SHAULA 3

Obviously, when we were in port our preferred activity (in fact our voyage's primary objective!) was to visit the area, and this could take many forms, from walking or cycling around to renting a car or a driver, or joining an organised trip, sometimes arranged by the Rally organisers and other times organised by the Rally crews on their own.

Unfortunately, the time for these leisure activities was claimed also by a number of mandatory tasks related to the voyage's logistics; first of all, the:

- IMMIGRATION PROCEDURES: in Europe we have almost forgotten frontier lines, but as soon as set sail from the Canary islands immigration and customs procedures become a mandatory formality when entering or leaving a Country, and in the Caribbean every island is a Country of its own! There are no fixed rules, typically the Customs, Immigration and often also Port Authority and Health offices must be visited, often in a specific (albeit sometimes unknown) order, and the various offices are not necessarily close one to the other! Sometimes, the procedure requires the crew to moor or anchor in a specified place and then stay on board and wait, wait, wait for the officials to come aboard.
In some Countries (e.g. Panama, Galapagos, Egypt) it's more or less mandatory to use the services of an agent, in others (Indonesia) a Cruising Permit must be obtained before entering the Country, or a Visa is required (Australia), or arrival must be announced by e-mail (Fiji and Australia) and sometimes the same entry/exit procedures must be performed even to move from one port to another in the same Country (Fiji).
Most of the times, nearly the same procedures must be performed in reverse order before leaving the Country and t is essential to get the Customs exit form that will be required when arriving in the next Country; besides being a waste of time, sometimes this is very inconvenient when only some ports are entitled to perform such formalities (for example Tahiti for the whole French Polynesia). Sometimes, such as in Tahiti, Authorities are open to some flexibility and allow crews to check out before actually leaving the Country, but in most cases departure must be within hours from the check-out procedures. Some crews occasionally took the risk of checking out before actually leaving, at their own risk (it must be pointed out that in many places the local officials are very annoyed by foreigners behaving like the local laws are none of their concern).

Except in a couple of occasions, we were not subject to more-or-less explicit requests for "presents", and formalities were usually performed in a corteous - if perhaps unhurried - manner, but nevertheless the process may be very legthy and it is not uncommon to spend half a day for check in and just slightly less (we already knew the location of the offices!) at departure.

Being in a Rally sometimes helped, at least the organisers advised us on the procedure to be followed and in some cases were even able to organise a dedicated procedure to be arranged for the Rally crews, and sometimes an agent was hired to take care of all formalities in our stead.

- GET LOCAL MONEY: with the exception of the few supermarkets and hotels, most transactions had to be settled in cash, preferably local money, so the first job after having been cleared into the Country was "finding a Bank" or preferably "finding an ATM"!
Luckily in most of the cases this turned out to be not a problem, in the whole voyage we had to go to a Bank to get some cash only once, just when arrived in Antigua, and that was because we were not yet aware of the ATM sitting in the lobby of the nearby supermarket!

Occasionally, in the smaller places, we had to ask some shop or hotel to exchange small sums from Dollars (or Euro) into the local currency.

....and by this time, the first day in port was gone! Before being free to go sight-seeing though, there were many other tasks that needed to be done or at least arranged:

- if our stay in the Country was long enough, we usually purchased two local SIM-cards (or sometimes full telephones) which enabled us to call each-other at a very low cost and usually gave much better tarifs also for international calls, compared to the prices of our domestic operators. Furthermore, being pre-paid cards, we could easily keep our expenditure under control.

- we had to find out how to refuel the boat: sometimes there was a fuel pump where we could go with the boat, in some other cases there were locals offering to come to your boat with a tanker or coming to collect your jerrycans and bringing them back refilled, but on other cases we had to take care of that ourselves, perhaps taking the jerrycans to a faraway street pump.
In the worst cases, refuelling could easily take a full day to be performed!

- also the refilling of gas bottles was something to investigate as it was normally not available in the vicinity: sometimes an entrepreneuring local was offering to take care of that, other times the Rally organisers took care of it themselves, but on a couple of occasions like in Oman in the middle of nowhere, we had to take care of it ourselves!

- another "classic" was laundry: if plenty of fresh water was available, we could perform washing ourselves, but normally it was possible to have our dirty stuff washed by a shore-based service, or do it ourselves with the washing-machines made available in some marinas.

- the Rally organisation came very handy when professional repairs were required (sailmakers, electricians, engine specialists were hard-to-find and usually very busy!), but also when we could perform repairs ourselves, if spare parts were required it was often impossible to find them locally and we had to ask the Rally people to buy them for us back in Europe and hand-carry them to the next destination. A very handy service that was used extensively by all crews!

No surprise that all these activities could easily keep all crewmembers busy for 2 or 3 days, if not more! In the meantime, we took advantage of every spare moment to begin exploring the neighborhood and find out things like:
- shops, what could be found and where
- existence of any large shopping center or supermarket, and how to get there
- places and things to see and how to get there (usually the Rally was organising some visit to the most obvious attractions and some event like folk-dances or traditional eating, but there war plenty of room for additional tourism according to individual tastes)

Often we were also renting a car, both for touring as well as for provisioning needs, and in some cases we kept the car throughout our whole stay.

....and then, reprovisioning! Victualling was a lengthy job, usually requiring several visits to local shops and markets (an unmissable experience!) and whenever possible one or more trips to larger shops or supermarkets for the hard-to-find stuff.

...and finally, with our conscience clean and our wallets dangerously empty, we could devote whatever time was left to visit the wonderful place we had come to see!...

Expecially on passage, far from the sight of land, days rapidly fall into a repetitive and somewhat boring routine...

First of all, some GENERAL CRITERIA:

1) nobody steers the boat, this is a job for the wind-vane or the electronic autopilot, both more accurate and less prone to distraction than a bored or sleepy helmsman...

2) there is ALWAYS somebody in the cockpit, both as a watch-keeper and to monitor the route and the weather, ready to trim the sails or adjust the autopilot.

3) in a two-person crew there is no way out, unavoidably the one who is off-watch SLEEPS most of the time, unless when he's busy with preparing meals, talking on the radio or performing other duties, repairs, and so on

4) if possible, the off-watch person was taking the oilskin off in order to sleep in a bunk, but when weather condition were adverse, we rested either in the cockpit or on the cabin floor, fully dressed and ready to help.

5) ALWAYS, the person in the cockpit was wearing the man-overboard alarm and the self-inflatable jacket and was tethered to the boat. Only exception, when motoring in flat calm by daytime.

6) CHARTWORK during passages was limited to little more than writing down the GPS position every 3 hours, as a backup to the track recorded by our chartplotter.

For what concerns the timetable, our solution was as follows (here every boat had its own approach):

From 00 to 03 A.M.: Baby on watch, Gian off

From 03 to 06 A.M.: Gian in the cockpit, Baby below decks asleep

From 06 to 09 A.M.: Baby in the cockpit, Gian asleep for a while and then preparing breakfast

From 09 to 12 A.M.: Gian on watch and Baby resting, except between 10 and 11, when we excanged roles during the radio roll-call; just before that, we usually connected to the e-mail service (weather forecasts in, blog postings out)

From 12 to 15 P.M.: Baby on watch and Gian preparing lunch, taking a quick nap if possible before the shift end

From 15 to 18 P.M.: nominally Gian on watch and Baby at rest (or perhaps playing on the PC!...), but often we were both awake and roles were managed according to any specific task at hand

From 18 to 21 P.M.: Baby in the cockpit and Gian preparing dinner after the afternoon radio roll-call

From 21 to 24 P.M.: Gian on watch and Baby trying to sleep

With this routine, we both had two rest periods during the night, albeit one probably not full; not surprisingly then, we slept whenever possible also during the day.

Initially, during the Atlantic crossing and then down to the Galapagos, the frequent squalls were keeping the person on watch quite busy, while afterwards the watch periods became more quiet and boring so we were able to read all the books that we carried for this purpose!

During the coastal legs, the routine did not change much: whenever possible, we preferred to stop at dusk and spend the night at anchor, but when this was not possible or we were pressed, we kept sailing all night following the usual routine: only difference, usually our pilotage was much stricter, and we had to keep both eyes well open for passing traffic.

During our voyage around the world we consumed about 4,000 liters of drinking water and other beverages, plus about 18,000 liters of tank water (mostly used for washing): now try to figure the hard work of replenishing our tanks, considering that very seldom shops and water taps are in the immediate vicinity of the yacht at anchor.

Even in the rare cases when we were moored to a pontoon provided with water taps, the concern remained about the potability of this water of unknown provenance!

Since some years, the solution has become available also for small craft after having become ubiquitous aboard ships, i.e. produce your own water with a DISSALATOR: basically these devices pump a large amount of sea water (which must be reasonably free from chemical and biological pollution) passing it at high pressure through a membrane that lets through only the fresh water, leaving salts and other impurities in the discharge water.

Typically a watermaker needs to process about 10 liters of sea water to produce 1 liter of fresh water, and the product quality is very good, in fact even too good because it's short of salts and some people advise to improve its salt content with additives. We never bothered because we did not use this water for drinking.

Due to the fact that the water circulating through the device is mostly sea water, with its content of micro-organisms and algae, it is not advisable to leave the system unused for more than about one week, otherwise it's recommended to run through the system about 10 liters of fresh water just before stopping the watermaker; if it will be left unused for an even longer period, a disinfectant should also be added to this fresh water.

We had a 30 liter/hour LIVOL watermaker, therefore during passages we usually ran it for one or two hours every one or two days, typically while the engine was running to recharge the batteries; erring on the safe side, we always performed the fresh-water rinsing before stopping the device, so our procedure was as follows:

1) start the dissalator with the fresh-water outlet diverted towards a 15-liter jerrycan where we collected the first fresh water output.

2) after about 20-30 minutes, when the tank was full, we turned the fresh water output towards the boat's main tank

3) when we had produced the desired quantity of water (we were trying to keep the tanks full) we turned the water inlet pipe to suck the fresh water from the previously-filled jerrycan: this takes a little more than one minute, so we had to be ready to switch off the watermaker before air could enter the pipes, risking damage to the high-pressure pump.

Every 6 months we replaced the filters on the sea-water inlet pipe and rinsed the whole system running a biocide through it for a complete disinfection (after which the first water produced by the system must be discarded).

A bit tricky, maybe, but try and compare it with lugging nearly 1,000 jerrycans back and forwards from the boat to the nearest tap!

A great freedom then, but where is the downside? As a matter of fact, there are a few:

- COST: a watermaker suitable for a small yacht costs upwards of 6-10,000 Euros

- Electrical consumption: our needed about 7 Amps, not trivial in the daily power balance.

- The MAINTENANCE, not difficult but critical: if the membrane is damaged the repair is going to cost dearly (and the membrane needs to be replaced every few years anyway)

- BULK: the device is bulky and it may be not easy to find a place for it on a small-medium sized yacht (our LIVOL had separate filters and high-pressure pump, which allowed for some flexibility in the installation, but the main unit is bulky anyway)

- If the boat is left unattended in COLD CLIMATES, the dissalator must be dismantled, to prevent freezing of the liquid which must be left inside it

Conversely, RELIABILITY has greatly improved in the last years: in the past, a lot of horror stories were reported, many of them apparently due to INSTALLATION problems: for example, a common issue was with the sea-water intake position, which allowed air bubbles to get in the pipes when the boat was running at speed, reducing the watermaker's output and risking to damage the high-pressure pump.

Nearly all boats in the Blue Water Rally were equipped with a watermaker, and problems were extremely few: only one boat had a mayor issue, caused by the pump running dry and overheating.

IS IT WORTH THE HASSLE? Maybe not on a yacht sailing only in Europe or the Mediterranean (although also in this case the freedom of not having to get to a port every few days just for water is attractive), but I WOULD NOT MAKE WITHOUT IT for a cruise anywhere else (okay, I'm not thinking of North America or Australia).

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Note for our faithful readers: from now on, we will try to put these notes simultaneously (well, almost!) also on our web-site: http://www.shaula3.ws - Please note that the web version may be richer, complete with photos and drawings, where applicable.