Ocean Crossing Upgrades

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Delancey

Title of the thread is Ocean Crossing Upgrades and the OP wants to buy a production boat to sail around the world and is seeking advice from experienced sailors WHO HAVE DONE THE SAME.

I thought it interesting to compare and contrast the difference between two respondents, one who has circumnavigated and one who certainly has lots of sailing experience but who we don't know has even crossed an ocean before.

Of the two, the guy out there doing it cautions against running out and buying all the stuff that everyone says you need pointing out that "If I had started with $1m I would have had everything, all bells and whistles incl ice-maker. But I was doing it on a tight budget." while the other who has nothing to lose by spending other people's money recommends arbitrarily replacing rigging and rudders and buying stuff to the tune of $30k-$50k.

My concern? Telling people they have to go out buy a bunch of stuff isn't really helpful and is directly contradicted by the real reality and experiences of real people who are really out there doing it, not sitting comfortably in an armchair. I don't think there is anything wrong with lot's of nice stuff assuming having to pay for it doesn't prevent you from leaving the dock.

These are all about opinions and are not fact based. As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm more in MarkJ's corner about adding less stuff but Civilized has added some good points as well. Keep in mind that not all ex charter boats are equal and some will need more care and attention than others. On our first offshore adventure I was sailing a lighter weight racer cruiser and I had some serious rudder problems that required reinforcement after a rough passage. I would rather lose the mast than a rudder offshore so rudders must be very carefully inspected. On my 3 other offshore boats I pulled the rudders and made modifications to 2 of them before leaving. Sometimes you just get lucky but your better off using some common sense that relying on luck. Saving money or not spending money you don't need to is the right thing to do if your trying to stay on a budget but make damn sure you are sailing a solid well inspected boat.

[MarkJ]

The reasons why these type of threads get ridiculous is that upgrading EVERYTHING just sounds so jolly obvious. "Of course you MUST service the life raft, its the LIFE RAFT for goodness sake!" "You must service the taps as they're cobwcted to thru hulls which could sink the boat!"

So there's people willing to waste their lives doing all this work where what they really want is a new oyster... but they are too poor so pontificate & procrastinate to where they never go cruising.

There's 2 choices: going or not going.

I went.



Mark

[barnakiel]

Upgrading a boat and sailing a boat are two different sports.

You can spend any amount of time and money upgrading. Up to the point of never going out, for sure.

You can also go out without upgrading and attend to the matters as they develop.

There are upgrading mentalities and sailing mentalities.

Somehow, two of the boats that I know sailed most miles do not look like they ever got upgraded. If they did, it was so long ago that their then upgrades are now collectables.

So many ways to skin a cat. If you are of the upgrading mentality, you will end up upgrading. If you are a sailing mentality, you will end up sailing.

If I had heaps on heaps of dough, I would upgrade some things on our boat. But since I do not, I simply make sure the important things are strong and seaworthy and then off we go.

Never apply other people's attitudes to your own adventures. Find you own way and follow it.

Know thyself. Or something like that. This is the true beginning and the only worthy target while we are here.

Cheers,
b.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by Delancey

The difference between the two? One reflects an ideal world, one reflects the real world.

They both reflect the real world. You won't go far hand steering until you wish there was either a wheel pilot or wind vane on board. We took another option, lots of crew. 12 actually on a watch system so steering wasn't to bad, but with a smaller crew hand steering hour after hour would have been a pain.

Charter yachts are built with lots of cabins and double berths because that's what customers want, not a coffin berth. However, in a rough seaway watch after watch, its important off crew can sleep so lee cloths pretty high on my list.

Inspect the rig and rudder before going, hardly expensive, unless there is something serious found.

Saefty equipment like life lines and harnesses, shouldn't even need to be debated.

Hardly high ticket items that I would have put on the ideal wish list.

[boatman61]

If your buying a boat for voyaging and know little about boats get the best surveyor you can find.. not the brokers recommendation.
Be with him when he does the survey and get him to explain the faults and why they are urgent or can be dealt with later/less urgent.
Equip yourself with a list/guide to what to look for in a survey and make sure he covers everything.. many surveyors will not lift a floorboard to check something as its beneath them.. so being there to do it for them serves a valuable purpose.
Deal with everything below the w/line that requires a lift out before she's dropped back in the water following the survey and also any other urgent stuff, lifes easier on the hard.. then launch and test sail..
All Good..
Stock up with food n water and away..
Essentials
Good Autopilot
Speed/Depth Log
Ships Compass
VHF
Good Nav system/CP
Back up like Nimble Navigator on a Notebook/Laptop/HH GPS
EPIRB and Liferaft.. or like me a good dinghy instead (cue know better)

[barnakiel]

So, what OP ends up with is lists of PERSONAL (very) preferences of what our boats (real and conceptual ones) should or could carry in our real and imaginary voyages.

This is in fact a very poor starting point - a relatively random and biased data set.

You can look up equipment roundups published annually by YM and look up there what equipment the boats carried and of what style / make. You will get more data points, more of a vertical slice of the whole picture. Mind most of the boats in question are new, newish, or otherwise quite well outfitted even before they get whatever the YM equipment survey shows.

Just an idea. Since it is so easy to order a backcopy of the YM. Maybe you can find the data online too.

b.

[Delancey]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Inspect the rig and rudder before going, hardly expensive, unless there is something serious found.

Why are you misrepresenting UNCIVILIZED's comments? He did not recommend inspecting the rig and rudder which anyone would agree would be prudent. He arbitrarily recommended, amongst to other upgrades, that the theoretical seven to fifteen year old boat in the OP needed to

"Rebuild the rig, replacing all tangs & major structural bolts, & fittings. Stays included.
Add 2nd headstay - Solent or Staysail...
....Rebuild Rudder"

Several years ago I looked into adding a Solent jib as a posible upgrade to my boat. To do the job I would have had to go to a yard to pull the rig, pay yard labor, and hire an outside contractor to weld in the sheave box. What UNCIVILIZED can do in a long weekend the yard wanted three to four weeks to turn around not including lead time on sails.

The ball park I got for this work including hardware but not including the cost of the sail itself or running rigging was $12k-$14k. A rudder rebuild on my boat costs something like +$3k not including shipping the old one to the fabricator and the new one back. Those few items from a twenty point list combined equal a big chunk of cruising kitty for some people and you haven't even left the dock.

Contrast this with the experience of MarkJ who sailed around the world on his ex-Sunsail charter boat just fine without rebuilding his rudder or adding a Solent jib and didn't replace his standing rigging until after 40,000 miles.

Would I love to have a Solent jib? Of course! Would I be willing to cross an ocean again without one? Absolutely! My first crossing taught me you just don't need one to safely cross an ocean. It taught me to make the right passage in the right season.

That crossing was a late season delivery of a thirty-six year old racing boat during which we experienced several gales including one that lasted six days with 35-65 knots wind speed. Mostly we used a twenty-five year old Kevlar blade but at times a thirty-six year old storm jib.

Oh, and by the way, for the trip boat owner purchased what I believed to be a too small wind vane and despite spending hours making new vanes and hours of fidgeting we could never get it to work. He had been cheap about purchasing it because he was broke at that point after having just bought a boat and paying for all of the other must haves.

With only three on onboard and my wife mostly confined to her berth because of sea sickness, the owner and I effectively double-handed hand-steering across the Atlantic.

Not my first choice and an experience I would seek to avoid in the future, but don't let anyone tell you it can't be done. Conditions were so poor at times during that gale that I think it would have been dangerous to use self-steering so keep that in mind as well. Better to do what most cruisers do and simply choose pasages and times make it likely you will not see these types of conditions.

[aquadreams]

Originally Posted by Delancey

Several years ago I looked into adding a Solent jib as a possible upgrade to my boat. [...]
The ball park I got for this work including hardware but not including the cost of the sail itself or running rigging was $12k-$14k.

A rudder rebuild on my boat costs something like +$3k not including shipping the old one to the fabricator and the new one back.

Thanks Delancey for posting ballpark costs for Solent jib and rudder rebuild.

What's a ballpark cost for new standing rigging?

What would ballpark cost be to refresh or replace a tired 15 year old engine? If needed, not just to spend money for the sake of it.

I recognize the debate over "go now with what you have" vs "spend time and money to upgrade". Great debate that will go on forever and in the end it's a personal preference. For example I have reasons to not take off for another two years. In that time I'm going to take a job as a sailing instructor on SF Bay, get EMT certified at a community college so I'll be prepared for medical emergencies, and shop for then upgrade a boat. The timing is my preference. Getting individual cost ballparks will help a lot.

Thanks again everyone for the great info!

Joe

[steamgoat]

Always a fun question,its what you NEED compared with what you think you need and what people say you need. I am obviously slightly crazy but I crossed,Canaries,Barbados in a 32ft wooden boat,no radio,no gps etc 21days.
Sometimes you get lucky ! Try for a little KISS rather than blowing a pile of money.

[Delancey]

Originally Posted by aquadreams

What's a ballpark cost for new standing rigging?

What would ballpark cost be to refresh or replace a tired 15 year old engine? If needed, not just to spend money for the sake of it.

The number I threw out for adding the Solent jib included a cast aluminum sheave box with a tang for the inner forestay attachment welded in place in the mast, toggle, swagged fitting, wire rope, another fitting, rigging screw, toggle, a chain plate cut into the deck and through-bolted to the aft anchor locker bulkhead, and a Harken roller furler.

As mentioned it did not include the sail itself but did include dropping the mast and replacing the standing rigging. I did not have them break that out separately. That was at a yard in the NYC metro area about two years ago.

MarkJ said he replaced his standing rigging this year for $6k but I don't know if he did the work himself or where he had it done. I priced materials alone for my rig a while back at around $5k. I looked into getting my rig pulled recently where I am at right now and got a price of $1,200-$1,500 just to drop the rig but that seems a little high.

I repowered my boat last year. Including haul-out and block, crane to drop the new engine in (used the boom to get the old one out at my marina to save time and money in the yard), Beta 38 engine, new shaft, new dripless seal, new cutless bearing, new Flexofold prop, new fuel tank, salvaged muffler, new exhaust and fuel hoses, and new aluminum engine stringers. I think my cost was a little over $16,500 but I did all the work myself. Paying a yard to do the work would probably add at least another $3-4K to that number.

Edit- thinking about adding the Solent jib alone, maybe somewhere around $8k including sail itself and the running rigging? All for a sail I should never need if I play my cards right, pay attention to the weather, and make the coconut run with all the other cruisers? Yeah right.

[daletournier]

As mentioned earlier im about to replace my standard rigging on a Catalina 470. One quote, and this is just the wire was $12,700 aud fitted. The quote im going with is $5,700aud , this is with me removing and replacing the wire myself.
For $80 I can buy a dye kit and inspect all the turnbuckells rather than just replace them all, which would be another $2000aud!

Sent from my vivo Y35 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app