Sailing to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean 1500

Problems (continued)

	Once we were running low on fresh water, we stopped using fresh water to wash dishes. The galley saltwater foot pump didn't work, so we ran the washdown hose into the galley from above. You can see the coiled green hose coming down through the hatch. When it wasn't in use, we hung up the nozzle on the vegetable netting.

• No good sea berths - The boat has big king and queen berths that allow you to roll around. The saloon settees are narrow but there are no lee cloths to keep you from falling off the settees.
• Deck lockers - The drains are too small and clog easily, the lids don't seal tightly and don't have gaskets.
• Mainsheet traveler car - The rigging to pull the car to port or starboard wasn't powerful enough and the cleats were small and awkward to use.
• Solar panels - Partially covered by the dodger so they were not efficient.
• Cabin lights - Lots of light fixtures that draw lots of current, which encourages wasting electricity. Jeff is replacing the incandescent bulbs with LEDs.
• Reefer/freezer - It needs lots of AC to operate so it can't run off the inverter and must use the genset.

• Staysail furler - There was no cleat to secure the control line for the staysail furler, so we had to knot it around a lifeline stanchion or wrap it around a winch.
• Plastic side curtains - The plastic cockpit enclosure interferes with the jib sheet winches—you can only turn them halfway.
• Handholds - The helm is lacking good handholds because so much of the pedestal is covered with equipment.
• Handholds - The outside of the dodger could use grab rails along the side decks.
• Helm seat - The high foam seat at the helm is hard to use and not very secure.
• Floorboard - A floorboard panel in the steps to the workbench passageway could slip out when you walked on it.

• Cockpit seats - They don't drain properly so water pools up in the corners (possibly related to the boat being out of trim).
• Plastic side curtains - They get in the way even when rolled up, and are difficult to snap and zip up all the way.
• Cockpit cushions - No good place to store unused cockpit cushions, and they tend to get underfoot in the cockpit.

• Sail damage - Mistake #1: Not reefing early enough and deeply enough. Mistake #2: During a squall, sailing a desired course rather than a comfortable reach, which increased the risk of accidental jibes. Mistake #3: Once problems were occurring, failing to correct problems quickly enough.
• Fuel tank manifold valves - Mistake #1: Unfamiliar with system and set valves the wrong way. As the engine ran, wanted to drain one tank and fill the other, but had it backwards. Mistake #2: Not giving enough credence to Tank Tender readings that were opposite from what was expected. The result was that by accident, the leaking fuel tank was overfilled, possibly causing other problems.
• Fresh water - Mistake: Using too much fresh water in the beginning of the trip.
• Life raft mounting - Mistake: Mounting the life raft without all the staysail rigging in place, so the interference problem could have been seen and avoided.
• Refitting schedule - General mistake: Setting a very aggressive schedule then keeping to the schedule no matter what. We wound up leaving with lots of problems unsolved or even undetected; many of the problems caused significant trouble during the voyage and will be more difficult to fix while cruising in the islands. It would have helped to go on a longer shakedown cruise before leaving, then fixing all the problems here in the States. But that might have caused its own set of problems: missing the season of reasonable weather for a Caribbean voyage and having to spend winter up north. It's a tossup which set of consequences is worse.

• Weather routing - Mistake #1: Not fully understanding how the navigation software used GRIB files to do weather routing. Mistake #2: Not adequately practicing weather routing before leaving. The result was that we used an incorrect GRIB file which caused the weather routing software to lay out an unnecessarily circuitous route.
• Jib sheets - Mistake: The online pictures of a fully-rigged Night Heron should have been closely scrutinized. We rigged the jib sheets incorrectly so they chafed on the cockpit coaming and were a tripping hazard. Instead we should have used aft turning blocks like in the pictures, but we didn't have enough blocks anyway.
• Battery drain - Mistake: Failure to carefully check all AC/DC circuit breakers when shutting down the genset. The water heater breaker was accidentally left on and drained the battery bank through the inverter. The problem was corrected before it got serious.

• Rescue ring - Mistake: Not following directions and understanding how it worked. The rescue ring was mounted improperly so the line would likely foul on various things.
• Saloon folding table - Mistake: Inadequate strength of materials. The metal support brackets for the folding saloon table broke.

• Captain's personality - Although I enjoyed being on Night Heron and considered the trip to be a worthwhile adventure, working for Jeff at times was very difficult, for personal reasons.
• Crew coordination - Due to various factors, multiple people tried to act as captain at various times and in various ways. As it turned out, no one was completely successful, not even the real captain. It's a very difficult job to successfully coordinate the efforts of four strangers crewing under difficult circumstances, and it's something that I think will get better with practice.
• Watchstanding schedule - Part of the coordination problem was that it took too long to come up with a usable long-term watchstanding schedule, so all four of us suffered some extra wear and tear from insufficient rest before this happened.
• Refitting/upgrading philosophy - Most boaters fall somewhere between these two extreme categories: those who strive to understand and master all the technical details and who do all of the refitting/upgrading work themselves, and those who hire experts to do all the work and trust that they do the job right. My own belief is that the most successful liveaboard cruisers are closer to the first category, since it can be too expensive and too difficult to hire experts whenever you need work done, plus the so-called experts might not be as smart as they want you to believe. Right now, I think Night Heron falls closer to the second category, although I think this will change with time and increasing familiarity with the systems (and with decreasing bank account).

I have a couple of observations, but again I remind you that I don't mean to complain or criticize.

I think a lot of the problems we experienced were due to not having enough time to work out the kinks in a newly acquired boat. Therefore, you wind up encountering the kinks along the way and hopefully you can work them out as you go. There is obviously a tradeoff between how much work you do before you leave and how much work you do along the way. As it turns out, you always do lots of work before you leave, and you always do lots of work along the way, so there's no escaping doing lots of work.

I think the strategy Jeff followed was to take care of the big problems first, then take care of the little problems later. But even though a little problem by itself is small, a big enough collection of little problems can wind up being like a big problem and can seriously compromise the voyage. Also, I think it can be much more difficult and expensive to solve problems while you're cruising in remote areas, compared to solving them here in the States. But like I mentioned above, any way you look at it there are tradeoffs.

Another thing that amazes me is how many of the problems caused secondary problems, and sometimes multiple secondary problems. It's pretty discouraging to encounter not just a primary problem but also a cascading chain of secondary problems. Sometimes a secondary problem doesn't occur right away or may be masked somehow, but it's still lurking and waiting to spring up.

Therefore it seems to me that a really important part of boat management has to be avoiding all problems in the first place, since that way you don't have to worry about secondary problems. It might take an unreasonable amount of time and money to avoid all of the problems all of the time, so it might be useful to analyze potential problem situations to figure out which primary problems cause the most serious secondary problems and concentrate on avoiding those primary problems. If you fail to anticipate the cascading chain of secondary problems, it can be pretty easy to dig yourself into a hole when a primary problem occurs.

That's finally the end of the problems. In the next section, you can take a taxi tour of Tortola.