“I’m going ashore for ice,” I told Richard Thomas, owner of the Reliance 44 cutter Strider, where I was a guest. He was below, buried in the engine compartment, installing a replacement alternator. The high-output Balmar was out of commission.

Strider was at anchor this past April off the beach in St. Lucia’s Rodney Bay. Upon our arrival the day before, we had discovered the problem. Fortunately, Richard had the original alternator under a bunk up forward. He’d stowed it there after installing the new Balmar alternator during the boat’s repowering two years ago.

“Ice? Good idea,” he said. “It’s been weeks since we’ve had ice in our rum.”

Richard’s boat has refrigeration, but the freezer thermostat had shorted out when a drip from a deck fitting got into the works. There was a refrigerator box, but no way to make ice.  

Is refrigeration necessary on a Caribbean boat? It’s nice, but 10 years ago, my family and I spent an entire season in the islands without it. The original Sea Frost system on Searcher, my 34-year-old Bowman 57, used a refrigerant that had become illegal in the United States. Replacing the system would have cost more than $5,000. We made do with ice, spending $700 for the entire season.

The trouble with ice in the islands is that it only comes as cubes in bags. There’s no block ice, which lasts longer. While my family and I anchored in Bequia, I’d send my 9-year-old son, Havana, ashore every afternoon in the RIB to buy a bag of ice for my evening rum, and to cool the milk and butter. Finally free from his domineering sister and parental control, he sped off to go nosing around the anchorage. 

“Do your exploring on your way in to get the ice,” I’d admonish him. “Not on your way back with the ice.”

I recalled those times as I jumped into Richard’s RIB and headed ashore—but first, with a little exploring. Packed along the beach to the south was a string of all-inclusive resorts and the yacht club, like a miniature Disneyland. On the beach to the north was a community of single-story cottages, knock-together restaurants and bars, lean-to workshops, and fishing boats pulled up on the sand. A dilapidated concrete pier was the playground for a bunch of West Indian kids. I watched them jump off the pier, float, and kick a worn-out soccer ball until it went into the water. They were all fit and thin, happy to be alive. I lingered in the dinghy, just off the pier, remembering the simple joy of my youth, frolicking on the dock of our lake home in New England. 

In the harbor, I found ice at the fuel dock and bought four bags. That should last us a couple of days, I figured. As I was about to head back out to the boat, I noticed a half-submerged replica of an 18th-century pirate ship—an obviously abandoned tourist party boat. 

It was The Pearl, according to the nameplate on the bow. By the look of it, the boat had been there for a while. Another West Indian entrepreneurial venture comes to an end.  

When I got back to the boat, the alternator was installed, and the engine was purring. “When I run up the revs,” Richard said, “the belt starts to squeal.”

“Batteries must be putting too much demand on the alternator,” I said. “I’ve had this problem on my boats. A squirt of belt treatment often works.”

Allowing the belt to squeal creates friction, which can lead to the belt’s burning out. We didn’t have an extra aboard.

“We can’t get the batteries up to a full charge if we can’t run the engine up to 2,000 rpm,” he said.

Hmm. It was time to pour some rum and contemplate the situation.

It had been a cloudless day—ideal to photograph the setting sun. I brought up my telephoto lens and settled in on the seat at the aft rail, with my rum (now with ice) within easy reach. I’ve done this dozens of times, trying to photograph the flash of green as the top of the sun disappears below the horizon. It lasts but 125th of a second.  

On this evening, conditions were right. Sahara dust, swept up in sandstorms off the deserts of North Africa, was filling the skies of the West Indies. At times, it was so thick that it looked like Maine fog, obscuring the islands just miles away. The dust was also settling, accumulating on Richard’s decks, clogging the running rigging and pissing him off. But it added a deep red to my photographs.

As I sat with my camera ready, a small catamaran crept into the scene. It was heading south, riding on the horizon, 3 miles off to the west.

It sailed right into my picture as the sun set.

Luck? Perhaps, but as a professional photographer and one who has taught photography, I’m forever preaching that luck favors the prepared artist. In other words, be ready when the photo gods present you with a gift.

The next morning, as we got underway, the squealing began as soon as Richard got the revs above 1,000.

“We can’t go on like this!” he shouted over the noise.

“Disconnect the exciter wire to the alternator and let it freewheel,” I suggested. “Perhaps that’ll stop it.”

He did, and the squealing stopped, but the batteries weren’t charging.

“Do you think the solar cells will help?” I asked.

“We’ll hand-steer to save the batteries,” he said. “I’ll turn off the fridge. We have ice now.” Sailors are adaptable.

“I’ve got to get another Balmar alternator shipped down,” he added, “and Antigua is the best place.” 

I looked at the Navionics charts on my iPhone. The distance to our next anchorage, Saint-Pierre on Martinique, was 44 miles. It would take us seven to eight hours, some of that time spent under sail. From Saint-Pierre, it would be another six hours to Portsmouth on Dominica for another night, then 47 miles, another seven hours, up to Deshaies on Guadeloupe. After that, six hours, mostly under sail, up to Jolly Harbour on Antigua.

“We’ll be in Antigua in four days,” I told Richard. 

We were now ignoring a cardinal rule of cruising. We had a schedule. 

By 10 a.m. that morning, we were 15 miles west of one of my favorite anchorages on these islands, Sainte-Anne on Martinique. A few years ago, at the tail end of a delivery down from Antigua, I spent two weeks there. On this trip, we’d miss it, but I felt compelled to tell Richard what we’d be missing.

“You round Pointe du Diamant, just over there,” I said. “Then scoot between it and Diamond Rock. Ahead, there’ll be a line of white-hulled sailboats, so thick you can’t see the beach. That’s the anchorage off the village of Sainte-Anne. Marina du Marin, a huge complex, is farther up in the bay. The marinas there are full of French catamaran charter boats, but there’s an easy-in, easy-out fuel dock, and more chandleries ashore than any other place in the islands. There’s a huge supermarket in there with its own dinghy dock.”  

There is little space for anchoring, though, and many of the boats appear to have been there for years, with some abandoned. I prefer Sainte-Anne’s anchorage. The water is cleaner, there’s a view of the sunset, and there’s always a breeze. It can be a bit of a dinghy ride in to the village, but there’s a substantial town dock and a garbage depository, and it’s an easy walk to the shops. There are no marine services, no fuel or water, and no chandlery.

The village has two streets, two small grocery stores, open-air fish and produce markets, and an excellent boulangerie. When I was there, a young couple from Lyon, France, had established a floating boulangerie service for boaters. Every morning, they made the rounds of the anchorage in their RIB, with tubs full of fresh croissants they made themselves, and baguettes from the shop ashore. It cost a bit more, but well worth it.

Ashore, the village of Sainte-Anne is a photographer’s paradise. I’d wander the streets, framing colorful compositions with my viewfinder. I’d linger across the street from a storefront, waiting for the actors to walk on stage and into my frame.

There’s a hill behind the village, with a trail to the top that begins just behind the church. It zigzags, following the 14 Stations of the Cross, with a shrine at each turn. At the top are a concrete building and cell tower—and a view of the anchorage below that’s breathtaking. 

There are beaches, hiking trails and a resort nearby. Agricultural fields spread across this part of Martinique. This island is blessed with an abundance of rich volcanic soil. It exports sugar, bananas and other agricultural products, including really strong rum. 

Which reminds me, back aboard Strider—it was now lunchtime. We were due west of Fort-de-France, Martinique’s commercial port, and we’d run out of wind. The mountains that run up the middle of the island were blocking the easterly trades. From these mountains, some of which rise to 4,000 feet, rivers run down gorges and valleys to spill into the sea. Doyle’s Guide describes a few small anchorages along this section of the coast. It was the last anchorage at the northern end of the island that drew us: Saint-Pierre.

We arrived as the sun was getting ready to set, lighting up the faces of the buildings that line the beach—like a French Cubist painting. Richard found a suitable spot to anchor in 30 feet of water, just a stone’s throw from the black-sand beach. Behind the town, the summit of Mount Pelee was lost in clouds. I sat on the cabin top, a glass of rum and tonic nearby, photographing the village as the light faded into dusk and the town’s lights came on.

Years ago, the family and I went ashore here. We spent a few days exploring the island’s interior, but that’s a story for another time.

The post Island Memories and Ice Runs: A Sailor’s Caribbean Tale appeared first on Cruising World.

The destination was the verdant Caribbean island nation of Dominica, in the Lesser Antilles chain, sandwiched between the French isles of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The goal was to partake in the fun, music, food and camaraderie of the second-annual PAYS Dominica Yachting Festival, a weeklong celebration to benefit the Portsmouth Association for Yacht Security. 

My ignorance regarding this entire venture was twofold: I’d never been to Dominica, and I had no clue what PAYS was all about. However, when my old mate Hank Schmitt invited me to come along for the festivities aboard his sweet Swan 48, Avocation, I reckoned there was nothing to lose. 

What transpired was one of the best weeks of my sailing life.

But first, we had to get there. 

It was almost precisely 170 nautical miles, more or less due south, from our departure point on St. Maarten’s Simpson Bay to Dominica. We were closehauled in the easterly trades for our entire one-tack overnight voyage, and it was a bumpy ride. But there were some definite highlights. Off St. Barts, we caught a glimpse of the impressive fleet of superyachts competing in the annual St. Barts Bucket regatta. At sunrise, we enjoyed a respite from the relentless easterlies, sluicing down the lee of Guadeloupe. The last 17 miles of open water were sporty, but exactly 26 hours after hoisting sail, we picked up a mooring in Prince Rupert’s Bay fronting the volcanic black-sand beach and the funky coastal town of Portsmouth on Dominica’s northwest coastline.

After catching a ride ashore on one of the PAYS water taxis, I had the first of many surprises. One of the locals caught a glimpse of our skipper, a dude I’ve known for decades—but never by this handle. 

“Look!” he called to his pals. “It’s Daddy Hank!”

Who’s Your Daddy?

There are several good reasons that Hank Schmitt is a rather beloved father figure along the waterfront of Dominica. After decades of roaming the oceans under sail—and through his related business, Offshore Passage Opportunities, the networking service that has helped countless sailors realize their own voyaging dreams—Schmitt is continuing to pay it forward with PAYS. 

The tale of how a native New Yorker from Long Island Sound became a favored patron to a faraway Caribbean island is, well, a winding one indeed.

The sailing bug bit Schmitt early, at the tender age of 7, when he started racing dinghies in junior programs at various yacht clubs on his home waters. During high school, he matriculated to Rhode Island’s Portsmouth Abbey, and starred on the sailing team while working summers at a boatyard back home and sailing his dad’s Cal 2-30. After graduation in 1977, with a one-way ticket to Florida, he finagled his way aboard a Morgan One Tonner to race in the prestigious Southern Ocean Racing Conference, the major ­big-boat yacht-racing series of the time. 

At 19, in Houston, he hopped aboard his first offshore oil rig; that began a seven-year odyssey that took him from the United States to Europe to Africa, and included his first transatlantic voyage, from Boston to Italy on a 400-foot drill ship at 8 knots. Thus, a pattern of movement was established. The equal attractions were new adventures and blue water. And it turned out, he was just getting going.

Back home in Huntington, New York, after the oil business cratered, he launched his own rigging and dive business, spent a few harrowing winters fishing commercially out of Montauk, and started doing yacht deliveries. Lots of them. Hundreds of thousands of miles. After one, in 1987, he landed a repossessed Tayana 37 that he renamed Hunk-a-Schmitt and lived aboard for 13 years. In 1992, he sailed it in Jimmy Cornell’s America 500 rally commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ famous voyage, visiting 25 ports in 10 months with a pair of solo Atlantic crossings. 

That led to, among other things, ­founding Offshore Passage Opportunities and the annual North America Rally to the Caribbean, during which he eventually ran a fleet of Swans back and forth from their charter bases in Rhode Island and St. Maarten each year (and earned some extra dough selling crew berths to fledgling voyagers). His own Swan, the 48-foot Avocation, always led the parade. 

That annual Caribbean pilgrimage is what first drew Schmitt to Dominica. For years, after arriving in the islands, he’d do a standard circuit of charters for members of Offshore Passage Opportunities: the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, a swing through the British Virgin Islands, Antigua Sailing Week. When the BVI portion started to get old, a fellow skipper offered a fresh suggestion: Check out Dominica.

During that first visit, around 2012, Schmitt met a boat boy named Albert, who was operating a dilapidated skiff. He tapped some members of Offshore Passage Opportunities for a contribution for the materials to build Albert a new boat. The next time he visited (with some cache with the PAYS locals after helping out Albert), he realized that the few moorings he’d seen off Portsmouth were missing. The Offshore Passage Opportunities crew stepped up again, eventually raising more than $20,000 for several dozen new moorings. 

That led to the first organized PAYS fundraisers, originally called Yachtie Appreciation Weeks (the second one, in 2015, drew more than 100 boats). They helped to fund a seaside PAYS pavilion and adjacent docks. The pandemic stopped the momentum, though Schmitt continued to raise and send money to help several Dominican families, and somewhere in there landed a nickname. Once normalcy returned, so did the weeklong celebration, rebranded as the Yachting Festival, with barbecues, tours, beach parties and more. 

For me, arriving for the 2024 PAYS party aboard Avocation, something was clear right from the outset. It’s pretty great showing up in Dominica in the company of Daddy Hank.

Embracing “Nature’s Island”

It’s hard to say what was the best part of the festival because it was all pretty damn festive. But we’ll start with the people, especially Team Avocation: Daddy, of course; his longtime Long Island mates, Alex Hummel and Dave Evans (the latter sailed down aboard skipper Peter Bourke’s Class 40, Imagine, a nifty yacht that added much to my own personal experience); and Offshore Passage Opportunities member Don Geier, a Kansas man who, in retrospect, probably had no idea (like me) of what he was getting himself into. And then there was the PAYS posse, with ringleader Eddison Laville playing a prominent role, and a cast of characters as colorful as their own monikers: Cobra, Toxic, Blackie, Boy-Boy, Kenny G and so many more.

A few more things stand out, especially the dazzling beauty of this rich, fertile island. Dominica has been called the Caribbean’s “nature island,” and with good reason. With its steep peaks, dense rainforest, rushing waterfalls, and abundant flora and fauna, it is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. 

It’s become known for eco-tourism, also with good reason. Those aforementioned black-sand beaches (which, to my eye, are nothing less than sensational) luckily deterred the arrival of Club Med-style resorts that afflict many a Caribbean island. The overall vibe remains inviting, laid-back and unspoiled. (That said, there’s plenty of new development underway, including major roads and a big international airport. My advice? Go. Now.)

Perhaps the best, easiest, most inclusive way to experience this island is also the simplest: Take a hike. As Avocation was a bit crowded, Alex and I decamped to shoreside quarters at the Mango Garden Cottages, which are run by Eddison’s Swiss wife, Sylvia, who invited us on “a morning stroll.” With a spirited quartet of happy pooches, we ascended an uphill trail past wandering goats and terrace gardens of cabbage and bananas to the Diablo Canyon, an arresting destination near a pretty spot called Sulphur Springs (its cool water was a lovely place to dip weary toes). A couple of hours later, Alex and I were drenched in sweat, while Sylvia and the dogs appeared fresh as daisies. Much too late, Alex made an astute observation: “It’s probably not a great idea to go on a steep hike with a Swiss woman.” Thanks, Captain Obvious. 

That turned out to be just a warm-up for the next day’s trek. Dominica is circled by a 14-stage, 115-mile long-distance hiking route called the Waitukubuli National Trail. Sylvia dropped off Alex, Dave and me at the trailhead to Stage 13, the Penville section, listed on the map as a “moderate” hike of 8 kilometers, or about 5 miles. All I can say is, I’m glad we didn’t tackle a “difficult” route. It was a true wilderness trail with crazy vegetation, incredible cliffside ocean views, and plenty of sharp switchbacks—on one of which I was almost knocked into oblivion on a narrow path by a burro going up while I was headed down. By the end, some five hours and a rainstorm later, we were all toast—but also beginning to understand Dominica in elemental terms. 

The next excursion, thankfully, was back to sea level and decidedly more mellow: a float up the Indian River with Albert, a fine guide, on the oars. The “indians” for which it was named were the indigenous island Carib people, before the colonists from Spain, France and Great Britain showed up, with predictably horrible results. Dominica boasts some 365 rivers, Albert told us as we slipped beneath a dense canopy of foliage and past century-old trees, their roots deep and tangled. Along the way, he pointed out the nests of termites and hummingbirds. Coconut crabs skittered along the shoreline. What’s left of the original Carib clans now live in villages to the north, but this was a serene place. Their spirit was still there.

We didn’t get a true sense of how vast and diverse Dominica was, however, until we piled into a van for an overland tour with another knowledgeable local named Kenneth Gussie. (He spelled it out in my notebook and said, “Don’t call me Kenny G,” though unfortunately for him, everybody does.) By any name, Kenneth was a passionate, knowledgeable ambassador for his homeland, which he called “the island of dreams. What are you looking for? Rivers and mountains? Caribbean culture? Fresh organic food? Eco-tourism? Where you can just be yourself without worries, and have great times?

“I’m going to make Dominica smile,” he continued. “That’s what I’m going to do.” He was as good as his word. It actually took us two days to take it all in, and that we did. 

Kenneth spoke of the place’s rich history, the different and lasting influences of all those earlier European colonizers (Columbus, on his second voyage, gave Dominica its name: Latin for Sunday, the day he sailed past), and its tumultuous break for independence from Great Britain in 1979. Kenneth also had fond comments about the recent influx of Chinese people to the island: “Very good friends. They teach us farming techniques, fishing techniques.” He also waxed poetically on the perfection of curried goat. 

We drove from the top of the island to the bottom, all 29 miles. We took in the national parks, including the one called Morne Diablotins, home to Dominica’s highest peak (4,747 feet). We had a look at the banana plantations, the fishing harbors and the botanical gardens in Roseau, the country’s busy capital. We stopped at the Indian reserve and picked up some crafts and souvenirs. We swam in the Titou Gorge and paid a visit to the Trafalgar Falls, where Hank and I scrambled up the boulders and had a refreshing soak in the cool, rocky pools. Everything was amazing. Thank you, Mr. Gussie; you did a wonderful job. All smiles.

Last, there was the one activity that put me firmly back in my more natural element: racing sailboats. The midweek Race to Mero was as casual as could be, and meant to showcase the new set of PAYS moorings installed off the beachfront of Mero Beach. There was no start or finish line; you could motor for five minutes at the outset; and the whole idea was just to go sailing and have fun, which I’m always up for. 

That’s precisely what transpired on board Peter Bourke’s Imagine, aboard which he’d invited me to sail as a ­doublehanded entry. Bourke had originally planned to do the Global Solo Challenge singlehanded round-the-world race aboard the boat, but an untimely bout with COVID-19 sidelined those plans. Now he was cruising the islands. His well-prepared 40-footer was a joy to sail, and even with fitful breeze, we managed to make 8 knots at one point and had a fine time slipping down Dominica’s coastline in the company of another half-dozen racers. And Mero Beach was a sweet spot to pick up that mooring. 

In a related aside, it must be noted: Cannabis is legal for the residents of “nature island.” If you (like me) happen to enjoy an occasional puff, the beach party on Mero, with a crazy street parade in the middle of it, is a good place to be. My new island brothers were more than happy to share. 

Peter and I had another cool sail back to Prince Rupert’s Bay. I might’ve still been high, because at the very end of it, by virtue of the fact that we were the only boat to complete both light-air legs entirely under sail, Imagine was declared the winner. At the awards ceremony that evening, Peter even got a trophy. More smiles.

With that, my work on Dominica was complete.

Heading North

Our festival experience had commenced with an overnight sail from St. Maarten, and as all good things must come to an end, it concluded with one too. Alex and I enjoyed a delicious lunch of coconut-curry conch and backed down a couple of blazing shots of cinnamon rum at our new favorite beach bar. We all bid the PAYS posse thanks and adieu, and we were off. 

It was an absolutely fantastic sail. The breeze had freed a bit on the way back to St. Maarten, which meant more of a reach than the upwind thrash we’d experienced on the trip down. It seemed fitting. After a week on Dominica, our souls were a bit freer as well. 

I deliberately crashed until midnight, with the plan to stay up for the rest of the evening because I love catching dawn at sea. It proved to be a smart call; I also saw the rise of a brilliant moon. Best of all, as I came on deck, there in our wake was the Southern Cross. I hadn’t expected to see it this far north.

In that moment, it was hard to tell which was tugging more on my heartstrings: that beautiful southern sky, or wishing that I was still on that unforgettable volcanic rock called Dominica, afloat on the sea beneath it.

It PAYS to Sail to Dominica

The third annual PAYS Dominica Yachting Festival, with a weeklong program of tours, beach parties and casual sailboat racing, is scheduled to take place March 22-30. For more information, visit paysdominica.com. § While Hank Schmitt is scaling back on his own voyaging, his Offshore Passage Opportunities networking service is still connecting sailors and skippers for mutual oceanic adventures. Learn more at sailopo.com.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Dazzled in Dominica appeared first on Cruising World.

Tiller between my legs, I hold the finicky jib sheet in one hand and my sparkling water in the ­other. Sueños picks up speed like a horse ready to run. I’m solo sailing, my favorite pastime. And I’m wing on wing, my favorite point of sail. Today, Montana’s Flathead Lake is perfect for both.

The Rocky Mountains graze blue sky on the eastern shore. Those craggy peaks culminate in Glacier National Park 30 miles north, where grizzlies, goats and woodsmen roam. To the west, bleached bluffs have baked to golden perfection after a long summer. And in front of me, the September sun glints across a vast expanse of royal blue that is mine alone.

At age 43, I’ve sailed more than half my life. I live with my husband and our two young kids in an area of Montana 100 miles to the south. We’ve spent the past four winters cruising in the Bahamas aboard Mikat, a 36-foot Jaguar catamaran. 

But my husband is less enamored of sailing than I am. Or, to be more accurate, he wants a break from fixing boats in beautiful places. A few months ago, we sold our one-third-ownership share in Mikat. As I skim across Flathead, he’s happily planning a family backpacking trip to Bolivia, South America’s only landlocked country.

The loss of our catamaran hit me harder than I expected. When we walked away from Mikat in Marsh Harbour, in the Bahamas, this past March, I nearly hyperventilated. What if it became a ghost ship that pulled me under when it sailed off without us?

A few weeks later, at a ­meditation class back in Montana, the instructor told us to envision a place where we felt happy, healthy and peaceful. I closed my eyes, and the forward berth on Mikat came into view—sheets perpetually damp and sandy, a tinge of diesel and mildew behind the salt water. I saw my children spiraling through the air as they swung on a halyard, framed against a slice of white sand. I saw the four of us diving off the transom, baptized anew in the neon water. 

I needed another happy place. So I found a boat ­partnership closer to home. 

Sueños is a Catalina 25 that’s been cruising Flathead Lake for two decades—only a few years longer than I have. As the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi, Flathead has hundreds of miles of shoreline to explore, along with a half-dozen islands. 

I nudge the tiller to turn toward my favorite of these islands, trimming in the sails. When I reach the horseshoe anchorage tucked against Wild Horse Island, I scramble around the deck, alternating between nursing the idling outboard, lowering the main at the mast, and running to the bow to wrest the anchor and chain from the hold. Sueños is definitely not set up for singlehanding, but that just makes it more interesting.

The sun is skimming the top of the ponderosas by the time I’ve set the hook. I strip off my clothes and cannonball off the side before the light disappears completely. The lake is cold but not icy…yet. The sailing season is short here in the Big Sky State—June through September, at best. Half of those days are too chilly to swim, the other half too smoky to see the mountains. But ­occasionally, you stumble upon the magic that makes Montana the last best place.

Before the last of the light fades, I row the dinghy to shore. Most of the island is a state park, with no roads or electricity. The few homes along its shore are accessible only by boat. I huff up a steep hill in the twilight, then startle when I see a herd of bighorn sheep at the top. Standing stock still, I watch two dozen mamas corral their rambunctious half-grown babies into a still-green hollow where they’ll be safe from human hikers.

Back aboard Sueños, I drink a beer while making dinner. The alcohol goes straight to my head and inspires me to call my friend Katie in Bellingham. As a fellow sailor who grew up in Montana, she’ll be able to appreciate how special it is to be alone on Flathead.

“I was just thinking about you,” she says. “We watched that documentary on the Race to Alaska last night. Are we ever going to do it?”

We’ve been talking for years about entering the 750-mile, nonmotorized, free-for-all ocean race from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. Our kids were always too little, our jobs too hard to leave for a month, and our motivation not quite strong enough to brave gnarly currents, freezing water, and wandering grizzlies.

But now, I have a sailboat-­size hole in my heart, and a craving for the next big ­adventure gnawing at my belly.

The beer answers bravely. “We’re totally doing it. This June.”

“Seriously?” Her voice ­ratchets up an octave. 

“Dead serious.”

We talk for a while about what kind of boat we want (cheap but fast, bigger than a shoebox and hopefully slightly drier), as well as whether we should invite others (maybe one more if it’s a woman and she can suffer cheerfully). Then we talk for even longer about what kind of logo and sweatshirt we should make for our team (because there’s no such thing as a perfect boat, but a good hoodie can last for decades). We decide on a team name: Sail Like A Mother.

I’m too excited to sleep, so I roll out my sleeping bag in the cockpit and stare up at the glittery smear of the Milky Way. I picture braving the Strait of Juan de Fuca at night, rounding Cape Caution with 30-knot winds on the nose, and ringing the bell if (when!) we arrive in Ketchikan nine months from now.

The next day, I sail Sueños back across Flathead. The lake is just as empty, just as regal. The boat picks up speed with both sails fully loaded, cutting fast toward the little harbor with its bobbing boats.

My heart picks up speed too. Sailing alone has never scared me. It’s docking alone that gives me nightmares.

The old finger docks at Dayton Yacht Harbor are wobbly, narrow and made of ancient, splintery planks. There are no cleats, just a rusty metal pylon at one end and chains looped around boards on the other. Since it’s a weekday in September, the docks are deserted. No one is around to lend a hand.

Talk about adventure.

A couple hundred yards away, I do my deck-scramble dance to take down the sails and put out the fenders. I loop an extra-long bow line on the forward cleat and a stout stern line on the port side. I gauge the wind. It’s behind me, of course, to make this even harder. 

I take deep breaths and mutter: “You got this. You got this.” Leaning over the stern, I maneuver the sputtering outboard and tiller at the same time to turn into the slip. At the last minute, I throw it in reverse and leap onto the precarious dock with both lines in hand. I quickly wrap the stern line around the pylon and hold on tight to the bow line, hoping that I don’t fall into the lake. Sueños settles safely. Whew.

Before I go back to my family, I sit in the cockpit for a few minutes. Soaking in the mountains. Remembering past voyages. Planning a new one. Thanking the universe for the gift of people who are willing to travel beside me on wild, watery paths.

Brianna Randall is a writer based in Montana. Her stories have appeared in National Geographic, BBC, The Washington Post, Outside, CNN, Discover and plenty of sailing magazines. Follow her and the (comedic) exploits of Team Sail Like A Mother at briannarandall.com. 

The post Northern Exposure: Sailing Montana’s Flathead Lake appeared first on Cruising World.

Strider, the Reliance 44 cutter I was aboard as a guest of the owner, left Bequia at midday on April 4. Our course was northbound to Chateaubelair, a village halfway up the west coast of St. Vincent. The 20 miles took us less than four hours. There was little wind as we left Admiralty Bay, but once out of Bequia’s lee, we caught a fair easterly breeze of 12 knots. With the engine off and sails up, we were making 6 knots.

Our original plan had been to hop up the chain of islands to Antigua by day, covering a distance of 250 miles and dropping the hook each night. If time allowed, we’d go ashore, clear in and spend a few days exploring. This normally requires an entire season, not the four weeks that I had—and we’d squandered two weeks hanging out on Bequia, with a side trip down to Union and Carriacou islands.  

Strider’s owner and I wanted to be in Antigua for the annual Classic Yacht Regatta at the end of the month. We could make that in two days if we sailed nonstop, but why rush when there is so much to see and do on these islands?

The west side of St. Vincent has a half dozen anchorages. Neither of us had been to Chateaubelair, so we chose it and read up on the anchoring options in my 2009 copy of the Doyle Guides. The village itself is tucked in at the end of a valley that spills down from Soufriere, the towering volcano that erupted in April 2021, spreading ash over most of St. Vincent and nearby islands to the south. Since we had no need or time to go ashore, we chose an anchorage on a narrow ledge beneath the cliffs to the north of the village.

As we rounded the island south of the anchorage, we could see a few yachts already anchored along the cliff that rises 400 feet above the sea. A girl on a surfboard, with two younger kids aboard, was paddling about. We skirted them, gave a friendly wave that they returned, and watched them paddle on. An elderly fisherman in a kayak came by, towing a line. He hollered, “There’s a school of tuna here!” and then paddled on.

Striker’s owner, Richard, was at the helm calling off depths as we creeped in close to the palm-tree-lined cliff. I was on the foredeck, readying the anchor. At 30 feet and no more than 100 yards from shore, Richard put the engine in reverse. The boat slowed to a stop, and I released the anchor and began to play out the chain.

Once the anchor was on the bottom, I let out another 100 feet, deployed the chain brake, climbed out over the bow rail, and put my foot on the chain. This is my standard operating procedure. I can feel the chain vibrate as the slack plays out along the rocky bottom. 

The chain tightened, rose and jumped. I could feel the anchor skip, reset, skip again, set and stay put. Richard gave the boat another nudge astern. The anchor chain raised up in a straight line. The boat stopped. We were here. 

I rigged the snubbing line, let out another few feet of chain to hang slack over the bow roller, and headed back to the cockpit. It was time for rum. Richard prefers punch; I’m an “add tonic” guy. 

As we were settling into the cockpit, a gunmetal gray catamaran charged into the anchorage at 6 knots, narrowly missing the kids on the surfboard and passing over the fisherman’s trolling line.

“That Frenchman has no regard,” Richard said, setting down his drink and heading forward.

“How do you know he’s a Frenchman?” I asked.

“Look at the flag. Besides, who else would be so arrogant?” 

The offending catamaran slowed to a stop just ahead of us. Richard began—nicely, I thought—advising the chap on board that there were kids about and that he’d run over the fisherman’s line.

The man in charge, in French-accented English, replied, “Who are you talking to? Me? Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“Have a little respect for the people that live here,” Richard said.

“You are trying to disrespect me,” the Frenchman replied, adding a string of words that are best not printed here. 

The argument continued for another minute, until the Frenchman became preoccupied with his anchoring. Two things worried me: the catamaran’s proximity and the chap’s anchoring methods.

As it turned out, what I should have been worried about was noise. Richard’s admonishments resulted in loud music playing all night from the catamaran’s aft deck.

April 5

We got underway at first light, motorsailing north along St. Vincent’s wilderness coast. Clouds obscured the summit of Soufriere, yet shafts of sunlight darted in and out of those clouds, spilling down valleys that descended to the sea. The entire northwest coast of the island was a rugged wilderness with no sign of man’s intrusion.

A northeast wind began to fill in as we approached the north tip of the island, motorsailing with a fully reefed main and a bit of the jib unrolled. As anticipated, the wind began in gusts, to 30 knots with seas on the bow. It’s the island effect, bending the prevailing trade wind and seas. We sheeted in and fell off to the northwest as conditions worsened. There was spray over the bow. Water filled the scuppers. For a while, it was a rough ride.

By 9:30, things had settled down. The seas and wind were east at 15 to 18 knots on the beam. We unrolled the main, kept the jib short and charged along at nearly 7 knots on course for the Pitons of St. Lucia, already visible 20 miles ahead.

It’s delightful out here, between the islands. Atlantic swells are on the beam, wind chop ruffles the sea’s surface, and the view is of blue sky with popcorn clouds far off on the horizon. It’s trade-wind sailing at its best. 

One of the charms of this chain is that the islands are strung out north to south in a gentle, 400-mile arch. With the trades blowing easterly (maybe a bit northeast, sometimes a bit southeast for much of the year) it’s a beam reach from Grenada to Antigua. From there, the wind will be on the starboard quarter as you make your way up to Sint Maarten, and all the way up to the British Virgin Islands. At times like this, you wish the sailing could go on forever.

Around noon, a 350-foot tanker with a black hull passed close astern. By 1 p.m., the wind began to move into the southeast, and by 2 we were back motorsailing in St. Lucia’s wind shadow. 

But by now, we were 3.5 miles west of the Pitons, too far out to stop for the night. I was sad, because there is a special anchorage below the northernmost pinnacle. My family and I spent four days anchored there in 2010. Anchoring is tricky, as the bottom falls off precipitously, requiring a stern line run ashore to a boulder or tree. A bunch of kids are usually there to help, for a few local dollars. It’s a short dinghy ride into the village, where there is an open-air market stocked by farmers. Guides and taxi drivers will bring you up the hill to hike or slip into the hot mud pools.

We gave all of that a pass and continued north to St. Lucia’s Rodney Bay.

Richard was restless. Something was bothering him.

“The engine is too hot,” he said, looking at the gauges before heading below.

The only way to shut down Striker’s diesel engine is to open the hatch in the cabin sole and manually pull the fuel shutoff. The pushbutton on the engine’s control panel is inoperative, one of those small details that Richard has not gotten around to fixing.

“I think we may have some sargassum weed in the raw-water strainer!” he hollered from deep in the engine room. 

Richard reached down in the bilge and closed the through-hull fitting that feeds seawater to the engine’s heat exchanger. The strainer is a stainless steel mesh basket inside a brass-and-glass fitting. Richard unscrewed the housing, removed the basket and found a few strands of seagrass. He put the strainer back together and opened the seacock.

Within 10 minutes, we were back under power, motorsailing up the west coast of St. Lucia. We passed along the island’s west coast, the inlet of Marigot, and Castries. Finally, we reached Rodney Bay, just north of the entrance channel leading into the IGY Marina complex. 

Richard went below to shut down the engine, only to discover the engine room partially flooded and the Balmar alternator half submerged.

The raw-water strainer was the culprit. After Richard’s inspection, the lid was improperly seated.

Now what? A brainstorming session in the cockpit.

This boat—like all boats—is electrically dependent. There’s the bilge and fresh-water pumps, refrigeration, the windlass, the autopilot, nav lights, radios, navigation instruments, phone chargers… We had enough juice in the batteries for a day or two if we conserved power. The engine would run without electricity once it started. We could sail. We could hand-steer. And we were anchored off Rodney Bay, one of the Caribbean’s largest marine centers. There had to be someone ashore who could fix the water-soaked alternator.

I opened the Doyle Guides app on my phone, and found Regis Electronics nearby. We now had a game plan for the next morning. We also had a backup. Richard is a resourceful mariner, so he had a spare alternator aboard. He’d retained the factory-installed alternator when he added the higher-output Balmar.

That next morning, while Richard was clearing us in, I went exploring. The inner harbor of Rodney Bay has hints of Fort Lauderdale, with condos and motoryachts. The IGY Marina complex is huge, with floating docks hosting charter fleets, powerboats and transients. Shops and boutiques are all around, including a gelato shop my kids couldn’t stay away from when we were here last. 

It took Richard a good hour to clear in. “There was a line,” he said, joining me at a table in the shade near the dinghy dock. From there, we took the alternator to the shop. It was fried. Not fixable.

Back in the shade, Richard called Hamilton Marine, our favorite chandlery in Maine. He knew the alternator guy, and the store had an exact replacement on the shelf. They could ship it down. Richard called a friend in Maine who was planning to join him when we reached Antigua. He asked if she could bring it down with her.

With that problem solved, we headed back out to the boat for lunch. Then, Richard installed the original alternator.

We needed a few things, so back into the lagoon we went. We found the supermarket and stocked up for a few days.

Late afternoon, about rum time, a guy named Gregory came by the boat for a chat in his floating farmers’ market. I remembered him from years ago, with his baskets of fruits and vegetables, all under a palm-thatched awning. He sold us a loaf of his daughter’s banana bread.

The next morning, with the engine purring below, we raised the anchor and prepared to get underway. Richard increased the revs to 2,000 rpm, and then the alternator belt screamed.

We looked at each other. Now what?

The post A Rumble Below appeared first on Cruising World.

I abandoned keelboats in the 1990s, no longer willing to make the necessary sacrifices. I was tired of slip fees. Tired of haulouts and winter storage. Tired of maintenance. The truth is, I was too lazy for all that, and always had been. 

My next boat, FOGG, was an unballasted cruising dinghy hardly bigger than a canoe. I built it with one simple idea in mind: to be able to answer the wind’s call at a moment’s notice. I wanted to hoist the sails and set off for the margins of the map whenever I felt like it, trading long, offshore passages for quiet meanderings along the watery edges of the world. 

For my next trip, I planned to take FOGG to the Thirty Thousand Islands, a sprawling Neverland of winding channels, rocky islands and white-pine forests that runs for 120 miles along the eastern shoreline of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. For crew, I recruited my friend Jay Williams. An experienced windsurfer but novice sailor, Jay was the only person I knew who’d see a week aboard an open boat as a step upin comfort. 

After a 10-hour drive from Wisconsin, we launched the boat in the village of Killarney, Ontario. Jay assembled his gear and loaded the boat as I parked the car and trailer a few blocks away in the back lot at the Church of St. Bonaventure.

Bonaventure. “Good luck.” I hoped we wouldn’t need it.

One advantage of launching at Killarney was the availability of good campsites nearby. With no need to go far on our first night, we treated ourselves to a fried fish dinner at the Herbert Fisheries dockside restaurant before setting off down the narrow Killarney Channel under auxiliary power—oars—in a breezeless calm. Engineless cruising calls for a boat that rows as well as it sails, and FOGG fits the bill perfectly.

A mile out of town, we rowed into Thebo Cove and set up camp on a sweeping granite slab where a low rock ledge formed a convenient dock. We spent a quiet evening under clear skies, the occasional wavering cry of a loon breaking the deep silence, the Milky Way a bright scattering of dust in the night sky. 

Then next morning, we loaded our gear, rowed past Killarney East Lighthouse into the open water of Georgian Bay, and hoisted the sail. Under blue skies and a moderate breeze, I put Jay at the tiller to get a feel for the boat. He proved to be a quick study. 

FOGG’s 85-square-foot boomless standing lugsail involves only a sheet and downhaul, trading sail-shaping controls for simplicity. I’ve come to think of it as a rig that disallows type-A behavior, a perfect match for my own lack of ambition. That said, the rig’s popularity with British and French smugglers in the 17th and 18th centuries suggests a certain level of performance—enough to outrun a revenue cutter, at least. I was more interested in how easy it was to reef the sail, or to strike the rig entirely when necessary, prime virtues for a small-boat cruising rig.

It was still early morning as Jay steered east on a broad reach, one hand on the tiller and the sheet tied off to an oarlock with a slipped half hitch. Perfect sailing. We reached the Fox Islands in a couple of hours, a 6- or 7-mile crossing. With the bow tied to an anchor buried in the ­cobblestones of West Fox Island’s broad beach, and a smaller anchor off the stern, we waded ashore in knee-deep water. We spent an hour traversing the broad granite summit while the breeze shuffled through the tall white pines overhead and sunlight glittered on the wavetops offshore.

With the wind holding steady from the southwest, I suggested we head for Hawk Island next. It would be a 2-mile hop to a tall granite dome fringed with cliffs and white pines. Jay was proving hard to dislodge from his position at the helm; he was already talking about building a boat for his own sail-and-oar adventures. 

I settled in on the ­forward thwart, arranging a couple of cushions behind me for ­optimal lounging, and contented myself with an ­occasional suggestion about sail trim. FOGG surged forward smoothly through the water, its sleek hull moving easily under full sail.

We landed on Hawk Island’s north side, where a rocky arm of the island provided shelter from the southwesterly breeze. The Thirty Thousand Islands region is classic Canadian Shield terrain—a vast region of the north where glaciers scraped the topsoil from the earth as they flowed southward during the last ice age, leaving behind huge expanses of exposed bedrock. 

Hawk Island was a perfect example: a slabby dome of granite rising high above the water, all pale-gray stone, clear water and dark pines. We ­circled the island on foot, scrambling over small cliffs and past deep ravines as a mob of gulls circled overhead, squawking loudly. Other than the gulls, we had it all to ourselves.

By the time we left Hawk Island, the wind had backed to the south. With no goal beyond enjoying the ­journey, we turned northwest and spent the afternoon threading a winding path through the northern edge of the Fox Islands, ghosting along past island after island in faint breezes, gliding through knee-deep sandy shallows edged by tall reeds, and slipping through rocky channels barely a boatlength wide. The centerboard and rudder touched bottom now and then, dragging through the sand, but we managed to stay afloat. It was a perfect introduction to boathandling for Jay. 

We finally dropped the sail to row through a maze of unnamed rocks toward the north side of Solomons Island, where a broad slab of granite at the water’s edge provided the perfect campsite.

The next morning, I was up before dawn. FOGG hung from the painter just offshore, afloat on a perfect mirror of the world. The water lay as dark and smooth and unruffled as a windowpane, each rock and tree and island reflected in unwavering detail. It was too much to resist. 

Leaving Jay asleep in his tent, I shoved off and spent an hour weaving my way through the outlying islands under oars, sneaking through passages barely wider than the boat’s narrow hull. With no roads or cottages nearby, I might have been a thousand miles from anywhere. I returned to camp to find Jay ready for the next leg of the journey, whatever that would be.

Counting on the ­prevailing westerlies to continue, I suggested that we set out for the Bustard Islands, about 20 miles east. We loaded the boat, rowed out through the rocks to open water, and hoisted the sail. Knowing that the wind would likely grow stronger as the day went on, I kept a close eye on the conditions as Jay steered us eastward on a southerly breeze.

An hour after setting sail, we had left the Fox Islands behind and were making rapid progress. FOGG’s narrow hull sliced cleanly through the waves on a close reach, but the wind had been building steadily. Whitecaps ruffled the surface in all directions now. The waves were distinctly higher here, out past Hawk Island, with a 60-mile fetch and a strong wind blowing. 

Soon enough, the ­wavetops were higher than our heads, approaching 6 feet from trough to crest—a good reminder of how quickly conditions can change on the Great Lakes. Now and then, a wave crest broke over the side of the boat in a tumbling burst of spray and foam. 

“Is this OK?” Jay asked. “Should we tie in a reef?”

I had been wondering the same thing. FOGG was doing fine for now, covering ground quickly, but these were no conditions for an inexperienced helmsman. It was all too easy to imagine a capsize. I doubted that would prove fatal—I had done extensive capsize testing with FOGG and knew we’d be able to self-rescue if necessary, even in these conditions—but it would make a god-awful mess of things at the very least. And the Bustard Islands were still almost 20 miles off.

“Head us up into the wind,” I told Jay. “We’ll drop the sail and run off under oars.” 

Even triple-reefing the sail wouldn’t protect us from the waves, which is why “strike the rig and row” is a time-honored storm tactic for small-boat sailing. Jay turned us directly into the waves, and FOGG coasted to a stop.

Dropping the sail took ­only a second or two—the weight of the yard brought it down instantly after I ­uncleated the halyard. Next, I pulled out the mast and laid it in the boat—a simple operation with an unstayed mast only 13 feet long. 

Without the sailing rig, FOGG lurched and bobbed in the waves, rolling wildly as the hull was pushed broadside to the swells. I was reminded of a passage from Stephen Crane’s 1897 short story “The Open Boat”: “A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a jumpy horse, and a horse is not muchsmaller.” It was a perfect description of our own situation.

I raised the centerboard and pulled out the oars while Jay steered us toward shore with the tiller. Once we turned off the wind, the boat’s motion steadied down to a mild rolling. Wave after wave passed beneath us, pushing FOGG forward in a surging rush of effortless motion that made my attempts at rowing almost irrelevant. We were just over a mile offshore by my reckoning—30 minutes of downwind rowing, maybe. 

The rocky lee shore we were aiming for would have meant disaster for a deep-draft keelboat. For us, it meant safety. FOGG’s 7-inch draft would allow us to slip through the band of rocks and shoals that guards the Georgian Bay mainland to find a protected anchorage in a quiet backwater well inshore. Crisis averted.

After a pleasant night in a perfectly sheltered cove on the southern edge of Philip Edward Island, we set off early the next day. Taking advantage of Georgian Bay’s typical morning calms, we rowed out through a tangle of rocks and shoals amid a chorus of loon calls. A heron flew overhead, wings almost brushing the treetops. Here was the small-boat Neverland we had come for—the north woods shattered into 30,000 pieces, a disassembled jigsaw puzzle scattered across the water all around us. 

This was canoe and kayak country, really, but FOGG was proving equally suited to the task, opening the door to a world we never could have reached in a bigger boat. 

A mile or two from camp, we arrived at open water just as the wind did the same. I hoisted the sail, and Jay steered southeast on a starboard tack. For this leg of the journey, we’d need to keep well offshore to avoid a long belt of shoals and rocks known as The Chickens, which runs 2 miles from Rooster Rock in the west to Hen Island in the east. The compass bearing that I estimated from a glance at the chart proved accurate enough; Jay soon had the Rooster Rock buoy in sight.

FOGG swept along ­happily on a close reach, riding easily on waves a foot or two high—an entirely different world from the previous day’s dangerous swells. After a couple of hours, we ­rounded Rooster Rock and turned due east, on a broad reach now. The day was all blue skies, sun and glittering arcs of spray—perfect conditions—while half a mile to the north, a ragged line of breaking waves and whitecaps marked the edge of The Chickens.

Ten miles farther on, passing Grondine Point (or “grumbling point,” for the continuous rumble of waves on the rocky shore), we decided to take advantage of FOGG’s capabilities by turning north. We would sail up the westernmost channel of the French River Delta through a network of cliff-sided grooves and channels that marked the passage of the glaciers of the last ice age. We’d ride the wind as far as we could, then drop the sail and take to the oars to push farther upriver. 

Indigenous peoples have used the sheltered routes through the French River Delta for thousands of years. Later, European fur traders used them too. The path we meant to follow was named the Voyageur Channel. From the chart, it looked like we should be able to sail up this passage for a few miles, turn east along the north side of Green Island, and return to the open waters of Georgian Bay via the Fort Channel a few miles farther east.

The southwest winds pushed us rapidly past long, low ridges that divided the river into an endless series of parallel channels. We were on a broad reach, almost a run, making 4 or 5 knots—too fast for comfort in the narrow, cliff-sided passages. It was time to drop the sail and take to the oars. Five or 6 miles of rowing would take us past Green Island, down the Fort Channel, and back out to open water. By the next day, after overnighting somewhere in the French River Delta, we’d be sailing again. In the meantime, there was no rush. 

This was canoe and kayak country, but FOGG was opening the door to a world we never could have reached in a bigger boat.

We spent the rest of the afternoon idling along the Voyageur Channel, trading off stints at the oars and stopping ashore to explore the side canyons, pine forests, and steep granite slabs whenever we found an easy landing place. It was late evening before we finally tethered FOGG to an island at the upper end of the Fort Channel and carried our camping gear up a low-angle slab to a narrow ledge bristling with mosses and lichens: home for the night.

It took three days to work our way back to the car and trailer at Killarney, an as-the-crow-flies distance of 25 miles. But FOGG was no crow. We pushed a few more miles upriver from our campsite the next day, paddling through cliffbound passages that were too narrow for rowing, edging into quiet backwaters lined with lily pads and tall reeds, and tying up beside steep cliffs to climb above the treetops. 

We may as well have been alone in the world—we saw no boats, no people. But we weren’t quite alone, either. A black bear shuffled past our campsite in an ­early-morning fog; a mink slipped along the rocks at the water’s edge as we rowed past; Jay found an Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake curled up in the lichen between our tents. It was the best kind of journey—not sailing, not paddling, not backpacking, but rather a hybrid that combined the best of all of them.

After a couple of days exploring inshore, we spent two days sailing back toward Killarney through wide-open ​waters, zigzagging offshore in a long series of lopsided tacks to make westward progress against the prevailing winds: past Hen Island, past The Chickens, past Grondine Point and Beaverstone Bay.

By now, Jay was an old hand at the tiller, handling FOGG with an ease born of long practice. We made our last camp on Hawk Island, carrying our tents to a high ledge just below the summit, leaving the boat tied to shore at a quiet corner of the beach far below. The setting sun made sharp silhouettes of the Fox Islands, with the rugged La Cloche Mountains forming a jagged skyline on the mainland beyond.

I sat on the summit of Hawk Island well into the night, long after daylight had faded from the sky to reveal the stars overhead, one after another. From where I sat, I could see FOGG resting quietly at anchor in the quiet water of the bay far below, the pale green hull barely visible in the light of a waning moon. Jay sat nearby with his guitar, working his way through a Jackson Browne song, in no hurry to crawl into his tent. 

In the morning, we’d have 10 miles of sailing to reach Killarney—10 miles away, and a different world entirely. I wasn’t sure if either of us was ready to return.

Tom Pamperin is a writer, teacher, ­small-boat sailor and occasional boatbuilder based in the Upper Midwest. He writes regularly about wooden-boat building and sailing. His 2014 book, Jagular Goes Everywhere: (mis)Adventures in a $300 Sailboat, received an honorable mention for the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Blei/Derleth Nonfiction Book Award.

The post Minimalist Cruising: Georgian Bay by Dinghy appeared first on Cruising World.

This was the question we debated all winter long: Could two 79-year-old sailors take on Lake Superior one last time?

My wife, Jennifer, and I have had the great luxury of sailing Catamount, our Caliber 38, for 18 summers on the upper Great Lakes. These summers included nine on Superior—for the past six summers with Jack, our Brittany Spaniel. But the big 8-0 is staring us squarely in the face, and we know our time afloat is nearing its end. Between Covid and Canada’s border closures, we had not been to our favorite Great Lake in four years. Was it realistic to think we could handle the biggest and baddest of all the lakes, where services are few, docks and anchorages are often 50 miles apart, and the weather has sunk many a boat over the centuries?

We got the blessings of our children and decided to give Superior another shot, but with some rules. Two long days were to be followed by a day off.  Naps were encouraged. Sailing on just the jib was still sailing. Motorsailing was still sailing. Heck, even motoring would count as sailing. No more 12- or 14-hour days. No going up the mast. No beating or tacking into waves more than 2 feet high. No white-knuckle entrances into anchorages. Docks were OK. Above all, savor every moment.

Spoiler alert: We broke every one of those rules, except the last.

Lake Superior is almost 400 miles from east to west (the sun rises 35 minutes earlier at its eastern end than its western end). It has more than 2,000 miles of shoreline. Our previous trips had been up and back along the Canadian shore, or up and back along the American shore, or up one shore, across the lake and back via the other. We had never circumnavigated the whole lake. Why not go for it? In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Getting to Lake Superior from our home port of Cheboygan, Michigan, means crossing 40 miles of western Lake Huron and fighting a 2-knot current for another 40 miles up the St. Marys River to the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (the “Soo.”) But we had two days of favorable winds and sailed all the way to the Soo in early July. We felt confident we could do this.

Then another concern: If we did the American shore first, we would encounter prevailing westerly winds and a 1½-knot current that runs clockwise around the lake. That favored going up the Canadian shore first and sailing counterclockwise. But the Canadian shore is also the most dramatic, the most remote (think Maine without people or lobster pots) and has rock-bound anchorages every 5 miles or so. We wanted to save the best for last, so clockwise it was: first the American shore, then back via Canada.

At the Soo, we got our first Lake Superior forecast, including that the mid-lake weather buoy recorded a water temperature of 39 degrees. Yeah, we would be putting off swimming until August.

We were the sole occupant of the 1,200-foot-long lock that raised us 21 feet from the St. Marys River to Superior itself. What service! Then we reached 48 miles to Whitefish Point’s breakwater-protected docks, beating an eastbound fog bank by minutes. We toured the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum with its dramatic display about the 1975 sinking of the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, when the gales of November came early. We also met members of the museum’s dive team who were looking for the sunken schooner Annie M. Peterson, which disappeared nearby with its crew of seven in a late-fall storm in 1914. The 191-foot schooner had been built in 1874 by Jennifer’s great-great-great grandfather in Green Bay, Wisconsin. As we prepared to strike farther west, it was sobering to think we might be sailing over the bones of her family’s lost boat.

We anchored out in charming Grand Marais, Michigan, to watch Fourth of July fireworks overhead, and then sailed wing and wing along the colorful cliffs of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Contrary winds and fog, interrupted only by thunderstorms, kept us up anchored in Grand Island’s Murray Bay for two days, but two longish motorsailing days got us to the Keweenaw Peninsula, a dramatic arc of land that forces its way squarely into Superior’s maw. 

The Keweenaw is the remnant of a rift in the earth’s crust that filled in with copper-rich magma. Its copper mines in the late 1800s allowed the electrification of America and attracted miners from throughout Europe, most notably Finland. The town of Hancock, Michigan, sits astride the waterway that cuts through the peninsula, and is the only town you will ever visit where the street sings are in English and Finnish.

We sat in the cockpit for four hours waiting out a midnight squall with continuous lightning in Eagle Harbor, farther east on the Keweenaw’s north shore. A three-hour midday nap gave us the energy to carry on to Copper Harbor at the peninsula’s tip, where we gratefully stayed at the town’s neat-as-a-pin (and not much bigger) wilderness marina, which had bear-proof garbage cans.

Rare easterly winds pushed us west for two long days to the hardscrabble town of Ontonogan, Michigan. We goofed by not resting there a full day. Instead, we tried to beat west into 2-footers; that was OK for a few miles, but not the 48 we had to cover to get to the Apostle Islands. So, in a rare burst of good judgment, we turned back for a second night at Ontonogan. Our decision was validated when the harbormaster rewarded us with zucchini from his garden and freshly caught lake trout.

The forecast for going west the following day wasn’t great either, but it was the best forecast for the next week, so we tried it once more. The west wind repeatedly backed southwest and veered northwest, allowing us to tack six times through 90 degrees of apparent wind without once altering our westerly course for the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. We staggered into virtually empty Julian Bay on the east side of Stockton Island and rewarded ourselves with three days off.

We have brought Catamount to the Apostles several times over the years. We love the area: lots of anchorages, sandy beaches, nothing to whack your keel, wave-carved sandstone arches and caves. Sailboats outnumber powerboats 10-to-1. We dusted off our dinghy-racing skills by beating through narrow passages, and we hiked the islands’ many trails. It is a seductive place, and our time in the islands recharged our batteries, which admittedly were getting a little low.

But our quest to circle the lake had our bow pointed west and my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. I grew up on Superior’s rocky shores and was looking forward to bringing Catamount into Duluth’s big commercial harbor. With thunderstorms in the forecast, we left the Apostles early for the 70-mile trip. We almost made it; the storms caught us just a mile outside the harbor entrance. My glorious homecoming was in a downpour, the harbor entrance visible only on radar, but our decks were sluiced clean as we settled gratefully into Barker’s Island Marina. Owned and managed by sailors, Barker’s is the most complete and well-run, full-service marina we have ever seen. We almost wished we had boat problems to fix just so we could take advantage of their skills.

After three days of visiting with family and eating their cooking, we passed under Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge and headed east along Superior’s Minnesota shore, 150 miles of gorgeous but inhospitable rock cliffs and rocky beaches. Northwest winds got us nearly to hullspeed without any seas as we scooted to the only protection, first at the docks at Silver Bay and then 50 miles farther east at Grand Marais (yes, there was a Grand Marais back in Michigan too).

To our south was the looming hulk of Isle Royale National Park. The 40-mile-long island, 12 miles from Canada and 45 miles from Michigan, is American territory courtesy of some cartographic chicanery by Benjamin Franklin at the conclusion of the American Revolution. Maps of Lake Superior at the time showed three large islands in Lake Superior, with Isle Royale smack in the middle. Franklin knew there were rumors of copper deposits on the island and magnanimously said, “You guys take those two, we’ll settle for this one.” In reality, there was only one other big island in the lake; England (and later Canada) got Michipicoten Island, much smaller and less impressive than Isle Royale. We have sailed to Isle Royale several times, but we had to pass this time because they now forbid dogs in the park, even good sailing dogs like Jack.

Our first true wilderness anchorage was at the Susie Islands, just a mile from the Canadian border, where we got an American send-off with another three-hour midnight squall and electrical storm. After a day of catching up on sleep, we were finally at the jumping-off spot for Canada.

We love Canada. (Full disclosure: we have a Canadian daughter-in-law and two dual-citizenship granddaughters.) We love its people, its wilderness, its no-drama way of life. And we especially love its 350 miles of Lake Superior. After a four-year absence, we lustily sang “O Canada” while we hauled up our red maple leaf courtesy flag. We spent our first night hunkered under the 400-foot cliffs of Jarvis Bay, and washed down our version of poutine (alfredo sauce over hash browns) with two Molsons.

Superior’s Canadian shore has legendary fog when warm air from the American prairies moves over all that frigid water, and that’s what engulfed us as we crossed the 19 miles of Thunder Bay, with its commercial shipping lanes and myriad islands. Visibility fell to nothing. Distinguishing thousand-foot-long islands from thousand-foot-long freighters was tough. The radar contact we were puzzling over proved to be the latter, but the gray pall lifted just enough for us to be confident we would sail safely in front of it.

Now we were truly in the wilderness. Rocky shores, abundant anchorages, high cliffs, no other boats. As we worked our way across the top of the lake, a dilemma arose. Every hour under sail meant having to choose or ignore a world-class anchorage. The prosaically named Boat Harbour or Fish Harbour? The charmingly labeled Old Man’s Pocket or Uncle Dave’s? The fan-shaped basaltic columns and caves of Woodbine or the mile-long black sand beach of Shesheeb Bay? Tough choices. We couldn’t overnight in all of them, so we anchored for lunch stops and dog runs, then moved on every night as we worked our way east.

We cautiously threaded our way past shoals into tiny Walker Channel to take another day off, and the next day sailed between majestic cliffs directly to the anchorage in Loon Harbour. There, we dinghied to a tiny nearby island for a wilderness sauna. No one knows who built it, who maintains it and how it hasn’t burned down after all these years, but its rusty stove got the temperature up to 180 degrees. We also finally had the courage to swim in Lake Superior, with “swimming” being defined as belly-flopping into 3 feet of water and then racing back into the sauna.

We sprung for two nights at the dock in the tiny community of Red Rock, Ontario, for more fuel and Molsons. The town is so close to the 49th parallel that it’s farther north than most of Newfoundland. Then it was off to the Slate Islands in Superior’s northeast corner. We had following winds and seas, poled out the jib and put the preventer on the boom for a 20-mile wing-and-wing romp, finally dropping sail deep into the archipelago’s interior. The Slates are the remnant of an ancient meteor impact crater, and a network of cliff-studded islands protected us from a series of storms that blew through for four days. Jennifer went up the mast to retrieve a halyard I hadn’t secured properly, and when we finally hauled the anchor, we had to disengage it from a 12-foot log.

From the Slate Islands back to the Soo is 200 miles of the most remote shoreline anywhere this side of Labrador or British Columbia. We threaded between skinny islets just big enough to support solitary pine trees into well-protected Pulpwood Harbour, part of Pukaskwa National Park. It was white-knuckle time slipping past shoals with just 2 feet under our keel at the entrance into tiny Dampier Cove, surrounded by pine-fringed islands. When the forecast called for 30 knots from the northwest, we hunkered in well-protected Pilot Cove for two days, put out two anchors and a shore line, and watched 9-footers gallop by the harbor entrance.

A brief weather window allowed us to reach 30 miles with a double-reefed main and scrap jib toward Indian Harbour. We were unwilling to turn broadside into the seas to drop the main sail into the wind, and I struggled with the downwind take down, causing some anxious moments on deck (me) and in the cockpit (Jennifer) before we got it sorted out. But Indian Harbour was just as we hoped it would be: empty, protected, tranquil, restorative. Three days there seemed way too short.

As we left Indian Harbour, while motorsailing off a lee shore, the fan belt broke, leading to more anxious moments. Jennifer worked the sails while I crawled into the engine room, wrench and replacement belt in hand. It was a good thing we’d had three quiet days in Indian Harbour; this Lake Superior cruising life is tiring stuff.

By now it was late August. Nights were cooler, maple trees were changing color, and Orion had begun his autumnal march across the southern sky. When a high finally settled over the lake, it was time to head south, and we hustled back to the Soo.

We gazed wistfully over the stern as we left Lake Superior. Left her forever. We had been greeted by loons in Loon Harbour and an eagle at Eagle Harbor. We had walked beaches rarely trod by human feet. We had sat out at night with only our masthead light and the International Space Station on its appointed rounds between us and the Milky Way. We’d had glorious sails past some of the most stunning scenery anywhere on the planet, and we’d only seen two other sailboats in four weeks and 350 miles on Superior’s Canadian shore.

We had heeded Mark Twain’s advice: “Years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from a safe harbor.” We’re not ready to call the broker quite yet, but we know that should this Lake Superior summer be the last we ever spend on Catamount, it was challenging and rewarding and memorable. We are regretful and grateful, and proud of what we did.

Yes, we broke every one of our own rules at least once, but not the last one: we savored every moment.

The post Savoring Superior: A Great Lakes Cruise To Remember appeared first on Cruising World.

When I first sailed the Lesser Antilles islands in the late 1970s, I listened to the morning weather broadcast from Radio Antilles. It came on every morning at 8:05, from an AM radio station on Montserrat. “Today’s weather will see winds south of east to north of east, from 12 to 18 knots, with higher gusts. Occasional showers. No significant change is anticipated over the next 48 hours.”

I swear, it was the same recording we heard every morning. 

The trade winds do blow, with predictable regularity, from the northeast to southeast all year long. There’s an occasional deviation: the passage of a hurricane or a few days of calm. There is a wet season in the summer, a dry season in the winter, and short periods of stronger winds—the Christmas winds—in late December through early January.

Still, after 25 years of sailing here, here are my words of warning: You can get lulled into complacency amid these islands. It’s part of their charm. But then you pay for it when the winds kick up.

Christmas Winds

A few years ago, at the end of a delivery from Antigua, I had anchored off the charming village of Sainte-Anne on Martinique. Something awakened me at first light. Still half asleep, I plodded to the companionway.

When I emerged into the cockpit, the weather was blowing like stink. I looked through the dodger window to see hundreds of whitecaps marching toward us. They were only a foot or so high, but they were steep, deep and sharp. They didn’t really bother the 54-foot sloop I was on, but the dinghy astern was dancing a jig.

Then, I heard the surrounding noises. There was a hum throughout the boat as the wind strummed a tune in the rigging, rising in pitch as the wind increased. Other noises mixed in: the snapping of the ensign astern, the flapping of the sail cover, the high-pitched whine of the wind generators above the aft arch.

I switched on the nav instruments. The wind indicator hovered between 20 and 25, then scooted up to 30 as a gust hit. This is a moderate gale on the Beaufort scale.

It was late January. The Christmas winds had arrived—late.

I thought it would blow like this for a few days, but rarely a week. It’s all academic, I told myself. What were the practical implications? Getting ashore in the dinghy would be a wet ride. I was reluctant to leave the boat on its own.

By the time I looked again, the RIB tied off astern was bouncing like a pony trying to throw its halter. The painter couldn’t take too much more before it would tear the ring out of the boat. I had elected to anchor way out at the edge of the field, for privacy and an unrestricted sunset view. That means the easterly wind had a longer fetch to build up these nasty waves.

I hauled in the RIB and tied on a longer painter, figuring more scope might reduce the snapping. It didn’t. Closer in? That didn’t work either.

Other boaters had come to the same conclusion. We all needed to haul our RIBs out of the water. Some had davits; others, like me, had to use a halyard or stow the thing on deck. 

That done, I checked the anchor chain. As the boat was driven back in a gust, the anchor chain straightened out, and the snubber came taught and stretched out. I had dived on the anchor when I first set it and was confident it would hold, but I wondered if I might awake one morning on my way to Honduras.

I watched as two French bareboats attempted to re-anchor. It didn’t go well. The wind was driving them sideways so fast that the anchors never had a chance to set.

The Christmas winds—we’d all just have to sit tight.

Island Effects

The tall mountains of the larger Caribbean islands block the trade winds, creating a wind shadow to leeward. These shadows can extend out to sea for 10 to 20 miles, which means a lot of motoring as you make your way south or north along the island’s flank. It can be a welcoming experience after bashing through the open Atlantic between the islands.

As I was sailing north from the Grenadines up to Antigua last April, I was aboard Richard Thomas’s Reliance 44 cutter. We’d left Prince Rupert Bay on Dominica that morning and were sailing north, west of Îles des Saintes. It was mid-afternoon when we ran into Guadeloupe’s wind shadow. We were about 5 miles offshore and had to proceed under power.

Then, I spied three sailboats, close in with the shore, sailing north, their sails full. Could there be a westerly sea breeze at play? 

“It is possible to make way under sail in the lee of the High Islands?” Don Street writes in his Transatlantic Crossing Guide (my copy is from 1989). “Most sailors assume there will be a total lull close to shore, so they pass 3 to 4 miles off—which is just where you find absolutely no wind. But there is a way to skirt along the lee shore of these high islands, which I discovered in a book of 18th-century sailing directions. There are three recommended ways of passing the islands: at seven leagues (21 miles offshore) or else close enough to be within two pistol shots of the beach.” 

The historian Dudley Pope explains that a pistol shot was a recognized term of measurement in those days and appears frequently in accounts of naval battles. It’s the equivalent of 25 yards.

“So stay within 50 yards offshore,” Street continues. “Which may be a bit closer than you want, but not by much. You stand a good chance of enjoying a smooth, scenic sail the length of the high island. The best time to try this is between 1000 and 1600. After 1600, the breeze falls off rapidly.”

He continues: “During the day, as the land heats up, you’ll sometimes pick up a westerly onshore breeze right up to the beach, counter to the trades, which continue to blow to the west higher up. Alternately at night, the cool air falls down off the hills, often providing a beautiful moonlight sail along the beach.”

This is one of the tricks savvy sailors use when sailing along Hispaniola and Puerto Rico’s north coasts.

“Dawn and dusk are the only times when there is absolutely no wind in the lee of these islands.” Street goes on. “I would say that, except for these times, you’ll be successfully sailing the lee shore about 75 percent of the time. Of course you can always sail up and down the islands, passing to windward of them.”

Night Winds

It’s those night winds Don writes about that concern me most.

Anchored in the delightful harbor of Deshaies on the northwestern tip of Guadeloupe, I’ve experienced these night winds numerous times. All is fine as you nestle in at anchor, and then the winds begin around 2 a.m. Easterly blasts of cool air traveling at 30 knots barrel down through the mountain valley, and through town and the harbor, testing your ground tackle and anchoring skills.

I lay awake in the cockpit, one eye on a fixed light ashore to see if we were dragging. 

“These are katabatic winds,” Chris Doyle told me recently. “Heavy cold air at the mountaintops slides down the slopes in the valleys and out to sea, resulting in a westerly airflow at the sea surface.”

Island Wind Refraction

Refraction is the phenomenon by which waves—light, radio, sound and sometimes ocean waves, currents and wind—bend when meeting an obstacle and curve away from their original path. That obstacle can be an island.

When sailing south one season on Searcher, my 57-foot Bowman ketch, we motored down the lee shore of Dominica with plans to anchor in Saint-Pierre on the northeast tip of Martinique for the night. As we approached the southern tip of Dominica, we began to experience a south-southeast wind, and I fell off to the west southwest. Swells were behaving the same way.

Five miles later, the wind and waves started to come back to the east, and we corrected our course to the south. By this time, we were too far west and in no position to fetch Saint-Pierre. Then, I figured we’d experience the same effect, in reverse, as we reached the northern tip of Martinique. The winds did bend to the north, and we were able to correct our course and make it in.

This effect occurs around many of the islands’ northern and southern tips. Tides also play a part. Even if only a foot or 2, a foul tide can also kick up a nasty chop when running counter to the prevailing wind. 

During last April’s voyage, north up the coast of Guadeloupe, we decided not to duck into Deshaies for the night. We could make the anchorage off Jolly Harbor on Antigua by midnight. As we were rounding the northern tip of Guadeloupe, we encountered confused seas and strong, gusty winds. It was frustrating and uncomfortable.

I’ve experienced this before; the winds get channeled between the main island landmass and two small islands off the tip of Pointe Allegre. After a while, things settled down, and progress could be made. By the time we got the anchor down off the beach in Jolly Harbor, it was 2 in the morning.

No Wind

Occasionally there are days of no wind at all. Larry Tyler, owner and skipper on the charter yacht The Dove, has been sailing these islands for more than 30 years. Recently, he told me, “The only thing that comes to mind is that every year once or twice, the winds die down completely and then suddenly you get a westerly wind blowing you on to beach, if you are anchored too close.

Last April, during the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, the first day’s race was a drifting competition in calm conditions. The sea was like a mirror.

Hurricanes

Every summer and fall, from June through mid-November, these islands are visited by a series of tropical waves. Before some of these waves reach the islands, they may turn into tropical storms with winds as high as 70 knots. As they accumulate energy and build strength, they turn into hurricanes, with winds in excess of 70 knots.

The whirling winds, rain, surges and waves pass through the island chain quickly, normally moving along at 12 knots. They come and are gone in less than a day, but the devastation they leave behind can be extreme. 

Hurricane Beryl came through the Grenadians last July, destroying 70 percent of the homes on Carriacou and Union Island, and severely damaging the remaining 30 percent. The peak of hurricane season is September, after the summer sun has heated up the Atlantic surface water, leading to enhanced evaporation, the fuel that drives a hurricane.

Thankfully, these days we have excellent sources to find out what’s coming.

The post Understanding Wind in the West Indies appeared first on Cruising World.

Before we found the Galápagos, the Galápagos found us. 

En route from Panama and still 100 miles from San Cristóbal Island—the port of entry for the dozen or so islands of Galápagos National Park and Galápagos Marine Reserve—a trio of red-footed booby birds installed themselves on the starboard bow of Ocean, our Dolphin 460 cruising cat. The ambassadors from the archipelago preened, fished, jostled for position, and slept. When the curtain of dawn revealed the islands on the horizon, we watched our escorts fly ahead.

Ever since 1835, when Charles Darwin (then in his 20s as a botanist aboard HMS Beagle) bundled his observations about the beaks of Galápagos finches into a theory of evolution that ­outraged the religious establishment, legions of enlightened sailors have been drawn to the islands. Why? Is it the richness of animal life: the birds, sea lions, penguins, marine iguanas and 150-year-old, 900-pound giant tortoises, most of which are unafraid of, and sometimes curious about, visitors? Is it the panorama of volcanoes and lava fields, the whimsical blocks and pinnacles amid a wide sea? Is it these islands’ singular place in history, as a kind of cradle of evolution? 

All of the above, despite the slew of official documents and eye-popping fees required to cruise there. We were determined to go, but as we completed another form and authorized another payment, we wondered, Would all of this be worth it?

During our 19-day stay, we decided that the answer was yes. We were privileged to view all manner of marine life, bird life and reptiles, much of it found only in these “Enchanted Islands.” We found workarounds to the three-anchorage restriction that officials placed on Ocean. Sometimes we followed locals to beaches, which they shared with sea lions. We met farmers at the open market, and filled our carryalls with fruit and veggies grown in the highlands. We sipped Galápagos-grown coffee at local cafes, where Ecuadorians grinned at our Spanglish. We sampled waterfront dining and gift shops and, you bet, we got the T-shirt.

One day, while on a local dive boat speeding along at 20 knots toward a site called Kicker Rock to swim with hammerheads, the captain spotted a red object in the water about 100 yards to port. A life jacket or fishing float? We diverted to take a look, and a burly crewman reached down and snatched the single-use plastic bottle out of the water, muttering “China.” 

That’s the way it is in the Galápagos—littering, on land or sea, is not tolerated. Ecuadorians go out of their way to preserve their islands and ocean.

Before we reached Kicker Rock, we anchored in a small cove where the 10 of us snorkelers dinghied ashore with a Galápagos National Park-certified naturalist. We strolled the beach to a saltwater estuary, with frigate birds circling above and land iguanas moving slowly across the sand. Our naturalist—in an easygoing, fun way—explained the world in front of our eyes, including how everything is connected and protected.

After lunch, we sped off to face the hammerheads, nervously pulled on our wetsuits, and rolled into the water. Swimming against the current swirling around Kicker Rock, we saw reef fish, sea turtles, manta rays and eagle rays—and, 10 feet below our fins, a half-dozen 8-foot hammerheads. They couldn’t have cared less about us as they disappeared into the murk. Forty minutes later, we’d circled the rock and clambered back aboard the dive boat, chattering excitedly. I checked my GoPro: I’d been so mesmerized by the hammerheads that I’d failed to press the shutter.

On another day trip, this time a snorkeling and hiking ­excursion to Punta Pitt, our group of 10 snorkeled a reefy islet amid cascades of reef fish and adolescent Galápagos sea lions twirling and spinning around us. A large bull, the king of the island, let us know that he was barely tolerating our incursion, with a few officious passes. Later, during a hike ashore on Punta Pitt, our naturalist led us through a geologist’s dream of a lava-sculpted valley and up along a windswept ridge overlooking the sea. We stepped carefully past a pair of blue-footed boobies that were engaged in a courtship dance, the tips of their beaks touching, their blue feet in perfect step. 

“Why aren’t they afraid of us?” I asked.

“They know we won’t hurt them,” he said.

On other day trips, we hiked through rainforest in the cool highlands, saw giant tortoises up close, and walked the 5-mile-wide caldera of Sierra Negra, eating our packed lunches on the side of a volcanic cone. Every day there was a “pinch me” moment. When it was time to leave, we concluded that all of us have much to learn from Ecuador’s strict management of the Galápagos Marine Reserve. In our combined 110 years of sailing, the Galápagos coasts are the only ones we’ve seen that are not fouled by plastic trash and dumped fishing gear. 

So, we sailed away from the Galápagos somewhat hopeful about the future of the ocean. The archipelago is unforgettable, and it doesn’t have to stand alone.

At press time, Tom and Harriet Linskey were cruising French Polynesia aboard Ocean.

Getting There 

The 830-mile passage we made from Panama to the Galápagos has a reputation among cruisers as fluky and frustrating. We asked for a weather forecast from Commanders’ Weather, a passage-routing service we’ve used the past 10 years. The meteorologists replied with a picture of, well, a whole lot of stuff going on. Along our route, we also downloaded weather GRIBs from PredictWind.

In Part One of the passage, boats departing Panama generally get about a day’s worth of tailwinds as the Caribbean’s northeast trade winds pass over Panama and fan out into the Pacific. These winds are variable in strength and direction.

In Part Two, the battle of the winds begins: The calms and squalls of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) wander drunkenly for hundreds of miles between the northeast and southeast trade winds. 

In Part Three, the longest leg of the passage, cruisers often face 10- to 20-knot headwinds and chop from the southwest. And the currents of this passage are variable too. 

Day One: We made about 6 knots under screecher on a starboard tack in light northerly winds. We got a sampling of freaky currents in the Gulf of Panama, sailing through six distinct current lines that almost seemed to sizzle, with the flat patch after each line feeling like it was lower than the previous patch. 

We followed the strategy suggested by Commanders’ Weather to get south into steadier winds and set ourselves up to windward for the long port tack to the Galápagos. With more than 800 miles to go, we were sailing 40 degrees away from the rhumb line to the Galápagos, which took some intestinal fortitude. But the ITCZ is slow, frustrating going, and this end-around is necessary. Soon, we were motoring in flat seas, only a couple of knots of wind, the sky crowded with stars, the Big Dipper astern.

Day Two: The wind, still light, shifted forward into the south. Through no brilliance of our own, we got a 1.5-knot favorable current boost to the south. Ocean motored under mainsail alone at 6 knots on one engine, making 7.5 knots speed over ground. The sea was still board-flat, with the lift of an occasional long-period swell from somewhere way down south. We worried about getting too close to Colombia and Ecuador, and tangled up at night with the big rigs of commercial fishing boats; we penciled in waypoints where we might tack over to port. 

Day Three: There’s nothing like the smell of diesel in the ­morning. We dumped our six jerrycans into the main tank so that our 120-gallon fuel tank was full again. Never had we burned so much diesel with more than halfway still to go in a passage. The wind was continuing light, and a tedious chop had sprung up. Still motorsailing under main only, getting south to the promised land of the southeast trades, we went through the fuel-consumption calculations of using one engine or two, at 1800, 2000, or 2200 rpm.

Day Four: After much debate, and prompted by a sprightly new 10-knot south-southwest wind, we tacked over to port. Now we were heading directly at, or sometimes 10 to 20 degrees below, the Galápagos, 555 miles away. Everything seemed OK, but late in the afternoon, a 20-mile line squall from the northeast slid over the top of our world, complete with a sheet of white-out rain. We motored slowly as a 1.2-knot current boosted us toward San Cristóbal.

Day Five: We did some ­sailing, interspersed with mostly motorsailing, as the wind flipped from south-southwest to south to south-southeast and back again. The ITCZ did seem to be to leeward of us now. By afternoon, we were sailing closehauled to the Galápagos in 14 knots of wind. Smooth seas, except when politely ruffled by a 1.7-knot favorable current. We turned off the engine, finally. 

Day Six: We had only 270 miles to go, still closehauled in 10 to 12 knots of wind, with occasional mainsail-only motorsailing. A posse of orca whales passed by two boat lengths to leeward.

Day Seven: At 0930, with only 123 miles left, we crossed the equator for the fourth time since we’ve been married and voyaging together; we toasted Neptune and Poseidon for taking care of us. We fired up the ­watermaker, ran two loads of laundry, organized our ­documents, and stared ­mesmerized at the ­volcanic cones and plugs of the Galápagos rising ahead.

Sea Lions on Our Swim Step

I’d seen sea lions take over a few decrepit fishing boats in a harbor on Isla San Cristóbal— dozens of brown furry bodies were in the cockpit, on the foredeck, up in the wheelhouse. But I never thought it would happen to us. 

Then one afternoon, returning from a day of provisioning in town, I found three sea lions aboard Ocean. One, about 280 pounds, was lounging on the cockpit grate. Another, some 180 pounds, was draped across the helm seat. A third, around 150 pounds, was sunning belly up on the starboard side deck. 

I used the telescoping deck brush to herd them down the swim steps, where they’d entered, and back into the water. I cleaned up the smears of sea lion body grease, and pee and poo. The cockpit looked like a barbershop floor after a day of buzz cuts. Then I remembered a naturalist saying that Isla San Cristóbal has more than 4,000 sea lions. We love them, but…boundaries. I created a sea lion defense zone by securing the boarding ladder up at a steep angle. I tied a web of dock lines across the sterns, and lashed fenders pointy end out. 

It didn’t work. 

The challenge only added to the fun—the sea lions were like teenagers jumping a chain-link fence. 

There are only a few sea lions on the island of Isla Isabela, we’d been told, so I dismantled the sea lion defense system, and we sailed 40 miles to anchor off Isla Isabela. Soon, a friendly creature began swimming toward us. It was a marine iguana. —TL    

Seven-Day Tour: Cruising the “Forbidden” Islands

As cruising sailors, we enjoyed the day-trip snorkeling and hiking excursions, but when I spent a week on the 83-foot, 16-passenger motor vessel Bonita, I experienced the closed-to-cruising-yachts parts of the Galápagos Marine Reserve.

After a day exploring Santiago Island, we departed after dinner to cruise overnight. It was clear and starry, and we could see the glowing red lava fields of Volcan Wolf on the northern edge of Isla Isabela. It was an awesome sight not available to us as cruisers.

The next morning, we awoke to thick fog. Fog at the Equator? Yes, because the northern tip of Isla Isabela swirls with the cold water of the Cromwell Current. As the sun rose and the fog dissipated, a solid rock wall was revealed. We explored life on and under the wall, starting with a dinghy tour of the marine iguanas, flightless cormorants, penguins, sea lions and ­boobies. After breakfast, we donned our wetsuits to snorkel the cliff face. On a rock covered with red Sally Lightfoot crabs, penguins were grouped at attention while a sea lion draped over the edge, staring at us. The sea lion flipped into the water, and then a flightless cormorant waddled up to take its place. 

Underwater, we saw turtles, sea lions, and a school of ­golden rays that swept through our group. I popped up my head to exclaim my delight, just in time to see a marine iguana paddle nearby. 

Touring the Galápagos by small cruise ship means that you slot into the master schedule of the marine park. There are three to four activities every day. Tours keep to the schedule to allow their guests a chance at fantastic encounters, as well as to allow human-free time for the animals. Each day was filled with activities and plenty of ­exercise, great food, ­c­amaraderie, and time to nap and recharge. —HL

Galápagos Regulations: Overboard?

If the thought of seven government officials climbing into your cockpit gives you the butterflies, relax. To enter the Galápagos Marine Reserve, a cruising boat must furnish completed documents, mostly questionnaires about environmental impact. The officials, each with a clipboard and a smile, were practiced and professional.

So were we. While still in Panama, our agent had emailed a folder of documents for us to complete, including a Fumigation Certificate and a Hull Cleaning Certificate. Prior to landfall, we’d done the homework: Ocean sported placards in the required places; we’d reorganized our garbage management; and we’d hove-to in light air outside the Reserve, snorkeling to make sure that Ocean’s hulls were barnacle-free (the Galápagos is on guard against invasive marine species). The one regulation that really rankled us was that cruising boats would be restricted to three anchorages, one each on Isla San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz and Isla Isabela. Our AIS transmitter had to remain on at all times, and diving or fishing from our boat was not permitted. Cruisers can apply to the port captain for permission to visit other islands with a Galápagos Marine Park naturalist for the day, or book day tours with a naturalist. It’s hard to argue with this system’s success: The marine park is a pristine, thriving wilderness area. The archipelago has endured a 400-year human evolution, from slaughtering giant tortoises and sea lions to preserving them. —TL

The post Galápagos: A Paradise Worth the Paperwork appeared first on Cruising World.

Someone has stolen the trade winds. 

It’s Easter Weekend, and I’m aboard Strider, Richard Thomason’s Reliance 44 cutter. We are anchored in Tyrell Bay on the small island of Carriacou. It’s been windless for days. Don Street writes that it’s just a “typical April calm,” but this lack of an easterly breeze has also stolen the natural air conditioning we’ve come to expect in the West Indian Islands. 

So, it’s also hot. Yesterday, the temperature on deck was 94. Below, it was in the high 80s. By mid-afternoon, with the boat anchored facing east, the cockpit was wide open to the afternoon sun. I found myself moving around in search of what little shade the Bimini top could afford. Everybody was complaining except Richard, who thrives in this heat. There was Sahara dust in the air, and it hadn’t rained in a month. The normally green hills were brown. April had become the new July.

Richard and I spent just two days on this laid-back island. We could have spent a month, but it was time to get moving. We both wanted to get to Antigua for the Classic Yacht Regatta at the end of the month. Time was a-wasting. 

Monday, April 2

We were off the hook just as the sun peeked over the Carriacou hills. Both of us have data feeds on our iPhones. Richard is on AT&T. I‘m using Spectrum. He has access to PredictWind. I’m partial to Windy. We wrangled over which was better, but we had to agree: getting up to Bequia would not be easy.

The wind would be light today, northeast tomorrow—not conducive to sailing up-wind back to Bequia for fuel. But we could make Chatham Bay on the west side of Union Island. It’s only 8 miles. Under power, we were there by 10:15, tucked into the northern end of the cove, with the anchor down 20 feet in a sandy bottom. We’d lounge here until the wind became more favorable. It was time to take a swim in the clear water.

Chatham Bay is one of those anchorages you dream about. The hills descend to a gently curved beach, fringed by palms. There’s not a vacation home in sight, no condos or adult-only resorts, just a scattering of beach bars and barbecue shacks catering to the visiting charter guests who drop in. There is a dirt road over the hills into town, but a few years ago, Chatham Bay was isolated, accessible only by foot or boat. 

Hiking trails take you to lookouts above the bay, where the entire Grenadines spreads out before you. When we arrived, there were just two other boats anchored in the cove—by evening, two dozen had arrived. As the sun set, a beach bar was pumping out loud music, and crews were heading in for another night of partying.

We were tempted to join them, but since we were “just waiting for a wind shift,” we had foregone the formality of clear-in at Clifton. We were here “in transit.”

Tuesday, April 3 

As we left the lee of Union Island, the morning northeast wind appeared slightly more favorable, but fetching Bequia was still going to be rough. If we managed to make 4 knots, it would take us six hours to cover the 25 miles. 

Then there was a west-setting current of a knot. In 10 hours, that would push us 6 miles west of our course, not to mention any leeway. The wind was forward of the beam, and the seas were on the bow. It was slow going and wet.

We shouldered on. 

It was a pleasure to watch a man sail his boat. Richard had been single-handing Strider for a few years, and he knew intuitively what the boat needed and liked. He tucked in a reef on the main and tweaked the head sail, which reduced the weather helm. It’s a one-man job. He left me to tend the helm.

The boat settled down on a northerly tack. We had most of the day with little to do, so he and I got to talking about the boats we’ve owned and the women we’ve loved. 

“Strider was built in Montreal in 1992,” he said. “She’s a 44-foot hand-laid fiberglass cutter designed by Pierre Munier and built by Reliance Sailing Craft Co., Ltd. They built 44 of them, starting in the late ’70s through the mid-’90s.

“There are still quite a few of them around,” he continued. “I know of two. I found this one down in North Carolina, just before Covid. It had been neglected for a while, so I cleaned her up and brought her home to Maine. I spent a good year refitting her. I replaced the engine, removed all of the plastic teak from the deck, installed non-skid decking, and then stripped and revarnished the brightwork. I removed years’ worth of bottom paint and painted the topsides. I tore out a lot of wiring, went through all the systems, and spent money and time replacing or updating all the electronics. Now, the autopilot, chart plotter, radios—everything is integrated. Afterwards, there was a lot of cleaning and painting.”

“You’re not finished?” I asked.

“There is still a lot to do,” he said. “I have to get back to Maine for the summer.”

“Did you have to redo any of the cabin work?”

“No. The original owner, a cabinetmaker from Toronto, did a fantastic job below.”

To this, I had to agree. The interior has hand-rubbed, varnished teak and off-white cream accents. The forward stateroom has a V-berth with an opening hatch overhead, along with lockers and drawers for stowage. The main cabin has a U-shape dining table opposite a settee. The nav station is across from the galley, which has a three-burner stove, oven, refrigerator, freezer and dual sink. Aft are head and hanging locker for wet foulies. Adjacent to the companionway are two berths, port and a starboard, one with a door and vanity. Richard uses the starboard berth, which has a draw curtain, as his toolshed.

Strider is indeed a well-put-together boat. On the exterior, the stem has a graceful angle that leads down to the water, while the sheer sweeps elegantly from the bow to the stern. The transom is flat with just the right space for the nameplate and home port. 

“She handles well,” I said from the helm.

Richard tucked himself into the forward end of the cockpit to leeward. “She’ll do 6 knots, constantly, even 7, maybe a little over 7,” he said.

This is what I was experiencing, plus Strider is fairly comfortable in the  seaways. She does not bounce.

“She’s a heavy boat,” he added. “She has a long keel and an entrapped prop. The rudder is hung off the aft end of the keel.

“I hesitate to say it,” he said with a pause, “but I’ve never had a problem picking up trap lines. She sails right over them. But she has her drawbacks. I suppose every boat does. She’s wet. The helmsman catches spray in a good blow, so I had new canvas and side curtains made. She’s so well fitted together that it can be a chore to access anything.”

“What are the things you like about the boat?” I asked. 

“I like that everything’s set up for single-handed sailing,” he replied. “All of the halyards, sheets and furling lines lead directly back into the cockpit. Everything’s right at your fingertips. There’s a button to push to furl or unfurl the jib. When I first sailed her, I did have a problem with the in-boom furling. The boom needs to be exactly perpendicular to the mast for the battened sail to wind in properly. Once I fix the vang, it works perfectly. The main sail is old, and occasionally the bolt rope slips out of the groove going up the mast. It’s critical not to be furling or reefing in 30 knots of wind.”

Richard then sat in silence for a while before adding: “She’s certainly not a super-expensive or fancy yacht, but she’s really, really nicely laid out, nicely put together. She turns heads wherever she goes. I get compliments in every harbor. ‘Beautiful,’ they tell me.

She is a beautiful boat.”

“But you still want to sell it?” I asked.

“I do.” 

“Why?” 

”It’s not really the boat I want to live on for the rest of my life,” he said.

Sure, it might be nice to have a boat that requires less work, but why own a boat if not to take care of it? A man needs something to work on—something requiring physical work—with his hands and tools. The intellect can sit back and watch as something wonderful comes to life, like the shape of a piece of wood or the glow of a well-laid coat of varnish. It brings balance to life. 

But Richard makes his living with his hands. He’s a builder and renovator of wealthy people’s summer homes in Maine.

“Be nice to have a midship cockpit,” he says, “and a large bed in the aft cabin.”

I’ve owned four sailboats over 50 years. They each required a lot of work, money and time, especially the two wooden ones. When I bought my last boat, Searcher, a 57-foot Bowman ketch, she was already 20 years old and had more systems than I needed for cruising. I tore them out and kept only the basics.

On Searcher’s last voyage through these islands, 14 years ago, we hand-steered—all the way down, back and through the islands. The out-of-date autopilot was too expensive to replace. We had $700 worth of ice instead of $5,000 worth of new refrigeration. Even those things felt like conveniences. During my earlier voyages in these islands, before chart plotters, I relied on a sextant, a hand-bearing compass and a log to plot dead-reckoning positions. In the late 1990s, I found one of the first Garmin GPS receivers. It was easier than taking noon sights, better than Loran and even better than the first satellite receivers that took four hours to calculate a fix. I was still using paper charts in those days. On more recent deliveries, I have relied on Navionics on my smartphone.

Back to sailing on Striker: Our course up to Bequia would have been a pleasant romp in a southeasterly breeze, but this was a strange season. It was a day of hard, wet work fighting our way to Bequia. Strider was making progress against the wind and seas, with spray over the bow. Occasionally, the lee scuppers would fill, and I was getting wet hand-steering for most of the day, fore-reaching.

It was late afternoon when we finally arrived in Admiralty Bay’s inner harbor. First things first: ashore for a shower, laundry and a rum punch at Daffodils’s bar. Over 20 years, this establishment has become a restaurant and bar with rooms to rent and a floating filling station.

The next morning, April 4, while Richard was at the post office officially clearing us in and out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I was at the ATM extracting more Eastern Caribbean currency. We had provisioning to do. Back out on the boat, the boys brought Daffodil’s yellow-and-red floating filling station alongside and tied off. It took half an hour to top up Strider’s fuel and water tanks, and fill our spare jugs.

Richard settled up, we cast them off, got the anchor up and were underway before noon.

It would be 18 miles to our next anchorage in Chateaubelair, a small village halfway up the west side of St. Vincent. We’d be there before sunset.

The post Caribbean Cruising: Wind Woes in the Grenadines appeared first on Cruising World.

Earlier this year, I was sailing through the Caribbean with Richard Thomas on his classic 44-foot cutter Strider. We were on our way from Union Island to Carriacou. Richard and I, both from Maine, are partial to wooden sailboats. We wanted to visit the shipwrights on Carriacou who still build boats the-old fashioned way.  

We rounded Jack Iron Point, a craggy cliff on the southeastern tip of the island, bound for Tyrell Bay. A hundred boats were anchored or moored along the half-mile beach. We found an open spot, launched the dinghy and went ashore.

While Richard handled the customs paperwork, I checked out Carriacou Marina. It has a storage yard with a Travelift. There’s a crowded dinghy dock, a mini-mart, laundry, showers, a chandlery and Las Iguanas Restaurant. The storage yard seemed full, with small yachts and fishing boats on the hard. I saw large blocks of concrete, but no tie-downs in the ground, and no hurricane pits.

Similarly, at Tyrell Bay Marina, we found a large storage space and a Travelift, but also a dozen catamarans and a dozen yachts on poppets. None of the boats were tied down, and there were no hurricane pits.

This is worrisome, I thought at the time, having survived my share of bad storms in the Caribbean throughout the years. But no major hurricane had hit Carriacou in 20 years. The last one, Ivan, was in 2004.

We walked along the village road, where a few knock-together bars and barbecue shacks sat along the beach. We found a lot for boaters to like on Carriacou—two air-conditioned and well-stocked supermarkets, a dive shop, a general store, a sail and canvas shop, and a few restaurants—but we wanted to find the wooden boatbuilders.

On the east side of the island, we saw two wooden fishing boats under construction, beneath the trees on the beach. But no one was around.

Alas, our hopes were dashed. I was back in Maine by early May. Richard sailed Strider north to Bermuda.

And then, Hurricane Beryl swept through the Grenadines, destroying much of what we’d seen on Carriacou.

Jonathan Petramala, a YouTube documentarian with WxChasing, flew into Carriacou the day before Beryl hit. He and his team also toured the island the day after Beryl. They talked with locals, who helped to document the destruction. Many of the lovely locations I’d photographed during my visit were wrecked or outright gone.

The cruising community is doing what it can to help. Lexi Fisher from Doyle Guides assembled a list of relief organizations accepting donations. Caribbean Compass and Cruising World magazines spread the word too. The US and the European Union pledged millions of dollars in immediate aid.

Cruisers on the less-affected islands headed to Carriacou with supplies. Samaritan’s Purse, a relief organization, sent a portable distillation system to extract fresh drinking water from seawater. Once the airport reopened, the islands’ governor flew in to survey the damage.

Hurricane Beryl was a category 4 storm with winds of 140 knots. It will be years before things return to normal on Carriacou.

I hope the wooden-boat builders don’t give up. And I hope that, someday, I get a chance to return and meet them.

The post Paradise Pummeled appeared first on Cruising World.