As we hunt for our future sailing boat home, "Chloe", we consider again and again the specifications and details that we want to see in her design. What does she need to do? How will she be like to live in for many years? For sure, Chloe has to be strong and tough. She has to be able to sail in shallow waters of the seas and up rivers. She has to be large enough to provide lots of comfort and storage while being small enough for either of us to handle, in a rough storm out in the middle of an ocean; while the other of us is asleep. Chloe presents a tough list of specs.
None of the boats we had sailed to date were close to meeting these needs. We searched all over the world for boat types, boat designs and boat builders... eventually we narrowed down our list, on paper at least, to only a few super boats. At the Top of our List is the Garcia 45 Exploration Design. Arguably, the best boat in the world right now for a worldwide cruising couple. Its design was the result of a joint collaboration between a reputable French Aluminum Yacht builder, Garcia and a world renown cruiser, Jimmy Cornell. Jimmy is a man who has sailed over two hundred of thousand miles as he circled the world afloat. Jimmy also founded the ARC , (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) along with others and has written a whole series of reference books designed to support those who choose to sail around the world's oceans. Clearly, a fascinating chap who obviously, 'knows his boats'. https://cornellsailing.com/about-us/jimmy-cornell/
His design efforts, along side Garcia's Aluminum boat designing and building expertise, resulted in the Garcia 45 Exploration Boat.
We're thinking that Chloe could be such a boat. And there are over 20x such boats today, scattered over the planet. Pearl is a recent example of such a boat. So, when we build Chloe, Pearl would be Chloe's older sister.
When we were told by our boat broker in Seattle, that 'Pearl' was sailing over the Pond and would be in Nassau in a few weeks time, we jumped at the chance to see her. Pearl's owner and his wife very graciously offered to show us their floating home. An offer for which we were and are, very grateful. They turned out to be super nice people and very willing to help us find Chloe.
After landing in Nassau, we hung out for a while, killing time for until Pearl arrived and was available for us to view.
We took a scooter drive up to see her, the day before we were invited. Just for a sneak pre-view, as we couldn't wait, plus we didn't want to get lost on the day that we were invited to come and see her (was Peter's lame excuse). Some couple of days later, were were invited to officially see her interior. During this latter visit, we didn't video or photo her interior; out of respect for the owners home and privacy, but we can describe her in detail. And we took some pics of her exterior...
Pearl - a Garcia 45 Exploration v2
Pearl is a truly perfect design for a cruising couple. Solid, Solid, Solid. A very strong Aluminum frame, hull and deck. Well sized water & fuel tanks. An optimized anchor system that brings the anchors chain's weight to the front of the mast, to center the resultant load. She has twin independent rudders, a rope controlled centerboard and can minimize her draft to ~1.05 meters. She's around 49 ft long and has a 14ft beam. A perfect size of canals, shallow Bahama's reefs and she's strong & big enough for dealing with huge stormy seas.
She's rigged as a cutter with provision for three head sails along with a conventional stack pack & lazy jacks and a fully battened, main sail.
Her engine is a 75hp Volvo Penta, with 'from above' engine access and she has a skeg protected, variable pitch, folding prop. A solid Sailing Arch provides a great mounting point for a dinghy and PV panels. She has births for 6 or more people, although we would remodel her to include more storage and workshop space instead of bunks. And, we would only want one of her two shower/toilets.
Perhaps the most unique thing about her though is her Salon design. One of the considerations of cruising over long distances is that you need to perform continuous look-out, when crossing oceans. You don't want a high speed container ship smacking into your boat, when you are sleeping soundly down below. Container ships can travel over 20 knotts and can come at you in any direction. So in 20 minutes, a ship that is 1000x bigger than you, and that 'was' 5 miles away, can very suddenly be bearing down upon you without knowing you're there. As you sleep. And, container ships are not looking for relatively tiny sail boats; lost in their radar clutter. We read once about a small sailing boat, with a broken back, wrapped over the bulbous bow of a container ship, as it arrived into New York Harbor. Empty... and no one was even aware of the little smashed up boat until the big ship had docked and a member of the crew looked down.
The Garcia 45 Exploration has a unique pilot house design. The Salon inside is located on a raised platform, with bench seating and navigation station facing forwards, with eye level windows. The forward window is retro-profiled, like a fishing boat or a military warship, to minimize sun glare. It gives the boat a unique, aggressive, almost commercial styling that you either love or hate. We stared and we stared... and we 'loved'. This design means we can do our look-outs in comfort, from inside the boat. We can shut the weather out, with only periodic excursions to the outside gale for a quick extra scan. Most sailboat that we have been in are arranged so that once you're inside, you can't see out.
After looking over Pearl in detail we decided to move forwards on Chloe's build and started to pin down the details of a boat build plan.
Getting all the details of Chloe spec'd and designed will now take some time, especially as we'd like her to be a Lithium Battery based boat with extra solar power. Solar is a reliable way to generate battery energy - to the extent that you can fit enough panels on the boat. We don't like windmills or hydro-generators as they involve moving parts. We'll upsize the Photovoltaic array size and use the most modern panels we can find to charge up a well sized bank of Lithium Phosphate batteries. And for those times when the sun doesn't perform: we'll have an extra 120A alternator installed on the 75hp engine.
We'll detail some of the technical thinking about power systems in a separate blog.
But at least we have a target boat now. A target Builder. A location to build her. Destination: "Cherbourg, La France"
Next up we need to drive up the East coast of the USA while we're Finishing up the build plan and paperwork and then sell our faithful Car. Once sold, we'll relocate to Europe.
