Fitness for Purpose (Crossing oceans)

[Andrew Troup]

Which if any of the listed items do you think (in general terms) probably disqualifies a cruising sailboat as being ready FOR YOU to cross ocean(s) with?

[robert sailor]

And the listed items are??

[Andrew Troup]

You try typing out that lot! :-) (see above, now posted)

[robert sailor]

OK got that one. My boat is better equipped than I would consider as minimal so I filled it out as if I was sailing a buddies boat in the trade winds. If it was in higher lattitudes I would have different requirements. Where is the raft/epirb/first aid/flares

[Andrew Troup]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Where is the raft/epirb/first aid/flares

Not intended to be exhaustive.

To paraphrase Groucho,

"this is my poll and I'm sticking to it. If you don't like it, I have others. "

[robert sailor]

Good answer, got my first chuckle this morning

[Andrew Troup]

In the light of recent events, maybe I should have included "Inability to hoist mainsail without running propulsion engine" !

(eg, because the vessel needs to be turned into the wind)

[Andrew Troup]

Thanks, guys, even these early results look interesting

[Nicholson58]

Pretty good list. Hard to rank many of them. Multiple dewatering including manual is certainly high on the list. Charging without engines - high. I don't presently carry a Sextant but we do carry 660 Watts solar & multiple GPS units. Emergency tiller in the lazerette. Simrad auto-helm. Power primaries and hand-held winch drive but all can be run by hand. Storm trisail, storm cutter sail, furling mizzen & main; heavy weather chicken-#2. 8-man AVON, epirb, dinghy, VHS, SSB, AIS, FM. Radar, radar reflector. 380 gal diesel in 5 tanks. 280 gallons water in 4 tanks with foot pump. Multiple re-build kits and spares for lots of stuff (except whatever is broken this time ) Bushel of filters, extra oil, grease & glycol. 5-gallon bucket of plugs. 6 gallons of hole clamps, couple hundred feet of hoses. Spare heat exchangers. Buckets of shackles & blocks. Spare starters; main & generator. We also carry Brownie for diving on the hull. Miles of spare rope and pre-made sheets & halyards. 5 anchors.

I miss the little 35 HP diesel on the Heritage One-Ton I raced. It had a manual compression release and hand crank start. Our current boat has 115 HP Westerbeke and needs a starter - no question.

"Things that have broken unexpectedly" might be a good topic too, along with how it was fixed. I was amazed on a Lake Michigan transit I went below to eyeball the engine room and found the two tiny 1/4-20 threaded rods holding the main seawater strainer together had parted. Spare rods aboard now . See my temp repair tourniquet.

On the same trip, the antisiphon valve on the main engine wet exhaust failed as did the throttle cable in the binnacle. Vice grip on the siphon breaker & end-for-end the cable with aluminum ground lugs for clamps. Siphon valve was dumping about 100 gallons/hour under engine.

How'd that little guy get in there? Cute little minks in Fairport all over the break wall & dock. Very tame.

That's most of the toys. Other stuff we are working on is a comprehensive med kit and some training.