The Less Glamorous Side of Yachting
There’s a glamorous side to yachting. There are sunsets, blue water, whales, penguins, icebergs and those spectacular moments that make you forget about everything else in the world.
And then there’s the other side. The side involving grease, tools, spare parts, CAD drawings, electrical connections, hydraulic oil, awkward spaces, frozen fingers and the occasional question of:
“Why is that leaking?”
Running a boat in Antarctica is tough. Really tough. And it’s not just because of the cold. Antarctica changes the rules.
Icebird operates in an environment where temperatures can hover around zero degrees or below. Water freezes. Materials behave differently. Machinery doesn’t appreciate the cold, and neither do we. Then there are the seas. To get to Antarctica, we have to cross the Drake Passage, where violent seas can put enormous loads on everything aboard — rigging, sails, winches, steering gear, fittings, fasteners, pumps and plumbing.
And then there is the distance.Once we’re heading south, we’re a very long way from the sort of supply chain that most of us take for granted. If something breaks at home, you order a replacement. FedEx arrives. Problem solved.
It doesn’t quite work like that in Antarctica. Parts may not be available in South America. Materials may have to come from overseas. Getting something from one country to another can become an adventure in itself.
So preparing Icebird isn’t simply about servicing things. It’s about anticipating what might go wrong and making sure we can deal with it when it does. Sometimes that means carrying an unusual piece of material through an airport. Sometimes it means designing a replacement part ourselves. Sometimes it means finding equipment that was last seen working on long-haul trucks in Siberia. And sometimes it means filling electrical connections with hot melt glue.
Welcome to expedition yachting.
The Bearing That Flew To Brazil
One of the less glamorous jobs on our current list is also one of the more important: replacing the mast base bearing. The existing bearing was installed in 2019, but unfortunately it wasn’t engineered with the correct tolerances.
In theory, a bearing like this should have a service life measured in decades. Twenty years or more wouldn’t be unreasonable. So, six years later, we’re replacing it. The interesting part isn’t just the machining. It’s getting the right material.
For this bearing we’ve chosen Vesconite, a specialised low-friction, high-load material that performs particularly well where lubrication and maintenance need to be minimised. The problem? It’s not available in Brazil.
So we did what any sensible Antarctic expedition yacht operator would do. We packed a cylinder of the stuff in our luggage. 150 mm in diameter. 300 mm long. Special high-lubrication Vesconite. And carried it through airports.
Because when you’re operating in remote environments, you learn to travel with the materials you’re going to need — even when your luggage starts to look slightly suspiciously like you’re transporting a piece of industrial machinery. The cylinder will be machined locally to produce the new mast base bearing. It’s a small example of a much bigger reality of running Icebird.
When you’re sailing in Antarctica, you can’t rely on being able to order the correct part when something fails. Sometimes the part doesn’t exist locally. Sometimes the material doesn’t exist locally. And sometimes the solution is to carry a 150 mm × 300 mm cylinder of engineering plastic halfway around the world.
It’s not glamorous. But it’s preparation.
The Rudder Bearing Surprise
Then there are the jobs that start out as routine inspections. We decided it was time to check the rudder bearings and seals. Simple enough. Except, of course, it wasn’t.
Once we got in there, we discovered that some of the Torlon needle rollers in the spherical bearings had been compromised. And they weren’t the sort of rollers you can simply replace with something off the shelf. The rollers are barrel-shaped, rather than simple cylindrical rollers. If they had been ordinary cylinders, we could potentially have made replacements by cutting them from suitable rod stock. But barrel-shaped rollers are another matter.
So what do you do?
This is where Steve gets to work. Rather than trying to source an increasingly obscure replacement component from somewhere on the other side of the planet, he spent hours on CAD designing a completely different solution. The answer is a set of precisely engineered Vesconite annular bushes to replace the Torlon rollers.
It’s a clever solution, but it’s also a good illustration of how expedition yacht maintenance works.
You start with, “Let’s just check the bearings.” Then you discover a problem. Then you discover the replacement part isn’t readily available. Then you discover that the replacement part isn’t really a standard replacement part anyway. And eventually someone is sitting at a computer designing a new component from scratch.
That’s expedition yachting. The ability to repair things is important. The ability to make things work when the original solution is no longer available is even more important. And this is exactly why we spend so much time going through Icebird now, while we’re still somewhere with workshops, machinery, engineers, materials and tools. We’d much rather spend hours on CAD in Brazil than hours staring at a compromised rudder bearing somewhere south of the Drake.
The Heater That Was Too Hot
Then there is the heating system. Given that we’re heading to Antarctica, this is something we’d quite like to have working. Icebird’s original heating system was a 23 kW Webasto diesel boiler, circulating hot water around the boat to feed the radiators.
On paper, 23 kW sounds reassuring. In reality, it was rather too much of a good thing. The boiler was simply too big for a yacht of Icebird’s size. Instead of settling into a nice, steady rhythm, it would fire up with all the subtlety of a jet taking off.
WHOOSH! Then, having produced far more heat than the boat actually needed, it would shut down again a couple of minutes later. Then, a little while later: WHOOSH!
And off it went again. What we didn’t initially appreciate was what this short-cycling was doing to the exhaust system. There’s a little bit of basic chemistry involved here. When you burn diesel, you produce water. Normally, that isn’t much of a problem because the exhaust is hot enough to keep the water as vapour and carry it away. But with our oversized heater constantly starting and stopping, the exhaust wasn’t getting hot enough for long enough.
So water was condensing inside the exhaust loop. And then sitting there. And, just to make things more interesting, the occasional slap from a wave probably didn’t help matters. Eventually, we realised that we were effectively collecting water in the exhaust system — and that water was finding its way back towards the heater. The result? We were losing heaters far more frequently than we should have been.
Enter Sasha and the Siberian solution. To his credit, Sasha was the one who stepped back and questioned the basic assumption.
Perhaps the heater wasn’t failing because we had bad luck. Perhaps the heater was simply too big. A 23 kW boiler made sense for a much larger volume of boat, but Icebird didn’t need that much heat. So Sasha went looking for a smaller solution. And found one. Actually, he found two. We’re now fitting 14 kW heaters, with the second one kept as a spare. And these particular heaters have a rather good backstory.
They were last seen doing duty on long-haul trucks in Siberia. Which seems like a pretty good pedigree for equipment that is about to spend its time heating an Antarctic expedition yacht. The theory is simple.
A smaller heater should run more continuously rather than repeatedly firing up and shutting down. That means a consistently hot exhaust, which should help prevent the condensation problem in the first place. But we’re not leaving it entirely to theory. Yes... more CAD. Steve has been at it again.
This time he’s designed a completely new exhaust system, complete with a loop and a water drain. The design allows any water that does condense in the exhaust to drain safely out of the boat rather than finding its way back towards the heater. It also gives us some protection against another possibility we don’t particularly enjoy thinking about: sea water coming back up the exhaust.
Because in Antarctica, the sea has plenty of opportunities to get involved in your engineering. So the new system is designed to help deal with that as well.
We didn’t start out saying: “Let’s redesign the heating system, find two Siberian truck heaters and have Steve spend hours designing a custom exhaust on CAD.” We started with: “Why do we keep killing heaters?”
And gradually worked backwards until we understood the problem. That’s perhaps the most important part of preparing Icebird. We’re not simply replacing things that have failed. We’re trying to understand why they failed. Because if you don’t fix the underlying problem, the replacement is just the next victim. And that’s not a particularly good strategy when your next destination is Antarctica.
The Hydraulic Heartbeat
Then there’s the hydraulic system. It’s one of those systems aboard Icebird that you don’t really think about — until you need it.
And we need it for quite a lot. The hydraulic system powers the bow thruster, anchor windlass, yacht winches, dinghy lifting system and garage door. In other words, a surprisingly large percentage of the heavy lifting aboard the boat depends on a network of pumps, valves, hoses and hydraulic machinery quietly doing its job.
So we’ve given the whole system a proper workover. We’ve replaced the control valves and solenoids, completely flushed the hydraulic system and overhauled the pump. And then there are the electrical connections to all those solenoids.
They are, to put it politely, far from marine-proof. They live in exactly the sort of environment where you don’t want electrical connections to live — surrounded by moisture, salt and condensation — and they have developed a frustrating habit of corroding and failing.
So we’ve come up with a highly sophisticated engineering solution. Hot melt glue. Yes. We’re filling the connections with it. It keeps the moisture out, protects the terminals and, hopefully, stops the endless cycle of corrosion and electrical failures. It’s not exactly the sort of solution you’ll find in a glossy yacht brochure.
But if it works, it works. And that’s increasingly the philosophy of this refit. The bow thruster needs to work when we’re manoeuvring. The anchor windlass needs to work when we’re anchoring. The winches need to work when we’re sailing. And the dinghy lift and garage door need to work when we’re moving gear and people around the boat. None of this is particularly glamorous.
But when you’re preparing a boat for Antarctica, boring and reliable is exactly what you want. And if a little blob of hot melt glue keeps a solenoid connection working when we’re thousands of miles from a marine electrician, we’ll happily call that engineering.
The Windlass That No Longer Exists
Then there’s the anchor windlass. You’d think replacing an anchor windlass would be reasonably straightforward. Find the model. Buy the new one. Bolt it on. Done. Except our particular windlass has been discontinued.
Lewmar has, quite reasonably, moved on to newer models. The trouble is that Icebird hasn’t. The old windlass has served us well, but when it came time to replace the deck unit, we discovered that the exact replacement simply wasn’t available.
And because boats are very good at turning standard products into completely non-standard installations, the new windlass wasn’t going to be a simple bolt-on replacement. Fortunately, the actual windlass is driven by a hydraulic motor, which meant we could retain the existing hydraulic drive system and concentrate on adapting the deck unit.
Enter our trusty and wonderful Abelardo. He’s been busy modifying the shaft arrangements and changing the base plate so that the new windlass can be properly integrated into Icebird’s existing installation. It’s another job that looks deceptively simple from the outside. A new windlass?
Surely that’s just a matter of swapping one for another. Except the bolt holes are different. The shaft is different. The base is different. The dimensions are different. And suddenly your “replacement” has turned into a custom engineering project. Sometimes you can’t buy the right part. Sometimes you have to make the part you bought fit the boat you have. That’s yachting.
In the Casa de Motores! – Engine room
Of course, none of this would be much use if we couldn’t make the boat move. So the main engine and generator have also been receiving some well-deserved attention.
Andrey has been lovingly attending to both of them — tuning valves, flushing heat exchangers and servicing injectors, along with all the other less visible jobs that keep an engine happy. The result? The Yanmar main engine has never sounded so sweet.
There’s something deeply reassuring about a diesel engine running beautifully. Perhaps it’s because, aboard an expedition yacht, you develop a particular appreciation for machinery that simply starts when you ask it to. The generator keeps the lights on, the batteries charged and all those increasingly sophisticated electrical systems alive.
And the main engine gets us in and out of places when the wind isn’t cooperating — which, sooner or later, it inevitably won’t. So we service them properly while we can. Valves adjusted. Heat exchangers flushed. Injectors serviced. Everything checked. And then we listen. That smooth, even sound from the Yanmar is one of those small pleasures that probably only boat owners understand.
It’s the sound of a machine telling you: “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Giving Icebird A New Electrical System, And A New Brain
Not everything we’re doing in Brazil involves bearings, machining and crawling into awkward corners. We’re also giving Icebird a fairly serious electrical upgrade.
When Icebird was built, the various electrical functions were controlled using a combination of switches, relays and dedicated circuits. It was a perfectly sensible way of doing things at the time, but technology has moved on considerably since then.
Our new Victron Quattro inverter/charger has allowed us to simplify much of that original system. A number of the old relays, switches and complicated circuits that were necessary when the boat was built can now be removed altogether.
Fewer components. Fewer connections. Fewer things to fail. And a much cleaner, more modern electrical system.
Eight batteries and a balancing act. We also took a closer look at our house battery bank. Icebird has 880 amp-hours at 24 volts, made up of eight 220 Ah, 12-volt batteries. They’re installed low down beneath the galley floor, which is a good place for keeping weight low — but it does mean they get pretty cold when we’re operating in Antarctic waters. When we looked carefully at how the batteries were connected, we realised that the original arrangement could allow the individual batteries to get out of balance.
That isn’t ideal for either performance or battery life. So, naturally, Steve got involved. He designed a completely new arrangement using three solid copper busbars, giving the battery bank a much more balanced and symmetrical electrical connection. We’re expecting the batteries to share the load more evenly and to get considerably better performance from the bank. It’s one of those changes that probably won’t be visible to anyone stepping aboard Icebird. There won’t be a shiny new gadget to point at. But the boat should simply work better. And that’s the whole point.
And then we decided to give the boat a brain. Alongside the electrical upgrade, we’re building a central computer for Icebird. The idea is to bring together monitoring, navigation and instrument systems that have traditionally operated as separate systems, giving us a much more integrated view of what’s happening aboard. Eventually, we’re even planning to integrate AI into the system. The practical possibilities are pretty exciting.
We should be able to ask questions about technical problems, search manuals and documentation, understand alarms and hopefully get some useful guidance when something isn’t behaving as it should. And, of course, we’re particularly looking forward to finally being able to ask the computer the most important question in boat maintenance: “Who put the bloody doodah where?” We’re expecting a very confident answer.
Our new charting system will also be able to combine charts from multiple sources and, importantly, continue recording our own tracks and depth information as we explore. That’s particularly valuable when we’re operating in remote areas.
Every passage adds to our own database of tracks and depths, gradually building a record of places we’ve explored rather than simply relying on what someone else has charted. So the electrical refit is really doing two things. We’re simplifying the old while building something new. The original relay and switching system is being replaced where modern technology allows. The battery system is being redesigned. The power management is being upgraded. And Icebird is gaining a digital brain that should help us understand, monitor and navigate the boat. It’s quite a transformation.
New Sails For The Journey South
And then there are the bits that are a little more obviously exciting. Soon we’ll sail to Buenos Aires, where Icebird will receive a new suit of sails from North Sails Argentina. We’ve chosen tough radial-cut Hydranet sails, selected with the Southern Ocean firmly in mind.
We’re also fitting a new heavy-duty Harken “Ocean” furler. These aren't simply cosmetic upgrades. When you’re heading towards the Southern Ocean, sailcloth and furling gear are very much part of the equipment you want to know you can trust.
The plan is then to head south down the Argentine coast, through the Strait of Magellan and into the spectacular Patagonian fjords before reaching Ushuaia. And then comes the Drake. And beyond it... Antarctica.
So what’s the point of all this?
None of these jobs, on their own, is particularly exciting. A bearing. A hydraulic valve. A battery connection. An exhaust pipe. A windlass. A heater. A diesel engine. Electrical relays.
But put them all together and you start to see what preparing an Antarctic expedition yacht actually involves. We’re trying to make Icebird as reliable, repairable and understandable as possible before we head south. Because once we cross the Drake, there isn’t a chandlery around the corner. There isn’t a FedEx delivery tomorrow morning. There isn’t necessarily a technician who knows exactly what your particular piece of marine equipment was supposed to do.
There is just the boat, the crew, the weather and whatever we’ve brought with us. That’s why the less glamorous side matters. The spectacular moments in Antarctica are the reward. The whales. The penguins. The ice. The kayaking. The wild seas and extraordinary landscapes. But those moments are made possible by all the boring work that happens beforehand.
The hours spent crawling into spaces nobody was designed to crawl into. The CAD drawings. The machining. The flushing, servicing and testing. The spare parts. The improvised solutions. The arguments with machinery. And, occasionally, a cylinder of Vesconite travelling through an airport in someone’s luggage.
We are still a little way from being ready. But we’re getting there. Soon we’ll be heading south. And when the sails finally fill, the machinery is running smoothly, the heating is keeping us warm and the systems are quietly doing exactly what they’re supposed to do, nobody will see all the work that went into making that moment possible.
That’s the funny thing about good preparation. When it works, nobody notices. And that’s exactly how we like it.
ANTARCTICA AWAITS.