On A New Tack

 How to use the Storm Sail on a Vision 444 My fellow Visionary Pierre on Umbono reached out recently wanting to review the steps for deploying the Storm Sail, since he was forecasted to be in less-than ideal sailing conditions in the next day. What better opportunity to write a blog article! This is going out quickly to support Pierre, but I will come back and add pictures and maybe link a video later. Preparation Keep the Storm Sail and everything you need for it somewhere where it is easy to get. We keep ours in the large lazarette under the Cockpit table seating. If you think you might need the Storm Sail, you probably should have the jacklines put out too.  The system we use to deploy the Storm Sail reduces the time we need to be forward, but wearing a life vest with harness and being clipped into the lazy jacks is the way to go here. Our Storm sail is in it's own bag with the following: A port sheet attached to the clew with a bowline A starboard sheet attached to the cle...

How to revive a failing water pump (and make it better!) This is a companion blog article to a YouTube video we did on the same topic. Disclaimer: You must be electrically and mechanically competent to complete these repairs/upgrades.  If you are unsure of any step, stop and get professional assistance.  You can always reach out to me and I will try my best to help. Our Vision 444 ES catamaran uses two freshwater pumps, one in each hull.  Each one is a 24V diaphragm pump made by Pentair.  Don't worry, the same steps apply to 12V pumps. We have one in each hull, but we also have crossover valves, which when we open, allows one pump to pressurize the water on both sides.  We normally operate them this way so that we drain water from one tank, then we can switch which pump is powered up and pull from the other tank. About a year after we launched, the port side pump started acting up.  It would sputter and get sporadic in running as it got close to the cut-off...