It is hard to believe but we’ve just had the first anniversary of Wind Horse’s launching in Auckland, New Zealand. She now has almost 12,000 nautical miles under her keel (1,100 hours on the engines) and it is time to take stock.

The question everyone keeps asking is, “How do we like the transition to power?”. As you probably know, we did not come willingly to this point in our lives. Prudence and advancing age forced us to give up the high-powered sailing we used to love.

But now that we’ve spent some time aboard Wind Horse we have come to love her as much as any of our sailboats. OK, the thrill and adrenaline rush of handling one of our boats under sail is gone. We can no longer work our way under sail through a tightly anchored fleet. But we’ve got a more comfortable mode of cruising almost completely devoid of worry about issues like weather. At this point in our lives the tradeoff is a good one.

The interior layout is working well. We very much like the “great room” approach to our living/working area, where both the on- and off-watch can communicate if desired, and where whomever has galley duty has the same view as the watchstander. This approach also has benefits at anchor as we have 360 degree views from everywhere in the “great room”.

As previously discussed in our reports while underway, Wind Horse has proven to be significantly more comfortable at all angles and combinations of seas than we are used to under sail. This has been a pleasant surprise and allowed us to make passages in conditions we would have waited out with Beowulf or Sundeer.

On deck, we been very happy with the layout of the aft deck and flying bridge. We are surprised at how often the flying bridge is used under way. In the tropics, we spent a majority of our day watches up here. We have wonderful sight lines, of course, and good air flow. We’ve found the motion in all sea-states to be very reasonable.

The aft dinghy deck is working out as planned. We use our booms to lift dinks on and off. Steve can do this on his own, unless there is a swell running, in which case it takes two of us. The one modification we’ve made is to switch the port boom dinghy hoist to a two-to-one tackle, which makes handling the 700-pound (335kg) outboard dinghy a lot easier.

The booms are used at anchor if it is bouncy. A pair of small flopper-stoppers reduces motion drastically. If the anchorage is very rolly, we’ll fill the flying bridge ballast tanks with 5000 pounds (2200kg) of salt water, which softens the motion a lot. We’ve only had to do this once.

The ROCNA anchor continues to please us. It has worked well in all the bottoms in which we’ve used it, and we now think the claim that it has significantly better holding than the Bruce to be valid. The Maxwell V4000 windlass is a big improvement on the V3500. A lot more muscle with this anchor winch. We have one of their 500C Auto Anchor controls, with a built-in chain counter and are pleased with it (although we still use nylon wire ties for depth indicators on our chain). We only mounted one of these units inside and now are thinking of adding a read-out to the flying bridge (we seem to be easily corrupted these days).

There are a number of systems on board which are somewhat different from what we’ve done in the past, and it might be useful to you to see how they are doing after a year of passaging..

Our NAIAD active stabilizers are one of the most important of these new systems. We really did not want to fit this gear because of the complex hydraulic system, but we’re very happy we did. The oversized fins were the right way to go. The system does not work very hard, and even in 20+ foot (6m) beam seas, average roll is 3 to 4 degrees.

The computerized Datum control head was also the right choice. Now that we are starting to dial in the underlying constants, the automatic learning cycle does a great job of adjusting control parameters.

We’ve had a couple of maintenance issues. A faulty hydraulic cylinder cropped up during sea trials, and then we had a lock valve go bad on the trip back from Hawaii. All were handled expeditiously by NAIAD. There customer service has been exemplary.

We are pleased with the choice of Deere 4045 TFM diesels. They have plenty of power to push us as fast as we want to go. At half load, with 30+ knots of wind on the nose and 5- to 8-foot seas, we can maintain 12.5 knots if we have to. We have spent 95% of our time at 11 knots, which takes between 1,850 and 2,050 RPM depending on our loading, sea state, and wind speed/angle. If we slow down to 10.25 knots the boat is almost silent, but so far we’ve preferred the slight noise (57dB) of the faster speed – mostly due to weather issues and the desire to get passage completed expeditiously. We might slow down a bit from here on out.

There have been two problems with the Deeres. The starboard engine had a faulty internal oil cooler, which was changed before we went into sea trials. And then in Fiji one of our fuel injection pumps had a bad seal. This is a rare occurrence, was easily dealt with by replacing the pump, and 800 hours later there have been no repeats. We’ve been told by mechanics who work on these engines there should be no further problems and to expect a minimum of 20,000 hours before an overhaul is required.

The engines are controlled with Glendinning electronic shift/throttles – one on the flying bridge and the other in the nav station. The Glendinning hear has worked without a hitch. The ability to automatically synch the engine RPM is a nice feature.

We have Racor Crank Vents on each of the engines. These have not been working correctly so we’ve got some blow-by and a few oil leaks. This is probably because the filters are overdue for a change, which has now been done. We’ve been waiting for the indicator to pop up. Since they have not, we’ve assumed these are OK. We will now change these at 500 hours (the manual say 750 and we have 1100 on the engines). We’ve added vacuum meters to each air filter to tell us when the air filters need cleaning or replacement.

Our Oberdorfer 1/4HP fuel pumps are working well (and have a lot of hours on them polishing and transferring fuel). The Separ fuel filters work fine. We see no big advantage or disadvantage compared to Racors and would use them again.

We have not been happy with our five-bladed Henley propellers. They are probably the wrong design for the boat. We’ve fitted a pair of Hall and Staevert four-bladed props and preliminary indications are that we are now hitting our performance and fuel consumption numbers (even though our previously reported data looked very good, it was not as good as expected).

The dripless shaft seals from PYI are working OK, except that the starboard seal has a very small weep. We’ll try a little toothpaste on the face at their suggestion to help mating. The CV axles and thrust bearings supplied by PYI are OK and run cool (just above engine room ambient temperature. The only problem with these we’ve had is they still toss a small amount of grease. At some point we are going to need to open them up and insert more grease, a major project about which we are not happy. We’d probably stick with SCATRA next time around due to this problem.

On the electrical side, our Electrodyne alternators are working hard and reliably, as we’ve come to expect over the years. At cruise RPM they each put out between 160 and 180 amps when they are hot, at 28V – and will hold this for hours. Underway, when running air conditioning and the water maker, the alternators can be working at a high output load for days on end.

We have a 1,500-amp hour bank of Sonnenschein traction batteries (A600 series). These are gel cells, the first time we’ve used a battery of this type (we’ve always used liquid electrolyte batteries in the past). We recently found out that there is really no way to check the battery state other than with an amp hour meter. With wet batteries a hydrometer will measure specific gravity which has a direct correlation to state of charge and battery condition. This does not please us and we’ll have to see how things work out (we used these batteries because the tops are not easily accessed as would be required with wet batteries).

Our electrical consumption is huge – around 250 amp hours per day! A lot of this is from small AC loads, which we are not managing that well. Lighting loads are also high. All of the above in some ways related to the larger size of this boat and also to a somewhat different style of cruising. We typically run the genset every other evening, during dinner, do the wash, watch a movie (big time power consumer with a 40″ TV) and put a little back into the batteries. With this approach we can sit four or five days before moving the boat (moving provides the real recharge), which fits our normal pattern quite well.

We have a 8kW Northern Lights genset. This size works well 90% of the time. We always keep it loaded at 75% using air conditioning or battery chargers to add load as needed. Electrically the unit works fine and we can barely hear it in the saloon. We have removed the sound shield to be able to keep a better eye on the unit. The sound shield itself could use a little engineering. Under way, in bouncy conditions, the latches do not hold and we would end up using masking tape to hold the panels together – pretty “Mickey Mouse” for the most expensive genset on the market. We’ve also found that the crank case bypass is substantial and quite dirty, even though we’ve routed the breather hose into the air cleaner filter. We’ve been told by a factory rep that the blow-by is “normal”. It coats the engine room with a light, dirty film. We would not buy another Northern Lights genset because of this.

Our Kabola heater is a great unit. Although this costs twice what a Webasto goes for, we’re happy to have made this decision. We had a bad circulating pump when the unit was new, which we’re told is rare, and otherwise the unit has worked without a problem. It is very, very quiet, on the boat and off as well.

The Frigoboat Danfoss compressor evaporator plate fridge and freezer units are still working fine. We let them run on automatic 98% of the time, with their variable speed control. The keel coolers are in a freshwater tank welded to the hull, and this works well. We have no problems freezing a large batch of meat or bread with these systems (40 pounds/18kg of meat will be hard in 12 hours).

Our Marine Air air conditioning units have not had much work. Mainly cooling, with some heating and defrosting to clear windows after cooking in cold weather. They are working fine. The only problem we’ve had is a faulty sea water pump relay control. This is easily wired around, after which we manually controlled the pump until a new board could be fitted.

Speaking of pumps, we’ve been using Shurflow double headed pumps with built-in pressure switches for a variety of functions. Except for two faulty pressure switches, they seem to be fine. However, the pressure switches look pretty low-tech and cheap, and we’ll probably replace them with something more industrial.

The Village Marine no-frills 800 GPD water maker has worked great. In the tropics, with warm water, it produced closer to 40 US gallons (155 L) per hour. In cold water, here in the Pacific Northwest we’re down to the rated 37 US gallons/hour.

The HeadHunter toilets, which work on a jet of fresh water, have proven to be reliable. However, they must have a proper pressure to work. We would use these again, but would always fit one manual head (Raritan PH11 on this boat) as back up. The one negative is the amount of water used per flush (and therefore the amount of effluent created for the holding tank). If this is an issue, we would go back to the SeaLand VacuFlush toilets.

The SeaLand integrated holding tank and pump, when it is used, does its job. So far we do not have any odor in the engine room. The charcoal filter on the air vent, which goes to the gas locker on the swim step, seems to work. The capacity of 28 US gallons (100L) is enough for the two of us with judicious use over a four- or five-day period.

Our WH Autopilot and steering system does it job as we’ve come to expect over the past 25 years. Wind Horse is easily steered, so the unit hardly works. We love our little electronic steering wheel.

We’ve not been so fortunate with our Teleflex steering cylinders. We used a version of these on all our boats for many years, with rarely a drip of oil even after 20 years of use. They have recently changed designs, and it seems as if we’ve been a test bed for them. We have been through three sets of cylinders and have just started installing the fourth set.

The problem is apparently with the seals. Our system has one passive cylinder and one active, the same as all our previous boats and the way WH does all its sailboats. It is the passive cylinder that has been going through seals.

Teleflex is 99% sure the new seals will do the job. In the meantime, we’ve gotten pretty good at changing the cylinders, with all of this practice.

On the communications front for offshore work, the Iridium Sat Phone together with UUPlus is a very efficient solution, and has been cost-efficient and very reliable. We have an Icom 802 SSB which we would not fit again. Although it is a fine set, it does not see enough usage to justify the space or cost. We’d go back to a Ham radio next time.

For the most part we’re very pleased with the way our gear has performed. There are still a couple of areas in which we need fine-tuning, but this about the same as we’ve experienced in the past. We have a pretty good handle on what needs to be improved and we’re working with our suppliers to get ourselves where we want to be.

We’re back aboard cruising now, during summer 2006. This fall we’ll report further on where things stand.