Steel for high latitudes?

Sybarite said:
My material of choice would be Strongall. Thick aluminium with zinc galvanic treatment.

Here is the personal boat of architect J-P Brouns :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1xeccbr4k393hv1/Globe Troller 40 - presentation.pdf

And also Michel Joubert's personal boat :

http://www.joubertnivelt-design.com/fiche-bateau/items/37.html
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These boats are all very nice - however from what the OP has indicated in his various posts he does not have that kind of budget. So he is trying to buy a suitable boat from the second hand market. Very few boats are specifically built for what he has in mind and even fewer on the market at all, never mind in his price range. He also has no direct experience of what he needs, so it is quite a challenge to work through even the limited range of options and choose a boat that might do the job - and then actually find one in decent enough condition to be suitable for his plans.

Steel is attractive because there are quite a lot of boats available in the price range that appear to be suitable, but as several people have pointed out, there is a reason why they seem cheap. Difficult to advise him as few people have done what he plans to do, and those that have, have used a wide variety of boats varying from production 30-35 footers, to old pilot cutters, to custom built metal boats. About the only things that are common is that they tend to be heavy displacement and have enclosed wheelhouses - plus a 27' trimaran flyer to prove them all wrong!
 
AntarcticPilot said:
Steel is usually the recommended material, though aluminium is increasingly popular. The main reason is because metal is resistant to abrasion from ice in the water; the ice will take the paint off steel but it will dent rather than abrading. I'm not talking about ice-breaking; as TimBennett says, a yacht isn't going to be capable of ice breaking. But Arctic and Antarctic waters are often full of small icy rubble (brash), which is difficult to avoid, and which will abrade wood or GRP. Wood can (and often is) protected by sacrificial planking at the bow, but GRP is not so easy to protect in that way.

As others have noted, Iceland and Northern Norway will probably be ice-free in summer anyway. Eastern Greenland is more problematic, and there will always be some floating ice derived from the fast-flowing glaciers that calve into the sea.
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but GRP is not so easy to protect in that way.
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John Gore Grimes had kevlar added to the bow of his Najad and Jeanneau incorporated it into its boats (at least into the Sun Fizz and the Sun Legende 41 and I presume they carried on doing so) as from 1985.
 
For arctic conditions and particularly temperatures, it could be worth considering the precise composition of the steel. The ductile-brittle transition temperature of steel is in the order of 20C. In the past there have been many fractures of steel equipment and structures at around 0C. The manganese - carbon ratio needs to be at least 4.0 to ensure ductility at these temperatures.
 
There are lots of steel one-offs but precious few production boats where one can be sure the bugs have been ironed out. I spent a week in the bilges of the Lord Nelson with a needle gun a couple of years ago. An ultrasound survey revealed thin plating that had to be cut out and replaced so I'd be wary of any steel boat with a few years use behind it and an unknown degree of neglect. Aluminium isn't prone to rust but carelessness like letting snippets of copper wire or the odd coin fall into the bilge could spell disaster. GRP is overall a safer bet.

What are the special risks of high-latitude sailing? Ice, rock and heavy weather. The most people would regard the scantlings of a Janbenbav as too light for that sort of sailing and would prefer the more solid build of e.g. HR, Contest etc. to deal with heavy weather. With a big budget you could get a new boat built with a Kevlar skin but realistically you'd have to rely on not bumping into anything hard. In practice you're in more danger of hull impact on a tradewind circumnavigation as they found out on Gypsy Moth 4.
 
snowleopard said:
...What are the special risks of high-latitude sailing? Ice, rock and heavy weather...
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Very good point. The one thing which stands out to me in high latitudes is lack of detailed, accurate and reliable charts. To be fair to the Norwegians theirs are really excellent, but even there retreating glaciers have left areas marked as 'unsurveyed'. Greenland charts are mostly only available at 1:400,000 scale and are marked with words something like (my charts are on the boat at the moment) "GPS derived positions: GPS positions are usually referenced to the WGS84 coordinate system; the relationship between WGS84 and positions plotted on this chart can not be determined" [my italics]. They go on to state "soundings must be considered to be of a reconnaissance nature only".

So it's hitting rocks which is my real worry - I know ice is dangerous too and must be treated with the utmost respect but at least one can mostly see it and take some avoiding action.
 
Tranona said:
These boats are all very nice - however from what the OP has indicated in his various posts he does not have that kind of budget.
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Very attentive so lets get specific. I've now upped the budget and decided I'll rent my house which gives up to 150k to consider.

Tranona said:
He also has no direct experience of what he needs, so it is quite a challenge to work through even the limited range of options and choose a boat that might do the job
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Indeed. I've never been to high latitudes but that is the intention. All he boats I've been looking at have pilot houses / deck saloons, cutters rigs, no teak and usually long or semi long keels. In the last week for example I've seen an Endurance 35 and a Seastream 43.

The one thing I am adamant about is not getting a "windowless bunker" as Tim quiet eloquently put it. A solid deck saloon would be ideal.
 
jdc said:
So it's hitting rocks which is my real worry - I know ice is dangerous too and must be treated with the utmost respect but at least one can mostly see it and take some avoiding action.
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A comment on ice . . . The two real dangers are (a) growlers at night - which you in fact cannot see at. (b) trapped and crushed by pack ice as you work thru a lead. You can see this but there may be no "avoiding action" possible. This later is only typically a risk if you go quite far north (or thru the NWP), but last summer there was pack ice quite far down the Labrador coast.

Sailing in poorly charted waters is often called "sailing on the white" (the chart is white). There are some skills and knowledge to pick up, just as there are for visual navigation in tropical waters. One key is that there will often be kelp floating above shallow rocks. A second is that a rece by dinghy with a handheld depth sounder is helpful before getting in somewhere tight.
 
One reason that steel and aluminium yachts are favoured for high latitude sailing is that you're far more likely to find an adequately insulated boat. If you're planning to spend more time in high latitudes than just a one-off voyage, then having a well insulated (and heated) boat is going to make for far more comfortable existence on board.

Personally, I wouldn't want to have a metal boat that wasn't insulated (quieter inside, no condensation), but for high latitudes I'd definitely want a properly insulated hull and deck, and decent heater (e.g. Refleks).

But perhaps I'm just getting old....
 
estarzinger said:
A comment on ice . . . The two real dangers are (a) growlers at night - which you in fact cannot see at. (b) trapped and crushed by pack ice as you work thru a lead. You can see this but there may be no "avoiding action" possible. This later is only typically a risk if you go quite far north (or thru the NWP), but last summer there was pack ice quite far down the Labrador coast.

Sailing in poorly charted waters is often called "sailing on the white" (the chart is white). There are some skills and knowledge to pick up, just as there are for visual navigation in tropical waters. One key is that there will often be kelp floating above shallow rocks. A second is that a rece by dinghy with a handheld depth sounder is helpful before getting in somewhere tight.
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Gosh - an honour to have such illustrious a commentator: It was Beth's article I quoted in my post in the previous thread!

WRT sailing on the white I have found that kelp is no guide in the arctic, although it is (reported to be, I've not been there, yet...) very helpful in Patagonia. In Svalbard and E Greenland there is none to speak of trailing at the surface, maybe because the sea freezes over completely every winter. The water is cloudy as well, both due to silt and plankton and due to dissolved oxygen due to low temperatures, so we find it hard to read.

We do use the dinghy to explore (we have a hard dinghy on deck rigged to be deployed reasonably rapidly), but actually the only time I struck a rock which took an appreciable chunk out of us was when our keel found the one pinnacle I'd not found with the dinghy - Sods's law! It also feels a little dangerous with only the two of us to launch it in any kind of seaway, so typically we feel our way in to anchor, albeit a bit far out, and then use the dinghy to investigate closer in/a passage through narrows. Would you advocate forward looking sonar?

In the arctic ocean trees from Siberia are also a threat - we've seen lots but thankfully have not struck one. Even harder to spot than growlers I think.
 
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estarzinger said:
A comment on ice . . . The two real dangers are (a) growlers at night - which you in fact cannot see at. (b) trapped and crushed by pack ice as you work thru a lead. You can see this but there may be no "avoiding action" possible. This later is only typically a risk if you go quite far north (or thru the NWP), but last summer there was pack ice quite far down the Labrador coast.

Sailing in poorly charted waters is often called "sailing on the white" (the chart is white). There are some skills and knowledge to pick up, just as there are for visual navigation in tropical waters. One key is that there will often be kelp floating above shallow rocks. A second is that a rece by dinghy with a handheld depth sounder is helpful before getting in somewhere tight.
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As one who has been involved in mapping in the polar regions for many, many years, I must endorse the comments here. DO NOT TRUST CHARTS OR MAPS IN THESE REGIONS. I am afraid that in Antarctica there are many rocks named after the vessel that hit them, or with names like "Fullastern Rock"! Svalbard is OK on the west of the archipelago, but the eastern side of the archipelago is far less well charted. East Greenland is poorly charted, and as others have noted, has large areas where there are no soundings.

My advice would be that coastal navigation in these areas requires good visibility and daylight.

A further point is that the basic geodetic survey is likely to be weak, resulting in errors of up to a few hundred metres in the geographic framework of the map. The map may well have everything in the right relative position, but still be quite a distance from where the GPS says you are.

If operating in some areas of Iceland, volcanic activity might well create new hazards from time to time.
 
estarzinger said:
A comment on ice . . . The two real dangers are (a) growlers at night - which you in fact cannot see at. (b) trapped and crushed by pack ice as you work thru a lead. You can see this but there may be no "avoiding action" possible. This later is only typically a risk if you go quite far north (or thru the NWP), but last summer there was pack ice quite far down the Labrador coast.

Sailing in poorly charted waters is often called "sailing on the white" (the chart is white). There are some skills and knowledge to pick up, just as there are for visual navigation in tropical waters. One key is that there will often be kelp floating above shallow rocks. A second is that a rece by dinghy with a handheld depth sounder is helpful before getting in somewhere tight.
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Michel Joubert lent his boat to a friend to do the NWP. In preparation he shortened the keel length (having previously holed his boat in a high altitude uncharted rock situation - a fisherman lent him a HP pump to get back to a harbour) and shortened his mast height from 16 - 12m.

The advantage with a metal boat is that you chop and change. He started out with a double ender but probably didn't have enough surface area to support the thrust from 2 x 110hp engines. So he gave the boat a transom stern and added torpedo weights to the keel going from 1m90 to 2m40 and now back to 1m50 (I think).

With a short draft you can get close to the shore where serious ice will not get you.
 
With a gen set and weilding kit a steel boat would be repairable anywhere out of the water.Steel would be a good choice for a centreboard design as strenght can be bulit in without bulk .Steel is chosen in many cases as it provides a cheap hull and deck...the rest is the same as any other materual.
 
estarzinger said:
A comment on ice . . . The two real dangers are (a) growlers at night - which you in fact cannot see at. (b) trapped and crushed by pack ice as you work thru a lead. You can see this but there may be no "avoiding action" possible. This later is only typically a risk if you go quite far north (or thru the NWP), but last summer there was pack ice quite far down the Labrador coast.

Sailing in poorly charted waters is often called "sailing on the white" (the chart is white). There are some skills and knowledge to pick up, just as there are for visual navigation in tropical waters. One key is that there will often be kelp floating above shallow rocks. A second is that a rece by dinghy with a handheld depth sounder is helpful before getting in somewhere tight.
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If I was planning a trip in high latitudes, it would be in the summer, when it doesn't get dark.
 
Well there is summer ice and growlers even in "mid latitudes" like South Georgia and below Greenland, where there definitely is "night time". And growlers can be hard to see even in daylight, particularly if there are white caps. You need to keep a very careful eye ahead for any sort of 'odd disturbance' on the water surface. And sail on the windward side of big burgs.

Regarding steel vs aluminum . . . For the same weight you can make a stronger aluminum hull. And there are aluminum welding skills/capability in pretty much every fishing meaningful Harbour. Either material can do the job . . . The high latitude fleet has been gradually shifting to aluminum primarily (I think) because it avoids the constant work chasing after rust.
 
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northcave said:
Very attentive so lets get specific. I've now upped the budget and decided I'll rent my house which gives up to 150k to consider.



Indeed. I've never been to high latitudes but that is the intention. All he boats I've been looking at have pilot houses / deck saloons, cutters rigs, no teak and usually long or semi long keels. In the last week for example I've seen an Endurance 35 and a Seastream 43.

The one thing I am adamant about is not getting a "windowless bunker" as Tim quiet eloquently put it. A solid deck saloon would be ideal.
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Good as that gets you out of old nail territory. Your next problem is that you will find (as you may have done with the Seatream) is that such boats are are often idiosyncratic in the way they have been fitted out and equipped, reflecting the original owner's ideas that could not be met with a production boat. Their ideas may not be the same as yours.

Whatever you buy it will likely need significant money spent on it as it is rare to find ready to go boats. Many are for sale because they need a refit and the current owner wants to avoid that, although often they don't recognise it when they set their asking price! So, with an overall budget of £150k you ought to be looking at between 100-120 for the purchase of the boat. Just as an example there are several Nauticat 39s for sale, but all getting to the age when they need refits. One in Holland is around £100k, but needs £20k at least spent on stripping out old kit and replacing - plus a repaint unless you are partial to bright red for a hull colour!

That particular class of boat is only a suggestion and with your bigger budget you will find many new possibilities, particularly if you are prepared to look across Europe.
 
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