Recent Interviews:

• Kirsten was honored to be included in the Arctic Yachts Expedition Sailing Boat Show. Click HERE for the full interview.

• Thanks to Yachting International Radio for including Kirsten in their Yacht Crew Vlogs discussing current topics within the industry. Kirsten’s interview with Rhea Rouw can be found HERE.

March 2021 Update from Kirsten:

“In the last newsletter Minnehaha and I had just arrived in Summerside, PEI. Minnehaha had been lifted out of the water, safely transported to a private, heated shed, owned by Darren and Susan Cousins. Meanwhile, I was getting settled into charming accommodation – an old farm house at Green Island Getaways at Granville, thanks to Alan Burland, who has been supporting me in so many ways on this project, and without whose help I would not even be here on PEI!

Since then, more than 2 months have gone by and we have made enormous amounts of progress. It has been predominantly Eddie Arsenault and me working on the refit with occasional volunteers. By some miraculous stroke of luck, Eddie Arsenault was asked to assist with the transportation and offloading of Minnehaha, which is how I got to meet him. To say that Eddie is a genius, would be a vast understatement – he certainly IS a genius, and much, much more – and he decided that the Minnehaha refit was a project that he was willing to tackle. He approaches any problem with confidence and instant ideas on how to execute repairs. There is no problem that does not have a workable solution to him. He is a welder and machinist by trade, but when you see him work, plan and come up with ideas around Minnehaha, you would think that he was born on a boat and has been working in a boat yard since before the time he could walk. I asked him once if he wasn’t perhaps born on a boat, and he simply replied: “No, born in a hospital, made on a boat.”  At any rate, Eddie does the work of 3 normal humans, in half the time - in between running his own shop, planning the repairs, ordering the materials and working on multiple tasks simultaneously. AND: he is a good and very patient teacher – I have learnt so much on this refit. There has been no shortage of banter and good humor either!

Firstly, we started by probing the bulwarks, which were showing signs of deterioration. We found certain areas to have rot, and so decided to rip the entire bulwarks out and rebuild them. At this point I would like to mention Todd Uecker from Cape George Marine Works in Port Townsend, Washington. Todd has been very supportive and helpful from the word go, when we first started going on the hunt for a Cape George 36. He has been giving us much guidance and pointers on which areas to pay attention to on a CG36 of this age, and knows intimately how the Cape Georges were built, what materials used, how improvements can be made etc. In order to expose the bulwarks adequately, we would have needed to strip some of the teak off next to them, at which point, we decided that we might as well strip all the teak. The deck was mainly in good condition below the teak, but the teak had certain areas where the bungs had popped out, and who knows what rot might have been lurking below the teak. Fortunately, there was no rot – only some minor leaks, which have now all been fixed. We replaced the teak with a layer of plywood, which we glassed over with epoxy, two layers of glass, one encapsulating the new Douglas Fir bulwarks, (the Douglas Fir, which was recuperated out of an old lathe bench – perfect wood!) and we then went to painstaking efforts to seal the scupper holes 100%, so that there would be no future water ingress. Once the two layers of glass had been laid, it was a lengthy process of fairing, sanding and shaping until Minnehaha’s deck was slick and smooth -  and eventually a couple of coats of Awl primer. At first we had hoped we could preserve the teak in the cockpit, but some of the areas in the cockpit needed to be rebuilt, and therefore we stripped it of it’s teak too. Mermaid Marine Products in Charlottetown, have been supporting us in giving us substantial discounts on West System epoxy resin and hardener, Awl Fair and Awl Primer, sanding blocks and paper and a myriad other supplies and materials that we have needed for the refit so far! A huge thank you!

Running parallel to this, we unhung the rudder, pulled the propeller, shaft and cutlass bearing, pulled the transmission, which is going to be replaced, removed the gudgeons, inspected them for corrosion or damage, removed the rudder pins, bored out new holes and replaced with larger pins.  The gudgeons were re-aligned, and the pin-holes were bored out and bogged with epoxy, to make sure there can be no water ingress. We would like to replace the 3-bladed, fixed propeller with a 2-bladed, feathering Max Prop. At this stage, PYI Inc., who are the largest distributors of Max Prop by far, have been extremely helpful, and they are going to try to provide us with the perfect Max Prop, which will be able to propel Minnehaha forward very effectively under power, but will create only the most minimal drag when she is moving under sail, thus, no doubt giving her that important extra edge on speed. In addition to that, PYI Inc. very kindly, would even like to provide us with inflatable “Fendertex fenders”, so a very big thank you, for this support and vote of confidence!

We also removed the bowsprit, and found dry rot, so the bowsprit will imminently be rebuilt. At this stage we are just waiting for the Douglas Fir to arrive from Washington State. The wood for this prominent, structurally and performance-wise very important piece of the boat has been very kindly donated by John MacRae Tree Farms / Ranney Day Custom Milling and Scott Ranney – and we are very grateful for this very kind gesture. The wood will be of absolutely top quality, as the trees there grow in gravel, and therefore very slowly – the growth rings are really tight, and there are no knots in the wood that we will be using. No shortcuts could possibly be taken with as an important part as the bowsprit!

The stainless steel bobstay attachment has also be removed – this entailed a couple of hours of itchy fibre-glass grinding job in the confined space of the anchor locker – but to be honest, the discomfort of being covered in fibre glass dust almost comes as second nature to me by this stage of the refit! It will be worth the hassle to replace the old stainless steel bobstay fitting with a bronze one instead. The Cape George Marine yard has made us up the new bobstay, as well an Ash tiller, and these will soon be shipped over to PEI.

The through-hulls have recently been removed – and no doubt, many of you know what a mission that can be! They will all be replaced. They had certain wooden spacers on the hull, which were still perfectly intact, and most of the through hulls were in such good condition, they could probably have lasted another 30 years! We are replacing the wooden spacers with fibre glass pucks, that we (with Eddie’s boundless creative streak) made by laminating multiple sheets of fibre glass together, and then had the “donuts” cut out of this “lamination” by the super-cool CNC machine and its operator, Brent Cousins, at Baltic Creek Woodworks. Baltic Creek has been doing various jobs such as machining pieces with the CNC for us, such as molds and plugs, as well as restoring of old teak, and rebuilding of the rudder cheeks out of oak, and being willing to have our Douglas Fir in their kiln to dry it. Not only that, whenever we’re missing a particular tool, be it a vacuum cleaner, chisel, c-clamp, file – no matter what – we rush over to the Baltic Creek workshop, where we can always borrow the tools we need!

This is to name but a few of the jobs! A big theme of the last month has been that of the new spars – a daily debate: we have been doing extensive research into getting the strongest possible rig, to replace Minnehaha’s wooden mast and boom. A very big thank you to Thomas Degremont, Sam Howell and James Teeters who have done many calculations and much research, in order to determine the righting moment of Minnehaha, and explore what our best options for mast sections could be. Not only that, they will also be doing the VPP’s and Polars for Minnehaha, from which we will then be able to do research into some of the possible best routing based on historical weather data. I am extremely grateful for all the time and effort that they have put into this – and it is so good to have such top notch, professional advice! Bearing in mind, that Minnehaha is quite a heavy displacement boat, compared to some of the other designs permitted in this race, we believe that a sturdy section is what she needs! She was designed with a rugged, beefy wooden mast. Therefore, going over to aluminum, the rig will invariably be lighter, and there is room to go up a size on the sections – which adds a little extra weight but a whole lot of extra strength! Keep watching and following us for when we announce our choice of new spars!

A thank you to Tom Amory for donating a Jordan Series Drogue, to Barry Kennedy for donating a Watt and Sea hydro-generator, James Bennett for the offer of Solbian solar panels and controller, an anonymous donor donated a trailing log and a cutlass bearing, and there have been a whole lot of donations via PayPal and GoFundMe. If it had not been for all these generous gifts, the project would not be able to keep ticking over – so an enormous thank you to each and every one.

Very substantial assistance has come from Chuck Gates and Mark Lindborg, who have been supporting me in this race ever since I had the pleasure of sailing with them on Pelagic in Newfoundland. Without them, I certainly would not be here with Minnehaha! Knight Coolidge has played (and continues to play) a role that cannot be understated, in bringing all these aspects together. Jennifer Coombs has also made a substantial contribution, for which I am extremely grateful, and so good to know she is cheering me on! And, of course, there’s the media team, with Alicia Biggart and Erin Ranney right in the foreground!

Support has also come in the form of interest and encouragement. Here I would like to thank Dale and Doug Bruce for organizing a Zoom presentation for the Cruising Club of America – it was a great opportunity to share some images of life aboard Pelagic, of recent sailing and refit of Minnehaha, and general preparations towards the Golden Globe Race with a keen and enthusiastic group of sailors! Without all the kind words, the sharing of information and the knowledge that people are rooting for me, the tough times would feel a lot tougher!

About the race: The Golden Globe Race 2022: a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation. This retro race is based upon the first solo circumnavigation race that took place in 1968. In order to stay true to the original circumnavigation, boats are all older designs, no bigger than 36 foot- and modern navigational technology, like GPS, is not permitted. Instead she will be depending upon her skills in celestial navigation and dead reckoning. The route for the race is France, down the Atlantic, east-about the Southern Ocean, and back up the Atlantic to France- an approximate distance of 30,000 nautical miles and anywhere from 7 to 9 months or more at sea.