Our boat is complex. There are lots of moving parts, standing parts, parts work pretty well or parts that could use improvement. While circumnavigating, we’ve learned so much about our boat, but one of our very early lessons was on lazy jacks. What are Lazy Jacks? Our boat, Starry Horizons, a Fountaine Pajot Helia 44,…
On our sail from Saint Helena to Brazil, we noticed something quite troubling. The set screws that hold our forestay together were backing out, and some were already completely missing. This was causing misalignment between the luff extensions and was damaging our sail. A properly aligned luff extension: Our misaligned one. You can see the…
One of the things David and I love about cruising is being out in remote locations, away from cities and towns. During our world circumnavigation, we’ve been able to go to some amazing places like the Lau group of Fiji and the Ha’apai group of Tonga. This also means we’re away from professional repairmen, chandleries,…
While at The Boat Works in Coomera, we tackled a lot of projects. Some of them we do yearly, while a few are things we’d never done before. Starry Horizons is now over 3 years old, and although she’s still young for a boat, as she gets more broken in, there’s more work to be…
After three and a half years of cruising, our AGM batteries weren’t holding a charge like they used to. We did our research and decided to upgrade our house bank to Lithium-ion (LiFePO4) batteries. Our AGM Battery Set-Up Battery Setup from the Factory Here’s what our Helia 44 came with from the Fountaine Pajot factory:…
While at The Boat Works, David and I had a long list of projects to tackle. One of my big ones was replacing our lifelines with fancy new Dyneema lifelines. What is a lifeline? Lifelines are wires or lines that run around the edges of your deck. These are designed to prevent you from falling…