Recent content by BrianH

I sincerely wish you a swift recovery and return to your boat as soon as the world resumes some normality. At age 84 I was forced to sell my Italian-based boat in April last year. I had laid her up in November and driven home with a mild abdominal pain that was later diagnosed as a category 4...

It made an enormous impression on me too. AIS equipment was still expensive in those days but the year after, in 2007, I went to the CeBIT technical exhibition in Hannover and scoured the small vendors' stalls and from a Taiwanese one picked up a Class B receiver for $200 after some haggling. I...

I agree, however . . . . For those whose memory of that incident may have dimmed in the intervening 14 years, the yacht Ouzo, a lifting keel Sailfish 25, was sunk with the loss of all three of the crew by a possible close encounter with what was judged to have been the ferry ship Pride of...

It was a freak 23°C sunny day on Sunday (now snowing today) here in Switzerland and sitting in the sun on the terrace for the postprandial coffee we were completely disturbed by the cacophony of powerful motorbikes streaming up the road incline across the small valley that lies between us...

There has been plenty of detail of the Adriatic bora and it is indeed a formidable wind to be careful of when cruising Croatia ... I have had lots of experiences of them during my 30 plus years of cruising there from my berth in NE Italy. But my first strong wind there was in 1980 with a...

+1 My HR94 has exactly that configuration and attributes - and disadvantages that I too, was prepared to accept. In addition to the solid wheelhouse roof, that provides not only shelter in bad weather, which can occur in the Adriatic, but acts as an essential bimini for shade that is necessary...

That is just so wrong. My HR94 (the only motor sailor HR ever made) sails well to windward with winds over 5 knots, at which the engine was never used. With a long keel her leeway is certainly not what I had with leaner, fin-keeled yachts of earlier years ... it took me until my 70s before I saw...

That final sentence sent me rooting out my copy of the contract. It is in English ... I could have had German or Italian versions. The German manager was fluent in all three languages but the yacht had UK MCA Part 1 registration so we settled on that despite my Swiss nationality and address...

This was indeed the Italian broker convention but northern brokers and on-line European ones have introduced the vendor-only fee. When in 2005 I found a yacht I wanted in my NE Italian marina the traditional Italian broker, a franchised Hallberg Rassy one, wanted to charge me 4% of the...

In the Profurl system I had installed the small diameter luff line that runs in an articulated aluminium extrusion held away from the mast by supports slotted into the original mast luff-line slot - see photo below. In nine years of use it never gave a hint of jamming raising or lowering...

I fitted Profurl in-boom mainsail reefing on my 31' boat and with it a new, fully-battened mainsail. I just couldn't trust that in-mast would never jam and with the instant bora gales we regularly experienced in the northern Adriatic, wasn't prepared to chance being single-handed in a rapidly...

This happened to me too, without becoming an illegal alien. In fact the immigration personnel couldn't have been nicer, proposing a solution to get around the problem, which I think happened often. It was in December 2009, after clearing from Road Town, BVI, I made the mistake of thinking the...

My HR94 (sold earlier this year) also had a hinged cockpit sole, the forward half, that could be lifted for engine access - although very heavy. It seated on a raised rim in the cockpit floor moulding, which met foam rubber strips on the floor section. It was not watertight, in fact, the cockpit...

Be aware that obtaining the only teak timber worth having, viz. genuine mature teak, rather than plantation timber, has the risk of involving illegal logging, unless sourced from old teak obtained from ship breakers. That is because plantation teak is typically harvested at between 20-30 years...

I've recently sold my 1981 31' HR94 this year with the original teak deck, which, when bought in 2005, was close to end-of-life condition. I kept it in NE Italy and nursed it through my ownership because, although leaking along many seams, it did not manifest in any leaks below because the...