The last stages of preparation

After months of maintenance and a last few days of hectic provisioning and packing, Auriga finally left her berth at Fox's marina on Monday! More details on the first leg to follow very shortly in a dedicated post.

But let's go back of a couple of day, and let's see what we've been up to in the last few days before the big departure.

What shall we take with us?

Final Preparations - A Tour

Yacht Auriga and crew are ready to leave as soon as the weather moderates. You can follow our adventures on the live tracker, starting Monday morning!

Matt, Giulia and Igor

For now, enjoy a mini-tour of Auriga - in sailing condition for the first time since last summer!

Running backstays

The inner forestay, when tensioned, will bend the mast and sag, unless the mast is supported from the opposite side. This is usually achieved with running backstays (runners) - a pair of wires attaching to the mast near the inner (or, on fractional rigs, only) forestay and tensioned alternately, with the windward one taking the load while the leeward one is eased. The running backstays are needed to fly the staysail on the inner stay, just like the main backstay must be tensioned to fly the jib on the main forestay.

Running backstay (right) supporting the mast

Haul-out weekend

The first weekend of July had been reserved for out-of-the-water maintenance. Auriga was lifted on Friday evening, and we had until Sunday evening to complete all the inspection, repairs and painting.
Our main goal was to clean the hull and renew the antifouling - a layer of special paint previnting growth of any wildlife on our hull.

Storm Staysail - Ready to Hoist!

The staysail, kindly donated by Richard F., is ready for it's next big adventure. Initially equipped with a luff tape and a head strop to be hoisted on a boat's main forestay, it had to be adapted to Auriga. As explained before, we decided to have hanked-on headsails throughout. Further, the luff extended with the strop was too long for our inner forestay. Thus, we had to shorten it while keeping the full-strength eye for attaching the halyard, and insert stainless grommets and hanks along the length of the luff. While Matt was preparing for his viva, I made best use of Richard B.'s living room to work on the staysail, as well as to finish stitching on the remaining jibs.

New Electrics - 12V

Getting the boat back to England required mostly quick fixed to the existing system. Surprisingly, most electrics worked, and we learnt what a "torpedo fuse" is (found in old Italian cars and in older boats by young Italians). Some fuses would fall out every time the boat slammed into a wave trough, but it got us here. For more extended passages, it seemed appropriate to make sure the system is simple, reliable and maintainable. We installed LED lighting, replaced a lot of the wiring throughout the boat, and re-run all of it to the new heart of the electrical system - the switch panel above the chart table.

Old fuse panel (bottom)

New circuit breaker panel with 12V sockets and more

Wind of Charge

Our yacht's navigation lights, instruments and other appliances draw power from the battery bank comprising two 110Ah batteries. This means we could (in theory) run, say, a light with a power of 12W - corresponding to a current of 1A - for 220h, or 9 days. On longer passages, this obviously means that we must have ways to charge the batteries - and/or keep our electricity consumption to a minimum. On the latter front, we have replaced internal lights, as well as the tricolour - a masthead navigation light used while sailing - with efficient LEDs. For charging, Auriga came equipped with the engine alternator and a dated wind generator (Rutland 913) - a favoured option for offshore sailing providing almost unlimited clean energy. Unfortunately, the old wind generator suffered irreparable damage following two ocean crossings and 12 years in the scorching Spanish heat - the bearing which allowed it to turn following the wind direction seized. A replacement was needed.

Our new wind generator 

Current Affairs

Another item on or wish list has been relocating the batteries and simplifying the cable routing. Previously, one battery was stored under the cockpit floor, while another battery (and the battery switch!) were in the starboard cockpit locker. Opening a locker lid at sea just to switch batteries seems less than ideal, and the inaccessible space under the cockpit looked ideal for the two batteries.

Adding an inner forestay - Part 5, in which Igor goes diving.

Having completed the deck eye, we were only missing a tang to attach the upper end of the stay wire to. We chose a two-part stainless fabrication from Wichard that slots inside the mast for maximum strength.

Inner forestay tang

The unexpected problem? The tang needs inserting and removing repeatedly during the fitting process, all while hanging in a harness and balancing power tools on your lap. The expected outcome? I dropped both pieces, and one of them disappeared in the cold UK spring waters.

Putting the forepeak back together - the water tank

With any maintenance job, 90% of all efforts remain hardly noticeable until it all finally starts coming together with the last 10%. Our forepeak was long a pile of plywood and fiberglass, but now it is returning to its functional form.

Reinforced storage in the forepeak

Staying alive (ah, ha, ha, ha) - bilge pumps

Bilge pumps are essential safety equipment on any seagoing yacht. Frankly, Auriga would have hardly made it as far as Ipswich wihtout. The leaks have since been dealt with; however, the old pump arrangement was not ideal. Firstly, the cockpit pump, accessible from the helming position, was defective, leaving only the pump down below - combined with a malfunctioning self-steering system, this made for an interesting few hours in the following seas off St Katherine's point.

Improved pipework

Solid, accessible, out of the way

Convenient pumping position

Adding an inner forestay - Part 4

The yacht is slowly taking shape, as some of the long-standing projects near completion. We have finally installed the forward bulkhead (see here). After months of preparation work, we have mixed up the largest batch of glass-reinforced epoxy putty yet, and glued the bulkhead solidly to the hull and deck. Then, we added three strips of biaxial cloth of increasing thickness on each side of the bulkhead, continuing the layup down along the stem, as seen in the picture below.

Glassed in place

Flowcoat, sikaflex, bolts

Strongest eye on Auriga?

A Helping Hand

The inner forestay is in the mail, and the structural reinforcements are nearing completion (more on that in a separate post). The only problem? Until a few days ago, we had no staysail to hoist in a real blow, when our storm jib starts looking rather oversized for the job. Meet Richard Fawcett.

Richard comparing boats

Sikaflex, sikaflex and some more sikaflex!

After the deck bolts, it's now time to clean and re-seal all the stanchion bases!


 
Sikafelx Adventures from Giulia Tyzack on Vimeo.

Easter Aloft

The Easter bank holiday weekend proved very productive, and Matt and Giulia are in fact still hard at work as I am typing this. Among other things, we finally had a chance to install the attachment points for the running backstays - these are necesseray to balance the load on the inner forestay.

View from the mast, tools at hand

Despite moderately strong winds and a wintery chill in the air, it was dry - reasonable weather for working aloft.

New Holes in the Hull

Another Saturday, another day of maintenance

 

This Saturday was another productive session. Among other things we made a new fibreglass conduit to protect wiring in the bow, removed the old aluminium forestay groove, cut off the seized wind turbine and protected some more of the woodwork with epoxy.

The big job, however was the new hole in the hull.

Giulia's response on being sent this picture: "What the hell is that?!"

The bow and other efforts

Time is ticking. There are now only 3 month to go until we reach the end of our berthing contract at Fox's. (Let's not call it a departure date - that is just asking for trouble!) This week we decided to up our game and spend the whole weekend on Auriga, rather than just one day. I think the work paid off, and it felt like we got a lot done.

The toe-rail bolts

Work continues apace to put everything in the bow together before we seal it permanently with our new bulkhead. This weekend we worked hard removing, cleaning, covering in copious sikaflex, and replacing the toe rail bolts.

Giulia working into the night cleaning nuts and washers

We probably put in 10 hours between us, and got only halfway around the boat. Overall I think we removed and resealed 30 bolts.

Adding an inner forestay - Part 3

Preparing the bow for the bulkhead

As well as building the new bulkhead we had to shape a lip in the bow, positioned to fit the new board. This provides better sealing and, practically, something we can epoxy the finished bulkhead on to.

There was already a small lip to hold the original piece, which we used to position and cut a template from mdf. This was used to both shape the plywood bulkhead and also cut out to make a backing piece we could apply the new layer of fibreglass to.

Igor and Giulia - shaping the new template and plywood bulkhead

Adding an inner forestay - Part 2

Making the bulkhead

(see Part 1) The new bulkhead is made from 12mm marine ply laminated with a layer of biaxial fiberglass cloth on each side. All structural boltholes are reinforced with solid fiberglass laminate to withstand both radial loads and axial compression. We added two watertight access hatches - you never know when the chain behind a permanent bulkhead will get tangled! Overall, making the balkhead took many tens of hours of work. Here's the "making of".

Marking, cutting holes, sanding

Adding an inner forestay - Part 1

To prepare Auriga for ocean sailing, we want to make the boat as reliable and adaptable as possible. A common modification for offshore-going yachts is the addition of an inner forestay. A small staysail can be flown from it in heavy weather, being easier and safer to set than a storm jib and giving the crew additional options in most conditions.

Storm staysail in heavy weather © Carlo Borlenghi / Rolex

This requires a deck fitting of substantial strength, and we had to face a host of challenges in modifying Auriga accordingly.