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adventure 40

  • Good Boat Review—Leadership 44

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    Practical Sailor just reminded me in an email of an excellent review, written by editor Darrell Nicholson, of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Leadership 44, designed by David Pedrick (one of my favourite designers) and built by Morris Yachts.

    Darrell also compares the Coast Guard boat to the Navy 44 Mk II, also by Pedrick, which adds even more useful information to his excellent review.

    Both boats can teach us a lot about what really matters when we go offshore. A highly recommended read, and it’s outside the PS paywall, too.

    Adventure 40 Learnings

    And those of you who have been involved in the Adventure 40 discussions will note many things in common between all three projects, mainly around elegant simplicity and sailing performance offshore.

    Lots of differences, too, given that the Navy 44 and Leadership 44 mission is fully crewed and the Adventure 40 primarily a two-person boat. Different budgets, too!

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  • Get Vane Gear Blade Out Of The Water Before Deploying JSD

    14 CommentsReading Time: < 1 minuteFree

    As I have said before, there are few people on the planet, probably less than a dozen, who know as much about surviving storms at sea in a small boat as Susanne Huber-Curphey.

    I’m privileged to be on her email newsletter list. The latest contained the following nugget of wisdom:

    This self-steering was also the reason why Ian on ‘Puffin’ did not deploy his Jordan-Series-Drogue (JSD) one week ago, causing his boat to capsize in a severe storm…

    …Ian clearly experienced the most severe weather in an otherwise rather quiet GGR, but I do wonder why he activated the Epirb on the then undamaged boat, rather than deploying his JSD after getting the imminent warning of over 90 knots of wind for several hours by the race organizers…

    …In my experience the exposed rudder of any self-steering system must be easily removable and stowed below deck in the to be expected, somehow wild conditions of a force ten or above. 

    Emphasis mine

    This confirms my thinking that Maxime has made the right choice in equipping the Adventure 40 with a servo pendulum gear, not an auxiliary rudder, since the boat will be tricked out for a JSD, as well as confirming my own reservations about the latter type of gear.

    If you want to dig deeper into Susanne’s thoughts on the loss of Puffin, there’s an interesting conversation over at Peter Foerthmann’s site. Yes, Peter is hardly unbiased, but that doesn’t alter the fact we can learn useful things from him, particularly since he also makes an auxiliary rudder gear.

    Further Reading

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  • Takacat Dinghy On Test

    26 CommentsReading Time: 2 minutesFree

    I’m constantly correcting people who assume that because my last three boats were monohulls I must be a multihull hater.

    Why is it that these days so many people seem to jump to the conclusion that just because we own one type of boat, we must think that it’s the best and all other boats are inferior?…Sorry, I digress into one of my favourite rants.

    So to make all you readers who own boats with two or three hulls happy we have just bought a cat.

    A Takacat Sport T260S inflatable to be exact.

    Actually, saying we bought it to keep you guys happy is complete BS.

    In reality, the reason was that it’s the only inflatable we could find that, because of its very cunning removable transom, breaks down into small-enough bags to fit through the cockpit locker hatch on our new-to-us J/109.

    That said, now our new tender has arrived, I have to say I’m pretty impressed and also think that the low wetted surface, and therefore decreased drag, will extend our range with the electric outboard we intend to buy once our bank account gets over its boat-expenditure-induced hissy fit.

    Anyway, once we have had the chance to actually use the new tender, rather than just play with it in the garage, I will write more.

    I also think this dinghy might be a very cool choice for an Adventure 40 owner, so we will think about that too as we evaluate it.

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  • Portable Solar Panels For Cruisers

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    The good folks over at Ocean Planet Energy are selling these foldable and portable solar panels.

    A couple of these will provide a cruising boat with around 100 amp hours at 12 volts over the course of a reasonably sunny day at anchor.

    To me this is a way better idea, at least to supplement a reasonable number of fixed panels, a good cruiser’s alternator, and possibly a hydro-generator for offshore use, than festooning a boat with a huge unseamanlike fixed solar array.

    Might even get one of these for our J/109, and I also think this, or something like it, could be a great solution for many Adventure 40 owners.

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