The Elusive Nut 2012 Lying on my back, the lower half of my body on the aft end of the starboard pipe quarterberth, the upper half scrunched against the inside of my Moore 24 GANNET’s hull, I could not quite see the nuts that were my objective. GANNET’s interior is a crawl space. Except in my favored position in a Sportaseat on the two seven inch wide four foot long boards that pose as the cabin sole, I don’t have even full sitting headroom, only slouching. Going aft on the the quarter pipe berths is more slithering than crawling. Slither I did one morning in order to replace the Autohelm electrical deck connection with one made by Perko. The Autohelm fitting was held by two tiny bolts with two tinier nuts at the aft end of the cockpit. Reaching up blindly--something at which I am becoming increasing adept--In a contortion no old man should have to endure, I finally fumbled a pair of vise grip pliers around one of the nuts and then rolled over and slithered backward on my belly to the companionway and went on deck where I unscrewed the bolt. I never did catch the second elusive nut and finally broke away enough of the plastic fitting from the cockpit side to expose it to a hack saw. While I don’t believe in such laws, often it does seem that when you are trying to remove something, with no matter how many or how few screws or nuts, one sticks. I have been known to become a bit testy at such times. But that day I found myself thinking: it’s a lovely morning; you are on the water; and you don’t have anything better to be doing than working on this boat--except sail her, and that will come again with time I removed the Autohelm fitting to replace it with one by Perko because I have two different tiller pilots: one Autohelm; one Signet. Putting Perko plugs on both now enables me to use them interchangeably. Although I have owned boats for almost fifty years and probably shouldn’t have been, I was surprised by how much time and money it took to convert GANNET, well equipped for around the buoys day racing when I bought her, into an ocean passage maker. Why anyone would want to do that is a reasonable question. My initial plan was to buy a small boat to sail on Lake Michigan during the northern summer and fly to New Zealand, where my other boat, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, lives on a mooring, to sail her in the northern winter. Sounds pretty good. But from the beginning one of the attractions to me of Moore 24s is their reputation for liking big wind and waves and another is that many have been successfully raced from California to Hawaii. I like sailing oceans. I like being far away from land and settling into the routine of a long passage. Several other factors entered in. I have completed circumnavigations in four successive decades--two in the 00s--and it has been in my mind to make it five. I turned 70 in 2011 and it has also been in my mind to go around again in my 70ties. And once I bought GANNET, I realized that for me two boats are too many. I have long known that I am a serial not a parallel machine. I concentrate on one thing and then go on to the next. I don’t like to multitask and have never thought that anyone does so well. Two boats more than 8,000 miles apart and a wife are too much, at least for me. So unable to do justice to both, I realized that I had to choose between GANNET and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. GANNET won out because she offers the possibility of a new sailing experience and new challenges and more interesting problems to solve. And because I have a special affection for small boats. Once THE HAWKE OF TUONELA was listed for sale, GANNET’s time on The Great Lakes was certain to be brief. The Chicago area is the first place I’ve lived as an adult where you can’t even keep a boat in the water year round. And I need the ocean’s endless horizon. Lake Michigan is the fifth biggest lake in the world. I can’t see across it, but I know that Michigan is only seventy miles away. That makes a difference. So a Moore 24 for the world. It would be interesting. I have quoted from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets before: Old men should be explorers. But preparing GANNET was taking such a long time. The morning I changed the Autohelm fitting I had owned the tiny sloop just over a year. Yet by a more realistic measurement I had only owned her three or four months. Bad weather prevented the boat yard from launching her until late in May of 2011, and a detached retina ended an already brief sailing season for me in early September. For a year progress would be considered slow. For three months it was pretty good. My first major change to GANNET was to replace her gasoline outboard with an electric Torqeedo, of which I have written elsewhere. Then, after a few day sails, I started on her interior. I doubt that many Moore 24 owners spend much time below. The boats are usually raced hard for a few hours and then put away, often pulled from the water and returned to their trailers. GANNET’s previous owner had told me the interior needed work, and he was right. Mismatched paint, dead cushions, a split in the vinyl on one of the pipe quarterberths, confused wiring. I needed to sort this out before I could stay aboard overnight and have an organized base on which to build. New cushions and pipe berth covers ordered, I removed everything else from the interior and painted it satin white, using Petit’s one part Easypoxy, from bilge to overhead. Moore 24s having no liner made this easier, though that is not a word that came to mind when I was sprawled roller in hand in that dead space in the stern. Paint dry, I sanded flaking varnish from the Bruynzell plywood main bulkhead with its distinctive circular cutout, and from other plywood panels, filled holes, and applied several coats of Deks Olje. I stopped varnishing decades ago. When the new cushions and covers were delivered, the transformation was dramatic. The electrical system was next. As one would expect with ultra-lights, weight is critical on Moore 24s, which displace only 2050 pounds, of which half is in the keel. But the little boats are often raced with a crew of four or even five. The maximum permitted crew eight is 825 pounds, and this puts me 670 pounds ahead. While crew weight is movable and useful on the rail going to windward, I intended to try to keep as much as I could centered and low. However I was thinking in terms of life aboard for months and thousands of miles, not hours and tens of miles, and some compromise was inevitable. And there is the matter of style: added weight or not, GANNET would have a couple of Dartington crystal double old-fashioned glasses and a bottle of Laphroaig on board. The first and greatest weight was two 80 amp Group 24 AGM batteries, which just squeeze into the battery compartment at the aft end of the v-berth. At 56 pounds each, this is like always having another small person on board, but denser and located just above the keel. I replaced the fused electrical panel with one with circuit breakers, removed the single fixed cabin light and a wire running to an old stern pulpit mounted GPS antenna, and secured other wires that were dangling. Moore 24 are basically empty shells. There are no water tanks, no head, no sink, no lockers, and ‘system’ may an exaggeration of her electronics. GANNET’s batteries, eventually to be charged by solar panels would basically be used to charge other batteries, some built-in to computers and iPods and speakers; some rechargeable Sanyo eneloops, which I have found to be the only rechargeables that hold their charge well while stored and so are ready when you need them; and the Li-Ion Torqeedo battery. For charging I wired a cigarette lighter socket directly from the AGMs to each side of the cabin, each with its own in-line circuit breaker; bought from Amazon two Elgato Micro USB plugs, two Tripp Lite 150 watt inverters, two eneloop chargers and a lot of AA and AAA eneloop batteries. Equipment that can charge with a USB cable, I plug into the Elgato. Equipment that charges from AC I plug into the Tripp Lite, which I have found to be blessedly silent. Many inverters aren’t. Music is essential to my sailing life. GANNET’s music system is appropriately ultra light, consisting of an iTouch and a choice of bluetooth speakers, one a Soundmatters FoxL v2 that is not much bigger than a candy bar, the other a Bose Soundlink. The Soundlink, which came onto the market after I had bought the FoxL, has a fuller sound; but the FoxL is amazingly good for its diminutive size. It has long been my policy to have a back up for essential systems. When I bought her, GANNET’s depthfinder and GPS displays were mounted on the mast and difficult for me to see. I moved the depthfinder back to the cockpit to where a hole exactly its size covered with a piece of plastic proved it had been before; and replaced the outdated GPS with a Velocitek ProStart, also mast mounted, but with a very readable display of GPS generated COG and SOG simultaneously. GANNET’s cabin lights are two Mighty Bright XtraFlex LED book lights, which have two levels of brightness and I can clip anywhere. One is more than enough to illuminate what I like to call GANNET’s Great Cabin. When I installed the six switch circuit breaker panel, I labelled one “Chart Plotter”; but a timely article in PRACTICAL SAILOR comparing chartplotting software for iPads caused me to change my mind and buy a 2012 iPad and the iNavX app instead of a conventional chartplotter. Because there is some confusion about whether the iPad’s “assisted GPS” will get a position in mid-ocean, I also bought a Dual Electronics XGPS 150A bluetooth GPS receiver, which may not have been necessary. I have been told that the recent iPad and iPhone 3G or 4G models will get positions anywhere. But I do not personally know that for a fact and do not want to find out a couple of hundred miles offshore. With one caveat, I have found the iPad and iNavX to make an excellent chartplotter. iNavX is simple to understand and use; comes set up to download all the free NOAA charts and buy those for other parts of the world at what I think are reasonable prices; and does everything I need it to and a good deal more, including being able to interface with NMEA 0183 and 2000, and even wirelessly control some autopilots. The caveat is that I find the iPad screen impossible to read in bright sunlight. This is not a serious problem because the unit obtains a GPS position from inside the cabin. Pairing the Dual XGPS with the iPad was simple. But then I wondered how to determine if the position on my iPad was coming from its own internal antenna or the Dual. Online I found advice to put the iPad into Airplane Mode, which turns off both GPS and Bluetooth; then turn Bluetooth back on. That the position displayed on the iPad is then coming from the Dual is proven by its obediently appearing and disappearing when I switch the Dual on and off. I also have chartplotting software with detailed world chart coverage in my laptops which obtain positions using any of several handheld GPS units. And I bought a used David White sextant, the same WWII U.S. Navy model that I used on my first circumnavigation. I will probably eventually use the now free circuit breaker switch for a masthead LED tri-color nav light. With an interior I could now live in and with, I moved to the deck where I considered anchoring and sail handling. Boats, particularly small boats, are filled with compromises. GANNET came with a toy anchor and 150’ of polyurethane rode that I assume met some race requirement, but were far from adequate in the real world. I prefer to anchor on all chain, which is impossible weight for a Moore 24, and to use anchors without pivot points, which are potential finger pinchers. THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s three anchors are a 33 pound Bruce, a 35 pound Delta and an a 20 pound aluminum Spade. For the past decade the Spade has been the primary and only used anchor. However, the correct Spade for GANNET weighs 10 pounds and costs more than $400. I may buy one eventually, but I settled for a 14 pound Delta costing $105 at an end of season sale and a rode of 230’ ½” 8 strand plaint with 20’ of ¼‘ chain. I also bought the smallest bow roller I could find, and replaced the u-bolts for bow lines with cleats. The rode is oversized for GANNET. That is a compromise I can live with. Working at the bow brought me in contact with GANNET’s lifelines. Not all Moores even have lifelines. Neither did EGREGIOUS, the Ericson 37 I sailed around Cape Horn on my first circumnavigation, or CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, the 18’ open boat I sailed most of the way around the world on my second. I decided to keep GANNET’s low lifelines, more as something to hold onto than to prevent falling overboard; but replaced the wire with Amsteel line, which is stronger, lighter and easier on skin. GANNET’s headsails had hanks, the first I had used in decades, and her mainsail a bolt rope. When lowered these sails flew all over the place. I tamed the jib by having Furlex furling gear installed, and, over the winter, tamed the main by having a new one made, fully battened, raised and lowered on a Tides Marine Strong System track. I also had a new 110% furling jib made; and an asymmetrical spinnaker to be set with Facnor gennaker furling gear. All this duplicates what I used successfully on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA during my fifth circumnavigation. GANNET’s new sails are not as fast as her former racing sails, but being able to control them quickly from the cockpit is to me worth the modest loss in performance. With the installation of the furling gear in August of 2011, I was ready to sail across Lake Michigan. I provisioned the little boat, preparing to leave on the day after Labor Day. On the day before Labor Day, a dark magenta tinged shadow with a thin acid green line at its curved leading edge began to spread across my right eye. The worst, the very worst, task in converting GANNET from fresh water to salt, took place the following spring, when on a series of cold April days, I removed GANNET’s old VC17 antifouling paint while she sat on her trailer. As I had far too long to observe, red VC17 is a beautiful paint with a hard teflon surface that burnishes to a mirror smooth bronze racing finish. However, it is idiosyncratic and cannot be coated with anything but itself or a salt water version, VC Offshore. I don’t like hard paints, which build up and must eventually be removed. Neither of the VCs is rated highly for anti-fouling. And I don’t like the colors, preferring to have my boat’s bottoms be white. In addition to personal aesthetics, when I had a new rudder made for THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, the builder, who was in Florida, specified that the warranty would be invalid if dark anti-fouling was used because he had made experiments showing that dark paint increases the temperature of rudders to the point that the thin skin might fail. A friend emailed that she had easily removed VC17 from her boat with isopropyl alcohol. On their website, the manufacturer of VC17 says remove by sanding. Research online found others recommending acetone or Xylol. Rejecting sanding because of my eye, I tried isopropyl alcohol first. Then acetone. Then xylol. All worked. To an extent. But where others said the VC17 dissolved from their hulls like magic, mine stuck tenaciously. So, despite, my eye, I sanded. Sanding anti-fouling paint is illegal in New Zealand and unpleasant and unwise anywhere. GANNET is a tiny boat with a fin keel and little wetted surface. Still, that bottom came to seem enormous as I spent insufferable day after insufferable day wiping and sanding. I kept telling myself: at least you will never have to do this again. Never. Ever. Again. Finally it was done, and two coats of white Petit Vivid, an ablative paint, were applied. GANNET went back in the water in early May 2012. On a cold, misty day, with a lowering sky, we drove an SUV load of stuff, some removed fro the winter: batteries, Torqeedo, sails; some new: sails; Tides Marine Strong track; up to GANNET. Hooking up the batteries was no problem. The sails were. I expected that somehow they would be. Tides Marine did not manufacture the track properly. It was a foot too long and one side of the groove that slides up the mast was rough with burrs of plastic. The dimensions of Moore 24s are not a closely guarded secret, so I have no idea why they got the length wrong. And the burrs, enough of which I removed with a screw driver to get the track up, were inexcusable. I have a small DeWalt cordless drill. I was impressed that its battery held enough charge all winter to drill a necessary hole after I hacksawed off the unneeded length of track. I have a tradition of baptizing new sails in blood. I don’t mean to, it just happens: that day by smashing my left hand a couple of times into the boom gooseneck fitting while shoving the Tides Marine track up the mast. Only a few drops of blood landed on the sail. They are hardly noticeable and add character. Or so I tell myself. I didn’t get to the jib until 5 p.m., when I was tired and cold and did something stupid. The luff tape seemed to fit in the Furlex groove, but the sail went up very, very slowly. This happened with the jib I had modified for the furler the preceding year; but the new sail was worse. About halfway up it stuck and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get it up or down. This despite generous use of McLube. Deciding up was what I wanted, I did manage to winch it inch by inch to the top. But once it was up, I found myself wondering if it will ever come down and what I will do if it won’t. Well, for a while it doesn’t have to; and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. GANNET is the only Moore 24 I have ever seen, but other Moore owners have provided me with useful information by email. During the winter, one wrote after seeing photos of GANNET’s interior online, to tell me that she is the only Moore he knows of that does not have below deck reinforcement for the aft lower shroud. Usually this is done by having pad eyes back to back, one above deck, one below, secured by the same bolts, with a wire or high tech line run from the below deck eye to a turnbuckle attached to a third pad eye secured down low on a partial bulkhead. He sent some photos which showed the arrangement on his boat. I must admit that I had wondered about GANNET’s aft lowers not be attached to a chainplate, but being inexperienced with the stresses on a Moore 24 rig, I thought that normal. After rewiring the autopilot deck fitting, my two main projects in spring 2012 were to secure the aft lower and to install solar panels. A question online at the Moore 24 owners group about upgrading winches added another when I decided to follow a suggestion to replace old Barient 10s with Harken 20.2s, which are dramatically bigger, but weigh less than a half pound more each. The only difficult part in reinforcing GANNET’s aft lowers was removing the U-bolts which was their current deck fittings. When I was finally able to pound them up with a hammer and get all the necessary pad eyes, turnbuckles and Amsteel line together, it all went smoothly. The new Harkens arrived while I was working on the shrouds. I read owners manuals. I noted that Harken specifies that the winches be installed using either slot head or hex head M6 bolts. I am used to the metric system, which has been adopted by every country except the United States, Myanmar and Liberia--and there is a set of allies for you. But, understandably, my small local WEST does not carry metric bolts, so I bought ¼” hex heads instead. After drilling holes through the deck, I discovered that Harken means what they say. ¼” don’t work. So I ordered M6s online. And when they arrived, they fit into the winches perfectly. Sometimes it pays to do what you are told. Often when I was working on GANNET, I studied her deck, considering placement of solar panels. I had narrowed my choices to panels by Aurinco and Ganz, and made full size cardboard cutouts of various sizes and took them up to the little boat. The difference between a rectangle 18½” x 16¼” and one 22⅛” x 20½” does not seem great; but, as the cutouts revealed, on GANNET’s deck is critical. The larger Ganz 30 watt panel is too big, so I ordered two of the smaller Aurinco 25 watt panels for near the stern, and two 47½” x 6” Aurinco 25 watt panels that I would place somewhere forward. I also ordered a Blue Sky Solar Boost 2000e regulator, which I have found effective on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. When the Aurinco panels arrived I was impressed by their construction and finish. Only ⅛” thick, they will not be toe-stubbers and are flexible enough to follow the slight camber of GANNET’s deck. Positioning solar panels is another compromise: avoiding shadows; being out of the way; and aesthetics. The latter caused me not to stick things on pulpits or towers or to have a windmill, which would easily produce more power than GANNET needs at less expense. The position of the two at the stern was obvious within an inch or two. They will be in the way when I lower or raise the Torqeedo, and at such times I will put a cushion over the panel to protect it. Aurinco says the panels can be walked on, but it is better not to. I moved the two forward panels around frequently one evening I spent the night aboard, finally leaving them a few inches either side of the forward hatch running forward parallel to the centerline. Just before drilling holes the next morning, I decided they were too much in the way there and moved them outboard. At times they will be shadowed by sails, depending on angles of wind and sun and course. Only with time will I know if the four Aurincos are sufficient for GANNET’s needs. Solar panels in place, wired and charging made GANNET independent of shore power and brought me to a plateau. There was more to do, but I didn’t want to do it. July 4 was imminent. A third of the summer had already passed. I was tired of working. It was time to put down tools and go sailing.

The Elusive Nut

2012

Lying on my back, the lower half of my body on the aft end of the starboard pipe quarterberth, the upper half scrunched against the inside of my Moore 24 GANNET’s hull, I could not quite see the nuts that were my objective.

GANNET’s interior is a crawl space. Except in my favored position in a Sportaseat on the two seven inch wide four foot long boards that pose as the cabin sole, I don’t have even full sitting headroom, only slouching. Going aft on the the quarter pipe berths is more slithering than crawling. Slither I did one morning in order to replace the Autohelm electrical deck connection with one made by Perko.

The Autohelm fitting was held by two tiny bolts with two tinier nuts at the aft end of the cockpit. Reaching up blindly--something at which I am becoming increasing adept--In a contortion no old man should have to endure, I finally fumbled a pair of vise grip pliers around one of the nuts and then rolled over and slithered backward on my belly to the companionway and went on deck where I unscrewed the bolt.

I never did catch the second elusive nut and finally broke away enough of the plastic fitting from the cockpit side to expose it to a hack saw.

While I don’t believe in such laws, often it does seem that when you are trying to remove something, with no matter how many or how few screws or nuts, one sticks.

I have been known to become a bit testy at such times. But that day I found myself thinking: it’s a lovely morning; you are on the water; and you don’t have anything better to be doing than working on this boat--except sail her, and that will come again with time

I removed the Autohelm fitting to replace it with one by Perko because I have two different tiller pilots: one Autohelm; one Signet. Putting Perko plugs on both now enables me to use them interchangeably.

Although I have owned boats for almost fifty years and probably shouldn’t have been, I was surprised by how much time and money it took to convert GANNET, well equipped for around the buoys day racing when I bought her, into an ocean passage maker.

Why anyone would want to do that is a reasonable question.

My initial plan was to buy a small boat to sail on Lake Michigan during the northern summer and fly to New Zealand, where my other boat, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, lives on a mooring, to sail her in the northern winter. Sounds pretty good. But from the beginning one of the attractions to me of Moore 24s is their reputation for liking big wind and waves and another is that many have been successfully raced from California to Hawaii. I like sailing oceans. I like being far away from land and settling into the routine of a long passage.

Several other factors entered in.

I have completed circumnavigations in four successive decades--two in the 00s--and it has been in my mind to make it five.

I turned 70 in 2011 and it has also been in my mind to go around again in my 70ties.

And once I bought GANNET, I realized that for me two boats are too many.

I have long known that I am a serial not a parallel machine. I concentrate on one thing and then go on to the next. I don’t like to multitask and have never thought that anyone does so well. Two boats more than 8,000 miles apart and a wife are too much, at least for me. So unable to do justice to both, I realized that I had to choose between GANNET and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. GANNET won out because she offers the possibility of a new sailing experience and new challenges and more interesting problems to solve. And because I have a special affection for small boats.

Once THE HAWKE OF TUONELA was listed for sale, GANNET’s time on The Great Lakes was certain to be brief.

The Chicago area is the first place I’ve lived as an adult where you can’t even keep a boat in the water year round. And I need the ocean’s endless horizon. Lake Michigan is the fifth biggest lake in the world. I can’t see across it, but I know that Michigan is only seventy miles away. That makes a difference.

So a Moore 24 for the world. It would be interesting. I have quoted from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets before: Old men should be explorers.

But preparing GANNET was taking such a long time.

The morning I changed the Autohelm fitting I had owned the tiny sloop just over a year. Yet by a more realistic measurement I had only owned her three or four months. Bad weather prevented the boat yard from launching her until late in May of 2011, and a detached retina ended an already brief sailing season for me in early September. For a year progress would be considered slow. For three months it was pretty good.

My first major change to GANNET was to replace her gasoline outboard with an electric Torqeedo, of which I have written elsewhere. Then, after a few day sails, I started on her interior.

I doubt that many Moore 24 owners spend much time below. The boats are usually raced hard for a few hours and then put away, often pulled from the water and returned to their trailers. GANNET’s previous owner had told me the interior needed work, and he was right. Mismatched paint, dead cushions, a split in the vinyl on one of the pipe quarterberths, confused wiring. I needed to sort this out before I could stay aboard overnight and have an organized base on which to build.

New cushions and pipe berth covers ordered, I removed everything else from the interior and painted it satin white, using Petit’s one part Easypoxy, from bilge to overhead. Moore 24s having no liner made this easier, though that is not a word that came to mind when I was sprawled roller in hand in that dead space in the stern.

Paint dry, I sanded flaking varnish from the Bruynzell plywood main bulkhead with its distinctive circular cutout, and from other plywood panels, filled holes, and applied several coats of Deks Olje. I stopped varnishing decades ago.

When the new cushions and covers were delivered, the transformation was dramatic.

The electrical system was next.

As one would expect with ultra-lights, weight is critical on Moore 24s, which displace only 2050 pounds, of which half is in the keel. But the little boats are often raced with a crew of four or even five. The maximum permitted crew eight is 825 pounds, and this puts me 670 pounds ahead. While crew weight is movable and useful on the rail going to windward, I intended to try to keep as much as I could centered and low. However I was thinking in terms of life aboard for months and thousands of miles, not hours and tens of miles, and some compromise was inevitable. And there is the matter of style: added weight or not, GANNET would have a couple of Dartington crystal double old-fashioned glasses and a bottle of Laphroaig on board.

The first and greatest weight was two 80 amp Group 24 AGM batteries, which just squeeze into the battery compartment at the aft end of the v-berth. At 56 pounds each, this is like always having another small person on board, but denser and located just above the keel.

I replaced the fused electrical panel with one with circuit breakers, removed the single fixed cabin light and a wire running to an old stern pulpit mounted GPS antenna, and secured other wires that were dangling.

Moore 24 are basically empty shells. There are no water tanks, no head, no sink, no lockers, and ‘system’ may an exaggeration of her electronics. GANNET’s batteries, eventually to be charged by solar panels would basically be used to charge other batteries, some built-in to computers and iPods and speakers; some rechargeable Sanyo eneloops, which I have found to be the only rechargeables that hold their charge well while stored and so are ready when you need them; and the Li-Ion Torqeedo battery.

For charging I wired a cigarette lighter socket directly from the AGMs to each side of the cabin, each with its own in-line circuit breaker; bought from Amazon two Elgato Micro USB plugs, two Tripp Lite 150 watt inverters, two eneloop chargers and a lot of AA and AAA eneloop batteries. Equipment that can charge with a USB cable, I plug into the Elgato. Equipment that charges from AC I plug into the Tripp Lite, which I have found to be blessedly silent. Many inverters aren’t.

Music is essential to my sailing life.

GANNET’s music system is appropriately ultra light, consisting of an iTouch and a choice of bluetooth speakers, one a Soundmatters FoxL v2 that is not much bigger than a candy bar, the other a Bose Soundlink. The Soundlink, which came onto the market after I had bought the FoxL, has a fuller sound; but the FoxL is amazingly good for its diminutive size. It has long been my policy to have a back up for essential systems.

When I bought her, GANNET’s depthfinder and GPS displays were mounted on the mast and difficult for me to see. I moved the depthfinder back to the cockpit to where a hole exactly its size covered with a piece of plastic proved it had been before; and replaced the outdated GPS with a Velocitek ProStart, also mast mounted, but with a very readable display of GPS generated COG and SOG simultaneously.

GANNET’s cabin lights are two Mighty Bright XtraFlex LED book lights, which have two levels of brightness and I can clip anywhere. One is more than enough to illuminate what I like to call GANNET’s Great Cabin.

When I installed the six switch circuit breaker panel, I labelled one “Chart Plotter”; but a timely article in PRACTICAL SAILOR comparing chartplotting software for iPads caused me to change my mind and buy a 2012 iPad and the iNavX app instead of a conventional chartplotter.

Because there is some confusion about whether the iPad’s “assisted GPS” will get a position in mid-ocean, I also bought a Dual Electronics XGPS 150A bluetooth GPS receiver, which may not have been necessary. I have been told that the recent iPad and iPhone 3G or 4G models will get positions anywhere. But I do not personally know that for a fact and do not want to find out a couple of hundred miles offshore.

With one caveat, I have found the iPad and iNavX to make an excellent chartplotter. iNavX is simple to understand and use; comes set up to download all the free NOAA charts and buy those for other parts of the world at what I think are reasonable prices; and does everything I need it to and a good deal more, including being able to interface with NMEA 0183 and 2000, and even wirelessly control some autopilots.

The caveat is that I find the iPad screen impossible to read in bright sunlight. This is not a serious problem because the unit obtains a GPS position from inside the cabin.

Pairing the Dual XGPS with the iPad was simple. But then I wondered how to determine if the position on my iPad was coming from its own internal antenna or the Dual. Online I found advice to put the iPad into Airplane Mode, which turns off both GPS and Bluetooth; then turn Bluetooth back on. That the position displayed on the iPad is then coming from the Dual is proven by its obediently appearing and disappearing when I switch the Dual on and off.

I also have chartplotting software with detailed world chart coverage in my laptops which obtain positions using any of several handheld GPS units.

And I bought a used David White sextant, the same WWII U.S. Navy model that I used on my first circumnavigation.

I will probably eventually use the now free circuit breaker switch for a masthead LED tri-color nav light.

With an interior I could now live in and with, I moved to the deck where I considered anchoring and sail handling.

Boats, particularly small boats, are filled with compromises.

GANNET came with a toy anchor and 150’ of polyurethane rode that I assume met some race requirement, but were far from adequate in the real world.

I prefer to anchor on all chain, which is impossible weight for a Moore 24, and to use anchors without pivot points, which are potential finger pinchers. THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s three anchors are a 33 pound Bruce, a 35 pound Delta and an a 20 pound aluminum Spade. For the past decade the Spade has been the primary and only used anchor. However, the correct Spade for GANNET weighs 10 pounds and costs more than $400. I may buy one eventually, but I settled for a 14 pound Delta costing $105 at an end of season sale and a rode of 230’ ½” 8 strand plaint with 20’ of ¼‘ chain. I also bought the smallest bow roller I could find, and replaced the u-bolts for bow lines with cleats.

The rode is oversized for GANNET. That is a compromise I can live with.

Working at the bow brought me in contact with GANNET’s lifelines. Not all Moores even have lifelines. Neither did EGREGIOUS, the Ericson 37 I sailed around Cape Horn on my first circumnavigation, or CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, the 18’ open boat I sailed most of the way around the world on my second. I decided to keep GANNET’s low lifelines, more as something to hold onto than to prevent falling overboard; but replaced the wire with Amsteel line, which is stronger, lighter and easier on skin.

GANNET’s headsails had hanks, the first I had used in decades, and her mainsail a bolt rope. When lowered these sails flew all over the place.

I tamed the jib by having Furlex furling gear installed, and, over the winter, tamed the main by having a new one made, fully battened, raised and lowered on a Tides Marine Strong System track.

I also had a new 110% furling jib made; and an asymmetrical spinnaker to be set with Facnor gennaker furling gear.

All this duplicates what I used successfully on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA during my fifth circumnavigation. GANNET’s new sails are not as fast as her former racing sails, but being able to control them quickly from the cockpit is to me worth the modest loss in performance.

With the installation of the furling gear in August of 2011, I was ready to sail across Lake Michigan. I provisioned the little boat, preparing to leave on the day after Labor Day. On the day before Labor Day, a dark magenta tinged shadow with a thin acid green line at its curved leading edge began to spread across my right eye.

The worst, the very worst, task in converting GANNET from fresh water to salt, took place the following spring, when on a series of cold April days, I removed GANNET’s old VC17 antifouling paint while she sat on her trailer.

As I had far too long to observe, red VC17 is a beautiful paint with a hard teflon surface that burnishes to a mirror smooth bronze racing finish. However, it is idiosyncratic and cannot be coated with anything but itself or a salt water version, VC Offshore. I don’t like hard paints, which build up and must eventually be removed. Neither of the VCs is rated highly for anti-fouling. And I don’t like the colors, preferring to have my boat’s bottoms be white. In addition to personal aesthetics, when I had a new rudder made for THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, the builder, who was in Florida, specified that the warranty would be invalid if dark anti-fouling was used because he had made experiments showing that dark paint increases the temperature of rudders to the point that the thin skin might fail.

A friend emailed that she had easily removed VC17 from her boat with isopropyl alcohol. On their website, the manufacturer of VC17 says remove by sanding. Research online found others recommending acetone or Xylol.

Rejecting sanding because of my eye, I tried isopropyl alcohol first. Then acetone. Then xylol. All worked. To an extent. But where others said the VC17 dissolved from their hulls like magic, mine stuck tenaciously. So, despite, my eye, I sanded. Sanding anti-fouling paint is illegal in New Zealand and unpleasant and unwise anywhere. GANNET is a tiny boat with a fin keel and little wetted surface. Still, that bottom came to seem enormous as I spent insufferable day after insufferable day wiping and sanding. I kept telling myself: at least you will never have to do this again. Never. Ever. Again. Finally it was done, and two coats of white Petit Vivid, an ablative paint, were applied.

GANNET went back in the water in early May 2012.

On a cold, misty day, with a lowering sky, we drove an SUV load of stuff, some removed fro the winter: batteries, Torqeedo, sails; some new: sails; Tides Marine Strong track; up to GANNET.

Hooking up the batteries was no problem.

The sails were. I expected that somehow they would be.

Tides Marine did not manufacture the track properly. It was a foot too long and one side of the groove that slides up the mast was rough with burrs of plastic. The dimensions of Moore 24s are not a closely guarded secret, so I have no idea why they got the length wrong. And the burrs, enough of which I removed with a screw driver to get the track up, were inexcusable.

I have a small DeWalt cordless drill. I was impressed that its battery held enough charge all winter to drill a necessary hole after I hacksawed off the unneeded length of track.

I have a tradition of baptizing new sails in blood. I don’t mean to, it just happens: that day by smashing my left hand a couple of times into the boom gooseneck fitting while shoving the Tides Marine track up the mast. Only a few drops of blood landed on the sail. They are hardly noticeable and add character. Or so I tell myself.

I didn’t get to the jib until 5 p.m., when I was tired and cold and did something stupid.

The luff tape seemed to fit in the Furlex groove, but the sail went up very, very slowly. This happened with the jib I had modified for the furler the preceding year; but the new sail was worse.

About halfway up it stuck and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get it up or down. This despite generous use of McLube.

Deciding up was what I wanted, I did manage to winch it inch by inch to the top. But once it was up, I found myself wondering if it will ever come down and what I will do if it won’t.

Well, for a while it doesn’t have to; and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

GANNET is the only Moore 24 I have ever seen, but other Moore owners have provided me with useful information by email.

During the winter, one wrote after seeing photos of GANNET’s interior online, to tell me that she is the only Moore he knows of that does not have below deck reinforcement for the aft lower shroud. Usually this is done by having pad eyes back to back, one above deck, one below, secured by the same bolts, with a wire or high tech line run from the below deck eye to a turnbuckle attached to a third pad eye secured down low on a partial bulkhead. He sent some photos which showed the arrangement on his boat.

I must admit that I had wondered about GANNET’s aft lowers not be attached to a chainplate, but being inexperienced with the stresses on a Moore 24 rig, I thought that normal.

After rewiring the autopilot deck fitting, my two main projects in spring 2012 were to secure the aft lower and to install solar panels. A question online at the Moore 24 owners group about upgrading winches added another when I decided to follow a suggestion to replace old Barient 10s with Harken 20.2s, which are dramatically bigger, but weigh less than a half pound more each.

The only difficult part in reinforcing GANNET’s aft lowers was removing the U-bolts which was their current deck fittings. When I was finally able to pound them up with a hammer and get all the necessary pad eyes, turnbuckles and Amsteel line together, it all went smoothly.

The new Harkens arrived while I was working on the shrouds.

I read owners manuals. I noted that Harken specifies that the winches be installed using either slot head or hex head M6 bolts. I am used to the metric system, which has been adopted by every country except the United States, Myanmar and Liberia--and there is a set of allies for you. But, understandably, my small local WEST does not carry metric bolts, so I bought ¼” hex heads instead. After drilling holes through the deck, I discovered that Harken means what they say. ¼” don’t work. So I ordered M6s online. And when they arrived, they fit into the winches perfectly. Sometimes it pays to do what you are told.

Often when I was working on GANNET, I studied her deck, considering placement of solar panels. I had narrowed my choices to panels by Aurinco and Ganz, and made full size cardboard cutouts of various sizes and took them up to the little boat.

The difference between a rectangle 18½” x 16¼” and one 22⅛” x 20½” does not seem great; but, as the cutouts revealed, on GANNET’s deck is critical. The larger Ganz 30 watt panel is too big, so I ordered two of the smaller Aurinco 25 watt panels for near the stern, and two

47½” x 6” Aurinco 25 watt panels that I would place somewhere forward. I also ordered a Blue Sky Solar Boost 2000e regulator, which I have found effective on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA.

When the Aurinco panels arrived I was impressed by their construction and finish. Only ⅛” thick, they will not be toe-stubbers and are flexible enough to follow the slight camber of GANNET’s deck.

Positioning solar panels is another compromise: avoiding shadows; being out of the way; and aesthetics. The latter caused me not to stick things on pulpits or towers or to have a windmill, which would easily produce more power than GANNET needs at less expense.

The position of the two at the stern was obvious within an inch or two. They will be in the way when I lower or raise the Torqeedo, and at such times I will put a cushion over the panel to protect it. Aurinco says the panels can be walked on, but it is better not to.

I moved the two forward panels around frequently one evening I spent the night aboard, finally leaving them a few inches either side of the forward hatch running forward parallel to the centerline. Just before drilling holes the next morning, I decided they were too much in the way there and moved them outboard. At times they will be shadowed by sails, depending on angles of wind and sun and course. Only with time will I know if the four Aurincos are sufficient for GANNET’s needs.

Solar panels in place, wired and charging made GANNET independent of shore power and brought me to a plateau. There was more to do, but I didn’t want to do it. July 4 was imminent. A third of the summer had already passed. I was tired of working. It was time to put down tools and go sailing.