Boat Plans Nz | The heater that iced up

Boat Plans Nz

THEY SAY THAT IF you have a heater on your boat, you can extend your sailing season by six weeks or so at each end. I have never been swayed by that argument. Having spent most of my life in the sub-tropics, I have no love of sailing in the cold. Or the cold-and-rain, as happens around here. So I reckon there’s no need for a heater on a boat in this region.
There was one on a little Cape Dory 25D I once owned. We found her on an island in the San Juans, and sailed her home one bitter-cold day in February, when there was ice on deck. We had an overnight stop in a marina in Anacortes, where we ran into an old sailing friend. He offered us an electric heater because he said a cold night was forecast, but we scoffed and turned him away. “We have a nice Force 10 heater installed,” we said.
After a meal ashore, we came back to the boat and lit the heater. It had started life as a kerosene model, but the previous owner had converted it to gas. A small can of propane screwed onto the bottom.
We soon noticed something strange. It didn’t seem to be producing a lot of heat, and what heat it did produce rose to the top of the cabin and stayed there. What was even stranger was the fact that the can of propane was collecting a coat of ice. If we stood up in the cabin, the air was luke-warm from the belly-button up, and freezing cold from the belly-button down. As the layer of ice on the can grew thicker, we shut the heater off, fearing that it was actually producing more cold than heat on average. Our bunks were below belly-button level, so we spent a very cold night aboard, having brought only light-weight sleeping bags with us.
One of the first jobs I did on that boat was to convert the Force 10 back to kerosene heat.
It was a fairly easy job once I’d bought the right tools for flaring the copper tubing and so on. The new burner put out a lot more heat and never tried to make ice, but the hot air still hung around above belly-button level until we bought a 12-volt fan and mounted it where a reading lamp used to be. That stirred the air up nicely, distributing warmth all over the cabin from head to toe.
But we rarely used that heater because the fan used electricity, and I was scared we might flatten the battery overnight and not be able to start the diesel engine on a cold morning.
I have learned over the years that very little is simple on a boat, and the less you have to go wrong the better off you are.
So we never had a heater on any other boat since. And our belly buttons have been very grateful.
Today’s Thought
What is true, simple and sincere is most congenial to man’s nature.
— Cicero, De Officiis
Tailpiece
“Who gave you that black eye?”
“My wife.”
"I thought she was out of town.”
“So did I.”

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Boat Plans Canada | In love with a Vertue 25

Boat Plans Canada

PEOPLE CAN BE SO CRUEL. Even people who know you well. Even people without a harmful bone in their bodies. The trouble is, they just don’t stop to think how something might affect you.

Two good friends of mine, Sue and Jere, out cruising in the Salish Sea, have sent me an e-mail picture of a gorgeous little wooden boat they came across in Pages’ Resort Marina on Gabriola Island in British Columbia.  I recognized her as a Vertue 25, a British design by Laurent Giles.

She looked brand new, sparkling in the Canadian sunshine with gleaming white topsides and faultless brightwork, but I discovered she was built by the Bent Jespersen boatbuilding firm on Vancouver Island in 1985.

She’s called Sarissa and I fell deeply in love with her at first sight, as, I suspect, my friends knew I would.

What can be more cruel than unrequited love? I can’t afford to buy her, I can’t afford to maintain her, and as far as I know she’s not for sale anyhow. The simple act of sending me her picture has broken my heart.

I’ll get over it, of course. I always do. This isn’t the first time. But each time it takes a bit longer.

I have drooled over the Vertue 25 ever since I first read Humphrey Barton’s book, Vertue XXXV. He singlehanded her around Cape Horn, of course, the smallest boat to double the cape at the time, I believe. And then there was the epic voyage of another Vertue 25 as detailed in that splendid book My Old Man and the Sea, written in alternating chapters by father and son, David and Daniel Hays. A wonderful read.

The Hays’s set out from Britain, sailed south and across the Atlantic to Panama, made their way via the Galapagos to Easter Island, and then plunged into the Screaming Fifties to round Cape Horn and head for home up the Atlantic again.

So what is it about the 25-foot Vertue that affects me so much? Hard to say, really, except that she’s simply a beautiful, sturdy  little heavy-displacement boat that has all the features I love. A transom-hung rudder. A full-length keel. A well-protected cockpit. Narrow beam. Three-inch bulwarks. A cocky doghouse. A simple sloop rig. A sheerline to die for.

Most people these days would describe her as old fashioned and outdated. I don’t care. I’m that way myself. Say what you like, but this is a boat that just wants to be taken to sea, and when you look at her you know that she’s promising to look after you in the bad stuff, tiny as she is.

As a final touch of cruelty, it occurred to me that if I did own a Vertue 25, I would feel compelled to cross an ocean in her. That, after all, is her purpose in life.  But I’m getting too long in the tooth for that sort of thing. However, when I mentioned this to another friend she said:

“I disagree with you, John. The purpose of owning a  Laurent Giles Vertue would be to have a boat that you loved, that made you recall previous ocean crossings, and  admitting that cross-ocean adventures are beyond you now, while enjoying short sails in the protected Gulf Islands. Would you like us to go and have a look at her for you?”

Thanks, Jen, but no. I’m suffering enough already.

Today’s Thought

It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.

— Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters
Tailpiece
"I couldnt sleep a wink last night with those curtains wide open."
"Why didnt you close them?"
"I cant reach across the street."

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