Survey results !

So the survey results are back !

And it is a result.

I nearly panicked when I saw the dreaded "Osmosis" word but it actually seems quite minor. The heater still seems to be troublesome but probably only needs a good service. I have to replace the gas hoses and may need to pay a Corgi registered engineer just to shove a couple of tubes on which will be annoying. But overall I am glad there are no horrible surprises.

Martin Evans, the surveyor has done an excellent and astonishingly thorough job. It was worth the wait.

Most people seem to agree with me that these issues are fairly minor.

Other than that I have been looking around for useful reference material so when we get the boat, we have as many of the manuals & advice as possible.

Here are some of the useful sites I have found

Diesel Engine Manuals - mine is a Yanmar 3GM30F (click on the English flag for a non dutch version!)

Diesel Engine Forum

Diesel Engine Maintenance

Old Eberspacher Manuals - mine is a D3L

Autohelm Manuals - mine is Nautech 4000

Stowe Navsounder

Garmin 120

Added to this I have been looking through the ybw forums to find some useful threads

General Maintenance
Heads
Engine Oils for old diesels
Eberspacher Servicing
Dinghy davits - we will want to install some system once we get the boat

Rinnai Hot Water Heater manuals

Good news but still waiting...

So the good news is that the Surveyor has sent a quick email saying the new boat is basically OK but saying he is busy writing up reports from other prior surveys so we should not expect our full written report until Tuesday.

Having spent good money on the survey it would be ridiculous to go ahead without waiting for the full written report so I will just have to be patient.

The list of jobs to do before we set of seems to be growing including

Arrange for new boat insurance
See the bank to sort out how to pay for it
Passage plan the delivery trip
Arrange for her to be antifouled and probably rectify any minor gel coat issues and polished
Arrange for her to be lifted back in.

On the passage planning front I have already got some good advice as ever from ybw.com

I was surprised to find that someone has put in a roundabout in the middle of the Thames Estuary! I kid you not. We will be planning to avoid these but for your amusement they are described in the below Notice to Mariners.

Roundabout NTM and Roundabout picture

What next, traffic cones and contra flows ?

On Saturday we attended the MacGregors Owners association AGM. We did think this would be for the last time but to be honest they are such a nice friendly bunch we will probably stay associate members. In fact the last two “commodore”s have brought another non Mac boat before finishing their terms in charge ! But they are both still members. I am thinking of organising a non Mac Owners association cruise if that makes any sense !

We had a useful day as we met some new members who haven’t brought a boat yet so might potentially want to buy ours. And we borrowed some charts from the association chart library that will help us with our delivery trip.

The frustrating element of the day was when the subject of “Risk Assessments” was brought up for our Rallies. The guys who brought it up were well meaning – just really passing on guidance from the RYA. But this is the kind of rubbish I have to put up with at work and go sailing to avoid.

A typical rally for us might be might be

1. Meet in Portsmouth
2. Sail to the Folly for dinner and a beer
3. Sail home.

Hardly Ellen/Joyon material?

Are skippers not capable of making their own assessments of boats, crew and conditions? Has anyone calculated the risk of “drowning” in paperwork !
I will be most disappointed if I don’t get a 100 post reply to this ;-)

I know exactly the place where people will enjoy venting their frustrations on this one.

YBW on risk Assessments !

Pippin digging for oil

Not really relevant to sailing around the world but soooo worth sharing is Pippin "prospecting" for oil in Poole 2007. She never made it rich but did take an awfully long time to get clean again. She won't be coming on the new catamaran looking anything like that.

First photos of our new boat

So how did we get here?

So how did I get to this point? I first started sailing on in Cancun, in tiny little Sunfish dinghies off the beach. Little did we know that conditions were almost perfect - flat, warm seas; gentle on-shore breeze; lots of clear space with no rocks / wrecks / buoys etc to hit.....

After trying very unsuccessfully to sail on a local lake when we got back home, we signed up for proper lessons and took our RYA 1 & 2 dinghy sailing courses. After toying with the idea of buying a dinghy of our own, we eventually ended up with a 26' trailer sailer and a hulking great 4x4 to tow it with! 4 years on and has led us to planning the ultimate in early retirement plans - selling up and sailing away to circumnavigate the world! Initially just a vague dream, then a tentative plan, now we have got down to the nitty-gritty of working out how to make it happen and are already in our 3rd year of a 10 year plan. Questina is the unexpected twist in our tale - she was never part of the original equation.

So how did we come to putting an offer on a 19 year old Prout Quest 33? Enter our dear friends Jilly and David, the delightful owners of a Prout Event 34. We thought we were quite adventurous with our little MacGregor, creeping cautiously up the Wareham Channel to the Town Quay. When we saw That Cat turn up, we weren't sure if it was by accident or design! Surely nobody would plan to bring a catamaran that size all the way up the channel?? Once we discovered that it was not only perfectly possible but also eminently more luxurious than our little boat, a new seed was germinated. Meeting up with David and Jilly again, anchored serenely in the Beaulieu River and later, beached quite happily at Bembridge, we realised that a medium sized catamaran could do almost anything our little Mac could do, in considerably more comfort. In addition, although we would lose the ability to power home at 10+ knots, we could stretch our sailing skills a lot further with night sailing, auto-helming and hence much longer passages than we are currently used to. Having previously ruled out the idea of keeping a cat in the Solent as too expensive and unmanageable, the opposite was suddenly looking quite feasible.

We headed down to Multihull World in Emsworth and after several hours of clambering over practically every cat in their range, we were fairly sure that a Quest 33 was the ideal cat for us. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the only model they didn't have in the UK, though they had pictures of several in the Med and further afield, so it took a few trips to east and west coasts plus a brief holiday in France to visit a few for us to be absolutely sure. And now we are just a gnat's whisker (plus a lot of cash!) away from owning our very own cat.

We also posted
on ybw.com about Prouts and Quest 33's in particular and got some reassuringly positive feedback.

In the begining

So it’s started. From small acorns do oak trees grow. Or maybe more appropriately that should be from ripples do tidal waves grow. Actually maybe this is a bad choice of analogy considering one day we want to sail off in to the blue yonder - let’s start over.

We are buying a new boat.

A Catamaran, a Prout Quest 33 to be precise. This won’t be the boat we will sail away on BUT it is a catamaran and is the first real practical step we have made towards fulfilling our dream. This is the practice boat we will have for the next five years or so whilst we build up our experience We are still many years from slipping the lines for good and sailing off over the horizon but this boat whilst small enough (we hope) to fit into our Solent berth is larger enough for us to gain some true offshore experience.

And today we are having the survey done. I am both excited and anxious to see what the surveyor comes up with.

Our previous boat, a MacGregor 26X, whilst much mocked by many we have enjoyed immensely and found a very flexible start to sailing. But it is time to move up a gear, to have a real Diesel engine, hot and cold running water, a shower, a heater, mains electricity and space, so much space.

We looked around many boats, and asked much advice, as ever the ybw.com forums were useful.
We asked for some specific advice from about brokers and offers and got some great replies on ybw.com

And now we are buying a new boat...