David Burgess says he grew up with a fishing rod in his hand on forays with his dad to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Over the years, he’s owned a variety of vessels from builders including Carolina, SeaCraft and Fountain. As an equity-fund manager, he can work from anywhere. These days, he keeps his 30-foot center-console on a river near his home off Chesapeake Bay, and his 26-foot twin V-drive cat at his Florida condo. But the jewel of his current fleet, for rambling through the British Virgin Islands with family and friends several times each year, is his Moorings 464PC My Wish Too. It’s at the charter company’s base on Tortola.

The 464PC is the second power catamaran from South African builder Robertson & Caine that Burgess has purchased through The Moorings’ yacht-management program. He’s happy to rattle off several of the program’s benefits: Dockage, maintenance and insurance are all covered; he receives a monthly check from The Moorings, which charters the vessel when he’s not aboard, giving him guaranteed revenue that exceeds his regular finance payment and puts cash in his pocket; and he can enjoy a number of cruises each year while having access to charter vacations on power cats (and sailboats, for that matter) at any Moorings destination. For Burgess, this way of owning a power cat is a win-win-win.

There is, however, one caveat that he wishes to make clear: “If you’re just going to go once a year, or every other year, just charter a boat, don’t buy it. But if you’re going to go three or four times every year, on trips that can cost up to $25,000 apiece, this is a great program.”

The program has been around for a long time, initially with sailboats, says Franck Bauguil, senior vice president of yacht ownership and product development at The Moorings. “We first started getting involved with powerboats around 2003,” he says. “Some private owners buy a boat and put it in charter for a few weeks to offset expenses. That’s not what we do. We’re an established company with multiple bases globally, and we operate out of fully staffed bases with mechanics, technicians and boatbuilders. As with our sailboats, we offer bareboat charters where you drive your own boat, but we also have fully crewed options with a skipper and chef.

“Our fleet of boats, including the three power catamarans in the program, are all privately owned, but we take care of operations and management,” he adds. “You buy the boat, you own it and name it; it’s very much a regular purchase. But with that purchase comes a management agreement where we maintain the boat on behalf of the owner and charter it to a third party when they’re not using it. We take all the issues out of the owner’s hands and incur most of the expenses. We make sure the maintenance is done, the warranties are checked, the vessels are clean, the batteries are topped off—there’s nothing for owners to do except enjoy it when they’re aboard.”

As with any boat purchase, owners can lay down the cash or go the finance route. According to the boat-show special at last fall’s Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, when it comes to the Moorings 403PC, most owners put down 20 to 25 percent of the cost of the yacht (about $1 million). The down payment is just shy of $200,000. At an 8.25 percent interest rate on a 20-year loan, the monthly payment of about $6,700 is offset by a guaranteed income of just under $7,500.

Bauguil says The Moorings continued those guaranteed payments after Hurricane Irma decimated the fleet in 2017, and during the height of the pandemic, when chartering essentially ceased. Management contracts generally run five to six years, after which the owner can keep the boat, trade it in, or have The Moorings’ brokerage operation place it for sale.

As far as usage is concerned, owners receive 84 points per year, with the cost of trips equating to two points per day. Of those 84 points, 42 can be used to reserve trips in advance, and 42 can be employed on short notice. (Owners can’t sublease their vessels, but they can offer them to friends or donate the time.) Generally, this breaks down to four to six weeks per year of in-season cruising, or up to 12 weeks per year in the offseason. Yachts are standardized across the company’s destinations, with identical engines, watermakers, electronics and so on, so if an owner chooses to charter a boat in a distant location, no surprises await.

Burgess generally divvies up his journeys among his pals, his family or other couples. With his retirement on the not-too-distant horizon, as well as that of one of his boating friends, he’s gone in half on a partnership for the new boat. And while he’s always used his boat in the BVI, for the first time he’s planned his next adventure on a sistership in the Bahamas.

It’s always good to have options, and with The Moorings’ yacht-management program, he’s found plenty.  

The Destinations

The Moorings has 18 worldwide destinations, including six islands in the Caribbean, a trio of bases in the Mediterranean, and locations in the Seychelles, Tahiti and Thailand. The 403PC and the 464PC are available at the Bahamian bases in the Exumas and the Abacos, as well as the BVI, Greece and Croatia. In addition, the 403PC is available in the Seychelles. 

The Alluring British Virgins

Perhaps the most popular of all of The Moorings’ cruising bases is the original location on Tortola, where the bareboat charter industry was basically launched in 1969. With Tortola’s easy navigation and protected anchorages, this spot remains the company’s crown jewel. Currently, there are seven 403PCs and two dozen 464PCs in the BVI charter fleet.

The Boats

As of this writing, The Moorings has a pair of flybridge power catamarans available in its yacht-management program, both built in South Africa by Robertson & Caine, which also produces the Leopard line of sail and power cats. The Moorings 403PC is powered by a pair of 320 hp Yanmar diesels with a cruising speed of 15 knots and a top hop of 17-plus knots. The Moorings 464PC is also powered with a pair of twin Yanmars and has a four-stateroom, four-head configuration. 

Take the next step: moorings.com

The post Cruising Made Easy with The Moorings appeared first on Yachting.

Sea Sense boating instruction

Sea Sense, which for nearly 25 years has been offering on-water boating instruction, is now offering courses called On Your Own Boat. Instructors will be in the Pacific Northwest and New England this summer, teaching individuals or couples how to operate their own vessels.

“Everyone onboard should have their own toolbox of knowledge,” says Capt. Patti Moore, co-founder of Sea Sense. “For couples, as they build their boating skills together, we teach them to work as a team. Communication between couples is the key to successful cruising.”

Classes are tailored to meet the needs of the individual, couple or family. Instructors can help with everything from maneuvering the boat to understanding onboard systems. The cost is $400 per day.

Previous clients who have found onboard teaching beneficial include a couple from Hampton, New Jersey, who were longtime sailors before buying a powerboat.

“We found we were way out of our depth,” they stated in a press release. “Our comfort and confidence levels for docking and maneuvering our own boat have increased tremendously in the three years we’ve owned Car-Lay, and it’s all due to having Sea Sense spend a few days onboard with us.”

Learn more at www.seasenseboating.com.

The post Learn on Your Own Boat appeared first on Yachting.

Refinishing windows

Lately I’d been worried that time had been slipping away during the holidays. Our routine of working on David B projects in the late afternoons and early evenings was disrupted by holiday parties and social obligations. While we enjoyed making time to see friends and family, in the back of my mind, I kept worrying how long it had been since I’d been able to do anything on the boat.

In November I started working refinishing the skylight on the foredeck while Jeffrey removed a section of old wood from the pilothouse. His big project for this winter is to build in a custom refrigerator and freezer just in front of the pilothouse. Our routine was good. In the mornings we’d work on marketing our cruises or on freelance contracts we have for winter income. Sometime around three or four in the afternoon we’d drive to the boat and spend a few hours there. It felt good, then December rolled around and suddenly those hours set aside for projects evaporated. Instead of working on the boat, we were working on a glass of wine or beer with friends we’d not seen in a long time. Most days during December we had just enough time to check on the boat — a habit we’ve happily maintained since we first bought the boat in 1998.

At some point in mid-December my mom emailed me asking if we wanted help with anything on the boat. She works for the school district where I grew up and had some free time between Christmas and New Years. We agreed that she and my dad would come help for five days.

By the time my parents arrived, Jeffrey and I had decided that we’d take the skylights and all the windows from around the settee to the shop where Mom and I would sand them. The settee area has seven windows and the skylights each have two. I was so excited to get started. I set out both of the random orbit sanders and the triangle sander. It had been a while since Mom had used them. She was cautious to make sure every window she worked on was sanded perfectly. It took us four days to take all the windows down to bare wood. The outside faces took a lot of work. We had let the teak gray while we attended to other projects over the last seven winters. This was the first time they had been refinished since our friend Aaron built them.

On New Years Eve we finished sanding. There was dust everywhere. Mom went inside (our shop is in our backyard) for a nap so she could stay awake for midnight festivities. I began to clean the shop. I took the air hose and dusted off the high areas and then swept the floor. I dusted everything so that we’d be ready for varnish the next day.

It was noon on New Years Day when Mom and I made it into the shop. I opened the big garage door and sunlight filled the shop. The windows all seemed to glow. I did a little more dusting with the air hose while Mom prepared each window for finish. This included wiping them down with rubbing alcohol and taping foam blocks to the glass so we could work on both sides of the panes. By four o’clock we were ready to apply our first coat of finish.

The afternoon went by fast. For the first time in five days we were able to work without hearing protectors and dust masks and chat as we worked. It grew dark and I closed the overhead door to the cold. Jeffrey and I use Deks Olje for our brightwork. It’s a two part oil based product which has a nice color tint and is easy to fix in the middle of a busy summer when we’re full with passengers. We got started and immediately felt the sense of accomplishment as the oil soaked in to the wood. The color change gave us a preview of what the end product would look like. It was so satisfying to see the transformation.

By six o’clock we’d finished a couple coats and it was time for my parents to leave. I was so grateful to them for spending their vacation time with us and for doing so much work. As their car disappeared into the night, I couldn’t help but think how nice it was to be able to ring in a new year with a renewed feeling of optimism. Having Mom help reset my routine. With the craziness of December over and with Mom’s labor I’m a little ahead of where I planned to be. I’m looking forward to the next few weeks of applying layers of Deks 2 to build up gloss. With the holidays over, Jeffrey and I will settle back into our routine, and if I’m lucky, my mom will want to come back for her spring break. I’ve still got eight more pilothouse windows, the trunk cabin, cap rail, and guard on her to-do list.

The post Refinishing Yacht Windows appeared first on Yachting.

Sanding on a boat

How often do you look at your boat and see weathered varnish? Brightwork is a constant consideration on most all boats and keeping up with it often seems like a chore. The David B is certainly no exception. Every time I look at the boat, I always see some part that needs a new coat. (I use the terms brightwork and varnish interchangeably for any type of clear or amber finishes.) This winter my attention is focused on refinishing two skylights, and time permitting, fifteen teak pilothouse window sashes. The work is time consuming, but like heading out for a run in the rain, the hardest part of refinishing brightwork is getting started.

Earlier this week I began work on the foredeck skylight. My plan was to sand the panes in place. I figured I could work around the hinges with a random orbit sander, then go back with the detail sander or hand sand for the hard-to-get places. That worked for a while, but then I decided that it would be faster, easier, and look better if I took off the hinges. At first I didn’t really want to go through the hassle, but in the end, it was the right approach.

It’s been at least three years since I last did any work on the foredeck’s skylight. Its mahogany has grayed where the finish has worn off. Like every boat owner with neglected varnish, I’m always apologetic to visitors when their eyes linger a little too long on an offending spot. So with great happiness I put on my dust mask, safety glasses, and hearing protection in preparation for my sander to meet the wood. I took a deep breath and exhaled into my dust mask only to fog my glasses. I looked down at the sander and acknowledged that we would be spending a lot of time together over the next few months. I lifted it up. It was cold. I switched it on and felt it’s torque. As the sanding pad spun lightning fast, its one hundred and fifty grit ate away the gray wood. My heart warmed as orange-red hues emerged from the weathered surface. After a few minutes, the sander melded into my hands and I lost track of time. Darkness fell outside, but under the white plastic of the winter cover, two florescent lights and a halogen shop light burned as dust swirled from the sander’s pick-up into the roaring Shop-Vac. All around me was the smell of mahogany. When I bushed away the dust, my fingertips were rewarded with the feel of smooth, sander-warmed surface. I allowed myself to let my thoughts slip into the future and to think about what kind of finish I’d use, and most importantly, what the skylight will look like in the summer months as it glows brightly in the sun.

Here are a couple of tips I have for sanding a skylight:

1. Be patient. Don’t try to get it all done at once.

2. Tape or cover the glass to protect from a slipping sander.

3. Remove hinges and other projections.

4. If your sander has a hook up for dust collection, use tape to secure the hose to the dust pick up.

5. Tape the sander’s power cord to the vacuum’s hose every foot starting at the back of the sander and going back about six feet towards the vacuum.

6. Don’t try to speed up the work by using a grit that is courser than necessary. You might take off too much wood.

7. If you are working on deck and need to be on your knees, I recommend a pair of double front pants with kneepad inserts. Kneepads that fit into pants are possibly the greatest invention ever. They can be washed without being removed and are always there, so you never have to worry about being uncomfortable while working on your knees.

We all know how much work it takes to keep up brightwork. When I pass by a boat, even one with a small amount of varnish, I always notice and I appreciate that effort. Refinishing brightwork can be a chore, but it can also be rewarding. As when you’ve made the effort to go for that run in the rain, when you’re done, you’ll be rewarded with a feeling of satisfaction and love of yourself and your boat.

_Read more about the David B _here.

The post Tips for Sanding Skylights appeared first on Yachting.

Bossanova

Last week I went to the boatyard for my first sight of her since the corrosion was discovered. Driving around to the front of the boatyard, my eye instantly found Bossanova, and I was struck, as I always am, by how massive she looks on the hard. From the waterline up, she was as beautiful as ever: Her high bow and reverse raked pilothouse windows suggested that Poseidon could bring it.

But looking beneath the waterline, my heart sank. The pitting and corrosion were everywhere. There wasn’t an ounce of zinc left.

Malcolm Elliott was meeting me to help sort through my options. An amiable Scot who moved to Fort Lauderdale in his 20s, Elliott is the owner of Florida Nautical Surveyors, and back in 2004 he performed the original pre-purchase survey of Bossanova. I knew his steel-boat experience was extensive and I trusted him. Marine Safety Consultants of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, had first discovered this corrosion during a routine insurance survey, and I had no reason to doubt their good work, but when the prognosis is grim, a second opinion is not only a good idea but offers a last, desperate hope.

Elliott dispelled that hope pretty quickly. If I were a welder or if I had time to learn and then devote to the repairs, this was not such a big deal. The damage was extensive but she could be repaired — hiring someone to do it would be expensive. I already had an estimate from one local welder who recommended doubling — welding good plate over the entire bottom of the boat. It would add more than 8,000 pounds to my boat, but more important, it’s a band-aid rather than a real solution. And if I wanted to sell Bossanova, the doubling would be a liability.

And here it must be said: I had been thinking of selling her, despite our long and wonderful history together. She is a ship made for voyages and adventures, and my current schedule makes those rare indeed. I had started feeling guilty about Bossanova — as though I owned a Ferrari that never went above 40 miles per hour, or a Clydesdale that gives kiddie-rides at a petting zoo. I singlehand this formidable small ship, but I can’t claim it’s always fun. She is a lot of boat to manage, with a single screw and lots of windage. I can’t come home from a long day at the office and just toss off the lines for a relaxing sunset cruise. More and more, I had been craving something smaller and simpler. So, on top of everything else, I felt guilty: Bossanova was ailing — I couldn’t desert her now.

So … I am still unresolved, but here’s the plan: I will blast the bottom to bare metal and round up some bids. I’ll finish the survey of the rest of the boat and subtract the bids from the valuation to arrive at an approximate unrepaired value. And with bids for cutting and cropping (the right way to do it) in hand, I’ll know whether it seems smart to pay for the repairs or whether I should offer the boat for sale to someone who has the skill or resources to fix her. I could also donate Bossanova to a school that would restore her. None of these is the perfect solution.

The good news? We’ve all experienced those situations when it seems like boating is just not worth it. It’s not that it’s expensive: We know and expect that. It’s that there are too many people in this business who think overcharging is a marine industry birthright. It can be demoralizing. But my recent experiences have reminded me, once again, of how much goodwill and kindness also exist in our community. The folks at Bristol Marine in Somerset, Massachusetts, have been helpful and patient. Elliott took time out from a vacation to meet me and offer his expert advice. And many Yachting readers have written to express concern, offering support and, in a couple of cases, even volunteering donations to save Bossanova. Thank you all.

I don’t know what will become of her, but I do know I’ll make sure that Bossanova will be repaired and loved by someone, even if I have to face the heartbreak of letting her go. And I don’t plan on “swallowing the anchor” any time soon.

Mary South
mary.south@yachtingmagazine.com

Read more from Mary in her blog, From the Editor.

The post Good News, Bad News appeared first on Yachting.

WagonWheels

In Maine, men once upon a time carved huge blocks of granite from the islands, using mostly muscle, and they called the grain structure they worked “the Run, the Rift, and the Hard Way.” The evocative phrase also serves to describe cruising this coast’s thousands of isles today. It’s relatively easy to run Down East from Portland to Cutler enjoying nearly innumerable secure harbors, both inhabited and wild. Instead of a continuous coastline you’ll find one rifted by tall Bays, like Penobscot and Blue Hill, that let you meander into the state’s more pastoral interior; picture gentle shores overhung by birch and oak trees rather than the stereotypical salt-stunted spruce. And you’ll delight in the long veins of gray-and-pink granite where molten magma once bubbled up through rifts in the planet’s skin and then was smoothed by millennia of sea action to form sculpture you can walk on. But what’s hard is visiting the outermost islands that arguably host the most intense flavor of Maine’s natural beauty.

Consider Wooden Ball, a mere 23 miles down Penobscot Bay from my lovely though highly civilized homeport of Camden. It’s a mile long but lacks anything you could honestly term a boat harbor. Heck, it doesn’t even have vegetation big enough to call a tree but, wow, is it alive in the summer! While it’s been well over a decade since my only visit, I have vivid memories of how the wee hollows in its endlessly varied ledges host cranberry bogs scattered with wildflowers and cattails, all happily overseen by songbirds. Of course there are many sea birds too, including rare species like roseate terns that are why many of these outer islands are off limits until the nesting season ends in mid-August, which makes it even harder to catch the right weather window.

I also remember how tough it was to get ashore in our tender, first to find a remotely reasonable spot and then to get over the jumble of wave rounded rocks, some granite in pinks and grays from the nearby rifts, that wanted to do some more tumbling underfoot. (Note that when these rocks grind down to sizes under about a half-inch and gather in a less exposed spot, Mainers tend to call it a beach.) Then were the minke whales working the herring that in turn worked whatever upwelled as strong tidal currents scoured the shores.

Had I paid more attention to those currents I might have avoided the embarrassing fact of the day. While my mate and I wandering the island in a Thoreauvian daze, my boat at the time, a fast 25-footer, dragged her anchor toward very deep water and if it weren’t for the extraordinary luck that a couple of good samaritan urchin divers were enjoying the same calm day in the same spot, we might still be on Wooden Ball Island.

But my taste for Maine outer islands was only whetted by that experience, though now I’m even more careful about how I go about visiting them. I’m very keen, for instance, on the various new tools that can warn me if my boat is dragging anchor even when I’m, say, a mile away picking cranberries.

One such tool is a clever smartphone app called Boat Monitor. Sensing anchor drag is not simply a matter of marking a spot with GPS, picking a safe radius and getting an alarm if your boat exceeds the radius, even if that’s all some anchor watch functions on chart plotters can do. The actual spot you want to mark is where the anchor is and you can do that with Boat Monitor either by having the phone at the bow when setting the hook or, better yet, entering your bearing and distance from the anchor once you’ve settled into position. Plus you may well want to know if your boat swings significantly around the anchor, even if it hasn’t yet exceeded the same radius from it, and Boat Monitor lets you do that by defining an additional pie-shape alarm area.

These anchor drag alarm nuances could be programmed into a chart plotter, but what Boat Monitor and similar apps can do naturally, and that no marine display is capable of yet, is to send a text message to another phone that’s in your pocket while you’re exploring ashore (or dining out). Heck, if you have an iPhone, Boat Monitor can even verbalize the alarm with distance and bearing.

But for this scenario to work you do need to leave a smartphone on the boat and have at least a texting phone with you, and there are some interesting alternatives. One is the Garmin GTU 10, a tiny wireless and waterproof GPS with a low-cost cellular data service built in. It’s designed for tracking dogs, children, dinghies, etc. but I found that it works pretty well as an anchor dragging alarm too. That’s because the system allows you to use a PC browser or a Garmin phone app to create detailed geofences and then tell the GTU 10 to notify you if it leaves (or enters) the “fenced” area. It would be nice if Garmin added marine charts to its Tracker applications, but the GTU 10’s current location is shown on regular maps, and I’ve usually been able to draw a safe anchoring area with that and a shoreline.

Meanwhile, the Siren Marine Sprite cellular monitoring system I’ve been testing does not support complex geofences but it will remote alarm you for a small position change and deserves consideration because it can mind your boat in so many other ways. For instance, a Sprite can be set up to send you regular reports on battery voltage and refrigerator temperature and/or alarms on unauthorized entry, and it can disable an outboard from half way around the world. And it can do all this via simple text messages or a more verbose app.

So when I hike remote Maine islands with poor anchorages these days, I usually have a way to alleviate my dragging anxieties. While I need to include the “usually” qualifier because some of these islands lack cellular coverage, there are, or will be, ways around that too. Garmin, for instance, has a high-performance cellular modem called the GDL 40 that’s currently used to deliver weather info to its displays but could, I think, become part of a very able off-boat tracking and monitoring system. There are also low-cost satellite alternatives like the Spot Hug, and I understand that we’ll eventually see Iridium “small burst data modems” built into multifunction displays so your boat electronics can text you!

That same Iridium modem is already inside the wonderful DeLorme inReach tracking and messaging handheld that I’m now glad to take ashore in wilderness spots like Wooden Ball Island. If I did somehow lose my boat ride home, the inReach could not only notify the search and rescue services with my ID and exact location but also let me text with them about what might happen next, all without regard to cellular coverage.

I’ve also become fond of Simrad’s StructureScan as a tool for analyzing the bottom before I drop anchor. StructureScan is used primarily by fishermen looking for productive underwater structures like ledges and wrecks, and it does not see ahead of a boat. (While that would be ideal for a gunkholer like me, forward-looking sonar doesn’t have the resolution I’d like yet). But StructureScan is a relatively inexpensive add-on that sees sideways in great detail, and a spin or two around a potential anchorage tells me a lot about what’s there. Humminbird also manufacturers inexpensive side-imaging sonar and Garmin recently purchased Interphase, a leader in forward- looking sonar, which bodes well.

But won’t the cruising guides tell me about island anchorages, you might ask? There are several good resources, including the excellent print publication A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast and the international cruise info-sharing site ActiveCaptain (which was founded by Mainers). However, “Catch-22” style, the outer islands, especially the most exotic and difficult ones, are not well covered because they’re not often visited.

Fortunately, though, the Maine outer islands are a focus of wildlife preservation organizations, which, in turn, are often fonts of information for boaters with a hankering for exploration. Visit the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuges site, for instance, to learn about the 50 islands they oversee. The Maine Coast Heritage Trust and local trusts like Boothbay Region also manage uninhabited islands for wildlife and human visitors, and don’t miss the Maine Island Trial Association. MITA may be oriented mainly to kayakers but its online and printed guide is fabulous asset for any cruiser.

Strangely enough I still don’t know what individual or organization owns Wooden Ball Island. There was no signage, at least when I visited, and the only sign of people was a long-abandoned shack that seemed to have once housed bird watchers. But I have learned, somewhat to my chagrin as an “adventurer,” that there was a time when heartier folks farmed Wooden Ball and similarly raw island jewels all along the coast of Maine. That was the Hard Way, indeed.

To read more articles by Ben Ellison, check out his Marine Electronics Blog.
To read more about Maine, try Christopher White’s article Where to Stay: Maine Marinas and Resorts
or Mary South’s article Cruising Mid-Coast Maine.

The post The Run, the Rift and the Hard Way appeared first on Yachting.

islander-running-_4906.jpg

d7990165.jpg

islander-running-4964.jpg

d7990326.jpg

sundeck-5582.jpg

upperdeck-breakfast-4397.jpg

upperdeck-4385.jpg

d7990323.jpg

dining-5665.jpg

diningroom.jpg

salon-5736.jpg

salon-5676.jpg

islander—main-saloon.jpg

master-4313.jpg

upperlounge-bar-5740.jpg

ws1x2644.jpg

islander—crane-trans-ferring-mast-to-barge-(medium).jpg

sail-masts-on-barge-(medium).jpg

islander—bridge-old-items-removed-(medium).jpg

dinning-room-protection-2(large)-(medium).jpg

crew-mess-cofferdam-passage(large)-(medium).jpg

1-of-many-piles-of-removed-cables-(medium).jpg

chain-plate-removal-(medium).jpg

The post Islander’s Refit appeared first on Yachting.

266.jpg

269.jpg

277.jpg

289.jpg

292.jpg

295.jpg

296.jpg

305.jpg

319.jpg

350.jpg

359.jpg

361.jpg

376.jpg

377.jpg

424.jpg

497.jpg

525.jpg

526.jpg

527.jpg

528.jpg

529.jpg

530.jpg

533.jpg

534.jpg

538.jpg

584.jpg

The post Refit of 154′ Feadship appeared first on Yachting.

Double B

D – D was a straightforward repower. “To get the engines out, we took the manifolds and turbos off. The 8V92’s flywheel housing is 32 inches and the salon door is 34 inches with the doorjambs off,” says Charlie Schloemer, president of Palm Beach Power. The narrower Series 60 slid right in.

Simple fiberglass and wood stringers common as engine beds in ’84 were capped with aluminum structures similar to the way engines are mounted in new boats today. Old 2-cycle Detroit Diesel engines typically require larger exhausts than their new 4-stroke counterparts, so the boat needed only new risers between turbo and muffler. Hatteras tended to overbuild a bit, so the original 2 1/2-inch Aquamet shafts were more than adequate.

Schloemer suggests new transmissions, purchased as a package with engines so covered under warranty, rather than trying to rebuild old transmissions.

“When I quote a repower, I include any work that should be done to the support system for the new engines,” Schloemer says. “Fuel lines and filters, batteries and cables, all that needs to be looked at. When everything is out of the way, that’s also the time to look at generators, water heaters, air conditioners, anything that is normally hard to access.”

Double B (above, right) was also a straightforward job. “We always leave a little extra room when we build a boat,” says Paul Spencer, president of Spencer Yachts. “That’s why we could put in a little longer and taller motor. It would be a mistake to think a boat like that would never be repowered.”

Exhausts were increased 2 inches in diameter, but shaft size wasn’t increased. “With the added horsepower, we find a tendency to crack the shaft at the keyway in the taper,” Spencer says. “We could have increased to a 3 1/2-inch shaft, but that’s somewhere near double the weight plus added drag,” he said. “Instead we switched to a splined taper. They seem to hold the horsepower well.”

Spencer says such details won’t be overlooked with the right yard. “A lot of people make the mistake of choosing the cheapest bid,” he says. “You want to make sure everything is done so it looks like the boat was built that way, not like it was a redo. There is always a way to do the job right and still make it look nice.”

The Alessa Leigh rebuild started as a fairly quick trip to the yard. “The project started with just a bucket,” says Chad Delannoy, Bell’s long-time captain and project manager. A bucket is what west-coasters call a fiberglass crow’s nest above the helm that serves the same purpose as an East Coast tuna tower. The original bucket design would have weighed 2,000 pounds, unacceptable since they were removing only an 800-pound Hatteras-original radar and antenna mast. Instead, the entire bucket was kept to 900 pounds using carbon fiber.

“That took about three weeks to design and four months to build,” Delannoy says. “Then Scott [Bell, the boat’s owner] heard about the new 2,400-horsepower engines from MTU.” Bell employed naval architects and engineers, and tank-tested several designs before settling on a 9-foot extension with much less pitch in the propeller pocket tunnels (from a 9-degree down angle to 2 1/2 degrees).

“Then Scott said, I love the cockpit and the engines, but I don’t like my interior,” Delannoy says. “In one conversation we were removing the entire interior from the vessel.” Every piece that could be lightened was. Cored structures and carbon fiber were used for everything, including cabin soles. “At one point I was standing in the engine room looking up at the sky,” Delannoy says.

Much of the interior became structural, yet to utilize every inch of space, nothing was committed to paper plans in advance. “I’d work with a carpenter for a week to mock up a section of the interior in plywood and cardboard and Styrofoam,” he says. “The Bells would come by and tweak it, and then we’d involve Tim Nolan, the engineer.”

Noise and vibration mitigation were as much a priority as saving weight, “Particularly in the master stateroom,” Delannoy says. “Scott wasn’t concerned with how we did it, but that was a priority.” Bulkheads attached to the hull only with vibration-deadening strips, vibration-isolated platforms upon which equipment was mounted with additional vibration-isolating mounts, sound-absorbing sprayed coatings, and pumps and equipment chosen in part for quiet operation satisfied Bell’s mandate — to never hear a pump or motor while in his stateroom. Sound at 20 knots on the bridge also stayed below 60 decibels.

For long excursions far offshore, redundancy was another mandate. “There isn’t a system aboard that doesn’t have a backup,” Delannoy says. “One was never enough, two was better, and in some cases we have three. Scott has one wife, but at least two of everything else.”

The post Nuts and Bolts: Repowering Yachts appeared first on Yachting.

David B Blog 1

I came to boating in the spring of 1998 when I bought my first boat with my soon-to-be-husband Jeffrey. The boat was the main ingredient for the dream we had committed ourselves to as a way to build our life together. We were in our late twenties; full of energy and the belief that we could make our dreams come true. Like so many people before us, our plan was to find an old boat, rebuild it, and share it with others by offering charters.

Although I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle, loved tidal pools and being near the water, I somehow had never found my way to boats. That all changed in 1996 when I met Jeffrey. He was twenty-six and had just landed a job as a captain on a passenger ferry that ran between Bellingham, Washington, and Victoria, British Columbia. He captivated me with a plan that he’d been working on since his days as a deckhand on the windjammers in Maine. His idea was to build a big schooner and run it as a business, like the boats he’d worked on in Maine. I fell in love listening to him. Most of my daydreams floated around the notion that I wanted to someday own a bed and breakfast in the San Juan Islands. When he first learned of my dreams he asked me, “Does your bed and breakfast need to have a foundation, or could it float?” With that one question and a smile, our dreams came together and two years later, after lots of searching, we found the “perfect” boat.

It was a diamond in the rough for sure, with sixty-five feet of rotten and weathered wood, peeling paint and an antique engine. We shook hands with the owner, exchanged money and signed some paperwork. After that we were the proud owners of a nearly derelict former cannery tender, built in 1929. Her name was David B, and she was priced just right – fifteen thousand dollars. That was May of 1998 and my initiation into the world of boats.

Our restoration of the David B took eight years, and in 2006, we achieved our goal of starting a charter boat business. Nowadays, our charters are usually between three and twelve days. Our focus is on nature and wildlife tours, as well as educational cruises that help yacht owners and bareboat charterers refine their skills. From April to October, you can find the David B cruising the waters of the Salish Sea, the Inside Passage and Southeast Alaska. In the off-season we spend our time at home in Bellingham making upgrades and doing maintenance to the boat.

I look forward to sharing my experiences both as a tour boat operator in some of the most beautiful places in the world, but also as a boat owner that faces the same challenges and obstacles as everyone else who has put their dreams in motion and found themselves on a boat.

Visit Northwest Navigation Co.’s website.

Check out Christine’s book about rebuilding the David B- More Faster Backwards.

The post How We Bought Our Boat and Got Started in the Charter Business appeared first on Yachting.