Circumnavigation Status

UPDATED 19/8/2009

BWR:

We are booked on the BWR and having paid the fees we are fully committed to the trip.

Enchantress:

The boat is in reasonable shape although there is still some equipment to fit and test out underway, details are on the Enchantress Refit page.

Navigation:

We will have 3 systems on board:

• The Navionics Gold electronic charts which work in our cockpit Chart Plotter and also on our PC. We now have charts for the full trip incl.:

  • the UK& Ireland

  • Fance & Iberia, incl the Canarias

  • The Caribbean

  • South America, incl the Glapagos Islands

  • The Pacific, Indian Ocean & Australia

  • The Mediterranean

• The Maxsea PC system with charts (dating from 2005) for the whole world

• Paper Charts. We now have charts taking us all the way round the world until we get to the Med. We will need to add Med charts in 2011.

Safety Issues:

These have nearly all been attended to including:

• Our liferaft has been serviced. I have seen it blown up and it looks in excellent condition.

• We have bought 2 new Spinlock lifejackets which we hope are comfortable enough that we will use them virtually all the time we are sailing. We will still have our high spec Crewsaver lifejackets for friends and for us to use in heavy weather.

• We have bought a Jordan Series Drogue  for storm conditions, but still have to put it together - a job for Gibraltar/Lanzarote.

• We have 2 EPIRBs (satellite emergency beacons) on board one of which is new with an internal GPS.

• Man Overboard Detectors. We are fitting the detector we had on Pinball and will have our 4  EPIRB watches with us.

• We have fitted an AIS system. This picks up transmissions from all large boats giving their name, speed, course etc. We will also transmit our details.

• We will have 3 fixed GPS systems on board, 1 for the Chart Plotter, 1 for the AIS and 1 old one as backup. We will also have 2 hand held GPS systems.

Water:

We are in the process of fitting a water maker. We have 750 lt in our 4 water tanks, but the watermaker will mean that we can keep the tanks topped up.

Power/Batteries:

We have 4 domestic batteries giving 450ahr of battery power for domestic use and an engine start battery. We have quite a lot of equipment which relies on the domestic batteries so battery charging is a key issue. We also have equipment which relies on 240 volts.

12 Volt:

• navigation & sailing instruments (Chart Plotter, AIS, MOB System, Depth Sonar, Speed, Log, Wind, VHF, SSB, Radar, Navtex, GPS, Navigation Lights, Domestic Lights, Water Pump, Bilge Pump)

• electric genoa winches

240 Volt:

• Fridge, Feeezer, Microwave, PC

For battery charging we have:

•  an 80amp generator on our engine

• a diesel generator which gives 240 volts to drive the 240 volt systems plus a 12 v battery charger

• wind generator

• Aqua generator, when we tow on long trips

• 2 x 30amp solar panels