Blog report - Milt Baker

It was all quite comfortable until Judy awakened me mid-morning with a report that we had a stabilizer alarm. "Probably no big deal," I thought, as I pulled myself out of bed and made my way to the pilothouse. But investigation and trouble-shooting led to my preliminary diagnosis which was confirmed by Naiad: the starboard side potentiometer, which tells the system how that fin is positioned, has failed or malfunctioned. If the system's software doesn't know the position of the fin, it cannot position the fin correctly-and that was what the alarm was telling us. What does this mean? Bluewater's port side stabilizer fin is out of business. We do not carry a spare potentiometer, so for the next 1,000 miles or so we're down to a single working stabilizer fin to keep us on the level. The good news is that a stabilization system like ours is about 80% as effective on a single fin as on two.

Up on my soapbox for a minute. If you've been to sea in a full displacement trawler like a Nordhavn, you know that good stabilization is a critical part of the equation. Even without stabilizers, a vessel like ours is a most seaworthy creation. It's not going to sink and it's not going to turn over. But it will roll and roll and roll. The roll is built right into the design, and nothing I've seen other than active fin stabilizers and their low-tech cousins, paravanes, can do much about that.

When we began rolling more than normal today after the port stabilizer went south, George asked seriously whether this boat would "turn over." To owners like Judy and me, both of us sailors for more than 40 years, that seems an odd question-but to someone with a lot fewer sea miles it's a legitimate one that deserves an answer. As I explained to George today, the short answer is, NO. No Nordhavn has ever turned over at sea and it's most unlikely that one ever will.

Chief designer Jeff Leishman can give you the technical side, but the truth is that stability is designed in from the keel up, and it's physically impossible for a vessel like this to turn over (that is, roll to port or starboard) and not recover. By the very nature of her design and the laws of physics, the farther she rolls in one direction, the greater the resistance to rolling. She'll roll, but she'll always resist the roll and come back in the other direction, rolling to the other side. That very stability is what makes her an uncomfortable yacht when stabilization is lost.

The truth is that no Nordhavn has ever been lost at sea by sinking or "turning over". That's just one of many reasons Judy and I own a Nordhavn and have enough confidence in the yacht to take her across an ocean!

Stabilization in an ocean-going trawler yacht is much more than a comfort issue. In truth it's a safety issue as well. Yes, a trawler yacht like Bluewater can go to sea without stabilization, but the crew aboard such a yacht will be many times less comfortable and runs a much greater risk of injury from being tossed about in a seaway.

On the other hand, a well stabilized yacht allows crewmembers more comfort, better rest and more of it, especially in heavy weather. A crew with injuries or exhausted from lack of rest is a crew on the verge of making mistakes!

As much as I love Bluewater's active fin stabilizers, I began this trip knowing that active fin stabilizers had been the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally's most troublesome mechanical system. Crossing oceans is not for wimpy power boats or wimpy stabilizer systems. In fact, it's my guess that a single ocean crossing aboard a trawler yacht probably subjects its active fin stabilization system to more stress than many stabilizer systems see in a lifetime. That's one reason we outfitted Bluewater with a heavy-duty Naiad system designed for larger yachts than our 47 feet-but then ordered a backup system, paravanes, as well. A paravane system requires a lot of rigging and it's not pretty to the eye of many owners, but as a backup stabilization system it has a lot going for it because it has no hydraulic, electrical, or electronic parts to break-the stabilization comes from towing heavy delta-wing paravanes through the water to resist rolling Paravanes will definitely slow a yacht down when being used; our experience shows a speed loss of about 4/10 of a knot, something we do not experience with our Naiads. But in most cases a more stable oceangoing yacht trumps a faster one. So Bluewater continues on, confident that even if the other stabilizer packs it in, we'll have stabilization all the way to the Azores. Our paravanes are stowed in fittings on our transom and our paravane poles were deployed in the ready position as we departed Bermuda, so we can launch paravanes in minutes if the need arises.

Our two companion yachts, the N55s Moana Kuewa and Salty Dawg, both have TRAC stabilizer systems, a brand favored by many Nordhavn owners. My own stabilizer experience-virtually all of it-is with Naiad, and in building Bluewater my decision was to stick with what I know. Over more than 15 years of owning Naiads on two yachts I've had few stabilizer problems. Anytime I have had a problem, however, never once has Naiad failed diagnose the problem quickly and get me up and running in short order. It my experience it all comes down to one man: Vic Kuzmovich, former Naiad chief engineer and for the last 15 years or so head of Naiad Florida. To quote my friend Scott Flanders, another Naiad fan, Vic is the real deal-he does what he says and he stands behind his company's products like nobody else. Vic is my Naiad oracle!

Bluewater's Naiad active fin stabilizer system is still under warranty, and I spoke with Vic today about the repair. To a trained hydraulics guy, our Naiad system is a robust and simple system, and changing out a potentiometer ought to be a quick and easy task. To a shade-tree mechanic like me, however, it's a different matter! Do I have the skills to needed change the potentiometer and align it properly? Perhaps with detailed instructions and help from crewmember George, whose mechanical skills leave mine in the slow lane, and from Med Bound 2007 Chief Engineer Bernie Francis, whose principal technical skills are in diesel mechanics, I can pull it off.

Meanwhile, we're rolling along nicely. To be sure, we're rolling more than we would with two working fins, but Bluewater's crew remains a contented one and our loss of a stabilizer fin is best considered an inconvenience rather than a serious problem.

--Milt, Judy, George and Schipperke Katy