From: Truelove39@aol.com RE: get home engines > But as one who intends to make passages alone (no fleet of lemmings for me), I John. As one of the people who was on the NAR I found this comment reflected a true lack of understanding of what it is like to do open ocean passages-both solo and with a rally. I do not know what your experience is, but all I can assume from that comment is that you do not have much experience either way. >From someone who actually has done long distance passagemaking (both with a group and solo), I will try to explain it. It is hard to put into words but I will attempt to help you understand. Last year according to our log we did over 70 days and night at sea under passage in the four months BEFORE the NAR without the company of other boats. Almost all of it out of sight of land, and most more then a day from help, no Sea Tow, no helicopter rescue. No doctors on shore to help. No place to buy parts, other boaters do not speak your language etc.. Then we did 22 days / nights at sea with friends within VHF distance. It was a really great change of pace. After you have done a few months at sea alone, you might want enjoy the difference of having company on the radio. We did! Then again maybe if you call people lemmings who have done things you have not, you will not want company. They also might have concerns about you joining them-I know I would. I would not want someone making nasty comments ruining the fun of others. Would we cruise with a group again. If they were going where we were going yes! Why - for the fun of it. It is nice to be alone, but after a few months at sea, it was GREAT to have friends. It is hard to explain but being alone at sea for 70 days is long, boring, stressful and tiring. Having someone else to talk to really can lower the friction within your crew. ------------------------------------------------------ There is serious stress knowing you as captain have to be able to fix anything. Let me try to give you a feeling of the stress of open ocean cruising. I never felt this stress when cruising where there was sea tow and helicopter rescue. We were off the coast of Central America one night, and my wife said she heard the anchor falling in the engine room. I said there is no anchor in the engine room, it was just the stabilizers slamming (they do that sometimes in serious seas). Next thing she says is "there is smoke in the master stateroom". I am thinking what's overheating, I open the engine room door and all I see is smoke, pieces of charred black stuff everywhere, and piece of fiber glass we all over the floor of the engine room. Pucker factor just got high! You know this is going to be a bad night! We were DAYS from an anchorage. The problem was simple but the three minutes tracking it down was scary. It was just the alternator belt on the small starting battery alternator (35 amp hour) failed, and it then took the front part of the engine belt guard and broke it into small pieces, lots of small pieces. The fix was to turn the second alternator (270 amp hour) parallel switch on and continue the trip. Oh and two hours of cleaning the mess up in a hot, heaving engine room with lots of hot moving parts, now without a belt guard. Sleep did not come easy for me, since I knew if I could not fix it, it wasn't getting fixed. If I could not get us to land, nobody was... I never felt this kind of stress in my 1,000 hours of flying. When flying I took the classes, passed the tests, had a professional mechanic that checked the aircraft over, (I had taken a 14 week class that let me work on the aircraft but he had to sign off every time I touched a wrench!) I used FAA weather etc. Was I ever scared: yes, but I knew I had the correct knowledge and equipment, and was tested to high standard of performance. (commercial, IFR multi-engine). I took check rides every year, instead of the every two years the FAA required. On the boat that night the question was did I what it took to fix EVERYTHING CRITICAL. There is NO CLASS, no checklist, no test, and most books are pretty poor. I never found a book on how to maintain stabilizers (a critical system) or how to diagnosis problems with an electrical system as sophisticated as the Nordhavn 47's. It has two transformers, an isolation and load balancing one. It has the ability for the boat to run off either 30 amp 120V or 50 amp 240 volts shorepower (50 or 60 hz), three battery chargers, inverter bypass, etc.. (all from the "factory"). Did I have the correct spares? Did I have the correct tools? Did I have the knowledge? Something I never found in a book: Would the failure occur in sea conditions I could repair something in. I have had to work on stuff in seas so rough I had to duct tape the tools and parts down when not in my hand. If I had a failure in Central America I could not fix I could easily loose the boat. In a group their might be someone else who might have what it took to fix something. The knowledge that someone else might know how to fix a failure, or have a spare or tool you did not lowered the stress. If you have not been there, you can not understand. ---------------------------------------------------- When you are actually on the open ocean you are responsible for the safety of your vessel. Even on a rally you can not depend on others, physical help is only possible when the seas allow it. Was their increased safety with a group. Yes. If you had a fire in reasonable sea conditions, someone would pick you up. In bad seas, you are still screwed. No helicopter rescue was possible for over 50% of the trip. So a rally it does not guarantee safety, just increases it. After 70 days of not having that level of entertainment, help and safety -- the NAR was like a vacation! Scott Strickland Strickly for Fun Nordhavn 47.