Off Sailing

Why did we choose Ramukanji? Well, the main driver was budget, by boat standards, I was working on a tight budget and I was very particular on the kit I wanted to fit.  The only way of meeting these two opposing criteria was to buy a relatively cheap boat and then fit it out with the kit I wanted and keeping the costs down by doing most of the labour myself.

 

So I started looking for a boat in the summer of 2021, the criteria being:

 

• Budget

• Around 32 -34ft long

 

The reason for the size requirement was because my wife, Claire, feels intimidated by larger boats if there is only there two of us on board. I would have preferred something slightly larger, but the sub 10 metre boats are cheaper to buy and cheaper to run, especially when paying for marina charges, most marinas charge by length and under 10m brings the costs down.

 

Other than that, I was opened minded as to make, model etc. I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted, but this was the post covid market and unfortunately the market was very inflated with boats selling for crazy money, not ideal.

 

However, I was in the fortunate position of having a head start on most boat buyers in that I had spent the last nine years working as a Yacht Surveyor. So having surveyed hundreds of yachts in that time, I kind of knew what to look for to avoid buying a pup.

 

One of the models I quite fancied was the Moody 31 and one came up for sale in Edinburgh for a sensible price and I was monitoring all the boat sales websites closely, so I was the first caller to the vendor.

 

The pictures looked good, and it had a relatively new engine fitted, so I booked a flight pronto and flew up to see it.  Unfortunately, the photos were flattering, and the engine showed signs of overheating, so feeling a bit deflated, I knew it wasn’t for me unless I could get it cheap. In the meantime, the vendor had deduced from the number of enquiries that he had under-priced the boat in the current market, so home I flew empty handed.

 

I had alerts set up on all the boat sales websites and a few weeks after the Scottish trip, in November 2021, an alert appeared in my inbox about a boat being listed at a broker in Ipswich, Suffolk. It was priced sensibly, and it was a relatively modern design for my price range. It was a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 32, these boats were built between 2002 – 2005 and with minor changes for a few more years after that.

 

I had chartered this model of boat in Greece a few years previously and really liked it so I started scrutinising the photos in the ad for why it was priced so well. It looked OK in the photos, but I could see some tell-tale signs that it had not been treated with TLC.

 

I called the brokers and arranged to see it and whilst I was in Suffolk I could pop in and see my best pal who had moved out that way.

 

The viewing confirmed my suspicions that the boat hadn’t been loved, the coachroof windows bonding had failed and they were letting water in, damaging the varnish on the interior woodwork and collecting in the bilge. Lifting the cabin sole boards revealed pools of water and corroded keel studs and nuts, she did not look good and there were numerous other issues.

 

On the upside, the engine looked good, I suspect it had been overhauled or replaced, and I could see past the neglect, and I knew that with some repairs, and TLC I could bring her back to her former glory. She also had not had much additional equipment added, which suited me as there was no point in paying for kit I would most likely replace anyway.

 

So, an offer was made and after much toing and froing a deal was secured.  I must admit, I thought I had got a good deal.

 

I now had to get her back to Chichester Harbour from Suffolk in the middle of Winter!

 

Boat design.

 

I thought it might be interesting (boring to most people) to talk about boat design at this stage.

 

Most things in life are a compromise (unless you’re a squillionaire with a bottomless pit of money, and there are a few of those around that have boats built for them) and boats are no exception.

 

My boat is what’s know as a “production boat”, that means there is a manufacturer who designs and builds a model of boat and then sells as many as possible in the hope of making a profit. The boat building industry is notoriously risky, with many boat builders coming and going.  This is because the market for boats is relatively small and it is a discretionary purchase, unless you’re a fisherman or a ferry operator, you don’t “need” a boat.

 

In my opinion there is a lot of mis informed tosh bandied around about boats. A lot of boat owners seem to gravitate to older designs on the basis that that they were “better built” and “tougher and stronger” than modern production boats, and there is some truth in this.

 

But the downside with the older designs is most of the older sailing cruisers were designed with smallish sail areas which means poor light airs sailing performance. I have often heard owners’ boat that “she stands up to her sails well, I don’t need to reef until the breeze is over 20knots”.

 

This is like saying “my car can get up a steep hill in top gear” That normally means it’s under geared and the engine is spinning inefficiently fast most of the time, like a 4 speed transmission car compared to a 6 speed modern car.

 

Some older designs were called cruiser/racers and as the name suggests, enabled the owner to go racing sometimes or take the family on a cruising holiday.  Some of these had more sail area and their performance was good. Unfortunately, the designs ere heavily influenced by something known as the International Offshore Rule (IOR).

 

These rules were intended to be a handicap system so that boats of very different shapes and sizes could compete. So just like in Formula 1, where the teams look to gain advantage by optimising or bending the rules, so boat designers did the same with the IOR.

 

Whilst this rule did improve some aspects of boat design it did have the effect of reducing stability and some strange hull designs with tiny mainsails and huge genoas, not ideal for cruising.

 

I also don’t like the interior layout of older boats, they can feel like “teak mines” referring to the use of wood teak for everything and the darkness of the interior.

 

But hey, horses for courses, older designs do have may benefits it comes down to how you intend to use it and what your priorities are.

 

My plans are day sailing in the Med, if I was looking to cross oceans then my requirements would be different, and arguably some older designs are may bebetter suited for this.

 

Our plans were to day sail only with short passages, as we had our Sprocker Spaniel with us and its not fair on him to do long passages. So for day sailing and bimbleing around the med Ramukanji proved very good. Her large cockpit and bathing platform were great for us to swim from. And she would easily do 6 knots in most weather conditions.

​

Blog anchor

 

Anchors can be a sensitive subject for sailors, a lot of sailors are fixed in their opinions of which type or brand of anchor is the best.

 

I'm not sure why this is is most sailors will only ever have experience of one or two anchors or certainly a very limited number in their sailing lives.

 

I am not a confident Anchor user as in the UK I haven't anchored much and so never feel as though I have a high level of experience. To help me make a good decision on the anchor for Ramukanji, I came across a website which is subscription only called Attainable Adventure Cruising. This website was very interesting, its main contributors are blue water sailors with many years of experience of sailing around the world and in higher latitudes and whilst I had no intention of doing any blue water sailing or high latitude sailing I was keen to ensure I had the best anchor available for my use in the Mediterranean as I intended to anchor quite a lot.

 

So having read through all the research the recommendation was for an anchor called the “SPADE”.

 

Most main Bower anchors these days can be divided into two types of anchor, they are plough style anchors or spade style anchors.

 

The research suggests that the spade anchors are superior to the plough anchors in principle, this will make sense as of course ploughs are designed to travel through the ground whereas a spade is is designed to actually move ground rather than move through it.

 

One of the most popular spade anchors is the Rocna which has a very good reputation and is marketed well, the reason I didn't go for the Rocna is because the roll bar can make it difficult to stow on the bow roller and there have been issues with the roll bar when anchoring. The manufacturers of the Rocna also do a version called Vulcan which does not have the roll bar but this has a couple of design disadvantages to the spade anchor in my opinion and that of Attainable Adventure Cruising.

 

The key benefits of the spade over its competitors in my opinion are the shank itself is constructed from welded sheet steel material which makes it light and strong, and to add to this the lowest part of the anchor has lead inserted in it. This means that the anchor sets very well because the lead and the light Shank ensure that it sets correctly even if it has been unset at some stage such as when a tide reverses. In a nutshell it's primary benefit is the way it sets and or resets and in this regard it's considered to be the best anchor. In order for this anchor to fit Ramukanji I had to have a new bow roller fabricated this is an expensive exercise but having done it I'm glad I did because it made deploying and recovering the anchor much easier and the new bow roller is considerably stronger than the old cast aluminium bow roller that came from the Jeanneau factory.

 

I haven't had the opportunity to try the anchor out in poor conditions we did quite a lot of nights at anchor in the Mediterranean bots it was always in relatively good weather and certainly in those conditions I slept very soundly, and the anchor never budged an inch.

 

To summarise I believe the spade anchor to be the best anchor available currently and if you are interested in really intelligent recommendations on equipment that have been trialled in the harshest conditions by very experienced sailors I can also highly recommend the subscription to the Attainable Adventure Cruising website, well worth the investment.

​

​

​

Sails

 

A sailing yacht is fundamentally a vehicle with the primary motive force being the wind!

 

Sounds obvious, but I am always surprised by the number of sailing yachts out there with sails that are long past their best but have the latest, shiniest chart plotter fitted.

 

Most sails are made from Dacron and the benefit of Dacron is its longevity and the downside of Dacron is its longevity! Why is longevity a downside? I hear the parsimonious sailor’s cry. Well Dacron will look fine but will have lost its shape and become stretched and baggy so its performance to windward will be compromised, the boat will heel more, make more leeway, slam into waves more and in the worst-case scenario may not enable you to claw your way off a leeward shore in an emergency.

 

“Well, I’m not a racing so they’ll do” I often hear. Let me tell you a story to illustrate the point. I used to have a share in a late 90’s Beneteau Oceanis 36 centre cockpit, this boat had a furling genoa and an in-mast furling mainsail. The boat was designed to be a family cruiser, so I was not expecting sparkling performance, the sails were the original equipment fit.

 

The sailing performance was adequate, and we knew no better so we lived with it for years. One season we had some money to spend and decided to get a new genoa, we went to Kemps sailmakers and had a chat with them, and we bought a cruising laminate sail. This is a sail with a non-stretch core and a layer of Dacron to prevent UV and other light damage.

 

The difference was night and day. Before when we got to 20kts apparent to windward, we were hurriedly looking to take some rolls in on the genoa as the boat would be heeling, slamming and making a lot of leeway. With the new genoa when we hit 20ktrs apparent, the boat would dig in heel slightly and charge forward like it had been turbo-charged! The most transformative thing it sailed soooo much better.

 

We later upgraded the mainsail and fitted a feathering a propellor, it could have been a different boat, it was so much nicer to sail.

 

Ramukanji sailed OK, with the sails she had but I knew after my previous experience I wanted the best. She was only 32ft long so she would need all the help she could get to sail well and keep up an average 6 knots cruising speed which is what I was aiming for.

 

So,I asked three experienced sailors I knew which sail maker to talk to and they all said Sanders in Lymington

 

So after talking to Sanders I decided on buying a new Genoa and mainsail:

 

• Fully Battened Mainsail using Tri-radial DP DCX-M (laminate), 4 full length battens, and a full set of OWS batten cars.

 

• Genoa using Tri-radial DP DCX-M, sunstrip, leech line, tell tales, foot markers and luff padding.

 

This investment has paid off in that the sails optimise the whole sailing experience the boat is fast, close winded and means we can cruise at 6kts or over in most breezes.

 

So don’t forget, a yacht is a sailing machine first and foremost and I assure you will get more enjoyment from a set of well cut, quality sails than from the latest, greatest shiny electronic gizmo.

​