November2020
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November 2020 Sponsored by Kraken Yachts From We are pleased to see that the message The Pulpit about the dangers of gas on board- November 2020 oceansailormagazine.com/eliminating- gas-on-board - is starting to get through, see ‘Ditching the Gas’ from the November This issue issue of Yachting World. It’s good to hear that the message we put out some time ago, British Sailing about the risks and inconvenience propane gas causes for world cruising, is beginning to be appreciated. Ocean Sailor Awards & more Readers Questions & Knot of the month By Dick Beaumont - Chairman of Kraken Yachts Page two We are thrilled to announce that the Kraken We are introducing a new section in Ocean 50 has been nominated, yet again, for the Sailor which will be a review of sailing clubs and institutions around the world ’. Feature British Sailing Awards ‘Blue Water Cruiser of the Year' the ‘Oscars’ for sailing yacht Each month Dick Durham will interview A weather eye: Part two designers and builders. To be nominated an elected spokesperson from a nominated Page Three three years in a row is unique in itself, but yacht club or organisation. If you would like to sail away with the golden statuette we to nominate your yacht club please contact need your vote, we need your crew’s vote, [email protected] Technical & Equipment your club member’s vote and anyone who Grab the gribs understands about blue water cruising’s Finally, following many readers’ requests, vote. Come on, let’s win this! we have introduced a new Ocean Sailor ‘tell Page eight a friend’ button as below. Click this button Kraken’s are without question the strongest and fill in your friend’s email address. This and safest ocean cruising yacht in build will ping a link straight to their inbox. Feature today. With her one-piece hull and keel Worse things can happen at sea (Zero Keel™), full-skeg rudder, heavily laid- If they want to subscribe to our free online magazine, they can, if they choose not to, Page eleven up hull, three-tank fuel polishing system, deep centre cockpit and Solent rig, to name their email address is not revealed to us or just a few of it’s unique blue water features, added to any mailing list. K50 In-Build need I say more? Please vote now. Birth of a blue water yacht Page sixteen Click here to vote Click here to tell a friend Technical & Equipment Understanding Yacht Design: Part two Page twenty one From The Galley Recipe: Lobster Linguine Covid Page twenty Six 90% Transmission Sailors Stories And then there was one Page thirty one Thanks to Ocean Sailor reader Kevin Ward from Mariner’s Bookshelf 40% South Africa for this Moby Dick & Ice Bird amusing but poignant Page thirty five graphic. We used some poetic license! Technical & Equipment Droning On 10% Page thirty six We are very happy to receive readers comments and would really appreciate your feedback on any element of Ocean Sailor. 0% Contact us at: [email protected] 1 Readers Questions " Dear Mister Beaumont, be working continuously to keep the yacht much higher up, in the bilge of the hull. on a straight course. Proponents of lifting keel will tell you they maintain adequate stability by Can you give your opinion The yacht needs enough positive righting supplementing ballast weight with form moment in its keel so that it can carry stability, but they are not the same. upon longer keels, lifting keels, enough sail to sail well, especially up The motion characteristics of a yacht with shallow keels? wind. If it’s a long keel it will not need to reduced or raised position ballast, using be as deep as a shorter keel. It's a major increased form stability, is very different design consideration deciding what's from one stabilised by well positioned keel Thank you. I enjoy your deep enough and what’s too shallow. It’s ballast. The later is the way to go I’m sure magazine very much. of course desirable to have as shallow unless, as I said shallow and or drying draught as possible, so one can get closer anchorages are your thing. in at anchorage or other shallow areas. I Leon V" think between 6’6”- 8’ (2 -2.5m) for a 48- I am also concerned about the vulnerability 58 ft yacht is the ball park. If you want to and mechanical failure potential of a lifting have shallower draft you need more ballast, keel. The less moving parts underwater the or will be able to carry less sail; read Fil better I feel. Sochaj’s article on yacht design in this and Dear Leon last months issue. One final point on the lifting keel issue is, as I said, the ballast now must go in the Thanks for your question. It comes back to All the yachts I have sailed over 45 years of hull, in the bilge, and that means less space the question, what and where will you sail world cruising have had a drafts in this area for the tanks and or storage, both of which your yacht for the majority of the time. You and I have never felt restricted from getting need to be maximised for blue water live can’t have it all and you have to decide what into places that were big enough for a 50 ft aboard cruising. is most important to you. I’ll give you my plus yacht to go. opinion based on what I want to do with my I hope that answered your questions, own yacht. It is also the primary purpose Lifting keels is another subject, with some but please get back to me with any further Kraken yachts are built for, blue water and overlaps to what I’ve said above. To my thoughts you have? world cruising, whether in the warmth of mind, the entire purpose of a yacht with a the tropics, or in cold of the high latitudes. lifting keel is to go up shallow estuaries and Dick Beaumont rivers and be able to dry out on the mud at To provide the most stable and comfortable low tide. motion the yacht needs to have a long keel (cord length) that has its ballast weight If that’s what you are going to do, as your We are very happy to receive spread over its length and carries the main purpose then you need a lifting readers questions on anything ballast as far out in the keel as possible. keel, but if it’s only something you might relating to blue water sailing. That will create a directionally stable yacht like to do occasionally beware, because that holds its course through the waves, you lose a lot, in terms of ocean sailing with less pitching. This means that the considerations. The lifting keel doesn’t Contact us at: autopilot or the helmsman will not have to carry the ballast weight, so it has to go in [email protected] The Ocean Sailor Knot of the month Strangle knot 1 2 This is an excellent knot to use as a ligature, to create a tourniquet, or bind a broken limb perhaps? It’s also the knot I use to tie fender lines since the commonly used clove hitch easily comes undone and tends to slide along the rail out of it’s intended position, whereas the strangle knot tightens the more it’s pulled. 3 4 Another use I make of it is tying hanks of ropes up for storage. 2 Weather Feature A Weather Eye Part Two Plain sailing or battling storms: You chose By Dick Beaumont 3 Weather Feature The sailor’s ability to access weather charts seasons becoming far less predictable than of November after the end of the supposed during ocean passages via satellite has they once were, due to the effects of global hurricane season. We were planning on the reduced the probability of running into warming, every blue water sailor should basis of a 21-day crossing which averaged heavy weather. Undoubtably it improves include this equipment and the weather 160nm a day. This is a conservative daily safety at sea immeasurably. Although it services they can provide on their yacht, run allowance on a 50ft cruising yacht such will never be an alternative to a blue water as a matter of course. I believe every blue as a Kraken 50. yacht’s liferaft, I believe it to be at least of water skipper should know how to use the equal importance. vital information it will provide. These are real charts as downloaded since the 10th of October 2020 via LuckGrib. Twenty-five years ago my trusty Carl In preparation for this article, we began Without the accurate and reliable weather Ziess sextant was usurped by a hand-held downloading grib files for an imaginary forecast charts we show below, if this had GPS that gave me an instant position fix, ocean passage across the Atlantic from been a real voyage, had we had continued accurate to 25mts or so, anywhere in the Gran Canaria to Annapolis USA and we got on the passage plan we made, as you would world, simply by switching it on. Three lucky. normally do without being able to see how or four years later electronics chart chips the weather systems were changing, we relegated paper charts to the same locker The series of weather charts below perfectly would have run straight into the centre of a as my sextant.