Sicily to Sardinia & Testing Our Stabilisers

Vanguard approaching a first anchorage in Sardinia

Today is not the best day to play at being a sailor. A strong weather system is blowing south from the Alps across a considerable fetch and around the coast of southern Sardinia. It's called a Mistral and is common enough this time of year. It blows through for a few days and then is gone, followed 12 hours or so later by calming seas. Now, sitting at anchor on the South Western tip of Sardinia, waiting to sprint the final 300 miles to Mallorca and our next stop at Palma.

Bow rollers now assembled with Locktight!

We have a growing list of repair items I'd classify as snagging. Unreliable tank gauges, dysfunctional Pepwave router, hunting steering, leaking fuel valves, jury-rigged watermaker ... nothing big enough to stop anything but in the annoying category. The only major item has been our fore-cabin hatch. Nothing we can do will prevent it from leaking quite badly short of gumming it up with Sikoflex (God's gift to sailors). Well, it's gummed up and will be ripped out and cast asunder. It should be a guaranteed item. Well, good luck with that sport, and in any event, sailors are generally self-sufficient.

Conversely, I wanted to tell you more positive news and give you a direct experience on Guarantees. We have a relationship with DMS, the supplier of our stabilizers. These stabilizers fold flat to avoid damage in docks (or ice) and have minimal power requirements. My friend, Rob Westerman, recently asked for an opinion based on our own direct experience; this was my reply, verbatim:

Rob - DMS Magnusmaster Stabilisers – I like those things. 

DMS Magnusmaster Stabilisers on Vanguard.

• They are very effective on our rolly polly hull. They do nothing for pitch or yaw but roll stops in anything up to a 3m sea, which we have experienced so far on the beam. It was also a short sea and quite steep. When time permits, I'll take a video of driving them in Antiphase to show you what I mean. 

• The build is robust; we fitted them without a cofferdam as they break off externally, so there is no possibility of a connection to the sea. During our ownership, the local area was constantly flooded with 3" of freshwater due to a dry pipe connection that had not been pressure tested. It took us 3 weeks to find it. I kept it pumped, but it frequently submerged the parts. There was no damage, though I'd not recommend the practice. 

• The system stows automatically when the engine clutch decouples. This is rather disconcerting but handy as it stops the possibility of being deployed when docking alongside.  So far, most of our docking has been stern-to, but that will change.  They deploy in about 10 seconds, and we often run without them. Quartering seas are the worst, and they get deployed if the roll goes above about 5%, as we are not proper sailors. :-)    

• There is a speed/energy penalty. It is extreme on our low-powered hull; at 8.5KN, we would drop to 8.0/8.1 when deploying them. Conversely, they do not use much power. They have a 13amp 240VAC system, which is about the same as a kettle max but often much less as their effect is proportional to demand. This is tiny compared to a Gyro, for example.   

• We fitted deflectors forward and have had no problems with weeds or nets, at least in 1500 miles, and the seas have also been pretty clean.   

• Their technical backup has been first class so far; 40 minutes after recently contacting them, we had our answer with a commissioning issue, from a car speeding down the motorway in Belgium to a yacht floundering about off the coast of Turkey!

Don't need to say more, really.

Solar became self sufficient (just)

Now the 42-degree days have cooled, and the wind is blowing, we can finally switch off the HVAC. At last, our Solar was able to keep up with demand during the day, or nearly so.

Well, that's a wrap for today. Tomorrow afternoon, we will push 300NM to our final stop at Palma. Going to "slow boat" it to arrive early in the morning in time for breakfast with luck. Regards to all from some random beach cove on the south end of Sardinia.

Chris