The New Boat and her keel!!
Here are some images from the Northshore yard in Itchenor. The new boat has just arrived from the moulding shop and is ready to be fitted out. There are also some pictures here of her lifting keel as that will be one of the first projects - to fit the keel in place. I though this would be a good time to look at the keel system in general since the keel and the Southerly's shallow draft abilities are a big part of the reason we chose her for our next boat!

Keel System
Here the keel is prepped and ready to go into the boat. The keel system consists of a massive grounding plate that bolts into the bottom of the boat. This plate weighs 2100Kg (4600 pounds) which is quite a bit more than our car. In the picture you can see the swinging keel itself in the raised position. It weighs another 1570Kg (3500 pounds) which is about the weight of a BMW 525. So when you swing the keel down you are basically hanging the weight of a respectable car down for added performance. With 9 foot draft this boat sails well to windward! Its one of the advantages of a swinging keel that the designer could go as low as he wanted for good performance.

Here is a shot of the keel close up. This is a massively strong system that Northshore have refined since they started building swing-keel boats more than 20 years ago. You can see the widely spaced bolt pattern that connects the keel to the reinforced inset in the hull. One thing I specially like about the builder is their British engineering! Good and solid!

Raising and lowering the keel is done by a hydraulic system. There is an electric pump that runs the hydraulic system and it is remotely controlled from the helm. Just above the buttons is a series of LEDs that show how high the keel is. There is also an emergency handle to be used in case the electric system fails.

Boat Design for a Swing Keel
One of the toughest aspect of designing a good swinging or lifting keel boat is what to do with the keel when it comes up! It has to go somewhere and many designers have had trouble with this. We have been on lifting keel boats where the keel case divides the whole saloon. Very inconvenient. But Northshore have come up with an ingenious design for the 42 that hides the keel just under the starboard side of the raised saloon. The raised saloon has great views while sitting there, and I doubt anyone coming on board at the boat show would even guess there was a keel the weight of a BMW retracted under their seat. Here is a picture of the saloon - the keel retracts under the seat on the centreline of the boat. Very clever design.

Why go to all this bother?
Well this image of a Bahamas Bank says it all. There are so many unspoiled anchorages we will be able to get to with a shallow keel - and the Bahamas is arguably the finest cruising ground within easy reach of North American East Coast sailors. We have sailed there 4 different cruises and have fallen in love with the place. There are whole island groups that are hard to visit with a deep draft yacht. We are going back with the Southerly!! (see below)

Shallow Draft
Many places in the world are easy to navigate if you have a shallower boat. The Trent-Severn Waterway in Canada is limited to 5 feet. Ditto the Midi Canal in France. Many places in the US Intra-Coastal Waterway are shoaling up around the inlets. Boats that draw more than 5 feet are deeper than the average so dredging often doesn't occur until that number is reached and the problem starts to affect the majority of boats.

But there is more to shallow draft cruising. Some powerboats draw just 3-4 feet but can't afford to run aground! By this I mean they have props hanging down being the lowest point. So if they hit it is likely expensive. With Two-Step we could often poke slowly into places that were just 6 feet deep since when we touched the bottom it didn't matter. Just our keel would touch and we would then reverse off again. The new boat is the best of both worlds - it draws just 3 feet but can also afford to run aground since it has the heavy keel and a grounding plate, and it protects its prop with a skeg. We will be able to poke slowly into really shallow spots.

Of course we wouldn't want to have the ability to get to shallow places and still not feel safe crossing oceans. The Southerly can do that too. Many have crossed oceans, and we are looking forward to a nice quick transatlantic passage this fall - en route to the Caribbean.

Shoal Draft Anchorages
The final advantage for the Southerly keel is the ability to dry out. It is actually one of the main reasons for the design. In the South of England and the north West of France there are many tidal anchorages. This would be a place that would be a good anchorage at high tide but would have no water at low tide. So the only kind of boat that can anchor there would need to be able to rest down on the bottom at low tide. In Two-Step we would have not been able to anchor there since the keel would cause the boat to heel further and further as the tide went down. We would finally be lying on our side. Most uncomfortable and possibly even at risk of flooding as the water came back in. With the new boat this is the perfect anchorage. And again, the Bahamas has many places like this. Comparing to Two-Step, I would imagine there are as many as double the Bahamian anchorages available for the Southerly as for Two-Step. Similar in the Chesapeake and Atlantic France.

Share the Sail to Shallow Shores
This winter we will be returning to the Bahamas! We sail from the Virgin Islands to the Turks and Caicos (another Shallow Draft Paradise) on Leg 14, and then on to the Bahamas on Leg 15. This leg means visiting the most remote islands in the Bahamas - known as the Far Out Islands - a rare opportunity and our personal favourite!! See the Share the Sail page for more info or drop us an email.

Electrical power use on a boat is one of the biggest issues for cruising sailors these days. Talk to any long-term cruising sailor and they will probably bend your ear for hours about the issues and problems in providing the power for their boat. Basically your boat is an independent system when you are away from the dock. Any power you use, and todays gadgets can use a lot, will have to be supplied from the ships systems. Most cruisers find that the gadgets they have draw too much for the boat's original electrical system - and require a substantial redesign.

First steps - to get started it is important to do a basic budget for the 12 Volt electrical system. I covered this in an earlier blog, and came up with 131 amp-hours at anchor, and 198 when we are on passage. Bear in mind this is from our own experience over 20 years of cruising on board Two-Step. Like most cruisers we conserve power when we can, we don't use much water, and we have installed efficient reading lights etc. If you plan a more hedonistic life you might want to budget more ;-)

Next we need to look at how to supply this power. There are two obvious scenarios - at anchor and on passage. On passage boats use more power, depending on autopilot draw it can be a lot more! Luckily the Raymarine pilot is quite good on power. But also on passage you might well find a time during the day when you need to run the engine anyway with light winds. So on those days you will likely get all the power you need from running the engine. The problem is on those wonderful tradewind passages when you are sailing well and don't need to run the engine. Then you must generate the power somehow. On Two-Step we just ran the engine anyway - in neutral. So on an ocean passage we found we had to run the engine twice a day for one hour each. Solar panels helped out somewhat but it is difficult to design a system that will provide the entire power requirements from solar - especially on passage since you use so much.

Power Options

• Solar - For our example of needing 198ah per day - we would need quite a solar farm to provide even half of that. Perhaps 3 large panels would give 100ah. I estimated a solar array would be 5 feet by 7 feet and cost $4000, and generate 100ah per day. And not if its cloudy.
• Wind - Typically these might give 60-12ah per day if there is reasonable wind. Unfortunately many anchorages are protected from the wind and therefore don't produce what the marketing people might claim - even in the windy Caribbean. And a typical Mediterranean summer would not provide enough predictable wind either. They are popular in the Caribbean though - and if you don't mind a constant whirring noise you might consider one. For us the whirring is too annoying.
• Alternator - the mainstay of 12V power generation for most cruisers. We typically used our main engine as a generator by running it one or two hours per day just to make electricity. At anchor if we are careful and its sunny (for the solar panels) then we might just run one hour per day. At sea on passage we needed to run it twice for one hour. On the Southerly we will have a bigger alternator - 80Amps vs 50 on Two-Step. At sea we would need to run it at least 3 hours per day to come up with 198ah. Probably more since an 80Amp alternator is not really going to produce 80 full time for 2.5 hours. Count on maybe 60% of the rated output on a regular basis. So our new 80Amp unit might give us 50 amps - that means 4 hours running at sea and three at anchor.
• Generator - At the risk of oversimplifying - if you have any large power consumers on board you probably should consider a Generator. And I don't mean someone who always leaves the lights on!! A big power consumer would be an air conditioning system, a clothes washer/dryer, a microwave oven, a scuba compressor etc. Most boats have some form of inverter to allow you to run 120V devices from the 12V batteries. This works great for small items, but running anything with real power requirements will need too many batteries to be practical. For example, running a typical small vacuum cleaner for 10 minutes would require 25ah from your batteries. Running a 120V watermaker for 2 hours would take 300-350ah. And if you did have such a big bank of batteries you would still need to put the power back in. Neither the alternator, the solar panels nor the wind generator can produce this much easily. So as you decide on more 120V devices, you are increasingly pointed to a GenSet. We have been considering a generator for a few reasons. First, the genset can easily produce enough 12 volt power to replace 198 amps in roughly 2 hours. It is quieter than the engine since they are usually very well insulated and typically installed with a dry exhaust. Best of all a generator will allow for Sheryl's and my two dream options for the new boat. A washing machine and a scuba compressor!! There are a number of small units meant for sailboats in the 40-foot range.

AC Power Needs
The other part of a complete electrical budget is planning the AC usage. This means anything you will need to run on house current - not 12 volts. For the modern more complicated cruiser (think Steve Dashew not Lin & Larry) this includes a washer or washer/dryer, vacuum cleaner, desalinator, air conditioning etc. And if you have anything in this category that will need to be run away from the dock, then you will need to figure out how to produce the power yourself - basically a generator is the most common solution here.

So for our new boat we had no option but a generator since we will have 2 big power users (washing machine and Scuba compressor) that need house current. Then it was a matter of trying to figure out which one.

Fitting in a Generator
When Northshore did the original drawings for the Southerly 42 they took a genset into consideration. With the raised pilot house/saloon the boat has quite a large area under the saloon floor, that is also positioned nicely in the center of the boat. Many similar modern boats have raised saloon windows but did not raise the saloon seating - so there is no extra space (plus you can't see out either - go figure?!?). But the Southerly is a cunning design that provides space for tanks, generator etc right in the center where it is best to place heavy items like this. You can click on the plans for a larger view. The generator Northshore chose was a Mastervolt. I wasn't familiar with this make but when I looked into them they looked like the perfect solution.

Mastervolt
Mastervolt has a very good reputation worldwide, and best of all they make almost all the components for a boats electrical system. So you can get the whole electrical system from them and the components are designed to work together. This means that the generator is designed to integrate with the charger/inverter. The two can cooperate and add their power output together. For example, if the generator is running but there is a surge of current drawn as the scuba compressor starts up, the inverter adds in the extra needed power. This should allow us to run the compressor - potentially the largest user we will have, on the smaller generator. We will certainly report back as the system progresses.

I have been in the middle of planning the instruments for the new boat. Most of it is sorted out now so I thought I'd give you an overview of the (nearly) final system.

First, regular viewers of our TV show will know I installed a Raymarine C80 and associated system a few years ago. To say I have been happy with the C80 is a huge understatement! I mean, all the Raymarine stuff works great, the autopilot was strong and quick and handled Two-Step very well, and the instruments were excellent too. But the C80 Plotter was a revelation!! It has an 8.4" screen which was a huge inprovement over our last plotter (with a small 5" screen). But the best feature is the integration with the other components of the system. I had not realized what it could mean to have information from the wind, speed, autopilot and especially the radar communicated to the plotter.

• Wind: the C80 can display the wind as a yellow arrow blowing toward your boat - on the chart. This means you can instantly see the actual wind direction on the chart. For sailors this means all the calculations on which is the favoured tack is much easier.
• Speed: naturally the plotter knows the boat's speed from the GPS, but it also gets the speed through the water from the knot-log sender. So the plotter can calculate what currents are affecting the boat as well. If you have entered a waypoint then it can also calculate the progress you are making toward that. The C80 can display a small arrow showing the direction of the current/leeway.
• Radar: Here is my favourite integration feature of the Raymarine plotters. The radar image can be overlaid on top of the chart! It is actually quite difficult to do this from a technical point of view. On a big ship the heading doesn't change much, so the radar image can be simply set up to line up with the heading of the ship. But on a sailboat in perky conditions, the heading is changing quite a lot. So in the time it takes for one rotation of the radar scanner, the heading has changed. Without getting into too much detail, it is DARNED DIFFICULT to plot the radar image on top of the chart. But the Raymarine system does a good job. So good in fact that it can make accurate calculations on a single radar target... which leads to my next favourite feature!
• MARPA: this is really a result of the radar integration but deserves a heading all to itself since it is SO COOL! MARPA means mini automatic radar plotting aid. This is an amazing tool and really made us feel safer at sea whenever there were big ships around, and especially at night. Basically it allows you to identify a ship on the radar and have the MARPA track that target - giving you the direction and speed of the target. Marpa will draw an arrow on the chart showing the course of the ship! It also calculates the ship's speed, and whether it will pose a threat to you! It really is hard to explain just how great this feature is. I have featured it a couple of times in our TV show since I am really convinced it is a huge safety and confidence plus for anyone who gets out in open water where there are ships. Very cool! Here is the link to a good description of this on Raymarine's website For this to work well you should have a gyro compass - luckily one is built into the G series of Raymarine Pilots. We had the S2G on Two-Step and will get it again on the new boat. Bringing us to the next point...
• Autopilot: the plotter gets exact course and heading info from the autopilot. Put a waypoint on the plotter, press goto, and the autopilot can be engaged to steer along the track to that exact point. This means it will use the plotter and GPS to insure it doesn't deviate from the line due to currents and leeway. This is not possible if the autopilot doesn't have some level of integration with the GPS. Of course the best is to have a plotter since you can then plot the position visually on the chart - and just go there.

So here's the list of electronics we are getting for the new boat.

Chart-plotters - One E120 for the nav station. I never wanted a plotter in the nav station on Two-Step since you can't see out. But the new boat has a pilot house and it will be just perfect there. But I also want one outside for when we're sailing. So we are also getting a E80 - looks exactly like our trusted C80 but is able to network with the E120 below. This means we just have one Radar antenna, and one chart chip with the navigation charts on, but can display the info on both displays. This is a picture of the nav station on a Southerly 42 like ours with the Raymarine E120 in the nav station. I am still trying to figure out where to put the E80 display. It will be in the cockpit somewhere but I'm not sure where. My plan is to wait until we have sailed a bit to see where it would be best. Two obvious spots are up under the dodger (sprayhood) where its visible from the main cockpit, or back on the table where it would be easier for someone at the helm to see.

Autopilot - Raymarine S2G Smartpilot with two control stations. One in the nav station as pictured above and one at the helm. We are also getting a remote for the pilot in case we are sitting forward from the helm.

Radar - 2KW radome will be installed up the mast. (Raymarine also). This can do the Marpa functions since we have the Gyro series autopilot controller - S2G above.

Instruments - Raymarine ST60+ series wind, speed and depth separate instruments. Also a graphic display which can repeat any of the info on the "bus". This will be at the nav station - although strictly speaking the E120 plotter can provide the same info and more - its convenient to have it already up on a dedicated repeater.

Lifetag - Raymarines new safety MOB system. More on this in a future blog.

AIS - WAY COOL!! I have been so looking forward to having AIS. More in a special AIS blog!

Thats it for now. I'm off to plan the battery/genset etc.

Cheers

Paul

Sheryl and I have just got back to the studio from the spring filming in Italy and this morning received some picture from the yard at Northshore where the new boat is being built! How exciting!!! I just had to share some of the images with you.

Here is the Hull mould. The boat is moulded then a bunch of structure is put in before the mould is removed. This is so the hull is strong before the mould is taken off. So the plant is putting in bulkheads and stringers (lengthwise stiffeners). These will all be glassed in place.

The hull mould you see is carefully cleaned and then waxed on the inside. Then the gelcoat is sprayed in. So, the first part of the boat to be built is, somewhat bizarrely, the gelcoat (like paint). Then fibreglass is applied to the gelcoat in layers according to the designers specification until the desired thickness has been reached. Then coring is applied where specified - in this case above the waterline. Then the grid of stiffeners and finally the bulkheads.

Northshore has two facilities. The one pictured here is in Havant, and here they do all the fibreglass moulding. Then the boat will be trucked a few miles around to the main workshop in Itchenor (South England Near Chichester). This is the main Northshore headquarters where they complete and also launch the boat.

In the moulding shop in Havant they are also making the small mouldings that will be the two heads. These are normally made as a single moulding since it means they are waterproof - just like a built-in shower stall in a house. So here they are fitting the forward head moulding in place!

In the middle of the hull you can see a tall fibreglass structure. This is the keel casing. Since it is a lifting-keel boat the keel needs a place to retract into. But the keel will not be added until the boat has been trucked to Northshore in Itchenor.

Anyway, as you can imagine, Sheryl and I are VERY EXCITED about this. The new boat is a real thing!!

I will post more pictures as soon as they are available!

Cheers!!

Paul


This is the deck mould with the finished deck still on the mould.