6 AWESOME TIPS for new YACHT owners before starting BOAT LIFE

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in, we thought we'd have a little change of pace this week and thought we'd go over some of the

boat

life

lessons we learned the hard way that some of you may not have. To welcome our self-inflicted adventure, what seems like a

life

time ago, we left Australia with the intention of sailing around the world. It's been a roller coaster ride ever since and although the plan has changed many times, we've laughed and learned. a new lesson for every step of the way and between us the real adventure has barely begun that is a statement that we now live this goes back to when we first bought the

boat

we know that every day we spend in a marina and a boatyard, we pay it the same way they do it, they get it this way because the higher the bill the cheaper it gets per day so it becomes easier and easier to justify the extension and before you know it , I just ruined it.

I remember when we bought the boat, we had done all the work on the hull, repainting it and splashing it in the water, then we stopped the boat at the dock and continued to stay there. Until we finished all our jobs, Chiara was getting really frustrated and I was, you know, I was extending one more time and it was actually the rental car rates and every week I remember we extended this car and we extended this car and we extended this . car rental that was

starting

to explode anyway we finally broke down and Kira said that's it, we're done, I told Adam no we can't extend it any longer, we have to go, we have to go, we finally got out of there 20 minutes Along the way we found this wide expanse of open water and it was only then that we realized we could have been anchored a mile away from the dock with parking with the same access we've had all this time anchored.

Yard life is heartbreaking as I think anyone who has spent more than a few days living aboard a yard can attest that we feel obligated to work hard paying for the privilege of being there, so let's use that privilege. for every day that we can and it's only when you spend six weeks or something in hard work and you're doing jobs and then you land and you realize that most of those things could have been done at anchor with the cool breeze coming through. on the ship and working on the pipes with a much better view, I might add, weeks ago and you have spent 500 600 thousand dollars that you did not need to beg for just because you were clinging to the pseudo convenience of being next to the land if you look at the ship when We dive in, it's like a gypsy caravan, there are tons of tools, there are things everywhere, but we know that all we are going to do is get out of the sling 100 or 200 meters away, put a hook in and that's where the Real work is going to happen, believe me, everything is better at anchor and any work that can happen at anchor should happen at anchor.

The wording of that I guess could have credit to uh john kreshma and we and he passed it on to many. Many, many months after we learned that lesson the hard way, and I guess that's why I'm trying to convey it to you now sometimes, like the first time we got caught with our pants down, we were total newbies, we had been stagnant. anchored for about four days or so because there was a spell of bad weather we were sailing from grenade maine to carriacou where we had planned to sail uh the next morning it was a rubbish day for sailing we actually booked the lounge a couple of times and called them and we canceled about three times before because this bad weather was keeping us anchored just as we were clearing the lee of Granada, this wall of galloping horses came flying at us and none of us were particularly well prepared for it, we had all sail up because we were sailing downwind and we had yet to learn the lesson of the value of sailing at 80, so we were caught with full sail from 15 knots to 38 knots. from one side of the cabin to the other, I suddenly felt like I was standing, what used to be lying down was now standing up and I was standing in the cabin combing my hair and Chiara Blesser went straight to the main sheet, she did the right and tried to try to get it out to get the boat back up, the foot rail was in the water and while I was trying to get the sheet out I had to hammer it with a winch handle because it was stuck there so hard there was so much force on this cue that I just couldn't get it out by hand, I ended up having to pull it out of the beak with a winch handle, which obviously the mane flew off and took a lot of skin off my hands in the We got to work taking a reef, we weren't watching the weather and we weren't on top of what we should have been doing, which was taking a reef, seeing that there were white caps in the distance and a band of weather were coming towards us if we would have been caught with a reef in the boat maybe it wouldn't have gone completely crazy the load on the mainsheet could have been better it could have been removed everything would have probably happened the same way but not as bad and we could have addressed the situation sooner and frankly, there's not a huge difference in speed on this boat and some boats I've been on, between the first and the second reef, if you take them at the appropriate times, we've since learned from that and there was a moment that I remember in Guadeloupe and I knew that I had been observing that there were clouds over the mountains, that there were some kind of gusts that passed, that there was a bit of a breeze around anyway and I had seen ships sail away and get their butts kicked, so I knew I don't care what the wind speed is now, we're sailing ready for 38 knots, we crank everything up.

In preparation for what could be some pretty gusty weather, my conservatism was rewarded because bang, you could tell your watch bought it, we crashed absolutely as predicted and just when every other boat had a wall of galloping horses, a huge dark cloud at the top of the um. the mountains right on the lee edge 43 knots this time and our boat like the tow rail didn't even go into the water our boat just glided along quite happily in 43 knots of wind and we just took off we were screaming with two reefs and a statue at about seven knots um and we just held on during the trip, it was actually fun, so get used to sailing at 80 because what it costs you in speed you will recover without gray hair, you reduce the load on your crew, reduce the load on your equipment, reduce the load on the rig, yes you will sail a little slower, sail at 80, learn to love it and protect your boat, protect your crew, protect yourself and don't bother. kicked by a burst of compression, yeah, again, this is one of the ones that's been passed down, that's been passed down by a few people and it's great advice and we learned it the hard way before someone told us that's what we should do, oh this.

The situation was fine, so we were complete and utter newbies. It was our first night trip. We were leaving Key West and heading to Marathon because that is the staging area for crossing the Gulf Stream into the Bahamas. the big world is our first night sale the sun was setting and immediately became pear shaped the wind kind of picked up the clouds filled in and it became a dark and gloomy night with strong winds suddenly our bilge light appeared and we were looking at it and we thought it had been on for a long time and we both thought oh god, really the worst thing is that the autopilot had gone, it had abandoned us that particular night as well for some unknown reason which, by the way, was completely my fault and Completely self-inflicted.

One person was steering the wheel by hand while the other grabbed every floorboard possible to figure out where this mysterious leak was coming from. I could hear this as a spongy splash and it was coming from what I call no man's land, which is under the galley, we continued sailing to the marathon, we tacked again and the bilge light didn't come on during the whole attack we were doing, we found that on one tack it was worse than the other, basically to make a long story short the cross feed scuppers had chafed through one of them so we basically had an open hose straight to the boat, I think we ended up closing every second period, which is also Suppose, as an aside, if you have a leak, if you have a leak not just in the tack, but close all the seats in each of them because it could be a hose, the leak in a tack is drastically reduced, if not stopped completely, and that logic and that advice.

It means a break in the hull or a completely blown seat or whatever, obviously, by tacking you're going to increase that leak, maybe take it out of the water completely, but at least you're going to slow down the flow, maybe. to the point where your bilge pump can keep up, maybe not, but it gives you time and gives you information that sounds really obvious and I know I guess it kind of is, but you don't see it all the time. Look, I was there too. I did it by just going there and it's downwind the whole way.

We'll just deploy the jib because it's furled. Too easy. Everything will be fine. And 99.9 of the time. We have been in Puerto Rico for about a month or so at the marina, basically in the middle of the day there are huge winds so the wind will pick up to about 30 knots every day at about 10 and then relax around five and then in the afternoon it's beautiful it's lovely and calm so the advice we were given was to leave early sail with the breeze like the lee breeze in the morning we had planned to leave early in the morning we got a little bit late at the beginning of the morning, filling up with fuel and getting ready to leave and when we left it was around 10 o'clock and these winds were just

starting

to pick up, but the breeze was behind us at this time. okay, this is okay, well let's deploy a jib, I don't want to waste time gathering and hoisting a man, let's just deploy the gym because it's on a permit right in the middle, we noticed the winds were really starting. to get up and we were looking at about 30 knots of wind just with a jib up at that point I thought okay, um, let's go in a little early and we decided to go into a bay called booker, we started the engine and why wouldn't the engine works?

Put it forward. Accelerate forward. Nothing, no water comes out from behind. There is no movement. A lot of noise but nothing happens. We go down. We lost the driveshaft again. What can you do? Know? We had a jib in 30 knot winds. to us and there was no way of engine to get rid of that leg so we have to sail we will anchor for sale we did it once we can do it again but I only had one jib it was just a rookie mistake. at that time, but as many of you know, with just a jib in a 30 knot breeze that will cause a twisted lee rudder, which is when the boat wants to get out of the wind and I couldn't, I couldn't get it. the boat to turn into the wind or even pass close to the eye of the wind to get the main to lift and balance it instead of tacking, we end up having to make big circles making our way into a port with only one bow. sailing what I should have done from day one is put the mainsail on when I had the engine running if I had done the work from day one I would have had clearance sales I could have been able to roof them down to being drivable and I could have sailed pretty good anywhere, I'm very happy, the lesson here for me was regardless of how far you go, just balance the sails, it's just bad, it's bad for your autopilot, it's bad for your rig structure, it's bad . by the steering cables and all the joints, but it was my lack of understanding and lazy sail handling that put me in that situation in the first place.

I guess the best way to teach this lesson is to tell you the story of when we returned from our Atlantic Crossing and arrived in Saint Martin we were a little crushed and very defeated. I guess we knew we had a problem when we were in the Atlantic and our propeller shaft fell off and this was the final straw. It happened three times then and there. We went back to Martin, we knew we had to fix it, we are changing everything we can afford and possibly do to fix that problem, so it's a new propeller, new motor mounts, we're realigning it, it's a drive protector that does everything.

We didn't test these things between each of the updates we did and every time we did an update we thought it would finally work after the three updates had been installed, then we went and tested everything and did it. and lo and behold, we heard this almighty noise as we left the anchorage, it sounded like a Cessna 172was flying two feet above the boat, like it was just the noise that was so abnormal, so we came back to anchor and tried to figure out what it was, however we did it. We had done three updates in that time and therefore had no idea where to start, what to identify and what the problem could have been, we still tried to follow the advice that if we do it, we do a particular job one that has to do with navigation or the engine of the boat check it check it immediately and check it without doing anything else because then you know if it is right or if it is wrong and it is exactly and only that, so Adam has a rule about fixing things ourselves , for which we never pay. a job that we haven't at least tried to do ourselves and in the last three years I think we've paid three contractors as a perfect example of a time when you know things were broken and there was no one to fire me. there was no one to call there was no one who could help us at all coming back from Bermuda unfortunately this massive calm had just hit us there was no wind and we just wanted to get back so we started the engine and after about 12 hours or so from driving everything We started turning off our autopilot due to a high voltage alert and when we went and took a look we were pouring about 17 volts into our battery bank.

I started troubleshooting the charge controller and alternator to figure out what was wrong. the manual, you know, you go to all your reading material to try to figure out what's going on. I get to whatever page is in the manual and you're going through the troubleshooting steps, yeah, pass that test, pass that test. Try it if it still doesn't work call this number sure thing buddy 120 miles from the coast I love it I love it just sitting on the phone with you shoot the breeze we'll stop in the middle of the ocean with no way to get there to the coast because there was no wind at all, but fortunately because we knew a little bit about the situation we were dealing with, I was able to configure it to work with its internal charge controller, which brought us home, it is a spectrum where You can be involved or as little involved as you want, but the more you immerse yourself in it, the more self-sufficient, the safer you will be, the more useful you will be to other people and the less money you will flush down the toilet, on the contrary, no. down the toilet, that's probably a little critical, the less money you'll spend on contractors and they're not cheap at all, so I hope some of you may have gotten some value out of them, uh and if not, maybe you just have to laugh. at our expense, okay, but if you enjoyed it, please give us a thumbs up, subscribe and hopefully join us next week, thanks for watching.