The likelihood of not being able to sail on a randomly chosen day during the time period in question due to rough weather – i.e. an average wind speed of over 24 knots and/or a significant wave height of over three metres – is thirty-four per cent on average for the four main legs, and the likelihood that we choose not to sail due to the headwind being too strong is twelve per cent. The risk of unfavourable winds is greatest between the Falklands and Ushuaia and when we head back home from Antarctica.
Consequently, the probability of the weather being fair enough for us to sail on a certain date is fifty-four per cent. The hardest stretch is not Drake Passage, as you might think, but crossing from the Falklands to Ushuaia. The main reason for this is the wind direction. Our course will be west-south-west, dead against the prevailing wind. Moreover, the Falklands are situated north of the low pressure that sweeps through Drake Passage, and in the southern hemisphere the wind rotates clockwise around a low pressure, which means that the strongest winds are created to the north of it. The probability that we would be able to travel this particular leg on a given date was forty-two per cent compared to approximately sixty per cent for the other three legs. The average speed is also the lowest – 7.2 knots compared to, on average, 8 knots for the other legs. During the time it took to complete this analysis the longest measured time in harbour awaiting favourable sailing conditions was the longest on this stretch – eleven days. The longest waiting period for the other three stretches was about a week.
So, in a normal week between December 1 and January 15, you can expect four days of sailing. Two days have to be spent in port due to reports of approaching foul weather, and one day because unfavourable winds are forecast. This proves how important it is to have access to accurate weather information when you are sailing in this area. One day a week is normally very windy. We found a significant wave height of ten metres once during our analysis, which means that we would risk encountering a twenty-metre wave every twenty-four hours, or even a thirty-metre monster wave!
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Choosing Boat Type and Equipment
(Arne)
The Impossibility of Combining Cost-efficiency, Speed and Comfort
People have circumnavigated the world in many different types and sizes of boat, so it is hard to define the characteristics of the optimal craft. Nevertheless, we would like to describe the choices we made when selecting our boat and equipment.
The impossibility of combining cost-efficiency, speed and comfort is a well-known fact. You can have speed and comfort if you give up on cost-efficiency. It is possible to achieve cost-efficiency and speed, but then you need to forgo comfort. It is also possible to achieve comfort and cost-efficiency, but then you need to give up speed. This is a law of nature.
We have chosen speed and comfort over cost-efficiency, although these three parameters are all relative to each other. There is probably some very wealthy boat-owner out there who would claim that we have chosen cost-efficiency over comfort, but the average circumnavigator is likely to agree with us.
Our positive experiences of the Hallberg-Rassy push-button sailing concept from the 46 model convinced us that we could cope with a larger boat. The hydraulic sail system worked extremely well. With the larger 62 model we now have a boat that can sail around two hundred nautical miles in a day at the same time as it is very comfortable for two people. Speed is always an asset on long hauls. Our boat can easily make 8.3 knots and up to 10 knots in favourable winds. At 8.3 knots the motor runs at economy speed: 1,500 rpm. At full throttle it can make 10 knots, but the fuel consumption is then too high.
The two hundred nautical miles we can cover in a twenty-four hour period should be compared to how far James Cook's Endeavour travelled; she only covered half the distance. Since our time plan was the same, it meant that Yaghan could stop in many more places and we could spend longer periods in port.
To our surprise, we found the stowage space in the 46 model to be inadequate for long distance sailing. This turned out to be rather an acute problem after we had learned to scuba dive. Diving equipment for two people takes up a lot of space. We simply felt that the 46 model would be too small for a crew of two with high demands for comfort! It came as a great surprise; it was something we were reluctant to tell our friends and acquaintances. It is hard to find things and have them easily accessible in a tightly packed boat. We were convinced and the experience of others had shown that sixty foot is an ideal boat size for two people circumnavigating the world. There are good reasons for choosing a smaller boat, but these are spelled cost-efficiency – not speed and comfort.
Running Costs Are Ten Per Cent of the Boat's Value
A large boat is significantly more expensive to run than a small one. Our annual costs amounted to nearly five per cent of the purchase price when sailing at home where we spent nearly every weekend and five weeks in the summer on board. With a hypothetical interest rate of five per cent I think a realistic annual cost for running it as a leisure boat is ten per cent of the purchase price.
During our circumnavigation we sail every day, so the cost will increase. Service and maintenance is of course more expensive for a boat that is used all the time compared to one that is only used at weekends. Moreover, costs for insurance and communications increase drastically during a circumnavigation. Our costs were twice as high compared to when we sailed only at weekends at home, i.e. ten per cent of the value of the boat annually, excluding interest. I think it is reasonable to assume that a boat costs ten per cent of its value to run, excluding interest, when it is used every day.
I am not interested in buying any of the very first few boats that are produced of a certain model. You cannot get away from the fact that these always suffer from defects and problems that are later fixed. The tenth Hallberg-Rassy 62 that came out of the shipyard became ours! We could have had it delivered earlier, but I wanted them to learn from the other nine before they built ours! Also, the shipyard had built several hundred 53s. Since Hallberg-Rassy is the only Swedish boat builder that makes fairly large series of boats of this size, there was really no alternative in Sweden for me. I thought about getting a British Oyster, but they were a lot more expensive.
Throw Your Prejudices Overboard
What experiences and considerations inspired us to build and equip our Hallberg-Rassy 62 the way we did? Let me begin by establishing that many boat-owners are very particular about what they want from a boat. It must be based on previous experience. It is natural to stay loyal to the type of boat you own and the way you sail it. It is basically a positive thing. This was true in our case when we moved from racing and brief summer outings to long-distance cruising. These earlier experiences may lead you to the wrong conclusions, however, when you want to begin to sail in a new way. Let me illustrate this with a few examples from our own sailing career.
The Stratus had a diesel tank capacity of sixty litres, which lasted us for most of the summer. When we ordered our Hallberg-Rassy 46 it came with a six hundred litre tank, and at the boatyard they asked us whether we wanted thousand litre tanks. Heléne and I laughed out loud. So you only needed to fill up every ten years? Once we started to sail long distances in the 46 model we soon realised that we should have gone for the larger tanks. Dead calm occurs more often than you think at sea. It is no fun to cover a long distance and then have to drift throughout the night. You need large tanks for when the wind fails. During the very first winter of owning the boat we increased the tank volume to a thousand litres so we could travel one thousand nautical miles under power. Over the years we began to realise that even that was on the small side, and we had extra large diesel tanks fitted on the 62 model too. It got a tank capacity of 2,400 litres, which was enough for fifteen hundred nautical miles in ideal conditions, not including the last forty litres that always remain in the three tanks and that you always need to keep eighty litres in reserve. This leaves us with 2,200 litres of usable fuel.
We have begun to think that even that is to cut it
too fine. The distance from Ushuaia to Puerto Montt in Chile is 1,500 nautical miles, and there are no inhabited areas. You are only allowed to sail during the day, and we wanted to take a closer look at the archipelago, so we planned on spending between forty and fifty days on this leg. The prevailing wind is dead ahead, which means that not even our 2,200 litres would take us all the way. Over this period, the heaters and the genset would consume a fair amount of diesel. There is only one fuelling point on this leg – at Puerto Natales – where you do not need to carry the fuel in barrels, but it is a detour of some one hundred nautical miles! Moreover, the quay where the fuel truck can get through is so exposed that you sometimes need to wait a whole week before the weather is right. It would be better to go all the way without having to refuel.
The trip to Antarctica also required large tanks. There are no filling stations in Antarctica, and the heaters are on all the time because of the cold. There is on average one gale/storm every four days in Drake Passage, so it is important to have enough diesel to take you across quickly, avoiding having to drift around in dead calm.
The size of the main engine is another factor that is often misjudged. The Stratus has a 28HP and the Hallberg-Rassy 46 a 95HP engine. At first, it was a heavenly feeling, but when you have a schedule to keep, as you do when you are cruising, you sometimes decide to motor against the wind and possibly even against the current in wind speeds of 20 knots. It was hard to cope with in the 46 model, and we were disappointed in the engine. The 62 model was fitted with a 237HP engine, which does 8 knots in all types of conditions. We think that is important for a cruising boat. In calm weather almost any motor is good enough, but when there is headwind and you are sailing against the current you can spend the whole night tacking without getting anywhere. If you want to avoid that you need a powerful engine.
Three Years’ Experience of Our Hallberg-Rassy 46
Our circumnavigation covered 44,000 nautical miles, the same distance Heléne and I had sailed together over a period of ten years previous to our setting out. These voyages were extremely important in terms of making the Hallberg-Rassy 62 the ideal boat for circumnavigating the world.
The five years we spent sailing the Hallberg-Rassy 46 were particularly important.
Apart from the Shetlands and the Faeroe Islands, we went to the Mediterranean in the 46 model. We brought down the boat in the summer of 2001 when I resigned as managing director of Handelsbanken after ten years and was appointed chairman of the board. We left her at Piraeus in Greece over the winter. We travelled down and sailed around the Greek islands over Christmas and the New Year, and during the midterm holiday in February. We were planning to sail her back home to Sweden in the summer of 2002. Since our new 62 model was to be delivered in spring 2003, we decided to post an advert for the 46 model on the Internet. We soon received a reply from a couple who wanted to buy her, and we delivered her to Villamoura, Portugal, in August 2002.
This meant that we were able to spend a year in the Mediterranean on the 46 model, a year that was to become an important learning experience when it came to finding improvements to our new 62 model.
In the Hallberg-Rassy 46 we used my regular laptop for navigation.
There were certain problems with this since the many programs took up too much space. Moreover, there are not enough com ports on a portable for Navtex, Inmarsat C, AIS et cetera, so we decided that the new boat should be fitted with a stationary computer dedicated to sailing and navigation software, for example Transas, Navtex, Inmarsat C and AIS. Our private information would have to be stored on our laptops. We decided on a Seabook for navigation. It is a robust piece of hardware with two mirrored hard disks, which means that it continues to run even if one of the disks should fail.
We also rigged up both our laptops so they could be used for navigation in an emergency. We were unable to fit in all the information, but electronic charts, GPS and AIS goes a long way.
We were not entirely happy with the electric system on the 46 model. It had regular batteries and a 50 ampere alternator and genset. I took the old batteries out in our first season and exchanged them for a battery bank with 2 volt cells. The advantages are that it can withstand more charging than a conventional battery and that it can be discharged down to twenty per cent compared to fifty per cent for regular batteries. You can also add greater charging capacity since the batteries can withstand quicker charging. This is especially important when you are planning to use as much electronics as we were in our new boat. In the 62 model we added a 2 volt cell bank with a nominal capacity of 800 ampere hours. Since it can be discharged down to twenty per cent, it means that you have a working capacity of 600 ampere hours. We estimated that the 62 model would use 20 amperes per hour, or nearly 500 ampere hours per day. With a capacity of 600 ampere hours it would suffice to charge once a day.
Two-volt cells are more expensive than conventional batteries. On the other hand it is cheaper in the long run, since they have a life span of more than ten years compared to maybe three for conventional batteries. Quality pays when it comes to batteries.
When you consume as much electricity as that you need to make sure you have sufficient charging capacity in order to avoid having to run the generator unnecessarily. A 2 volt battery bank can withstand charging fifty per cent of the bank's total capacity, which means that our 800 ampere bank can withstand a 400 ampere charging. This meant that we wanted three chargers of 100 ampere on the generator and one for 100 ampere on the main motor. This was not a problem; the problem was finding a generator with enough capacity.
The year we spent in the Mediterranean put us off bottled gas. The bottles you buy around the Mediterranean are of a different size from the ones you buy in Scandinavia. The norm in southern Europe is three kilo camping bottles. They did not fit into the rack inside our boat, which was designed for larger bottles. We had to tie these smaller bottles with string, which was not satisfactory. I think bottled gas on board constitutes a risk, although perhaps not a very great risk. We spent a lot of time carrying bottles. The places where you can buy them are never close to where you happen to be.
Moreover, the reducing valve needs to be changed frequently. The bottles are always kept in a place that is exposed to the weather and salt water. They have a tendency to break on the most inconvenient occasions – often in stormy weather at night when you cannot change them.
So we decided to install an electric stove in the 62 model. Hallberg-Rassy had never done it before, so it was a little hardgoing in the beginning, but they finally tracked down a gimballed stove in the US. The only disadvantage is that it, like all electric stoves, takes longer to heat up than a gas stove. It is not a great problem when you are cooking, but it can be tedious when you want to make all those innumerable cups of tea and coffee you tend to drink at sea. We solved the problem by buying an electric kettle. It works on 220 volts and boils the water instantly. We have a constant 220 volt supply on board the 62 model via the 5 kW inverter (which transforms the 24 volts in the batteries to 220 volts). The electric stove is also supplied by the inverter, which means that we do not need to start the generator in order to make dinner. We are extremely pleased about this set up. The only thing we need to get from the outside is diesel fuel, which is not very often.
During the year we spent sailing around the Mediterranean we discovered that I am sensitive to heat, and we realised that we needed to install air-conditioning so I would be able to endure the hot weather down by the equator.
An 8 kW standard generator could not meet the 62 model's considerable electricity requirements: the stove, the large battery bank and the air conditioning. Even the larger 12 kW unit that was available seemed insufficient, so the boatyard fitted a 16 kW Westerbeke – the largest unit they had ever installed. You could just about squeeze it into the engine room. Now we can charge up to 500 amperes in three hours. We have never found it too powerful; it is what we need bearing in mind our electricity consumption. We are grateful for our “power s
tation” every single day.
Our experience from previous cruises has convinced us that we want Internet access via satellite. Accurate weather information is the key to a safe and enjoyable cruise. A weather fax and Navtex are important tools, but in order to receive really good weather information you need to enter your route into a computer program, run it with your weather criteria and let the software plot the optimal route. You need the Internet for daily input wherever you are in the world.
When our 62 was built, the Inmarsat B system was the only option that met my requirements. The antenna was enormous and weighed a hundred kilos. It seemed like a dead end. A few months before it was delivered, however, the Inmarsat Fleet 77 with a 64 kilobit per second connection was introduced on the market. The antenna, a 1x1 metre ball, only weighs twenty-seven kilos. We were really pleased about it. It was exactly the type of product I knew I must have. I was the first customer in Sweden, somewhat against my principles, but there was no alternative. I simply had to have it. There were some teething problems, but in the end the Fleet 77 was as reliable as anything.
It is important to do everything you can to make the yacht easy to handle. It was especially important to us since we assumed that the 62 model would be the last boat we owned in life. We need to be able to sail it when we are old and frail. We fitted a lift on one of the aft posts, which is mostly used for hoisting and lowering the outboard motor for the inflatable dinghy. We wanted dinghy davits that we could use when sailing around in archipelagos, and we wanted to be able to stow the dinghy below deck through the booby hatch when crossing the ocean. We got an inflatable Achilles dinghy with a collapsible aluminium floor. It is heavier than a normal inflatable dinghy (it weighs about sixty kilos), but that is not a problem since we have a lift. When we are sailing around islands or during a short ocean crossing it is stored on the davits. We always stow it away before we go to sea for several days. The davits are telescopic, so they are out of sight when the dinghy is stowed away. This solution was something that we altered during the course of our voyage, however. It turned out that when you are travelling across coral reefs you need a dinghy with a hard fibreglass bottom, but more about that later.
Back at the helm - sailing the Yaghan to Antarctica, Patagonia and the South Pacific Page 5