Question: What advice and cautions would you have regarding buying older aluminum boats? I have been told to pay particular attention to the area under the heads and engine and around the through-hulls. Is there anything else you might be wary about in an older aluminum boat?

Answer: All the areas you mention are important. The good thing is that with aluminum any structural problem is usually fairly obvious, unlike fiberglass, and can be easily fixed to be as strong as new, again unlike fiberglass. I would add one other area to check carefully: the shaft tube. Many aluminum boats have experienced corrosion problems in this area due to the dead water that sits in the tube together with the stainless steel shaft. Properly inspecting this area is non-trivial since the propeller shaft must be removed, which often requires removing the rudder—no bad idea in itself.

There is no fundamental reason why a 15 to 25 year old aluminum boat should not be sound, but a good survey is essential. Also the surveyor should have a lot of experience with aluminum. I would suggest Tony Knowles of Newport Marine Surveyors.

I think buying a boat 30 to 40 years old might be pushing your luck, particularly since the heyday of aluminum yacht construction did not start until the late seventies. Look for a boat from a reputable boat yard with plenty of aluminum boats under their belts before they built yours.

A more fundamental question is whether such a boat is a good buy. (Morgan’s Cloud was only six years old when we bought her.) The key is whether the boat has been consistently upgraded to modern standards (like Morgan’s Cloud); if so, you may get a great deal. If not, you could be looking at a refit that will cost more than a new boat if you pay someone else to do it, or that will take several years if you do it yourself and still cost a lot of money.

I understand your reluctance to blow too much of the cruising kitty on a boat, but I would still look carefully at either a new production aluminum boat (probably from France or Holland) or a bare aluminum hull and finish it out yourself. Either option could, in the end, be less costly than an older boat. If you go the latter route, allow at least two years of full time work to finish out a 40’ hull; much more if you are trying to hold down a job at the same time. Another benefit of new construction is that you stand a better chance of getting the deck salon/wheelhouse you’re interested in, which was an unusual feature until comparatively recently. (Incidentally, I would not even think about home-building a hull; way too much work for the rewards.)

Question: I would like to do some cruising in the high latitudes and am in the process of planning a boat to take me there. You and others, like Jimmy Cornell, are very partial to alloy boats and I agree it seems to be the way to go. But I also like catamarans.

I can have a cat made from alloy. What do you think of sailing in the high latitudes in a catamaran? I was thinking at least 50′ long with thin hulls to help her point well. I would like to visit Alaska and Antarctica, among many other places.

Answer: As I answer this, please keep in mind that I have had no multi-hull experience since a summer skippering a 50ft day charter (head boat) catamaran some 30 years ago. Having said that, I see no reason why an aluminum catamaran would not be perfectly practical for the high latitudes; in fact, some real advantages come to mind:

• Shallow draft enabling the boat to get away from drifting ice.
• Could be built to easily dry out on the tide.
• The potential for fast passages, thereby reducing the chance of getting caught out in heavy weather.

I think that the main issues will be making the boat strong enough to withstand the demands of high latitude sailing as well as capable of carrying the necessary equipment (particularly ground tackle) without making the boat too heavy. As I understand it, the key to safety in multi-hulls is keeping them light. I can remember that the charter cat mentioned above used to scare me in a breeze when we had a full load of tourists aboard and, in fact, my predecessor as skipper flipped it in that condition, luckily without loss of life. Of course multi-hull design has come a huge distance since then.

There is even a French yard that specializes in aluminum catamarans, albeit large and expensive ones.

Ever since I was a small child I have had a fascination with building things, or making them better—boats, cars and motorcycles have all come and gone in this manner. Some started as good basic raw material, others as well formed objects that simply needed fine tuning and affection.

And like many of us who love to sail, my ultimate dream has been to build a boat capable of going just about anywhere imagination can take me. And to my great good fortune, for the last few years I have had a partner in life (and sail) who shares that dream—so now there’s no excuse for either of us not to dream by day. So now, children grown, businesses sold, and the deposit paid, our coin is down the well.

So we now hope to distil a lifetime of sailing experience into creating a boat for two (plus occasional friends and family) that will be as safe and comfortable in the tropics as in the high latitudes we are more accustomed to. In my case 15 years as a sailing instructor and professional charter skipper and wildlife researcher, in Louise’s four years aboard our existing boat, plus a female eye for details I would undoubtedly overlook or dismiss—wrongly—as unimportant.

During my working career I skippered vessels as diverse as a sailing trawler, 72ft sail training ketch and for the last nine years a 39ft cutter. All have helped to inform our view of what will suit us. And like most sensible people we have cultivated a magpie eye for filching good ideas, so we believe that our new home will be both original and new. But as the old saying goes, all that means is that the parts that are original are not new, and the parts that are new are not original. And maybe that’s no bad thing—the sea doesn’t change and evolution, not revolution, probably makes most sense.

But what we both agree on is buy well, buy once and keep it simple. Anyone who has ever worked on even a modestly complicated charter boat knows that cheap and weak gear never lasts, always breaks at the wrong time, and that to opt for less than the best always results in a life of endless drudgery fixing/making/mending. And whilst that ability to repair is vital, constant practice doesn’t just make perfect, it can also ruin an otherwise pleasantly challenging pastime. We’d rather be cruising!

So we have taken the plunge, and our new boat has just begun to take shape. And, no, we’re not building her ourselves—we’ve both worked long and hard to get this far, and we want to get going—the clock doesn’t go backwards. But we have had the luxury of working with an Agent and Builder who are broadly sympathetic to our needs (and occasional demands!). Our choice of boat is (to some) unusual, and maybe wouldn’t be your choice either, but we hope you’ll nonetheless find it of interest to follow our trials and tribulations as ONVI 435 No 104 takes shape in the Alubat factory in Les Sables D’Olonne, France.

Over the next months we’ll be writing a regular update right up until she’s launched, and beyond. And we hope our travails may help inform you if this is your dream, too, maybe even inspire you, but never—hopefully—bore you.

There is a strong argument for buying a used boat for long distance cruising. The purchase price is initially more affordable, the boat often comes with a fairly full inventory, and may be well sorted out and ready to go.

An OVNI 435 aluminum sailboat being framed

Such boats do exist, but experience suggests that the reality is more likely to be just the opposite. The price, which on the face of it may seem attractive, often proves to be less so once the replacement of worn and obsolete equipment has been factored in—refits are never cheap. If your ambitions stretch beyond normal horizons then the equation becomes even more complicated, as suitable boats are few and far between. And upgrading even a well prepared stock boat to meet the needs of a totally independent cruising life will come at a premium price.

The desire for a metal hull narrowed our range of options further. Over several years we’d looked at many steel boats that might have fitted the bill, but all had what might be termed fatal flaws—no insulation, worn out equipment and rust, rust, rust! Such experiences began to divert the search from steel towards aluminum. At the same time more and more highly experienced sailors had turned to this light, durable material for their craft, especially where high latitudes were the destination—think S/Vs Aventura III, Hawk, Morgan’s Cloud, Northabout, Pelagic Australis, Seal, amongst others. Their reasons for making such choices were highly instructive and chimed with our own thoughts, so the search began for a suitable aluminum boat.

Aluminum boats in the UK are very rare indeed, although far more plentiful in Europe. Boat builders in France have long seen the benefits of alloy construction, and the Dutch have followed suit, building on their mastery of the art of building in steel. Excellent used boats do come on the market, but we always seemed to hear about them too late—good boats at sensible prices were snapped up, and we undoubtedly missed a couple of beauties. At the same time, the usual mismatches in terms of our baseline, non-negotiable design features came up time and again.

Scrutiny of the prices helped to concentrate the mind—these boats hold their values incredibly well, a good thing if you own one, less so if you are looking to buy. When we focused on a couple of likely boats, worked out the cost of upgrading them to our requirements and added the inevitable bit extra, there was nothing much between them and a new boat, price wise. When we were faced with buying someone else’s compromise, however good the boat, the decision was made—we’d go for a new build. At least, too, with a new boat we stand a chance of having several years of relatively trouble free cruising.

So far we are happy with that decision. We have been able to build in many desirable custom features at remarkably little extra cost, one of the major advantages of building in alloy, and working with a builder who has done it all before. And we have had a major say in the interior, rig, deck and systems to create a boat that suits us from scratch. Time will tell whether we have got it right.

For us the choice of boat was dictated by our need for a traveling base camp for our wildlife photography interests, as much as for recreation. As the places we wish to visit are generally remote from civilization, we need a craft that can go virtually anywhere, for extended periods, and be as self-sufficient as possible—something like an ocean going 4×4. We think that the OVNI 435 more than fits that bill.

All OVNIs offer the benefits of aluminum construction, including high strength to weight, resistance to penetration and abrasion together with integral fuel and water tanks. Combine this with the simplicity of modifying many elements of the construction and thus producing a semi-custom boat at the price of a good production boat, the package is attractive. In terms of what can be changed, the rule of thumb at the builder seems to be that if it has been done before, or will not materially slow down the production line, then it can be accommodated at modest or no extra cost. As ours will be OVNI 435 number 104, the design improvements and suggestions of the previous 103 buyers will ensure ours is as near to perfect as we can hope for.

Of the models on offer, the 435 has the most positive attributes of the range for us, including many “traditional” features such as a well-stayed cutter rig, a skeg hung rudder and protected propeller. The size is right for two of us to handle on our own, as well as being big enough to make a comfortable home with adequate tankage and carrying capacity. The sail plan is modest and well divided, and so should be easily manageable, important for us, as we both have backs that have seen better days!

A well protected rudder and prop are essential for cruising in remote waters

The 435 draws 2’6” with the plate up, 8’4” with it down, and with a flat run along the centerline of the hull will sit upright when dried out on a level surface. Both plate and rudder are hydraulically controlled, and have an ingenious safety device in the manually operated pump, where copper plugs are designed to rupture in the event of either foil striking an object, allowing them to swing freely to avoid structural damage.

The benefit of true shoal draft like this opens up many cruising areas, and is ideal for the exploration we have in mind. Not only that, in many wild places, the ability to anchor further in can make a huge difference to comfort and safety in bad weather—with deep draft you are often sitting just too far out from shelter, sometimes exposed and uncomfortable. And it also means that in the event of maintenance or cleaning of the hull, you don’t need to head for the nearest marina Travelhoist, but simply find a suitable place to take the ground—autonomy, once again.

As for the looks, well you either love them or hate them: unpainted hulls may look drab, but mean no maintenance; chines are not everyone’s cup of tea, but add great rigidity to the structure; and so on. We think the 435 looks great—chunky, purposeful, and as Bill Tilman was fond of saying “fit to shunt ice”. She certainly does it for us.

Aluminum has many obvious attributes as a construction material—high strength to weight, durability, lack of maintenance—but there are other, subtler benefits that aluminum can offer, especially if starting from scratch. Careful thought at the planning stage to take advantage of that potential is time well spent.

It is an easy material to work in. Louise has just returned from France where she has inspected our boat at the completion of welding. From start to finish it has taken around six weeks from a pile of plate to a finished hull and deck. She was also able to view the completed joinery waiting to be dropped into place. This is, in effect, “furniture”, and not structural, a benefit in terms of its long term integrity, as well as ease of access for periodic inspection of the hull or in the event of any structural damage that might necessitate welding. It also demonstrates how an aluminum yacht in the hands of the right builder need not end up being colossally expensive.

Aluminum lends itself to one-off design internally too. In a GRP yacht the position of bulkheads is still to some degree dictated by their structural role, making the interior layout far less flexible. With aluminum, bulkheads, heads units and so forth can in theory be wherever you like. The only limiting factor for us is the factory philosophy of limited modification at sensible cost—but if we had wanted a custom built interior, we’d have to be prepared to pay for it, so we’re very happy with what we’re getting.

The OVNI has a number of features that make good use of the potential of aluminum construction. All tanks (fuel and water) are integral and welded into the hull, and have removable plates to enable cleaning and internal inspection. All of the lead ballast (3.5 Tonnes) is encapsulated in plastic and then plated in to the bilges. In the event of the hull being pierced in any of these areas, only a tank or a ballast chamber will be breached, hopefully averting a potential loss. At our request the builders extended the forward bulkhead behind the anchor locker to full depth, welded and watertight, giving us a crash bulkhead against collision with any floating objects—that ought to help us sleep easier!

Our new boat - welded everything!

Where we have really tried to exploit the benefits of alloy construction is on deck. Our motto is, “if it can move—weld it”. Not just from the point of view of structural integrity, but also to avoid leaks and corrosion caused by dissimilar metals where fittings have been screwed or bolted on. So all grab rails (and we have plenty), dorade vents and tangs for deck gear are welded. We have also had fitted welded breakwaters around both forward hatches to protect the seals from deck sweeping seas, as well as a solid breakwater where the cockpit dodger will be mounted. All have been easy and cheap to achieve at this stage of the build—the watertight bulkhead, complete with inspection hatch cost around $300, for example. An additional anchor stern roller in line with a sheet winch was easily incorporated, a simple custom boat hook holder mounted on the stern arch, tangs for webbing davits—simple things, but worthwhile we feel, all adding in their own way to a functional, sturdy, and (hopefully!) leak proof home.

Those of us with aspirations to cruise in higher latitudes tend to focus on obviously important kit—sails, ground tackle, engine—but sometimes at the expense of simpler and less apparent elements. For example, some of our time will still be spent in port, but that almost certainly won’t be the sort of haven we’re used to in more developed areas.

Over the years a few fishing ports have put in small pontoons that yachts may be permitted to use, but as often as not if you are seeking shelter from bad weather (and you will be, at some stage) it will mean rafting up with fishing vessels and work boats. And here it will be just as important to be prepared for port as it would be for an exposed anchorage.

Production boats these days tend to be designed for marina dwelling, not mixing it up with the big boys—mooring cleats that are too few and too small with inadequate fairleads, and often poorly secured to the deck. A bad night in a small fishing port with a big storm surge finding its way around the corner will soon find any weaknesses. And when F/V Cruncher arrives with an exhausted crew at 0300 and berths alongside you, will they be able to spot your cleats, or even drop one of their hefty lines around one? If not, look out, as they will have to make fast to whatever is most obvious, and not necessarily what you might have chosen.

The OVNI 435 aluminum sailboat anchor locker and bow

The answer is to scale up accordingly, both above and below deck. For our new boat, we have specified oversized welded cleats, and added a huge additional pair in the bow, where from previous experience we know we’ll need them. We have no fairleads, simply wide and open access to the cleats, allowing all angle attachment. Extra cleats also allow one warp for one job, essential when additional warps such as shore lines are required.

At least a couple of really long warps are essential, especially in areas with a high rise and fall of tide, to make fast to bollards or rings on the pier. Robust protectors for these (we use reinforced loo pipe) where they pass over the edge of the pier, will stop chafe devouring them in a few hours. We’ve even seen warps with chain ends for this purpose, and didn’t think that was overkill at all.

A must is a robust fender board, especially when alongside vertical pilings, allowing the fenders to remain in place. It is possible to link sausage fenders into a horizontal daisy chain in normal conditions, but once your boat starts to surge back and forth, nothing but a fender board will do—they are also ideal when alongside barnacle encrusted jetties, too.

Our boat is also having a welded, unpainted rubbing strake just below deck level, for those unfortunate moments when a fender slips out of place, and the topsides grind against a dock, which should save paint and pride in equal measure.

For when the storm hits, you’re on your own, and preparation for every eventuality is vital. And if you have made everything as strong as it needs to be, with the gear to back it up, then you will be ready to face the challenge, confident that you and your precious boat will still be there in the morning.

A boat designed for extended offshore cruising has very different priorities from one designed for the occasional weekend aboard or a two week annual holiday.

The former, is, after all, going to be your home, and you will be spending the majority of each year aboard at anchor or in harbour. The emphasis therefore shifts towards practicality, stowage and liveaboard comfort.

The OVNI comes with an aft cockpit, so that to some degree dictates the layout below. We have made a significant number of departures from the standard layout, starting in the bow area where we have done away with a heads and shower module, replacing it with stowage and a small fixed workbench. Years working on charter boats and sharing cabins with heads units made this an easy choice! The standard forward cabin has an offset double forward to port, but this loses width due to the shape of the hull, so we have opted instead for a big central double, lots of stowage and a small writing desk. This is a bedroom, in effect—forecabins are of limited use at sea (unless you like being flipped like a burger), and we want a civilized, comfortable sleeping compartment for when we are in port.

The saloon is very much as per the standard OVNI layout, which is largely governed by the presence of the centreboard case. Sensibly Alubat make a virtue of this, offsetting the saloon seating and table to port, and using the case as the backrest of the central seat. We have asked for the chart table to face forward (it normally faces aft—which just feels wrong to us), and have altered the corner angles of the saloon seating to ensure that we have two good sea berths as a result. Although we are more used to having an island galley aft, this is not an option, so we’ll have to get used to a galley down the starboard side of the saloon—let’s hope it works well.

Aft of the galley we have opted for an enlarged head and shower, with full standing headroom. Again, we want a home, not a compromise, and with plenty of grab rails should have a heads that works as well at sea as in harbour. This modification loses us space in the starboard aft cabin, but we had already factored that in. Instead of the standard double berth in this cabin, we have opted for stowage and space for all of our vital services. What we want is instant and unobstructed access to all equipment that will need regular servicing—the watermaker and heater, for example—as our motto is “if a job’s easy—you’ll do it”.

A big double berth aft to port will be for guests, as well as being split as an additional sea berth. One of the things we are looking forward to most is company along the way, and this comfortable double ought to make even the most picky sybarite feel at home!

Wherever possible we have specified equipment that we know will be dependable and easily serviced. Quality equipment always pays for itself in the long run, so it’ll be Force 10 in the galley, Lavac in the heads and Webasto for the heating system. We are, after all, going to have to live with our choices day in, day out, and so we’re spending good money now in the hope we shall save it in the long run.

We are now at the final stage of selecting our navigation systems, and as new products are being launched all of the time, have decided to wait until the last minute before committing.

But to some degree the choices are being made for (or taken away from) us, as so many of the manufacturers are moving towards integrated systems, reducing the available options for those of us who like to pick and mix the best kit from different stables. For example, it is now virtually impossible to buy a stand alone radar, as everyone is moving towards combined radar/plotters using their own Ethernet type connectivity.

Since the 90’s I have professionally skippered my own yacht on research projects, and have for the last six years used a laptop linked to a GPS for all basic navigation. Being only modestly computer literate has never been a major shortcoming, and although they have simply been fixed to the chart table with Velcro, we have never lost one to damp or rough handling. If you are used to computers at all, they are quick and intuitive to operate, and their large screens offer a good view of the charts. By comparison, I recently skippered a boat with a brand new plotter, and didn’t like it at all—the screen was too small, and the operation was clumsy and slow. And having recently watched two experts trying to sort out a problem aboard a boat with an Ethernet link between instruments and plotter—two sets of software, and by their own admission, a tendency to crash on a regular basis—I wonder whether this is really the way forward?

The new and the old both have their places

Of course PCs can go wrong, too—we carry a spare as back up, as well as up to date passage charts and pilot books, just in case. And as I learned to navigate long before we had any electronic luxuries, if I have to go back to dead reckoning in an emergency it should not a big deal. But with our laptop we can integrate weather files from the internet, AIS information, tidal streams and Navtex at far lower cost than a half way decent plotter. And we’ll stick with an NMEA interface which at least will allow some basic diagnostic tests to be run should it go down 1000 miles from the nearest dealer.

The one thing we have committed to is an Echopilot forward looking echosounder. We used an Interphase Twin Scope for the last seven years, and found that the ability to scan for depth and obstructions ahead of the boat was indispensable, especially in poorly charted waters. But Echopilot sensibly offer the option of a custom transducer housing made from solid aluminum billet (essential for us with our aluminum hull) which will enable us to pull the transducer prior to taking the ground, one of our main reasons for choosing an OVNI. Having heard nothing but good reports of their products, this was an easy choice to make.

And while we’re on the subject of holes in the hull, we think the fewer, the better, so we’re not having a through hull speed/log unit. Paddle wheel logs are unreliable, and often tricky to calibrate accurately, and as a Furuno WAAS GPS reads speed as fast as a log, we shall use a repeater in the cockpit as a speedo, and the trip facility as a log. We are well aware that this is “over the ground”, but we can compensate for that if needs be. And if all of the electrics fail, then we have a lovely boxed Walker Knotmaster towed log that has followed me from boat to boat over the years. There should be a limit to complexity!

As I mentioned in a previous posting, one of the most attractive features of our new OVNI is the protected rudder, which we think is an essential feature for a long distance boat.

However, the three cruising boats I have owned over the last 25 years were all equipped with balanced spade rudders with no supporting skeg. And as in the last of the three I had covered over 60,000 miles with no problems, I had, in fairness, few reasons to doubt their strength and fitness for long distance cruising.

This last boat, like all commercially registered boats in the UK, has had to undergo a full, out of the water, structural survey every five years, and in the most recent survey the rudder and its fittings received an A classification. With the rudder being balanced, the immense and repetitive loadings it is constantly subject to are seldom felt through the wheel, but we know they exist, so each year we have conducted a careful examination of the shell looking for cracks caused by stress. In addition, every few years we have dropped the rudder, to examine the stock, the bearings and neoprene stuffing gaiter, but we have never found any evidence of deterioration or stress. So when we lost our rudder off the South Cornwall coast this summer, it was, to say the least, a shock.

Evidence of crevice corrosion and metal fatigue

As we were within half a mile of the shore, the priority was to gain some sea room. Fortunately we have prepared for such an eventuality, and with our flexible cutter rig have always managed to work out a combination of sails and warps to make progress in the right direction. So we furled the yankee, backed the staysail, and using the main to bring her head up, we turned her out to sea. With the wind being light we were making little progress, so we started the engine and brought our speed up to three knots. Although we were swooping around rather a lot, the combination of backed staysail and pinned in main worked effectively, so we didn’t need to trail a warp. A VHF call to the Coastguard to explain our predicament ended with the reassuring message that the local Lifeboat was being launched—with passengers aboard they were taking no chances.

The Lifeboat arrived and confirmed that our rudder was, indeed, missing—just as we had suspected. They passed us a drogue to be towed astern, and then a tow line and we were off. We had already dropped our sails as instructed and so had no way to balance the boat, but at a towing speed of five knots or more we were really swinging around on the limit of control even with the big drogue out, making it abundantly clear just how tricky it would be to handle a boat without a rudder at higher speeds.

Two days later she was out of the water, and we could see for the first time the extent of the damage. The 4” rudder stock had sheared off about 6″ down from the hull, inside the rudder blade where no amount of inspection could have discovered a problem. Eventually a surveyor visited on behalf of our Insurers, and after some deliberation drew attention to two faults. One was that there was evidence of crevice corrosion at a weld where the shaft had been sleeved to allow the rudder to taper, which was where the stock had sheared. The second was the unmistakeable sign of “beaching marks” indicative of metal fatigue plainly visible on the sheared stock. So our claim was rejected on the grounds of “wear and tear/metal fatigue”—another shock.

Many yachtsmen are unaware that stainless steel is not corrosion free, and should not be constantly immersed, which can cause the surface oxide layer to break down allowing crevice corrosion to gain an entry. GRP rudders are notorious for becoming waterlogged, and in the anoxic, polluted solution inside the shell, corrosion will soon go to work on even the best marine grade stainless steel. Ally that to the metallurgical changes that the weld itself would have caused, the fact that the step down in size would have effectively created a “hard spot” (and thus a weakness), coupled to the continuous loading and flexing inherent in this type of rudder where it exits the hull, and you have, over time, a recipe for disaster. The remarkable thing with ours may be that it lasted as long as it did.

So now I’m convinced that spade rudders are unsuitable for long distance offshore voyages, not just because many new production boats have stocks made in unsuitable materials (which they undoubtedly do), but also because there may be a potential time bomb waiting to go off even in a well built older cruiser. And whilst we were lucky, and all went well, I could think of a thousand occasions in the past when the consequences might have been very different—and that simply rules them out for me.