On Board with Mark Corke

Aviateur 5.70m

 

 

Since I no longer have Mallard I’ve been thinking that at some time in the future it would be nice to get back to sailing a small boat, perhaps something that can be easily trailed, and of course I would want to build it myself. Several years ago I was thinking that a mini Transat boat would be great, fun and fast to sail but the more that looked into it I realized that a decent sail wardrobe would cost a bomb and with a deep fixed keel with a bulb on the bottom the boat would have to be lifted on and off the trailer with a travel hoist each time.

The Aviatuer by French designer Eric Hensval seems like the answer to my prayers; the same size almost as a mini Transat but with the lifting keel which makes launching from the trailer at the boat ramp a snap thus opening up almost unlimited cruising potential. Keeping it on the trailer will also mean that it can be dry sailed and thus save a lot of money each year by not having it sitting on a mooring or in a slip, neither of which are especially cheap. From a distance the boat could pass as a mini with her retractable bowsprit, square cut topped main sail and twin rudders. It is this latter feature coupled with the lifting keel that allows the boat to dry out upright, perfect for sneaking into coves and other skinny water that would be off limits to a mini.

Looking at the lines the boat is little more than a sharpie if one discounts the intermediate strake at the turn of the bilge that helps soften the shape and make the boat appear less boxy.

There are a ton of pictures on the web and at Duckworks from where, for a modest fee I was able to instantly download the study plans. Interestingly the method shown in these plans if for the boat to be built over a series of temporary frames; the seams are joined with epoxy and glass released from the mold and then the interior seams are filleted and glass taped before the rest of the fit out and deck is completed. I thought this an unnecessary complication and so I e-mailed the designed who confirmed that the boat could be constructed using the stitch and glue method. Providing that the panels are cut accurately the boat will tend to form it’s own correct natural shape as the temporary stitches are installed. It would be necessary to make a cradle for the hull to sit in while it was being made but you would need to do that anyway even if building the boat in the method shown in the original plans. Not having to make a frame structure onto which the panels are screwed will save a fair bit of time and there will be less turning of the hull as the interior can almost be completed before the boat would have to be rolled to tape the outside joints.

The video above shows the boat sailing in 12 knots of breeze and it is trucking right along. Incidentally the plastic domes, once a dead giveaway of the long distance voyager especially on French boats are not just for effect on the Aviatuer, they give much needed light below and with the secondary tiller on the inside of the boat allow easy and dry steering in inclement weather.

 

Weldmount

 

 

These snaps may not be of the best quality as they were shot on my iPhone but none the less they do show a rather unique product. Weldmount was not something that I have ever used before but I picked some up in the local store after seeing a video on the internet. Weldmount comes in different types depending on what is to be bonded but essentially it is a two part adhesive that can be used to bond all manner of fixtures and fittings to the boat. Until now I like many boat owners has been drilling small holes in he boat to attach cable clips, bolts and other such parts. Weldmount allows the user to bond stainless steel studs, saddle clamps and cable tie pad to almost any surface without resorting to a drill. Apart from the time savings it means that it is possible to save drilling litteraly hundreds of holes in the boat, all points for possible water intrusion. I must admit I was little skeptical at first but this really is an amazing product and highly recommended.

Repairs and upgrades - Norcold and Simrad

This picture (above) was taken with taken with my iPhone at close range and as I could not get far enough back so you will have to excuse the parallax error, but it shows the fairly well, I think the progress to date on the new fridge installation. The old fridge was noisy, the seals were worn so it ran all the time, it used a ton of electricity, iced up with gay abandon and the small freezer compartment door did not properly close. With that said I am pretty impressed that it managed to soldier on for 26 years, but it had to go and is being replaced with another, which like the first is from Norcold. The fridge is a dual voltage 12/120 model which looks pretty slick, but installation has required some modifications to the cabinet work around the unit as the overall size is a little smaller. The old fridge had what can best be described as flange around the unit and this screwed into the wooden framework. This had two functions, it sealed the gap between the fridge and the cabinetry preventing dirt and debris from entering and secondly held the fridge in place preventing it from moving when the boat moved about at sea. The new fridge lacks the flange which I miss and I hope that at some time in the future Norcold sees the wisdom in reintroducing this feature to at least some of the models in their range. The 0788 model that I am installing is fixed in position with screws through the feet which are visible when the door is opened. This works well on my boat but I could see may be a problem where the fridge is located higher from the sole where a solid attachment point may not be available. Because the fridge is less tall than the original I also have room for cutlery drawer and you can see the drawer front temporarily taped into position for photography purposes.

After talking with the technical folks at Norcold I found out that I had been operating my fridge incorrectly in the past. I had always assumed that with a dual voltage fridge one had to turn off the DC breaker before turning on the AC breaker to power the fridge but it seems that I should have been keeping both the 12 volt and 120 fridge breakers on when I was aboard. Apparently there is an automatic relay in the back of the fridge which by default runs off AC voltage, if this is interrupted or unavailable then the appliance automatically switches to 12 volts DC until 120 volts AC is restored. They have been wired that way for years, it seems, but I never knew, and now you do too.

I've never liked the way that many radar and chart plotter displays just tend to get bolted down to any free bit of space with the cables sprouting out of the back. I think this messy and I wanted to do something better. Seaglass has surprisingly never had a multi function display installed at either helm and this is something that is being addressed during this winter and spring fit out season. The truth is that I have a bunch of equipment on long-term loan from the good folks at Simrad for a series of features that I have been working on about installing an NMEA 2000 network. At the heart of the system is a beautiful 16 inch NSS evo2 MFD. I've played about for ages trying to work out the best location for this with initial thoughts that it might go above the windscreen. This looked like a good bet and would have worked well with the general refit of the headliner and lighting upgrades but a mock-up showed that it was just too far forward of the helm seat to make controlling it as easy as it could be. So further head scratching and another mock up brought me to the point I am at now with what I can best describe as a teak nacelle which sits on the self and to port of the main  steering compass. The MFD can now be controlled with relative ease from the comfort of the helm seat and the large screen is easy to read from most anywhere in the salon making watching movies when swinging on a hook a distinct possibility. I am going to miss the flat surface on which I placed pilot books and charts when underway and so I have to find alternative placements for these, but I think the trade-off worth it. 

In the picture above the MFD has been temporarily dropped into place just to see how it will look when finished properly; there's to be a matt black surround between the teak 'eyebrow' and edge of the MFD but this will not be installed until after the nacelle has been varnished to match the rest of the boat interior. Also, you will notice that the teak is still somewhat of a rather odd color. The nacelle is made of 9 mm marine ply onto which I have glued teak veneer with the adjoining corners and eyebrow from solid teak. Teak when freshly cut has a definite green tinge but this soon fades and the color reverts to that familiar honey tone within a few days and the nacelle is still in that phase but by the time the varnishing starts the color will be somewhat different to what you see here. I should add that the color continues to mellow even through the varnish and so with time will blend in well with the 25-year-old teak interior.

 

B and G Vulcan and Simrad G07 - a brace of beauties

 

Simrad have just announced the GO7 Multi Touch display but before we get into that let's take a step back and remember a time not too long ago before multi function displays when there were chart plotters whose only job was to display and chart and show where you were. Not long after that we started to see charts that could be overlaid with radar data and then from there....well you get the idea. I am sure that I am not the only person out there that till tends to call them chart plotters even if they can do everything now from operate the stereo to control the autopilot.

So then it is somewhat gratifying to see the Simrad G07 which is being marketed as a 'stand alone' display harkening back to earlier times when there were just chart plotters. The unit itself has a 7 inch display and this helps keep the price down to a reasonable level. The list price has been announced as $799 but expect to see these discounted in the retailers when they go on sale to the boating public at the beginning of May. I suspect that there will be lot of interest in these units and being small with an attractive price point they will surely find their way onto many center consoles and smaller boats. There are basically two versions of the unit the G07 with the Simrad badge and an almost identical B and G version called the Vulcan which features the very useful SailSteer function which is aimed as you might have guessed squarely at sail boaters.

Both units should sell well and the absence of knobs on the front means that operation is akin to using a tablet, so anybody that has a smart phone should be able to get the unit up and running right out of the box with very little time spent looking over the owners manual. Another way that the price is kept down is to reduce the amount of connections on the back which on the G07/Vulcan is limited to just three; an NMEA port,  power and a connection for a sounder. Lacking is an Ethernet connection so radar is not supported and also missing is a video input. All that said this is one smart little unit and I would have jumped at the chance to get my hands on a Vulcan for my Golant Gaffer to replace the rather aging Raymarine unit that was still in place when I sold the boat. I think Navico, the parent of Band G and Simrad are onto a winner with this unit and I look forward to seeing how sales shape up in the coming months especially seeing they are making them available, wisely in my view at the beginning of the 2015 boating season.