It is now pretty likely that Hurricane Earl will give us high winds here on the south-western shore of Nova Scotia. However, a deviation of just 50 miles either side of the forecast track will likely make the difference between us experiencing gale force versus hurricane force winds. And that in turn will determine whether we do very little preparation on Morgan’s Cloud or a lot.
That brings me to the subject of this post: the danger of relying too much on the many sites on the internet that repackage the information generated by the US National Hurricane Center in visually appealing ways (sizzle) but in so doing, lose much of the really important information (sausage).
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I have lived most of my life in the direct line of fire of Atlantic hurricanes, first in Bermuda, and now on the southern shore of Nova Scotia.
But no matter how familiar I am with the damned things, or perhaps because of that familiarity, I always have a slight feeling of constant tension at this time of year, which I’m sure I share with every rational resident of the east coast of this continent, Bermuda and the Caribbean. And, of course, those of us that are boat owners have even more to worry about.
This year is no different, with, as I write, two active hurricanes out there and one brewing. One even looks disturbingly as if it has us in its sights.
So I thought I would share some of the resources that I have found useful in keeping an eye on hurricanes and assessing the risk of getting clobbered.
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In part one and two of this series on the care and feeding of batteries on a live-aboard voyaging boat, we talked about what batteries need for a long life. In the next few posts we will move on to how to actually get those battery needs met.
We now have a fair, but certainly not great, battery charging system; however, getting here was anything but easy. The story of our long and costly struggle on Morgan’s Cloud and the lessons we have learned will, we hope, help you.
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There is so much about this story that worries me that it is hard to know where to start. A single-handed sailor abandoned his boat because he was totally exhausted from three days of hand steering, not because there was anything wrong with the boat.
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Pèlerin, our boat and home, is an OVNI 435 cutter designed by Philippe Briand, built for us and launched in 2008. Here is a brief introduction to her, what has worked for us, and what we’d do differently if we were starting again.
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It’s Saturday evening and we could not wait until next week to take the bubble wrap off the new site, so we pulled the trigger. After six months of work on this project, it’s time for a large scotch.
Vagabond is no ordinary yacht
There’s no mistaking the profile of certain boats, so it was easy for us to recognise the red yacht transiting the Caledonian Canal one day in early April, despite the near blizzard conditions at the time. ‘Vagabond’ is a well-known yacht in polar circles, and there is really nothing quite like her visually.
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Well worth a read: An interesting blog by our friends, circumnavigators and frequent commentors on AAC, David and Judy, who are in Greenland with their family on Danza, their beautifully prepared and just plain beautiful steel ketch.
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In the last post we wrote about the very poor service life that we have been getting from AGM batteries on Morgan’s Cloud—typically just a year or so.
Justin Gobar at Lifeline, who provided us with new batteries, is advising us on how to care for them. Put broadly, there are four ways that will yield different lifetimes based on daily 50% deep cycles:
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Deserted on a Sunday
Many yachtsmen who have visited the Rias of Galicia have remarked that they resemble the sea lochs of Scotland (but without the rain or the midges!). And they do, although they are far busier than Scotland, not just in terms of population and boat traffic, but also because of one of the cornerstones of the local economy – fishing, and, most specifically, fish farming.
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