Dulcinea is our Moody 40 – we bought her in July 2024, when she was berthed in Premier Marina, Gosport, with the intention of taking her to the West Coast of Scotland in 2025. In the meantime there is much that we want to sort out.
I’ll be keeping an irregular blog of progress here – for many years I did the same for my antique firearms restoration website www.cablesfarm.co.uk but I am not really doing much restoration now that I have the boat to fret about, so I’ll transfer my attention to this website!
14 April – bit of a jump here! We’ve been busy getting things sorted to take Dulcinea up to Scotland, and the time has nearly arrived – probably just as the unseasonal settled weather with ideal E winds comes to an end! We’ve been sorting out the boat’s systems so that we feel reasonably confident that they are functioning well enough to be safe on the trip, and that we know how to operate everything. We’ve have had a few trips out, but so far haven’t sailed in any significant wind so that aspect of the boat is a bit of an unknown. We have got the ORCA navigation system up and running, and it looks good although I will still revert to Navionics for close inshore work – Navionics seems to have changed a bit and I haven’t got used to the changes yet – for one thing, and most annoyingly it won’t allow you to have more than 2 devices using the app at once if they are on the internet – its a pain because I like to have the option of Navionics at the binnacle and on the little tablet under the spayhood, plus on my phone if I’m off watch below – I need to work out a protocal for sorting that problem. Also I can no longer drop an anchor pin when I want. To add to the boat’s internet access I’ve added a fancy 5G router (RUTM51) with a data sim card that will set up a boat wifi so I can get internet access anywhere there is mobile reception – in Gosport we get 20 Mb/sec up and down speeds, which is handy. I’ve replaced the house and engine batteries with Predator DPX AGM batteries – I just managed to fit 3 size 1500 120 Ahr in the battery box with about 2 mm to spare, 2 for house and one for engine starting, giving us 240 Ahr for domestic, although that only amounts to about 150 Ahr that can be used without impairing the battery life. We fitted a new nnchor to replace the 15Kg Delta I had mistakenly bought before I did my homework on anchoring! We now have a 20 Kg Ronca Vulcan on 60 meters of code 4 8mm chain. We’ve only tried the anchor once – in softish mud off Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight, and it bought the boat to a sudden halt when we had deployed about twice the water depth of chain – not something I’ve encountered before, so that is a good sign – I plan to put about 30m of Nylon rope (Octoplait) onto the chain to give us a toal rode of 90m. One nice thing about the Moody 40 is that the anchor locker is enormous – I’ve put in a GRP bin on one side of the aft bulkhead to hold a spare gas cylinder and the snubber ropes and anchor buoy, without getting in the way of the chain.
Anyway, all being well we are pretty much prepped to go after the Easter weekend, when the tides will be right – just hoping the weather will be kind!
9th March – Back from yet another visit to Gosport to work on Dulcinea. Jobs are gradually being ticked off – This time we fitted holders for the emergency tiller in the port stern locker, fixed up the NMEA engine data link (Yacht Devices YDEG04) and got the Orca system more or less running BUT the connection between the ORCA CORE and my ruggedised l-tablet is not 100% reliable even at close range – maybe due to insufficient memory. The Navionics on my 10 inch Tab A tablet also hangs up occasionally so I need to address both issues! I put on the new binnacle extension bar with the new plastic plate for the tablet – it does work but would be much better if the angle of the tablet could be adjusted to accomodate both sitting and standing at the wheel – at the moment its fine for sitting, which is not the normal position, so I’ll have to engineer a tilt mechanism. Some time ago I got worried about how much gas we had on boards for extended periods away from supplies – Dulcinea currently runs on Camping Gas 907 bottles that only hold 2.7 Kg instead of the 4.5Kg of the calor bottles. I decided it would be good to carry an exstra spare bottle beside the spare in the gas locker – it needs to be in a place where any leaked gas drains overboard, which rules out the aft lockers that drain directly into the bilges. There is plenty of room in the anchor locker, so I made a fibreglass ‘bucket’ to fix on the aft bulkhead of the locker that would hold a spare gas cylinder or e.g. the tripping line and snubber or whatever. My bucket was too big to fit through the opening and past the windlass and the bar running forward, so I cut it in two and reassembled it wben inside the locker. It doesn’t take up any of the chain space – the only downside is that it will need to be unscrewed from the bulkhead and lowered to allow the windlass to be serviced. The first tranch of upholstry has now gone off to be used as spatterns for the complete new saloon upholstering. So things tick on and we are starting to think more seriously about setting off for Scotland! Next big jobs are sorting the batteries and power etc, getting the binnacle right with tilt and holders for the radio extension and thruster remote control, and possibly adding a router and dedicated mobiles connection. I also need to sort stowage for 40 lts of emergency fuel storage. We will get there in the end!!!
17th Feb 2025 Made another visit to Dulcinea for the Volvo engine inspection and trial which went OK – boat handles nicely with the Featherstream prop. I tackled the instrumentation – sorting the antenna connections for tha VHF as they were a bit on the short side, and putting in a fuse block for the vhf, antenna combiner and network bus. I have a composite network as there are instruments running on the old SeaTalk, Seatalkng and NMEA200. See the INSTRUMENTS page above for details…… I have now finished the emergency tiller – the old one was rusted beyond recovery, so I made one in Stainless steel , and made the main.lower leg in two parts to make it easier to stow. In use it fits onto the top of the rudder post which is under the aft bed, and sticks out through the deck above, with a cross piece that has ropes to the two aft winches for steering – tried it on the pontoon and it works – not the easiest thing to use though!
9th Feb 2025 Back in the water last Wednesday! Cue starting work on the various jobs again – it means I cna stay on the boat instead of having to stay in the local Travelodge – which is near the boat, cheap and serves breakfast from 7 a.m. so its practical! I spent a couple of days fitting lighting and some sound insulation in the engine bay and rebuilding a bit of the furniture around the engine, plus refitting 8 doors that I had taken off to make access easier for the engine swap. I reconnected the wiring to the mast using Wago electrical connectors that I mounted in 3D printed boxes – much neater although I did have a couple of wires that Hadn’t made connection as I hadn’t pushed them in far enough…. Next job is to finish the emergency tiller assembly – I need to align it with the rudder – and then begin to sort out the instruments an fit the interface to the engine instrumentation and the ORCA CORE system – all joined together with a new wiring system… I’ll be back down tomorrow as the engineer from VOLVO PENTA is coming on Wednesday morning to inspect thes engine installation so that they can give the engine a 2 year guarentee.
27th Jan 2025 Dulcinea is now ready to go back in, the engine is done, the mast is back in and the keel is re-bedded and its antifouled. At the moment the yard is very busy and the wind has been at more or less gale force for the last few working days so they can’t safely operate, and we don’t know when they will get her it. I am standing by for an email telling me they have a slot, but I have a feeling it will be Febraury before its in. When its back in I can get on and put he doors back on and get the instruments sorted. I have got most of the kit to put in an Orca Core2 and connect all the existing instruments to it – I’ll put up a separates technical post elsewhere along with the circuit diagram.
14th Jan 2025 She is still in the yard – the mast has now come out and the keel is off – Mark is waiting for some studding to make the new bolts before the keel goes back on. Ross the rigger (from GTR Rigging derigged the mast for the takeout and found that there was no VHF antenna at the masthead – given that we don’t have any other antenna connected I’m mystified that we could pick up the King’s Harbour Master `(KHM) who assiduously controls all the traffic in the harbour – you are not allowed to move a boat in the harbour without a listening watch on channel 11. Ross thought that there was probably enough wire to pick up the very local signal, but I’m glad its been discovered now. I had had a look at the masthead with binoculars but I must have missed it…… Another thing to fix. And another – it turns out that the stainless elbow and the joiner in the exhaust were 2 1/2 inch, or about 63mm diameter, and the new exhaust hose is 60mm – so I’m having to make new ones from 60.3 stainless 316 tube – I will probably get the welder I use for gun parts to do the welding on the elbow as I’m not sure I can weld well enough to last 20 years! I am in the process of cutting and filing a perfect matching 90 dergee joint!
8 Jan 2025 I’ve just got back from Gosport – the mast was supposed to come out today, but Ross the Rigger got called away to an urgent job so it won’t happen until Friday, and even then depends on the wind being low enough. I did manage to check a few things while I was down there – I’ve been working on a replacement emergency tiller, so I was able to check the sleeve I’d made to couple it anto the rudder stock – unfortunately just too tight a fit, so I’ll have to remake it. I also checked some hooks I’d made to support the lee cloths I’m making – I need to refine that design too. I found that the ‘house’ battery was flat, so I borrowed a battery charger to run off the extension that one of the contractors had left on the boat – hopefully that will save the battery, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it needed replacement. While I was there Ash and Andy fitted the new propeller and rope cutter – I was quite glad we had asked for one to be fitted as I heard an account of a 68ft yacht that had caught a creel line off Southampton that had got so wound up in the propeller that it pulled the shaft and separated the gearbox from the engine and bent the ‘P’ bracket and damaged the shaft seals……. I’m busy planning the upgrade to our instruments – I’ll put that on a separate page.. Here is the beautiful prop….
29 Dec 2024 I hope you all had a peaceful and pleasant holiday over Christmas. The New Year is almost upon us, and the days are beginning to get a bit longer- at least in the Northern Hemisphere! Dulcinea is sitting out in the yard at Endeavour Quay waiting for everyone to get back to work – I think it will be next week before things really start to happen – the mast is due to come off on the 7th – I’ll go down on the 6th as I want to get a look at the fittings etc at the top of the mast and replace anything that needs it. I’m hoping th standing rigging is OK, it was replaced 7 years ago so it should have 3 years before it is due for a major inspection, and maybe it will need replacing then or at least within a couple of years – I’m pretty sure it hasn’t had a lot of stress since it was replaced, so I’m optimistic that it will last. I do know that some of the running rigging needs replacing – particularly the genoa halyard as the core is bunched up in a few places. The main halyard doesn’t get much use – in fact I would not be surprised if the mainsail had been up all the time since the rigging was replaced, so I’m not expecting it to need replacing – All the vulnerable bits of it are within the mast anyway and thus protected to some degree.