All at sea – a blog about boat repair, sailing and cruising the high seas.
Now would be a good time to introduce “Nikea,” a Beneteau First 345. While Irish-registered, she has spent her life in the sheltered Ionian Sea, “gunk-holing” from island to island. I co-own the boat with a small consortium of friends. We take it in turns to spend time with her, going from island to island, port to port and anchorage to anchorage.
In late September of 2009, a small group of us departed the Port of Galway at around 9PM on a Friday evening on board Beoga, a Beneteau 40.7. We were on our way to La Coruna on the North-Western tip of Spain. Our ultimate destination was Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. Well, our ultimate-ultimate destination was the Caribbean via the ARC or Atlantic Rally for Cruisers.
Much has been written about the ARC, and it is definitely the easiest way to get from Europe to the Americas, although I think the “cruise in company” bit is a bit over-stated, seeing as we saw scant other craft once we were a few days out. People will tell you that the sunsets and sunrises on board are unbelievably fantastic, and they’d be right. Others will tell you about the magnificent night sky, with absolutely no light pollution.
However, living in the West of Ireland gives us some fantastic sunsets, and the occasional sunrise of note. Also, as I live a long way from the city centre, light pollution is less of an issue for me, and I’m often blown away by the sheer intensity of the Milky Way. So I don’t need to sail thousands of miles in a relatively small boat, across a vast expansion of ocean, in order to see sights like that.
Galway, Ireland. “Into the Mystic” has a very solid, very reliable but very noisy engine. She boasts an inboard diesel engine, manufactured by Yanmar. It’s a 1GM10 for those familiar with the breed. In all its years of service, it never gave so much as a hint of trouble, and started almost immediately, except for those days when the battery was flat. At that, the engine would usually start after about 30 or 45 seconds of breathless hand-cranking.
In 2010 I was disgusted to find that the engine had seized up. Even though I had winterized the engine in late 2007, the exhaust muffler was filled with salt water, and the moist air made its way back into the cylinder via the exhaust valve.
As you can see from the above image, the hull had developed a lot of dirt and mould while exposed to the elements outside the house. The first priority was to hire a couple of contractors to power-hose the deck, sand back the antifoul and generally restore some sort of life to the paint job.
They told me the name of the weird concoction they used - I should have written it down. I think it’s called Roklore but Google thinks otherwise. Apparently painters use it to clean pebble-dash from the outside of houses, prior to painting. If you know, leave a comment… Please!
Whatever it is, it’s effective. I don’t have a recent photograph of the deck, but I will add one so you can see the transformation. It’s quite awe-inspiring. The deck and hull look like new.
My old man once said (and he wasn’t the first, by any means) that the two happiest times in your life are the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell it. The dream of a life afloat is replaced by the scourge of boat ownership, and that dreaded sense of indebtedness which accompanies it.
Like most kids, I obviously didn’t listen to my father and I now own (or co-own) three boats (for simplicity sake, I’m ruling out anything with a waterline length less than 3 metres).
I bought the Achilles 24 in 1999, and sailed her for the first few years out of Galway Bay Sailing Club. After that, life got in the way and the last time she saw sea water under her keel was in 2007. That same year, after spending a winter doing the usual sanding, varnishing, anti-fouling and generally looking after the boat, she sat on her mooring for most of the summer while I faffed about in OPB (“Other People’s Boats”), including a charter of a 47 foot Jeanneau in Croatia.
