We have put some feedback on the ‘Boat’ and ‘Kit’ pages on the performance of some of the equipment fitted along with some notes on the support from various manufacturers.

We are re-learning many old lessons as we go along, but that is part of the fun. We have adopted a few philosophies that help us to make decisions when we are unsure of the right approach to a problem. Many of the philosophies have corollaries and are applicable to a variety of situations.

This is a fundamental philosophy that we have adopted, normally prompted by the question "What is the right thing to do?" There are frequent situations where there is a seemingly easy shortcut and an alternative more demanding option requiring more effort, skill, time or money. Which one to choose? The tempting shortcut generally involves an initial uncomfortable guilty feeling followed by the realisation that you are going to have to do the job properly anyway. By the time you get to this stage, it will generally take more effort, time, skill and money to sort out than if it had been done properly in the first place.

Examples are legion. Take, for example, the decision to reef with increasing winds or approach of suspicious dark clouds, requiring a trip forward to the mast and a certain amount of winching and struggling with flapping sails. Never much fun in the middle of the night. However, sitting in the cockpit hoping the wind will decrease or the dark cloud will go away will generally result in having to stagger about on the foredeck to reef anyway with the poor boat over on her ear, big green seas raking the foredeck and slashing rain.

At the other end of the scale, a small amount of maintenance done in time (avoiding more extensive/expensive repairs later) saves time, money and effort in the long run. There is balance to be struck between being a paranoid control freak and a slob, we tend to the former approach.

There are a number of corollaries that naturally follow on from this concept of doing it right the first time.

• Put things away in there proper place so that you or anyone else can find them next time. With all the hidey holes, things can get lost on boat for years (e.g., my grease gun, I now have two having lost one for 15 months).
• Do a risk assessment of what happens if you drop anything. I have lost count of the number of hours I have spent ferreting around behind insulation or at the bottom of disgusting harbours because I have dropped an irreplaceable item or tool.

Bad things happening is generally the result of a number of unrelated issues building up producing a chain of failures. For instance, buying a cheap second hand sail, on which one never quite seems to have the time to repair those loose stitches will probably let you down in the middle of the night when a squall hits you as you approach a lee shore and the engine won’t start because the filter is blocked by the crud in the fuel tank that you haven’t got round to cleaning yet. In addition to equipping the boat with good quality equipment with spares or redundant back-ups, we have a system of daily, weekly, monthly, 6 monthly and annual checks to keep an eye on things. We stand continual watches in the cockpit on passage, avoid pressing the boat, reef early, have 4 anchors with 100 metres of chain, etc, etc.

When deciding on whether to have a shiny new bit of kit (electronic chart plotter, watermaker, generator, etc), just think how you will cope when (not if) it fails. In the short term, will you be able to cope without it. You do have paper charts don’t you? You do have enough stored water to reach a port don’t you? In the longer term, can you fix it yourself or have you the cash and patience to pay for and await that spare part from the other side of the world and wrest it from the clutches of the local postal/customs system. The poorer and more remote the country, the more Byzantine can be the customs regulations requiring you to hire expensive agents costing more than the spare part. If we feel a piece of equipment is essential (such as GPS and anchor) we either have redundancy (4 GPSs and 4 anchors) or make sure I can fix it without assistance (carrying spare parts of course).

There are many highly opinionated people in the sailing world. Not all of them are right (including me). Their views are sometimes correct, sometimes based on different situations to yours, and sometimes they like to feel important and knowledgeable. Examples for us were the installation of our long range single side band transceiver, where we received much conflicting advice, similarly how to use which varnish gets all the experts going. The health and longevity of our Perkins 4108 engine receives opinions varying from "You need a new engine mate" to "Don’t worry about it, it’ll carry on until you shoot it." Opinions on cruising areas are highly subjective, we have learnt to largely disregard bad news about destinations unless it comes directly from a trusted friend who has direct and recent experience. Get the best information you can, then make up your own mind. Finding out why the expert holds his/her opinion is often interesting and whether they can justify them. Here are a few reasons often heard:

During your preparation before setting off, you will receive or read much advice. Here are some of the regular ones which come around…

• The Herd Instinct. If a vessel is anchored alone in a large bay with acres of good holding, the next boat to arrive will assume that you have local knowledge and drop his hook right alongside you. The herd instinct.

• Wear shoes. It saves damage to your feet when kicking items of deckgear in a hurry. Blood is very difficult to get off Treadmaster and soft furnishings.