Electronics for Solo Transatlantic

S

sirockin

New Member
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13 Feb 2005
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Palma de Mallorca
www.yachtasylumseeker.org
I'm looking at going from Mallorca to Caribbean early in the new year. I should have crew at least to Gibraltar but I'm likely to be doing the crossing single-handed.

Right now I have SSB, VHF (fitted & handheld), EPIRB, depth/speed indicator, GPS (fitted & handheld).

I have around 2000 GBP to spend on more electronics. Right now I'm thinking about a Sea-Me (wired to an alarm buzzer) and an AIS transponder (possibly easy-Trx). Maybe radar as well, although I don't think the budget would cover all three once I've bought fittings and so on.

My main concern is alarms when I'm asleep. Right now I'm tempted to drop the radar as it would probably use too much juice to keep it running whenever I'm asleep (don't have great charging facilities on board although I understand they can be quite helpful for giving alarms when squalls are coming through.

As far as AIS/See-Me is concerned my understanding is:
- See-Me will respond to the majority of commercial vessels' radar (provided they've got them on!)
- Easy-trx will respond to any commercial vessel that has its AIS switched on.

I suppose the big question is which equipment is likely to be on board and switched on when a commercial vessel is on a long passage?

The other area I'm looking at is weather forecasting. My cost-effective options at the moment seem to be:
- Laptop software linked to SSB to receive weatherfaxd
- Direct satellite reception using WXTOIMG and receiver
- Airmar weatherstation transducer which also gives some handy extra features although obviously doesn't give a forecast as such.

Anwyay, I would welcome any advice and views on either of these areas.

Cheers,

Dave
 
[ QUOTE ]
Anwyay, I would welcome any advice and views on either of these areas.



[/ QUOTE ]

You could always read some books by Joshua Slocum, Robin Knox-Johnson, Alec Rose, Francis Chichester, Marin Marie, Vito Dumas, David Lewis and many other single-handers; all of whom completed long voyages without the gadgets you refer to. You could say that if this gear had been available at the time they would probably have used it, but the lack of it didn't seem to have caused them any worry. And none of them could be described as foolhardy in any way.

Good luck with your voyage!
 
A couple of thoughts - we are going through the same process of fitting the boat out, ableit double handed not single handed:

1) Lots of electric items - is it worth spending some of the budget on ensuring you have sufficient battery bank / charging measures?
2) AIS and SeaMe will only be of benefit if the other vessells have AIS/Radar on and are monitoring it - this therefore puts reliance on the other vessel.
3) Radar, on the other hand, would put reliance on you not the other vessel. You choose when to use it, and you don't need to rely on the other vessel to do anything. You can set radar alarms etc for when your off watch.

The downside to radar - its power hungry - which brings us back to point 1.

Radar isn't too pricey - you can get a good set for under £1k now, and a colour GPS/Radar with overlay etc for under £1.5k - so this should leave plenty of budget left for installation.

In your position with everything you already have, I would think about spending on other areas (Solar panels, towed genny) etc - you can't have too much electricity on board with everything you already have.

In my opinion, AIS and Seame is much more important in coastal waters and shipping lanes than it is offshore when many other vessel may relax their watches, hence I would prefer to rely on my own equipment (radar) than on other people and their equipment being switched on and functioning.

As noted above too, you don't really need anything else - I'm sure you can think of plenty more ways of spending £2k - rum?!

Jonny
 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anwyay, I would welcome any advice and views on either of these areas.



[/ QUOTE ]

You could always read some books by Joshua Slocum, Robin Knox-Johnson, Alec Rose, Francis Chichester, Marin Marie, Vito Dumas, David Lewis and many other single-handers; all of whom completed long voyages without the gadgets you refer to. You could say that if this gear had been available at the time they would probably have used it, but the lack of it didn't seem to have caused them any worry. And none of them could be described as foolhardy in any way.


[/ QUOTE ]
No, but to be fair to the original poster neither did they have to calculate the risks of being run down by the very many very large very (relatively) fast moving cargo ships charging around the oceans today.
 
You might care to browse the Jester forum which has lots of information / ideas re sailing singlehanded. Good luck with the trip.
 
Go for radar...

Go for radar - it's the only option which is independent and doesn't rely on ships behaving themselves! Even entry-level radars have guard zone alarms and the ability to connect an external alarm buzzer. If you're worried about power consumption, use timed transmit mode. The Furuno 1623 and 1715 radars have timed transmit (called "Watchman" mode) which transmits for a minute every 5/10/20 minutes. The Raymarine C-series has a similar timed transmit feature, allowing you to do 10/20/30 scans every 3/5/10/15 minutes. If you also turn down the backlighting, current consumption will be quite low with any of these.

I haven't used the Furuno radars, and I'm not sure whether they can be set up with a 360degree guard zone (rather than a sector). I have a C-series, and I know that this can be set up with either sector or 360degree guard zones.

You can get a Furuno 1623 for around £900, a Furuno 1715 for around £1250, and a Raymarine C70 for around £1650. The Raymarine, of course, also gives you a colour chartplotter and has radar/chart overlay and MARPA features (although you need a heading input for these).
 
West to East weather info isn't that important or useful as once your a day or two away from the Canaries its wind...squall... wind, which you can usually see in the clouds. Moonless nights can make it difficult to see squalls coming through.

Coming back then a £100.00 old laptop and your ssb will be good enough. I'd go for a towed generator and paint the top of the mast orange for going out. This ensures you always have radio and nav lights even if your engine or batteries have problems.

I have had two ships both on route to Panama from Rotterdam appear behind quite suddenly when half way across. Other option as I have found they all listen to CH16 is to broadcast your position and see if anyone is listening before you get your head down. vhf range from mast head to mast on a ship should be at least 50nm so you'll get 2 hours kip.

Last trip was two handed but with sick crew, so mostly single handed as far as watch keeping was concerned.

Have a good trip
 
I did west to east this year singlehanded and found the furuno 1623 brillant. I used it all the time when asleep on the guardzone alarm set. I also had an airx windgenny that is good backup and great when out in the westindies. I relied on the standard octahedral reflector which can't go wrong like the seame.
Make sure the autopilot is really capable in big seas and have a spare if possible. I needed mine (WP32)
 
I'd go for radar, with the timed scans to reduce consumption, and a towed generator to provide additional power.
I did a single-handed transatlantic circuit a couple of years ago, and relied on a radar alarm; this was a good piece of kit, but I came across a significant number of ships not using their radar.
Good luck
 
I did a round trip from falmouth to falmouth in 1977 in a small yacht with lugsail rig and no electrics or electronics. I used an old egg timer and looked 360degs then set the timer for 10mins and slept. this ment that i got about 45 mins sleep every hr your body gets used to the system very quickly and i never felt knackered
. I think the reliance on electronics is foolhardy even in these days of reliability. the No1 eyeball is best
 
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Try Petite Bateau A very useful short and single handed news group. Despite the name we're UK based.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting, but shame it doesn't have a cruising section for those of us that don't race.
 
Hi Dave, I think you have plenty of kit now. I have done a solo from Tortola to Kinsale, you have a lot more than I did in 98. The ssb weatherfax is very useful, plus, although I could only listen, Herbs Net. Regards "lookout", as singlehanders, we can,t have it all ways, we have to rely on a degree of "luck". I slept up to 6hrs a night, depending on weather, the obsession with electronic eyes makes me wonder why people want to single hand BUT only with an electronic CREW.
 
Since a laptop is such an extremely useful tool- presuming that you've got backup systems and don't rely on it- have a look at Asus EeePC. Instead of your usual mechanic HDD it sports a solid drive wich means it's less power hungry and rugged. TFT's a bit small at 7" and it only comes with 4GB, 900Mhz BUT costs only 250 quid. Every marine application will run happily on it (comes with either linux or xp) as for storage problems: you could use USB sticks/external flash drives or SD-cards.

Certainly something you don't need but if you've decided on taking a laptop (and there are good reasons to do so), I'd give it a thought!

asus-eeepc-701-review.jpg
 
I sailed from the BVI to the Azores via Bermuda 2 years ago with 2 hand-held GPS and a radar (plus sextant which I couldn't use for the critical bit as the weather was appalling for the last 2 weeks). I would go for an Aerogen wind genny to keep your batteries topped up and a radar with MARPA.
We met some big boys out on the ocean and only one responded to our VHF call so assume the others weren't looking out very much.
If I had to choose between the genny and a radar I would go for the radar (assuming you can top batts with the engine).
 
Thanks for the great feedback everyone. The radar option does sound best really - especially since a multifunction display will provide some nice extra features.

In general I agree with the sentiments expressed by Twisterowner - I try to keep my boat as simple as possible. However, as other posters have pointed out, there's a lot more commercial traffic about, going a lot faster so I think warning systems do have a useful role as backup. I think Robin Knox Johnson was interviewed recently saying that traffic has increased incredibly even in the last couple of years.

Anyway, thanks again everyone.

Dave
 
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