Keep it in the family

Recently, we put out a request on the Contessa 32 Class Association website for photos to use in the new, soon to be launched Jeremy Rogers website. Looking through the Contessa 32 Facebook site I realised that although I joined the Rogers family years ago, I have yet to join the Contessa family which is really an incredible institution! There is even a Dutch Contessa 32 Assocation! I met a 32 owner today, Clive Tollett, who lives on board his boat the whole summer, laying up the boat each year where he happens to end up - (in my dreams, maybe one day)! It was such fun hearing his ideas about what might work on Calypso and seeing his genuine interest in the changes to the layout below and his enthusiasm for the project. We are really looking forward to showing all of you 32 and Contessa 26 owners around the boat at the Southampton Boat Show - and Kit and I are looking forward to joining the Contessa clan!

Don't get mad, get even!

It sounds silly, but when we started living on shore, after several years at sea, I felt really quite grateful that I could put something down on the side in the kitchen and know it would stay there. I remember getting really quite cross with the invisible bully who seemed to wait for the most inconvenient moment to push me and my belongings around - the galley was where he tended to strike! I do realise that getting cross is a really bad approach, will only make things worse and the only sensible thing to do is make your galley space as user friendly as possible. Fortunately, I'm not the first person to come across this problem and a UK company have come up with some very clever design concepts aimed at making cooking at sea a pleasure. GN Espace is run by two guys, one a sailor and product designer and the other a chef. The idea is that everything fits - so the trays from your cooker and storage boxes from the cupboard fit perfectly into the sink, the hot water comes from the Quooker, so no unnecessary kettles flying around and taking up space. The gas cooker, made in Essex, is a beauty and 30% more efficient than a regular cooker. Suddenly, I'm quite looking forward to cooking on Calypso. Bring it on bully.

Call the Police, it's teak!

I'm afraid I'm in danger of turning into a Kebony bore - but it is such a great product and such a good idea! You can get sustainably grown teak, but problem with it is that it has to grow fast in order to be sustainable, so it tends to be softer, more sappy and generally not up to scratch. Kebony, on the other hand (here she goes) uses sustainably grown wood, in our case maple but sometimes a softwood like pine, which is then placed in a vat of furfuryl alcohol (a natural and harmless byproduct of the sugar making industry) and heated. It's a clever way of mimicking the natural process which goes on during the long growth of a tropical hardwood - and the result is this incredibly durable wood, which looks and feels and weathers like the best quality teak, but is absolutely, certifiably sustainable. Apparently in Norway it's impossible to import teak and some Kebony was recently used in a local train station for seating. Within days the local council was inundated with complaints, and demands for the seating to be removed and somebody prosecuted, as people were convinced it was made out of tropical hardwood. In the end, signs had to be permanently erected explaining the provenance of the wood before the furore died down. Is this a sign of things to come in the rest of Europe? We certainly are some way behind our Norwegian friends.

Dirty secret!

I don't normally get really excited about boat gear, but there is one piece of equipment that I have a bit of an obscure liking for and that is pumps. Maybe it's something to do with the fact they could keep the boat afloat in an emergency, but I don't think so. I'm afraid it's linked to the same area of the brain that gets pleasure from cleaning hair out of the shower plug hole, or wax out of an ear (preferably not your own). It's the potential a pump has to get into the smallest, dirtiest place in the boat and clean it out. Ahem, anyway... We had a very nice man from Whale pumps, Simon McFarland crawling round the boat the other day. We were all scratching our heads figuring out where to put holding tanks (there will be two, one for grey water and another for black water) and where best to place the pumps. Whale have come up with this great new generation of pumps called Intelligent Control pumps - they come on automatically when there's a body of water over the sensor. This gets away from the old float switch style which have a tendency to get gunged up, stuck on, or not float free. It's true, there will be less opportunity for me to get my head in the bilge and free the pumps - but I can probably learn to live with it!

Insulation, insulation, insulation

Ok, it's not very sexy but it's something we all need to do more of. In a boat you're limited by the fact that insulation material can absolutely not absorb water - no fleeces or tumble dryer fluff for us (it's true there is someone making something eco out of tumble dryer fluff). So Calypso is now well and truly packed with 2 inches of thinsulate insulation - no doubt that will have real impact on condensation as well as warmth. Bring on winter sailing trips!

steady progress

Just over two months to get Calypso in the water and another month to get her ready for the Southampton Boat Show in September. It's quite a tall order and Jeremy is working flat out and Kit in all his spare time. Things are starting to take shape though - Roger Figgures, the local stainless steel craftsman delivered a beautiful fuel tank (see photo) and Jeremy and Kit are seen here lowering the new, super efficient fridge into place. We've also been thinking about how to create a slightly different, more open feel to the main saloon. Jeremy is a proper shipwright, top quality joinery throughout and no quick fixes allowed. What I am realising is that many of the modern, simple looks that I quite like are created by cutting corners, gluing things together instead of making it properly, and to last. There's only so much you can do on a 32 ft boat and we want to keep the features that make the Contessa so special, so the plan is to get rid of some of the built in cushioning which should give us the feel we want without comprimising on quality. I'm sure Jeremy must be secretly tearing his hair out as Fiona and I have various "brainwaves" which invariably mean more work for him but he doesn't show it, and so far we are all still talking!

The man from Delmonte.........

Finding products which have better environmental credentials yet match the performance of "conventional" products is not always easy. I knew it would be tricky to find a varnish which would come up to Jeremy's high standards - so it was with some trepidation I put a can of Le Tonkinois in front of him to try. This is a linseed based product, with no petroleum based solvents. From what I could see, it looked like a fantastic product, rather like an oil, it soaks into the wood, so there is no need to sand it right back for subsequent coats. It's made by a small French firm in the outskirts of Paris and the raving testimonials all sound too good to be true. But I'm not the one who has been varnishing for a lifetime, so I have been nipping out to check on the progress of the test piece that Jeremy has been varnishing, waiting for the verdict. It seems the answer is YES.

Radio Rogers

My father-in-law is a bit of legend in the sailing world. Not only is he an amazing craftsman and innovative boat builder (he bought the technology from Lotus to start vacuum moulding boats in the 70's), he is also an awesome helmsman. Back then, as well as building two Contessa 32s a week, he'd also build a racing boat every year for the prestigious Admiral's Cup Series and go off with his brother Jonathan and mates as crew, and invariably win! He was awarded Yachtsman of the Year in 1974 for diverting from a race in the One Ton Cup to respond to a flare - and rescuing a family whose boat had caught fire and sank. In more recent years, despite not racing regularly, and being in his 70s Jeremy doesn't seem to have lost his edge at all. In 2002, 2003 and 2006 he won the Round-The-Island Race in his Contessa 26, Rosina (an incredible achievement as anyone who knows about the race will understand), and most recently the Contessa 32 National Championships have been his two years running in Gigi. Jeremy is one of those people who doesn't say much, but when he does - people listen and yet he is genuinely the most modest person you could hope to meet and definitely media shy. So, it was with some surprise to learn that Jeremy had agreed to go with Kit to be interviewed live on BBC Radio Solent about Calypso last Sunday (scroll through 27 minutes to reach the interview). Believe me, this is newsworthy, kind of like the sailing equivalent of Kate Moss giving a live interview.... or something like that!

Are you sitting comfortably?

I came out of our house the other day to find Kit giving a lecture on Greek mythology to a passing lycra clad cyclist who had stopped to ask some directions. This seemed a little odd until I realised that the lycra was branded up with Garmin logos and this unsuspecting cyclist (and senior Garmin employee) was actually being told ALL about Calypso. To be fair he did seem pretty interested - who knows that chance meeting could be the beginning of a great relationship!

The Taming of the Screw

If I'm honest, the science behind the fine tuning of propellers has always been a bit beyond me. I remember on our last boat Silurian there was a lot of cursing and filing down, refitting and more cursing to do with the propeller. This time, I'm determined to get my head around it a bit better and it seems the hybrid engine might provide that opportunity. One of the main things which put us off the hybrid engine in the beginning was that we understood (wrongly) that in order to generate electricity the propeller would need to be in a permanently fixed position thus slowing the boat down. This was immediately dismissed as a no-no, just not something a Rogers would willingly sign up to! After Graeme Hawksley's visit from Hybrid Marine it became apparent that we could actually fit a feathering prop (one that slips into a streamlined position when the boat is sailing forward) which could be forced into a generating position (non streamlined) when we wanted to generate electricity from the prop - ie not during a race. After a little research it seems that the prop for the job is an 18" Featherstream propeller made by a local company called Darglow Marine. The exciting news is that Darglow Marine are keen to use Calypso as a test bed for props working with hybrid engines - I can feel a deal more cursing, filing and refitting ahead! At least we'll have the experts helping us.

The hybrid donkey arrives

Much excitement this week as the hybrid engine arrived courtesy of Graeme Hawksley at Hybrid Marine. As we come to terms with how much power our system (including propeller, wind turbines and solar panels) should be able to pump out we are realising that we have to rethink the whole way we develop Calypso. The latest debate has involved how to cook, now we're thinking of ditching the idea of gas and going electric instead. We can boil water efficiently using a quooker (a clever little immersion heater) and we're even thinking of having a microwave! That might sound extravagent on a 32 foot boat but if we're creating the energy ourselves it could be the way to go and certainly electric is a lot safer than gas on a boat.

Bonding

Easter holidays are upon us (at least they're upon Fiona and me), Jeremy and Kit are mostly found down at the yard "bonding", that's sticking bits of bulk head in and other structural stuff and generally creating the internal layout of the boat. Much progress has been made, the deck has been fitted and come off again, the water tank is in place, the electric cables are all run and the boys are able to see where their bunks will be. As the boat progresses the list of "stuff" inevitably grows and one of our main jobs is researching suppliers to verify their environmental credentials - something we are doing with help from the Green Blue. Yesterday, old friend and low carbon guru Mukti Mitchell got in touch and is going to show me how to calculate Calypso's carbon footprint. Hopefully there is a section which factors in low energy father and son bonding!

To hybrid or not to hybrid?

Not long ago we all sat down around Jeremy and Fiona's kitchen table and did a good job of convincing ourselves that we didn't want a hybrid engine. There would be constant drag with the prop spinning we thought, and anyway, the brief was to keep things simple. Then Graeme Hawksley from Hybrid Marine came into the yard and quietly but very convincingly explained why we definitely do want a hybrid engine. He allayed our fears about a constantly spinning prop (we can feather it when it's not needed which won't affect performance when racing) and we can integrate it with the solar and wind systems, helping to keep things simple. The truth is, electric is way things are going in the car industry and it's going to be true of boating too, so we might as well lead the way!

Metamorphosis

Breaking Calypso out of the mould was a bit like a fairly long and painful birthing process. The mould groaned and creaked as it was prized from the hull. We looked on anxiously. Would it all go ok? Would she emerge unscathed? Would she be perfect? Finally, after a morning of coaxing, the mould came away and there she was, the ugly duckling transformed into a beautiful swan.

Sealing the keel

When Jeremy first started building boats the keel was made by carrying molten lead in ladles up into the boat and pouring it into the keel cavity, a highly skilled and quite dangerous job. Nowadays the keel is cast at the Henry Irons factory down in Cornwall and sent up ready made. I find it hugely reassuring to see two tonnes of lead being lowered into Calypso, knowing that this (together with a great design) will keep us upright! During the disastrous Fastnet race of 1979 when so many boats and lives were lost the Contessa 32 stood out as an exceptionally seaworthy boat - since then she has been used as the benchmark for stability. There is, of course, a compromise when it comes to space down below, but for me there's no question which is more important.

Greening the Blue

The image of yachting has changed a lot over the years and it seems the RYA (Royal Yachting Association) has been keeping up with the times. Last week we had a visit from the RYA's very own green team The Green Blue who had got wind of the embryonic Calypso and wanted to know more. The Green Blue team donned the hard hats and looked around the yard while Jeremy quietly and very persuasively outlined the green advantages of building the Contessa 32 out of fibreglass. (Jeremy argues that because the Contessa 32 is built to last - potentially forever if maintained properly - it's actually quite a green option). OK it can't be recycled but no one seems to be trying to recycle their Contessa 32s, unlike many of the cheaper GRP boats out there. By the end of the visit there were plans afoot to take Calypso to the Southampton Boat Show to use her as a showcase for green technology and products. This would have a rather dramatic effect on the build timetable, but could provide a great opportunity to make Calypso something very special. Watch this space!

Breaking the mould

Recently we have been dropping down to the yard en masse to check on the progress of Calypso. I'm not sure whether our children are especially wild or whether it's normal for boys but they seem to explode out of the car and disperse like a gas into all corners of the yard, causing all sorts of trouble. The twins are only four, so I don't expect them to really grasp what is going in terms of "building our own boat" but I am hopeful that the bigger boys will learn a lot from the process. The concept of the inside-out boat has been quite hard to grasp, one day we spent a few minutes discussing this and although Inigo, our seven year old, was concentrating really hard, it clearly wasn't getting through. Suddenly I came up with a great way of explaining it. "Ini, you remember last year you made those chocolate Easter eggs using a plastic mould"? - Inigo's face lights up, and that's it, the boat has gone, his brain is entirely full of chocolate. "How many days is it til Easter Mummy"? Suddenly I find myself calculating how many days til Easter, one of the twins falls over, and the moment is lost! Maybe next week I'll think of a better example, not involving chocolate.

Ugly duckling

For most of the year the Contessa 32 mould sits outside in the car park at the Lymington Yacht Haven with "CO32" scrawled across it in spray paint. Of course, I know it's inside out, and the outside doesn't matter, but I have to admit it's not been really obvious to me how those beautiful boats come out of such a rough looking thing. All became clear last week when the mould was brought into the yard and cracked open. Once polished up, the inside of the mould is like a perfect replica of the outside of a Contessa 32. First, two layers of gel coat are laid down on the top sides, and then layer after layer of fibreglass, soaked in resin. It may be the least green part of the boat building process, but it is at least reassuring to see the strength built in to this hull when I think about the sea miles this boat will carry my family.

Rough hands, happy heart.

The transition from living afloat to living on land is often a hard one.
I found it relatively easy as motherhood consumed and satisfied me to a large degree but Kit, unsurprisingly, found the contrast between being skipper of a whale research/wildlife filming boat and teacher in a large secondary school rather harder. One of things that seemed to upset him most was the disappearance of the callouses on his hands. In recent weeks he has been cycling down to the boat yard on Saturday mornings to help on Calypso and I've noticed a few changes taking place in my husband. One is a very slight roughening of the hands, (though there's a long way to go before reaching Jeremy's award winning league). The other is a contented smile on his face!

Teak Performance?

I've been kicking around the Rogers' boat yard for over 10 years, so I'm not completely new to what it takes to build a boat, but I guess watching your own boat being built is a bit like having your own baby, suddenly the subject becomes a whole lot more interesting - that's probably where the comparison ends! Jeremy is now experimenting with a new type of teak replacement called Kebony. There is no doubt that teak is an amazing wood, but as demand outstrips sustainable supply it's important that a really good alternative is found. There are plenty of examples of resin filled softwoods on the market, but these proved problematic when the toxic resin started leaching out. Kebony, a Norwegian-based company, claims to have found a solution to this; waste Kebony can be disposed of as untreated wood. It comes ready planked which makes it more appealing than a tree trunk from the builders' point of view, but it will be interesting to see what Jeremy thinks of it as a craftsman.