LIVING ABOARD

Michael Briant

Published by Accent Press Ltd 2018

www.accentpress.co.uk

eISBN 9781786156341

Copyright © Michael Briant 2018

The right of Michael Briant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book, neither the author nor the publisher assumes responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations of the subject matter herein.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of

Accent Press Ltd.

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Also by Michael E Briant

Caribbean Island Sailing Guide

Gentle Sailing Route to the Mediterranean

Gentle Mediterranean Route to the Islands

Strait Sailing to Gibraltar

Living Aboard Around The World

Pacific Crossing Guide

Easy Navigation

CHAPTERS

1. WHICH BOAT AND WHAT EQUIPMENT?

2. THE CANAL ROUTE TO THE SUN

3. THE SEA ROUTE TO THE SUN

4. CRUISIN THE MEDITERRANEAN

5. CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

6. CRUISING THE CARIBBEAN

7. PANAMA AND PAN-PAN

8. THE CANAL INTO THE PACIFIC

9. SOUTH PACIFIC ISLANDS

10. TAHITI TO NEW ZEALAND

11. HELICOPTER RESCUE

12. THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

13. PIRATE ATTACK

14. TRAGEDY IN THE RED SEA

15. HOMEWARD BOUND

Chapter One

WHICH BOAT AND WHAT EQUIPMENT?

You can long distance cruise in any boat – the equipment you need is dependant on your intended cruising ground. The construction can be anything – Ferro, steel, plastic, or wood but there are issues with all of them. The experience and training that you acquire in home waters is valuable but long distance sailing – living aboard your vessel – is very different from a summer holiday or s ome long weekends.

There are three major cruising grounds in the world – two a re approximately the same size – The Mediterranean and the Caribbean. You can eas ily spend many years in either area and enjoy a variety of cultures and languages. The third area is the Trade Winds Circumnavigation Route, the world, which rather more challenging. Assuming a modest income and capital to invest in your boat, equipment, and living style, it is sensible to equip your boat specifically for the cruising ground you intend visiting.

For European cruisers the Mediterranean offers a very exciting and interesting cruising area with a vast array of countries and places to go. If you are coming from the UK or northern Europe the canal system will allow you to reach Mediterranean waters without any necessity to overnight at sea or go offshore. To use the French Canal systems you need a boat that’s draft does not exceed 1.8 metres – 5ft 9inchs and beam less than 5 metres 16ft 4inches. If you use the Canal du Midi from half way down Biscay then the absolute maximum draft is – 1.6 metres (5ft 2 inches) It looks like catamarans are ideal for the canals but unless they have ‘steerable’ engine legs or twin engines. Getting a near to 5 metres beam, into canal locks, can be challenging.

Because it is such a wonderful cruising area boarded by so many wealthy countries, it is crowded. It has marinas almost everywhere and anchoring places in sheltered coves and bays for the night are difficult to find. Over most of the Mediterranean, you will spend 95% of the time in marinas or harbours and have to look quite hard for ‘free’ places to anchor in. This will have an impact on your budget although compared to UK marina and port charges they are still relatively modest in most countries. You do not need to spend large amounts of money on ground tackle – extra anchors or on self-sufficiency. For Mediterranean cruising there is no reason to deck your boat out with solar panels, wind generators, oversize alternators or generators. You just need a good size battery bank and a good marine battery charger that will plug into the marina supply and possibly a solar panel to help top up the battery bank. Fresh clean drinking water is available everywhere and spare parts can be obtained easily by post. Any production boat is suitable and really does not need to be beefed up. Wind self steering gear is useless most of the time in this sea and a water-maker totally un-necessary.

If your has got Calor Gas you will find it almost impossible to get these cylinders filled or exchanged once you leave the UK. You will have major problems everywhere in the world. The easiest solution is to change to Camping Gaz – the French system. All over the Mediterranean, you will be able to either swap or get the bottles refilled. In the rest of the world, you will find they are also refillable except the USA where you will just have to buy into their system.

Size is possibly an issue. Catamarans may well be charged 150% of the berthing fee because of their beam. Much over 40 ft for a mono hull, may well be harder to ‘park’ in confined areas of a marina unless you have bow thrusters. It is useful to be able to steer astern with some certainty so the modern fin keel yachts are probably more manageable than very long keel, more traditional craft. The choice of construction is open except there are issues with wood decks and hulls in high summer with the sun beating incessantly down on them causing them to open up and leak. Varnish work also takes a beating and large expanses of bright work will ensure lots of re-varnishing work every year. Steel is fine, except the very high salt content, will ensure you are regularly working on rust patches. Ferro Cement has no special problems at except it is frequently difficult to get insurance on this construction even built professionally. In almost all countries, GRP repairs can be made by local boat yards.

Once you leave UK waters a bimini becomes an essential item or at the very least an awning, that can be slung over the boom to provide shade on anchorage. The awning or bimini is better with side curtains, as the Mediterranean sunsets slowly and can be very uncomfortable in the late afternoon shining in your eyes.

Most cruisers in the Mediterranean stop during the winter months and find a marina to stay in between October or November and around April. There can be some very severe weather during the winter months and in northern Med countries like France, it can be extremely cold.

Cruising the Caribbean is very different. There are very few marinas at all in the islands and your boat will spend 95% of its time swinging to its anchor. Extra anchors and chain are essential, as is self-sufficiency. Larger water tanks, refrigeration units and electrical power generating capabilities. Most American boats have auxiliary diesel generators, well silenced, efficiently powering the banks of extra batteries that all boats need in these circumstances. Possibly the best alternative after a purpose built generator is solar panels, backed up by a powerful alternator with a ‘smart charger’ to fill the batteries faster. Wind generators can be useful but of course, most anchorages are protected from the wind. Behind most of he islands, the sea will be fairly calm and smooth even in the 40-knot squalls coming off the headlands and mountain passes.

An electric anchor winch is almost essential, as is an SSB – Single Side Band radio. Most communications between boats around the islands happens on SSB. The distances involved between these quite small islands are large and the cruising community keeps in touch by HF-SSB radio. Weather and safety information is broadcast daily on nets and just keeping in touch with other boats is facilitated. It really does not matter if you purchase a ham or marine radio provided it is ‘snipped’ to cover both sides of the side band. You cannot of course transmit on the ham frequencies unless you have a licence, except in emergencies. You can also email with the addition of a modem and your laptop on Sailmail and Airmail. Mobile phone networks exist on most of the islands but are not very practical to ‘clock’ into unless you are staying for more than a few days.

The dinghy and outboard will become essential in these waters along with the ability to lock it up safely to something when you have got ashore in it. If it is possible to carry a hard dinghy on deck then so much the better. This piece of equipment is going to be vital if you ever want to get to party on other boats, join the BBQ ashore or just go shopping or exploring. Sometimes it is even worth carrying two so that you and your crew / co skipper / partner can have some independence.

In the hurricane season, most cruising boats head south. Trinidad and Venezuela are considered outside the hurricane zone and are pretty safe. Trinidad has boat yards and facilities, which are probably the best in the Caribbean – Venezuela has some wonderful anchorages and excellent facilities in Margarita and the boat yards in Puerto de la Cruz are as good as Trinidad if not so numerous. Venezuela has islands and mangrove harbours that can safely be explored whilst hurricanes track north.

There is no need to carry a boat full of spares. DHL and FedEx fly into most places and the big chandlery chain, West Marine, can have items on a plane to you within 24 hours. The USA east coast and to a lesser extent the Islands are an excellent place to buy a cruising boat. Generally, they are up to a third less expensive than their European equivalent and some excellent deals can be found in places like Fort Lauderdale, Annapolis, and Baltimore. You would have to pay VAT in Europe if you brought the boat back and probably have to have it EU approved – not that easy except if you take the very easy minimum requirement – s uitable for lakes, rivers and close inshore. There is no legislation to stop you then taking it offshore.

Bigger boats are commonplace in the Caribbean and the only time there will be a financial penalty is at the annual haul out and antifouling. The rest of the time anchoring is free. Ferro boats can be very good value and offer excellent accommodation with only the insurance issue as a problem. You should make certain the hull was professionally built and not an amateur construction. Steel boats start to come into their own with the larger ones offering a big volume for relatively low costs. Maintenance and fighting the rust will still be a problem. There are many lightweight GRP production charter boats sailing very successfully around the islands. For long term Liveaboards, possibly a heavier boat would be more comfortable in some of the more rolly anchorages. Although there are some very inexpensive new lightweight GRP yachts for sale like Bavaria, Hunter some Bennateau and Jeanneau models you should look carefully to see if the internal construction will stand up to daily use 365 days a year. Sometime these boats can look very tired after only a couple of years of living aboard.

The world cruise requires much more care over the choice of vessel and equipment. The big difference with cruising either the Mediterranean or Caribbean is that you will be crossing oceans. The mileage in one passage, of a few weeks duration, can exceed that achieved in several seasons of local sailings. Unless you are doing a sprint around the world over a two-year period, you will be on board for 4 years or more. Perhaps longer. You are going to encounter heavier weather as a regular phenomenon. The larger and heavier the boat, the more comfortable you will be. The size of the boat is also a much more important consideration. Whilst you can cross-oceans in almost anything, the task becomes easier the bigger the boat is. You can carry more water, more spares, more battery power and be generally more comfortable. The size is restricted only by what you can reasonably handle yourself, the sail area, bearing in mind sometimes you will be reefing and shaking out reefs a dozen times a day.

Anchoring will be the norm but sometimes harbours, marinas and ports will be your chosen stopping places. In far away places ports and harbours can be very yacht unfriendly places with rough concrete work or shuttering, broken quaysides where the fuel or water berth is for your boat to moor against. Considerable cosmetic damage can caused quite easily if you are unwary and the boat needs to be robust. If you are and experienced sailor, doing a quick circumnavigation, then a lightweight production boat could be the answer. The equipment kept as simple as possible in order to keep the weight down and speed up. If you are intending to spend time in the tropical paradises and explore the world, then a more sturdy craft will suit you better.

The self steering gear becomes vitally important. There is no way a single hander or couple can helm the boat 24/7 and in fact, most long distance cruisers only helm entering or leaving port – the rest of the time some sor t of autopilot takes the strain. That is of course the problem. You really have to decide if you are going to use the fairly indestructible but expensive wind self steering gears – or an electronic autopilot, which connects to the boats main rudder and guides the boat by an electric motor controlled by an electronic compass.

Wind self steering gears, are basically wind vanes attached to the main rudder of the boat via the wheel or tiller or to their own small rudder, which guides the boat by the power and direction of the wind. They use no electrical power whatsoever and are designed to withstand the rigours of ocean passages. They are not cheap, but will probably last a lifetime. They are friendly towards the boat, as they will not work unless the boat is properly balanced and as the winds get stronger they become more efficient. They will not work in very light winds or calms so a small back up electric autopilot is useful in those conditions.

Electronic autopilots require electrical power continually. They also guide the boat relative to a compass course so if the wind direction changes you will frequently not be aware of this change and the boat will become un-balanced and need many more corrections by the autopilot to maintain its course. When you are crossing oceans the amount of power used by the autopilot continually working, day and night, plus the power for essential equipment like GPS, compass lights and navigation light can add up to a big power demand. It is unlikely that solar panels or wind generators can meet this demand so you will need to charge the batteries either by a built in generator or the main engine, which means you need to carry sufficient fuel to do this. Because generally they were not built for continual heavy use breakdowns are not uncommon and out in the ocean there is no DHL or FedEx. The solution is to carry a complete replacement – a 2 nd autopilot so that any part of the original, which fails, can be replaced.

You are also getting into the area of considering a sea anchor of some for when the conditions deteriorate to the point it is better to heave to and let the weather moderate. Personally, I use a parachute sea anchor, which can be deployed from the cockpit and will hold the bows to the waves rather than the stern. Almost certainly, you should be carrying a 406 EPIRB, which transmits to international rescue centres via satellites. In addition to a life raft you will want a ‘grab bag’ conta ining extra water, sun hat, flares, fish hooks and lures etc. If the worst happened, it could be a considerable time before you are rescued.

Communications will mainly be via SSB to other yachts Satellite radio is probably the way to go for calling home if you can afford it – if not Sailmail or Airmail via the SSB. VHF is actually very important for speaking to ships in the area. They all keep radio watch on channel 16. Don’t forget the officer of the watch is probably very bored with hour after hour and day after day of nothing to see or do. His radar alarm will be set to pick up other ships and a small sailing boat may well not register. Carrying a mobile telephone and buying local pay as you go Sim cards is useful when staying somewhere longer than a week or two.

I installed a water-maker for the Pacific and it worked well. It is however a pretty expensive piece of equipment which requires daily attention. It cannot be left unused for more than a few days without going through the time consuming process of chemically ‘pickling’ the membrane. It also requires c onsiderable electric power to run so can be demanding on the batteries. On the long Pacific legs, I always made sure I had enough drinking water on board for the passage so that any extra the water-maker produced could be used for washing. You can live without food for probably 10 days but without water, after 2 days, in the tropics, you are in very serious trouble. There is of course no country in the world where you cannot get water. Sometimes you have to pay for it but this cost is certainly less than the filters and chemicals needed to maintain a water-maker for a few months.

Charts and pilot books for the world can be acquired as you go along but can present a storage and weight problem in smaller craft if you hang onto them. There are some excellent electronic systems like C-Map but you will want to back up with paper charts. Most cruising boats carry yachting pilot books for getting in and out of harbours and then passage charts and the fewest detail charts they feel they can get away with. Once you leave UK waters the excellent range of NOAA – American charts become available in photocopy form at tiny prices compared to British Admiralty Charting. The American freedom of information act allows photocopies to be made of all their charts so companies like Tides End in the USA can post excellent three-quarter size copies to you anywhere except the UK, Australia, New Zealand where they are prohibited by copyright laws. Slightly odd when you consider most charts were originated back in the days of Cook and Nelson with modern additions. Once you leave European and American waters, the accuracy of both paper and electronic charts deteriorates. If a country cannot afford to have its coastline mapped by satellite mapping then the reefs and rocks are as charted by some sailor with a sextant and are pretty inaccurate by modern standards.

The world cruising boat needs and extensive toolkit. Not just a full kit of socket wrenches and spanners but a multimeter, screwdrivers, battery electric drill converted to run from the boats 12v system, files, chisels, saws and on and on. ‘Cruising the world’ often means you are in places where the only person that can affect the repair is you. ‘How to do it books’ are invaluable, as well as th e ability and tools to do basic repairs to your engine or rigging. You need to carry spares to fix the standing rigging, heads, autopilots, engine, alternator etc. Probably the outboard and dinghy will become the only method of transport to shore so also needs hole-patching equipment. With so much coral around in the Pacific, Indian oceans and the Red Sea, a hard dinghy is even more useful – although I have travelled t hose waters with only an inflatable – and an extensive repair kit.

Having decided where you are heading to then all you need is a boat and add water.

There is something so exciting about going through the sheets of information on second hand boats for sale. Opening the post and looking at the brochures of new boats just off the production line. Visiting boat shows and wandering round yachts, you will probably never be able to afford.

I have owned several keelboats starting with 22ft Galion via a lightweight Jaguar 25 which suffered from a broken rudder and a wonderful Elizabethan 31, a steel Maurice Griffiths 40ft Golden Hind ketch, which I had thought, was the perfect boat for a circumnavigate. Having sailed her to the Canaries by way of Biscay, Gibraltar, and the western Mediterranean, I decided I had made a mistake. The big problem with steel is that it requires constant maintenance fighting the battle against rust every time you get into port. Unless she is big, with a large sail area, steel boats are very slow. Excellent platforms in a blow, during a storm in Australia I watched one bounce across a coral reef and then be blown 200 miles to end up high and dry on a beach – undamaged except for some scratches and dents! Mind you, the skipper and crew had been lifted off by helicopter.

You can long distance cruise in any boat – the degree of c omfort is closely related to how much you have to spend. The equipment you need is dependant on your intended cruising ground and again your bank account. The construction can be anything – Ferro, steel, plastic, aluminium or wood but there are issues with all of them. It can cost anything you like depending on your resources. A young German friend of mine built an aluminium yacht of around 33 foot, had an inexpensive auto helm, a hand held VHF, hand held GPS and so little anchor warp he had to moor within 5 or 6 metres. He made a fairly uneventful 18 month circumnavigation, on a small budget, and then sold the boat at a profit. Mind you he was a good sailor and very practical.

There are many budget sailors out there doing it on a shoestring. Westerly centaurs in the Bahamas after an Atlantic crossing, little home built steel boats cruising the Caribbean, with their owners finding work in boat yards to maintain their wandering life style. Older couples having just retired, taking a sailing course, purchasing lightweight production boats and cruising the islands heading south for the sun and a pleasurable retirement. It is a fact that there are more ‘wrinklies’ in the Pacific heading west than there are teenagers. There are many boats with children on board enjoying the great adventure – education in the mornings and pla ying with other boat kids in the afternoon. These children all have a smattering of several languages because the cruising fraternity is very international.

The experience and training that you acquire in home waters is valuable but long distance sailing – living aboard your vessel – is very diffe rent from a summer holiday or some long weekends. Quite a few people start with little experience, just some basic navigational knowledge that GPS has made it easy to acquire. The ability to tie a few knots, a little courage, some luck and the determination to make a success of the enterprise. It is also fair to note that the routes to the sun are littered with abandoned dreams – cruising boats with weeds growing forest like on their hulls. Frequently bedecked with solar panels and wind generators they lay abandoned because their owners found the cruising lifestyle was not for them. Or because they were unlucky enough to encounter some weather on their first trip and got badly frightened or just ran out of money.

So, the boat you buy will be what suits you and you can afford. Remember the hardest part financial part of long distance cruising, is finding the resources to live from day to day rather than the capital invested in the craft. It is possible to work your way around the world but the further you stray from Europe, the Caribbean and the USA, the harder it becomes. What very poor countries have is very cheap labour and a surfeit of it. Unless you have a skill that is marketable worldwide you will find jobs difficult to come by and very poorly paid. That of course why there are so many older people cruising – they have a pension or property that they can rent out. The younger people with families are often just taking a year or two out until the money runs out when they will sell the boat and return to land to try to make enough money to go cruising again.