Hard to believe we’ve been here a week already. It’s flown by and so much has happened. As I write, we are out sailing…. Just the two of us. We’ve had lots of training (well mostly Anthony has been in training) on the sail configuration and components, docking, electronics, (watermaker, circuits, batteries, charger, solar panels, etc.) plumbing (i.e., how to empty the holding tanks for the toilets), and more. Anthony has been sailing mostly of his life and this is our 3rd boat, but much has changed. For one, it’s a catamaran (two hulls) and not a monohull (like Sea Fever), and 2) there have been many advancements in electronics and gear since we last sailed. It’s a lot of information to take in in a short time and easy to get to “information overload” quickly.
Our trainers (from Outremer) have been fabulous. They are all very knowledgeable, easy-going, patient and speak English very well (certainly better than our French). Victor was our first trainer for a quick overview of the layout and where different controls were located. Stephane was next and he is part of the “after-sales service” team. He works with new owners to familiarize them with all of the boat systems and fixes anything that is not functioning properly. Thomas was our trainer for the electronics such as the chart plotter and wireless system and Julien worked with us on the sail configuration and docking practice.
This short video shows Anthony and Julien pulling out the Code 0, a sail made for upwind sailing in light conditions.
While Anthony has been in “training”, I’m still trying to organize our belongings and figure out where things should be stowed. Storage on a boat is limited and often in small and hard to get to locations. So, it’s a challenge to determine what needs to be available for quick access (binoculars, VHF radio, sailing gloves, winch handles), and what can be in a storage bin under a bunk (wine…. lots of it!).
The weather has been mixed. The first few days were sunny and warm (low to mid 60s), and then came the clouds and rain. This revealed 2 issues: first the rain. On Wednesday (4/28) it rained most of the day and rained quite hard at times. The next morning, as Stephane was explaining something, we noticed water beneath the microwave. At first I thought maybe I hadn’t dried the dishes well before putting them away. Then we pulled everything out and found far more water there than would have come from wet dishes. Oh no… a leak! Where had it come from? Turns out it was caused by missing sealant around the shaft of the primary electric winch on the cabin top. More rain was forecast for the next several days and the last thing you want to see on a boat is a leak.
So, Stephane and Fred came back that afternoon (in the pouring rain), pulled out the microwave, removed the winch, resealed everything and replaced the microwave. They were there until 7:00 pm making sure the problem was taken care of that day. That’s service!
The rain came in as part of a cold front…. The key word here is “cold” (froid in French). One of the “options” we added was AC which can also act as a heater (reversible heat pump), so naturally, when it turned colder, we wanted to know how to turn on the heat. We were hooked up to “shore power” so thought there’d be no issue even though the AC/heater unit would require a lot of amps. Ahhh, slight problem…our boat is wired for 110V (US standard), but Europe runs on 220V. We have an “inverter” to transform 220V power to our 110V set up. Except that our inverter isn’t “strong” enough to start the AC/Heater compressor … so no heater. Yikes!
Okay, well then, let’s just buy a portable heater…. Ahhh, no joy there either because we have no electrical outlets to handle 220V, only 110….. Hmmm….The low inside the cabin was 53F last night – and the rain is, well, cold and wet …….but I’m married to an engineer …
So we pulled out my little teeny hair dryer and turned it on and the salon went from 56 degrees to 65 degrees in a short time. It was noisy, and we had to run it quite often, but it works for now. We also turned on the oven and that helped as well, but since it runs on propane, we have to keep a hatch open for ventilation so it’s not ideal either…. Luckily sunshine was forecast for the rest of the week. Hopefully, we can get a new, more powerful inverter installed soon – before we need AC!