Category: Gear – Yachting and Boating
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Galley Box
16th November 2023 – Rotherhithe Inspired by one of Roger Barnes’ wonderful cruising dinghy blogs, I decided that I too could do with a galley box, but for our camper van rather than our little dinghy. I could see a couple of advantages of having a dedicated galley box: When cooking outside, the cooker would…
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Preparations for the North West Passage – One week to go!
26th July 2023 Rotherhithe Reading time: 5 Minutes The adventure seems to be attracting a fair bit of press. The Telegraph had this write up and PBO had this. Stirling and Son’s Facebook page has this amazing video of what I should expect and, although I have sailed on Integrity before, this looks like pretty…
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How long does it take to prepare for an Arctic voyage from the UK?
16th May 2023 – London Reading time: 15 minutes Clearly there is no straightforward answer to such a wishy-washy question. It depends so much on whether you, and your boat, have made previous high latitude voyages. Even the location of your boat in the UK could affect the timing. To stick my neck out, I…
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Anchors and Anchoring
22nd February 2023 Reading Time 20 Minutes Before we start Sumara is a long-keeled boat, 26 foot long, weighing about 5 tonnes. She tends to lie to the current, rather than the wind. The boat does not have a windlass. My final choice of anchor tackle needed to cope with fairly extreme anchorages in Arctic…
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Rudders, Tillers and Self-Steering Gear – Part Three
9th February 2023 Servo Pendulum and other Self-Steering Gear I suppose it must have been the 1995 Earls Court London Boat Show when I bought my Windpilot Self-Steering gear. Those were the days when you could browse amongst the various suppliers and compare and contrast, before getting completely slaughtered at the Guinness stand. Did you…
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Rudders, Tillers and Self-Steering Gear – Part Two
7th February 2023 Trim Tab Self-Steering Last week I had intended to just post a short piece about the repair I have just made to my rudder hangings. Then I got a bit carried away and went on (and on) about rudders in general. That spurred Bruce Morley to drop me a line about his…
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Rudders, Tillers and Self-Steering Gear – Part One
2nd February 2023 Reading Time 10 Minutes Rudders and Tillers in general My Rudder Repair I have always regarded Sumara’s rudder as being pretty bullet-proof. It pivots on a strong bronze fitting with a 3/4″ pintle at its base. It has two sets of heavy bronze castings with a long 3/4″ bronze bolt linking them…
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Tanks and Containers
6th January 2023 On Sumara I need to carry three liquids in bulk – Water, Diesel and Paraffin. These are stored in fixed tanks which are supplemented with portable containers. Over the 32 years that I have owned Sumara I have learned a few lessons and picked up a few tricks. So here we go:…
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Technical Problems
Scoresby Sund Expedition 2022 Day 32. 12th July 2022 Position: Moored Torshavn Weather: The wind has dropped from F9 to about F7, not sure whether to call that good or not. It was a fiercely windy night here last night. Jannicke returned from the airport because all the flights were cancelled. She has only just…
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I’ve been sorting through Sumara’s Tools
25th May 2022 – Rotherhithe 17 days to go before the Scoresby Sund Expedition starts In the past I have used a round canvas ditty bag to hold my splicing and rigging gear, plus a Kuny tool bag for all my other tools, but it was always a struggle to stow both of them into…