Going Spare – Part 2

As I said in Going Spare: Part 1, a lot depends on the age and type of yacht you have. If you have a relatively new yacht, you can expect to need fewer spares. That expectation however has to take account of the commitment of the crew to carry out daily, weekly and monthly checks. The diligence of the crew will directly relate to how easily these checks can be carried out, the keyword here is accessibility. If you have to move bunk cushions, take off panels and then crane your neck into a tight space just to see whatever is supposed to be checked, it’s unlikely to be checked properly, if at all.

That is why we will not build a Kraken of any size without a dedicated engine and equipment room.  I’ll cover my daily and monthly checklist next month.

In terms of the age of the vessel, it must be accepted that mechanical and electrical equipment on a yacht doesn’t last forever but whilst many people think, the more you use the equipment the sooner the equipment will wear out or break, the opposite is in fact true. The more equipment is used the longer it will last, as long as you carry out checks and servicing.

In all the yachts I have owned I have noticed a seven-year cycle when at least a semi refit of key equipment will need to be undertaken to keep everything running in tip-top condition. For a voyaging yacht, a commitment to trying to keep her in tip-top condition is the only mindset that works.

The next consideration is how far ‘off-grid’ will you be going?

Off-grid by my definition is a sliding scale. Entry-level off-grid is determined, these days, by coming up with nothing for a google search of your yachts generator service agents, and when you only have distant memories of yacht marinas! Mid ‘off grid’ will be if you’re fortunate enough to be able to locate a local mechanic that the locals use to fix tractors or the local ferry. Full off-grid is where there are no tractors or ferries, let alone someone to fix them.

The best designed and properly fitted out cruising yachts will have levels of redundancy in their key or vital equipment systems. These redundancy levels will turn a critical failure into an inconvenience.

In deepest darkest Papua New Guinea a nearby lightning strike in the bay I was anchored in took out both my Raymarine GPS plotters. The one below at the nav station still worked but without positioning, so we swapped it out with the one in the cockpit helm, so we had chart function. Then we taped a handheld Garmin GPS to the console and used that to generate a position and plotted a series of waypoints onto the chart screen of the Raymarine plotter.

One of my crew said he didn’t understand why I was so concerned about the accuracy of our position since he knew I had sailed many thousands of miles using charts and a sextant. I told him that the places one chooses to sail must be determined by the navigators’ ability to determine if they are sailing into undue risk to the vessel. I would never have dreamed of sailing into areas as poorly charted as PNG but at least with a GPS plotted track I could get myself out of trouble by turning around and retracing my track. It was laborious to keep updating the electronic chart with our waypoints but by doing that, and sometimes backing up and retracing our track, we successfully navigated through PNG for nearly three months. I now carry two handheld GPS, one of which is kept in a lead-lined box!

The third fallback plan to the scenario above is paper charts and a handheld GPS and the fourth is back to my sextant and head for the open ocean.

Think carefully about the spares you need to carry in context of where you’re going and for how long.

I’ve listed spares parts in two designations. Must have always, and might have if going off-grid, these are marked in red.