5 Steps to make your boat your cruising home

May 31, 2011 | When you are liveaboard cruising you will probably spend many days in marinas or harbours for every day you spend at sea. You may be loitering lazily in the Whitsunday Islands or you might be on passage to Noumea with four days to go. But the onboard domestic side of your life will follow much the same pattern as it did at home — only there will be rather less space. Good meals add pleasure to the cruising lifestyle, besides which watchkeepers enjoy hot drinks in the small hours and anyway cruising people tend to be very sociable, so the galley is in use on and off, day and night. It should have adequate working surfaces and sufficient storage space for implements and accessories: pots, pans, trays, crockery, cutlery, cleaning materials, cookery books, etc. The doors of lockers must be fitted with safety catches so they cannot fly open and spill their contents. Gas — propane or butane — is cleaner, less smelly and far easier to use and more reliable than kerosene, although the necessary precautions with gas must be rigidly adhered to and the installation in some countries must have official approval. Gas in most places is more readily obtainable than kerosene, although the business of getting your heavy gas bottle to the filling station is a major chore — especially because taxi drivers sometimes refuse to take gas bottles. And talking of toast — there are no 12V toasters on the market that I know of. There is the hotplate type of toaster — a small tray that sits over the flame, on which the slices of bread (or damper) are laid flat, and there is the pyramid type where the bread is propped against the four sides. Whatever type you choose, it is asking for domestic disharmony to go to sea without a decent toaster! It is difficult enough to keep the bread fresh — no problem when there is a bakery nearby, but a serious one on a long passage. The best answer is to bake your own bread or damper. If you don’t have an oven, you can bake in a Dutch oven — which sits on a burner — or even in a pressure cooker without using the pressure valve. You can fall back on biscuits — crackers or whatever — but it is not the same. Creature comforts are just as important on a boat as at home. You will also need to make a stowage plan and lists — a list for each and every locker. The old sailors’ adage “Everything in its right place, and a right place for everything” is still good advice. You don’t want any glory holes and the stowage must be able to stand up to the inevitable gale. If you can’t remember where you stowed the spare torch batteries on a dark and windy night, you could be in deep trouble. They must be what are known as “deep-cycle” batteries, able to withstand repeated deep discharges. Ordinary automobile or truck batteries have thinner plates and are designed for engine cranking and, in normal use with the engine running are always being charged almost to their full capacity. They will become damaged internally by the prolonged discharges which take place on a boat when the domestic circuit is in use and there is no input. A good quality deep-cycle battery will last five years or more. Some of the sealed, gel-type, deep-cycle batteries, designed for marine use, are excellent but expensive. In the domestic circuit, cabin lighting, stereo, VHF, GPS and other instruments, use relatively few amps. The most constant drainage of the batteries is from the refrigerator (compressor motor), switched on but not necessarily running for 24 hours a day. Other heavy consumers of current are radar, navigation lights, autopilot, AC inverters and VHF and SSB radios when transmitting. Some of the new sealed-unit refrigerator compressors are claimed to use just a few amps (less than five), but even so in a warm climate this mounts up every 24 hours to as much as 50amphours per day on the basis of 10 hours of running time (amps x hours = amphours). Masthead navigation lights, rated at 1.5 amp in eight hours will consume 12 amphours. Consumption soon mounts up. It is essential that the cold storage unit is really thickly, foam-sandwich insulated with the lid at the top. On most boats it is neither necessary nor desirable to have a large fridge, and before you buy a freezer, a watermaker or a bowthruster calculate your overall daily electrical consumption in amphours per day and then your daily rate of supply. Remember: the secret — the joy — of making your boat your cruising home is self-sufficiency — not gadgetry. Laundry also needs thinking about, but I won’t go into it here in any depth because Jill Knight covers the topic of water A rain-catcher with a hose that leads to the water tank filler is a useful accessory. You can make your own out of a sheet of plastic with a hole in the middle and a short length of hose that leads the rainwater to your tank. Bunks should have bunk-boards (leecloths) to prevent the sleeper from being pitched out if the boat is rolling. The height of the canvas should be at least 35 to 40cm above the bunk and its length about 120cm. It should be rigged with attachments to the deck head, and the lower edge secured under the bunk, which is where it should be stowed when not in use. Then comes the important question of entertainment. No matter how fascinating your partner’s conversation is, nor how funny his or her jokes are, you are going to need entertainment — music, hobbies, games or other distractions. You will have ample time to read, so you need to take a good supply of books, although other cruisers are always prepared to swap. Games such as Scrabble, chess, cards and backgammon are great onboard forms of recreation and relaxation. Today, of course, there is also emailing and keeping in touch with family, friends and other cruisers. And you might want to learn some words of the language of the country you are in. You will not be entirely cut off from your past and you will need to make arrangements to receive mail. Apart from family and friends, you might still own property, have business interests or investments. A mobile phone is a useful asset, but email is the most convenient way of keeping in touch. Some marinas now have Wifi, enabling you to access the internet on your laptop from your chart table and, if not, there is usually an internet centre nearby, even in far-flung parts of the world. An HF SSB radio is good for keeping in touch with other yachts, those ahead of you or those following in your wake. It gives weather reports, gale warnings and world news. The ham radio network on HF frequencies puts out ocean weather from distant weather gurus, some of whom are famous among cruising folk, and keeps sailors in touch round the world.

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