We’re currently at sea, with more than a thousand nautical miles from Hawai’i behind us, and more than a thousand ahead of us to our destination: Majuro, Marshall Islands. So far, this passage has reminded us how less-tangible skills can be as important to cruising as those you can learn in a seminar or class. Among the most useful of these skills is listening—not as in listening to your partner, co-captain or crew (although that’s important, too), rather, listening to your boat. It’s often trying to tell you something. For an explainer on this, jump to the video.

Years of learning Totem’s creaks and groans were put into practice this week. Jamie and I departed from Kona, Hawai’i on Monday, September 9, bound for the Marshall Islands. On our third day at sea, sailing downwind, wing-on-wing, in trade-wind conditions, we were bewildered by a mystery clunk from the rudder. We have always been aware of a “light” clunk, from the upper bearing at deck level, but this was a different sound. Different, in this situation, on a converging path with unsettling weather in the forecast, was not good.

Worst-Case Scenario

Rudder failure has the potential to be sudden and catastrophic. We imagined possibilities, thinking about “sound, bluewater boats” with capable crews who have had rapid, disastrous outcomes from rudder failure. Feeding our concern was that, some years ago, a sistership to Totem had a serious potential rudder problem. Heavy bronze bolts securing the bronze skeg to fiberglass began backing out. They were able to resolve it, but as we were underway gliding over the ocean floor 16,000 feet below, we couldn’t assess our clunk underway.

Anatomy of Totem’s Rudder

Totem‘s rudder has three bearings. The highest is at deck level. Below that, a second bearing lies where the rudder post passes through the hull at the bottom of the boat. These first two can be inspected to varying degrees from the lazarette while at sea. The third bearing is a gudgeon and pintle mechanism midway up the rudder securing it to the top of the bronze skeg. Halfway across the Pacific, this bearing could only be inspected with a swim.

The deck-level inspection we were able to conduct at sea gave us no cause for concern. The origin of the clunk must be coming from somewhere that we could only inspect by getting in the water, which wasn’t safe with 1.5-meter wind waves, plus a 2- to 3-meter (and occasionally 4- meter) swell from the north.

An Unplanned Pit Stop

As we considered our options, an interesting one emerged: a small, remote atoll that was 300 nm west of Totem at the time. With our onboard broadband from Starlink, we researched this option further, only to discover that “Johnston Atoll,” while a US territory, does not welcome visitors. It’s a military site, a former nuclear testing location, and a site used to incinerate and dump weapons. For the last couple of decades, it has also been a wildlife refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Nonetheless, I sent an email with fingers crossed and a queasy stomach. To our astonishment, within a matter of hours, we had traded several emails with the F&WS management, while looping in the US Coast Guard’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) in Honolulu to document the situation.

Were we prepared to declare an emergency? While establishing our needs, yet making it clear that we did not want any resources to be expended on our behalf, permission was granted for us to anchor for our inspection and any repairs that might be necessary. We received the official green light around midnight, and we waited for the relative safety of dawn to alter course with a gybe toward the atoll.

Inspecting the Rudder

We arrived at dusk—a move made possible courtesy of the arrow-straight, 500-foot wide channel blasted through coral by the military. We anchored and waited for the next morning to inspect the rudder. Once in the water Jamie was able reproduce the clunk. The lower bearing has play enough that slight rudder flex was enabling the pintle to bang against the gudgeon/bearing. Closer inspection revealed nothing bad. The skeg was as stout as when it was new (42 years ago). Although the play is new, roughly 3/16”, the hardware looked perfect. We found no compromised rudder integrity, but would rely on a second inspection to be sure.

The Source of the Clunk

Nearly 5,000 nm have passed under Totem’s keel since splashing last December. This sound did not occur across that time period. So, why now? What changed?

Chief among Jamie’s concerns, despite the good initial inspection, was the construction of the rudder post. If the rudder post was one long rode section linking in the skeg at the bottom, then we had a problem. The excess play wouldn’t have been possible unless internal metal structure was coming apart. We spent hours poring over photos of the rudder and skeg, mainly from when they were removed in Thailand for inspection. That was a project, in Thailand, with somewhat dramatic fashion.

Photos showed what memory had forgotten: that the rudder post didn’t exit through the lower bearing. Instead a short stainless post, a pintle, meant the play was okay and not a sign of internal problems. We suspect Totem’s very DDW point of sail, which put multiple directional forces on the rudder compared to other points of sail, pushed and shoved the rudder around, making the clunk sound. We communicated findings back to the F&WS team and to the JRCC Honolulu, who at this time were looping in folks from the US Air Force and applying pressure for us move along as soon as possible.

Johnston Atoll: Wild, Mysterious

If we had to assign a single word to Johnston Atoll, it would be “creepy.” (Not how one typically describes a remote tropical island!) Reading the atoll’s history may be exciting for some, but the legacy is sobering. Bunkers scattered around islets, concrete bulkheads around all the land we could see, a concrete block of a building we assume is where chemical weapons were incinerated, and not a sign of living human presence. 

The cacophony of seabirds, which seemed to occupy every scrap of land, counterbalanced the darkly morbid shadows cast by the military legacy. The boobies, especially, provided some entertainment as they perched fearlessly near us around Totem. 

The terms of our stay were very clear: There was to be no exploring. We were prohibited from going ashore, and we could not swim—other than what was required immediately adjacent to Totem to inspect the rudder. No problem! Yet, while we did not go to the wildlife, the wildlife (or the birds, at least—marine life was minimal) came to us. At any moment, as many as a dozen boobies sat happily pooping away on our solar panels. (Another aerial assault at Johnston Atoll perhaps?) They gathered on our bow pulpit in groups of five, and even hung off the snubber line, watching our every move.

The sheer density of birds offered a reminder of just how important it was to restrict our movement, to prevent anything we might inadvertently bring to their delicate environment. The red-tailed tropicbird population was devastated here after ants (ants?) infested their nesting grounds. How easy is it for ships to introduce a pest? It was no problem for us to remain happily aboard our floating island, Totem, simply grateful to be here and find resolution. (For more about the crazy ants (yes, that’s what they’re called), check out this article from F&WS on the many years required to address their threat. Also, click over to this beautifully photographed article from the Audubon society).

Departing Johnston Atoll

Getting away was the next trick. (Ideally, we’d have departed immediately!) I was keen to arrive in Majuro for a multi-day festival the following week, during a public holiday, Manit Day, that celebrates Marshallese culture. If we carried on right away, we might still have made a day or two of the festivities.

Unfortunately, the weather for departing was, in a word, unsettled. After watching mostly benign conditions in this part of the Pacific for the month prior to leaving Hawai’i, volatile conditions from the ITCZ moved tropical waves toward our location and threatened to spin up into more severe weather.

We wanted to get away. We definitely didn’t want to be in a system turning cyclonic with 45 knot winds and potential stronger microbursts. We put this short video together to illustrate. Weather watchers might learn from how Jamie’s reviewing a combination of wind, rain and satellite imagery to determine when we could safely carry on. Friends and followers may understand the personal relating of this wild experience.

Next Stop: Majuro

We departed again the morning of September 19th, literally watching at anchor for the winds from a nearby system to move past our location and open up a safe window for us to carry on. We’ll miss the festival in Majuro, but we’ve regained confidence in our rudder.

Want to follow along?

Totem’s PredictWind tracking page includes data about current weather conditions. Noforeignland users can see our circumnav track here. 

Join us at the Annapolis Boat Show in October

We’ll be flying from Majuro to Annapolis for the annual sailboat show. Our departure will be only days after we make landfall. Hopefully, the 30ish hours of travel will feel like a cakewalk after this passage. Meanwhile, we’re excited to be teaching a range of courses, details below. Please join us if you’re coming to the show. Note: Pre-registration is required, and seats are limited. (At least one course is already sold out.)

American Sailing Association seminar, Oct. 11

How to Sail Around the World: No boat show ticket required to join our afternoon, half-day seminar with the ASA. Insights, inspiration, and the toolkit you need to plan your own successful, long-distance cruising adventures.

Cruisers University seminars, Oct. 7-10

• Becoming a Cruiser: Together, we break down the massive project which is “how to go cruising.” Think of this as the best of our coaching work condensed into a packed day to get you launched and comfortably on your way.
• Sail Inventory and Care: Jamie gets hands-on with sails! Practical information to care for (and save money with) your boat’s sails
• She’s a Cruiser (Master Class): Behan presents in collaboration with two other cruisers, Nica Waters and Liz Shaw, this program is just for women, with concrete actions and intangible essentials. Guest speakers lending their wisdom include Lin Pardey, Sheryl Shard, Mia Karlsson, Sophie Darsy, and Hilary Howes
• Basics of Fiberglass Repair: Jamie will detail materials, basics of fiberglass work every cruiser should know, demonstrate live, and let you get hands on to try the methods and mixing as well. (this class is now sold out)
• Route Planning: careful route planning leads to safe and comfortable passages: learn the tools and method from Jamie!
• Safety at Sea: Jamie uses examples and tools to help you avoid being an UNsafe boat

Take the Wheel, Oct 11-13

This flagship Annapolis Boat Show program is divided between a morning in the classroom and an afternoon on the water. We lead the classroom portion, and discuss sailboat design (features, tradeoffs, and bluewater myths), purchase process, how to maximize your boating pleasure, and budget planning for setting sail.

The post Sailing <i>Totem</i>: A Mystery Clunk and a Mid-Pacific Pit Stop appeared first on Cruising World.

Gabby Covill and her husband, now in their mid-50s, met when they were younger and both had an interest in sailing. They owned an X-332 that they’d race around their home waters in Britain, and they had three children, which meant that sailing around the world had to be put off as a dream.

However, they chartered Oyster sailing yachts in the Mediterranean and Caribbean—and those experiences inspired them. With the children now in their 20s, the couple is embracing post-pandemic YOLO mode. They commissioned the Oyster 745 Mexican Wave in February 2021.

They took delivery last year and spent some time getting to know the boat in the Mediterranean. This past January, they set off with all the other Oysters from Nelson’s Dockyard in Antigua as part of the Oyster World Rally 2024-25. Cruising World caught up with Covill just after Mexican Wave arrived in the Galapagos Islands in early March.

What inspired you to take part in the Oyster World Rally?

My husband retired 18 months ago, and he wanted a project, so he decided to build this Oyster. What really attracted us was that we could build it and go around the world fully supported. They have technical support. There’s a whole team to help us as we go around the world. It’s a real comfort. We’re doing it with the other boats, so it’s really sociable. You get to meet lots of fun, interesting people who are doing the same thing.

How different is this experience from your previous time on boats?

We’ve never done anything like this. We used to race our little X-332, but this is ocean passages. It’s completely different. It’s one of the reasons we chose the Oyster 745. We realized that we needed crew to help us maintain the boat, and we needed some extra support sailing her.

How many crew are aboard Mexican Wave with you?

We have three crew: a skipper, a first mate/chef and an engineer. We’re so proud of our skipper. She’s the only female skipper doing the Oyster World Rally. She’s also a diving instructor. She’s great fun.

How do those dynamics work, in terms of who actually sails the boat?                 

We very much want to be involved. We all do watches. We all work as one big team. We’ve just done a four-day trip, and we were as much a part of the rotation as everyone else.

We spent this past summer in the Med, prepping the boat, and my husband did the ARC last year, sailed across the Atlantic. It’s much more new to me than it is to him, but we absolutely love it. It’s pushing me out of my comfort zone. The next passage will be the big one, to the Marquesas.

What have been some of the rally’s unexpected highlights so far?

Starlink has made a massive difference because I can stay in touch with my friends and my children. It gives me confidence, and it takes away the remoteness. Eighteen months ago, you’d do a passage, and everybody would be excited to get to land, to get some Wi-Fi. Now, people are in contact and posting on Instagram the whole time. I wouldn’t be on this boat if I couldn’t stay in touch with my kids.

Bonaire was an unexpected highlight for my husband. He did a lot of diving there. The Galapagos, we’ve been here for only three days so far, but we dived yesterday with the hammerheads, which was an amazing experience. The wildlife is not afraid of us. It’s incredible.

And we were in Panama for three weeks. We stopped over in Coiba Island, which we didn’t know much about beforehand. It’s a national park, and it’s very remote. We snorkeled and went on a couple of hikes. It’s so peaceful. There are no boats there. We arrived with the Oysters, had a few drinks on the beach, and then went back to the boats. It was fantastic.

Transiting the Panama Canal was also a highlight for us both. It’s just amazing to me, from the Atlantic through to the Pacific, and you’re transiting through with these huge container ships. The pilots who come on board, it works like clockwork. You’re nested up with two other boats, and you go through the locks into Gatun Lake, and then down the locks on the other side, and the gates open, and you’re in the Pacific. It was a real emotional moment for us.

How do you balance the fun of cruising with the competitive spirit of a rally?

We constantly have a joke: It’s a rally, not a race. But you can imagine, when the sails are up, all the skippers turn into racers. It’s good fun.

Now, all the Oysters are together in the Galapagos, but then we’ll head off to different places, and then we’ll meet up again in the Marquesas. So you get your freedom to go off and do what you want to do, and then you meet up again, and there’s always somebody not too far away because you’re always leaving at the same time.

We’re not trying to get there as quickly as possible. We’re trying to get there as safely as possible. It really makes no difference if you’re the first boat or the last boat to arrive. You can go at your own pace.

How did you prepare for the demands of around-the-world sailing?

We had to have extensive medical training for each person on the boat. You buy a kit, which contains everything from an IV to oxygen, antibiotics, injections—everything you’d need in an emergency—and then you have access to 24-hour medical care by video, text message and telephone. The doctor will call you back and talk you through whatever the problem might be.

We had to do the sea-survival course as well. That’s what to do if you have to abandon ship. They teach you how to use everything in an emergency.

How did you find your three crewmembers?

Oyster has a crew manager, and we found our skipper through her. Our engineer, we found because he’d done part of the rally before. Our first mate answered an ad on one of the social media groups.

Our skipper, we interviewed digitally because she was in Fiji at the time. Our first mate, we interviewed in person in Palma. We interviewed our engineer digitally as well. It was personality as much as anything else. You’re spending 18 months with these people. They become your family. We call them our boat family. We are living in a very small space.

What are your relationships like with the other rally participants?

We have a lot of fun with all the other boats. When we meet up, there’s always a party. We’ve got an owners’ WhatsApp chat going, which is really fun, and because of Starlink, we can do that.

We’re also all in touch by SSB radio, but in all the rallies before, they used SSB to make sure everyone checked in at 9 o’clock in the morning and at 7 o’clock at night. Now, everybody feels that WhatsApp has taken over, but we still need the SSB.

What kinds of things get discussed?

Somebody will say, “Has anybody got a part?” Say somebody has a problem with their fridge filter. It will be on the WhatsApp group, and somebody else will answer. That’s happened a lot recently. We all share our parts.

What do you think of cruising as a lifestyle so far?

I think it’s absolutely fantastic. We can now go anywhere in the world on our boat. It’s incredible, and we absolutely love it. We’ve got lots of lovely things on the boat, so it feels like home. We have fabulous watermakers now. The fact that we can literally go anywhere—when we finish this rally, we don’t know what we’ll do, but we could go see the East Coast of the States. We could go to Polynesia. We’re not really sure, but we could do anything.

What advice would you give to cruising sailors who are interested in joining a rally?

Do it, because you just don’t know what’s around the corner, so you should try to live every moment. That’s why we’ve done it. We’re in our mid-50s now, and we’ve just got to do these things when we can.

The post A Big, New World appeared first on Cruising World.

Solo sailor Cole Brauer has become the first American woman to race solo, nonstop and unassisted around the world, finishing the Global Solo Challenge March 7, at 8:23am CET after 130 days at sea. 

She finished in second place, setting a new Class40 around-the-world speed record and amassing 450,000 followers on Instagram in the process. At just 29 years old, Brauer was both the youngest skipper and the only female sailor in the fleet of 16 boats.

Brauer, 29, arrived Thursday in A Coruna, Spain, after departing from the city on Oct. 29. She took part in the Global Solo Challenge, along with more than a dozen other sailors, several of whom didn’t complete the competition. Brauer sailed around the globe on the First Light, a 2008 OCD Class40, and traveled about 30,000 miles. 

“It hasn’t really hit me yet. Everyone’s so excited, but for me it hasn’t really sunk in that I now hold these records,” says Brauer. ”It just feels like I went for a little sail, and now I’m back.”

The Boothbay, Maine woman said her purpose in pursuing the challenge was to show how the male-dominated sport can “become more open and less ‘traditional.’”

Brauer was introduced to sailing after moving to Hawaii for college. She said she didn’t have opportunities to sail as a child, but growing up on a nature reserve cemented her love of nature. She joined Hawaii’s sailing community, who she said took her under their wings. 

The goal of solo-racing around the world became Brauer’s dream after a 2018 dinner with her mentor Tim Fetsch, who later sent her solo sailor Ellen MacArthur’s book. She said on Instagram that she wanted to accomplish the feat of being the first American woman to race solo around the world before turning 30. She is also preparing for the 2028 Vendée Globe. 

“The race was for me,” she said. “It was this amazing experience that I got to have, so I feel like the celebration at the finish is almost for everyone else who was involved with this. I already had the amazing experience, I already had the experience I went out there looking for. So this celebration at the end is for the team and the supporters.”

While Brauer is the first American woman to race around the globe alone by sea, she is not the first woman to sail around the world. Polish sailor Krystina Chojnowska-Liskiewicz sailed single-handed around the world in 1978 during a 401-day voyage, The Associated Press reported. Kay Cottee of Australia was the first woman to complete the venture nonstop in 1987. 

Brauer said to the media that being away from loved ones for 130 days was the most difficult part of the journey. 

Brauer left A Coruña, Spain, on October 29 with six other skippers. She led the group to the Equator and began picking off the competitors from previous starts. As she turned east and headed for Cape Horn, she began having autopilot issues, one of which led to a broach that tossed her across the boat and injured her ribs. There was concern that she would have to pull into port, but despite the injury, she was able to make the necessary repairs and continue sailing. 

In the South Pacific, Brauer also began having trouble with her hydrogenerator, which supplies much of her power onboard, keeping her steering instruments, autopilot, watermaker, and Starlink going. Even with a back up system and regular maintenance, her power rationing lasted through the end of the race. 

While her expert seamanship and technical know-how made her one of the top competitors of the race, another hallmark of Brauer’s campaign was her social media presence, which inspired the admiration of hundreds of thousands of followers. Brauer used Instagram to keep followers updated on her journey, providing glimpses of what life at sea looks like when you’re a one-woman show. Between exhilarating shots of ocean waves and painstakingly chartering her journey, Brauer showed peeks into how she spent her downtime, such as watching Formula One and working out.

Her honest, chipper updates brought followers along for the ups and downs of four months on the seas. She received hundreds of comments from people saying that although they’d never sailed before, they were so amazed by her bravery, tenacity, and positive outlook. 

“This whole experience has been really awesome, and thank you guys so much for participating,” she said in an Instagram video to the nearly 500,000 people who followed her journey on the social media platform.

“This monumental milestone is not just a physical triumph, but a testament to her courage in facing challenges head-on,” says Project Manager Brendon Scanlon, about her rounding of Cape Horn, and turning northwards towards the finish. “As she sails the rough seas and navigates life’s complexities onboard, we celebrate the indomitable spirit that defines her remarkable journey.”

After completing the Global Solo Challenge, Brauer hopes to campaign for the 2028 Vendée Globe—the highest level of solo circumnavigational races. Her updates can be best followed at colebraueroceanracing on Instagram.

The post Cole Brauer Completes the Global Solo Challenge appeared first on Cruising World.

When Kirsten Neuschäfer decided to compete in the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race, she searched for a fast, safe and stable boat. She studied designs with a good ballast-to-weight ratio, and sought out a hull and rig that could withstand a hard beat to windward. 

She found Minnehaha in Newfoundland and knew that the tough, sturdy Cape George 36 was the one. The quick cutter with a generous sail plan met all of the official requirements—a production boat with a full keel, less than 36 feet long, designed before 1988—and a few requirements she had set for herself. 

“I wanted a super-secure boat for the Southern Ocean, which was fast as well,” Neuschäfer says. “Minnehaha suffers a little in light airs, but I knew I had a good chance of surviving. It was clear to me that the GGR was a bit of a race of attrition.”

Her instincts, along with detailed preparation, hard work and a bit of luck, served her well. Eight months after 16 skippers set out from the west coast of France to race solo 30,000 miles eastbound around a Southern Ocean course, Neuschäfer and Minnehaha caught one last whisper of wind off Les Sables d’Olonne, ghosted over the line, and sailed into history.

“I didn’t actually know that I’d won until the boats came out to meet me,” the South African sailor said of her historic finish. “I knew I was very close to Abhilash, so I was pushing hard. I knew we were very close.”

Indian skipper Abhilash Tomy battled the same light airs that Neuschäfer faced near the end of the race and arrived a day after, taking second place. Austrian Michael Guggenberger finished third, as the final skipper to complete the race in the racing class.

The Golden Globe Race is a nonstop, solo, unassisted round-the-world race with the start and finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne. Competitors are required to sail small boats using paper charts, VHF radio, sextants and celestial navigation. No modern weather-routing software is allowed, nor satellite communication, electronic instruments and autopilots. 

The route takes the sailors south through the Atlantic before heading east to Cape Town, South Africa, and around the Cape of Good Hope. After crossing the Indian Ocean and keeping Tasmania to port, sailors traverse the storm-plagued Southern Ocean and round Cape Horn. The ­final stretch leads north through the Atlantic and back to Les Sables d’Olonne.

Of the 16 skippers who started the 2022-23 race, 11 retired and two others made a single stop, moving them out of competition and into the Chichester Class. Neuschäfer’s victory made her one of only three people to win the race—and the first woman ever to win a solo circumnavigation yacht race.

“Minnehaha suffers in light airs, but I knew I had a good chance of surviving. The GGR is a race of attrition.”

The race is based on the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, won by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston aboard his 32-foot Bermudan ketch, Suhaili. Knox-Johnston was the only skipper to finish; in doing so, he became the first person to solo-circumnavigate the globe nonstop. Nine others retired, one was dismasted, and one committed suicide. The race was run once more in 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the original race. Eighteen sailors set out, and five ­finished. French sailor Jean-Luc Van Den Heede won the 2018 edition. 

More people have gone into space than have sailed singlehanded around the world. The small nature of the club means that the sailors, while competing, still look out for one another’s health and safety.

During the first dash south down the Atlantic in the 2022-23 race, Neuschäfer relayed to the race committee the VHF-radio mayday call of fellow sailor Guy DeBoer, who’d hit rocks near the Canary Islands. After a night spent grinding over the rocks, DeBoer abandoned his boat the next morning with the help of a local rescue team.

Two months later, 450 miles southeast of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Tapio Lehtinen’s Gaia 36, Asteria, flooded after taking on water from astern, and sank in less than 20 minutes. Lehtinen had just enough time to activate his EPIRB, put on his survival suit, and swim to his drifting life raft. “I gave Asteria a last standing salute as she went down,” the Finnish skipper said. Neuschäfer, the closet sailor to his position, altered course and hand-steered through the night to assist in his rescue. 

“The emergency handheld GPS showed Tapio’s coordinates,” Neuschäfer says. “I followed the track, but it was very difficult to spot a small, orange life raft. I was able to reach him on the VHF, but the early morning light was behind him, and I couldn’t see him. He fired off a flare, and I approached him on a beam reach. He’d been waiting 24 hours and was ready. He threw me a line, and I caught it on the first try, pulled him in, tied the life raft to Minnehaha, and helped him aboard.”

The two sailors shared a glass of rum. An hour later, Neuschäfer managed Lehtinen’s dangerous transfer from Minnehaha to bulk carrier Darya Gayatri, a freighter that had responded to the emergency call as well. “When I saw he was on board, I was just relieved for him,” she says.

Neuschäfer’s own heavy-weather plan focused on mitigating risks and staying true to strategies she’d set. When a low-pressure system approached on her way south to Cape Horn, she set a warp off her stern and held on for 12 hours until the storm blew over. In strong winds north of the Falklands, she hove-to, knowing that beating to windward in the extreme conditions risked damage to her boat. 

By this time in her life, she was no stranger to adventure. Neuschäfer’s early years had led her from South Africa to a set of jobs in Europe, followed by a solo trans-Africa biking trip, where she pedaled the continent north to south in her 20s. Her later experience working for Skip Novak on his Pelagic Expeditions exposed her to the wind and weather systems of the Antarctic Peninsula, Patagonia and the Falklands, and built her familiarity with the Southern Ocean.

“You need a great deal of self-sufficiency on these expeditions,” she says. “You need to know which tools and spares to bring. You need to be able to do all kinds of troubleshooting, refit the boats, change out a propeller, or fix a rig under difficult weather conditions.”

Neuschäfer had also done several long-distance ­deliveries, including taking a Leopard catamaran from the South Africa factory to Australia, and completing a singlehanded delivery from Portugal to South Africa on what she calls a labor-intensive boat. “This, that and the next thing needed to be done, and I discovered that I can solve problems out at sea,” she says.

As she followed the 2018 Golden Globe Race, she liked its spirit of adventure. “There are a lot of reasons to decide not to do something,” she says. “Having succeeded and followed my heart in other decisions, I knew that the GGR was something I should do.”

Her plans were nearly derailed early when she left her boat in Newfoundland and flew to South Africa, and then COVID-19 restrictions kept her from returning to Canada. She was eventually able to get back to Newfoundland and sail to Prince Edward Island, where she spent a year preparing for the race. She fell in love with the people there and made lifelong friends. Several were present at the Golden Globe Race finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne.

For her part, Neuschäfer makes light of the fact that the race dubbed a “Voyage for Madmen” was won by a woman. “I entered as a sailor,” she says. “I competed as a sailor and won as a sailor. On the same token, it’s a male-dominated race. If what I did inspires someone, then good will come of it, and I’m happy for that.”

Neuschäfer clearly has inspired the sailing world. On the final night of her race, as Minnehaha made its way up Les Sables d’Olonne channel, thousands of supporters lined the harbor walls, cheering and waving flares. Neuschäfer’s smile lit up the night. When she reached the dock, a friend handed her a bottle of champagne, which she sprayed into the air. Dressed in her sailing bibs and bare feet, she stepped off her boat and onto dry land for the first time in 235 days, and hugged her mother. 

Theresa Nicholson is CW’s senior editor.

The post Solo Act: Kirsten Neuschäfer Wins the Golden Globe Race appeared first on Cruising World.

In the realm of extraordinary adventures, the thrill of a circumnavigation stands tall, offering an unparalleled opportunity to experience by boat some of the most mesmerizing places on the planet. It is a voyage that redefines the boundaries of exploration and leaves an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of all who undertake this amazing odyssey. Combine the allure of such a voyage with the comforts of cruising in a group of like-minded sailors, and you have the Oyster World Rally. Over the course of nearly 16 months, 25 Oyster yachts’ owners and guests traversed ­approximately 27,000 nautical miles, ­visiting awe-inspiring destinations, creating cherished memories along the way, and forging bonds to last a lifetime through shared experiences, laughter, and the pursuit of a common dream. From the vibrant shores of the Caribbean to the secluded islands of the South Pacific and beyond, participants witnessed firsthand the sheer diversity and beauty of our planet, all with the assurance of safety and comfort, knowing that fellow participants were nearby to lend a helping hand or share in the joy of discovering ­remarkable locations. In the pages that follow, we invite you to join us on the ­voyage of a lifetime, as Oyster World Rally participants share the magnificence of sailing and exploration that can be experienced only in a ­circumnavigation.

These were among the most ­beautiful places we have visited, completely remote and untouched by tourism. 

There were so many highlights on this trip ahead of us, but it was the prospect of adventure we were most looking forward to.

One of the magical things about sailing around the world is that you can reach places other people can’t in cruise ships; places that are tiny, with no infrastructure, and you get to experience these things that others simply cannot. 

The post World Wanderers of the Oyster Rally appeared first on Cruising World.

Their numbers are impressive: 45,000 miles, a couple dozen countries, islands too many to count, and 16 years with five to go before sailing completely around the world. A life’s accomplishment by any measure, with enough stories and pictures to fill a closetful of magazines.

But when Sherry and Dave McCampbell talk about circumnavigating, what you more often hear is nitty-gritty — “all the mundane stuff for our visits anywhere to be fun and stress-free,” Sherry says. “If you don’t sweat the small stuff, it doesn’t get done.”

Dave adds: “We plan ahead a lot. There are cruisers who say, ‘Oh, we just go.’ But I think you miss a lot if you do that. You end up in the wrong place, the wrong season, you get hit by weather that you wouldn’t if you were just watching what was going on. We have our next year planned out. We know where we’re going, pretty much. We know what the route is, we know when to go, and all of that.”

Sailing the world is not cruising the Virgin Islands. It takes years. It takes a good boat. It takes money. “It takes somebody who knows the boat and can make repairs in out-of-the-way places,” Dave says. “You can’t get too seasick. You can’t get too scared of being a thousand miles from shore. You can’t have a lot of family issues back home.”

Stir in a thirst for adventure and compatibility, and you’ve got the McCampbells. Which explains why the Florida pair will likely join the rather exclusive club of cruisers who have circumnavigated.

Dave, 77, a former US Navy diver, hatched the dream and acquired the boat in 1996. It was a beat-up 1980 CSY 44 Walkthrough Cutter for sale at $65,000. It had been chartered for 20 years, was in “horrible” shape, and needed 10 years to replace virtually everything to cross the Pacific. He named the boat Soggy Paws for a cat that dipped its foot while drinking water.

Sherry, 66, whose US Navy father took his family on a yearlong Caribbean cruise the year she graduated from high school, later led a women’s race team while programming computers and looking for a partner with a well-equipped boat for long-distance cruising. “I dated a few guys who said they were sailors, but they were dock people,” she says. 

Theirs was a quick courtship. They met March 5, 2006, sailed together on May 19, and on June 25, Dave asked her if she would go around the world with him. After working through a neatness divide, they married in 2007 and took off. “About once a month, we invite some people over,” Dave says with a chuckle. “That ends up being a mad scramble to clean up the boat. That works for me.”

As of this writing, they are docked in Malaysia. They make an annual trip home to see family and friends, pick up boat parts, get medical and dental checkups, and take a break from the small floating worlds they’ve occupied 24/7 for 16 years. In 2015, they ­enlarged their world by buying a St. Francis 44 catamaran, paid for with the sale of the CSY and $100,000 that Dave inherited. 

The monohull was, by then, 45 years old and becoming a maintenance black hole. After sailing on a catamaran, they came to admire sailing flat, with a heel of less than 5 degrees—“a huge advantage because you don’t get anywhere near as tired,” Dave says. “When underway, I can do things that I never could before: work on a computer, relax. The equipment is much more modern. It goes faster. It has so much more room for the stuff we’ve got.” 

They transferred the name; furnished a watermaker and refrigerator/freezer; upgraded the electric system (powered by solar panels), saildrives and interior lighting; and extended the hulls at the stern to create a dive platform. They’ve made hundreds of dives in their years afloat.

With her computer and communications skills, Sherry has compiled an online circumnavigation encyclopedia that details virtually every aspect of what they’ve learned. The site has neatly organized “compendiums” with indexes by year, by country, by task. There are 82 “maintenance” entries, 53 under “Indonesia,” and several dozen “passages.” From entry procedures to pirate precautions to how to make wine from rice in Muslim countries to historic World War II battle sites (Dave’s father, David, was a flying ace and Medal of Honor winner), their site is a day-to-day, sometimes hourly, account of what it’s been like to sail halfway around the world. The site has received half a million views.

The high points for them were long, slow island hopping in Micronesia and Fiji, the first with few other cruisers, the second with an active social net. “I used to fall asleep in geography class,” Sherry admits. “But now I’m discovering geography one country at a time, one person at a time. We’ve tried to learn about 10 different languages.”

The lows were slogging passages, upwind, against a current, in midsquall: wet memories that, with time, lose their edge. Oh, and that time on route to the Solomons when one of their engines died.

With good retirement plans that have actually increased in value, the McCampbells have also been able to park their boat and travel to other countries by air. Coming home to Florida has been a culture shock, in terms of politics and wealth. “This crazy United States isn’t where we left,” is all Sherry wanted to say for the record. 

Their view of the world has also changed. “There are little things that we had no idea about,” Dave says. “The number of people who are living just fine with no money at all in some of these out islands. They’re able to survive, do their own fishing and farming with essentially no income, just barely getting by but still having a good time, smiling and very welcoming to us.”

As members of the Seven Seas Cruising Association, they carry a tub of ­supplies to trade or give away. Sherry’s first impulse to carry lipsticks and makeup was ­welcomed in French Polynesia but not in the Solomons. “They want fishing gear, T-shirts, towels, soap, things for their kids: pens, pencils, paper, stuff they could use,” Dave says. And ­eyeglasses. Inexpensive ­drugstore magnifiers. Anybody over 40, because of the sun, had cataracts and wanted glasses.

If their good health holds, Dave and Sherry plan to head for the Mediterranean this December, up through the Red Sea. According to their current plan, by the time they finally get home, 20 years will have elapsed.

“One of our worries is, we’ve been out 16 years and we’re still only about halfway around, and we need to get the rest of the way around before one of us croaks,” Dave says. 

Sherry adds: “We’re still alive. We’re still having ­adventures at our age.” 

Jim Carrier taught himself to sail on Long Island Sound in a $100 Snark he carried atop his Mustang. After it blew apart in a million foam beads on I-95, he bought a 1970 Allied Seabreeze yawl and sailed it 15,000 miles across the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

The post This Ol’ Boat: Halfway Around and Aiming to Cross Their Wake appeared first on Cruising World.

Imagine losing your chart plotter midway through a passage. Now, imagine tossing out your autopilot, compass and all the paper charts too. Navigating thousands of ocean miles without modern navigational equipment takes sailing to a whole new level. 

Or, rather, it returns us to the roots of ancient sailors, using nature to find our way. 

More than a millennium ago, traditional Polynesian explorers voyaged between far-flung islands using a suite of natural clues: the direction of swells, the flight path of birds, the position of stars, the color of clouds. 

The Polynesian Voyaging Society is reviving the art and science of wayfinding with replicas of ancient voyaging canoes. Since its inaugural voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976, the society has inspired people worldwide to embrace traditional navigation and Indigenous knowledge. The voyages made by hundreds of crew members have sparked a cultural renaissance. 

“We use voyaging to inspire other Indigenous communities about reclaiming their culture and how that’s connected to caring for the Earth and oceans,” says Sonja Swenson Rogers, the society’s communications director.

Last week, the society announced the Moananuiākea Voyage, a four-year circumnavigation of the Pacific that will launch June 10 from Juneau, Alaska. Two canoes, Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia, will carry 400 rotating crew members an estimated 43,000 nautical miles. The plan is to visit 36 countries and archipelagoes, nearly 100 Indigenous territories and more than 300 ports—all using traditional wayfinding.

“Every day, a navigator needs to make 5,000 observations, of a wave or a bird or a star, and make 500 choices about trim, course, steering, and then make two decisions at sunrise and sunset,” says Nainoa Thompson, CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and a master navigator.

Thompson was the first Polynesian in at least 600 years to use wayfinding for long-distance, open-ocean voyaging. He studied under Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the Micronesian island of Satawal, who led Hōkūleʻa to Tahiti on her first voyage. European colonizers believed the native peoples accidentally drifted across the sea, but modern wayfinders have proved that skilled explorers can navigate purposefully and precisely between Pacific islands just as their ancestors did.

During the past four decades, Thompson has dedicated much of his time to training new navigators from Hawaii and other Pacific islands. He says the goal of the Moananuiākea Voyage is to ignite a movement of 10 million “planetary navigators” to help steer “our island Earth” toward a healthy, thriving future. “This is about not just the oceans; this is about taking discovery and moving it towards choices and…action that we believe is going to help build a future that is good enough for our kids,” Thompson says.

Moananuiākea (the Hawaiian word for the Pacific Ocean) will be Hōkūleʻa’s 15th major voyage. Hōkūleʻa will be shipped on a barge from Hawaii to Tacoma, Washington, on April 16, then make its way north to Auke Bay in Juneau, Alaska, the traditional lands of the A’akw Kwáan. On June 15, Hōkūleʻa will begin its circumnavigation of the Pacific after a ceremony with leaders from Taiwan, French Polynesia, the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, and New Zealand (which the Maori call Aotearoa). Traditional canoes from First Nations will also be in Auke Bay to pay homage to Indigenous peoples and communities in Alaska, Rogers says.

Hikianalia will join the voyage in August in Seattle, and then the sister canoes will navigate south along the west coasts of North and South America. In spring 2024, the canoes will begin sailing through Polynesia, arriving in New Zealand during the first half of 2025. From there, the voyage will move north to Melanesia, Micronesia, Palau and Japan, where the canoes will be shipped to California at the end of 2026. The circumnavigation will wrap up with a sail from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and a round-trip visit to Tahiti in spring 2027. 

“The incredible, beautiful cultural revival—it’s a big part of the voyage,” Rogers says. “We want to share our story and hear others’ stories.”

Follow the Moananuiākea Voyage and learn more at hokulea.com and waahonua.com.

The post Polynesian Voyaging Society Plans Four-year Circumnavigation of the Pacific appeared first on Cruising World.

The short answer: Always bring your sense of humor, and always leave your societal cares and woes. 

The longer, more complex answer starts with a question: How do you use your boat? 

Many folks daysail on the weekends. Fine. They need only the basic tools and supplies to get them back to the dock they just left. However, my wife and I are occasionally at sea for 48 days—and once, in the Indian Ocean, we went four and half months without provisioning because, happily, there is nowhere to provision in uninhabited, blissful Chagos.

Back in the 1950s, when I started out, all offshore vessels were heavy-displacement  craft. They had cramped living space but much cargo capacity, which was good because once America faded over the transom, chandleries were almost nonexistent. International payments were nearly impossible. There was no overnight shipping. We attempted to bring everything with us—weight and space be damned.

On my Endurance 35 ketch, Carlotta, in the early 1970s, besides the usual impeller, zincs and filters for our Four-107 engine, I carried a spare head gasket, prop, raw-­water pump, starter motor, alternator and four injectors—drawing the line only at a spare diesel fuel pump. This was ­perfectly normal. Hell, I’ve known boats that carried a complete set of spare sails while shoving off across the Pacific.

However, there were four problems with this approach. One, the weight of all these heavy spares added up. Two, ditto the cost. Three, they took up space. And four, often when you went to use the spare starter motor that you’d so carefully brought aboard seven years and two continents ago, it wouldn’t work. It would have been damaged by salt corrosion. I’ve probably purchased a dozen expensive head-gasket kits that never actually made it into the engine. One drop of salt water beat me to the punch. 

Today, boats are lighter and have far less stowage. Even if they could afford the weight, modern boat interiors are optimized to sell at boat shows, not necessarily to function well at sea. There’s barely room to stow a few cans of soup; forget such bulky items as starter motors or delicate items such as head gaskets. 

Worst, there’s more and more dependence on electronics and electrical stuff. I’ve happily cruised on vessels with hand-cranking diesels that had no wires going to them whatsoever. My current diesel, however, probably has 20 to 50 electro parts. And, of course, the rusty metal box that houses all these integrated circuits just happens to have ended up directly below our amidships cockpit steering pedestal that gushes water in a full gale like a lawn sprinkler. (I’ve installed an extensive water shed just above the engine to compensate.)

Progress? In terms of fuel economy, perhaps. In other ways, certainly not. And the future is plain: Soon, all injectors will be electronic as well.

I realize that I’m an old fart. Carlotta, along with my 52-foot John Alden schooner, Elizabeth, and my 22-foot double-ender, Corina, all had kerosene running lights. Those Fresnel-lensed Perko units worked pretty well for the 32 years we lived aboard these craft.

Was I unusual in the amount of spares I used to carry? Perhaps. Once, in the Mediterranean, while running late for a wild party on the Italian island of Sardinia, we received a forecast for light airs. We anchored in a Greek cove for a couple of hours to swap out our slipping Hurst transmission. It’s easy if you’ve got the proper tools, and oh, what a party it was! Then again, a DIYer like myself can get carried away. I don’t have a welding machine or a metal lathe aboard, but I envy circumnavigator Tom Lemm of the pinky schooner Le Papillon, who does. 

So, what should a prudent modern mariner carry aboard today? If well-heeled, not too much. There are well-stocked chandleries in the Bahamas, Caribbean, Panama Canal, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa and Brazil. Marine service outlets are everywhere, for a pretty penny. 

And, of course, luck plays a part. My buddy Woody was nearing the end of his circumnavigation when lightning struck his boat in the mid-Pacific. After putting out the numerous fires (including paperback books that ignited where they touched chainplates), he happily announced to the crew that he carried a spare electro everything—GPS, VHF radio, depth sounder, alternator and more. Alas, despite each of these units being bone-dry, unconnected and stowed in sealed plastic-foam containers, none of them worked. The force of the lightning strike had been that strong.

Poorly funded or work-as-you-go circumnavigations have to carry far more spares and tools. My stand-up, vise-equipped tool room bristles with mechanical, electrical, plumbing and woodworking tools. I don’t have just an adjustable wrench or two; I have sockets from tiny to inch-and-a-quarter in both imperial and metric sizes for quarter-, three-eighths- and half-inch drives. Plus, a long breaker bar. Open-end and box-end wrenches. Short and long extenders. Torque wrench? Of course. Three sizes of crowbars? Why not?

Do I use these often? Yeah, I do—especially on the boats of friends who don’t know their Loctite adhesive from their Never-Seez lubricant. 

But back to the practical advice: You need to carry the stuff that will break. The top of this list is electrical autopilots. If I’m in Auckland, New Zealand, and a friend sails in from the Lesser Antilles, I always say, “I heard you had autopilot problems.” Chances are, it’s true (unless they have a Monitor or other dependable mechanical-steer device like we do). 

Next is watermakers. One popular brand eats so much money that owners joke that they should switch to Dom Pérignon because it would be cheaper. Freshwater-pump systems also regularly fail unless you follow their strict maintenance schedule to the letter. Doing so would leave you little time for anything else. 

Heads, of course, are crappy to work on. It is everything I can do to not deep-six my two; the only reason I don’t is because I have such a sizable investment in their spares. I carry two complete pumps and a half-dozen joker valves, as well as every moving part, gasket and O-ring in the whole stinkin’ mess. 

My engine requires the most spare parts. I now carry a single spare injector and a spare raw-water pump, plus the usual impellers. I carry six each of the primary and secondary fuel filters in case I get a batch of bad fuel. Luckily, neither rusts. However, I carry only two spare lube oil filters because they do rust. (How counterproductive can you get?) 

Fluids are another problem. I carry enough oil and five-year coolant to replace what’s inside my engine, plus a few quarts so that I don’t have to deal with gallons in a seaway to top off. Yes, I carry 2 gallons of distilled water for our batteries as well. 

We carry a spare prop and carburetor for our wonderfully dependable, ultralight Tohatsu 10-horse. Ditto, a spare meter of Hypalon and extra glue for our Caribe dinghy. (We keep our inflatables carefully covered from the sun at all times, and we get 12 to 14 years of hard, daily use out of them. An amazing value.) 

My wife, Carolyn, has a 1950s Pfaff sewing machine that has circumnavigated numerous times aboard various boats. We stock all the threads, grommets, snaps and DOT fasteners to do almost anything fabric-related aboard. Our dinghy cover, sail covers and dodger are all in good nick. Do we make our own sails? No, but when our staysail blew apart in a Pacific gale south of the Cooks, we managed to stick it together long enough to get to New Zealand. Ditto when the entire head of a (used) jib pulled out off the Cocos Islands.  

Thanks to our humidity-controlled dry boxes, we don’t have moisture problems with our 12 hard drives, six lenses and two DSLR cameras. 

Our Para-Tech sea anchor and Jordan Series Drogue don’t require any spares, and we’re careful about chafe on the 1,200 feet of cordage and spare anchor rode that relates to them. Yes, I carry a spare windlass motor; no, I’ve never used it. 

Sadly, the tools I use most often these days are contained in my two small electrical toolboxes. These contain my ohmmeter, test lamps and terminal crimpers. I’d say that I work on my rig about one minute for every hour I work on my too-needy electrical system; those modern conveniences don’t come cheap in terms of weight, space, money or time. Example: I just installed double USBs in the aft and main cabins, as well as at the nav table and fo’c’sle. 

The hardest part of preparing for an ocean crossing or circumnavigation is to keep in mind that my life as an offshore sailor is not about the boat; it’s about the voyage. The boat is just a tool. It’s the experience a wise sailor seeks. One reason that I and my lovely bride of 52 years are still on our honeymoon together is because we understand that ease is a false god. 

To each his own, of course. Our idea is to sail to Chagos and enjoy Chagos—not to work on our vessel in Chagos. Not to update the autopilot’s firmware. Not to drunkenly shop online from paradise. Do you really think air conditioning improves the cruising experience? I don’t. Electric hatches and davits? Sheet and halyard winches? Vacuum-packed freshwater toilets? 

Really?

If you take it all with you, then you’ll never be able to get away from it.

Once, I received a gift of a state-of-the-art satphone from an editor. I politely attempted to refuse, but the publication firmly insisted. One perfect day in midocean, that same publication called me and hollered because of a misplaced comma or something equally trivial. My perfect day wasn’t perfect anymore. I brooded for an hour or two, then told to Carolyn to get our video camera. 

“Are you ready?” I asked. 

“Yes,” she said. “I’m recording.” 

“Excellent,” I muttered as I Frisbee’d the satphone into the 20,000-foot-deep blue sea. At the next port, I sent off a letter. I enclosed the SD card with my resignation letter. 

Ah, much better.

The post What Should You Bring With You When Packing for a Circumnavigation? appeared first on Cruising World.

Barry and Sue Parkin had already lost one sail. They were really, really hoping that they wouldn’t lose another as they screamed toward the finish line.

Their No. 3 jib tore straight across and blew apart the second time they took the helm of their recently purchased Oyster 625, Papillon. It was a 2013 build, and the sails that came with it were probably a decade old, with levels of wear and tear that they were still sussing out during September’s Oyster Palma Regatta off Spain’s Balearic Isles. 

“Every time we did a sail maneuver, it was the first time we’d done it on that boat,” Barry says. “We were working on how to get these sails up.”

Now, it was the last of three days of racing, and Papillon was in a battle for first place with the Oyster 625 Peregrine Falcon. With their résumés as Olympic sailors, the Parkins certainly had their competition worried, but what had started out as a 5-knot breeze had whipped up to a 20-knot blow. As they pushed the boat on the last leg of the course, they didn’t know if the old genoa would hold.

“These were laminate racing sails,” Barry says, adding that they had deteriorated just by being stored. Still, the Parkins kept the pressure on. “They have some good crew on Oysters. Some of the other boats had professional sailors on board.”

If you had asked the couple a few decades ago whether they would likely find themselves in that kind of a race, aboard that kind of a sailboat, they both likely would have said no. But now that they’re both 58 years old, with three of their four children out of school, they’re starting to think about sailing a lot differently. 

Back in the 1980s and ’90s—when you didn’t have to be a full-time sailor to compete in the Olympic Games—Barry and Sue were both good amateurs. He’d grown up in southwest England, in Falmouth, while she was raised in Brightlingsea on Britain’s east coast. They both learned to sail and race as kids and continued racing through college, until they graduated and got jobs. Sue became a math and physical education teacher, while Barry became a graduate trainee as an engineer with Mars Inc., building and designing production lines.

“We both then carried on racing at the highest level we could, using all of our vacations and weekends,” Barry says. “Sue went to the Olympics very young. She went to the 1988 Olympics in the 470, then again in ’92 and ’96. She did that while continuing to do women’s match racing in keel boats between each of the Olympics while still working full and part time.”

It took him a bit longer to get to the Games, but while working his way through different jobs with Mars and ­racing all over the world, he kept at it. “I really had a serious attempt at the Olympics at the end of ’94, when I was 30,” he says. “I got together with a team, and we went to the Olympics in ’96 and 2000.”

It was during the run up to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta that Barry and Sue became really good friends as teammates. They married soon after. 

Meanwhile, Barry’s career at Mars kept advancing, all the way to global head of procurement and sustainability, the job he holds today. “I’ve worked for them for 37 years now,” he says. “During the period when I was training for the Olympics, I was at director level, and they supported me by giving me a lot of time off to train. But the week after the Olympics finished, I went back to work and carried on with my career.”

Still, both he and Sue have continued to race—now for Uncle Sam, as US nationals who split their time between Connecticut and Florida. Ahead of the Oyster regatta in September, Barry competed in the International Etchells Worlds in Cowes, England, and he’s planning to compete in the Etchells World Championship in April on Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Some of their kids too have caught the bug; 24-year-old Jack was a world youth champion who’s now an investment banker at JPMorgan in New York, sailing in his spare time, while 16-year-old Freddie—still in high school—became world youth champion on the 420 in July 2022 on the North Sea.

Sometimes, just for fun, they all head out on Long Island Sound to race against one another.

“Riverside Yacht Club in Connecticut, where we live in the summer, has the biggest frostbiting fleet in the country,” Barry says. “These are singlehanded, and on any given Sunday in the winter, you’ll have about 50 boats on the start line. It’s all weight-equalized, so we can all race each other. We’re very competitive. [My sons] generally beat me now—not always, but generally. I say, ‘Sure, you can beat me in a 10-foot boat, but maybe not in a 30-foot boat.’”

The couple did have boats of their own before buying the Oyster 625, with their biggest previously being a 36-foot Sessa powerboat for cruising in the Northeast (because, Barry says, “there’s not a lot of wind in the summer up there”). But with Freddie now looking at colleges and the other three kids well into adulthood, they have a vision of setting a course much farther into the distance. 

“Susie’s always had this dream that once the kids are gone, we’ll head off and do some cruising, see parts of the world we’ve never seen,” Barry says. “We have this idea of sailing around the world.”

Hence, the shopping began for a boat that would let them do it. Oysters are built near where Sue grew up in Britain, and the couple knows people who work for the yard. They always liked Oyster yachts—a premium brand made for shorthanded, comfortable, bluewater cruising—but what really sold them was the Oyster owners’ association and the company’s Oyster World Rally, a fully supported, global circumnavigation that starts and ends at the Caribbean island of Antigua.

“You’re cruising in company with the technical support and the peer support,” Barry says. “They train you, and you have great social events. So it lowers the bar on doing that trip considerably, versus heading off on your own. It makes it accessible to people who don’t have a lot of experience, which is us.”

The biggest challenge, he says, will be learning to make sense of such a complex boat. He’s learning all the Oyster 625’s systems—generators, watermakers, ice makers, air conditioning, navigation equipment—that never factored into the Parkins’ racing lives. 

“Then there’s the challenge of being on a boat day after day after day,” he says. “All of that is completely different from the challenges of racing on a small boat, where you’re on the water for maybe six or eight hours, maybe an overnight race, but it’s a sprint. You’re concerned about what might break on the boat, but you have very different safety considerations.”

So far, they’re happy with their choice of Papillon. Buying Hull No. 5 (previously Lady Mariposa) substantially reduced their required upfront investment, and they’ve put the boat into the Oyster Yachts charter fleet at a weekly base rate of $22,000 to help offset their expenses. This winter, Papillon will be in the Caribbean, where they plan to cruise in between charter use. For summer 2023, the boat will be in New England, and they hope to do the Newport Bermuda Race in 2024. 

Somewhere along the way, they’re ­eagerly anticipating spending their first-ever night aboard while sailing offshore.

“I’ve spent many days and nights on boats in the past, but an Oyster is ­pretty luxurious,” Barry says. “You’re not ­slumming it. The owner’s cabin in the back is full width. It’s really, really nice.”

And, of course, they’ll be racing Papillon when the opportunity arises, as it did in the Balearic Isles shortly after they took delivery in fall 2022—when they were in a battle for first place aboard their boat that they barely knew, and weren’t sure if the genoa would hold.

Despite their best efforts that day, the old sail gave out on them after about five hours of racing, just before Papillon got to the finish. Peregrine Falcon took the top spot. 

“We had to put up a different one. It was just another older sail, but that cost us the win,” Barry says. “But we were there to have fun, so we weren’t that upset. We learned a lot about the boat, which sails great. It will do 9½ knots upwind and 12 knots off the wind with an asymmetric up.”

Barry, Sue and all their friends who were on board that day are eager for another shot at a win. Their next opportunity against the Oyster fleet will be the Oyster Antigua Regatta in April, based at Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour.

There’s likely to be a sizable roster of skilled competitors there too, given that the regatta will include a celebration of Oyster’s 50th year in business, as well as a welcome home for boats completing the 2022-23 Oyster World Rally. 

Fair notice to all: By then, the Parkins will have Papillon’s new sails. 

The post Learning to Fly: Longtime Sailboat Racers Discover Cruising On Their New Oyster 625 <em>Papillon</em> appeared first on Cruising World.

Ginger and Peter Niemann were recently awarded the 2021 Blue Water Medal by the Cruising Club of America for their inspirational efforts and achievements during two sailing circumnavigations. Their circumnavigations took them to the Arctic’s northern latitudes and Patagonia’s southern latitudes; their second trip around the world included several rigorous, non-stop passages due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

The Niemanns’ first voyaging boat was Marcy, a 47-foot sloop they converted from a schooner. From 2006 to 2010, Marcy took them west-about from Seattle almost 50,000 miles around the world, including rounding the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.

In 2017, they departed Washington State on Irene, a 52-foot fiberglass ketch. Taking the opposite direction, east-about, through the Northwest Passage and staying in the northern hemisphere, they never crossed their first circumnavigation’s track. They sailed to Greenland, Newfoundland, and the US East Coast before crossing the Atlantic to Ireland.

After touring the U.K., Atlantic Europe and the Mediterranean, they found themselves suddenly stranded in Turkey when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Like many other international cruisers, they were stopped in their tracks. Unwilling to leave Irene, they considered staying in Turkey; sailing back home across the Atlantic; or heading home to the Pacific Northwest through the Suez Canal. They chose the third option and sailed for two months and 6,000 miles non-stop across the Indian Ocean during the monsoon to Batam, Indonesia.

When they arrived in Batam they found their previously negotiated permission to stay in Indonesia revoked. Nearby Singapore let them stay, but they were required to stay onboard their boat. They lived onboard at the Changi Sailing Club for five months; in all, they spent nearly 300 days unable to go ashore. On February 2, 2021, they departed on the long cruise home to Washington State via Japan and the Aleutians. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Peter and Ginger persevered, cheerfully adapting to a seemingly endless onboard quarantine and undertaking lengthy sea passages under difficult conditions. CCA found their persistence and ingenuity truly inspiring. CCA recognized their teamwork, courage, good humor, flexibility and innovative spirit as evidence of their exceptional personal and sailing mettle and awarded them the 2021 Blue Water Medal.

The Blue Water Medal has been awarded regularly since 1923 to reward  seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities that might otherwise go unrecognized. Past winners include Eric Tabarly, Sir Francis Chichester, Rod Stephens, Webb Chiles and Eric and Susan Hiscock.

The post High-latitude Circumnavigators Awarded 2021 Blue Water Medal appeared first on Cruising World.