As I am writing this on New Year’s eve 2022, I’ll start with a spoiler alert that it seemed only fitting for us to celebrate New Year’s eve in our last port on this side of the Atlantic and get 2023 off to a great start by leaving in the morning on New Year’s Day for our Trans Atlantic crossing over to the Caribbean.
OK, now that you know where we are headed, let’s rewind back to where we left off in the last Mobius.World update “On the Run” when we were still in Tangier Morocco patiently waiting for a good weather window to head down south along the West coast of Morocco to the Canary Islands. It all worked out as I had written in that update and we checked out of Morocco and left Tanja Marina Bay on Wednesday morning the 21st December.
There was a bit more wind and wave on the nose than the forecast had predicted but it continued to settle down that evening as we made our way West and then turned South for the Canary Islands.
The conditions that first day gave us the opportunity to become more familiar with our Paravane stabilisation system to see how well it worked to reduce the rolling from the beam (on the side) waves and swell. This was the first chance I got to test out the latest rigging setup so I was keen to see how it would worked and very happy with the results in the end.
As you may recall from previous posts, Paravanes or “fish” as they are sometimes called are commonly seen on commercial fishing boats as well as a few recreational trawlers and provide a way to reduce the roll of a boat as it follows swell and waves coming at angles of about 45 to 125 degrees of the hull, which means on the beam or sides.
I used this design from some Canadian fish boats as they were very well suited to a DIY project and would let me experiment with various sizes and setups to find the Goldilocks just right setup and then perhaps make a pair out of all aluminium.
Here is what my finished version 1.o of these paravanes look like when they are all ready to go to work.
Each paravane is suspended by fixed length lines of Dyneema from the end of the A-frame booms that we set out at about 45 degrees.
These fixed length lines going down to the paravanes allow them to run about 6 meters/18 ft under the surface of the water. As the boat tries to roll to one side that paravane “dives” down and then as the boat tries to roll over to the opposite side the paravane resists being pulled up and thus reduces the amount and speed of the roll. Super simple all mechanical system.Deployment is very quick and easy, just let the A-frames out by easing off the lines going from the tip of each A-frame over to the top corner of the Arch and then lower the paravanes into the water with the boat stopped or moving slowly.
The design of the paravanes is such that they automatically align themselves and dive down till the fixed length line stops their descent and they start “flying” through the water about 6 meters below the surface.
My previous rigging was to have a retrieval line, the white line in the photo above, attached to the top rear corner of the aluminium “fin” and just let this trail through the water out behind the paravanes. It worked fine but the retrieval was purely manual by hauling in that retrieval line by hand and in anything other than very calm conditions was quite slow and laborious and potentially dangerous so I came up with a different design.
Staying with the KISS approach, Keep is Simple & Safe, I simply used these aluminium low friction doughnut shaped rings that we use with our Dyneema lines in many other places on the boat. Easy to insert them into the orange Dyneema line going down to the paravanes such that this ring would be about a meter above the water and then run the White retrieval line through the ring.
If you look carefully or click to enlarge the photo, you will see that I added a block to the middle of the A-frame and ran the retrieval line through this block and over to the Arch.
Easier to see the whole thing when the A-frame is in its vertical stowed position here. You can see how that White retrieval line goes through the low friction ring, up to the turning block on the A-frame then over to the second turning block attached to the Arch and down to the horizontally mounted winch at the base of the Arch.
Here is the best shot I could get of what the whole setup looks line when it is fully deployed and working. The White retrieval line is kept slack and allowed to trail out behind the paravane so it flies freely.
Retrieval now became as simple and as safe as deploying by simply using the winch to pull in the white retrieval line which starts to pick up the tail of the paravane and put it in this neutral vertical position with very low resistance to bring to the surface.
I just keep cranking the winch to bring the paravane above the water and up to about level with the deck of the boat where I can use a boat hook to grab the line and pull the suspended paravane onboard.
The whole process was very controlled and safe and this setup allows me to retrieve the paravanes without having to fully stop the boat so the whole process takes less than a few minutes and then Christine can take us back up to speed and we continue on our way or head into our anchorage or port.
So how well did these paravanes help stabilize the boat and reduce the roll you ask? I thought the best way to show this was with this screen of a Roll graph I created on our Maretron N2K View system you see here. This is a shot of the previous 4 hours and you can see the point a bit right of center where the paravanes went into the water and started working. Previously on the Left you can see that the roll on the vertical axis was much larger reaching up over 15 degrees side to side and then dropped off noticeably to about 5 degrees or less. At the time of this photo you can see that the roll was -1.3 degrees, negative being roll to Port, positive to Starboard.
The best way I can describe the effect is that these paravanes don’t eliminate the roll, they dampen it considerably both in degrees of roll and in speed of roll. There is still some roll but it is now much slower and less “deep” which makes for a MUCH more comfortable motion that makes it easy to move around the boat safely. I want to be clear that were we to have active stabilizer fins or Magnus effect cylinders, the reduction in roll would be much greater, however that comes with a significant cost in both complexity, price and maintenance. For now we are very happy with these early trials of our Paravane system and we will continue to learn and test it in different conditions as we travel the world. If they continue to work as well as these early trials indicate then we’ll just keep on using them. If not, the hull has been fully framed for active stabilizers if we decide we want to install them at a later date. I will continue to report the real world data on how well the paravanes work as we venture forward.
I will come up with a more permanent storage setup for the Paravanes when they are not in use but for now it is working well to stow them safely out of the way on their sides like this, lashed to the very sturdy AL stanchions with their own lines.
As it turned out we didn’t get a chance to use the Paravanes after that first day of our 3 1/2 day passage down to the Canaries as the seas flattened out and no stabilization was needed at all. Weather WonderWoman Christine had found us yet another great weather window and the rest of this passage was smooth and comfy as could be. These were our typical sea conditions. Hard to ask for much better and we even had a bit of a following sea to help us along.
As these two crew members can attest.
For those interested in overall passage performance this trip, the total distance was 678.4 NM in 78.2 hours. Average SoG, Speed over Ground was 8.7 knots and average fuel consumption was 1.76 L/NM. All numbers which we are eXtremely happy with and will continue to try out different combinations of engine RPM, load and prop pitch to see how these numbers change as we log more and more nautical smiles.
Other highlights of this passage include numerous schools of different types of dolphins who joined us for various amounts of time to the squealing delight of the Captain from her perch on the Bow.
We also picked up a few hitchhikers like this rather large squid but they didn’t travel too far with us before heading back to sea.
We had originally intended to head for the northernmost Canary Island of Lanzarote but we were not able to find a berth at the Port of Entry there so we headed over to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria instead.
A bit disponing for us because we had hoped to meet up with David, who we had met years ago on our previous boat Learnativity when we were in Vuda Point marina in Fiji. David has been following us for a long time now on the bloat and he very kindly reached out to us when he saw that we were heading to the Canaries where he was now working on Lanzarote. Sorry to miss you this time David but stay tuned for the next opportunity.And so it was that we pulled into the very large Las Palmas Marina, which is where the ARC rally starts from each year in November. Even with those 200+ boats now long gone, the marina still only had a few spots but managed to fit us in on the end of the fuel dock you see here.
The night after we arrived another low front passed through with some sustained winds over 40 knots which caused a bit of problems for some of the boats inside and outside the marina so we had several of them come in during the middle of the night and this is what the scene looked like in front of us the next morning. Several more came in after this and we had one tie up alongside us to add one more spot for a few days refuge. All has been cleared up now but repairs are still underway for damage in the marina and on several of the boats.
Seems like the Canary Island people like to get an early start on celebrating the pending arrival of the New Year and Christine was able to get this shot of the fireworks going off over in the city the other side of the marina last night. I’m guessing this was just a warm up for the big show tonight so should be quite the celebration for all of us this New Year’s Eve.
Weather may change our routing but we are currently heading to the south end of the Caribbean islands to St. George’s on the West side of Grenada.
This zoomed out view will help provide a better overall picture of the typical routing many boats take for crossing the Atlantic both directions. Who knows, maybe we’ll just keep going and do the whole loop and end up back over in Europe in a year or two?
Our intended route from here in Las Palmas over to Grenada will likely be about 2800 NM and should take us somewhere between 13-14 days but of course weather conditions can change that both directions so we’ll just leave it up to Mother Nature to decide.
For now, we eagerly look forward to eXploring the many many islands and experiences awaiting us in the Caribbean which will also be a bit of “back home” for Christine from her many years sailing there since the 90’s. Fist though, we need to send 2022 into the history books and get 2023 started with our first Atlantic crossing in Möbius.
We have SO much to be grateful for from our experiences in 2022 so we look forward to tonight’s celebration. We’ll try not to stay up too late, which is pretty easy for us to do, as we intend to throw off the dock lines tomorrow morning and start making our way across the Atlantic. We want to sincerely thank each of you for all the time you take to join us throughout all our adventures with designing, building and now cruising on Möbius. It means a lot to both of us to know that so many people are ridging along with us and we hope we can continue to post updates that will want you to keep coming back for more.
We will be off line throughout the crossing so the next update here will be from wherever we land in the Caribbean and I can provide you more details on the passage mid January or so. Wherever and how ever you celebrate the end of 2022 we wish that 2023 will turn out to be the best year yet for all of us.
Happy New Year to all of you from all of us!
-Wayne, Christine, Barney & Ruby.
Congratulation and all our wishes for a safe crossing and a very good year of sailing.
Hope to see you in Florida.
Mi casa es tu casa.
JP and Marie.
Thanks JP! You know our situation much better than most having done more than your share of passages over the years as well. And you and Marie are in the rare group of those who have done such voyages under power! Special thanks then for your well wishes and we’ll see you on the other side.
Happy New Year’s to you and Marie and look forward to seeing what you two get up to in the New Year.
Probably missed your departure as it is New Year’s Eve morning here in Vancouver, but wanted to wish you both a great 2023 cruising and safe travels across the Atlantic. Joan and Dave
My turn for apologies now for taking so long to respond to you and all the others who commented as well Dave. After 2 weeks offline during our Atlantic crossing the Emails and online content certainly had piled up so I’m still working my way through that mountain. Thanks for your kind wishes and they seemed to have worked as we had a fast and comfy crossing.
Thanks,
Wayne
Happy New Year and Happy New Adventures Christine and Wayne. May the weather conditions be perfect for your crossing. We eagerly await your next posting. Sherry and Rick
Thanks so much Sherry and Rick. Just now catching up with all the comments, Emails and other online things that piled up during our two week crossing and thanks for the help that your best wishes gave us for such a quick and easy passage.
-Wayne
Great to catch up and hear more on the adventures. Bringing history back to life with some of those passages. Smooth travels ahead, we hope. Cheers!
Hey Grant! Fun to have you “along for the ride” and glad you are enjoying it.
-Wayne
Like your approach to experiencing the voyage rather than making the trip. Also your way of starting with a sound 1.0 and evolving, even if Mr G was the exception that proved the rule.
In that spirit, I’ve been researching wake adapted rudders, struts and props as in https://www.miwheel.com/sterngears/wake-adapted-technology/
https://www.hydrocompinc.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/wapd.pdf
There’s always more adventure on the voyage.
Hi John. Funny how living such a “connected” world there is so much overlap as I too have been seeing this coverage of wake apapted rudders, props, etc. Interesting and I look forward to learning more as I continue to follow it along with you.
-Wayne
Happy new year and smooth crossing! cant’ wait for your next wonderful post.
Thanks for your help with us having such a successful passage. Much appreciated.
-Wayne
I’ve just come accross you blog after seeing the LRC58 for sale and finding out abut these boats. I’m a big fan of FPB’s and yours seems very similar. Great boat and hope you have many years of adventure in it.
Hi Mark, welcome aboard the Good Ship Möbius.
There does seem to be building momentum behind these type of long range, short handed and “eXtreme” type expedition power boats though the numbers are certainly still VERY small compared to other Trawler type power cruising boats. Glad you found us and are enjoying the ride so far. Please do let me know as you do so what type of posts and content you find most valuable, least so, what you’d like to see more of, etc.
Wayne
MAN! Am I happy I found this treasure of info! Thank you for sharing.
The other day I had a very bad experience with my 50ft trawler and documented it: https://youtu.be/iymm_EPpc7o.
Please advice on some questions if you want to and have the time.
.1. If you have a look at that video. Waves from astern caused by strong wind (24-30knts), on a trawler (sister of Marine Trader) would your vanes lead to the stability everybody needs?
.2. Because I also drive the boat on the rivers and canals of The Netherlands I have to take some fixed bridges in account. With the mast down, the top of the fly is 5.3m high and if I store the poles like most all users do, I cannot use those routes any more. Any idea or guesses, why no one (it seems that way) stows the poles aligned with the length of the boat? (I can image that docking on a jetty or a lock (we have many in The Netherlands) becomes an issue in possibly damaging the pole). But this setup + a bigger fender is a lot cheaper than Magnus Stabs. (quote of € 80k)
.3. I saw a video of Cruising Sea Venture, and he mentioned that (I believe he said) “A Paravane Architect had calculated that the vanes on Sea Venture had to be 6ft in the water. I read that you have them 6m. Is this 6, from you experience or is there a formula only architects know?
.4. I see that you drew the vanes by memory, what are the dimensions and from your experience by now, what would happen if they where twice the size?
.5. You sailed a route I only could imagine one could do that with a sailboat (cause of fuel issue). I subscribed to MV Dirona on YT and saw him drive his Nordhavn all over the world, made possible by enormous flexible fuel tanks on the deck. What is your fuel capacity?
.6. This is a silly question, so be aware of it upfront: If one owns a yacht like yours and is undertaking the trips you do, (and have some money available otherwise one could not undertake this…- the Dutchman asked) why have not the regular stabs installed and go for this home made (be aware: with respect!!) setup of vanes?
Well “that’s all for now, folks” some cartoon once said, so let me end that ways also.
Thank you in advance.
Glad you found the blog and found some of the content to be of use to you.
Not sure I can answer all your questions but here are some initial responses:
1. I watched a bit of the video and difficult to know how much paravanes would have helped. The boat in the video was very different hull than on Möbius and was experiencing large beam seas and rolling over 30 degrees he said. We have not experienced quite that much roll but when we have had our paravanes out it reduced the roll to under 10 degrees and much slower period which made a huge difference and was quite safe and comfortable onboard.
2. If you do some searches on the Trawler Forum and YouTube you will find examples of boats which have created paravane beams that extent out horizontally from the boat and have vertical hinge pins so that they fold in alongside the boat and thus do not change the overall height. So this might work well for situations like you want to explore.
3. Yes, Sea Venture and I have exchanged quite a few Emails over the years and he had a very good paravane setup. I don’t know of any formula or formal way of calculating the depth to run the paravanes below the water level just that you want to make sure that they are deep enough to be in “clear” water that is not being disturbed by surface waves and such. Then you also want to ensure that they are running deep enough to reduce any danger of them coming up and out of the water in large seas.
4. The triangle paravane surface on the ones I built measured about 80cm wide at the back and about 60cm long. Again no real formula that I know of, I just measured a lot of commercially produced paravanes and spoke with others who had built some of their own and came up with these numbers to try. If I were to be continuing to cruise I would try building a new set that were larger, perhaps a meter on the back edge as it is all about the surface area that is what resists being pulled up and thus reduces the roll. The nice thing about these simple plywood based paravanes is that they are relatively quick to make and affordable so you can experiment with different sizes and try them out in different conditions to see what suits you and your boat best.
5. Our fuel capacity is about 14k litres which gives us a range at 8-9 kts of about 7k NM.
6. The hull on Möbius was designed and built for active stabilizers, either fins or Magnus, to be installed so all the bracing, WT coffer dams, etc. have all been built in. We decided to try Paravanes first and see how well they suited us and our use cases and then could install active stabilizers in the future if wanted. If we were to be able to continue cruising then I suspect that we would have installed active stabilizers, most likely Magnus Effect type, in the next few years. No question that active stabilizers reduce the roll more than passive paravanes and they are much more convenient to use. They just come at some cost both financially and in terms of maintenance and potential failures.
Hope that helps and best wishes with your future passages.
Wayne
Thank you very much, Wayne, for your very comprehensive answer. It certainly helps in the decision for stabs. From a Defever owner, I understood that CMC stabilizers have an electric version that also work perfectly in zero-speed.
Thanks for letting me know that you found the posts to be of value to you.
I’m not keeping up with it of late but there are several companies who are advertising “zero speed” active stabilizers of both the fin and Magnus type. Have not yet spoken to anyone who has one of these to get any first hand feedback from them but hopefully we will start seeing reviews and discussions in the magazines and online forums.