We are Chuck and Barb Shipley, home port Savannah, GA.  Cruising
grounds so far have been the SE USA and Abaco, but I'm only six and
one-half months away from retirement (not that I'm counting -- much)
and so we are laying plans for the Great Loop, and back to more of the
Bahamas, and on down the Caribbean to South America.  If we follow our
instincts -- and if our initial excursions work out -- we will almost
certainly sell the house on the water and may well move exclusively to
the boat.  With our "house" money we just might upgrade to a newer and
larger Krogen.  One with stabilizers, which we don't have.

When we are through with introductions, I'd like to ask if anyone
thinks it is feasible/possible/not-totally-nuts to sneak down the
Bahamas and then the Caribbean chain WITHOUT stabilizers in a KK42.

--chuck and Barbara Shipley
Tusen Takk
KK42-152

--
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man
living with power to endanger the public liberty.

• John Adams

RE - I'd like to ask if anyone thinks it is
feasible/possible/not-totally-nuts to sneak down the Bahamas and then the
Caribbean chain WITHOUT stabilizers in a KK42.

Starting with the thought that anything is possible !  It is not clear to me
what you will have as your longest leg if you "sneak", but if you are going
to deal with open ocean and 8+ foot waves which you need to be ready for
even if you are only planning 2 or 3 days max. off shore, I would think the
most important upgrade would be stabilizers on a KK42 or larger.

To give you some feel for what it could be like try throwing everything that
is more than 5 feet from the axial or lateral centers of rotation on the
floor that can't stand 1.1+ G's minimum in ALL directions, and travel like
that for a couple of days. You may still find a few books on the floor once
in a while with stabilizers but both the people and the "things" will be a
lot happier with stabilizers.

Good boating, John Harris

Your KK42 has a cored hull. To create an adequate "boss" to take the strain,
an area of the coring would have to be removed and built-up with fiberglass.
The good news is that most KK42's have a large "basement" with plenty of
room to work so the labor might not be as much as for a boat with confined
bilge spaces.

I have no experience of external paravanes, but I think that Nordhavn
charges about $12,500 to add them to their boats in the 40 foot range. But
I'm sure that they have built the added strength required into all their
hulls. Depending upon where this reinforcement must go, it could be
expensive or affordable.

IMHO, one never recovers the cost of installation on most items when selling
your boat. I would start making plans for the next boat which includes
compensating for any deficiences you see in your KK42 - which is a great
boat with tons of storage space. As other list members have said, this is a
comfort issue and not so much a safety issue. I say this because you have
said you would like a larger Krogen. If you decide that your current boat is
a keeper, then by all means add a stabilizing mechanism suited to your
intended travels. Note that if I were truly going to sea in a KK42, I would
replace the teak pilothouse doors with aluminum doors by Freeman or Diamond
Sea-Glaze - sliding or foward-opening Dutch doors.

Also, you can never be 100% sure about the weather and those are the times
when you need to be at the top of your game - not hanging on for dear life.
The boat will be fine; it's a real trawler, but it survives because it bears
a strong resemblance to a ball and that was N.A. Hargraves favorite shape -
at least that was what he said about the stern of the liner USS
Constitution.

Ron Rogers
Willard 40
Trying to leave freezing Annapolis