find out how to steer King Malu backwards.

Coming out from the berth she swung clockwise again (if it were anti-clockwise this would not be such a problem in our current berth, but clockwise means we have to do a three point turn to get out). When we were in the anchoring area we tried reversing with rudder straight ahead and at other angles of steering. Whatever we did she turned clockwise. Our best idea about this is that the linkage on the outboard is slightly bent and the outboard not completely straight on to the boat. Another day we'll play with that.

We then made the template for the dodger. It will be more of a windscreen than a dodger, but will be helpful for night sailing and for inclement weather and protecting the instruments.

Gentle day sail

2010-11-06T19:41:00.001+02:00

16 nautical miles

Watching the forecast we were not at all sure what the day would bring - gentle winds or none at all. If none at all then we would motor round to the anchoring area, swim and make the dodger template and do a few other jobs on the boat. As it was we had gentle wind of a steady 8-12 knots and we had a really nice sail out towards Cape Pila and back.

Ont thing that is puzzling is the reversing. Every time I reverse King Malu she swings clockwise. This time we found we had the boarding ladder down which was creating a drag and so that swung us round.

We put up the repaired genoa from the rips last weekend. Amongst other things we had tightened the leech rope and that meant the sail set better. Interesting these little things we are learning as we go.

Day sail, mizzen and genoa

2010-10-31T21:42:00.004+02:00

10 nautical miles

We decided to go out for a day sail. Had to be back earlier as the clocks went back last night so dusk comes even earlier now. The forecast for was a constant Bft 3 gusting Bft 4 throughout the day. Tim said yesterday 'If it's dead calm we'll motor round to the other side of the harbour, drop a dinghy anchor attached to a buoy and do some reversing practice'. Absolutely no chance of that today!

Reversing out the yacht again turned the wrong way, but we managed a neat three point turn and motored out of the marina. I was really confused. Last time the boat turned the wrong way it was because we were trailing a warp by accident (a crew member didn't realise there are springs on both sides of the boat). But this time there were no warps. We think it is because the outboard we have is not directly in line with the yacht and may be pulling to one side very slightly.

Anyway we thought with a bit more wind we would try other sail plans, so to start with we tried sailing with just the genoa. She did a respectable 3.5 to 4 knots in 11-18 knots wind (gusting 18) and was sailing quite flat. As Tim remarked, sailing flat will be good for non-sailors as guests on board or anyone feeling slightly seasick.

The cloud formations were really beautiful today. There were a couple of other yachts out from our marina. One sailing with just main and no genoa - also sailing pretty flat - and one with three-quarters genoa and main, which was heeling over somewhat.

Next we tried the mizzen with the genoa. Tim thought that it might give us a weather helm, but I was hopeful since I had seen this recommended online somewhere. In fact she sailed with less helm with the mizzen than without. Watching the movement on the autopilot is a good way to gauge the weather or lee helm on the trim of the boat.

Looking up at the genoa to check the set of the sail we noticed a problem. The seem along the leech of the sail was ripping with the strong gusts of wind. By the time we got back to the marina, three sections of the sail would need repair. A job for our new found sewing skills.

Two days ago on Facebook I did the 'Which Lord of the Rings character are you?' I came up as Elrond, which started off 'You are supremely confident about yourself...' No, not me, I worry I might be wrong a lot of the time and it goes on '...rightfully so, for you are rarely wrong'. Well in docking I wish I had trusted my judgement.

With the wind blowing 18 knots we came in to berth in the marina. We had planned what would happen, since the wind was north easterly I would come in and then hold the bow off the dock while time secured the stern line. We were both concerned about blowing into other boats as the berths are very narrow and can close up.

We kept the genoa up till the very last minute, since with the outboard, with a following sea it can cavitate quite badly.

Coming in Tim was for'ard watching and shouted 'More starboard helm'. I was sure I didn't need it, but trusted he was seeing something I could not. This meant that I came round more than I wanted and just as we are going into the gap come to a grinding halt. We're caught. Because of the extra turn a neighbour's mooring line has caught under the rudder. Peter from one of the other boats comes to help and we secure ourselves with extra lines to our two neighbours. We're just discussing what to do when Tim takes off his top and jumps in the water. He stands on the mooring line, which frees us from it and we can be pulled into the dock. Peter said he does everything he can to avoid going in the water - especially in the marina.

Later Tim remarks how we are complementary to each other - I am comfortable going up masts and he is comfortable jumping in the water. True, I would rather go up masts than sort out stuff under the water... unless it was the only solution of course.

When we have secure the boat, we scrub the decks and clean up inside.

Quick photo to show where we have been and off home. The southerly track was from Thursday, today's was south easterly. It was very clear today. from the furthest out we got you could easily see Cape Greco as well as Cape Pila. Normally the haze is such that you cannot see Cape Greco till you are past Cape Pila.

Solar cells and steaming lights

2010-10-30T20:49:00.034+03:00

Another maintenance day.

The target today to at least get the solar cells finished and working. We had a solar charger unit, which as a pain as it is positive earth and the rest of the yacht is negative earth, which means... we have to ensure that it is isolated from other equipment in the yacht.

On the output of the solar charger we fitted a shunt to measure the amount of current coming from the solar cells and a two way switch so we can either charge the navigation battery bank or the domestic battery bank.

Then it's time to go up the main mast to fix the steaming light. The old steaming light looks like a frosted glass fitting... it isn't of course, it's just the plastic has become frosted over with age. A perennial problem with plastic lenses on navigation lights. Actually, its good it's not actually perennial as it would prove expensive if it were!

When we were fitting the wind gauge at the top of the main mast I dropped a tracer line down the mast and Tim caught it within seconds. It wasn't quite so easy this time. Partly this was because the hole for the steaming light wire was at the front of the mast and so the line was dropping down the edge of the mast, whereas it was dead centre for the wind gauge.

One of the better investments we made was a treble clip safety line from mailspeedmarine.com. I had been suggesting an elasticated safety line as they are easier to handle on a bouncing deck, but Tim suggested the treble hook one. This has proved invaluable in mast work. It means that once I am in location I can clip on - both as an added safety line should there be a problem with the main line up the mast and also to hold me to the mast and as a result I can brace against the mast. You can see it clearly in this photo and see how I use it to brace away from the mast in the next one.

When the steaming light was fitted I wanted to test it before proceeding, but we were beginning to lose light so Tim wanted to do all the mast work before dusk.

The final job was the two flag halyards. Strangely it looks lighter because the clouds have parted and we have blue sky, but the light is actually fading. In some ways this was the most difficult thing I have done on the mast to date as I needed to fix a shackle with a block to an eye far out on the spreader.

Leaning out by pushing against the mast was the answer, but being gently rocked around while trying to threat the tiny shackle and not dropping anything was... interesting!

Down the mast... test steaming light... Everything worked and it was time for home.

Ochi Day sail

2010-10-28T19:14:00.003+03:00

16 nautical miles

This would have been the start of a four day sail round to Latchi, but for the fact that tomorrow the forecast is for the sort of winds you sail through if you have to but avoid if you don't!

The crew today was me, Tim, Sidney, Mark and Jacob.

This was Mark's first sail with us. He had valiantly helped re-surfacing the deck when we were on the hard, but had not the opportunity for a sail yet.

The weather today was kind to us and so Mark enjoyed the sun on the forepeak, using the inflatable dinghy as a backrest.

We set off early to get a smooth sea as we wanted to re-calibrate the auto-pilot. We had found a dinghy anchor next door to the compass which we hadn't known about and so it was throwing the alignment out.

The calibration first involved two wide and slow circles, then running straight at more than 4 knots and aligning to the GPS and finally allowing the autopilot to learn the characteristics of the rudder.

The autopilot was significantly more responsive now and held course very much better. Just shows how important it is to ensure there is no metallic material near the compass.

Tim had brought some haloumi. Having the ability to grill haloumi in the middle of the day just adds that finishing touch to a wonderful day sailing.

The wind was light - really gentle sailing weather.

It was a day of firsts - we allowed Jacob to try his hand at helming too. The first time Tim had met Jacob he was helming my Wayfarer and he had noted how well he handled the helm.

Today he was to try his hand at a very much bigger boat.

Everything is much more sluggish and feels unresponsive compared to a dinghy, but he soon got the hang of it and you can tell from the smile on his face how he enjoyed it.

Sidney looked perpetually cool in his shades, black baseball cap and black T-shirt!

Although the sun was not as bright as it has been, the reflected light off the water makes it seem brighter than it is.

We headed off down towards Cape Kiti and we checked our position using compass and chart. The new binoculars with build in compass make it much easier for taking bearings.

Actually it was a fun sail. I think all of us enjoyed it.

All in a mornings work... fixing a mizzen topping lift

2010-10-24T23:49:00.000+03:00

Just a simple job, cut off the topping lift from the mizzen mast and drop a new one in... so we thought. Dropping a wind gauge cable had been a doddle, why shouldn't putting in a new topping lift be easy?

Up the mizzen mast I went, snapped on my safety line and cut the old (stuck) topping lift which dropped gracefully to the deck. Then with a screwdriver pushed away the old topping lift into the mast ready for a tracer line to drop in the mast and pick up a new 8mm line. But... the old topping lift didn't clear the block fully whatever I did. The tracer would not fall inside and... tended (about 5 times or more) to come out of the sail track.

Eventually I gave up and fixed a new external block to the outside of the mast for the topping lift! Will fix properly when we drop the mizzen mast.

Next... fix the clip on the end of the starboard mizzen spreader. Lowered away till I was at the right height, added extra safety line and pushed out from the mast to reach the spreader... hoisted drill and started drilling out the old pop rivet. Tried to steady myself from swinging around since I am pushing out from the mast... kept drilling... drill bit broke. New drill bit, drilled hole, fixed new pop rivet in place.

Then added two extra lines from the spreaders to hold the two new solar panels. Finally down on the deck and time for a snack of haloumi cheese sandwiches. Then fix the solar panels in place... couple of other odd jobs and home for lunch. Late. Ooops.

First time with the bimini

2010-10-23T18:56:00.005+03:00

11 Nautical Miles

We went down to the marina early to fit the new bimini and ready the boat for the sail today. The forecast said light winds in the morning, heavier in the afternoon (Bft 3) dying down again later.

When I reversed out of our mooring I had the helm over to starboard, but the boat pulled to port. Very strange. I then had to do a 270 degree multi-point turn to get the right direction to exit the marina. Then someone noticed we were trailing one of the spring lines from the port side. Pull it in and suddenly the helm is responsive again.

Light meant non-existant! So we motored round to the other side of the harbour for coffee and a swim.

Tim cleaned the barnacles off the outboard. The encrustations were getting heavy so we need to find some solution. For next year we can paint the part in the water with anti-fouling, but for now we need to keep cleaning and cleaning and cleaning...

We're not happy that we cannot lift the outboard and we may try to find a solution to that. Tim tried lifting the motor and only succeeded in bending the rod keeping it in line with the boat.

Most of the photos from the day are useless sadly as the camera got stuck in macro mode. However, we were really, really pleased with the bimini, it gives a significant amount of shade and really makes sailing a lot easier.

Yes, that's petrol in the cans at the stern of the yacht. We don't want petrol inside the hull, and we really need to make a petrol locker sometime... hopefully by the end of next season we will have a reliable inboard, so it won't be so necessary. Watch this space!

After about a hour the wind came up to 5 knots so we sailed out towards Cape Pila. Then it rose to 10-11 knots and we were sailing beautifully. Tim made lunch and we, that is me, Tim, Sidney, Maria and Melvyn enjoyed a tuna sandwich.

The autopilot was misbehaving again, didn't hold the course we expected and to get it to hold course to wind we had to set it then click the +10 degrees button, then it did hold course to wind perfectly. Also had to increase the sensitivity of the drive.

Then the wind picked up some more... 16 knots gusting 19 knots. and dying down so the gusts were quite significant. We were slightly concerned that if it picked up more and we had to wait till 19:00 or 20:00 for calmer weather we would be rentering the marina at night. Not something we want to do yet.

So we reluctantly turned for home.

We don't have lazy jacks on the booms yet, so we had to unzip the bimini to drop the main sail. It all worked perfectly. Not neat, but worked.

Then we motored into the marina and moored. Peter was on the quayside to take the lines. This was the first time that I did a perfect mooring... practice makes perfect. We need many more of these to build up experience.

Then a coffee. We have a wonderful device for making coffee, sort of like an espresso but not quite. Sitting under the bimini sipping really good coffee... this is the life!

Bimini finished

2010-10-21T23:02:00.000+03:00

Yes at last the bimini is finished and we will fit it this Saturday. This evening we sewed the final pieces of tape along the sides and did the final trimming and finishing. We still have tapes to make, but we will use cord/line on Saturday to work out the best placement and then make tapes to fit.

Sewing... sewing... sewing... a bimini

2010-10-17T23:38:00.056+03:00

Seems we're always sewing these days. We started making a bimini with a kit from Sailrite two weekends ago and thought we'd get it completed in a weekend. Wrong!

Tim has converted his sun room into a 'sail loft'. Since its a penthouse apartment, it really is a 'loft'!

At the far end of the room we have a work surface that he found as someone was throwing it out and with the addition of five 2 euro Ikea legs we now have a very good working area for the sewing.

Before you sew though you have to cut out the Sunbrella, which we do with a hot knife. Hence the MDF on the floor to protect the tiles. Well... when I say hot knife I mean soldering iron to use as a hot knife.

A real hot knife costs about a couple of hundred dollars, so we found a high temperature soldering iron and find that works quite as well.

We created Sunbrella tubes with zips along them to hold the Bimini onto the frame. Fitting long zips to these thin tubes proves easier than I expected. It was about the only thing that was easier than expected.

The sewing machine was inherrited with the yacht and is about as old as the yacht (more than 35 years). Solid as a rock. When we first used it we broke about 5 needles so we took it to the Singer shop in Larnaca and got it serviced. Net result was that we haven't broken one needle on the whole project!

You need two or three people for this. The electric drive for the sewing machine is dead so Tim acts as the drive motor, holding everything steady while I feed into the foot.

In order to feed some of it through you have to roll up one side. That we found was a three person job.

To start with we let gravity pull the material through while I guided. This resulted in very uneven stitches, and having a third person take the weight of the cloth improved things no end.

We had hoped to finish by the end of the day, but we made a mistake sewing one panel in the wrong way round and had to unpick and start again. We lost about an hour and a half over that.

However, by the end of the day we did have all the panels together and took it down to the boat to measure for the final zip placement.

We really want to have as much shade as possible, so we have made what amounts to a four bow bimini, or you could consider it two two bow biminis joined together in the middle. Our original design had been for a king dodger joined to a two bow bimini, but we like the air flow because of the Mediterranean heat, so have reduced the dodger for inclement weather and increased the bimini.

The photo shows it in place with safety pins holding the final zip.

Starting the bimini

2010-10-03T22:50:00.017+03:00

The one thing we found when we did the two day sail was the problem of being under the sun all day. Back in the spring we had bought a bimini and dodger kit from Sailrite and so this weekend (a long weekend including Friday which is a public holiday) we decided to start it. My expectation was that we could get the metalwork done on Friday morning, the templates done on Friday afternoon and get the sewing done on Saturday/Sunday. How wrong I would be!

On Friday we started the metal work... well... we worked out what we wanted to do, which was to modify the original plan from Sailrite to try to make a significantly bigger bimini. The original plan was for a 2 bow bimini and a very large 2 bow dodger and to join the two together. However, the 2 day sail had shown that sailing in the Mediterranean you really want all the wind you can get to cool you down except for rare occasions when you need some protection.

So we modified the plan to become a very large double 2 bow bimini with a much smaller dodger. This was possible because we had the old bow from the old dodger to be part of the new kit.

Having done the planning we then worked out the metalwork, cut and fixed in place. That was a whole days work and we ended up Friday evening with the metalwork in place but nothing more. Tim remarked that his uncle used to say projects take twice and long and cost twice as much as you expect.

Saturday the whole day was taken up with making the templates... and making a work space in Tim's sunroom for sewing and other boat related work over the winter.

Sunday we started the sewing. By the evening we had got the first of three panels completed. Hopefully it will go quicker as we become more competent with the sewing machine and cutting out the material etc. Our final job for the weekend was to take the completed panel down and check it on the boat.

Yes, looks good... now just to complete it.

Barnacles and autopilots

2010-09-28T21:37:00.000+03:00

18 nautical miles

This was a gentle sail with just Tim and me sailing King Malu. It was good to see we could handle her easily with just the two of us. In the past we had a minimum crew of three.

Before heading out we went down to sea Costas as Raymarine. We wanted a 100 amp breaker for the winch motor. Cost 120 EUR and was made in Losotho. Surprised Tim to find that out and didn't exactly impress him. Tim lived in South Africa for many years and his reaction was that most people in Lesotho came to South Africa to work and he didn't know there was much industry in that country at all!

One of the other things we wanted to talk about was the way the autopilot didn't hold course to wind very well. He thought it could be a problem with the wind sensor not sending the right data to the autopilot. He gave us some tips and with those we got the autopilot to work very well. In particular I think it was not having a high enough sensitivity to respond to the wind in the very light airs we have in Larnaca Bay. The run back was about 120 degrees to the wind and the autopilot held it beautifully.

We finally moored just to the north of the port so we could try the winch again. Then Tim put on goggles, grabbed the waterproof camera and dived under the boat to see what growth we might have on her.

There is a significant growth of barnacles on the propellor - although they are all very small.

The hull in general is clean of growth except for this patch at the stern under the nape of the keel.

My guess is that there was growth like this all round below the waterline and that sailing her two weekends in a row has washed off most of it except in this place where the water turbulence is low and so the antifouling hasn't washed it away.

Along the waterline there are also very small amounts of growth. But considering she was just sitting there for six to nine months while we were struggling with motor problems its pretty minor really.

Weekend sail to Fig Tree Bay

2010-09-19T22:05:00.010+03:00

Approx 60 nautical miles

This was to be out first weekend sail, leaving early Saturday morning and returning Sunday evening. I have prepared a passage plan, which meant we should leave by 09:30 to arrive by 16:30 and allow a couple of hours leaway in case of problems before we began to lose light.

This meant we needed to start around 07:30 to prepare the boat. There were two small jobs to do: Fix some extra marine ply on the outboard mount for the dinghy and fix the stern light on the stern! Surprisingly both jobs went perfectly and we left only about 10 minutes late.

The wind predictions were for light airs in the morning with stronger in the afternoon, with a repeat for Sunday. In fact the light airs on Sunday were almost non-existant.

By 10:40 we were sailing close hauled towards Cape Pila.

By 11:44 the wind was 7.7 knots and Tim and Sidney decided on a little fishing.

This was the first time the tackle had come out and there was some discussion about lures and rig. Never having fished I had no idea.

An hour later we were at Cape Pila - almost exactly on schedule and changed the waypoint to Cape Greco.

This was the start of the voyage proper. We had sailed the Wayfarer round Cape Pila but never to Cape Greco as it was too far for a day sail.

Tim and Sidney had caught no fish.

We started the generator to recharge the batteries and keep the freezer cold.

Yipes... when I open the sail locker there are exhaust fumes pouring out. It turns out that because we were on starboard tack, both the generator exhaust and the old engine exhaust were under water. The old engine exhaust was not fully closed and the exhaust gases were coming out of the generator and bubbling back into the engine exhaust!

At 15:00 we passed Cape Greco and turned into a dead run, then jibed in towards Konos Bay.

By 16:15 we were close to Fig Tree Bay so we started the motor and looked around the bay, decided that all night disco was not our scene so went the other side of the promontory to Panayia.

This was a beautiful bay with a couple of small sailing boats and a gullet moored. There was a someone snorkeling in the middle of the bay and an almost deserted and minute beach.

The sea bed was rock but we dropped anchor hoping to catch in a rock crevice. We watched the shoreline carefully and realised the anchor had not held and was dragging. So we moved out to the mouth of the bay where there was sand and the anchor held.

Anchoring is an art we need more practice at.

A catamaran came in with a wedding party dance on board. I must say I have never seen a wedding party in swim suits and bikinis before. Imagine the bride... yes she had a white net skirt... but a white bikini on her top.

Then later a second catamaran arrived, both of which moored alongside the gullet.

We hoisted our anchor light and I prepared dinner and we sat on deck as the sun set over the hills behind the bay.

The fear of dragging anchor woke me three times during the night with the sound of the anchor dragging... I would leap off the bunk and stick my head out of the hatch only to find I was disoriented because the boat had changed by 120 degrees and the shore was no longer where I expected it.

Each time it wasn't dragging and it was just the chain dragging across the rocky sea bed vibrating up the chain to the locker in my cabin resounding like a drum, each time the noise concerned me.

The following day we managed to get the Spot Satellite Messenger working better so below is the map of our route back. It didn't work quite correctly, as it should have plotted out in real time on the map at the top of the page. Oh well... next time.

As the sun rose over the sea we all woke and made espresso. Freshly brewed coffee to wake you up... nothing like it!

Then I found out that I had not been the only one up during the night: Tim woke and went on deck thinking he heard people climbing on board to try to steal our dinghy!

It was only the ropes chattering against the mast.

Looking round the bay we saw the catamarans from the night before and then brought up the anchor and motored northwards for a look at the coast.

Would have been trouble free except the windlass wiring got hot and the windlass stopped working so we had to pull the final 5 metres of chain up by hand.

There was absolutely no wind.

When we got a couple of knots of wind we raised every square inch of sail we could: Asymetric Spinnaker, Mainsail, Mizzen and Mizzen Staysail... and we got... 0.9 knots!

We tried the spinnaker pole and decided that our asymmetric didn't need anything as heavy as that and that pole would be a hindrance rather than a help with the sail. We did at least try it.

No wind meant... time for motor sailing. By 11:00 we were still motor sailing. Wind was up to 5.3 knots. Big deal!

We tried turning the engine off and the navigation computer calculated it would take 20 hours to be back in Larnaca Marina!

By now we are just north east of Cape Greco again on our way home.

By 12:56 the wind is now 5.4 knots and we are south of Agia Napa, still motor sailing.

Just before 14:00 the wind was nearly 6 knots and we decided to try the Mizzen Stay Sail again. Instead of following instructions that we had read on the Internet we decided on following sailing intuition.

This time with some trial and error we set it beautifully and got an extra knot of speed out of the boat.

It felt really good and enjoyable sailing across Larnaca bay with all sails set. Somehow a ketch with all sails set is an inspiring sight to a sailor.

Tim decided lying in the shade along the deck looking up at the rig... admiring the sails was the place to be.

I sat for a while on the shady side dangling my feet over the side. We were not heeling enough to cool them in the water though. But the shade with the wind was good and made us realise we need to get the bimini and spray hood finished to give us some shade.

Now with all this it must be time to catch some fish to take home for dinner?

Sadly no luck today. It was a good job we were not depending on fish for supper!

We arrived back in Larnaca Marina between 16:30 and 17:00... almost on time again.

We took a first load back to the car... a quick beer and then we tidied and cleaned the boat and left for home.

Definitely the best weekend for a long time.

Sea trials for the Outboard

2010-09-12T21:49:00.001+03:00

15 Nautical Miles

Today was sea trial for the new Honda outboard we fitted yesterday. The plan was to motor round to the other side of the harbour, drop anchor (to test anchor system). Weigh anchor and sail, testing the autopilot and the mizzen sail, check hove to... and return before 3pm... and... have a good time.

The new Honda started flawlessly, and took us out of the berth easily, and then the boat skewed strangely... we found that the trop line from the mooring line had en-cycled the outboard shaft (not the prop-shaft fortunately). Once free King Malu responded happily and we motored round.

It was beautiful dropping anchor in crystal clear water and seeing the anchor chain dropped across the sea floor. We do need some markers for the anchor chain to work out exactly how much we have payed out. Tim, Jacob and Mick went for a swim and then we tided the boat and set sail.

Working out which tankers were at anchor proved interesting. Sometimes even with binoculars it was difficult to see the anchor chains and impossible to see the black ball from the for'ard mast. I think AIS is a 'must have' in busy waterways.

The autopilot did its thing correctly, very smoothly but at times didn't hold course to wind as well as I would have liked.

Early on I was unhappy that it could hold a better course than I could manual steering, but this wasn't always the case and at other times I was slightly frustrated with the way it held course and I could hold the course better.

Part of today was learning more of the new boat handling - we put up the mizzen sail and we wondered if some of the handling differences are due to the mizzen sail.

The mizzen has a very big roach and setting this sail was not quite as easy as I think we expected.

After we had passed one of the tankers we went into the wind to try to furl the main sail. We quickly learnt that it's tonnes easier doing this with the motor running and you you are moving through the water.

'3 degrees to port Mr Helmsman...' On the way back to port Jacob had a go at helming this much bigger yacht than the 16 foot Wayfarer he normally sails with me.

Mick asked, 'So are you both happy with the new motor?'

'I'll tell you when we are in the marina...'

The wind was gusting about 20 knots but the Honda allowed us about 2 knots into the wind at about 2/3 throttle and 5 knots when we turned.

We were deliberately not pushing the engine as its new. The wind was much higher coming into the marina than we have done before, but the outboard performed beautifully with reverse thrust to slow us to a stop without touching the quay.

Walking back to the car along the quay Tim said, 'In answer to your question... 99.9%'

All in all we are both very pleased with the new motor... this is the third motor we have worked on to try to get King Malu sailing... had the first one worked we would be where we are today but six months ago.

Fitting the new Honda Outboard

2010-09-11T21:50:00.022+03:00

Hearing all the horror stories of engines we had always anticipated having a backup motor. We had talked about a medium sized outboard. We didn't expect the Ford diesel to fail, nor the electric drive to have problems... so our backup plan was advanced to get the outboard as a primary drive till we get the electric drive fixed. We chatted to Dave at mailspeedmarine.com and after discussion he recommended the Honda BF20. We've used mailspeedmarine.com before and always found that their worldwide shipping is both economic and efficient.

The Honda 20hp came in a package about 85 kg. Not light, but not impossible either.

We borrowed Ken's stair-walking trolley to bring it to King Malu. Ken joined us for the exercise.

We have high hopes that this time we will be successful with the motor.

The stair walking trolley proved invaluable as we had to take the motor up over a sea wall to get to our quay.

Lowering it down we attached a couple of ropes to stop runaway motor syndrome.

Then it was just a push around to King Malu.

'Oh my goodness...' we have to get it onto the deck and we are moored bow to. We cannot change around as we don't have a motor!

Both Tim and I had plans to do this. We both were keen not to damage the new motor or the treadmaster on the deck.

Suddenly someone suggests removing the safety lines from the starboard side to make it vastly less distance we have to lift and control the motor.

That proves to be a master stroke and makes it radically easier.

We use a halyard attached to the motor to take the weight and two people guiding to move it gently to the stern. Another halyard off the mizzen mast to lower it on to the plate that we have fitted.

Sounds easy?

In some ways it was easy, but a lot of very tiring work.

We then had to wire and fix the motor. The extension was too short so I had to extend the extension. We meant 20 wire splices.

By the end of the day we fired up the motor and... it worked. That was so encouraging. Though we were exhausted, it was that kind of nice tiredness that you get from a job well done and successful.

Update

2010-08-27T00:12:00.000+03:00

So... what has been happening since the problem with the motor? Well... we removed it and it has been sent back to the manufacturer for testing. In the meantime we have ordered a Honda outboard, which had been our intention anyhow as backup, to use until the electric drive is ready. Tim and I are both away for a few days next week, so hopefully next weekend (4/5 September) we will fix the outboard and remotes on King Malu and then... be sailing again.

Second sea trial

2010-07-25T22:05:00.008+03:00

10 nautical miles

Target today was to calibrate the navionics. This meant we needed to do two or three very slow circles. As we started off from the marina there was a significant sea mist. We don't have radar this year so we stationed John at the bow as lookout.

Then we started the slow circles. The autopilot calibrated and we hoisted sails and started off towards Cape Pila. Yes! The autopilot was now working fine and would steer course or to wind.

Next thing was to create a compass deviation chart. So we started on that under sail.

The motor was too hot to use, but it would have been easier and quicker to do this under power. We really must find something to keep the motor cool.

With 8 deep discharge batteries, plus the power controller there is not a lot of space in the engine room.

But now this was glorious sailing. We had ice-cool watermelon while we sailed along.

We started the generator to test that under way and to recharge the batteries that we had used quite a bit for the navionics calibration. That worked perfectly. Could even run the fridge freezer at the same time as recharging the batteries.

Louis needed to be back by 1pm so we turned for home. I had hoped a sail past Larnaca Nautical Club, but time would not permit.

About half a nautical mile out from the marina we started the motor, dropped the sails and I took the helm. I had the throttle at about 40% keeping it low because I know we still have this motor heating problem and when it gets too hot the controller throttles the motor back automatically and the last thing I want is to lose power while maneuvering into the berth, especially as we want to try to berth stern to this time.

At 40% throttle we had just about 2 knots of speed. Not exactly mind blowing, but adequate. We really do need more power. I would have liked to motor up to the marina at about 4 knots and slowed to 2 and then 1 as we entered. I felt we were just chugging along, and because of the over-heating I don't really feel I trust the motor yet.

I slow down to about a knot as we turn into our area of the marina and then slow still more as we come close to our berth... turn ready to reverse... put the throttle into reverse and... nothing... the motor died.

Because the wind was moderate we immediately started to drift towards the other boats and the slipway which would have done significant damage to our yacht and others except for the quick thinking of Tim who jumped into the water and swam to an anchor chain and we threw him a line which he secure to that chain... and we eventually managed to berth the boat in between two others not at our own berth.

We stayed on the yacht all afternoon worried that the real owner of the berth would return. I talked a friend Chris into a tow at 5pm when the wind had dropped. Where we were it did appear to drop. When he started to tow we realised the wind had not dropped we were just in a sheltered position. We should have taken his advice and not tried it.

With the help of a couple of Lebanese on a power boat we managed to beth between two very big power boats. Other than damaging our brand new gangplank no other damage was sustained to our yacht... or anyone else. Thank God.

We left her there for the night.

First sea trial

2010-07-24T22:04:00.005+03:00

11 nautical miles

The day started off with Tim and me clearing up King Malu so that when we sailed tools and other things would not fly around the cabin. Then when our crew arrived, Jacob, Louis and Sidney we got the sails ready, put on lifejackets and motored out. The motor was still getting hotter than we wanted, but it did the job.

Up with mainsail and genoa and we started sailing. Yes... King Malu under sail again! She is a very well behaved if heavy boat. What with the fridge and freezer working it was wonderful to enjoy a glass of ice cold lemonade as we sailed.

We wanted to try to get the mizzen up, but could not because we need an extra halyard, since we had stolen the mizzen halyard for the gangplank. We tried removing the mizzen topping lift, but that was stuck firmly.

We tried the autopilot, but that went crazy taking us totally the wrong way. However, the main sheet system was brilliant, total control and very easy from the helm.

On the way back we passed the Zenobia dive boats. The wreck of the Zenobia is supposed to be one of the ten best dive sites in the world.

One of the boats was Alpha Divers, run by Chris, a friend of mine. I almost called him up on the radio, but we were having fun and he was working!

King Malu tacked nicely and so on the way back (I was skipper for the day) I decided to try a jibe. Yes, she jibed nicely too... a textbook jibe with the boat gently coming round rather than the boom bashing across.

So I positioned her right and did a final jibe and a broad reach back to the marina. The motor worked OK, but there was too much wind to reverse in, so we just put her bow to the dock. The afternoon we spent on pottering jobs.

OK, so I re-read the manual for the autopilot and in commissioning realised that the motor control was the wrong way round. Changed that and the autopilot went the right way. Costas from Raymarine came round and I found out that the reason we couldn't get the autopilot to steer to wind was that it was configured (dealer config which he changed) as a power boat not sail boat. And... the reason that we couldn't see wind and depth on the A70 was that the autopilot didn't repeat those values on the NMEA output. OK, so tomorrow we will calibrate the autopilot.

All in all a wonderful day's sail.

Batteries being installed

2010-07-17T18:04:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I painted with epoxy the battery cage, so today was fix it in place and get the batteries wired... didn't finish, of course, but did get a long way there.

In the morning I cut some marine ply for the cage: 2cm thick marine ply! This is so that when the batteries are in place they will not roll about and should worst come to worst and the boat ever rolls 180 degrees, the batteries will not fall out. You really don't want 200 plus kilos of batteries free running around your engine room!

But before we could fix the battery cage back in place we had to refit the motor. The flange that joined the motor to the UJ (universal joint) was re-machined on Thursday to fix two problems - firstly one of the bolts thread was chewed up and two of the others didn't look to good and secondly alignment was dependent on the bolts which was not great. So Louis re-tapped the holes for larger bolts and created a stud alignment for the flange to the UJ. Worked great.

So after the motor was back in place we bolted the battery cage in place and then started wiring and fixing the woodwork. Almost finished but not quite. Would have got further if I could have found the Stanley knife to cut the insulation off some wires, but the boat seems to have this habit of getting really untidy and then being unable to find anything. The degree if untidiness is directly proportional to the number of people working on the boat at the same time... so with Tim, me, Daniel, Ken and Louis all working on the boat on Wednesday you can see it got pretty untidy!

I started tidying again in an effort to find the Stanley knife. It should be easier now in that with the battery cage in place we won't be tripping over 8 deep discharge batteries and a fairly heft motor controller all the time.

Battery box in place

2010-07-15T23:25:00.001+03:00

I went down really early this morning, well, 8am is really early for me, with Louis to help cut away part of the main frame for the motor and fit the bolts for the battery box. He cut off the extra bits of metal. Just as we finished that Ken rang suggesting we put the cage back in, mark it up, remove it, remove the frame and take all back to the workshop to fix. I said 'Too late, it's done'.

We then fitted the cage back in and drilled all 8 of the 8mm holes for bolts (9mm holes for 8mm bolts). Finished around 10am. It was very hot work. Need more water for the boat ;-) Louis basically felt we had to do it in situ with clamps because it will be right aligned... even though it is a 'job' (ie task) drilling all holes with electric hand drill. We left the cage in place since Dan and I can get it out and saves Louis time.

In the afternoon I paid a visit to Louis workshop: Louis has done the lathe work on the flange for the motor so that it mates perfectly with the UJ. Alignment will be easy for the future. He had retapped all the threads on the UJ to 12mm metric. He has still to widen the holes in the flange to allow for 12mm bolts (which he will do tomorrow) and he gave me two new hex bolts for the motor (different lengths, stainless steel this time) and is getting new 12mm bolts for the UJ the right length (again tomorrow).

I am hoping to get motor back in tomorrow and hope this is last time. I'm not into this 'in, out, in, out' I prefer to work with a temporary bodge while testing then put something in correctly and leave it there! With the flange re-machined I think we will be perfectly aligned with the motor.

I met Louis family while I was there - he has two sons almost exactly same age as mine, and when his wife arrived found they had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary 2 weeks ago, whereas our 30th is this weekend.

Louis also introduced me to Savvas who does most of the electrical work here (rewinding motors, generators etc). He was very interested in what we are doing with King Malu.

Battery boxes and motor alignment

2010-07-14T23:11:00.008+03:00

Tim, Daniel and I went down to King Malu around 5pm to look at some settings on the motor. When we arrived we found Ken and Loius had put the battery box (a significant metal structure for 8 deep discharge batteries) into the saloon. So we thought we would see if it fitted. Ken and Louis had not done this because the motor controller was in the way and would need unwiring.

Bofore fitting the battery box we wanted to test the new settings we had been emailed for the motor. Sadly they were slower than the ones the previous day. Hmmm... not going well.

So we unwired the controller and fitted, or tried to fit, the battery box. Two of the struts from the main frame for the motor and battery boxes were too long and so it would not fit. We called Ken and Louis and they came to look. Tomorrow we would need to cut away some of the main frame.

Then we looked at the alignment of the prop shaft. It looked good, but two problems were noticed. Firstly the thread of one of the bolts was screwed up and would need retapping and secondly Louis noticed that the connection from the motor flange to the universal joint could be improved for alignment, indeed, should be improved and he wished he had noticed this before. Oh well... another step forward for another day.

While this was happening Daniel was doing a turks head knot on the stern hand rail. There is a flap in the hand rail for people to come on and off the boat. Because it has a steel catch it tends to scratch the teak varnishing. So the tucks head knot will stop it banging.

Removed the old motor

2010-07-11T23:08:00.002+03:00

Well, the controller isn't working correctly, but we did manage to motor over to the lift out berth and lift out the old Ford motor.

Tim and I spent the morning in preparation. Included in this was removing the saloon table. That had been Daniel's suggestion to give more space. After the well built Suez Canal pilot had apparently fallen against the table when the boat was under previous ownership that table had not been the same again. Tim had tried to make it firmer, but to no avail. We decided to remove it and make it more rigid in the future.

Having removed it we then decided that for our sailing a large fixed table wasn't really what we wanted so for this year we will use a fold-up table and think about what is best for the future next year. Many of our projects involve thinking and planning and rethinking and re-planning till we get the best solution possible.

In the afternoon we (Tim, Daniel, Sydney, Jacob and me) and gathered together and created a derrick with the spinnaker pole, the main halyard and the mainsheet (which is 4:1/8:1 ratio block system) and the genoa sheets as guides. This worked extremely well and we lifted the old Ford engine to the deck.

We then motored round to the lift out bay and removed the engine. What went wrong? This was easier than we expected. Within a few minutes the old engine was sitting on the hard.

We then motored back out with the intention of checking anchoring and then returning to our berth. However... on the way out two of the fenders pulled off so we decided we should launch the tender and retrieve them.

Agggg... the wind was blowing us around and the lack of engine power (the new new motor controller is not configured correctly yet) meant we decided discretion was the better part of valour and tried to return to our berth. In reverse the motor really was a pain giving almost no power. This is partly because we have a folding propeller.

We moored for'ard to and then sent a shore party off the retrieve the fenders. They failed. They walked back and forth trying to find them.

On the way back someone said to them, 'Looking for something?' 'Yes, we lost a couple of fenders' 'These yours?' 'Yes' 'Next time I'll keep them!'

Finally took my car round and lifted the engine into the back and then drove home and lifted out into my driveway.

Successful day. Need more like these.

Motor working... sort of...

2010-07-10T23:42:00.001+03:00

What a day. In the morning Daniel and I went down to King Malu and got the frame bedded onto the engine bearers. Then got the motor mounted onto the frame and finally lined up the motor with the prop shaft. Then back home for lunch.

After lunch Tim and I went down to the boat and wired it all up. Temporarily wired that is since we don't have the battery cage upon which the drive controller will be mounted. But the aim is to get the motor working so we can move the boat to the lift out dock and take out the old Ford engine tomorrow.

Having wired it all up we tested it and... the motor revolved at unbelievably slow speed. Everything we did seemed to make no difference. So we phoned Jacopo to try and get more information. The problem was compounded by the fact that the documentation didn't match the firmware embedded in the controller. No joy. So home for dinner...

Tim, Lauren and I then went back after dinner and went through every setting in the controller and at last the motor came to life. Not entirely sure what we did, but at least it should work for tomorrow. It was exciting to see King Malu surge forward on her moorings, rearing to go.

One irritation is that the motor controller doesn't like some connections at switch on. So we will have to put a time delay on them. Doesn't fully make sense in an electric car, but is nonsense in a boat. I wish we could disable that 'feature'.

Motor frame finished

2010-07-09T01:50:00.004+03:00

Ken and Louis finished the frame for the motor today and checked everything lines up with the drive shaft correctly. So at 6pm I took it home and painted it with epoxy primer.

Then late when I couldn't sleep I got up and finished the throttle control. That now works correctly too.

My original design didn't have the extra drain resistor for the transistor relay driver or the resistor on the output of the throttle control. But with those added the system worked very well indeed.

Basically the cross wired dual gang potentiometer has one fading up while the other is fading down and visa versa. By adding them through a couple of diodes, from the central off position the voltage increases in each direction.

Using a ubiquitous 741 op-amp across the two potentiometers, when the voltage on one is greater than the other the op-amp triggers state. This goes through a 2N2222 driver transistor to a relay. I could drive the controller direct, with a couple of op-amps, but using the relay isolates my circuit from the controller totally.

Simple and effective.

Tomorrow if all goes well the battery frame will be finished.

Motor in place... temporarily

2010-07-06T20:47:00.009+03:00

Yes, it had it's first fitting today... like a fitting for a suit or a dress. And yes, there are adjustments to be made. But not with needle and thread, but welding torch and milling machine.

Ken and Louis got the side plates and end plate ready for the first fitting and sadly, the side plates were very slightly wrong. However, as the english phrase does 'a miss is as good as a mile' so the plates were taken off back to the workshop for re-machining.

The plan had been to fit the motor, then remove it to have it epoxy painted. My feeling after today is that when its fitted we leave it there and epoxy paint what we can in situ.

Tomorrow should be the next fitting.

We found out over the weekend that the manufacturer of the drive controller had different firmware installed to what the manual specified. This means the wig-wag controller (their language) or the Morse controller (sailing language) will not work. Great. Not! So I sat down over the weekend and designed some basic electronics to overcome the problem. Amazing what you can do with a 741 op-amp.

Yesterday we negotiated with the company that supplied the motor to send us a programmer by express air freight so that we can re-program the controller to work correctly with the new electronic throttle that I designed. We now have a tracking number so that we know its on its way.

Motor arrived

2010-07-01T21:59:00.002+03:00

Exciting day. The motor arrived.

I had been watching the tracking of the item with TNT and so knew online when it had arrived in Cyprus and called TNT to arrange for Tim and me to pick it up.

We went down to the TNT depot in Larnaca only to find that although they had the controller there, they had left the motor with another company for delivery because it was so heavy. So we went down to the other company with a TNT rep to pick it up. On the way back home TNT phoned us to say the package had arrived (we knew) but that one of the packages was missing (we knew it was somewhere else) and that they would try to find it (we told them we already had it).

Heavy beast the motor. Lighter than the old diesel though.

Engine room hatch complete

2010-06-26T22:10:00.021+03:00

Now we have the pieces of marine ply to fill around the hatch frame it will be easy.

So back into the engine room I go. Actually, I'm not feeling great today, having started a flu like cold overnight, but I'm determined to finish the job we started yesterday.

Everything screwed in place like it was designed to go. Well, I suppose nearly 35 years ago it was designed to have the pieces of marine ply where I was putting them back. I wonder how many years it has been in the kludged state.

With the hatch in place the saloon is beginning to look like a saloon again. If only we can get the old engine block out...

I tried removing the oil marks around the engine room hatch with Miracle Cleaner and sadly it didn't make any impression on it. So this will have to wait till next year to be rubbed down and re-varnished. The priority now is function rather than beauty, although we do want her to look neat and tidy for the season.

We have even started on the multitude of minor miscellaneous jobs, in this case fixing a clip for the safety torch just inside the main cabin.

Filling the hole... into the engine room

2010-06-25T22:06:00.006+03:00

The engine room hatch is not a big issue in the scheme of things but the hole into the engine room makes the boat look very unfinished. So Chris and I decided today we would try to fix it.

We bought 2x1 timber and some long screws to fix the frame in place and spent quite some time working on it.

Alas we failed. At least we failed to complete it. We screwed the frame in place and it didn't look quite right and tried to make filler pieces of 2x1 and wedged the frame in place and then the hatch itself wouldn't fit and kept falling out.

Suddenly I noticed the holes through the frame were countersunk from the back, which meant the frame must have been fitted from the back.

OK, so we failed, but we now knew what we should do to fix it... tomorrow.

New battery now works

2010-06-24T18:52:00.002+03:00

OK, so the reason the new battery didn't work yesterday to start the generator was easy. I like easy to fix problems: When I had changed the battery I had tightened up all the fixings except one of the earth cables. That one was making bad connection and so not getting enough current to the started motor. Fixed.

Sunset over Larnaca brought time to go to Tim's flat for a lovely evening of potatoes in the Webber, with crisps and dips, some great wine and even better fellowship.

Discussions range to sailing tomorrow... taking out the Wayfarer and the trimaran. Some real sailing to look forward to.

Electrical issues

2010-06-23T20:18:00.005+03:00

Too much wind for a sail in the Wayfarer so it's down to the marina again to work on King Malu.

We have been having problems starting the generator - the engine battery is very old so it's not surprising. Starts fine when we use the domestic battery bank. So we bought a new engine battery today.

When we plugged in the new battery it started taking charge, unlike the old one. So we charged it up, but it still wouldn't start the generator. I am thinking that there wire is too long or there is something not good connection so higher resistance than allows enough current to flow for starting the generator. Chris and I will investigate more tomorrow.

It's possible that the wire from the battery, through the shunt, over to the isolation switch, back round the sail locker to the generator is too long for the very high current needed to start the generator. When we doubled up with the second battery bank we were halving the resistance too.

Later this afternoon I started updating the CAD drawing for the electrical schematic and (grrrr...) Windows lost it over dinner tonight, so will update tomorrow and remember to save since the 'autosave' on the CAD system obviously doesn't work.

We heard the PSUs for the electric drive are, or should be, on their way today... and that as soon as funds clear in Italy, the new electric drive itself will be on it's way. Hopefully tomorrow, so that it arrives early next week.