“You Work From The Boat Full Time? How’s That Going?”

Hylas 54, New England Cruise 2020

By Rich

We bet a lot of you wonder how it’s going with three of the four of us working day jobs from the boat. It’s an interesting question because while I have been working from boats for long periods full time for several seasons between Rover and our prior boat, Le Saberage, those experiences were very different in that the boats tended to stay in one marina for weeks at a time, most often at a slip. That meant marina-supplied WiFi, electrical power supplied from the marina, and a known cell phone signal strength.

Continue reading “You Work From The Boat Full Time? How’s That Going?” →

Reader Poll! What Is The Dumbest Thing You’ve Seen A Crew Do When Anchoring?

Uncategorized

By Rich

Alright readers! If you’ve ever anchored out in Annapolis for Blue Angels, the 4th of July, or Bands in the Sands, or if you’ve ever anchored … ummm …. anytime in the BVI, then you’ve no doubt seen some pretty heroically hair-brained stupidity by fellow captains trying to set or retrieve an anchor. Use the comments selection below (or PM me and I can post) and let’s see if we can select the winning story!

Just to kick things off, I’ll start with two stories: one I witnessed and one (because if you can’t laugh at yourself, you shouldn’t laugh at others) that I starred in! Continue reading Reader Poll! What Is The Dumbest Thing You’ve Seen A Crew Do When Anchoring? →

Hylas 54: Reflections On Ground Tackle

Hylas 54, New England Cruise 2020, Yacht Design

By Rich

Fortunately for each member of Team Rover, we are all aligned on preferring to be at anchor by far over moorings or slips. That’s a really good thing because the experience is considerably different for each of the three options. Slips and (in particular) moorings are more or less tie-up-and-forget-it affairs, whereas anchoring requires more diligence and skill in choosing the right spot and monitoring to be sure swing radiuses are appropriate and the boat is not dragging in stiff breezes. So far we’ve been anchored more than half or 3+ week trip and I have the following reflections to share about the experience so far: Continue reading Hylas 54: Reflections On Ground Tackle →

Paula’s First Post!

Hylas 54, New England Cruise 2020

By Paula

Greetings from Rover!  This entry covers almost 3 weeks of information on our stops to include site info, workout options and food.  Future posts will be shorter as I get into the groove of writing.  So, here we go…after 10 years of planning, we finally embarked on our “around the world” excursion on June 27, 2020 from Annapolis, MD.  Like everyone, we needed additional thoughtful planning to account for the new normal, “living with Covid.” More of that to come for sure. Continue reading Paula’s First Post! →

We Are Giving A Live Seminar This Sunday!

Hylas 54

By Rich

Join us this Sunday at 5PM! We are giving the first of a three part seminar for the Annapolis Yacht Club on our transition from inshore Bay racers to offshore passage making and cruising. Here are are the details, we look forward to seeing you there!

3-Part Cruising Webinar: Starts this Sunday – 4/26, 5PM
Part 1 (April 26) will be an introduction to the crew and will cover our preparation for the cruise. Part 2 (May 3) will focus on yacht selection and Part 3 (May 10) will be about what we’ve learned so far.
Join using this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82273152784?pwd=dS83NlhkNWE0NkgwZ1Y3Z1RaRlVodz09
Meeting ID: 822 7315 2784
Password: 251750

An Object Lesson In Keeping Diesel Clean

Tips & Tricks

By Rich

It’s a terrible joke but I’ll make it again: marine diesel engines always fail at the worst time. From an engineering standpoint, this is a bad joke because there is a perfectly good reason why engines choose rough weather to fail: big seas stir up the asphaltenes or blobs of microbial growth, which then get sucked up into lines and filters. Many boat owners like to blame old, dirty fuel tanks or having “gotten bad fuel” at their last fill up, but the reality is that keeping fuel clean requires constant vigilance even on new boats. The ship’s log our our Hylas 54, Rover, show that she was experiencing engine failures due to clogged fuel filters when she was only a year old. Below is a great a video from Distant Shores TV showing they had the exact same experience on their one year old boat – and, as always, the engine failure occurred in an choppy inlet, which is when they always do. If you watch the video all the way through you will see that a terrible design flaw in Southerly’s fuel plumbing directly contributed their failure too.

How To Prevent Incidents Like This Continue reading An Object Lesson In Keeping Diesel Clean →

Ever Struggle To Get a Dockline On A Far Away Piling? Rig A Heaving Line

Tips & Tricks

By Rich

Don’t you hate it when you want to add a dockline to one corner of your boat, but the nearest piling is 15 feet away and much too tall to throw a line over it? On our Hylas 54 we found the prior owners had rigged heaving lines to solve the problem. Heaving lines are relatively light and small, but long lines with a weight on one end. Here’s what ours look like:

Continue reading Ever Struggle To Get a Dockline On A Far Away Piling? Rig A Heaving Line →

Keeping Water Tanks Clean: Part III

Hylas 54, Tips & Tricks

By Rich

For more backgound on this post, see this post and this post. In summary, the fresh water tanks on a boat can get pretty disgusting inside if they aren’t managed carefully. We cleaned the water tanks on our Hylas soon after we bought her and it was a big job that I’d prefer not to have to do regularly. As such, I needed a means of draining the very last bits of water out of each tank once they were “empty” (but not really empty, because the pump pickups are high enough from the bottom of the tank that small amounts of water remain in each tank, then go rancid and start growing small swamp monsters). Continue reading Keeping Water Tanks Clean: Part III →