My jaw ached from hours of clenching. My fingers grew numb from white-knuckling the companionway as a brace. We were crossing the Sea of Cortez from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with our course set for Chacala on the mainland. There, we planned to rendezvous with my partner’s family.  

We had disobeyed the cardinal rule of cruising: You can choose a time or a place, but you can’t choose both. 

Despite the weather reports predicting sporty winds blowing into the 20s with moderate northwest swells, we were 40 miles southeast of Cabo when the northwest swell grew to 10 to 12 feet, every six to eight seconds, breaking frequently over the beam of our 41-foot Cheoy Lee sailboat, Avocet. The wind was sporty, as predicted, but at a much higher speed of 25 knots sustained with chronic gusts into the mid-30s from behind us.

I was on the first watch of the night, my harness clipped into our dodger, my eyes on the horizon. The only light to fill the ink-black space ahead of us came from the breaking waves that painted the sea with moments of phosphorescence.

Then, the faint glow of the moon began to rise. It was around that time that things took a turn for the worse. 

Bang is a sound you never want to hear at sea, let alone at night. Chris sprung from below as I tried to free myself from the dodger. “What was that?” he asked, thinking we had hit something. 

“It came from the rig!” I yelled over the deafening wind and sea. “I can’t see anything!” 

It took a few moments to realize that our 130 percent genoa that was heavily reefed had completely unfurled, leading us to become overpowered very quickly.

We disengaged our autopilot and immediately broke off, putting the swell more on our aft quarter to prevent further rounding up. Avocet became a sled with hull speeds into the double digits as we tried to figure out a plan. 

I clipped into the helm. Chris secured himself to the jack lines and walked to the bow with a new furling line in hand. 

In horror, I watched waves break over the bow and snuff out his headlamp. He would soon realize that our furling line had chafed through at the drum. 

At first, he tried to install the new furling line within the drum, but there was no way he could get enough wraps. Chris returned to the cockpit to grab another line, kissed me on the forehead, gave me a reassuring smile, and scrambled back to the bow. He attached the bitter end of the line to the sail’s tack and wrapped as many loops around the top of the drum as he could, essentially creating an external furling unit. 

Then, Chris sat, feet braced against our bulwark, and pulled in the furling line. The wind was howling, but it couldn’t muffle his cheers as the sail began to furl in. 

We then used the same technique as dousing our spinnaker to have our main sail shade the genoa, removing as much power as we could from the sail before blowing the sheet to make it easier to pull it in. Once the secondary furling line was secured to a cleat, Chris could remove the defunct line within the drum, install the new one, and reef the sail again to get us back on course. 

This was a worst-case scenario for a furler failure, but the method worked in a pinch. It prevented us from having to pull down the sail, which would have increased risk for us and for Avocet. In high winds, you should actively avoid coming into irons because there is a high probability that it will shred your sails to oblivion or tangle your lines. Or both.

In calmer seas later, after further investigation, we concluded that the furler drum had been set incorrectly and went undetected until the furler line was tested under tension, causing the abrupt chafe and snap. Ever since then, we have reset the furler drum and replaced the line, and have not had a single issue in the additional 2,000 nautical miles under our keel. 

We hope you never have to try this yourself, but we urge you to run through a Plan B, C and D if you should ever experience a failure like this.

The post Redundancy of Thought appeared first on Cruising World.

Two months into our cruising adventure aboard our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet, we found ourselves docked in my hometown of Santa Cruz, California, for an unexpected job opportunity. With strong swells rocking the harbor, our fenders took a beating, while protecting our hull from the constant blows against the dock.

We hadn’t yet graduated to sewing our own soft fender covers, so, for temporary protection I wrapped the fenders with towels. By Day 3 of the dock pummeling, I discovered one towel had gone missing, swept away by the surge. I needed a new solution, fast—and preferably one that didn’t cost a dime, since we were freshly two months into our cruising journey. 

As I assessed the situation, I thought: If only I could dress the fenders. Then it hit me: Why not actually dress them? I hurried down below, rummaged through my husband’s project shirts and found the most worn-out ones—perfect for the task. With t-shirts in hand, I returned to the fenders, slipped them on and smiled at my quick fix. Now, sporting Chris’s old shirts, our fenders were no longer naked, and Avocet’s paint stayed protected. 

This little experience reminded me that, sometimes, all you need is to think outside the box. Before you go out and buy something for your boat, take a look around. You might already have what you need. Boats require ingenuity, and sometimes the simplest solutions are right in front of us.

Marissa and Chris Neely share their sailing adventures, from the technical aspects of cruising a classic sailboat to the challenges and triumphs of liveaboard life, through their Sailing Avocet blog. Check it out at svavocet.com.

The post Fender Protection on a Budget appeared first on Cruising World.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every boat has a story. So does every boat owner. And few tell those stories better than Marissa and Chris, the crew of Avocet, a 1979 41-foot Cheoy Lee. They met the boat in February 2018, just three months before college graduation, got married in June 2018, and have been liveaboards ever since. Avocet’s journey has only just begun, and as Cruising World’s newest ambassadors, the Avocet crew share their adventures with our community, from the technical aspects of cruising a classic sailboat to the breathtaking destinations they visit to the challenges (and triumphs!) that come with the liveaboard life.

Ahoy, from Avocet

My name is Marissa, and I am half of the crew on Avocet, a 1979 41-foot Cheoy Lee that my partner, Chris, and I have been living aboard since 2018.

Chris grew up in a sailing family, spending time on small lake boats and sailing near the San Francisco Bay area aboard his family’s Mason 43. His older brother purchased a Hans Christian 33, Prism, to cruise the world, paving the way for us to follow in his wake half a decade later.

Chris got me involved in the sport early in our relationship. We were barely 15 when he persuaded me to crew for him in the annual High Sierra Regatta, where I caught the sailing bug. After high school, Chris asked me to marry him in Costa Rica while we were aboard his brother’s boat. Of course, I said yes to a life of adventure, which led us to where we are now.

Our current story starts with how we found our beloved Avocet. We met the boat in February 2018, just three months before college graduation. We signed the papers in March, and Chris spent nearly every weekend driving eight hours to prepare Avocet for our move-in day.

Then, in May, we began our adult lives—him with his bachelor’s degree in social sciences, and me with bachelors’ in ski business, resort management and global business management. We got married on June 2, 2018, just two days before Chris carried me from the dock to Avocet’s cockpit and we unpacked on board.

The Discovery

Back when Chris and I were looking for boats in 2018, Avocet was not even on our radar. We were looking for something simpler, like a Catalina 36. At the time, we had no intentions of cruising, and we were looking for a crash pad while Chris finished his studies at film school in San Francisco Bay.

We convinced ourselves that the Catalina 36 was everything we wanted, until we stepped aboard one in Southern California and realized it wouldn’t suit our lifestyle needs. We had no Plan B, but we did have Chris’ brother Jon with us. He found Avocet.

“We cruised with a boat like this in Mexico,” Jon said as he boarded the boat. After a few moments on board, Chris felt at home, comparing the warm teak walls to his family’s Mason 43. I was not as easily charmed—I thought the interior was atrocious—but Chris begged me to give it a minute.

After we drove away, Chris couldn’t stop thinking about the boat. His offer to the seller was laughable at best, probably around $25,000, which is what we had saved. The seller rejected that offer, so Chris wrote a letter to the seller, explaining who we were and why we would be honored to buy it. We settled around $30,000, which was $10,000 less than the original listed price. We still had to get a bank loan, but Avocet was ours.

The Confusion

People recognize that Avocet is a Cheoy Lee but often fail to identify the model. On the outside, the boat looks strikingly similar to the Offshore 41 and Pedrick 41, but has key differences. Cheoy Lee had seen a similar design from naval architect Ray Richards, the designer of the Offshore, and subsequently designed its own Cheoy Lee 41. Richards’ new-at-the-time element was a 6-foot-deep cruising fin, in which the forefoot is a cutaway and the rudder is attached to a skeg. Richards described the boat as “stiff as a church,” which we have found to be very true.

Unlike Avocet, the Offshore 41s don’t share the same tumblehome, leaving them much narrower with a different sheer. Inside, Avocet’s saloon is oval-shaped, unlike the semi-circle cut of the Offshore. Our boat’s head is abaft the saloon on the starboard side, forward of the stateroom, with a closet separating them. In the Offshore, there is no closet.

Avocet is also different from the Offshore below the waterline, thanks to Avocet’s modified fin keel and separated skeg-hung rudder. Our boat’s prop shaft comes right out of the keel, making our shaft 4½ feet long. Another notable difference is that the Offshore has a slightly taller cabin top.

Unfortunately, there is not much existing literature on Cheoy Lee 41s—especially sloops—since they seemed to have been built to order and highly customized by whoever commissioned them. We asked Cheoy Lee for help in our hunt to find details about Avocet, but no records were in their database.

Richards did kindly answer my emails and provided some insight, supporting our own findings: “I am not particularly familiar with it, but your email jogged my memory that indeed, Cheoy Lee had Pedrick design a 41, ‘borrowing’ from mine but with the, by then, contemporary style of underbody and flatter sheer. I also recall that Pedrick was or had been in the Sparkman & Stephens office, a factor that Cheoy Lee probably and understandably would have figured as good for sales. There were more than a few misquotes and errors. For example, I turned out four, not 10 designs for Cheoy Lee. The first was a 39, a larger and heavier version of an aluminum one-tonner that had received some good press, but it was totally away from the type and style of CL’s market niche. It was flush-decked and had a plumb transom from which a dirty big outboard rudder was hung. Tad Woodhull, Lyon Yachts, Essex, Connecticut, had one and did well racing it in Long Island Sound. It was he who stimulated Cheoy Lee toward replacing Phil Rhodes’ very handsome Reliant, which came to be sold as their Offshore 40. Thus came my 41, which was originally designated Offshore 40. Maybe that, in CL’s mind, was much like replacing a Richards with a Pedrick. The 32 came next. It was followed by the 38, very similar in features to the 41.”

There only seem to be eight CL41s in existence, reflected on the Cheoy Lee Association owners page, and Avocet appears to be one of the only sloops.

The Construction

Like most boats of this vintage, Avocet has a solid fiberglass hull. According to the company literature, the thickness in these boats ranges from about seven-sixteenths of an inch at the sheer to 1 inch, but we have found Avocet to be five-eighths of an inch at the sheer and as much as 2 inches at the keel.

This level of fiberglass production was uncommon at the time and gave Cheoy Lee a good reputation for building robust boats. Unlike many other early fiberglass classics, the Cheoy Lee 41s had fiberglass decks, most with a teak overlay. The previous owner removed Avocet’s teak deck, most likely in Mexico in 2004. Beneath the fiberglass deck is mahogany planking that serves as core. We inspected it. Dry as a bone.

Cheoy Lee poured its own cast iron ballasts, but our keel is lead, which is denser, softer and not subject to corrosion. Cheoy Lee Shipyards said it was unlikely that the boat originally had a lead keel, but it’s possible that Avocet’s original owner commissioned it with lead ballast, for which we are thankful.

On the other hand, Avocet was built with poor-quality stainless steel. The chainplates crumbled in our hands. Fasteners were a problem, too. Most owners, like us, have replaced the shoddy metal, sometimes paving the way for other problems, such as leaks. We had this issue when the fasteners in our toe rail corroded, leaving voids that allowed water intrusion into our interior. Instead of replacing the toe rail, we removed it and added a bulwark. This let us glass over the deck-to-hull joint, reinforcing the structural integrity of our boat. It is, so far, the crowning upgrade on our extensive project list.

Avocet’s previous owner also replaced the Sitka spruce spar in 2004 with our aluminum mast, which we refitted in 2021. Avocet is deck-stepped with a single spreader and a relatively short boom, meaning the boat is heavily headsail-driven.

I know what you are thinking: A cruising boat with a deck-stepped mast? How could this be? Well, as with many things in sailing, there is a deck-stepped versus keel-stepped debate.

Deck-stepped boats have masts that are more flexible, making the mast easier to adjust for optimum performance by making small adjustments to the standing rigging. Going upwind, the backstay, runners and check stays can have tension added to tighten the stays and pull the mast aft. This will both rake the mast aft, giving it weather helm, and tension the headstay for added pointing ability.

If all the stays fail on the mast, it will fall over, since it stands on the deck totally reliant on the rigging—one of the many reasons we replaced our chainplates and all the rigging, and beefed up our mast step in 2021.

Avocet’s geared steering quadrant is also unusual. Unlike with cable or worm steering, the input from the helm goes directly to a pinion gear, which turns a larger planetary gear, then a drive shaft mounted vertically inside the binnacle. This connects directly to the rudder shaft through two more gears. There is little that can go wrong with this system. All the gears are locked together with large components, eliminating the risk of cable failure.

With so much mechanical advantage, Avocet has a different feel than other boats. Because of the geared steering, we can never feel weather helm, which takes some getting used to if you are a seasoned sailor. We also have an easy time hand-steering, and our autopilot has more control. The lock-to-lock at the wheel takes four complete revolutions of the helm. In the time we have owned Avocet, we have really grown to like this system.

Avocet also has an inboard Perkins 4-108 diesel engine that is midship between the galley and head. With the weight concentrated on centerline, we have less pitching. The weight is also low, with the Perkins below the cabin sole, about 2 feet below the waterline. It’s not the easiest location for maintenance, but it’s a valuable addition to our lead ballast, making it the best possible location for sailing performance.

And, our cabin sole is removable for access the engine. We also have a 6-foot-deep bilge with pumps and alarms to address any incoming water and eliminate flooding.

If our engine were above the cabin sole and beneath the companionway (like many are), it would be at equal risk of water damage due to a green wave—a good reason why we relocated our batteries to a watertight spot.

The Performance

Although Avocet isn’t truly an International Offshore Rule vessel, it shares a lot of traits, having been built at the height of IOR times in the late ’70s. The hull has bow and stern overhangs, the boat has a wide beam, and it is heavily headsail-driven. It sails incredibly well for its heavy weight, too. With a modified fin keel and a large rudder far aft on the stern, Avocet always feels well-footed underway. The keel digs deep into the sea while the rudder has significant control on any given point of sail.

At 26,000 pounds, Avocet is not a light boat, but it carries the weight in all the right places. Our favorite attribute is the boat’s low-slung nature. The freeboard is relatively low off the water, and much of the weight is carried below the waterline. This all contributes to Avocet’s best sailing characteristic, which is stiffness.

In a generous breeze of 15 to 25 knots, we can carry all our canvas and keep a heel no more than 15 to 20 degrees, making life aboard blissfully comfortable. Avocet’s unassuming image is what makes it such a good boat a comfortable racer in disguise. That’s how we squeezed out a second place showing in this year’s Banderas Bay Regatta, with the heaviest handicap in the entire race.

Postscript

Avocet‘s journey has only just begun, and we’re thrilled to share our adventures with the Cruising World community. As Cruising World‘s newest ambassadors, you’ll get a front-row seat to our experiences, from the technical aspects of cruising a unique boat like Avocet to the breathtaking destinations we encounter and the challenges (and triumphs!) that come with full-time liveaboard life.

In the coming months, we’ll be chronicling our ongoing adventures, giving you a variety of specially curated content from our cruising life, from boat projects and maintenance to the realities of full-time liveaboard life, managing limited space and staying connected with loved ones back home.We believe Avocet‘s story resonates with many sailors. It’s a testament to the spirit of adventure, the joy of living a life less ordinary and the unique bond that forms between a crew and its boat. We’re excited to share this journey with you, so stay tuned for more updates from Avocet! In the meantime, learn more about what we’re up to now at svavocet.com.

The post Sailing <i>Avocet</i>: A New Adventure Begins appeared first on Cruising World.