HURRICANE PREPARATION TIPS

Story by TMC Editor / May 11, 2017

1. When preparing a vessel for the approach of a tropical wave, depression, tropical storm or hurricane, be sure to close all seacocks, except the cockpit scupper seacocks. Leave the cockpit scuppers open to allow rain water and sea spray to drain out of the cockpit.

During one tropical storm, a large sailboat was blown onto soft sand in shoal water and would have suffered minimal damage. However, since the galley and head sink seacocks were left open, seawater flooded the vessel while the yacht was careened on its side. The interior was partially filled with seawater, causing damage to the engine, refrigeration, electrical systems and cabinetry. It was an unnecessary loss.

2. If you have the time when preparing for the arrival of a hurricane or tropical storm, consider removing your vessel’s lifelines and the vertical pieces of your two piece stanchions (base & vertical) from their bases along the gunwale of your sailboat.

If you are ashore in a safe haven, you will not need the lifelines and stanchions to hold on to during the storm. If they are removed that will keep them undamaged and they cannot engage stanchions or lifelines on a neighboring boat and cause unneeded damage.

3. If you are securing your sailboat alongside other sailboats in a rafting or marina setting, stagger the adjacent sailboats so that the mast, spreaders and standing rigging of your boat will not engage the neighboring boats.

During a storm, the wind and waves will hit each boat at a different time and each boat will respond and roll differently. If your masts are adjacent to one another there is a strong chance that they will catch on one another, causing unneeded damage. Move your boat fore or aft to keep the spars and rigging apart.

4. Boat/US has done research showing that polyester (Dacron) dock lines resist chafe much better than nylon. In fact, they have conducted experiments that showed that nylon anchor or dock lines would melt when mounted within rubber hose or tubing chafe gear! Apparently, the friction between the strands of the stretchy nylon line created so much that that the nylon line was able to part.

The recommendation from Boat/US is to use polyester lines at chafe points. Make a short polyester pennant that passes over the bow chock or by the bobstay to use between the bow anchor and the stretching behavior. Use the polyester line at the chafe points.

 

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I’ve used The Multihull Company to list and sell two catamarans in the past year and they have been excellent to work with. The first cat was a vessel (42 Lagoon) I had released from my charter company. We had som difficulties during the sale process with the buyer finalizing the purchase and TMC handled things beautifully and we were able to close as expected. The second, a 1997 Island Packet Cat, they were able to attract multiple potential buyers, in a fairly short period of time, and just before our sailing season ended here in Michigan. Will, Andrew, Riley and the rest of the team there have been excellent to work with. Very professional and responsive. As someone that has worked in sales and sales management for my entire career, I appreciate the process they have in place and their execution.

— Wayne Titus

Yacht Broker Micheal Streng did a fantastic job helping us buy our dream retirement boat. He is pleasant, professional, smart, diligent, and totally focused toward ensuring the best outcome for us- his clients.

He helped us identify the key features we wanted. And, helped us then learn the market by seeing firsthand seeing all the boats available. How? By organizing a two day driving extravaganza to see as many boats available from dawn to dusk.

But, his crucial expert assistance continued throughout the whole buying process… helping us craft multiple offers and counter offers to ensure we “bought-right”!

His expertise continued with calmly helping us organize the multitude of details, from sourcing survey experts and renegotiating credits for issues… to ensuring our foreign manufactured vessel had duty paid receipts… thus all saving us much aggravation and thousands of dollars!

In closing, sourcing and buying a boat right has adventurous elements of the “wild-west”. Our Broker – Micheal Streng was our LoneRanger & Tonto… expertly guiding and helping us to help make our dream a reality.

Tom & Danielle

Waterford, Connecticut

— Tom & Danielle

We purchased a Lagoon 470 catamaran through Zvonimir (Zee) Kalinic, TMC’s broker in Croatia and Italy. Zee is the ultimate professional and by far the best broker we have ever had the pleasure of doing business with. Thankyou Zee for your professionalism, guidance and support in securing this purchase for our family! Not an easy task being Australian and purchasing in a foreign country but thanks to your help and the assistance of Andrew Holland in the office, this process was made so much more stress free.
Thank you Zee and The Multihull Compnay!

— James van Roon

Andrew Hodgdon was a pleasure to have as a broker. He was always there for me and I appreciated his help and professionalism. Thank you Andrew!! Highly recommended.

— Bill Gardner

Just wish to share our thanks with Cal Landau and The Multihull Company for their service selling our catamaran that we owned for nearly 15yrs. Cal our broker in West Palm Beach was THE BEST!
He worked with us beyond the call of duty in helping us prep and moor our boat during some horrendous weather that came through last Winter and always offered to lend a hand while we were in West Palm procuring supplies. etc. Cal was always present to show the boat, learned about our boat systems to answer questions from shoppers and made a very informative listing with great photos and video that attracted a lot of action. I wish to highly recommend Cal and The Multihull Co if you’re planning on putting your boat on the market.

— Rush’n Blue’s Travels

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