L: Sorry this one is a few days old - waiting until we got signal again to send. I also hope these blogs don't turn into late night musings that are of little interest. If that is what they are becoming then please let us know.

.....but here I am again. It is 0400 and all is quiet. It is a beautiful night having left the relative stress of the straits of Messina (fuelling, whirl pools, ferries, cargo ships, long line fishing boats and generally very high quantities of traffic). We have navigated the islands North of Sicily - Etna behind to our port, Stromboli behind to our starboard. Sardinia is on the nose with approximately 250nm to run and the wind looking unhelpfully light for the transit.....

Tonight's company comes from a few lights on the horizon (earlier it really did test our light recognition!) and a gentle flickering of our navigation lights. Aha, the topic of the night - an older yacht is merely an assemblence of barely operating parts. The job of a bosun is never done....

in the late nineties, my eldest brother and I would, on occasion, accompany our Dad on a Tuesday evening meet up of the local running/orienteering club - a highly effective way of levelling the playing field between varying levels of running fitness and speed. And a good excuse for a run and a pint.

These days I do reflect on a member of that club - "coathangar". Not his real name! At that time I was both fit and fast on my feet. Coathangar was three times my age, tall and, in retrospect, likely carried the stresses and strains of life of which I was largely naive. He jogged. He plodded. He was given his name by my brother and I because he had little to no shoulder movement and his arms  were bent and stuck out on either side to give the silhouette of (yes you guessed it!) a coat hangar.

But - by god he was good. Over distance I could not get close.... Coat hangar had capacity, resilience and fortitude that I simply was yet to develop.

So where is this going? My flickering nav light.....

We bought Canopus over a younger, fresher boat because she is a "coat hangar". Where modern production boats are designed with intricate tools, techniques and, in the case of composites, knowledge they are also built to a cost. As a medium displacement 1990's boat, Canopus is over engineered for what we use her for and retains an equipment fit (both cabinetry and mechanical systems) that you would not see on a modern production boat for cost reasons. This approach, ultimately led to the collapse of Moody as an independent builder (the name is now owned by Hanse) but has provided us with a boat that we believe is strong, capable and provides a layout that has been developed over the years with cruising in mind and ideal for the journey that we are on.

Canopus is 32yrs old, however, and the marine environment is a harsh one. Constant seaway motions load every component and joint (be it mechanical or electrical). Salt gets everywhere and corrodes almost everything. Every component is designed with a purpose and is cycled at very regular intervals. Electrical currents abound - through the boat and through the sea - creating electrolysis everywhere. The use of dissimilar metals adds the atomic confusion. The life of an ocean going boat is a hard one.

It is also impossible to ignore the way that technology has moved on over the last 32 yrs both in engineering technology and techniques but also the systems that support everything we do to live on the boat.

The nautical arguments of old vs new, monohull vs multihull, Garmin vs Raymarine will continue forever. And as they should because there is no right answer. As our surveyor put it "you just need to choose which hole you want to pour your money into. But remember, there is nothing more expensive than a cheap boat". We chose our hole, are proud of her and decided that we would spend the money on upgrading to the boat we wanted rather than later realise we needed a refit after all.

Our refit, whilst not extensive on the fabric of the boat, has focussed on safety, maintenance and performance upgrades. From a safety perspective we have treated Canopus like a coded vessel - I.e to meet the rules laid down by the certification authorities for a commercial vessel and to meet SOLAS (safety of life at sea) standards. We have new fire extinguishers throughout, we have a new full spec ISO 4 person life raft, we have new, up to date life jackets with personal AIS beacons (so we can each be tracked if we fall overboard), we have anew EPIRB (the system that alerts search and rescue when we are in trouble), throwing lines, Danbuoy (a trackable big inflatable flag that we can use if someone goes overboard), we have fitted a satellite communications system so we have coverage at any point on the planet if we need to communicate and we have a lot of medicine on board.

From a maintenance perspective, the focus has been on those consumables that really should be done regularly but often are over looked due to cost and effort. Every through hull fittin has been swapped. These are the valves that go through the hull to feed coolant or hotel services. Whilst ours looked ok from the outside, on removal some of them were actually dangerously close to failure. We have also changed alll of the standing rigging (the fixed rope and steel lines that hold up the mast) and a large proportion of the running rigging (the ropes that facilitate all of the sail movement and shape). All the anodes have been changed. We have also replaced any item that is obviously close to end of life (ironically the nav lights ae on that list!). The engine has had a major service that has included amongst all the usual belts changes etc a complete water pump overhaul. We have even replaced the mattresses for the bunks!

Then there are the performance upgrades. Canopus has always been lethargic under power - a combination of fixed pitch propellor and non-turbo charged engine with a very linear power curve has meant that the propellor is designed for engine speeds that were uncomfortable to use. We have fitted a Featherstream propellor whose operating point is much lower down the engines operating curve - we now do 6kts at 2750 rpm rather than 4kts.

Canopus also now has a mechanical hydrovane. This is a mechanical device mounted to the transom that self-steers using a sail that is attached to a secondary rudder. This comes with 2 advantages. Firstly, there is no power draw on long passages (and therefore reliance on an operational electrical system) that you would see from a traditional Autopilot. Secondly, particularly relevant given our route through Gibraltar and the prevalence of Orca attacks, the secondary rudder (which is removable) can be used as an emergency rudder should anything happen to our main one.

On the topic of power, we have also added a water maker. At sea, fresh water can quickly become not only critical for comfort (getting rid of all that salt!) but also limits your survival time. We carry as much drinking water to cover our transits plus contingency, but also keep our tanks as brimmed as possible in case we get some sort of leak. Our water maker (made by Aquinetic) can produce 75 l/hr which is a real asset on a family boat.

The power audit of the boat is absolutely critical to being self sufficient. Whilst our existing solar panels and bank of batteries does a great job, when running our electronic aids and water maker for any length of time (particularly at night when all the nav, lights and fans are running)we have provisioned for hydroelectric generation. This is a 300watt unit that is mounted onto the transom and we lower into the water when needed. It adds drag to the boat (although less than we have removed by replacing the fixed propellor with a feathering one) and will power everything we need if we are sailing any where between 4 and 9knots. All of this is integrated through a system of 3 intelligent chargers working to maintain the battery health.

The area that Canopus was most in need of upgrading was her electronics. As you can imagine, the technology difference between a 1990's fit and today is huge. My father-in-law and I basically filled a skip with wires that we removed and Canopus is now fitted with a state of the art data network that processes wind, depth, temperature, GPS, AIS, Radar and navigation systems. All is controlled via a touch screen chartplotter at the nav station or remotely by phone or iPad. Similarly the clunky displays presented above the companionway are replaced by new fully-programmable displays cut into a new instrument panel. It is a credit to Garmin that as a "DIYer" I was able to fit all of this kit - albeit with a lot of swearing as cables were run blind behind the solid build of a 90's yacht!

So have we got the boat that we want? Yes. Does she retain support the way we want to live for the next 11 months? Absolutely. Is the nav light still flickering?.......

And the life of a bosun is never complete. A boat is made up of hundreds of thousands of parts and they exist in a horrendous environment. There will always be a list of jobs - so tomorrow I will rewire the nav light. In fact, there are a number of internal lights that are on the blink so I might just do them all at once.

For now though I will just enjoy the peace and quiet and what is about to be a spectacular sunrise above the mountains behind.

Look after yourselves and fair winds.

The crew of Canopus

PS as I write this my revometer has just lost stability. Another one for the list!

PPS Given the late issue of this blog, I can also confirm that the lights are now all working!