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.

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Of the 62 years I’ve lived aboard—52 of them with my wife, Carolyn—the vast majority of our time has been spent laying on our own hooks. Occasionally we’re required to pick up a mooring, but rarely do we go to a dock. Our record is two and a half years without touching a dock in the Caribbean; currently, while in Singapore, we’ve been 24 months without using our fenders. The longest we’ve stayed at a dock was five months in 2010 in Turkey; before that, I can’t even remember. 

Why?

We like the privacy. Like kings of yore, we feel more at ease with a large moat surrounding our residence. I write a minimum of four hours a day, and there are fewer interruptions on the hook. We don’t end up with any stowaways. Rats are a real problem in the developing nations, as are roaches, termites and ants. Theft is much less of a problem. Ditto, marine salesmen, government officials and waterborne Jehovah’s Witnesses (who have managed to visit us twice!). The boat pivots into the wind. Swimming is merely a matter of falling in. Our cockpit meals are romantic, intimate affairs, and afterward, we can’t be charged with a credit-card reader. And best of all, living on the hook is almost always free—free in terms of money, yes, but also free of the hassles that marina life invariably includes. 

Does this require special equipment? Yes, you need, in particular, the right attitude. We don’t live aboard ­because it’s easy. It’s not. It is wonderful (in part because it isn’t easy). Ease is a false god. Living aboard, the way we do it, is labor-intensive. But we’re happy to pay that price for the amazing, astounding personal freedom we enjoy year-round in the farthest corners of the globe. 

Yes, at 70 we still have manual sheet winches; no, we don’t pay for a gym membership. 

We believe that the entire world is a gourmet feast, and our vessel gives us the widest possible menu. We anchor somewhere exotic for as long as that destination offers us the highest-quality life imaginable, and when it ceases
to, we move on. 

Currently we’re headquartering out of Singapore, with stunning Indonesia, diverse Malaysia and breathtaking Thailand a short sail away. Since our winds here are monsoonal, not trades, we can sail downwind to the Nicobars, India, the Maldives, Chagos, Oman, Yemen and the Horn of Africa, and then wait a month or two and toddle back to Singapore, also downwind! 

How cool is that? 

Obviously, our dinghy is extremely important, and everything about it is carefully considered. We use a 10-foot Caribe RIB. Our last one, under heavy use, lasted us 12 years because we treated it kindly and Carolyn made it a new sun cover every five to seven years. 

Our RIB is powered by a lightweight and powerful 10 hp
Tohatsu outboard, supplied by a 3-gallon tank. This allows us to plane with two people, a bag of groceries, and a carton of beer—a good universal weight standard for yachties. The Tohatsu burns little fuel if we don’t run it wide open. 

Not only is the dinghy our way of getting ashore and enjoying our cruising destination, but it also serves as a truck to bring our folding bikes ashore and to transport our propane, water, fuel tanks, and more. It also serves as our sports car and tour bus. We’ve met many wonderful locals far up rivers, in mangrove sloughs, and across shallow bays. 

In place of an expensive outboard tiller extension, we use a properly sized piece of PVC pipe with an extended dead-man cable so I can stand up as I carefully weave through coral-strewn waters. (In St. Martin, someone gave us an expensive outboard tiller extension; it lasted an hour before being stolen.)

Our dinghy painters are always made from 3/8-inch yellow poly because it floats and, thus, avoids our prop while backing in reverse. We never allow our dinghy to stay in the water overnight. Instead, we hoist it on our davits, on the hip against the hull, or put it on deck. We never intentionally tow it offshore. Thus, during our last four circs, we’ve never lost or damaged our tender. (If, for some reason, you must tow a dinghy offshore in brisk conditions, string a short nylon rope with a fender off its transom so it doesn’t surf off.)

One more factor to consider with regard to our dinghy: We often use it to help others in distress. And because of that, we want it to be 100 percent ready at all times because we might need to instantly engage in highly dangerous activities with it: perform a rescue, tow a boat, chase away a bad guy, help another vessel kedge off.

Equal in importance to our dinghy is our ground tackle. Our primary anchor is a Rocna 55-pounder on 240 feet of 10 mm galvanized chain. While this works 90 percent of the time, it’s being ready for the other 10 percent that separates the men from the boys. We have a Viking 60 aluminum Danforth-style anchor and a 44-pound stainless-steel Bruce on deck as well, each with its own nylon rode. We employ these regularly as a second and third anchor, and contend that if you’re too lazy to do this, it is best to keep hugging the dock. 

Since we’re now in our 70s, our windlass is quite dear to us. While we circumnavigated twice without one when Carolyn was a hot-hot chick, now we simply don’t have the muscles or endurance that we had when we were half our age. 

The windlass, of course, hauls up our anchor, but it does far more. For instance, whenever a lubber anchors too close, it allows us to just smile and move. And if 10 minutes later, a lubberly friend of that lubber anchors too close, we move again. We never stand on our rights because our experience is that inconsiderate people don’t last long in the marine community, and besides, life is too short to deal with such folks. We’re sailors. We can sail away, and often do. 

Occasionally we use our windlass to haul cargo such as water or 40-liter fuel jugs aboard using a bridle. Once we even used it to lift a quadriplegic friend aboard because they wanted to go for a sail. When we loaded our M92B Perkins diesel aboard, we hoisted and lowered it into place via our main boom, with trusty Carolyn at the windlass foot switch. I laughed at the estimate the yard gave me to hoist it aboard by crane.

Another tool in our quiver is our stout twin spinnaker poles. If there’s an annoying swell in the harbor, we use them to deploy our twin triangular flopper stoppers, while at the same time we sheet in our flat-cut, fully battened mizzen to smooth things out. 

Needless to say, we select our anchorages carefully. Often we’re anchored in completely safe harbors. But there are times when we’re not. Occasionally we might just drop the hook in the lee, and during these times, we are always ready, 24/7, to go to sea. 

Numerous times we’ve left the harbor at dusk and gone offshore to heave to as a blow approaches, much to the amusement of our less knowledgeable, more dock-trusting friends. Recently we and another boat did so, while seven cruising boats that didn’t ended up on the beach. Oops. Each of those skippers claimed it was a freak storm, but it wasn’t. It was just a capful of wind from the opposite direction, and totally predictable because a singlehander named Ross, on a British twin-keeler, and I read it correctly.

We had no watermaker for our first two circumnavigations, but on Ganesh, our 43-foot French ketch, we have a small desalinator that we use to make 3 gallons per day. We also have three levels of on-deck rain-catchment systems, similar to what we used one time when we stayed in deserted Chagos for four months. 

Jugs play an important part in our life because we’re often lugging fuel from cheap gas stations instead of expensive marina pumps. Ditto for filling water tanks because we often use them to replenish water in one of our five separate tanks, designed so that if we get contaminated water, it doesn’t ruin our good water already aboard.

Batteries play a role in our ability to stay land-free as well. We have eight 6-volt Trojans in our house bank and four in our cranking bank, and they’re recharged by nine solar cells. Overkill? It sure is (intentionally) on sunny days in the tropics, but not on rough fall passages in the North Atlantic. We try to never crank up to charge, and haven’t in the past five or six years, anyway.

Do we wear foul-weather jackets that cost more than 10 times the price of our first liveaboard cruising vessel? No, we wear PVC stuff and buy it from where commercial fishermen shop. For us, it’s both the best value and the driest. (Yes, we replace our cheap PVC foulies every two decades or so—why not?)

Unlike others, satphones are not for us. To communicate, we use our VHF and SSB radios in conjunction with a Pactor modem to send off our stories and book manuscripts. Though in Singapore, we do have to carry mobile phones to use TraceTogether to reduce COVID-19 transmission, something we’re happy to do despite this being the first time I’ve ever owned a mobile phone. (I haven’t given anyone the number except for my wife and daughter. Why would I possibly want a device that could interrupt my dinner?)

A few other liveaboard tidbits to consider: While we never lock our boat in densely populated Singapore—we know these 6 million folks are honest—we do lock and alarm her in other areas. To do it, we’ve cobbled together a burglar and bilge alarm for 20 bucks that not only rings loudly and lights up the deck, but it triggers our masthead and spreader lights as well. And though we also lock our dinghy in certain anchorages, in others we don’t bother because both the RIB and outboard are clearly painted and marked in unusual ways, which is one of the reasons they are often passed over by lazy “teefs.” 

We never leave anything valuable on deck. Ashore, we dress modestly and don’t wear flashy jewelry. If possible, we use inland ATMs. A few of the ATMs closest to the dinghy docks in Thailand are known to sport skimmers, which can capture your login info. We also carry five to seven debit cards from issuers in the United States, New Zealand and Southeast Asia so they can’t all be shut off at once in case of civil war, revolution, insurrection or natural disaster.

The result is two happy, healthy and loving people, smitten not only with each other, but the entire kooky world as well. And we do it all while living on the hook.

While Cap’n Fatty Goodlander frets about being anchor-bound for too long in Singapore, his wife, Carolyn, turns lemons into lemonade by studying Mandarin.

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Not you too, Son,” my father said sadly. 

It was the late 1950s, and the crew of the schooner Elizabeth, wearing rags, were lined up for a dressing down on the foredeck. We’d been heading into a setting sun in the Florida Keys and had run hard aground on a shoal. We’d then attempted to kedge off—with a large anchor, a clinker-built rowing dinghy named Lil’ Liz, and a stiff, tarred-hemp anchor rode that handled like unruly razor blades. 

Father wasn’t happy. Our schooner had a 52-foot length on deck and a 64-foot length overall. This Alden-designed schooner weighed three times more than a modern vessel. She drew 8½ feet. Her iron keel was long and narrow. Our anchor windlass was manual and inefficient. Darkness was only two hours away. A northerner was coming. There were building swells too. 

All of this was bad, but what happened next was far worse. Carole, my oldest sister, made a sound. It was kind of a yelp but strangled in mid-cry. All of us became wide-eyed at her insolence until Mother, aka the Sea Siren, began to laugh. Gale, the middle child, also began to giggle, chuckle, and then outright hoot and guffaw. Jerry, our ship’s dog, let go a howl or two to show her solidarity with the sisterhood.

I’m loath to point out the petty sexism of male sailors back in the day, but all this made unfortunate sense to my provincial father. To him, women were the weaker sex. This was an emergency. They should be dutifully following orders, not giggling or openly mocking their captain. 

I, a mere lad of 8 years, stood off to the side, leaning toward my beloved father’s view. But then, for an instant, I saw the absurdity of what was happening—a sun-bronzed, freedom-crazed skipper dressed in a Tahitian pareo aboard a dilapidated schooner that had somehow sailed out of the 1920s was yelling at his cowering family because he’d failed to have the sun over his shoulder as he entered a tropical port.

I realized that nothing can turn an easygoing man into a drill sergeant faster than a tiller in his hand. And that was when I too allowed a giggle of amusement to escape, causing my betrayed father to utter those fateful words: “Not you too, Son.”

Yes, we learn as we sail. I’ve sailed a lot, so I can claim­­—however falsely—to have learned a bit. This little episode taught me that, on any pleasure cruise, there’s the skipper who sweats the details and a crew who doesn’t—nor should they be asked to. If you assume the mantle of captain, you have to accept the responsibility and the realization that your guests shouldn’t (and can’t, really) share the burden. 

Let’s back up a tad. I’ve been scribbling about boats for 50 years now. I’ve written a lot of how-to articles. This column, though, is about how not to. Put another way, it’s about where I fall short as skipper. 

One place where I fall short is failing to appreciate the shore-centric reality of my guests. For instance, we were in Vava’u, Tonga, and sailing to the capital city of Nukualofa, where our San Francisco guest would fly out the next day. This was an adult who had traveled the world on land, graduated from an Ivy League university, and had the smarts to buy Apple stock when Jobs and Woz were still in the garage. 

Everything was fine. It was a perfect sailing day in paradise. Ganesh, our 43-foot ketch, was rail-down and broad-reaching in 24 knots of breeze. The water was gin-clear. The verdant islands slid by like a Winslow Homer watercolor. 

Our guest was utterly beguiled by our lifestyle for more than an hour. Our decks were dry. Everything was going fine until our guest awoke after a nap, looked around, blinked, looked around frantically, and then began to cry aloud. 

I’m not talking about a whimper. I’m talking about a full-on I-don’t-want-to-die scream. “Oh, my God! Where’s land? Point to land! Oh, God! Take me back! Take me back to land right now!”

I was not terribly compassionate. 

“What?” I sneered. “You didn’t realize that islands 40 nautical miles apart had water in between? Or that from the deck of a small vessel, you can’t see too far?”

My wife, Carolyn, ­cautioned, “Berating a blubbering lubber who may have just been mentally scarred forever and consequentially sentenced to therapy for the rest of their natural life isn’t going to help.”

The truth is, I’m sea-centric. I view the world through the keyhole of a sailor, not a rock-hugger. I remember being in a severe Pacific gale with Mexico on my lee. While I desperately attempted to claw off the coast to get sea room, that guest asked me without guile, “Think we can make it into safe harbor before the worst of it?” 

Land is the danger, I thought, not the solution.

I’ve spent decades in the Caribbean. A guest once asked me, while transiting the incredibly deep Puerto Rican trench, if we were going to anchor after dark so that we could get some sleep. 

“How much scope do you think that requires?” I mused. “Thirty-thousand feet times five?”

Having headquartered out of St. John in the US Virgin Islands for two decades, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked if the islands go “all the way to the bottom.”

“Nah,” I always say. “They just drift around, which isn’t a problem unless they bump into each other, which is probably what sank Atlantis.” 

Yes, numerous charter guests have brought tiny vials with them to collect samples of “all the different colors of the seawater.”

We’re currently on our fourth circumnavigation. While we have friends who have completed the Big Fat Circle in a quick two years, we usually take five to seven years, while enduring dock lizards who constantly ask us, “How many days does it take to sail around the world?”

What, they’ve never spun a globe? Never compared the speed of a modern jet in relationship to a half-tide rock such as Ganesh?

Yes, dirt-dwellers are set in their ways. The last time we were in Thailand, I was forced to shut off our water-pressure pump because a stubborn guest insisted on run-run-running his shower. The result wasn’t me being mad at him as much as him being mad at me. “Come on, Fatty,” the fellow said. “This is 2020, not the 1600s.” 

Yes, as expected, he was a tad busy sightseeing when we repeatedly ferried out the jugs to refill our 80-gallon tanks. (Occasionally, our 3-gallon-per-hour desalination unit works, but only if we can afford the amperage.)

But speaking of electrical issues, I was between Bermuda and St. Maarten when a guest came into the cockpit with a hair dryer and asked where they could plug it in. 

“Puerto Rico?” I replied. “St. Barts, maybe? Argentina?”

The same answer applies to the question, “Where is the shower’s hot-water valve?” 

Of course, during the first few decades of my offshore career, we used celestial navigation. When asked if I knew our location as we cruised the Caribbean in the 1970s, I could honestly reply: “Sure. South of North America and north of South America.”

Oh, those were good ol’ days. You could tell folks on St. Thomas that you got there by sailing south until the butter melted, then banged a left.

Seriously, I used to clear Sandy Hook and square away to a point well west of Bermuda, then run down my latitude with noon sights (which didn’t require accurate time) and finally turn to port. Just to be sure, I’d switch on a transistor radio. If the AM signal got louder, I was dead-on course.

Easy-peasy, right? Why make it difficult?

In the 1970s, I had a Bulova Accutron wristwatch with a tuning fork. I could walk aboard any vessel with my sextant in one hand and with my HO publications and nautical almanac in the other, and I could guide that vessel anywhere on the planet. If I wanted a big tip at the end, I’d leave sheets of paper around, filled with scribbled equations to “figure out the continental drift,” I’d say mystically. 

Oh, there are lots of little tricks to make life easier offshore. In late December, it can be extremely difficult to beat 2,000 miles against the reinforced trade winds from Florida to the Lesser Antilles. The seas are large. Falling into the troughs is like hitting concrete. And this boat-­jarring crash doesn’t happen one time, but rather a million times. The results are predictable. 

Thus, whenever the bilge of a vessel that I was sailing eastward across the Thorny Path would suddenly fill with water, I’d just dip and taste my finger, and then smile while the rest of the crew tried to find the leak instead of checking out the ill-chocked, split-open white plastic freshwater tank under the V-berth. 

I know, cruel.

Often, of course, I’d just be delivery crew. Once, off Bermuda on a custom Little Harbor 83, the skipper came up to relieve me just before dawn. I noticed that his clothes were inside out. He’d dressed in a dark cabin and hadn’t wanted to turn on a light to disturb his sleeping wife. Knowing that a captain is always right, I quietly informed the crew. It wasn’t until lunch that it slowly dawned on the poor fellow why his entire grinning crew had their clothes on inside out. 

Then there were the liveaboard parents of a girl. They couldn’t refuse her anything, not even a small aquarium, which they wedged into a bookshelf while offshore. Alas, in the Indian Ocean, they got into a gale that pounded their three-masted sailboat. One wave struck them so hard that the aquarium was dislodged above the sleeping mother. She was doused with salt water, sand, small rocks and a couple of flopping fish. She screamed at her husband, “Honey, we’re aground!”

On a similar note, I installed a burglar and bilge alarm on my Endurance 35, Carlotta, when I built her from scratch in Boston in 1971. This fire bell was super-noisy. Carolyn’s sister and her boyfriend flew in from Chicago to visit us in Bequia, and I soon had them offshore in heavy weather. It was rough. The motion of the seas was so violent that the boyfriend chose to sleep on the cabin sole between my wife’s bunk and mine, to prevent him from being thrown around the main cabin.

Somehow, around midnight, Carlotta hit a pothole (an empty space between waves). Our bow plunged, and the force of the crash bounced our bilge alarm on. 

I’d never heard the alarm under battle conditions, and was sure our hull had broken open like an egg after being struck by a rogue wave. I jumped out of my bunk and was horrified to discover in my grogginess that not only were we sinking, but also that the hole in the hull was so freaking big that I was standing on the back of whale.

The boyfriend’s point of view was a tad different. 

“There I was, scared out of my mind offshore, when a loud noise went off—so loud and so terrifying that I couldn’t think straight,” he recalled. “It was pitch-black inside the swaying cabin, and all my rationality had fled. Next thing I knew, 175 pounds jumped on my stomach, whooshing the air completely out of my chest. Before I could manage to suck back in any oxygen, a bare foot jammed down my exposed neck, cutting off my air supply and preventing me from breathing in. As I began to black out and see the approaching white light, my only thought was that I was certainly hearing the last bell, for sure.”

He never visited again. Last we heard, he’d purchased rural property in Indiana and puked each time he saw a picture of a seascape. 

I know, I know. I should have more compassion, right? 

And this isn’t mentioning Joker, our cat, whose favorite thing during night crossings of the Anegada Passage was to catch flying fish on the foredeck and then proudly deposit them (wet, alive and wiggling) onto the chests of our sleeping guests below. 

Oh, the screams as they levitated.

All of which is why Carolyn often slaps her forehead as she informs our guests, grimly, “I’ve made only two mistakes in life: Saying ‘I’ and ‘do’ were both of  ’em.”

The post Fatty Goodlander: Where I Fall Short as Skipper appeared first on Cruising World.

The boaters have spoken. US Harbors has announced the winners of its 5th annual contest to find the “Best Harbor” in the U.S., with Block Island taking the 2024 title of Grand Winner. 

The crowd-sourced contest, open to the public for voting, is held online each year. Participants vote on their favorite harbor out of the 1500+ harbors for which US Harbors provides tidal and coastal weather data.

Communities with the most passion for where they live, boat and fish generally end up winning the event, and the 2024 winners include several new harbors that were not previously in the winners’ circle.  

Grand Winner, Best Harbor in the U.S. for 2024: Block Island, RI 

Just a short ferry ride from Rhode Island, Block Island is a beautiful little getaway with rolling hills and lovely beaches. The island’s vibe is relaxed and charming, perfect for biking, hiking, and exploring its stunning nature trails. With nearly half of the island dedicated to conservation, it’s a haven for wildlife and offers spectacular views from spots like Mohegan Bluffs and the iconic Southeast Lighthouse. The main village, Old Harbor, is full of cozy shops, delicious restaurants, and plenty of spots to just sit back and soak in the island’s laid-back atmosphere.

Comments from 2024 Voters About Block Island: 

“I’ve sailed to Block Island from Stamford, CT, for 20 years. I stayed in the Great Salt Pond in one of the three marinas or, if they were full, on a town mooring or at anchor. I fell in love with Block Island and now live here.” —Bennet W. 

“Such a magical spot! We love it so much we’re getting married there in August!” —Luke B.

“Because of the efforts of the Block Island community and a strong environmental ethic, along with the support of environmental groups, the Great Salt Pond remains protected and a treasure of nature.” —Douglas M. 

“Best Boating overnight harbor, period!” —Richard C.  

2024’s Top 10 Voting Results  

1. Block Island, RI (also 2024’s Northeast regional winner; first time on winners list)  
2. Destin, FL (also 2024’s Gulf Coast regional winner; first time on winners list)  
3. Padanaram, MA (2019 “Best Harbor” Grand Winner)
4. Bristol, RI (first time on winners list)
5. Shelter Cove, Hilton Head, NC (also 2024’s Southeast regional winner, and Southeast regional winner in 2022 and 2021)  
6. Pillar Point, Princeton, CA (2024’s Pacific Coast regional winner; first time on winners list)  
7. Gloucester, MA (first time on winners list)  
8. Charlevoix, MI (2021 “Best Harbor” Grand Winner; also 2024’s Great Lakes regional winner)
9. Brookings, OR (first time on winners list)  
10. DepoeBay, OR (2022 “BestHarbor” Grand Winner)

Other 2024 Regional Winners:  

Oyster Bay, NY (2024’s Mid-Atlantic regional winner)

The post Block Island Voted 2024 Best Harbor in the U.S. appeared first on Cruising World.

It was March, and I’d survived another winter in Maine. Since the fall, I’d been following Richard Thomas, a fellow Mainer, on Facebook. He’d been sailing his Reliance 44 cutter Strider to Bermuda and then to the Caribbean. By late March, he was holed up at Bequia. 

“Got a spare bunk aboard that boat of yours?” I wrote. “I have a need to go sailing.”

I’d met Richard, a building contractor, two years earlier in Antigua’s English Harbour. I was there to cover the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, and he’d just arrived on Strider from the Bahamas. We’d been sharing notes ever since. 

Our plan from Bequia was to sail down to Grenada for two days, and then island-hop back up the chain, anchoring in a cove or harbor every night. Eventually, we’d visit eight islands—Union Island, Carriacou, Grenada, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Les Saintes and Guadeloupe—but first, we’d spend a week on Bequia, prepping the boat, provisioning and spending a little time enjoying the tourist life.

I booked a mid-March flight to St. Vincent, and 20 fellow travelers and I caught the last ferry to Bequia. The hour-long ride got us into Port Elizabeth by 9 that night, and I was aboard Strider with a rum in my hand by 9:30.

Richard had assigned me a bunk in a small cabin aft, near the companionway. It was tight, and with no overhead hatch to scoop in a cooling night breeze. I began looking at the cockpit. It also was a bit tight, but the seats were long and wide enough to stretch out. Nights are warm enough, so only a sheet is needed. I’d brought my own. 

An Old Friend

The next morning, Richard and I headed into town. As we approached the dinghy dock, I saw that Bequia hadn’t changed much in 15 years. My family and I had spent part of a season here in 2010, boat-schooling our kids on Searcher, our Bowman 57 ketch. 

It was good to be back. The dinghy dock was crowded with another dozen RIBs. Since it was a cruise-ship day, dozens of tourists struggled out of a launch and then lined up dutifully, led like sheep to a half dozen open-air buses bound for a two-hour tour. I knew they’d only scratch the surface. Bequia is one of the smallest inhabited islands in the Eastern Caribbean, but it has a huge reputation in the cruising community. The 5,000 residents are welcoming, and Admiralty Bay is an open anchorage with enough space for 100 yachts, and a cruise ship or two.

This island has no mass-market resort chains. There are a few small, luxury hotels, including Bequia Plantation Hotel, Bequia Beach Hotel and The Liming Hotel, along with B&Bs and rental spots scattered about the hillsides. In season, though, the anchorage may have more bunks afloat than are available ashore, with most of the boats carrying a well-worn copy of the Sailor’s Guide to the Windward Islands by Chris Doyle.

Richard and I shouldered our shopping bags, dodged the tourists and made our way to the Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which houses the island’s sole ATM. If there’s a cruise ship in the harbor, the machine will be out of cash by noon. A handful of small grocery stores is also here, but you have to visit them all, as not one has everything. You can stop along the way at an open-air bar for a bottle of Sparrow’s rum, made on St. Vincent.

Shopping for food is a challenge. You don’t go in with a list; you see what’s available and then decide what’s for dinner. “It’s the availability of meat and poultry,” Richard said, pawing through a chest freezer. “That’s the challenge. There’s never any steak, hardly any hamburger, occasionally some pork, but lots of chicken parts, mostly legs, rarely any breast meat.”

All of the food on Bequia comes from St. Vincent on ferries. Fruit and vegetables are available at open-air fruit and vegetable stands, some no larger than a card table. The covered market was abuzz 15 years ago, full of stalls bursting with fresh food, but as I walked through in March, only two stalls were open. The local entrepreneurs must have discovered that they could simply set up shop on the street and not pay the market rent. Doris’ Fresh Food and Yacht Provisioning is an upscale, air-conditioned store with everything that wealthy expats and visiting sailors desire, from Swiss chocolate to exotic coffees and wine. Doris also has a large frozen meat and poultry section, at a price. 

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive on Bequia. The center of Port Arthur is busy with vendors hawking their wares and pushcarts overflowing with produce and other stuff. Customs and immigration is here, in the post office. An outdoor mall is nearby with tables of produce and fruit, crafts and handmade jewelry. At one of the cafes, you can grab a few hours of Wi-Fi for the price of an iced tea or lunch.

Marine chandleries, sailmakers, a canvas shop, freelance mechanics, carpenters, electricians and people who can fix anything are all on the backstreets. There is fuel and water at the yacht club. Daffodil Marine Services has a fuel and water delivery barge, and does laundry, can provide ice, and has a dockside restaurant and guest house. A second fuel barge also makes the rounds in the anchorage.

There’s good snorkeling a dinghy ride away, and two dive shops have tours and services. Lower Bay Beach is great for body surfing if there’s a northerly swell running. Hiking trails lead up and over the hills to more beaches. You could spend a month here, as Richard has done.

Years ago, Bequia was known for its Scottish shipwrights, who crafted schooners for the island trade. Some boats hunted whales. After the war, boatbuilding petered out, so the locals turned to building model boats to sell to visiting yachtsmen. Locals still hunt whales today, under an international license. They can kill no more than four in a year. To learn more about the island’s traditions, take the $2 bus ride from town to the Bequia Boat Museum. Outside, under a roof, is a collection of original wooden whale boats, each 30 feet long and built on the island. 

On our way back to the bus stop, we had lunch at the Good Mood Cafe. It’s owned by John and Donna Fisher, an English couple who have been here for 15 years. John was an electrical and plumbing engineer back in the UK. He could fix anything. Now, he has more work than he can cope with, fixing washing machines, dryers, stoves and other appliances. Sitting on their second-story porch for a lunch of freshly made English sausage rolls, it was hard to visualize a nicer spot. A jungle of greenery surrounded us.

Boat Work to Do

Richard and Strider had been anchored in Admiralty Bay for a month, and the prop and hull were becoming a marine garden. They needed scraping. The same was true for the dinghy’s bottom, which we did on the beach. These tasks took up a day or so.

A few days before Easter, we’d re-anchored closer to shore, on the north side of the bay, to get out of a pesky swell. That first night, the band at a nearby bar kept us up until midnight. It wasn’t that they were loud; it’s that they were really bad. When that band folded up, another band just down the beach kept going, until 3. 

“I’m not putting up with this,” Richard told me the next morning. “This is Easter weekend. This place is going to be hopping. Let’s get out of here and head south. We can get to Union Island in half a day.”

And that’s what we did.

The post Why Boaters Love Bequia appeared first on Cruising World.

If you’ve spent any time in the West Indies on a boat, then you may have already figured out how to connect your phone to the Internet. Understanding phone service and digital roaming is paramount. Here’s what I recently discovered.

You can always go ashore and, for the price of a beer or an iced tea, connect using the bar’s Wi-Fi. And all along the island chain, from Grenada to the US and British Virgin Islands, cell phone service is available, even a few miles offshore.

In March, I flew to the islands to meet a friend on his boat in Bequia. As my plane touched down on St. Vincent, my iPhone lit up: “Welcome to St. Vincent and the Grenadians. You are now connected to Spectrum Mobile. Outgoing calls are 12 cents a minute; 25 cents for incoming calls; texts are free; and roaming data is 10 cents a megabyte.”

It wasn’t always this easy to connect. In the early ’80s, I’d call my office in Maine from a pay phone nailed to a palm tree near the taxi stand at the Cruz Bay ferry terminal on St. John. In 1983, AOL came online. With a bag phone—the one with an antenna that you placed on your car roof or cabin top—you could connect to AT&T and AOL while cruising in the USVI. Over in the BVI, rates were outrageous, but if you anchored off the caves or in Kelly’s Cove on Norman Island, you could hit the AT&T tower on top of St. John, and you were in.

It’s been a scramble ever since to find inexpensive access to Wi-Fi while living on a boat in the islands. In 2010, we were boat-schooling our two kids on Searcher, our Bowman 57 ketch. While in Grenada, we learned of a Wi-Fi hot spot in English Harbour, Antigua. For $50 a month, we had Wi-Fi on board with an antenna on the aft deck, a booster and a router below. We could use Skype to make calls.

It’s much easier to make calls today, but the costs can still add up. After a week on board in Bequia, I checked in with Spectrum at home and learned that I’d already run up a $30 bill. The Digicel store in the middle of Port Elizabeth had a sale on: I could get a monthly plan with 25 GB for $42. It also had free texting and an ample number of free phone calls.

However, I’d have to buy a new phone or replace the SIM card in my phone, with a new one ($19) that had a new phone number, thereby losing access to my contacts and email. And, service would only be good from St. Vincent and the Grenadines south to Union Island, but not in Grenada or the islands to the north.

That would not be ideal when we left to go sailing for a few months. I emailed a friend who’s been skippering a charter boat in the islands for 30 years. He had a plan for unlimited Internet all over the Caribbean, and unlimited calls in the Caribbean and toward Europe— but not to the US or Canada. To get that plan, I’d have to visit one of the French Islands to buy a new phone, or switch SIM cards. 

Still not ideal. I noticed that Richard Thomas, the owner of the boat I was aboard, was on his phone all the time. I asked about his plan. 

“AT&T,” he replied. “It’s $10 a day for unlimited phone calls, in and out, data and texting.”

“That’s costing you $300 a month!” I shrieked.

“No. It’s $10 a day for the first 10 days, then free for the rest of the month,” he said.

A $100 maximum? That was less than what I pay at home in Maine for Internet and phone service. But, there was no AT&T store handy, so I muddled through with what I had. Each time we neared an island, my phone lit up with a welcome from Spectrum and the rates for that new island.

Richard discovered that he had a spare cell phone onboard, one he’d bought in the French Islands earlier in the year. “All you need to do is reactivate it and top it up,” he told me.

When we reached Rodney Bay on St. Lucia two weeks later, I went looking for the Digicel store. “I want to use this French phone as a hot spot,” I told the clerk. “That way, I can still use my iPhone to access the Internet.”

“Yes, that will work,” he said. “You’ll need a new SIM card.”

It would cost me $15. For another $40, I could get a plan with 25 GB of data and free phone and text, for a month. 

“Will it cover the islands north to Antigua?” I asked.

“Yes, but not the French Islands,” he said.

I could live with that. I bought in. At the end of the few weeks of sailing, I had spent $60 for the plan but used only 250 megabytes of data.

When I got back home, my Spectrum bill for the two months in the Caribbean was only $60. 

The Bottom Line

Next time I’m off to the islands, I’ll stick with my Spectrum International plan. If I need a lot of Internet access, I’ll go ashore and spend the morning at a cafe with free Wi-Fi. 

Check your phone’s international plan before you depart, and if you plan to work offshore or in remote locations, then consider investing in Starlink. If your only requirements are accessing PredictWind and the Windy weather app, then Iridium GO! is a more cost-effective option. 

Or, you can always throw the phone over the side and go off the grid entirely. Which, some people tell me, is also quite nice.

The post Connected in the Caribbean: Learning Lessons Underway appeared first on Cruising World.

The mid-February day started out like so many other sailing events I’ve enjoyed over the years: meeting up with a new crew, scoping out the particulars of a boat I’d never sailed, reviewing the sailing instructions and forecast for the day’s race, and then dropping the dock lines and heading out. Such is the life of an itinerant sailing writer, and I’ve never taken any of it for granted. 

Little did I know, however, that before this day was done, I’d hear something bordering on the profound. 

It was the opening day of the St. Petersburg, Florida, edition of the Sailing World Regatta Series, sponsored by Cruising World’s sister publication. As he often does, my longtime J/24 mate Dave Reed, the editor of Sailing World, threw me an assignment: Go racing with a team of seasoned homeboys from the St. Petersburg Yacht Club on the day’s distance race, a relatively new element of the regatta for the cruiser/racer set. I was more than happy to oblige. 

Which is how I made the acquaintance of Tim Landt and his close pal Doug Jones, who attended high school in the same prehistoric era that I did, and who have been racing sailboats together ever since. The pair were in the same class as a couple of other St. Pete luminaries, Ed Baird and Allison Jolley, who each rose to the pinnacle of the sport—the former as a winning America’s Cup skipper, the latter as an Olympic gold medalist. “Doug and I were different,” Landt said, laughing. “We had to go to work.”

Landt grew up racing Optimists and Lasers, moved into crewed boats with a Columbia 24 and a Cal 40, and even owned a couple of big Ted Irwin-designed cruising boats. But he seemed proudest of his current ride, a relatively rare Nightwind 35, a centerboard sloop designed by his friend and hero, the late Bruce Kirby, who also created the ubiquitous Laser. “I’d been looking for one for years,” Landt said. “They never come up for sale.” This past October, one did, and he pounced. 

This was only the third race aboard his new Charisma, but he downplayed it. “I got all my old buddies together,” he said. “We’re just out here to have fun.”

But Landt was—how shall we put this?—an aggressive and vocal racer, and he wasn’t there to fool around. He nailed a port-tack start; was on the foredeck for a sail change as the breeze built; called out spinnaker trim early and often; and was more or less a cyclone the entire race, in which Charisma scored a respectable fourth in the 13-boat Cruising division. A very good sailor, Landt’s enthusiasm and exuberance were infectious; it’s always great to sail with a dude who just bloody loves it, and it was clear he did.  

Back at the dock, Landt shared a cool story about naming Charisma: As a kid, he landed a gig as a gofer for a wealthy captain of industry in the days of the great Southern Ocean Racing Conference series. The guy had a boat by the same name. “He was so humble,” Landt said. “I always said if I got a nice race boat, I’d call it Charisma.”

And then, he added: “You’re a writer, you might appreciate this. An old commodore, who was also my coach, once told me that the key to sailing is recreation. That’s what you have to turn it into. Now take that word apart, it’s re-creation. You always have to re-create yourself through your recreation. And that’s what sailing does for me.”

In the moment, I laughed and thanked him for a fine day. Only later did it occur to me that Landt had put into simple terms something I’ve always felt about sailing. I’m sure that a ­truly manic surfer or alpinist would say the same thing. That time away from the daily grind, laser-focused on the natural world, is priceless. Every time I’m on the water, whether on a daysail or after crossing an ocean, I come away refreshed and renewed. A new man. Hopefully a better one. Re-created. 

It always keeps me coming back for more.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

The post The Re-creation: My Day at the St. Pete Regatta appeared first on Cruising World.

The arrival of spring has us thinking about new adventures and distant horizons—and, along with that, the long to-do list we need to tackle to enable those ambitions. Why not take some time for yourself during this spring commissioning season to refuel your cruising passion with a great book?

Whether your literary taste leans toward adventure, mystery, romance or food, we’ve got you covered. Need a veterinarian’s advice for sailing with your furry friends, or inspiration for a circumnavigation that won’t break the bank? We’ve got that too.

Here are our top-seven picks for stories we guarantee will lift your spirits, fill your sails, and help you set an inspired course to summer cruising.

Addicted To More Adventure: Risk Is Good, Enjoy It
By Bob Shepton

Warning: Don’t pick up a copy of the Reverend Bob Shepton’s latest book, Addicted To More Adventure, if you’re susceptible to temptation and thrill-seeking. By the time you’ve finished the final chapter on his travels through Antarctica, you’ll be typing “expedition-ready sailboat” into your browser. Shepton, born in Scotland and a former officer in the Royal Marines, was one of the first people to organize and lead sailing expeditions for school-aged kids. He sailed round the world in his Westerly 33-foot via Antarctica and Cape Horn with “school leavers,” a journey that he dubbed the “first school group to sail round the world.” Shepton, 89, is well-known for leading several Bill Tilman-type sail-climbing expeditions to Greenland and Arctic Canada, where Shepton and his crew completed numerous first-ascent climbs. In his approximately 150,000 miles of sailing, he’s crossed the Atlantic 15 times and made 13 visits to the Arctic. His expeditions have made close to 60 first ascents of mountains and rock faces in Greenland and Arctic Canada. Aboard the 33-foot sloop Dodo’s Delight, he transited the Northwest Passage east to west (2012) and then west to east (2013). This adventure is recalled in the opening chapter of the book. He’s been awarded the Blue Water Medal, the Tilman Medal (twice), the Goldsmith Medal for Exploration, the Ocean Cruising Club’s Barton Cup (twice), the OCC’s Vasey Vase (three times), and the Vice Commodore’s Medal (three times). He was voted Yachtsman of the Year (UK) in 2013 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. He has barely missed a beat since CW published his profile in 2020, although the book’s postscript mentions the passing of his beloved wife and the sale of Dodo’s Delight. Shepton has two previous books, Addicted to Adventure and High Latitude Sailing.

Capsize
By David Kushner

A naked corpse with a cracked skull is discovered by the Swedish police at sunrise in a cemetery next to a stolen schooner, aground along the seawall. The medical examiner determines that the dead man had been exposed to enough plutonium to build a nuclear bomb. Blue-eyed Bengt Linder, a marine insurance fraud expert, and police inspector Anya Wallin, a tall, blond Swede, are assigned to the case. The body count builds, followed by a shootout with a corrupt superyacht owner and a wild chase through Corsica, Cyprus, Lebanon and the south of France. The action in Capsize catches you like a strong breeze on a tight reach and propels you toward a high-stakes finish—a perfect read for a long, rainy weekend while waiting for weather.

Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love and Loss
By Susan Cole

Susan Cole spent 30 years on and around boats, and her poignant memoir, Holding Fast, captures her complicated, decades-long relationship with the sea. The adventure begins when her partner, John, talks her into buying a leaky, 1903 48-foot Fire Island Ferryboat. After 10 years on board, a fire destroys their home and all of their possessions. Several sailboats follow, as does a three-year sail through the Caribbean with their young daughter, Kate. Through a layered narrative, Cole exposes her growth from hesitant sailor to empowered cruiser, culminating in her experience of riding out Hurricane Mitch alone, upriver in the Rio Dulce. Seasoned sailors will appreciate Cole’s origin story; new sailors will enjoy her honesty. In the end, her book is an adventure story wrapped in a love letter to her husband John, who loses his battle to cancer. Cole earned a Bachelor of Arts at Barnard College and a Masters in Psychology from Columbia University.

Where There Is No Pet Doctor: A Manual for Cruisers, RVers and Backcountry Travelers, Fourth Edition
By David W. LaVigne DVM

Dr. David LaVigne has practiced veterinary medicine for more than 40 years and was a longtime liveaboard cruiser and a rear commodore in the Seven Seas Cruising Association. He has presented numerous lectures on pets and written dozens of articles about our furry friends’ lives on board. His website includes links to a list of webinars and classes on cruising with pets. This is the fourth edition of LaVigne’s resourceful guide on traveling with pets. The updated edition includes global pet quarantine and entry requirements, common health issues, medications, skin care, eye care and ear care. A rating system is included to rate procedures according to degree of difficulty and possible risk to the pet. While suturing a pet’s injury might be four stars (****Not Recommended), removing sutures or treating a soft-tissue injury rates one star (*Little Risk). He includes information on general first aid, fractures, medications, systemic problems, and diet. Sadly, the geriatric care section is followed by information on euthanasia and body care.

Hooked On the Horizon: Sailing Blue Eye Around the World
By Tom Dymond

In this entertaining and addictively honest memoir, two school friends cast off from England on a Nicholson 32, with dreams of sailing around the world. Though neither the boat nor the crew are ready, “sooner or later you have to jump,” Dymond writes. Their first jump out of Portsmouth takes them across the English Channel south to Morocco, on to the Canary Islands, and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. The big jump follows: Panama, the Galapagos Islands, the South Pacific and New Zealand. Through Indonesia, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean, battle scars harden the crew and boat, and they push on to a final path through the French canals and back to England, their circumnavigation complete and the “entire journey astern.”

Dymond dispels early in the story any idea that the cruising life is sunshine and rainbows, writing with a dry humor of the challenges that cruisers face while pursuing their dreams—the relentless beat to windward, the bureaucracy in Panama, the unending boat projects, and days spent waiting for weather. He looks back at three years of cruising and examines why, even at anchor among the simplicity and beauty, we are constantly caught up in wondering what lies over the next horizon.

The Hunter and The Gatherer: Cooking and Provisioning for Sailing Adventurers
By Catherine Lawson and David Bristow

Aussies Dave Bristow, the hunter, and Catherine Lawson, the gatherer, have spent the past two decades afloat. The couple, joined by their young daughter, Maya, have made conscious choices to live simple, sustainable lives on their 40-foot catamaran, Wild One. The Hunter and The Gatherer is a culmination of their two decades of travel, filled with 60 pages of provisioning advice (cracking coconuts, foraging ashore, growing sprouts) and 160 recipes.

“This is a book for ocean-loving foodies,” Lawson says. “Our food is for tiny galleys, long passages and perfect sunsets.”

The recipes are divided into three sections: Food for Hunters (Spicy Thai Fish Burgers, Baked Prawn and Noodle Rolls, Mussels Bianco), Food for Gatherers (Easy Persian Pilau, Red Lentil Bolognese, Power-Charged Tabbouleh); and Sweet Treats (Papaya Scones, Coconut Cake, Grilled Pistachio Plums).

“We call [all of] these recipes ‘faraway food,’ and create them for people who love to eat well but love to escape even more.”

Boat Girl: A Misadventure
By Elizabeth Foscue

Author Elizabeth Foscue, a boat kid who spent a slice of her formative years living aboard in the Caribbean, brings us this laugh-out-loud coming-of-age story about 15-year-old Caitlin Davies, a misfit teenager living on a sailboat with her parents in the British Virgin Islands. Short, scrawny and awkward, Caitlin has somehow managed to beguile Tristan, the cutest guy on the island, and to make a few stray friends. But when former owners of her family’s sailboat show up looking for the left-behind contraband that Caitlin has discovered under the yacht’s floorboards, the tropics really heat up. Funny and charming, Boat Girl reminds us of the angst of being a teenager, and the unexpected adventures of living aboard.

The post 7 Great Reads for Summer Sailing appeared first on Cruising World.

Too Tall,” as I call him, made a modest living banging nails in Lynn, Massachusetts, working in residential construction. We met while shooting pool on Revere Beach. He was intrigued to learn that I was building a 36-foot ketch from scratch. 

“What for?” he asked. 

“To make the big, fat circle,” I explained. “And to be free, really free, not consumer-­choice free.”

A few weeks later, during a backyard barbecue in Swampscott, Too Tall noticed a trailerable sailboat in the host’s two-car garage. It was an O’Day 19. His buddy told him that he didn’t have the time to sail it, and, worse, his wife was getting a new AMC Gremlin. They needed the space in the garage.

Too Tall left with the boat on his trailer hitch, to both their surprise. “Got it for a song,” he crowed to his wife while showing it to her in their driveway.

“Oh, dear,” she moaned. “That’s exactly what a pregnant wife needs: a hole in the water her husband pours money into.” 

Truthfully, it was a stressful time. His wife was worn to a frazzle, getting ready for the baby and taking Lamaze classes while working a full-time job. Worse, Too Tall knew that he was drinking too much while trying to cope with all the changes. He decided to cut down on the booze and concentrate on supporting their rocky transition from couple to family. 

The following week, his wife volunteered to re-sew the mainsail using a new, sun-resistant Gore-Tex thread she’d read about in a women’s magazine. Meanwhile, Too Tall assessed the centerboard. The previous owner had snapped it and lost the rudder in a storm. Too Tall came down to use my band saw, to rough-cut the shapes in marine plywood. 

“How long do you expect to be gone?” he asked, staring up at the half-finished hull of my 36-foot Carlotta.

“Forever, I hope,” I told him. 

“Aren’t you scared of drowning?”

“Aren’t you scared of driving drunk?”

“Touché,” he said.  

I didn’t hear much from him in the next few weeks. Later, I learned that he had a buddy who spray-painted trucks. The O’Day ended up with black topsides, a red boot top, and blue antifouling. 

For his birthday, his wife presented him with fitted sheets she’d sewn. She’d figured out where he kept the companionway key and measured for them. 

“We’re gonna need an Igloo cooler,” she mused afterward. 

The word we made Too Tall smile. 

Construction work took most of his time, and it was 18 months between buying his boat and sailing it. Naming the boat became a family matter as well. Too Tall rejected his wife’s Titanic Too idea and went with a suggestion from Martin, his just-beginning-to-talk son. 

The first time he sailed Mighty Mouse, Too Tall’s main halyard broke, but he managed to get back to the boat ramp under jib alone. The second time out, he took a cockpitful of water in a gust. From then on, he never fully cleated off his mainsheet. 

During the third sail, he ran aground, but, luckily, sand is soft. After that, he always taped a photocopy of his chart to his aft cabin face, right under the through-bulkhead compass he’d purchased on sale at Bliss Marine. 

He started racing at a local yacht club, and he was utterly amazed at how slow he could make a sailboat go. After one race, while he was ashore at the awards ceremony, the boat dragged and damaged its new rudder. So, Too Tall returned to my boat shed with questions about anchor type and ­whatever scope was. 

One evening, when his wife’s parents were visiting and they had a babysitter, Too Tall picked up his wife at Constitution Marina and sailed her to the Boston fish pier for dinner at the No Name Restaurant. She felt good tucked into his shoulder as they sailed. 

The O’Day eventually was replaced by a 22-foot Westerly Nomad—not a racer with its twin keels, but perfect for the mud mooring he’d wrangled in Winthrop. Then came the big breakthrough. With Martin now 5 years old, the family chartered a 32-foot sloop out of Long Bay, St. Thomas, and had the best 10 family days of their lives. His wife loved the Virgin Islands, Too Tall loved the trade winds, and Martin took to the water like a gleeful fish.

The first time out, his halyard broke. The second time, he took a cockpitful of water in a gust. From then on, he never fully cleated off his mainsheet.

Many of the local ­liveaboards in the Virgin Islands anchorages had kids, and Martin acted as the ­couple’s passport into many ­joyous cockpits aboard cruising yachts from all over the world. Sailing back to Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas as the sun set and Martin napped below, Too Tall’s wife whispered into his ear: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could make this moment last forever?” 

A Contessa 32, designed by David Sadler, had been damaged against a seawall in Scituate, Massachusetts, and the insurance company wanted to offload it. Too Tall didn’t know anything about fiberglass, but a few months later, he was an itchy expert. Their first family cruise was to Maine, where they blew out their genoa while sailing overcanvassed in a squall off Portland. Too Tall immediately revamped his reefing system, which worked flawlessly during the next summer’s cruise to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. 

By the time Martin went off to the California Institute of Technology on scholarship, the couple had already crawled “The Ditch” to Florida a couple of times on their Carl Alberg 35. From there, it was an easy jump to the Bahamas and, eventually, to wandering the Lesser Antilles. There, they bumped into many of our dear friends on St. John, in the US Virgin Islands. 

During this entire time, Too Tall made just about every mistake in the book, from running over his dinghy painter to leaving a dock without unplugging his shore cord. Once, while dragging in the Turks and Caicos as a tropical wave passed ­overhead, he’d been unable to cast off his anchor because of the splice at its bitter end. The following day, he’d cut off the splice and never belayed his anchor rode again without ­being able to cast it off instantly under load. 

But, dear reader, this ­column isn’t about Too Tall and his wife or how much fun they had, eventually, hanging in Panama’s San Blas archipelago and cruising along the east coast of Central America. 

It’s actually a column about Duncan and Barbara. 

Duncan, a just-retired attorney specializing in international law, was living in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. He’d nurtured a dream for decades of cruising offshore. He knew exactly the kind of boat to get. He found one listed for sale in Langkawi. It was almost brand-new, having spent most of its life on the hard at Rebak Island. 

Barbara knew nothing of boats, but what was there to know other than how to make a piña colada?

Duncan didn’t like the idea of heavy weather, so he had his sailmaker stitch up an asymmetric spinnaker along with one of those newfangled cruising chutes with the strings and holes. The thing that frustrated Duncan most was how long all the Malaysian shipyard workers took to mount stuff. His weather window was almost gone by the time his davits were installed, his cockpit fridge was chilled, and the new instrument array at the helm was blinking on. 

He asked me for advice. “Take it slow,” I said. “Just sail a few miles down the coast to a safe harbor, then venture forth as urge, experience and expertise dictate. Don’t scare yourself and, especially, don’t scare your spouse. Baby steps will get you to Cape Town, South Africa, faster than anything else.”

He intended to follow my advice, but those damn dawdling workmen. He’d pored over Jimmy Cornell’s books about weather windows. It was now or never. 

So, Duncan and Barbara set off to cruise Indonesia and then hop down to Australia’s remote territory of Cocos Keeling, without ever having overnighted on their boat. Hell, without ever having sailed their boat out of sight of land. Or within sight of it, for that matter. 

Within 12 miles of leaving, a wave boarded them (current against wind) in the Malacca Strait—and their $8,000 inflated life raft was trailing astern. The only thing Duncan could figure was that the factory-made bracket he’d purchased with it had been defective. How else could the raft have escaped? 

It was too rough to bring the dinghy on deck. He cut it loose. Barbara didn’t say anything at the time, but this scared the bejesus out of her. If they’d lost their life raft in the first two hours, how long would it take to lose the entire boat?

From that moment on, Barbara took to her bunk and prayed while silently resolving: marriage, yes; suicide by saltwater, no.

Their brand-new lithium batteries went flat, just like that. Without electricity in the house bank, they couldn’t use their autopilot and had to hand-steer. In a real blow. With the wind gusting into the mid-20s.

They didn’t have time to think, really. Only to survive. Sleep was impossible while hard on the wind. They’d become complete numbskulls but didn’t have the experience to realize it. All the hatches leaked—poured water below, really, much of it directly onto the navigation station, where, one by one, their new electronics failed. They wondered: How could so many different suppliers sell them so much defective equipment? Their smartphones were waterproof, weren’t they? 

Not that their smartphones worked. They were out of cellphone range. Or didn’t have the right SIM card. Whatever.

Damn, it was dark at night. They couldn’t get a weather report. When would this horrible wind stop? Thank gosh for their Garmin GPS. At least they knew where they were. Right by those tiny blue dots on the chart.

Bam!

The sound a 30,000-pound fiberglass vessel makes as it crunches up on a coral reef is horrible, and, of course, expensive. Within 72 hours of setting off on his long-awaited Indian Ocean cruise, Duncan called me and whispered in a still-quivering voice, “It’s a lot of work, isn’t it?”

“Offshore sailing is the most labor-intensive—and for some, the most fulfilling—lifestyle imaginable,” I replied. 

“Barbara doesn’t like it,” he said. 

Ah, yes. Blame it on the wife. How convenient. 

“It’s not relaxing at all.” 

I held my tongue. 

Yes, Duncan had a law degree and a pocketful of gold, but he little common sense and absolutely no seamanship. That can’t be purchased. It has to be earned. 

The bottom line: Duncan didn’t make one-hundredth of the mistakes that Too Tall had made. Duncan merely made them all within the first 48 hours, amid poorly charted foreign shores, while surrounded by rocks. 

“Don’t make any major life decisions right now,” Carolyn advised Duncan. “Relax. The scrapes on your hull can be fixed. Things will seem better in the morning.”

They haven’t called us back with their ultimate decision, but we know what it will be. They scared themselves silly. And that fear will take a long, long time to wash away. 

So much for baby steps. 

Isn’t there a middle way? A path between a lifetime of learning and ­absolutely none? Of course. We know many happy cruisers who, within a year or two of thoughtful coastal sailing, safely head offshore. 

Here’s the distillation of my 63 years of cruising the world: Seamanship matters. Money and BS, not so much.

The post Learning the Art of Seamanship appeared first on Cruising World.

Aside from the few sneak peeks I’ve shared on Sailing Totem’s social media, I’ve largely kept my new ink all to myself. For an entire year. Why? Because it’s personal! The flock of swallows marks, for me, the journey our family shared of sailing around the world together. A special time, an uncommon achievement, a journey we shared.

What is it about sailors and swallow tattoos, anyway?

There’s a mix of symbolism, superstition and tradition in the ink sailors choose. Tattoos have a history longer than we can imagine, with archeological evidence stretching back to the Stone Age and in disparate corners of the planet. By the time Cook voyaged in the 1700s, body art was an established ritual among sailors.

Why swallows in particular? Imagine the men in the age of sail (which was pretty much all men at that time) embarking on difficult and dangerous voyages from which many would not return. The superstitions associated with this era of sailing were one way for a sailor to feel a tiny bit of control over something which mostly was not in their control, and swallow tattoos are intertwined with these superstitions.

A swallow tattoo marked the achievement of a sailor’s first 5,000 nautical miles, which represented a literal survival at their profession. A second swallow, often placed on opposite shoulders, was a symbol of homecoming. Barn swallows return home from distant migratory grounds, something that probably resonated with sailors wondering whether they’d ever see the shores of their home again. And if they didn’t, well, other superstitions say the swallow would help carry the sailor’s soul to heaven.

Contemporary versions have a range of freestyle options, since color and fine detail weren’t easy for sailors using a needle and gunpowder to do. The “modern classic” is the mid-century Sailor Jerry style, popularized by the famous Honolulu-based tattoo artist (not named Jerry).

My friend Niki, aboard Grateful, has also added swallow tattoos along the way, with different designs reflecting destinations, artists or her own inspiration. Her most recent swallow is a traditional Marquesan style, inked by the artist Kaha not long after arrival in French Polynesia. 

“We researched the ways to be sensitive about having these new tattoos,” she posted. “The key is to speak to the artist and allow for something unique to be designed in conversation about what’s important in your life.”

Niki jokes that “it’s a family thing,” as she shares pictures of her husband Jamie’s swallows, and his sister Mindy’s, both done in Palma de Mallorca.

The rope on Mindy’s representing the knot she tied delivering their other brother’s catamaran both ways across the Atlantic.

I’m neither an artist nor a very creative person. It was a long process—and sometimes painful—to settle on a design direction that felt right and ready to take to an artist to refine. Like my Marquesan tattoo, I sat with the idea for months until the right concept gelled.

A design aspect that resonated with me was to add a bird for each 5,000 nautical-mile increment of our family’s circumnavigation. At the time we closed the loop, it tallied eleven swallows. My self-imposed deadline was to have the piece completed before we left Mexico, symbolizing the beginning of a new chapter in my cruising life.

Once landing on an idea, it still needed the right artist to bring to life. This took much longer than expected. I studied the styles of artists I could access to make sure they aligned with my own, and I seeked personal recommendations. After several false starts, test-driving some temporary designs and a few visits to Tucson, I landed on the right artist and an approach: fine detail, organic movement and a design that allows for expansion with more birds at some future inflection point.

This week, our daughter Mairen, who is an artist, shared her latest work. I swooned—our journey in swallows, interpreted again. (And no, I’m not getting this as another tattoo.) But I just couldn’t wait to proudly post a print she’s made. There are some bulkheads around here that feel like blank canvases, and I sense a new Totem crew tee shirt in the works.

On that note, the family printing business we’ve worked with for years is no more. If you know of an outfit we can support for printing and shipping a small range of Totem gear, please send us a recommendation.

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