A Camper and Nicholson 35.

This page is for some of the best equipment we have fitted to Doucier.

Top of the list goes to our Auto Pilot - Raymarine S3G. We sail short handed, mostly just the two of us, so the extra 'pair of hands' provided by an auto pilot makes passage making a lot easier. When we bought the boat the original B&G equipment was still fitted and working perfectly after 30 years, however after some experimentation with a couple of different auto pilots we decided to fit the Raymarine S3G.

The hydraulic drive used by the modern B&G auto pilots was a very neat design by Hypro which incorporated the ram and hydraulic motor in to a single unit so we decided to fit the Hypro ram drive. Two types of ram are available, visually identical but one has a faster drive rate which is the one we fitted.

What persuaded us that the Raymarine pilot was the one for us was the ease by which the unit could be tuned to the characteristics of the boat and the quality of the course holding and auto tacking.

The quadrant on the Nic 35 is a substantial casting and had a strengthened corner on the Port side with 3 convenient bolt holds pre drilled. To provide a pickup for the ram an additional plate was cast in bronze and drilled to pick up the 3 bolt holes on the quadrant. This plate provided an extension from the quadrant onto which the pin for the ram drive was mounted.

The ram itself is situated on the Port side alongside the fuel tank bolted on to a 450mm by 300mm by 10mm stainless steel plates (316 stainless) which in turn is epoxied and bolted on to the underside of the cockpit sole.
     

 

It's not really equipment but it looks good. In 2006 we had a new toe rail fitted, the windows re-sealed and re-chromed. We should also mention that when we bought the boat in 1999 we had the topsides re-painted in Awlgrip navy blue. This is an amazing paint - very hard and we have never polished it, just rinse it with fresh water and an Awlgrip detergent to remove grime. Apart from the odd, but inevitable, scratch the topsides are still looking excellent.
       

The Nic 35 needs a bit of a breeze to get her moving so we really needed some sails for the times when there was little wind. The spinnaker we have is a large sail for the two of us to handle so we bought a cruising chute and a snuffer from Saturn Sails. Apart from looking superb we find that we can achieve a reasonable boat speed in winds as low as 6 knots and the sail is easily handled by just the two of us.

The picture on the right was taken late one afternoon, the wind was gradually dropping as we sailed up the Sound of Sleat - the stretch of water between the Southern part of Skye and the mainland of Scotland. The cruising chute provided us with a very relaxed sail for over 3 hours.

 

One of the attractions of sailing in Scotland is the remoteness and lack of marinas so anchoring becomes the normal routine. Originally Doucier was fitted with a double action manual windlass that worked very well but the effort required to haul up the chain and anchor would often make us think twice about stopping somewhere for lunch. So recently we purchased an electric windlass, a Lofrans Kobra (1kw), and this has proved invaluable making anchoring an almost effortless task.

We believe being secure for the night when at anchor, this comes from choosing the right place to anchor but also comes from having the right gear which for us means having a good anchor (35lb CQR) and plenty of good heavy chain (up to 70m of 10mm chain).

The down side of the electric windlass is that if the electric motor failed then the manual capabilities of the windlass are very poor - so as a precaution we carry a spare electric motor.

We recently had all the standing rigging replaced and decided that rather then replace the forestay inside the furling system we would replace the whole furling system. The existing system was a Rotostay so having looked at various furling systems on the market and not being very keen on a enclosed drum, we decided to fit another Rotostay, the Regatta 800. Milled out of solid stainless steel the drum is a very nice bit of engineering and looks extremely robust.