arcturus

Why I like two-masted boats...Arcturus (still as Cybele) on her first sail up the Bay, a week after we bought her. (That's me and Ryan on the foredeck messing about with the spinnaker).

Our Route. Thanks to Kenton White for making this! We're actually in Bangor, N. Ireland, but this shows our 
landfall in Crookhaven - Twenty-three days at sea, and never more than 30 knots of breeze.

Update: April 2011 Pre-launch slideshow.


Somebody said somewhere along the line that the best boat is the one you have. 

Arcturus isn't perfect, definitely isn't ideal for the high-latitude sailing to come later, but she's a freaking good boat. I hate the centerboard, but we're making some design changes to try and simplify and strengthen it a bit (see below).

Arcturus is a 1966 Allied Seabreeze yawl, Hull #56, and it was the first and only boat Mia and I even looked at. At the time, we didn’t want to buy a boat, nor did we have the money to buy one. I was living on my dad’s Wauquiez Hood 38 Sojourner, and Mia was only in town for a few weeks from Sweden. We took Sojourner up to Baltimore for two days – I was browsing through the back of Spinsheet looking at the classified ads and saw the one for a Seabreeze yawl that had been apparently refit and was in beautiful condition. So we went and saw it, just for laughs – except that I told Mia that it was going to be my boat the minute I laid eyes on the hull when we pulled into the parking lot at Bachelor’s Point Marina in Oxford. I sold my car, and with some creative financing we bought her four weeks later. Mia and I have maintained a wonderfully friendly relationship with the boat’s previous owner ever since (who happened to be neighbors and friends with Hal and Margaret Roth). The decision was an emotional one for sure, but it’s working out.

I’ve always had ideas of going long-distance sailing, but we never had any real plans until we bought the boat. It kind of became apparent that the most logical first landfall would be in Scandinavia, as Mia’s family lives near Stockholm and it’d be a proper challenge sailing the northerly route from the US via Ireland, Scotland and Norway.

We’d been living on the boat on and off for a while, back and forth between Sweden (where Mia is still in school until June this year) and the Caribbean (where I’d been working as a skipper for Broadreach and as a ‘yellowshirt’ for the ARC rally). But it wasn’t until this past summer (’10) that we seriously started refitting the boat specifically for the crossing.

The Refit

I got a job for the summer with Southbound Yacht Rigging in Annapolis, working sort of as an apprentice and learning the trade, which was incredibly enjoyable, and we hauled the boat in Eastport next to my good friend Micah’s Alberg 35. With the resources of the rigging shop, Micah’s expert help and use of the shop that our neighbor at Sarles had, we were pretty well setup to do some major work.

Mast & Rigging

The main priority of the entire project was to make everything simple and seaworthy so I’d be able to sleep at night. The rig was the first logical place to start, being the most important part of the boat save for the hull.

Mia and have gotten quite good at dropping the mizzenmast on our own with the help of the mainmast halyard. We had the mainmast pulled at the Annapolis Harbor Boatyard en route to having the boat hauled over in Back Creek. I borrowed the mast cart from work and Mia and I walked the mainmast from the Annapolis yard about three blocks down the street to the other side of Eastport and set it on sawhorses next to the boat. It had a bird’s nest in the bottom of it when the pulled it (no birds though).

I stripped the mast bare, electrical wiring and all, and we replaced everything from new, including mast tangs, through-bolts and the spreaders. Inspired by Yves Gelinas’ refit of Jean du Sud, we re-designed the rig to have double spreaders instead of single, to stiffen the mast, add an extra shroud each side and shorten the unsupported lengths. The new spreaders were attached by a through bar instead of bolted on with brackets (the uppers came from Bacons and cost only $50 – I had them powdercoated at a motorcycle shop in town – but the lowers had to be bought new from Rig Rite for serious money). Cutting the slots in the mast to accept the through bars was the most challenging aspect of the project, especially getting both sides to line up exactly so the spreaders would mount straight.

We re-rigged with Dynex Dux (see my Ocean Navigator article for Dux details) that I spliced myself, mostly onboard the boat down in Florida last year with nothing but a sharpie and a chopstick (yes, the kind you eat sushi with). It’s super-duper lightweight, and I think the boat actually stands up to puffs of breeze better than it did before, but maybe it’s wishful thinking. I will not go back to wire.

Finally, we replaced the electrical wiring in the mast, installed a new masthead VHF antenna, retro-fitted LED bulbs in the tricolor and removed the electronic wind indicator for a trusty Windex.

Chainplates

The biggest structural improvement to the boat (and subsequently the biggest and most difficult project) were the re-design and installation of the new titanium chainplates. The old stainless chainplates were 1 ¼” wide, ¼” thick and held in place with three 3/8” bolts, mounted on plywood bulkheads through the deck, though nearly as far outboard as the toerail. They leaked like a sieve, and they were not properly designed from the get-go – the bulkheads were vertical, yet the fore and aft lowers obviously have an angle from the vertical to them, so all of the force from the shrouds was trying (quite successfully it turned out) to bend the chainplates in line with the shrouds. There were originally three each side, an upper and two lowers.

I started from scratch and decided we’d mount the new ones outboard on the hull. I like the stoudt look it gives the boat, they’d be easy to install (so I thought), and I could make them any size I chose. Plus, there would be no holes through the decks and my books would stay dry on the shelves.

I had John Franta at Colligo Marine (who I’d worked with on the Dux) draw up my design in CAD. I added a bolt hole and made them 1 ½” wide, ¼” wider than original. And we upsized the bolts to 1/2”. So they’re substantially stronger than what we reaplaced, and titanium won’t corrode. John had them fabricated as straight bars, but we’d have to bend them to match the shroud angle. This was the fun part.

The new chainplates actually had to be bent in two ways – first, the top of it had to be bent in-line with the shroud. Then they’d have to carefully be shaped to match the curvature of the hull on which they’d be mounted. It’s nearly vertical that high off the waterline, but there is some curve to it. My friend Rodney is a sculptor, and came to the rescue. He helped me trace cardboard templates of the hull curve, and we took the chainplates to his studio in Baltimore and bent them on an ancient-looking mechanism that used a long lever arm to cold-work the metal.

The shrouds also had an angle relative to the vertical when viewing the boat from the side. We made a mock-up of a mast by temporarily stepping the spinnaker pole with a few lines to simulate the shrouds, and simply sighted the angles from afar while Micah held the ‘shrouds’ in place. Using only my eyes, we were able to get the measurements between the three chainplates within a 1/4” on each side.

The next challenge was what to do about the rubrail. The boat’s previous owner had installed a mahagony rubrail the length of the boat, and I had to decide whether to cut out a section for the chainplates or try to go ‘through’ it, as if the chainplates had been installed before the rubrail. We did this, as it would give a better finish.

With some drill bits and a Fein saw, we chiseled out a gap between the rubrail and the hull, six in all (one for each new chainplate) seriously dinging up the hull in the process. We then dry-fitted the chainplates after drilling the bolt holes, and poured epoxy into the gaps I’d cut. With wax on the metal, they popped right out once the epoxy cured, leaving a perfect slot. We cut backing plates from ¼” G-10, mounted the new chainplates with 5200, faired in the dings in the hull and had a friend spray the damaged areas with Awlgrip to match the boat (which turned out to be standard ‘Oyster White,' after some research). I left in place one of the inboard chainplates for the intermediate shroud that we added when converting to a double-spreader rig, and attached the lowers and uppers to the new outboard chainplates. We filled the old chainplate holes – they don’t leak anymore!

Mizzen / Cape Horn Wind Vane

One of the reasons I was attracted to that Seabreeze ad in the first place is because I’m a sucker for boats with two masts. I grew up sailing my dad’s various ketch’s, all named Sojourner, worked for several years on the 74’ schooner Woodwind in Annapolis, and am of the general assumption that a ‘real’ boat is one with two masts. A fine philosophy, but a bit of a pain in practice.

The mizzen re-do starts actually with the wind vane. We met Yves Gelinas at the Annapolis Boat Show in 2009. I’d seen his movie Around the World with Jean du Sud, one of the all-time classics. His Cape Horn vane was the epitome of simplicity, strength and elegance, so there was really no other choice for me, just a matter of saving money and ordering it.

Yves came by Arcturus one day during the show (the boat was docked at Sarles, just across the drawbridge and only about a 5 minute walk from Yves’ booth). He crawled around the lazarette taking measurements (and dropped his tape measure in my bilge, where it remains). He actually asked if I was insistent on keeping the mizzen (there’s that philosophy again), and suggested I either get a new mast or build a bigger step to get the boom higher by a foot so as not to interfere with the vane. Raising the mast would allow the boom to be higher without sacrificing sail area (the mizzen is only 65 square feet to begin with!). Yves took his measurements and six months later sent us the new gear straight from Quebec.

I didn’t think much about the mizzen in the interim, figuring we’d figure it out when the time came to mount the gear. Rather serendipitously, we were hauled out next to a guy named Ernie who was replacing the mast on his Com Pac 25. He’d restored nearly the entire boat by himself, and it was in gorgeous condition inside and out. A new mast and rigging were to be the final touches. The old mast was lying on the ground next to the boat, and appeared to me the perfect size for Arcturus, though perhaps slightly too long. Our old mizzen was woefully skinny, and the Com Pac mast seemed a bit beefier, perfect for what I wanted. The only problem was that he’d already sold it to a guy who worked in the boatyard to use as a gin-pole on his catamaran.

I left a note in Sharpie on a piece of wood next to the mast, and a few days later the guy came by. We struck a deal where he’d take my old mizzen, I’d get the old Com Pac mast and Ernie would get a photo of his old mast as we entered Stockholm harbor. We struck lucky yet again – Phil was a freelance yacht painter, and ended up being the guy who touched up our hull with Awlgrip after the chainplate installation. Funny how things work out isn’t it?

Anyway, we cut about 3 feet off the Com Pac mast, bought a new step from Dwyer for $25, rigged it with Dux and stepped it. The Cape Horn installation went without a hitch, and the boom rides wonderfully a few inches above the vane. Good idea Yves.

Interior

We got a little carried away with the interior modifications. The boat’s former owner had re-finished the interior to like-new condition, with white-painted bulkheads, oiled teak trim and new sea-foam green cushions. It had a u-shaped dinette to port that converted to a double with a settee and pilot berth above it to starboard. The settee pulled out to create a single berth below the pilot berth, but was horribly uncomfortable to sit on when not extended, as it was too short and the backrest was vertical due to the pilot berth.

We immediately removed the pilot berth cushion and made a makeshift bookshelf, but it looked crappy because of all the wasted space. The settee was still uncomfortable. I didn’t want to have to be messing about converting the dinette at sea just to have a sleep.

We started by cutting back the pilot berth, angling the backrest and creating a simple straight settee with a bookshelf behind it on the starboard side. This created a ready-made seaberth, a great place to sit, and a 6’6” long bookshelf, wide enough to also stow my sextant on.

We made a makeshift bookshelf behind the dinette on the portside, but I was never happy with it, so we finally gutted it and started over this summer with the boat hauled. One of Mia’s projects was to remove all the teak trim and install Styrofoam behind it for insulation, so there was a lot of destruction being done anyway.

We ripped out the dinette and grinded away the bulkheads supporting it from beneath, getting the portside down to a bare hull. I re-designed the settee and bookshelf to be a mirror of the starboard side, inspired by the simple, symmetrical interior of a Cherubini schooner I was then working on at Southbound. We glassed in partial plywood bulkheads to support the settee and create three separate under-seat lockers. We epoxied plywood battens to the hull to insulate between and accept the teak ceiling that would cover the foam. I cut hatches out of the settee seat as large as possible to provide easy access to the lockers which are a real boon to our storage, as we had none there before with the dinette save for two tiny cubbies. The finished product looks almost original and is far more practical since we now have two ready-to-go sea berths plus 13 feet of shelf-space and 3 extra storage lockers. The last piece of the puzzle will be to install a drop-leaf table which I will incorporate into the centerboard pipe…

Centerboard

…Which brings me to this. The Seabreeze was designed by Maclear and Harris, two dudes who worked for Sparkman & Stephens in the 50s and 60s, most notably on the famous centerboard yawl Finisterre who won three consecutive Bermuda races back in the day. They left S&S soon after and designed the Seabreeze along Finisterre’s lines, only three feet shorter (and out of fiberglass rather than wood). All but one of the 135 boats has a centerboard (the exception being a hull built in Australia – some guys bought the plans from Maclear & Harris and asked them for instructions on how to build without the board – they deepened the keel by 9 inches I believe).

The early boats had heavy bronze boards, while the later ones had aluminum. Arcturus is a ‘bronze’ boat. The lifting arrangement was a 7x19 wire attached to the board, passing over a turning block in the bilge, under the engine and over another block in the engine bilge, and finally to a bronze worm gear winch in the cockpit. To keep it watertight, the cable passes through bronze pipe between the sheave boxes.

The night before we were to launch the boat this past summer I tried to change the cable (the boat was actually in the slings so I could drop the board low enough to change it). It jumped off the sheave near the keel and that was that. Micah came over and we dismantled the sheavebox (whose lid was fiberglass, secured by about 20 bolts around a ½” flange), lashed the board permanently about halfway down, and put the lid back on with 4200, hoping that it would dry by morning before launch. It took us a six-pack of Guiness and until after midnight to finish. I had to have the boat in the water for the upcoming Boat Show, where we’d be displaying the Dux with John Franta and Colligo, so the centerboard would have to wait until the next haulout. There had to be a better way.

I started thinking that the simplest way would be to have no sheaves at all – less to go wrong. With the old arrangement, there was no way to fix a jumped sheave unless the boat was hauled. With Rodney’s (the sculptor) help, we designed a pretty ingenious system that he is helping me weld together.

The sheavebox in the keel will get a stainless plate for a lid, replacing the fiberglass. On that plate will be welded a ½” ID stainless pipe that will extend to the coachroof and be bolted in place as one piece. On the underside of the lid, we are mounting a plastic anchor-roller sheave – wide, and vee-shaped, with almost no way for a cable to jump off. The plate, sheave and pipe will be one unit, bolted onto the sheave box and then onto the coachroof. We’ll install an exit sheavebox near the cabin ceiling for the cable, which will come down on the outside of the pipe to the same bronze winch, will be mounted on a steel plate welded to the forward side of the pipe. The drop-leaf table’s aft end will be mounted to this pipe, hiding the winch under it. The cable will be replaced with dyneema so as not to cut through the plastic anchor roller sheave. Should it break at sea, it should be easily replaced by fishing a weighted string down the pipe from inside the cabin that will come out through the keel – I can then dive under the boat, retrieve it and attach it to the board. The pipe will be completely watertight (the water level would rise inside the pipe to the level of the boat’s waterline – the only opening in the pipe is for the small sheave at the height of the coachroof, way above the waterline – the keel will be airborn before this hole could ever get below the waterline), one-piece and strong, and will provide an extra handhold in the cabin, and a convenient mount for the table.

Engine

Right now, the Westerbeke is sitting on the cabin sole waiting to be cleaned up and put back together. I am seriously tempted to turn it into a mooring block after our trip to Florida last year on the ICW.

Sails

Finally, the other most important aspect. I had Chuck O’Malley of Doyle Chesapeake design and build new working sails for the boat, hand-finished and slightly heavier than normal for offshore work. I am anxiously awaiting to test them when I get back from Sweden and get the boat in the water in the next few weeks. We have a new main with two reef points, new mizzen with one reef and new 130% hank-on genoa with one reef on the way, all from 9 oz. cloth.

Chuck also took my staysail, which was previously hoisted flying on it’s own wire luff, and fitted bronze hanks and a new synthetic rope luff to replace the wire. During the re-rig I fitted a permanent inner forestay, so the staysail can remain hanked on at all times offshore.

The coolest project he’s doing for us is fitting up a Colligo luff-line furler that John Franta gave us after the Annapolis show this year. My dad’s old sailing friends Dave and Francine (who are also catering our USA wedding party with a whole pig!), gave me a big 180% nylon drifter from their Pearson 365 that they sold a while back. The sail was likely built in the 70s or 80s but didn’t appear to ever have been out of the bag. We hoisted it a few times on Arcturus – the luff is perfect, but the clew extends nearly to the transom when sheeted flat. Chuck at Doyle is cutting it down to about a 165% sail, removing the boltrope in the luff (that was for a traditional furler), and installing a dyneema luff to be used with the Colligo Furler. It will be hoisted on the spin halyard, tacked to the anchor roller, and flown flying, independent of the forestay. We can roll it and leave it hoisted, and in lousy weather, drop the whole thing, coil it like a snake and easily stow it. So in essence, we have three (nearly 4) headsails – the 165, 130 (with a reef to make it about 100%) and the staysail – all ready to go without having to change headsails on the foredeck. We’ll see how it works in practice.

Stay tuned for updates on the final push before launch coming up in April – I have exactly one month from the time I get home on Monday to finish the centerboard pipe, convert the boat from wheel to tiller steering, connect the Cape Horn control lines, re-install the engine (maybe), paint the bottom, launch the boat, fit the sails and test sail everything. Plus a million other little details. Come May I’m off to Bermuda to work for the Arc Europe rally, then back to Sweden for my wedding, after which we’ll be setting off, hopefully by July 1!