ASK SAIL
Our experts have the answers on cutting-edge sails, eco-friendly marine toilets, crossed wires and electrical bonding
WHY ALL THE MEMBRANE SAILS? Q:
I am noticing more and more cruising boats carrying high-tech membrane sails, and I was wondering why that is.
— Carter Dickens, Houston, TX
BRIAN HANCOCK REPLIES
It’s all about the engineering. Specifically, membrane sails are highly engineered, so you can end up with a sail that is almost half the weight of a similar sail made out of Dacron. Why is this important, you ask? Basically, heavier sails will result in more weight aloft, and that will increase the heeling and pitching moment of the boat. That in turn, over a long passage, results in fatiguing the crew, which is why so many cruisers are opting for lighter sails. Lighter sails are also easier to set and trim, and take up less room below when they need to be stowed. As a side note, you might look closer at some of those wooden masts you see out there. These days many of them are made out of carbon and then covered with a thin wood veneer for the same reason.
FLUSHED WITH ANXIETY Q:
I am considering buying a used Nonsuch 36 currently kept in Florida. The present owner proudly told me he had thrown away his holding tank and installed a new manual Raritan toilet connected to a Raritan Electro Scan system, which has two separate staged macerators plus electrodes that convert the salt in seawater to chlorine that then fully purifies the human waste. Supposedly, it operates in two stages, with the first flush cycle held internally and treated with the chlorine until the next flush cycle ejects the first mass overboard.
The owner claims that this is fully approved by the USCG and that he can now legally discharge anywhere without a holding tank. I have never heard of this before and wonder how the average dockmaster in a pristine East Coast harbor like Annapolis, Edgartown or Rockport will react when seeing (and hearing) a brown slurry squirting out of the boat in what is normally a no-discharge zone (NDZ), no matter how purified it is. I also wonder how completely toilet paper gets ground up to invisibility.
Basically, my two questions are 1) do these work well in lieu of a regular holding tank, and 2) can they legally be used anywhere including in a designated NDZ? A third question might be whether a manual head or an electric head is the more complementary operational choice?
— Barry Stott, Chadds Ford, PA
DON CASEY REPLIES
Raritan’s Electro Scan is a marvelous piece of engineering.
The EPA concluded in its own testing of the Electro Scan that it “removed almost all pathogen indicators (99.99 percent or greater).” The discharge coming directly out of the unit, even before being diluted by surrounding water, has a fecal coliform count of less than a fifth of the most stringent coastal water quality standard, the one for shellfish beds. It is also about 99 percent lower than the standard for safe swimming. As for your anxiety about “brown slurry,” a better description of the discharge is a puff of light dust. The current owner of the boat you are looking at has every reason to be proud of his plumbing choice, and currently can legally flush in nearly all Florida waters. The exceptions in Florida are Destin Harbor and some parts of the Keys, where ALL discharge is prohibited.
Unfortunately, when it comes to waste treatment systems afloat (and borrowing the wisdom of Pogo) “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Specifically, sailors almost universally support NDZs in the misguided belief
that this is environmentally sound science, when it is not. In fact, what the proliferation of NDZs has done is discourage the development and installation of effective one-flush treatment systems because a boat still has to be equipped with a holding tank for some waters you might want to sail in. Aside from the repugnance and health risks of storing waste aboard, when you hand it off to a municipality, the quality of its discharge is far inferior to the Electro Scan. Legally you cannot pump the treated waste overboard in an NDZ, never mind that the discharge is likely to be purer than the water you are floating in. Environmentally, however, direct discharge from this particular device is demonstrably better for the planet. It strikes me as a plus that this boat faces you with this choice.
TO BOND OR NOT TO BOND Q:
I have a 1981 Passport 42 with a fiberglass hull that came with green bonding wires running to every Groco bronze through-hull. Should these be bonded, or should they be isolated from everything else? I’ve read conflicting reports even from experts on the topic, which is leaving me confused as to the correct solution.
—Anthony Mazzei, Sausalito, CA
NIGEL CALDER REPLIES
High quality bronze through-hulls (like Groco throughhulls) do not typically need bonding if they are installed above the level of bilge water in the boat. However, if they are immersed in bilge water that is another matter, and a bonding wire is needed to minimize the risk of any stray current corrosion. This is not to say that high-quality bronze through-hulls can’t be bonded if above the level of bilge water, simply that it is probably not necessary. Note, however, that many so-called “bronze” through-hulls are actually some variant of brass, in which case they should be bonded. In that case, the keys to the success of a bonding system are to have as nearly electrically perfect connections as possible and to ensure you maintain whatever sacrificial anode is included in the system. The effectiveness of this anode will also be in direct proportion to its surface area, so it should be replaced as soon as it is 50 percent used up. If you wait until it is entirely gone your bronze through-hulls will likely have been eating up some other metal in the bonding circuit!
ATTACK OF THE SOLDER BLOB Q:
I do my own electronics installations. Unfortunately, while wiring up the NMEA 0183 “talker” and “listener” wires from my new GPS to an older DSC VHF radio, I accidentally shorted the listener wires together with a solder blob. Did I kill my radio or GPS, as they were turned on during my lapse of soldering skills?
— Dean Ross, Panama City, LA
GORDON WEST REPLIES
You are good to go, once you properly match up the data wires correctly. Optical couplers save the day! These data lines are sometimes hard to ID in the dark space behind the equipment, so the optical couplers keep your gear safe from a short. Be aware, though, that once you have the wires properly connected up and the GPS gets a fix, it may take a few seconds for the VHF radio to read out from the GPS talker line.