15º 57.532s 145º 04.778w
Sun Jun 02 2019
Isabel
says that everything on the boat has to have at least two purposes, and if we
haven’t used it in at least a year, it’s off the boat. That apparently applies
to me as well.
Part
of safety is redundancy. Things are going to wear and break. Long passages
especially lead to chafe problems that would never become apparent in day
sailing or short overnight adventures. Stuff that somehow can find a way to rub
together for 20 or 30 days leads to frayed canvas or lines, worn steel parts,
etc. It’s important to look around the boat and figure out how one can
improvise a fix if something important fails deep at sea and we simply have to
find a way to carry on. Parts of our main sail stack pack canvass took a
beating on our passage from PV to FP, and I’m still trying to decide how to
repair it.
Back
at the end of 2015, Casey at Pacific Offshore Rigging suggested replacing our
topping lift with a much larger line. It was looking a bit tired, but his point
was that in the event the main halyard parted, we would be able to quickly
switch the topping lift over to the main halyard attachment point and get
sailing again. A great idea, and worthy of a little extra cost.
We
have replaced every piece of running rigging, and at 11 years old it was
absolutely time to do so. Sun and salt are evil. As we’re not made of money,
rather that buy two sets of everything we kept the still serviceable lines as
spares and found homes for them. Not easy on our little boat as both the weight
and storage volume are problem, but necessary to have the spares so we have the
old spinnaker and jib halyards tucked safely away. The main halyard was
absolutely shot, but we’ve got that topping lift trick . . .
We’ve
got all the materials for a full change of oil and multiple oil filters (those
might be hard to source), and enough extra to deal with a sudden leak. We’ve
got lots of spare fuel filters in case we get a sudden case of fuel
contamination. We’ve got heaps of 20 and 5 micron filters for the water maker,
rebuild parts for the boost pump and high pressure pump, and plumbing parts to
exclude one of the two pressure vessels in case one membrane goes South. We
always have a couple jerry jugs of diesel and gasoline and when those are gone
we’re even more keenly aware of our fuel state. We’ve got a spare house water
pump, and parts to rebuild those including microswitches and a full up pump
head. As a backup we’ve got a manual pump and we’re already setup to bypass the
electric pump and extract drinking water. Imagine having a few hundred liters
of water on board and no way to get at it. Perhaps most importantly, there are
two toilets on the boat. Imagine blocking the only head!
Not
only have we got two engines (oh the joy of catamarans) but two full up
alternators with individual regulators, and spares of each. The fuel tanks do
not interconnect, so if one fuel tank becomes contaminated it won’t foul the
other one. I recently replaced most of the salt water and some of the fresh
water hoses and kept enough of the old ones for emergency repairs. Thad brought
us a heap of stainless steel hose clamps; those do break on occasion, so we’ve
also got that going for us.
A
set of oars live in the dinghy, and we’ve got 2 spare props for the outboard.
As well we’ve got a spare fuel line for the dinghy fuel tank; apparently those
can be very difficult to source in some parts of the world as they’re
manufacturer specific.
We’ve
got 4 solar panels, each with its own controller. If a controller died we could
combine multiple panel inputs to a single controller, and they’re large enough
they’ve got head room for additional input. We don’t have a spare inverter
(wish we did), but if it packs up we’ve got a little Honda generator we can use
to run the watermaker and any other AC appliance.
Our
LiFeP04 batteries are in a 4S4P configuration for a total of 720 amp hours, so
if a single or multiple cells go South we can reconfigure to any multiple of
180 amp hours and keep going. We’ve got 2 refrigerators to keep fresh food and
veg, but we’ve only got 1 freezer. If that packs up we’ll have no ice cubes!
However, the designer/builder of that unit, Mal Betts of ICEER in Australia,
was our guest at a rally years ago, and he left us with a spare controller, the
most common part to fail. What a guy!
We
have a spare autopilot, as the original owner had installed one we considered
inadequate for a boat of this weight. We test it occasionally to ensure it’s
still available for emergency duty. The Seawind 1160 has dual rudders with a
solid interconnect link, then individual cable steering to both a port and
starboard helm station. If one hand steering station cable fails, we can use
the other. If both fail, steer with the hydraulic autopilot which connects
directly to the interconnect link. Backup upon backup. Try losing steering at
sea – it does happen and becomes a major emergency fast. Our pals on Shamal,
another Seawind 1160 somehow lost an entire rudder – the must have hit
something at sea, and found that the boat could be steered to safety using only
one rudder. Not great, but redundancy.
\
We’ve
got 2 propane cylinders, multiple cans of wasabi, and lots of fishing line and
lures. Not going hungry out here! There’s a lot more to mention, but you get
the point, and only you know your boat and all its systems, and if you don’t
you better get up to speed.
BS
sessions with other cruisers often include topics such as “how are you prepared
cope with this or that system failure or outright emergency, and what tricks
have you learned so far?” There’s a lot of clever folks out there, and it’s useful
to share ideas. At the end of the day, perhaps our most important spare is the
cruising community itself, whose members are ready to come to the aid of
others, either with tools and parts in hand, or over the radio from afar. It’s
a great bunch of folks!
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