The Value of Technology

When out at sea, the most valuable piece of equipment on a yacht today is probably the GPS Chart Plotter, not the Compass.

GPS will give you your exact position with a range of error of a few feet! The GPS antenna on our AIS is so accurate that during installation it asks for the exact position of the antenna on the yacht to know the true space that the vessel occupies on the surface of the ocean!

GPS started off wonderful, a small screen would display your exact coordinates on the Earth. You no longer need a sextant to find your rough position and Dead Reckoning just became very obsolete! The readout lets you quickly know precisely where you are so you can plot them on a paper chart and figure out where you should go next.

Then someone thought about how they could make it even easier to do! Paper charts are big and cumbersome, so this was the next point to improve upon! GPS displays grew bigger and bigger to the point that maps could be visible on them, and eventually charts could be displayed on their screens. Now your position is instantly plotted on the screen in real time right before your eyes!

Navigating transformed from an art that takes practice to a video game where you steer your little boat shaped icon around on a screen. Avoiding rocks, buoys, and day markers suddenly became possible, even in the darkness of night or the blinding effects of thick fog. This is great for stationary objects that don’t move, but what about other boats on the same waterway?

AIS makes this possible, and even better it plots the other boats on your screen! Suddenly, sailing became a video game where you can steer blindly in any conditions, all you have to do is avoid the other dots on the screen!

This all sounds rather fantastical, but the sad thing is while we were in the Azores, I met another cruiser who luckily arrived after having some technical issues with one of his motors (on his catamaran). This cruiser carried no paper charts, only chart plotters. These large screens were very apparent in his cockpit area. When off they were huge black rectangles and when on they could serve as a flashlight!

The alarming part is he did not carry a compass.

If his electronics failed or if his ability to power electronics ran out, he had no paper charts to plot his position and calculate his course or to navigate by, and even worse, he had no compass to guide him.

Technology is awesome and it has made it possible for us to sail into completely unknown ports for the first time with confidence that we will safely anchor without bumping into anything! That doesn’t mean that technology should be revered above the tried and true simple tools of the past, like a compass.

Still in Lockdown

Our trip to Europe found us sailing into the Mediterranean and embarking on a fun winter excursion through the hills of the European continent…in a van!

Van life was the goal as we found ways to entertain ourselves away from the rough winter Mediterranean. We started our journey in early February, through Spain, France, and up to Belgium by March. We then visited The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, and Austria!

Then the lockdown came and we found ourselves trapped in Austria for a few weeks while Corona Virus raged in the European Continent. That was mid March!

We are doing well and waiting for it to finally be safe to drive back to our boat in Spain but enjoying all the sights that Austria has to offer while we wait! The people are friendly and the food is delicious, so no complaints about where we got stuck from us here.

Boats and Money

We all know that boats use a lot of money. They cost money to buy them, the cost money to store them, and they cost money to repair them.

These costs are not very negotiable. You can take steps to reduce these costs, but they will still cost in the end. The only cost you can take full control of is the cost of upgrading your boat. The boat show is the best example of an adult candy store! All the booths are pretty with shiny gizmos that dazzle and draw you deep into their snare!

The best way to avoid wasting money is to avoid buying stuff that won’t actually work! After three years of cruising full time and an ocean crossing, we have a pretty good understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Watch as we discuss our biggest money wasting purchases for gear that we have made so that you can learn to avoid these traps.

La Mancha in Spain

We travel deep into the heart of Spain where we find an ancient clifftop city named Toledo where we learn about Manchego Cheese and real Toledo Steel Swords.

Not All Dyneema is Created Equal

Dyneema is a wonderful modern fiber that is incredibly light and incredibly strong. It can be used for all sorts of different purposes, ranging from anchoring giant oil rigs, mooring huge cargo ships, mining, logging, and even standing rigging on a sailboat!

The only issue with using Dyneema for your specific application is you need to be informed about “which” Dyneema you want to use. It has been many years since the first generation of Dyneema came to market, and since then it has gone through many evolutions as particular needs were found, and then met.

Saying “I’ll rig my yacht with Dyneema” is the same as saying “I’ll have a dog guard my house”. Are you talking about a Chihuahua, a Pug, or a German Sheppard? Some dogs are better for specific jobs and the same holds true with Dyneema.

As Dyneema products improve, their prices fluctuate. What used to be the latest and greatest comes down in price as the new “best product” takes the high price on the market. This makes it tempting to buy “cheap Dyneema” for your rigging, but it is important to look at what kind you are getting.

An early form of Dyneema is called SK-75. This rope is incredibly strong and lightweight, but it doesn’t do well under a constant load as it will begin to creep (rather heavily).

SK-75 was then replaced by SK-78 which had the same properties as its predecessor but with improved creep resistance. SK-78 was then improved upon even further with an entirely new generation of material called DM-20.

Naturally, SK-75 is very inexpensive, SK-78 is a little more expensive, and DM-20 fetches a higher price. All three fibers are single braid 12-strand rope, so why can’t you use them interchangeably?

This will all become apparent when the three different types of Dyneema are subjected to the same load at the same temperature.

The three fibers were subjected to the force of 300 MPa at 30*C and the creep was measured.

• SK-75 creeped 0.02% per day

• SK-78 creeped 0.006% per day

• DM-20 creeped 0.00007% per day

The percentages seem small, but on a boat, the “per day” is indefinite! Rigging is always under a load and every year is 365 days. In one year SK-75 would creep 7.5%. If your stay is 20m long, you are talking about it creeping an additional 1.5m (4.9 feet)!

Steel standing rigging has an expected lifespan of 10 years, that’s 3650 days. That would be 73% creep! This sounds pretty extreme but the stay would have failed from a creep rupture long before ever reaching that point, meaning it would fail long before the 10 year mark. SK-75 tends to fail at around 50% creep, which means you could expect it to fail in about 6 years.

SK-78 creeps significantly less than SK-75, about 3 times less actually. This means that it will hold your rigging and avoid creeping out of control before your eyes! Over 10 years of that grueling experiment, you can expect the a stay to creep 21.9%. This is significantly less than with the older generation of SK-75 fibers and really good news to someone who uses this as their standing rigging. SK-78 tends to rupture from creep at around 30% creep elongation, meaning that SK-78 would outlast steel rigging (if a yacht were the torture chamber that was this experiment). If your rigging lived in that torture chamber, it would be expected to fail at around day 5000, or 13.7 years into the experiment!

Naturally, one can expect that DM-20 raises the stakes for what is considered ideal The creep resistance improvement from SK-78 to DM-20 is 85.7x better (from 0.006% per day to 0.00007% per day)! After 10 years in the torture chamber, the stay would have creeped a mere 0.255%. That is practically nothing! In our imaginary 20m stay in this torture chamber, the stay would only creep 0.05m (1.96 inches) over 10 years! Compare that the the 1.5m of creep from SK-75 in the first year!

While SK-75 tends to rupture from creep at around 50% in torture tests and SK-78 tends to rupture around 30% from creep elongation, none of the tests that I have seen has managed to cause DM-20 to fail from creep. 30*C is wonderful for accelerating the flaws of creep, yet tests at 70*C (which manage to rupture SK-75 and SK-78 in a few days) failed to cause DM-20 to fail. After 6 months, the test was ended without a creep failure in DM-20.

While you can find “cheap” Dyneema to rig your yacht, it is worth the extra expense to buy the right kind of Dyneema for your yacht. Creep will not be a concern and you will be able to rest and relax knowing that your rigging is incredibly strong and secure, even against creep!