Colin Hacking

Home
What to Bring
2002 Visitors
2003 Visitors
2004 Visitors
2005 Visitors
2006-11 Visitors

Up
Colin Hacking
Karen and Jon
Harshbargers
Angelos
Carolyn & Lexi
Terry & Gina Cole
Emilie Cobb
John and Becky
Casey & Kenny Quayle
Tony Hacking & Family

Colin's Fiji visit
Colin's Australia visit

Colin Hacking

January 10 - February 4, 2002

Jon's father, Colin, came down three weeks after we moved aboard Ocelot while we were still stuck in Simpson Lagoon in St. Martin. We were thrilled when he volunteered to visit us on a "busman's holiday. That is, we weren't going to sail around with him. Instead, he and Jon were going to join forces to co-engineer the new boat.

Ocelot was originally designed as a charter boat. Charterers typically don't mind running their engines every morning and evening, but cruisers (especially us!) don't want to have to do this. Therefore, several boat systems needed to be converted from alternator/engine power to being able to run on 12vDC from the solar panels.

Jon, Amanda, Colin & Chris having lunch in Ocelot's saloon

Cutting the top for the new fridge

Installing the new mainsail ... again

Removing the old radar mount to
make room for the new solar panels

Designing and Building the new solar panel supports

Designing & building the new solar panel supports

Assembling our Fortress storm anchor

With Colin's help we began to turn Bipede-the-Charter-Boat into Ocelot-the-Cruising-Boat. This involved, among other things:

Strengthening the davits to hold a bigger dinghy
Designing how and where to install the watermaker
Accumulating appropriate tools, materials, and spares
Ripping out the galley refrigeration system
Designing and replacing the galley fridge with a more efficient and better insulated electrical refrigeration system
Designing and installing the 2 bow pulpits
Installing the new sails (several times, as it turned out)
Designing supports and installing the solar panels
Installing 700 amp-hours of new ship's batteries (100kg or 220 lbs each)
Assembling our new storm anchor
Finding and fixing the squeaky floorboards that drove us crazy
Working with Chris on AP (college-level) physics problems

New ship's batteries -
100kg (220 lbs) each!

As it was, we didn't get quite as much done as we'd hoped. For instance, we couldn't find appropriate materials to convert our fabric awning (bimini) into a hard bimini. (We finally upgraded the bimini in Fiji!) As Jon says, "When you get two engineers together, it might take twice as long, but they have twice as much fun." Colin and Jon had a wonderful time designing and refining systems, bouncing ideas off each other, arguing about the best way to do something, and using our limited manufacturing capabilities to do what needed doing.

Colin also was a willing guinea pig to Sue's very rusty "tropics/islands" cooking. Luckily French St. Martin had an unlimited supply of French bread, French cheese, and French beer which, when consumed for lunch, smoothes the way to more experimental dinners. Couldn't ask for a better father-in-law!

Although he didn't expect to go sailing at all, there was a yacht race in St. Martin while he was there, and one of our friends raced their boat, so Jon and Colin crewed on that. After all the great hard work Colin did with us on Ocelot, it was great to see him having some "real" fun!

Lifetime
Commodores
of the
Seven Seas
Cruising
Association

If our information is useful,
you can help by making a donation