We’re sailing a 2008 Seawind 1160, a boat that a crowd of folks enjoy racing in Australia. There seem to be a good number of live-aboard sailors as well. Living on a boat in a marina is one thing; living in remote locations on the hook is a different animal. If you go hunting for a bear you better be loaded for bear, because a bear will laugh at a popgun. We’ve got extensive provisions and spare parts, we’ve got a 30 gallon per hour water maker, we’ve got extra refrigeration for food (and beer), we’ve got a diesel fired blown air furnace, and we’ve got toys like kite boarding gear, one SCUBA setup, SUP and kayak. We’ve also got shades and bug screens and the like. We have 7 20 liter jerry cans with diesel and 2 with gasoline to run the dinghy and the emergency backup Honda 2kw generator. We’ve got a Parasailor, a second jib, and a screecher sail. All that takes up space, and it adds weight, a lot of it.
Darned Seawind 1160 doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps we forgot what JollyDogs felt or performed like before we kitted her out to go cruising, or perhaps the design is somewhat insensitive to load. Certainly she sits lower in the water - we raised the anti-foul line 2 inches and given the factory line drawings we reckon we’re at about 10 tons. And here we are, with reef #3 in the main and just a tad of the jib rolled out, sailing in 14 knots of true wind from the West which puts the apparent wind at 11 knots and 120 degrees to port, and we’re doing 4.5 knots. I had to roll up most of the jib a moment ago when the true wind came up to 16 knots because we were brushing up against our 6 knot speed limit.
How the hell are we supposed to slow this bad girl down? Go bare poles?!? We’re sailing with a “blob” (for lack of a better word) for a starboard bow and the autopilot is managing just fine. If the wind picks up a couple of knots I’m either going have to drop the main and then roll out all the jib and see if I can remain under our 6 knot speed limit, or, well, I don’t know what.
We’ve spent a good bit of time strategizing about how we’ll configure the sails and place the true wind and seas to go easy on the damaged starboard bow with an objective of wind and seas well aft of the beam and a maximum speed of 6 knots with a target speed of 5 knots average. It’s proving to be a bit of a struggle to accomplish this seemingly simple goal.
As my UAV flight test pal Spencer Spiker is fond of saying, “this is a high class problem”. Most folks complain that their boat is slow and won’t even begin sailing until they’ve got 10 or 15 knots of wind or whatever, and they have to motor all over the place. We can sail quite happily in 6 knots of breeze, and often do. Diesels are noisy and stinky, and they transform a beautiful sailing experience into a ride on a “transportation appliance”.
Nothing against French people, some of our best friends are French, but I don’t speak French worth a lick, and I’m sure glad I’m dealing with English speaking folks at the other end of the email string or telephone when talking with Seawind. The factory support team has responded quickly to every email query about the bow structure, the hull layup and manufacturing techniques, offered their thoughts about collision bulkhead reinforcement and additional flood control bulkheads, and even answered my questions regarding scuttling the vessel if we had to abandon ship. Best they can tell the blasted boat won’t even sink. I can’t believe we wasted all that money on a life raft - although if she caught fire we’d be off in a flash. So to speak.
We’re not even the first owners of this boat, we’re the second. She was built in Australia in 2008; we bought her in 2013. Changed that silly name Lanakai to something more serious (JollyDogs) and she’s been our full time home since 2014. Even still, Seawind treats us like we’re company stock holders with voting shares.