Countercurrent ideas on the use and maintenance of a 1987 Grand Soleil 46
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Carletto Primo is a Grand Soleil 46 from Cantiere Del Pardo, designed by Jezequel and launched in 1987. I bought it from engineer Morriconi in 1999. After sixteen years of rambling the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, after an endless and inevitable series of small and large breakdowns, breakages, misconceptions, mistakes, brilliant insights and later abandoned modifications, I have yet to see a sexier boat around the seas than mine. We have been everywhere on the Italian coast, in the major and minor islands, in France, in Spain, in Tunisia, in Greece and then again… Balearic, Egadi, Aeolian… thousands of miles.
So we were saying. 12 tons, 14 meters, low on the water, with a deck plan and a very generous rig, which remains a little sleepy in light winds (they are all good at being phenomena in 15 knots of air) but which then, as soon as it cools down, with any wind and gait, exalts itself and unleashes all its power, which knows how to raise its butt lightly in front of the breaker above and which does not sink its nose into the one that has just passed you, which makes wonderful whiskers of foam, that rises over the sea on the bow gracefully and at the same time, if there is a wave to break through with all its inertia, does not back off, that on a very narrow upwind leans on the foresail steadily and steadily, that can absorb violent gusts with condescension, that travels well with all sails out but also with very little sail, that the more the years pass the more she seems to rejuvenate, that has a language all her own that I now understand to perfection of creaks and little moans of love… This is Jezequel’s Grand Soleil, the “spaghetti Swan,” my beloved boat.
Then, last year, the big idea: around the world done slowly, in bits and pieces, with my loved ones, with friends who are willing to sail with me, and … here I am. I left Cala Galera in late July 2015 and today, after a year of intermittent sailing, Carletto Primo is at the berth at Marina Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, the most beautiful and organized marina I have seen in my life, entrusted to the loving care of the local Italian-owned IBC shipyard. Very serious efficient and kind people. About 5,700 miles. Not bad for one old man in his thirties and another in his sixties. It has been a great, exciting year. I am a retiree with little more than the minimum but, who knows why, I feel so rich today. My boat is … “the best boat in the world” simply because it is my boat. The same principle applies to children, loves, and friends. The verb “to love” mainly contains the noun “sea.” Will it be a case?
WHAT I IMPROVED AND MODIFIED
Eliminate the teak deck, put a superbimini, raft at the stern, change the name, take away the spi…
1. In the boat, doors are useless. They weigh, crush fingers and cut the air. I cheerfully landed them by replacing them with as many blue cotton curtains. Lighter boat, fingers that don’t crush, air that circulates freely. Of course, the ones in the bathrooms I kept.
2. The back of the sofa containing the motor is a misconception. I took it off, reupholstered and recovered the sofa, and now, with the table down I have a vast thousand-use thalamus at my disposal that we wittily called “orgy-bed.” Great.
3. The wooden deck is heavy, scorches the boat, is difficult to keep clean, etc. As soon as the wood began to show some weakness, I removed it, replaced by a sober but elegant varnish mixed with sand. A few hundred pounds are gone.
4. Stern sails nowadays are different from those of yesterday. I gave my spi to a friend who promptly reciprocated by giving me a wonderful candid gennaker.
5. I looked for a bowsprit to wall off the genny. The lowest cost I found was about 1,600 euros plus installation. In the banks by now they had me on file so I went to a steel pipe factory near my home and bought a piece of pipe (the best in the world) for the sum of 46 euros. Then I bought three ratchet straps at an auto parts store and installed with my own little hands a bowsprit of extraordinary strength and efficiency. It’s bad to see, I know, but then don’t watch it. I like it.
6. The sun in July and August is merciless. I then installed a generous bimini at the stern and I devised a perfect awning, without selvedges on the drapes, which covers the entire center of the boat and which, if the wind is too strong, easily releases and automatically packs onto the bimini.
7.I installed a wind generator, I already had one.
8. I installed a solar panel over the bimini.
9.I decided, as the know-it-all French do, that I would forever moor at the bow, using the solid bowsprit as an aid to the ascent and descent.
10.I put the life raft on the aft platform which is the most suitable place for ejection in case of need.
11.I renamed the boat BIRBONE and then CARLETTO PRIMO screwing with superstitious prejudices. Oh no, I forgot. I had to change the engine.
MISTAKES I’VE MADE OVER THE YEARS
Bullshit like sails made of fabric too light, change the deck, buy a 12 v monitor
1.I had a battened mainsail made with trolleys a little too light (bullshit). I had gotten performance anxiety (of the boat).
2.I returned all the halyards to the cockpit (big screw-up). I had to leave the original deck plan with the mainsail halyard at the mast.
3.For more than ten years, I have been looking for a way to water from the deck that would periodically have me find bilges full of fresh water. Then I suddenly realized that when I filled the water tanks in the navy, I left the hose in the nozzle and did something else. There was something in the “overflow” of the tank that was not working and sending water into me. No big deal, so the bilges would wash out a little bit (small shit).
4.I unloaded the tangon since I had the gennaker (bullshit). The tangon is very useful with the full stern genoa and also for sitting on the bow at sunset with half a Tuscan in your mouth (venial shit).
5.I bought a 2000-watt electric heater (bullshit). Buy yourself a nice polar sleeping bag you spend less.
6.I bought a 12-volt DVD monitor and never used it. When I wanted to use it, it immediately electrocuted itself (bullshit).
7.I saved money on the purchase of the tender and its engine (super-bucks).
8.I left the gennaker ashore in more than 25 knots. Everything seemed to be going well, we were spinning like rockets but then, suddenly, it disintegrated in a split second (mega bullshit).
9.I did not have a heavy gennaker with me (super-bullshit). What do you care if you make 0.1 more knots if the light one then breaks (see above).
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