Albany to Tasmania - Day 6 ‘Old Technology’

Friday, April 24th 2026.

Lunch is the highlight of every day at sea. (Other than breakfast and dinner) Today happened to be leftover vegetable pie. Not bad at all.

The drone of the three cylinder Kubota purring away under the companionway steps becomes white noise after a few hours. It was using very little fuel, approximately 1.7L/hr at 1800rpm. That gave us about 4 knots speed over ground.

The mainsail, still at the third reef was sheeted centre. I went forward to adjust the reef to improve the sail shape. Kevin steered into the wind to assist the process.

Now for more technical talk.

Emigre has a boom furling mainsail, not a professional setup such as offerings from Leisurefurl or Profurl, but a 1970’s agricultural setup that looks like it’s built out of tractor parts.

Most modern boom furlers have a mandrill (aluminium tube) that rotates within an open ‘c section’ boom. This allows for traditional placement of mainsheet blocks and hardware for a boom vang/kicker.

Emigre’s entire boom rotates from a crank handle on the front of the mast, connected via a universal joint at the gooseneck. The mainsail is cut relatively flat and is fully battened allowing it to roll around the outside of the boom. The mainsheet and topping lift are attached to a swivelling plate at the end of the boom allowing the mainsail to be furled once the boom vang is removed.

The main problems with all boom furlers are the inability to reef and un-reef unless the boat is pointed ‘head to wind’, the requirement to have the boom at a specific angle prior to furling and the wear and tear that takes place on the bolt rope luff of the mainsail when it slides into a track in the mast.

Due to the tension created by the sail battens, the bolt rope can be easily damaged where it enters the mast track.

Another disadvantage of Emigre’s mainsail furling system is that it can only be operated from the mast rather than from the safety of the cockpit.

If I had to list advantages, it would be the simplicity of hoisting and dropping the sail, (in fair weather) and the way the system negates the requirement for reef lines, deck organisers and secondary winches in the cockpit, making for a clean deck layout. Neither of these benefits outweighs the cons in my opinion.

If money were no object, my ideal reefing setup for emigre would be traditional slab reefing type. It would require:

A new mainsail with top batten full length others being 3/4 length, heavy duty Dacron construction with three deep reefs, the third being halfway up the luff. Low friction rings would be attached to luff and clew reef points.

I would install a Harken ball bearing track and cars to the mast allowing the sail to be hoisted or dropped with very little friction, even when sailing downwind.

A new boom with heavy duty gooseneck removing existing universal joint would be fitted. Double line reefing (a seperate line controlling the luff and clew of each reef) would be rigged externally to the boom through heavy duty cheek blocks and low friction saddles.

60mm blocks at mast base would lead reef lines aft via deck organisers to cabin top. Two Anderson 40 self tailing winches would be mounted on the cabin top along with a bank of spin lock clutches to manage the lines each side of the companionway hatch.

I would expect that changing this over would cost over $20k, certainly over capitalising on the boat.

For now the boom furler remains and I sail extremely conservatively when offshore due to the difficulty of reefing in strong wind and heavy seas.

With the third reef set nicely without the sail bunching up towards the gooseneck, we centred the boom, re-engaged the tiller pilot and went back to motoring into a fickle easterly breeze no more than force two.

I had switched the HF radio on around 15:15 and started calling CQ using morse code. CQ is an abbreviation from the telegraphy era that means ‘calling anyone anywhere’. Amateur radio operators use it notify other station that they want to talk to anyone on the frequency.

Morse code is widely regarded as an obsolete method of communication. This may be the case other than within the amateur radio hobby where it has grown in popularity since the requirement to learn it was removed from the licensing exams.

The benefit of operating Morse code rather than using single sideband or ‘phone’ is the narrow bandwidth of the morse code ‘dits’ and ‘dahs’ can travel a lot further than modulating a voice transmission using the same amount of power.

Put simply, less power travels further making it possible for primitive HF radio stations such as mine to make contact with stations all over the world.

After calling CQ for a while, a Stuart VK6MK in Bunbury WA replied to my call. We exchanged call sign and gave each other a signal report along with our names. After a short conversation or ‘QSO’, we sent 73’s which is short for best wishes.

I changed frequency to attempt a voice contact with Andrew VK6AS, a friend of Kevin’s. Unfortunately we both suffered with local electrical noise and the contact wasn’t possible.

After heating vegetable curry and rice for dinner, Kevin and I sat in the saloon discussing the pros and cons of different boat design for offshore sailing and living aboard. A favourite topic of conversation amongst sailors. Unfortunately these debates usually end with a difference in opinion, much like Ford and Holden enthusiasts debating who made the better car. Our conversation was cut short when Kevin glanced at the chart plotter and noticed we had been steaming steadily Westward back towards Esperance for about half an hour as the autopilot had gone into standby mode. Oops.

With the course corrected we got some sleep before the wind gently filled in enough to switch the engine off, set the Aries Windvane and ghost along under sail at about three knots for the rest of the night.