Too long in one place (Santa Ponca) so I might as well go somewhere at last??

I know, I'll sail out to the Caribbean! Shouldn't be too bad, 4000Nm and good weather all the way???? Just upgrade the boat, find a crew, get some food and set off!

It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I bought a couplke of books, had a read and decided to go for it!

Upgrade the boat:

The Blue Dolphin has already been across the Atlantic, 7 years ago as she was originally based in the BVI's so in general she is fairly well equipped for the crossing. Saying that, a lot has changed in 7 years, and I'd already upgraded a few items since buying the boat.

Fit the Inverter! The problem all starts with the fridge and freezer! They can run on 220V when I'm plugged into the shore, or running the generator, or using a mechanical compressor from the port engine. I quickly discovered that you need them running almost all the time, or at least all day to maintain the freezer as a freezer! Options now are to run an engine 12 hours a day every day, just to keep food frozen and beer cold, or get mains power from the batteries! That's exactly what the inverter does. I shopped around for a while, then bought a 2.5KW Mobitronic Inverter. It's rated well over the power I needed just for the fridge, but it means it can run almost anything onboard. Yes girls, you can now use hairdryers whilst we are out at sea!

Fit the solar panels! This should've been easy as I bought them in January so plenty of time. Unfortunately I didn't set it as a priority job as they worked fine just sat on the deck! The only problem was that I had to take them inside if sailing in rough weather, which wasn't too much of a hardship. I'd asked a few companies about building a Stainless frame to support them off the back, but the prices they were quoting were unrealisitic! I guess that's boating for you? Eventually, I found a company who sold the marine stainless to the trade and were happy to sell to me direct. I completed my drawings and took the measurements, then bought 12 pieces of stainless tube and 18 stainless fittings, I now had a kit frame. After 2 days of cutting, drilling and riveting, the frame was ready to fit onto the davits (Poles on the back of the boat used to hoist the dinghy out of the water). I enlisted Dave (Ocean Lady) and Pete (A guest of Dave's out on holiday) and we lifted the panels into place. Some careful balancing acts and a bit more marking, drilling and riveting and we had the panels fitted to the boat! We were impressed, I'd measured right and they looked good, only problem is they weren't exactly safe! The frame was solid front to rear, but not side to side, time for a rethink! Easy solution, a couple of Stainless wire stays from either side to the centre of the boat and now they're really solid in all directions, job completed!

Fit the wind generator! I hadn't planned on fitting a wind generator, as I'd hoped that the solar panels would produce enough power. I hadn't planned on the freezer using so much power for so long (18-20 Amps when running), so the panels alone weren't enough. I searched the web, read the reviews and asked other yachts with them fitted. The overall winner was the Air Marine AIR-X generator, It's much quieter than previous models, it produces the most power (up to 35Amps) and it looks really nice! I bought one through a friendly chandlery who gave me 25% discount, but it still cost 1000€ buy the time I'd bought the pole and the wiring etc. This actually turned out to be really easy to fit, but has been sadly disappointing in power output! I've not seen it produce more than 2-3 Amps since fitting it, however I have been mostly anchored in sheltered bays, so we'll see what it can do on the open sea!

Sails! The journey from the Canaries out to the Caribbean is usually sailed along the trade wind route. This means you leave the Canaries and sail SSW towards the Cape Verde Islands, then when 200 miles North of the Cape Verdes you head West. The wind and tide should be behind you all the way, and it's considered to be an easy journey! I'd spoken to a lot of people and read a few books, and a common sail configuration is to run 2 foresails, tied out tight on either side of the boat and leave the mainsail down. This is especially suited to the catamarans as it's easy to tie the sails out wide and the boat is inherently stable, so doesn't roll like a normal yacht. I decided that this was a good opportunity to fit the bowsprit that I wanted and purchase a big Genoa which would pull the boat along well in light winds. At this point my friend James came in and as he owed me 300€ for some work I did for him, he gave me a Genoa in return. We took the Genoa out onto the boat and hoisted it up the mast, this sail was huge! We used a halyard which ran right from the top of the mast and the sail only just fitted onto the forestay mounting point. The foot of the sail was so long it went back beyond the shrouds which hold the mast up! The only way we could use this sail, would be with a bowsprit and roller furling gear, as I had earlier planned. We took the sai ashore and took some measurements, it worked out at about 65sqm which is the same size as my mainsail. Get this fitted and we're going to have a fast crossing! Then it went wrong! I had 2 companies come and look and quote for the job, One said they could do it, then stopped talking to me! The other looked at the rigging and at the sail and strongly advised me not to use the sail as we'd planned! The problem was that my shrouds only go 80% up the mast and he pointed out that a side wind would put the fullk force of that huge sail onto the top of the mast, He would not guarantee that the mast was strong enough so he suggested we cut the sail down and shorten it to use the spinnaker halyard point instead. I contacted North Sails who I had given the sail to to be repaired and they offered to come and give their opinion. North agreed with the rigger, except that they did not want to cut down the sail as it was so big, they advised me to look for another smaller sail. At this point, Dave from Ocean Lady made the kind offer of lending me his spare Genoa! He brought it over and we laid it out on top of my foresail and it looked promising. The luff was 2m shorter than my sail, but the foot was much longer, so overall the whole sail was much bigger. (Dave's is actually 35sqm and mine was 25sqm) I thanked Dave as usual, but refused to borrow it in case it was damaged en route. I am also unsure if I will ever come back to Mallorca, whilst he is thinking of going to Greece, so returning it could've been difficult! We agreed a very cheap price and I now owned 1 mainsail and 3 foresails, even if only 2 of the foresails actually fitted!

Find a Crew:

This part was much easier than I thought, there are 2 ways to find a crew, you can just set off and stop in bars at ports along the way and get chatting. It's often quite easy to find crew this way as lots of people hitch hike around the world on yachts! The alternative was to actively advertise for crew, I chose www.crewseekers.co.uk as they have been around for a while and are well known. It was free for me to advertise as I was offering the yacht, the crew paid about £10 to be emailed details of boats for which they could apply.

I had immediate success! Within 2 weeks of advertising, I had an email from a Graham and Patty from Canada, they are taking a year off and touring Europe, then hoped to get a yacht across to the Caribbean before touring South America, then returning home to Canada. They a few years sailing experience and most importantly looked like a fun couple. We swapped a few emails, then had a chat on the phone and I immediately agreed that they were on the crew! Now I couldn't change my mind, I had people depending on me!! I receieved a few emails from people who I didn't think would fit in with us, either by age, or wording of their emails, but I was getting lots of interest.

After a couple more weeks, I had an email from Floris and Natalie from Holland, Floris is 35 and had 20 years experience, whilst Natalie had 10 years, again they looked promising, so after a phone call and several emails, I was keen to take them also. Unfortunately They were also in contention for a place on another yacht, an Oyster 55, which is a much larger and more luxurious boat than the Blue Dolphin. I now had to wait and see which they chose, but I was confident as we had got on well over the phone. If Floris and Natalie came with us, we had enough crew for the crossing, I was planning on between 4 and 6, ideally 6 would give us more time off watch on the night shifts!

I then received an email from Maggie, She's 24 and from London and was planning on taking a sabbatical from work to take part in an Atlantic crossing. Maggie Has previously sailed from Ireland to Morocco, via Portugal and Gibraltar, so she would have experienced the most days at sea in a single trip out of all of us. I was in England for a few weeks so I arranged to meet up with Maggie in London, so we could talk about the tripand see how we got on. It would be important that we got on ok, as we would probably end up on watch together as the others were couples! We had lunch and a couple of beers in Covent Garden, all looked good and we agreed to go for it, so Maggie was aboard!

The only question now was Floris and Natalie! They were going to Cowes to help sail a yacht back to Holland, So I rearranged my flight home and drove to Gatwick to meet with them and take them to Southampton. They had already said over the phone that we were their preferred choice of yacht as we were all the same age and of similar experience and attitude. The other yacht had an older crew and they felt they would just be hired hands on that boat! We had a great day, chatting non stop in the car, then stopped off in Port Solent Marina (Portsmouth) for some sailing scenery and lunch. Floris gave me a gift of some Dutch playing cards and a bottle of Malt Scotch and we now had a full crew!

The only thing left to do was schedule the crew's arrival on the boat, I needed help sailing the boat from Gibraltar South to the Canaries, as I'm not insured for single handed journeys over 18 hours and this one would take 5 days. Graham and Patty volunteered for this part of the Journey as it suited everyone, then Floris, Natalie and Maggie arranged flights to Tenerife for 9th November! We even had a schedule to work to now! I had a phone call with Graham and they asked if they could join me earlier along the Spanish coast, as they were no longer going to Seville as per their original plans. No problem of course, I was looking forward to meeting them and it would give me some company for the journey. Would it be possible for them to bring a friend along for a week, to sail with us as far as Malaga? Of course she would be welcome, so we now have Michelle joining Graham and Patty and meeting me 11th October in Murcia. This fits perfectly with my schedule as I can visit my mum in the Mar Menor (by Murcia) during the first week of October and be ready to set out to sea on the 12th. Working backwards this meant that I had to leave Mallorca by the end of September, to allow a 3-4 day sail to Mar Menor, then a week with mum, before picking up crew and leaving. We would also have plenty of time to get to Tenerife by 11th November, as we would have a full month to do about 15 days sailing. We could cut this down if we did a couple of overnighters too.

What Next

OK so we have a crew, we have a schedule and the boat's mostly sorted, then the clutch went! I was heading for Palma Nova when I realised that the Starboard engine wasn't driving forwards. After a brief check, the engine was pulling happily in reverse, but almost nothing in forwards???? Out with the bible of boat mechanics and I find a picture of my Hurth Gearbox. They have seperate clutches for forwards and reverse, so it looks like the forwards clutch has gone! I phoned a mechanic and described teh symptons and he offered to visit that night and have a look. All confirmed, new clutch, he would order the parts, then drop the gearbox out, replace the clutch and put it back for me. He would phone me in a couple of weeks when the parts arrived. I waited a couple of weeks, then called and he hadn't received the parts yet. I waited another week and still no parts, then he stopped answering my phone calls! Only one answer, do it yourself! So I disconnected the prop shaft, unbolted the gearbox housing and removed the gearbox! I wish I'd done it 3 weeks earlier as it only took half an hour to remove it. 20 minutes later it was stripped down and the difference in the 2 sets of clutch plates was obvious, so I needed a set of plates. I bolted it back together finger tight and took it to Marine Machine in Palma, they are the main importers of Hurth gearboxes in Mallorca and sure of course they could do it! Their quote however was 500€ for a clutch kit and 8 hours labour at 50€ per hour! Total cost 900€, however they could sell me a complete brand new gearbox for 1080€ which he obviously recommended! As I had stripped the gearbox in 20 minutes, I questioned the 8 hours labour and was told that was what it would cost! I also queried the price of the 5 clutch plates and a gasket set, as this would cost me £50 on a motorbike back home! They ordered the parts only for 210€ and I rebuilt the gearbox myself, saving 700€ and only taking about an hour to rebuild and refit in total! All works fine, and I now understand how the gearbox works which is a bonus!