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Yes cruise is going well. In the BVI now and about to depart for Panama.

Sounds to me like a sunfish. Lots of them around the NZ coast this time of year. We saw 2 in the RNI last year. I think you really would know about it if it had been a whale. I have hit both a whale and sunfish(many times) as well as a log(almost took the rudder off the sunfast) and there was no way you wouldn't have known it was a whale and a log would leave marks and is a very different solid hit and bang. Whales are big things and leave lots of turbulence in the water whenever they move. Normally the tail will whip up out of the water a bit too. We had it slap the side of the boat when w

Finally got a picture of Rogue under sail. Honking up here in Antigua right now.

I heard and interesting theory the other day about IOR hull shapes and downwind sailing. Basically it was that when you try to get an IOR shaped displacement yacht to exceed hullspeed the resulting bow and stern waves combined with the dip between them and you basically end up sailing the boat supported by just on the bow and stern which are both pinched in and offer vertically no form stability at all. Therefore the boat becomes very unstable. Combined with the old school soft nylon spinnaker fabric and deep unstable sails the death roll was inevitable. Modern spinnaker fabric is much stiff

Lovely sail a few days ago between the Islands of St Vincent and St Lucia in the Caribbean.

We found the same as IT. It has been great so far for weather and comunication offshore but thats about it. I have found the aps to be shockly bad though. Lots of crashes and very clunky.

Hi San Fran, sorry I dont have many photos with me right now(on anchor in the Tobago Cays caribbean after crossing the atlantic) but I do have a few. I made mine out of 25mm foam with 2 layers of 400gm double bias glass on both sides and stiffened with carbon around the edges. I also made a support for the bottom the same way. I had to grind the hull down to the bare glass so i could carbon and glass it on there which was 2 x 150mm layers of about 400gm carbon and 1 x the same in normal glass. It was pretty strong, strong enough for me to stand on the end with no movement at all. We decided

Whatever you do make sure you put in a compression tube from the forestay back to the mast. Essentual if you want to really load it up with anything off the prod. Stiffens the whole platform and much easier to do now. I replaced the main beam in mine which was a real ass of a job.

It does depend on a lot of things. Yes you will need to reduce the luff by around half a meter. This is often best done by chopping down the luff a couple of hundred 35mm behind the luff tape (which you need to cut off anyway) Then its a quick job to add webbing at the head and tack. If you want a uv that's where the cost really comes in. Uv material is expensive and it's time consuming to put on.

With our one I think it would work without the aerial as it mostly has near full reception but the download speed seems to be much faster with the external aerial and 5 bars reception the whole time. With the time it can take to download some files you really can't have any breaks in reception over that time or it 'times' out.

Haha deb I just saw your comment. Yes I left the Sunfast disco ball in the capable hands of the SSANZ committee on board the Ma'ara. Fortunately I have a new one on the Rogue which will likely have some stories to tell by the time it gets back to NZ....

yeah we will have a few jerrycans of fuel as well. will be carrying a total of around 450L for the atlantic. here is Episode 3 re edited and uploaded.

Yeah i need to re edit it and take Dweller on the threshold out of it.... You will see some sailing eventually, we have 13,000nm of it coming up....

Yeah we haven't tried out the island berth in a seaway yet. But I will make a lee cloth for the middle, I think only one of us will get to be in bed at a time offshore anyway! Boat sails OK, sticky in the light but that was always to be expected. Fine when you can use the motor if the wind isn't right but I can imagine it could be quite painful mid Atlantic if its gets light and we cant motor for too long. Overall im pretty happy with it. Hey does that last video (EP3) work for you guys? it says its blocked dueto a song that I put on it but I can play it.

Thought I should post and update of our trip so far. Had is ups and downs but overall its going very well. We have cruised most of the south of France and are currently in Antibes. Had plenty of jobs to do but are starting to get ontop of the job list. Will head down to Palma in the next week or 2. We have a friend from NZ coming up on the 18th October to help us sail to the Canaries and across the Atlantic. Still a bit unsure of what our plans will be for the caribbean as Irma really has caused some wide spread carnage to the northern islands and it sounds like law and order will take a w

Ok next question, how much should I be expecting my 450 watt of solar panels to be putting in. It seems to be only around 8-12 amp at the moment and that's with batteries at 85%. I feel like I should be getting a bit more? Was getting 105 amps out of the alternator this morning so that's good. Means I don't really need to upgrade that.

Well the good news is that the alternator was putting 95amps into the batteries this morning. So it must be either a 100 or 125amp alt.

Don't lubricate ball bearing blocks. What happens is they just end up sliding instead of rolling which creates the flat spots. It's likely you already have the flat spots and that's the problem. Lube will only make the problem worse long term. Keeping them clean adds a huge amount to the longevity. Dried up salt is a killer.

Hi Jon, yes our readout on the panel is always about 0.5v under what out victron battery monitor reads. I have checked the victron monitor against an actual multimeter on the batteries and it is right. I don't know how to reset the panel readout but really don't even look at it anyway. Batteries going in the boat tomorrow along with a new forestay then we can get out cruising! What's your total battery capacity Jon and a typical daily draw for you when at sea? I can't remember if you had solar power? I just replaced all the nav lights bulbs with LED so instead of a 3amp draw it's now down

Thanks for all the reply guys. It's certainly food for thought. I have been in and out of marinas most of the time and had the batteries on charge a lot and often for over a week but then they still only last 1 night if I turn off the charger. I just don't want to chuck more money away getting these batteries tested again. Although our charging capacity is low I'm pretty sure that right now it's not the immediate problem. Interesting to note that this boat has done extensive cruising to the Caribbean and back with the current setup and the old owner said they vary rarely needed to char

Rest voltage is 12.6-12.7v but it quickly drops 12.4-12.6 with any load on.

I had some guys come and take a look and test the batteries. They took one out and charged it on their charger and then load tested it. Then they tested the other 2 while in the boat. Sick of the bills in Euro for all the mucking around and figured it's time to just buy the new ones as one more session on the boat and I will have already spent a similar amount to the new set of batteries anyway.... I guess the question is should I be getting a slightly smaller bank? 3 x 180ah instead? I imagine a bigger alternator could be a costly excersize with new pulleys and belts? Roughly what sort of

(Note I don't know much about this topic so excuse me if I have the terminology and details slightly out) We currently have a 660ah battery bank made up of 3 x 220ah lifeline agm batteries on our beneteau oceanis 50. Alternator is I think the standard 80amp alternator that comes with the yanmar but the most I have seen it inputting is 58amps. The surveyor reckoned it was only a 35amp but clearly it's more than that. In addition to that we have 450watt of solar and a 300watt hydro generator that will only get used on longer passages(gets in the way for general boating). 240v charger

Great thread. I have more battery related questions but will start another thread for it to save confusion.

A good mate of damons is one of the owners. Yes a mumm 30.