A Travelling A25?

[Beta Don]

All you can do with a windlass is haul up the anchor after you've broken it out of the weeds, mud, rocks or whatever. A suitable sized anchor for an A-25 wouldn't weigh anymore than 25 pounds - Look into a Rocna or my favorite, the Mantus anchor. 10 feet of 5/16ths chain and 200 feet of 1/2 inch three lay rope will hold a 25 foot boat in anything short of a hurricane

I'm older than you and have sailed and anchored with a 34' sailboat for years and never considered 'investing' in a windlass. I shorten the scope until I'm over the anchor and then use reverse gear to break it out of the bottom and then haul it up the remaining 15 or 20 feet by hand. A 25 pound anchor and 10 pounds of chain are not difficult to get aboard, once the anchor is broken out and as I mentioned earlier, you can't use the windlass to break it out unless you have a much bigger windlass than you normally find on a small boat

I would suggest you try it the old 'Armstrong method' first for a while and then buy a windlass later on if you find it's a problem. I think you'll find it's not that difficult

Don

[Sunsetrider]

I appreciate your words, Don. I do not have a whole lot of real "cruising" experience in unfamiliar or challenging waters. I have been reading blogs of those advising on the ICW and Bahamas for example, and my main concern is getting caught solo close to shore with an onshore wind, having to leave the helm to struggle with the anchor. I have no plan to get a windlass in the next year, so we'll see how things go in the meantime.

[WillieC]

Yeah, single handing is an acquired skill. Rowed out to our mooring buoy last week with my 7 year old grandson in a brisk chop. My main concern was getting him safely aboard the WillieC. Rowed alongside the swim platform, hoisted him safely aboard, concerned about opening up the canvas and getting him really aboard. He said, "Look grandpa, there goes the dinghy!" In my concern for him, I neglected to secure the dinghy. Darkness is upon us, the wind is picking up and it's low tide. And there goes the dinghy down the canal. The missus is the captain, I'm just the cabin boy with benefits, not the kind you are thinking of. And she is safely ashore, ensconced in her books. So now I am in a bit of a hurry: Start the engine, turn on the gps/sounder, release the buoy, and hold my colorful language for the grandson. Oh, and retrieve the dinghy headed for a pair of anchored boats in shallow water. I can't see a thing, will have to stow the spotlight a little more accessible reach, but little Alfie's eyes are still young. "It's right there, grandpa! You are headed right for it!" Caught it on the first pass with the boat hook on the starboard side. Still in gear, idling, then pulling away before hitting the other boats. The wind keeps picking up, 18" waves. Now all we gotta do, young Alfred, is find the buoy and we can call it a night. (The whole mission was grandpa and Alfie camping on the boat. None of this drama was planned.) A couple stabs, after we found our buoy among several in the neighborhood, brought us right alongside, starboard again, against the wind, in gear idling. "Now Alfie, when I tell you, you pull back hard on the big red knob!"
Perfect. I guess I can't really call that single handing, but it is not unlike your concern, Sunsetrider, getting caught close to shore with an onshore wind. Practice. Practice. Practice.

[Sunsetrider]

Sounds like a night to remember! And throw in a little joint stiffness, lack of good balance and nimbleness, well you get the drift!

[stxray]

Hello Sunsetter,
Like you I am older, not in the best of shape, restoring an A25 with the intention of chasing horizons; most of which will be done single handed. When I was younger, I had no doubt I could handle whatever life threw at me; now, not so much.

Maybe its need or maybe it's piece of mind but I moved a windlass from my nice-to-have list to my need-to-have list.

Sure, I can go up to the bow and probably hoist the anchor. But, do I want to? What if conditions/circumstances are bad?

Check out the Good Automatic Windlass. It's the only one I've found that does not not require you to tie off the anchor line once set or retrieved. As a result, you can drop and/or retrieve your anchor without leaving the helm. It's what I'll be installing.
Ray

[Sunsetrider]

Thanks for the tip Xray - I will noodle that item for sure!

[kerrye]

To troubleshoot your electrical problem, run a jumper wire from the negative post of your battery to the engine control panel. If it fixes the problem, you know you have a grounding issue and you need to install a permanent grounding wire.

[Sunsetrider]

Any spot in particular on the back of the panel?

[Mark Deeser]

Allow me to share a possible money saving idea on the dingy davits. We found a set of Weaver Snap Davits on eBay for 150 dollars. You can use them to mount a hard or inflatable dingy off your swim platform. Easy to raise or deploy. If your plans are cruising, as the others have stated the Albin would be really to beat.

[kerrye]

Any spot in particular on the back of the panel?

Wherever would give it a good ground, perhaps even to the wire intended to ground the panel.

[DesertAlbin736]

Mark D says,

Allow me to share a possible money saving idea on the dingy davits. We found a set of Weaver Snap Davits on eBay for 150 dollars. You can use them to mount a hard or inflatable dingy off your swim platform. Easy to raise or deploy. If your plans are cruising, as the others have stated the Albin would be really to beat.

Quite so. That's what we had (inherited from previous owners), a Boatex 8 hard shell on snap davits and liked it a lot, right up until the dinghy caught a wave in rough seas off Nelson Island, 6 miles North of Pender Harbour on British Columbia's Sunshine coast.

That was one of the scariest experiences I've ever had, and we came close to losing our whole boat and possibly even our lives. We were motoring along Northbound in what started out as relatively calm conditions, a short chop of wind waves a foot or less, winds no more than 10 to 12 knots. But in short order it started getting rougher fast, and as we reached the point marked with an X in the satellite view below I heard a big BANG and looked aft to see our dinghy hanging down by the stern. A foot or two of the dinghy's aft gunwale was completely ripped out and hanging down scooping water.

The obvious thing to do was to release the dinghy (the front snap davit latch and the upper standoff rods were still attached) and let if float free, which it did but was completely swamped and damaged beyond repair. From there things went from bad to worse. Next thing we knew the dinghy capsized with the bottom awash and jammed up under the stern of our boat. I could only assume the dock line of the dinghy had fouled our propeller, since try as we might it would not budge when we tried to push it free with a boat hook.

So now we're adrift on a lee shore heading toward that rock seen just above the X in the satellite photo. And while it looks like a speck in the picture, it's really a big steep rock with depths over 150 feet right up to it. So what started out as a PAN-PAN situation was rapidly deteriorating into a MAYDAY.

Dinghyloss.jpg

I got on the radio & declared a PAN PAN emergency to the Canadian Coast Guard, but there was little they could do beyond take our information and relay it. Luckily another boat (there have been so many serendipitious things about this trip), a 45 sailboat with an 80 HP engine happened to be nearby & heard our calls. This all happened on July 11th. I say serenipitous because we had previously met these folks on July 2nd on the bus ride to Hummingbird Inn Pub at Montague Harbour on Galiano Island in the Gulf Islands across Georgia Strait and again in Pender Harbour on the mainland and had just had lunch with them the day before. And this guy was no ordinary sailor, but had his 100 ton Coast Guard captain's license. He and his wife were Americans from Glacier, WA. Ironically his boat's name was "Whitecap".

He came around and took us under tow, which in itself was a pretty hairy operation, since by then we had drifted to within 50 yards of the big rock and heading right for it at about a knot to knot and a half. By then the seas were building to 3 ft plus (wind against tide current) and the winds were kicking up whitecaps. The first attempt to toss a line failed, so the second time he went around and trailed 200 ft of yellow floating poly stern tie line astern and swooped by close enough that I was able to snag it with a boat hook. Only while I was able to snag the line the bitter end went under our boat & caught on something and stretched taut before I had a chance to properly tie it off on our sampson post, only able to do one half turn and didn't have a chance to route it under the crossbar on our bow pulpit. So the whole time I rode up on the bow, tethered in with my SOSpenders inflatable PFD with D rings to attach a tether (left over from my sailboat days). So as we're getting towed the 6 miles back toward Pender Harbour at speeds faster than our bouat usually goes, at least 7 or 8 knots, bucking waves that were building to 4 foot plus, I'm watching the tow line slowly start to chafe through on the pulpit cross bar. So all this time I didn't have a chance to go back and check on the dinghy and my wife was busy staying on the helm to keep us straight.

Finally we got in close to Pender Harbour and in sheltered waters where the waves had died down, so I went back & got on the radio and called him up (all this time we were staying on channel 68) and told him the line was almost chafed through and could he slack off so I could re-tie it. So only then was I able to go back and check on the dinghy, and it was GONE, nowhere be seen. I pulled up the cockpit floor board to check the prop shaft and it was spinning free, so if it ever was fouled it was clear now.

That's the long story of our snap davit woes. Our old dinghy is now either on the bottom, floating capsized and awash somewhere in Georgia Strait, or washed up on the rocks somewhere on the Sunshine Coast.

Moral of the story is, snap davits are great, but in the case of the Albin 25 unless the dinghy is less than 6 ft long the ends are going to extend past the transom by a foot or more on each side and act like a big drag chute. Which is fine as long as you stick to calm waters. You see dinghies on snap davits all the time, both inflatables and hard shells, but those are on trawlers and cabin cruisers where the full beam of the boat is carried all the way aft, not like the A25 where the hull is more like a sailboat and narrows at the stern. What we should have done was a) either stayed in port & wait for calmer weather, or b)towed the dinghy (which could have swamped anyway), or c)turned around sooner & head back to port, which we were thinking of doing right before the accident happened. So our plan now is to bite the bullet and go for lifting davits for the Gig Harbor Nisqually that I bought to replace the old one. I'm in the process now of checking on a number of different brands, OMS, Forespar, St. Croix, and Garhauer. My biggest problem is that the stern rails on our boat are pretty wobbly & don't seem strong enough to support davits, and the question is how to get davits to extend far enough aft to clear the swim platform. The Nisqually is much tippier than our Boatex was, so I'm going to add fenders along the sides to approximate what the Walker Bay RID tubes do. That alone would preclude using snap davits.

One final thing about Weaver Snap Davits, there's a design difference between snap davits for hard shell dinghies and ones for inflatables. For hard shell dinks the latch, that is the part with the release handle, is on the dinghy and the bracket that it hooks onto is on the swim platform. For inflatables it's just the opposite, the release latch is on the swim platform the the bracket is on the dink. So if you look for snap davits make sure it's the type that's right for your type of dinghy.

Here's our old dinghy lowered but still attached to the swim platform

turkeydayraftup1.jpg

Here's a side view of the setup

DSCN1246.JPG

I want to end up with something like this...

OC_htd40a.jpg

[dkirsop]

My prop zinc might last two months and the rudder carrier might last two years. Now I admit I am in more brackish water than where the boat came from and it is warmer here in the sunbelt of Hood Canal, so that may affect sacrificial rates.

I may have an answer to your prop zinc problem. My boat eats them like candy too. My shaft and prop are completely isolated from any ground connection through the engine and there is no stray current originating from my boat. However, I suspect the local power company has a phase imbalance in its system which enters the water through the ground wire attached to every power pole adjacent to the marina. Temperature would also have an effect on the rate of corrosion all other factors being equal. When docked, I attach a large anode to the prop shaft using a large plier clamp and #8 wire which I then hang over the side. This appears to be working as I can record several milliamps of current between the shaft and the anode. The anode also shows signs of corrosion, which is good. Time will tell when I haul the boat this fall.

[WillieC]

Dkirsop,

I just saw your post on the bilge pump (another future project for me...) and noticed your clamp on the shaft and was going to ask you about it. No need to now. I understand your description about stray currents, but my mooring ball is out in the canal 200 feet from our bulkhead, no marina in sight, closest boat is 50 yards and only on hot waterski weekends. We do have quite warm water over the summers here. I also think that the shaft anode wears quickly partly because of erosion from being on the rotating shaft. The stationary anode on the skeg rarely erodes. Will check installed zincs this pm.

How is your #8 wire attached to your over-the-side anode? I have heard of folks using stainless welding rod. I prefer simple. Also, when you measure the current, is the anode in the water? Are both leads from the meter under water?

We plan on heading to Bellingham soon, with marina stops on the way, so one of my projects today is this over-the-side anode.

[dkirsop]

In the past, on a different boat in a different situation, I simply bought a large anode and bolted it to the wire using a heavy duty crimp on eyelet. At the other end I crimped a large alligator clamp to the wire. This time I was lazy and bought what is commonly called a Guppy anode ( looks like a fish and comes complete with wire and alligator clamp). For the extra cost I found it was defective as the connection at the anode was faulty. A simple repair but annoying. So my first recommendation is save some money and make your own.

My alligator clip was too small to attach to the shaft so I mounted a pair of hose clamps on the shaft with the screws 180 degrees apart to maintain balance. I then attach the alligator clip to one of the screws.

I measured the voltage and amperage with the anode in the water. I detached the clamp and bridged the connection between the clamp and shaft with a multimeter. I recorded a voltage difference between the anode and the shaft of 68.3mV and an amperage of 5.1mA flowing between the shaft and the zinc. These are significant readings as far as electrolysis is concerned.

In my opinion, the real problem is that the prop nut anode is too small for this situation and a larger anode is required. Hence my decision to hang a large anode over the side when docked.

This wasn't a problem when I was docked further from shore and in cooler water which is why I suspect the nearby power lines. Our marina does not have shore power on the docks.

[DesertAlbin736]

A few thoughts on 'A traveling A25'. This is an old thread, & looking back & reminiscing early posts is fun. Sunsetrider, I think now that you're retired & have the time, there's a great trip for you right in your back yard that's all fresh water, and all you have to do is launch on the St. Lawrence at Gananoque and head southwest to Lake Ontario (what sort of currents would you have to deal with on the St. Lawrence?), follow the Eastern shore of Lake Ontario on the NY side to Oswego with overnight & fuel stops on the way as needed, and figure out where to clear US customs. Then go on the Oswego River/Canal & a series of seven locks past Fulton, NY and on down to link with the Erie Canal, head west on the canal all the way to Tonawanda & Buffalo, go on Lake Erie to Port Colborne on the Canadian side & take the Welland Canal back to Lake Ontario & return along the North Shore to the St. Lawrence & Ganancoque. That would be an awesome trip of several weeks, as a bonus would essentially circumnavigate Lake Ontario. If not this year then maybe next. You wouldn't need a dinghy on the canals, and maybe not on the lakes either. We did a leisurely bit of the Erie canal in 2015, but only went from Cayuga Lake to Fairport & back in five days & 110 miles because we were on a schedule to get to Rhode Island by a certain date. You could do a lot more and take your time doing it.