As active seasonal ­cruisers seeking winter warmth, usually in the Bahamas, my husband, Radd, and I have spent many winter holidays aboard our Island Packet 40, Sasha, far away from family and friends back home. We do miss the gatherings and traditions, but no matter where we are, we try to embrace new ways of celebrating—joining local celebrations or attending local services—while preserving a few tried-and-true traditions from our land life. 

Nassau, on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, was the backdrop for one of our most memorable holidays. We arrived a few days before Christmas, got settled, and then set out to explore. That day’s mission was to visit the Bacardi distillery.

In all our cruising ­destinations, when venturing beyond walking distance of our harbor, we always use whatever public transportation is available (if any). Yes, we’re frugal cruisers, but public transport is a great way to interact with local people and absorb the culture. It’s always far more interesting than taking a taxi.

In Nassau, we were lucky: There’s an extensive bus system. New Providence is a fairly large island; if you want to head away from Nassau harbor and the downtown area to the island’s south side (“over the hill,” as the locals say), you must hail a taxi, get a ride or take the bus. 

After ensuring that we were going in the right direction, we asked our friendly bus driver if the Bacardi distillery was on the route. 

“No,” he replied, with a ­sorrowful head shake. Then, his face lit up with a wide smile. “But I’ll take you there.”

And away we went, the only two riders on the bus.

Once we got “over the hill,” we discovered a whole different world: homes with yards, small shopping centers, and no tourists. Eventually, we were out in the country. The driver took us right to the distillery’s entrance. We expressed our heartfelt thanks, and then he asked, “What time do you want me to pick you up?” 

The friendliness and ­courtesy of the Bahamian people are astounding.

After a pleasant tour and, of course, a rum tasting, we emerged with several bottles of Bacardi to restock our near-empty liquor locker on board. Sure enough, our new friend retrieved us at the ­appointed hour, and back “over the hill” we went.

Back on the boat, feeling festive, I formulated a plan. For as long as I can remember, my mom made special cookies for Christmas Eve. They were moist and creamy, with a hint of peanut butter perfectly ­complemented by chocolate centers. She always used packaged Brach’s Chocolate Stars, so we called them Star Cookies.

Of course, she passed down the recipe, one she’d modified through trial and error. I began to gather ingredients on the boat and realized that I had everything but the chocolate stars. It didn’t matter: The cookies are delicious with any small, solid-chocolate candy pieces for the centers. You can use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, even white chocolate.

When Christmas Eve arrived, we rode the city bus again, this time to attend a holiday service at the magnificent 300-year-old Christ Church Cathedral, a Nassau landmark. In yet another demonstration of Bahamian courtesy, a different driver apologized profusely for not being able to take us directly there but promised he’d get us within a short walk. We both wore wide smiles as easy-­listening Christmas carols blared out of the bus speakers. 

Late that night, back aboard Sasha, we feasted on the cookies, along with eggnog spiced with fresh nutmeg and a healthy shot of our recently acquired rum. Turns out it’s possible to be home for the holidays after all.

Star Cookies (yields 30 cookies)

Ingredients:

• 1¾ cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• ¾ cup butter
• ¾ cup creamy peanut butter
• ½ cup sugar plus ½ cup more for rolling 
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• About 30 small chocolate pieces
• Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. 

Cream together butter, peanut butter, ½ cup sugar and ½ cup brown sugar. Add egg and vanilla. Beat well, then mix until consistency is like dough. (It will be slightly wet.) 

Line a cookie sheet with baking paper. With your hands, form the dough into 1½-inch balls (about the size of a ping pong ball), and roll each ball in the remaining ½ cup sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. 

Bake for 8 minutes. Remove from the oven, place a chocolate piece on each cookie, and press firmly. Return the cookies to the oven and bake for 2 to 5 more minutes, or until the cookies are golden-brown and set. 

Let the cookies cool, and then sprinkle them with powdered sugar, especially if you miss snow. 

Prep time: 1 hour
Difficulty: Medium
Can be made: at anchor

Cook’s Note: 

Use a 1-tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop out raw cookie dough, then roll to shape into balls. A heaping tablespoon makes a perfect-size dough ball.

Do you have a favorite boat recipe? Send it to us for possible inclusion in Sailor & Galley. Tell us why it’s a favorite, and add a short description of your boat and where you cruise. Send it, along with high-resolution digital photos of you aboard your boat, to sailorandgalley@cruisingworld.com.

The post Sailor & Galley: Home for the Holidays appeared first on Cruising World.

Sailing south from Lefkas in the Greek Ionian Sea, I found a calm anchorage in a ­deserted cove on the east side of the hilly, wooded island of Ithaca. This was the home of Homer’s hero Odysseus, who was seeking to return home to his wife, Penelope. I, on the other hand, was seeking to get away from home and find a secure anchorage for the night. In deference to Odysseus, I kept the sails up in a desultory 10-knot breeze. I was always a sucker for the appearance of inauthentic antiquity. My Hanse 415 Adagio’s refrigeration, however, remained on with the Greek beer chilled. Odysseus would have been thrilled; the god Poseidon, probably not.

The next morning, I sat down in the cockpit to enjoy a freshly brewed cup of coffee. No sooner had I settled down than I heard the raucous noise of a high-speed powerboat. 

The only vessels that traveled that fast in the Mediterranean, apart from Italian speedboat cowboys, were the coast guard. Sure enough, the Hellenic Coast Guard roared into the bay and, slowing only a little, executed a tight U-turn around my boat. Their wake rocked Adagio violently. Annoyed, I nevertheless waved with what I hoped might be taken as a friendly but not overly familiar gesture. With no acknowledgment, and seemingly assured that there were no illegal migrants or unsanctioned toga parties aboard my ­Italian-flagged vessel, they sped off into the horizon. Paradise, or the illusion thereof, is invariably a fleeting phenomenon.

With no agenda or itinerary other than to get Adagio out of the water and fly home to Southern California in early November, I returned to my coffee and pondered the day. Avoid expectations, be open to what shows up, and let the day unfold, I reminded myself. The thought of calling my office or clients in the States did not even occur to me.

Conventional-cruising narratives had always told me that to genuinely experience a cruising lifestyle in locations such as the Mediterranean, I needed to fully drop out from my domesticated land life. This would include abandoning my ­business and the work I enjoyed, my friends, skiing, my home, and my physical-­fitness routine. For me, however, this posed what I initially saw as an insoluble conundrum: Did I really want to be that liberated?

As much as I was passionate about cruising, I also loved my lifestyle in Ventura, California, and, yes, my joint-custody dog, Murphy, from a recent divorce.

In 2008, at age 60, I came to the stark realization that my biggest enemy in life was time. This awareness led me to the conclusion that if I were going to live the balance of my life to its fullest, then I needed to start doing it now. I did not want to have any regrets, and I dreaded finding myself in a conversation with my orthopedist that began: “Well, Jim, you know you are at an age where you need to start slowing down. Have you considered taking up miniature golf?”

In the fall of that year, I chose to do the Baja Ha-Ha—the fun cruise from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico—with a friend. For the balance of the fall, winter and early spring, I mostly solo-sailed my 41-foot Wauquiez in the amazing Sea of Cortez.

I discovered that I thrived in solitude with total self-reliance, and I loved the ability to get away from it all, if only for two to three weeks at a time. Moving around the sea, I would berth my vessel in a secure marina for several weeks, and fly home to resume my work and land life in Ventura.

By fall 2015, I had spent two seasons in the Pacific Northwest, two seasons in Mexico, and eight months in the Hawaiian Islands following the Transpac race. Commuter cruising, as I came to call it, had become a chosen and well-trodden—albeit still adventuresome—lifestyle. I had become comfortable, if not confident, in my ability to schedule and meld my work, my team, and my cruising life. This skill allowed me to spend at least three to four months a year on the water.

In winter 2015-16, I looked for new commuter-cruising grounds. Cruising to the South Pacific did not appeal to me; where could I park the boat and return home? Nor did I relish long, solitary ocean passages. My limited bareboat experience in the Caribbean had left me with the impression—superficial, to be sure—that there was a repetitive sameness to these admittedly beautiful islands. The Mediterranean, on the other hand, held the allure of a rich history, varied cultures, big cities, quaint villages, and a friendly and engaging people. It also offered an established cruising infrastructure and secure marinas. I rationalized that if I continued working, I could afford to purchase a better boat in the Mediterranean.

I bought the three-year-old Adagio in spring 2016 just outside Genoa, Italy, and began the first of four seasons, each one around five months, in the Mediterranean. My initial goal was to cruise the entire Med in two years. I subsequently modified that to a more realistic four years.

Adapting my flexible itinerary to such constraints as the pesky 90-day EU visa and the reality that there is, at best, a Mediterranean cruising season of six to seven months, I soon developed a lifestyle that had me in the Med in early April and out of the water in early November. I’d return to California in July and August for a five- to six-week working hiatus. My time afloat in the Med became more like two- to three-month mini sabbaticals, and my working life adapted accordingly.

July and August in the Mediterranean were hot, crowded and expensive. Did I really want to be seen in trendy marinas in that heat while paying more than $400 a night for a mooring, if I could even get one? Cruising in the shoulder seasons, however, came with the challenge of more-variable weather. The sailor’s adage that the wind blows either too much or not at all in the Med I found to be especially affirmed in the spring and fall.

One of the pluses of cruising the Med is that it rarely required me as a solo cruiser to do any overnight sailing. And I was almost always within cellular range. Now, with devices such as Starlink and videoconferencing, conducting business afloat in the Mediterranean is no more difficult than doing it remotely in the US, aside from the time difference.

Like any cruising area, the Mediterranean does have its drawbacks and risks. There are some definite no-go areas, such as most of North Africa and the Middle East. And there is the ongoing illegal migrant crisis. 

And then there is the challenge of Med mooring singlehanded—especially in Greek and Turkish waters, where I needed to drop the anchor and back down, all while steering to hit my slot on the quay. It’s a good case for having three hands, or four if you have a bow thruster, which Adagio did not have. As with much of cruising, you adapt, though I would still embarrass myself from time to time.

The Mediterranean also offered an unexpected bonus: the opportunity to engage with a friendly, culturally diverse cruising community at anchor and in the marinas. Singlehanded cruisers are a bit of a rarity in the Med (I met only one other) and a curiosity. I got used to predictable questions of “How do you do it?” and “Don’t you get lonely?” Yes, I would think, that’s why I initiated this conversation with you. Some would speak of having met other solo sailors, invariably prefaced with the word “crazy,” as in, “He was a crazy Swede.” Perhaps I earned the moniker of “that crazy old American who ran and had a rowing machine on his boat.”

My advice to aspiring commuter cruisers is to start with a smaller boat and go for shorter durations. Learn, adapt and, in some cases, endure.

Most of us have multiple passions in life. For me, these became particularly hard to let go of the older I became. Is there a way for each of us to craft a ­cruising lifestyle that allows us to pursue all of these? I believe there is. Leap, as nature essayist John Burroughs put it, and the net will appear. 

Jim Eisenhart is the author of the ­forthcoming book Nomad Sailor: Adventures Commuter Cruising the Mediterranean. He currently owns a Moody DS41 and has been commuter-­cruising the US East Coast and Bahamas. 

The post Part-time Cruising Fits My Lifestyle appeared first on Cruising World.

Your choice of which dinghy to carry aboard is pivotal to successful cruising. This is especially true if your cruising kitty is small. A good dinghy is a requirement for frugal cruising. 

Notice that I wrote carry aboard. I never tow a dinghy that I don’t want to lose. Why? Basic seamanship. Squalls approach fast. A swamped or flipped dinghy is a major problem offshore—for you and the environment. Painters can end up in the prop. Personal watercraft run over the tow lines. Towed dinghies get caught on navigational buoys, lobster pots and bridge fenders. 

Towing a tender is fraught with complications. Even a skillful boathandler can get into trouble approaching a slip while towing a dinghy. And being forced into your gyrating dinghy while at sea exposes you to extreme risk. Many a sailor has met Davy Jones just after pulling in their dinghy, casually hopping aboard, ambling aft, and leaning toward their outboard—just as the painter sharply takes up and catapults them over the outboard and into the water.

I’ve known three sailors who have ended up overboard this way. One was in the Lesser Antilles, without anyone in the crew even noticing. There’s one thing that every offshore sailor dreads: watching the transom recede as their vessel sails away. 

Yes, innocent choices can have severe consequences. And we haven’t even talked about the evil dinghies themselves. 

Offshore, dinghies can seem demoniacally possessed, ­especially while running downwind in heavy weather. They can hole your boat or wipe off its rudder or twist up the self-steering gear. I’ve even had dinghies pass me—then stop immediately ahead. Having a rigid-tender ­submarine zigzagging 50 feet beneath the surface like a berserk shark is no fun.  

One more tip: Never tow kids you love astern in the dinghy without an assigned watcher. Do this only with someone else’s bilge brats.

But seriously, the first ­question to think about when choosing a dinghy is: rigid or inflatable? 

I love to row, so we carried a Lawton-designed, fiberglass Graves tender for 15 years aboard Carlotta, our 36-foot Endurance ketch. Rowing is great exercise and a wonderful way to meet your fellow cruisers. It’s quiet and nonpolluting—two nice qualities if you reside on a warming planet like I do. 

If well-constructed, these dinghies are almost ­indestructible. At worst, you might injure one cosmetically, but it is almost impossible to destroy a Tortola-style dinghy, even in boisterous trade winds amid sharp reefs. 

Unfortunately, everything is a compromise. Well-constructed also means heavy. Of course, these heavy, rigid dinghies do more damage than the lighter, softer ones. So, I always tell my passengers to “keep your hands inside the dinghy.” They always comply until, suddenly, they don’t, and jam their hands between the surging dinghy and the immovable dock.

If you row a rigid tender, always remove the oar horns before coming alongside a ­vessel—especially if the ­graceful vessel has long ­overhangs. Dinghies yanked under a counter (or multihull wing) can do major ­damage in an instant during an ­unexpected wake. 

Ash oars are best. Oar leathers aren’t just about style; copper blade tips will greatly extend the oar’s life. Yes, the sailor and the length of the oar are related for best results. Of course, you should learn to feather your oars, and stow them in such a manner that they can’t be yanked into the water by the painter or float away if the dinghy is swamped. (Consider an oar lock through the thwart as well.)

Here’s a sad fact: If a dinghy rows well, it powers poorly. And vice versa. 

Stowage is another factor. Davits are cool on monohulls if you sail in, say, a swimming pool. It is best to stow a dinghy upside down on the foredeck while offshore in monohulls smaller than 70 feet long. We think of our foredeck dinghy as our backup life raft. And we put extra water and bulkier survival gear under it—in suitably tied-in watertight containers. 

Part of seamanship is to, again and again, prepare for the worst while expecting (and, hopefully, experiencing) the best. We’ve never used our dinghy as a life raft (or our life raft as a life raft, for that matter), which is exactly why we prepare it so diligently before each offshore passage. Just in case. 

In blue water, I carry a knife with me at all times (even sleeping), and I have dive knives made of 316 stainless steel in my cockpit and on my foredeck. Think about having to launch your dinghy while sinking, at night, naked and disoriented, after being hit by freighter. Those knives just might come in handy.

Currently, we have a 10.5-foot Caribe RIB for a tender, as we have for the past couple of circumnavigations. With a Tohatsu 9.8-­horsepower outboard (lighter than most and super dependable), the Caribe planes with both of us aboard, along with a case of beer and a full gas tank. This dinghy is small enough to hoist easily into our davits while coastal cruising in light-air venues such as Southeast Asia, or to bring on deck if we venture offshore. 

While initially expensive, the Caribes generally give us 12 years or two circumnavigations. This makes them quite affordable. How do we get twice the longevity that the average cruiser experiences? We always keep our tender protected by a Sunbrella cover, and we are careful where and for how long we leave it. 

The Achilles’ heel of modern inflatables isn’t abrasion; it’s puncture. Keep the tender away from sharp objects. I’ve poked a small hole from a nail sticking out of a dock, and my wife, Carolyn, barely touched a piling with a sole oyster that made a 6-foot slit in a ­dinghy’s starboard pontoon (that took three laborious attempts to fix). 

Sadly, some popular ­anchorages are regularly visited by organized dinghy thieves. An older guy, in his 20s, piles a bunch of local kids into his boat, gives them each a knife, and drops them all into the water. The kids cut the dinghy painters as they swim through the anchorage at 3 a.m. The older guy eventually collects all the drifting ­dinghies and swimming kids. 

We had our dinghy out of the water in South America when this happened in one anchorage, and were the only anchored cruisers with a dinghy left come morning. 

Now, about folding ­dinghies: They fold well. At least that’s what the guy with all the dripping cameras around his neck told me after I fished him out of the water off St. Barts. 

And while I love T-tops, ­center-consoles and fast boats, I keep my own dinghy as simple and light as possible. Sadly, too heavy and too light are both problems. When I had a lightweight 2-horsepower outboard on my inflatable, it would flip so often that I painted the outboard with antifouling inside the case. (To avoid this problem, pull the transom plug at anchor during a sudden squall. The inflatable dinghy won’t sink and will never flip, even in a gale.)

Another bonus of inflatables is that other yachties don’t cringe like they do if you approach their boat in a rigid tender, especially one lacking a soft rub rail. 

I was amazed in Western Samoa to have a fellow Virgin Islander come up and rail-cling while his heavy wooden tender banged repeatedly into my delicate gelcoat. When I said something like, “Careful, don’t allow your dinghy to hit my boat,” he just grinned, took another swig of his bottle of rum, and replied: “Don’t worry, Fatty. My rail is air-dried oak and through-bolted. Not a problem.”

Sure, for him.

One of the reasons we love our inflatable so much is because it saves us money while providing us with so much peace and tranquility. Marinas can be expensive, noisy and hot, so we almost never tie up. However, the anchorage closest to a marina is often also crowded. Our lightweight dinghy and its powerful engine allow us to anchor amid nature a couple of miles away, and yet have all the benefits of civilization when we want and need them. (We also have good ground tackle, a stout companionway locking system, and a loud burglar-alarm system on the main boat.)

It’s great to be able to sail a couple of miles to the inlet, catch a hundred pounds of grouper and snapper, and sail back again without raising a sweat.

Sailing tenders are another option, especially if you spend four months in deserted Chagos, as we did. It’s great to be able to sail a couple of miles to the inlet, catch a hundred pounds of grouper and snapper to share with the entire anchorage, and sail back again without raising a sweat. Or making noise. Or polluting in a pristine paradise. 

Alas, everything is a compromise. Rigs, a rudder, sails, and centerboards all take up room and cost money. I love sailing tenders dearly, but the confusion and weight of the gear doesn’t help you while passagemaking. Having clean, clear decks is a safety advantage offshore, especially in a breeze. 

On the plus side, there’s no denying how romantic sailing tenders are. If we have long-term guests aboard, we often disappear for an hour or two because (we tell them) the wind dropped on the other side of the island.

One more thing: If you haul out your dinghy each evening, as we do, it probably will never be stolen or acquire too much growth. However, it you leave it in the water, the clingy barnacles will certainly discover it. Sure, you can paint it with antifouling, but then, on passage, you, your sails and your sheets will gradually turn blue (as happened to us). 

If you don’t paint it, you’ll have to take it to the beach regularly, empty it, remove the outboard, and flip the dinghy over to scrape it. That’s not the bad part; the bad part is that it is easy to damage the RIB’s fabric while cleaning it. We’ve learned this the expensive way. Thus, we hoist at sundown, a nightly ritual in my life for 63 years now. 

The bottom line is that a proper tender, properly tended to, will save you money and time as it brings you joy. Seamanship is important. The wrong tender in the wrong sea at the wrong time at the wrong end of a tow rope can cost a life.

The choice is yours.

The post On Watch: Tender Feelings appeared first on Cruising World.

In the early days, when I thought about what it might be like cruising and home-schooling, the vision went something like this:

Warm, dappled morning light streaming in through the open companionway, my daughters working on journal entries. Me making coffee while gathering items for our morning science lesson, which would, of course, tie into that day’s reading assignment. My husband, Green, working on route-planning and navigation exercises over breakfast. After a snorkeling break (with fish and coral identification, naturally), the girls would do math without complaining, and then we’d hunt for shells, which we would somehow turn into an art project. Visits to town would be prefaced by a study of the area’s history. 

There would be lesson plans. We would be organized. Our curriculum would be exciting and relevant, and meet all of the standards from back home. The kids would be engaged and eager to learn.

This was, obviously, a fantasy.

When an old friend reached out recently with questions about home-schooling while cruising, I hesitated to answer—even after a couple of winters sailing south with the kids to the Bahamas. 

Why did I go silent? Because, while some of our days had included some of the elements I’d envisioned, most days saw the kids begrudgingly sitting at the salon table doing some pages in workbooks, with me imploring them to “get school done” so we could go ashore. If we were underway, forget about it. School took a backseat. I was not quite the teacher I had hoped to be—nor was I terribly creative or organized. I worried that they’d be behind their peers, and that I was failing to embrace the opportunities around us. 

Looking for advice that I could pass on to my friend, I reached out to a few veteran cruisers who had many years of “boat-schooling” in their wake. What I discovered was surprising and comforting: What they envisioned wasn’t always what ended up working either, and doubts were common.

What Worked, What Didn’t

When Behan Gifford and her husband, Jamie, set out cruising with their three kids—who were entering preschool, first and fourth grades—they knew they wanted to “de-school.” This is a length of time with less, if any, focus on formal schoolwork. It’s sort of an ease in to home-schooling where you learn what the kids’ natural areas of interest are.

“The idea of de-schooling is that we, parents and kids alike, need time to reset on how learning will happen on board,” Behan Gifford says. “Home-schooling on board doesn’t have to include the stress, the approach or many other aspects of mainstream school.”

It’s one of several approaches that I considered for our girls, Caitlin and Juliana, who were in sixth and first grades when we set out aboard Lyra, our family’s Reliance 44 ketch. Our approach ended up being eclectic. I sort of based our materials on where they had left off with their classes, with the thought that we would fill in with lessons that I made up, related to our surroundings. 

Other options could have been a “school-in-a-box” approach where you order a complete grade-level curriculum, and oftentimes have remote support from a teacher or adviser; an online school where kids log in and do activities each day; or unschooling, which lets the kids follow what interests them. 

The Gifford family, after de-­schooling with their kids, went with a sort of unschooling approach. “Natural learning felt like a natural fit,” Gifford says. “We stuffed the boat with primary resources, from field guides to an encyclopedia set to books about the places we’d be exploring together, and let it flow. There were also standard-issue grade-level workbooks, because if a kid wanted to do that, well, then, that’s what they did. Opportunities to learn were everywhere.”

Erin Carey and her family also had a pretty laid-back approach at the beginning. The family left to go cruising in February 2018 when the kids were 3, 7 and 8, and they cruised the Caribbean for two years before crossing the Atlantic. 

“While we thought school was ­important, we were pretty relaxed and open to finding new ways for the kids to learn,” Carey says. “I decided we didn’t want the school-in-a-box approach because we didn’t want to have to send results home or order books via [snail mail]. We also didn’t want to have to rely on the internet. Our approach completely changed after a couple of years.” 

The Eccles family, whose daughters were 10 and 12 when they set out on the Oyster World Rally in September 2021, began with a more structured approach. 

“When we first left Monaco, we planned for the girls to use a full curriculum from Laurel Springs,” Kate Eccles says. “They offered us a more traditional textbook option rather than online schooling because we knew that Wi-Fi and data would be a challenge, particularly when on passage for weeks at a time. Unfortunately, what we didn’t realize until the girls actually started the schooling was that at the end of every lesson, they were required to do an online test, which of course they were unable to do.”

The Reality

Carey says that she needed to adjust her schooling to reality: “I realized that I was not really creative enough or patient enough to make up lessons each day. I also hated wondering if I was doing enough.”

After a cruising pause during the pandemic, the family continued on to the Mediterranean, where they cruised for almost two years. “For the second time around, we went with the complete opposite kind of curriculum,” Carey says. “We signed up to an online school called Acellus. The kids simply had to open their computers and log in, then watch videos and answer questions based on those videos. In theory, it sounded amazing. It took all of the teaching out of the equation for us, and we never had to worry if they were working at the right grade level.”

This went OK for about six to eight months, and then, the younger kids got bored. The oldest son continued with Acellus, and the family added writing assignments because they felt that the program lacked in that area. They moved the two younger kids into a program called My Homeschool, a curriculum that emphasizes high-quality literature. 

Aboard Lyra, our girls kept up with their workbooks, and I kept my fingers crossed that they would fit in with their classmates once we returned to land. A difference in our situation compared with the other families is that our timeline was much shorter. Our girls wouldn’t get too far off course, but we never really were able to settle into a good rhythm with home-schooling. 

Eccles’ family came to a similar conclusion. “A huge part of the Oyster World Rally for us as parents was that we would expose our children to alternative forms of learning,” she says. “The bulk of our days included learning to sail, to log coordinates on charts, and participate in SSB calls.” 

Her kids also learned to prepare meals, organize provisions, and live in a ­confined space. Patience and hard work were emphasized, and they developed a sense of responsibility by being on time for their watches. 

“They experienced firsthand learning about wildlife, not only in the oceans, but also on land all around the world, from the Galapagos to the Gili islands, and were exposed to an array of different cultures and religions,” she says. “Sure, we knew that the girls possibly might return to regular life weaker in certain areas of the curriculum, however, we felt that the rally really was an education in itself and an experience of a lifetime.”

Lessons Learned

There is no “best” way to home-school on board. What will work for your family might look completely different from the family down the dock, and you will likely go through times when you doubt yourself. 

“Know that the first steps into home-schooling will be uncomfortable, and the approach you take probably won’t work out quite the way you imagined it,” Gifford says. “That’s OK. Reset, and try again. You can always stop, breathe, and reset from the place you find yourself. Most cruising families do this—sometimes a few times—to different degrees. It’s a lot of pressure felt by parents. It’s often not pretty to navigate the delicate roles of parent and teacher or learning facilitator, but we have yet to see dismal failures as long as parents are keeping minds and hearts open to continue trying until they land on the right balance for their kids and themselves.”

Eccles agrees: “Get the kids reading as much as possible. If you can, get them used to using e-readers because this will save a lot of time trying to find bookstores as you go around the world.” 

Also try to see everything that you’re doing as a learning or teaching ­opportunity, she says, and enjoy the adventure. 

Things to Consider

The pandemic changed many aspects of daily life, especially school. “Home-schooling has blossomed,” said Melissa Robb, home-school advocate for ENRICHri, a Rhode Island home-school support group. “It was already on the rise, steadily, across the country, really, across the world, but throw in a pandemic along with a plethora of social issues, and it skyrocketed. With the higher numbers comes more resources in the marketplace and locally via libraries, businesses and museums.” 

This availability of resources has been a game-changer for cruising families, but the options can be overwhelming. Before committing to a full curriculum, ask if your kids can try a few lessons to make sure it’s a good fit. Also keep in mind that many of the ­online-learning options require a robust internet connection (and unlimited data), and some courses have a set class schedule. This could all work well if you’re at a dock with great Wi-Fi, but less so if you’re actively cruising.

Resources include the Kids4Sail Facebook group, made up of cruising families around the world. It has a frequently updated spreadsheet with common curricula that cruising ­families are using.

World Book has textbooks and workbooks in all subject areas, as well as digital resources.

Outschool can help with everything from a one-time drawing class to weekly Spanish lessons. Because these classes are over video, Outschool requires high-speed internet access.

Voyaging With Kids by Behan Gifford, Sara Dawn Johnson and Michael Robertson (available in print and e-book) is a treasure trove of information for any family considering going cruising.

Lesson Plans Ahoy by Nadine Slavinski, third edition (available in print and e-book) covers a variety of subjects and can be adapted for kids ages 4 through 12. 

Jennifer Brett is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Home-Schooling Aboard appeared first on Cruising World.

Eibbor and Knarf’s parents were kidnapped by Frost Giants. The boys desperately needed help. Scooter Squirrel raced to Winston Woodchuck, who dived into his burrow, frantically digging until he reached the tunnels of the Dwarves. They summoned Frey, who came with his longship, Skidbladnir, and took the boys to Asgard to plead their case to Odin. Skidbladnir was enchanted so that, among other magical traits, it always had fair winds and got where it needed to go. 

Such were the bedtime stories Dad told my brother, Frank, and me more than 60 years ago in the wild hills of West Bolton, Vermont, overlooking Lake Champlain. Despite the US Navy being born on Lake Champlain and the famous Capt. Phillips living a few miles from our house, Vermont is the only landlocked state in New England, so it might not seem an apt setting for nautical lore and traditions. However, a few years after my grandfather returned from World War II, he and my then-preteen ­father built a 16-foot Moth and ignited an obsession in Dad for sailboats. He found plans for a 26-foot ketch that became his lifelong white whale. I grew up with those plans and, under Dad’s tutelage, learned almost every rig that had sailed for the past thousand years by copying illustrations in The Book of Old Ships by Henry B. Culver and Gordon Grant.

 My initial 20 or so were canoes. I bought my first canoe with my paper-route money at age 11 and got a Gunter-rig sailing kit. That Grumman canoe still hangs in the barn in the winter, but in 55 years, it has never had a name. My first experience with naming a boat was as a teenager, when a 16-foot Rocket-class sloop that had been in a chicken coop for 25 years was donated to our Explorer post. We restored her and sailed the chickens—I mean the dickens—out of her on Lake Champlain. Our best adolescent workmanship notwithstanding, her seams could work the caulking in a chop, and we named her Kon Liki. It was 39 years before I named a second boat.

On the cusp of October 2009, another artist, Cole Johnson, and I stood at the lip of the 1,200-foot canyon of Canada’s Kogaluk River (“Little River” in Inuktitut) with our canoe in the howling wilderness of the Labrador Barrenlands. A river we’d been on nine days earlier had wandered into a boulder garden and had not come out, so we struck out overland, north to the Kogaluk, hoping that it would have water. As we stood, buffeted by the gale winds of the Barrens, it was a profound relief and joy to look down to the sparkling river far below. At that moment, a feeling welled up to name our silent companion, the stalwart canoe that would, days later, on the Labrador Sea, save our lives. The name came to me instantly, Bonnie, my then girlfriend, now wife (it was also, by chance, Cole’s mother’s name), steadfast and true no matter the challenge. That was one of only two canoes I have ever named. 

After COVID struck and closed Canada, I was stuck in Vermont, so I hiked the 273-mile Long Trail end to end as a painting trip. The paintings from the hike sold out so, in 2021, I decided to do the same thing on Lake Champlain. But I needed a bigger boat. I found a wooden, double-ended, 20-foot pocket cruiser (appropriately for my transition back to sail, a “canoe yawl”) at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. It was essentially a nice trailer with a free boat on it. Bonnie and I spent two months restoring that boat. I’d planned to spend at least six weeks aboard, so the boat needed a name. We bandied several about as we sanded the boat to bare wood, sealed the hull, and built accommodations in the cabin. Years ago, I had toured on the national art show circuit in a 15-passenger Dodge van dubbed the Artful Dodger. This boat was cute and a bit plump, but well-rounded with lovely lines. As a sleek creature of the water and my nascent floating studio, it almost named itself the Artful Otter.

The voyage of the Artful Otter was a wonderful experience during which I named my second canoe, a tubby 11-foot bright-green cutie that Bonnie had owned since childhood. That was the canoe that helped bring us together (another story), and I used it as Artful Otter’s tender. With the tiny green boat trailing lightly behind on the waves, its name became obvious: Leaflet.

The voyage raised funds for charities and made the artists some money. Expanding from the idea of the Long Trail trip, I involved other artists who all wanted to continue the project, so we needed a yet bigger boat. I cruised the yacht websites looking for an affordable, artistic vessel. That turned out to be a tall order. Brother Frank, now a retired US Coast Guard captain, steered me away from a couple of old wooden beauties that appealed to the artist in me but would have probably sunk—my plans, anyway. 

Then, I found it: a wooden, 1962 Aries 32 ketch in Chester, Nova Scotia. A double-ender like Artful Otter, this boat underwent a marine survey that impressed even sea dog Frank. And I could afford it by selling Artful Otter. That was a ­painful thought. Nonetheless, I brought the printout of the listing down to dinner, the one meal that Dad, Bonnie and I share every day.

Dad is an old-time Vermonter with Yankee frugality deeply ingrained, so I never saw his reaction coming. He had gotten his teenage ketch plans out while Bonnie and I restored Artful Otter, but presumably the enormity of the project hit, and he had not proceeded beyond that. Looking at the ­photos of this ketch at dinner, though, he set his jaw and quietly said, “That’s my boat.”

“Huh?” I started to explain the plan when he cut me off. 

“Don’t sell the Otter. I’ll buy this boat,” he said. 

And that was that. I suspect that, at age 90, he was realizing that lifelong dreams needed to come to reality ASAP, and he would not discuss it. 

Chester, Nova Scotia, is at least a 1,200-mile sail back to Vermont. After dinner, Bonnie upped the ante with the idea of Frank and me taking Dad on a bucket-list trip of a lifetime by sailing home with him in the ketch. He will be 91 when we get underway in July, but his mind is sound, and he is healthy and strong. Frank jumped aboard immediately, and I’ve never seen Dad so enthused.

Rub-a-dub-dub, three old men in a…well, the boat needed a name. Yet apart from a brief inspection in a heavy snowstorm, I had no physical connection with the boat. My names for other boats had been bestowed organically, but this time, it seemed, we might need to dream up one out of thin air. 

Artful Otter II, the working name during the search, was jettisoned ­instantly, closely followed by my overlong fixation with plays on art and ­ketches such as Sketchy Otter, Art S’Ketch, ­Sketch-A-Ketch, CanUS’Ketch (Bonnie is Canadian) and other such ideas. Sea dog Frank thought my Bonnie Pearl was a wonderfully nautical play on Captain Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl and Bonnie. Dad was politely nonplussed. 

Then, it hit me. The three of us setting off on an adventure: Eibbor and Knarf stories, Scooter Squirrel, the Dwarves, the Norse gods, and a magic longship, like a double-ender ketch. 

As is true of many Germanic-language names, it is not pretty to an American (or Canadian) ear, but it resonates with the three of us 60 years later: Skidbladnir.

Hailing from Lake Champlain, wildlife artist, naturalist, and outdoorsman Rob Mullen operates out of his floating studio, the canoe-yawl Artful Otter. Lately, his sailing and painting grounds have grown to include the 1962 wooden Aries 32 ketch Skidbladnir.

The post To Name a Boat: The Art and History of My Many Vessels appeared first on Cruising World.

We had departed Santa Catalina Island, California, at midnight aboard our Peterson 46, Esprit. It was October, and we were making the 60-plus-nautical-mile passage at night because of a favorable wind forecast. Our destination, Ventura, lay upwind. Winds would be fairly light but enough to avoid motoring the entire way.

 My husband, Mitchell, and I are both originally from a landlocked mountain town: Park City, Utah, which we still call our official home port. We bought Esprit in Panama in 2018, then sailed back to San Francisco Bay, where we could operate charters to earn money for extended cruising. When the pandemic hit, ­charters were no longer an option, so we relocated to Southern California to live aboard and work. We chose Ventura because we had friends there and could easily get into the boat-repair and management business. This industry thrived during the pandemic—a great way to stock the cruising kitty.

Dawn is my favorite watch time on passage. As the sky ­began to brighten, I updated the ship’s log, scanned the horizon once more, and popped down below. My mission: Brew hot coffee and extract a Mason jar from the fridge. In the jar was my “instant” breakfast: a luscious mix of coconut milk, rolled oats, honey, and spice, topped with nuts and fresh fruit. (I often alternate this quick onboard breakfast with an equally delicious “pudding” made with chia seeds.) 

With my mission complete, I settled into the cockpit, enjoyed each bite as the sky turned tangerine, and watched seabirds hunting for their own breakfasts. 

Something big splashed in the distance. Dolphins? I had no one to ask because my crew, consisting of my husband and our cat, were snoozing peacefully down below. Soon, Anacapa Island came into view off the port bow. It’s one of eight islands that make up the Channel Islands archipelago. Five of them, including Anacapa, are national parkland. They are all rugged and pristine, and provide us with challenging and epic cruising grounds. 

In just a few more hours, we’d be back in Ventura Harbor, our temporary home port, before we sailed south to Mexico and beyond.

When it comes to passage-­planning, one of my favorite tasks is figuring out what to eat. We are foodies, and my studies and work background are in nutrition, so there are always fresh, made-from-scratch meals and snacks aboard Esprit.Overnight oats and chia pudding are two of my favorite make-ahead boat breakfasts, and I almost always make a batch or two for passages. Oats have the benefit of being more readily available in markets; they don’t provide quite as much protein as chia seeds, but they’re a great source of filling fiber and quality carbohydrates. (Just add more nuts or seeds to boost protein.) 

There are countless ways to vary each recipe, depending on what you have on hand and what sounds delicious to you. The base is dry rolled oats or chia seeds soaked overnight in coconut milk. (You can use any milk, but I love the tropical taste of the coconut.) You can even combine the chia and oats (see Cook’s Notes). Dress it up with a variety of seasonal fruit, nuts, or seeds for a satisfying, filling breakfast that’s high in protein, fiber, healthy fats, and antioxidants; that’s sure to provide long-lasting fuel for your adventures by sea or land. 

Both recipes will last for several days in the fridge. Consider making a few batches, divided into single-serve containers. This convenient, pre-made breakfast also makes a great snack during passages, or it can be a pretty addition to brunch at anchor with friends. 

Better yet, take time to enjoy a slow morning as I did with this easy, tropical pudding, and transport yourself to paradise, if you’re not already there.

Tropical Breakfast “Pudding” (Serves 2)

For oats:

• 1⁄2 cup dry rolled oats
• 1⁄2 cup (or to taste) coconut or any other milk 

For chia seeds:

• 4 Tbsp. chia seeds
• 1 cup coconut or any other milk
• 1⁄4 tsp. cardamom (optional)
• 1 Tbsp. honey or maple syrup 
• 1 very ripe mango, pureed; or fresh berries, peach or any fruit, diced
• 2 Tbsp. chopped pistachios, ­pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts or slivered almonds

Combine oats or chia seeds, milk, cardamom, and honey or maple syrup in a small bowl. If using nonhomogenized coconut milk, you first might need to warm it in a ­saucepan to get rid of clumps.

Once combined, divide equally into 2 small Mason jars or other containers. Leave room at the top for fruit. 

Cover and refrigerate overnight, or a minimum of 4 hours, to thicken pudding consistency. 

If using mango, slice and scoop out the flesh. Use a blender or food processor, and blend until smooth. Store in a container in the fridge, and spoon over the mixture once it’s firmed up. If using other fruit, add it to the pudding once it’s firm, or just before eating. 

Top with nuts, and savor.

Prep time: 10 MINUTES, PLUS 4 TO 8 HOURS TO CHILL
Difficulty: EASY
Can be made: AT ANCHOR OR UNDERWAY

Cook’s Notes: 

As a topping, pureed peach is also divine, or a blueberry compote. A good-quality jam is a great substitute if fresh provisions are low. Add a sprinkling of crushed, freeze-dried raspberries or pineapples for extra zing. For oats, a dollop of plain Greek yogurt before adding the fruit is also delicious.

Do you have a favorite boat recipe? Send it to us for possible inclusion in Sailor & Galley. Tell us why it’s a favorite, and add a short description of your boat and where you cruise. Send it, along with high-resolution digital photos of you aboard your boat, to sailorandgalley@cruisingworld.com.

The post Sailor & Galley: Rolled Oats Breakfast Pudding with a Tropical Twist appeared first on Cruising World.

In 1974, Australian journalist Murray Davis assembled a ragtag crew of sailors and scribblers in Newport, Rhode Island, and put out the first issue of Cruising World. The bet Murray made that summer was a big one: 65,000 big ones, if bets are measured in printed magazine copies. Ten years later, he sold the brand to The New York Times Company. Paid circulation had grown to 120,000 copies addressed to high-net-worth individuals (in the parlance of Madison Avenue). Davis retired to a life of ease on Newport’s tony Ocean Drive.

In some ways, the joke was on Madison Avenue. Davis’ genius was to tap into a countercultural zeitgeist impelled by skyrocketing oil prices, back-to-the-garden dreams of self-reliance evinced by the Whole Earth Catalog, and a particularly prominent June 1973 Time magazine story called “The Good Life Afloat,” which placed, of all boats, a Westsail 32 front and center. 

“Beached though he may be by responsibilities ashore,” the Time story went, “the cruising sailor can still feel a certain smugness about his boat. She can take him across an ocean whenever he is ready to go. Just a few years ago, the men who owned boats like these were usually looked upon as oddballs, dropouts, or dreamers ready to up-anchor and take off for the islands. They were incurable eccentrics, antiquarians putting in their time refurbishing relics of another age. But suddenly those old-fashioned boats and their gear seem strangely up-to-date. The cruising sailor seems less eccentric. The boats they have preserved have now become objects of envy.”

Playboy magazine took the idolatry a step further in a 1976 feature: “Your ultimate destination in a Cigarette boat may be no farther than the forward berth, but there is no navigable place in the world beyond the range of the Westsail 32.”

Davis came to the subject honestly. For the first half of the 1960s, he’d written a column about the Western Australian waterfront scene for The Age, a Melbourne daily. That lasted till his wanderlust overtook him. In 1967, he and his wife, Barbara, and their two small children boarded a 21-ton, yawl-rigged Falmouth Quay punt called Klang II and sailed themselves to America.

“Every escapade needs a hook to lend it legitimacy,” Nim Marsh wrote in a 2004 profile. Davis’ hook was, in his own words, “to watch Australia’s challenge for the great symbol of sailing, the America’s Cup.” He would cover the races in Newport, in which Australian hero Dame Pattie was to compete, reporting back to his readers in Melbourne. As the Davis family sailed halfway around the world, they befriended some of that era’s giants of the cruising community—Eric and Susan Hiscock, Miles and Beryl Smeeton, Blondie Hasler—as well as young up-and-comers such as Lin and Larry Pardey and Bruce Bingham. The first issue of CW included dispatches from all of them.

Though Davis tapped into a deep vein, he didn’t invent the worldwide cruising community; instead, he discovered one that by the 1970s was already thriving. To locate the father of this community, he’d have to look back still another 50 years to a man named William Washburn Nutting—arguably the most influential cruising sailor that today’s cruisers have never heard of.

We All Sail in the Track of Typhoon

 “I think it is reasonable to say that a country is only as big as its sports. In this day when life is so very easy and safe-and-sane and highly specialized and steam-heated, we need sports that are big and raw and, yes, dangerous. Not that we recommend taking chances in the roaring forties in the middle of November or crossing the Atlantic on the fiftieth parallel at any time of the year. This sort of yachting, I suppose, will never be popular. But I do hope that if there is any result from my book on the Typhoon, it will be to inspire a confidence in the possibilities of the small yacht and instill an interest in the sea and a desire to explore.”

Thus wrote W.W. Nutting. His 1921 book, The Track Of The “typhoon,” lit a fire whose flame still spreads more than a century later. “I feel that what American yachting needs is less ­common sense, less restrictions, less slide rules, and more sailing,” Nutting wrote.

A line he borrowed from a US Navy sub-chaser commander distilled Nutting’s ultimate disdain for his own safe-and-sane era: “Is ‘Safety First’ going to be our national motto?”

Like Davis, Nutting started his career scribbling on the waterfront scene—in Nutting’s case, from the Manhattan offices of The Motor Boating Magazine in the years just before World War I. Nutting was a gregarious man who gathered around him a Parisian-style salon of other men who were interested in something entirely new under the sun: sailing on the ocean “for the fun of the thing.”

In the 1910s, there was no seagoing cruising community. Yacht clubs had begun to proliferate after the Civil War, but with a focus that seldom extended beyond inshore racing. A handful of America’s wealthiest Brahmins very occasionally raced to Bermuda or across the Atlantic, but with large crews of paid professional sailors. Amateur sailors had made well-publicized ocean voyages: Joshua Slocum, who published his enduring bestseller about the first recorded solo circumnavigation from 1895 to 1898; Howard Blackburn, who in 1901 crossed to Portugal in 39 days aboard a 25-foot Friendship sloop. Still, before World War I, there was neither a cohort of long-distance cruising sailors nor a fleet of seaworthy yachts to take them sailing.

Nutting changed that. In summer 1913, with scant experience of sailing, piloting or navigation, he sailed the 28-foot cutter Nereis, mostly singlehanded, from New York to Newfoundland. Along the way, he survived several near calamities. Off Nantucket, Massachusetts, he was knocked overboard by the boom. Only dumb bloody luck and a loose lazy jack saved him from drowning. But that summer’s experience inflamed his adventuring spirit, and the stories he published inflamed others. With friends he met during those travels, Nutting began to dream of a shorthanded trans-Atlantic voyage—and of the boat that could accomplish such a trip.

One of those friends was Canadian engineer Frederick W. “Casey” Baldwin, the first British subject to take flight in March 1908, shortly after the Wright Brothers’ first Kitty Hawk flights, and the man who would go on in 1919 to set the world speed record of more than 70 mph across the water in a hydroplane that he designed and built with Alexander Graham Bell.

Though World War I interrupted the conversation they had started in 1913, Nutting and Baldwin reconvened in fall 1919 to work out their plans—for the boat and for the voyage. Nutting wrote: “Finally we got down to the inevitable subject of boats and more particularly of cruising boats.” 

Their choices were limited to one of two categories: fishermen or racers. There simply were no other choices. Fishermen—­adaptations of Friendship sloops, oyster dredgers or Gloucester schooners—accounted for all the boats sailed in shorthanded transoceanic voyages. These tended to be rough-hewn, solid, seaworthy and slow. Casey, by contrast, had collected silver by racing lightly built boats with long overhangs designed under Nathanael Herreshoff’s Universal Rule. Casey, Nutting wrote, was “all for a big boat—as big a one as possible without going beyond the strength of one man in the matter of the mainsail and the ground tackle, which are really the limiting factors.”

Nutting’s tastes were shaped by his summer on Nereis. “I think a singlehander should be as small as possible without ­sacrificing full headroom—say, 28 to 30 feet on deck,” he wrote. But, conceding that singlehanding wasn’t the most desirable way to cruise, he consented to a compromise: “a 40-footer, fisherman style, ketch rigged with an auxiliary motor.”

Ocean Sailing “For the Fun of the Thing”

Back in New York, Nutting delivered his commission to yacht ­designer William Atkin, a pal and stablemate at Motor Boating, who pushed the length to 45 feet before the boat was done. Baldwin oversaw the boatbuilding at Bell’s laboratory in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, and on July 3, 1920, Typhoon launched.

As Davis legitimized his escapade with the hook of an America’s Cup summer, so Nutting latched onto the Harmsworth Trophy Races, set for August 10 in Cowes, England, to ­legitimize his. “Not that there was any serious motive behind the cruise of the Typhoon,” Nutting hedged. “We were not trying to ­demonstrate anything; we were not conducting an advertising campaign; we hadn’t lost a bet. I had the little vessel built according to Atkin’s and my own ideas of what a seagoing yacht should be, and we sailed her across the Atlantic and back again for the fun of the thing. We feel that the sport of picking your way across great stretches of water, by your own (newly acquired) skill with a sextant, pitting your wits against the big, more or less honest forces of nature, feeling your way with leadline through fog and darkness into strange places which the travelers of trodden paths never experience, chumming with the people of the sea—these things, we believe, are worth the time, the cost, the energy—yes, and even the risk and hardship that are bound to be a part of such an undertaking. We did it for the fun of the thing, and we believe that no further explanation is necessary.”

They did it, all right, crossing from Baddeck to Cowes, 2,777 miles in just over 22 days. Along the way, they encountered several gales, which Nutting illuminated for his steam-heated readers in full, breathless detail: “It was a roaring, wild, wonderful night, the sky pitch black, the sea a driving stampede of weird, unearthly lights. The countless crests of breaking waves made luminous patches in the blackness as though lit by some ghostly light from beneath the sea, and the tops, whipped off by the wind, cut the sky with horizontal streaks of a more brilliant light, like the sparks from a prairie fire.”

For a shipmate, Nutting could have picked no one better than Baldwin. “Casey, drenched and grinning, was in his element,” he wrote. “The wind was still increasing, but there was no trace of concern in his voice as he shouted back a ‘cheerio’ through the racket. He was enjoying himself as only the man at the wheel can at such a time.”

At Cowes, word of Typhoon’sexploits quickly spread through the harbor. General John Seely, the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, brought regards from King George V, a sailor himself. The Earl of Dunraven, who’d challenged the America’s Cup with three Valkyrie iterationsbetween 1887 and 1895, came aboard Typhoon. But the most consequential acquaintance Nutting made was Claud Worth, vice commodore of the Royal Cruising Club, established in 1880.

Birth of a Cruising Community

“Before leaving England,” Nutting wrote, “there is one institution we must mention because I hope that some time there will be such a one in our country. This is the Royal Cruising Club whose membership included many of the real cruising yachtsmen of England. Why can’t some such club be started on this side of the Atlantic?”

One of the first things Nutting did when Typhoon returned to New York that November was to propose what would become the Cruising Club of America—established in 1922, with Nutting elected as its first commodore. The club’s purpose? “To encourage the designing, building, and sailing of small seaworthy yachts, to make popular cruising upon deep water, and to develop in the amateur sailor a love of true seamanship, and to give opportunity to become proficient in the art of navigation.” You can walk down the dock of any seaside marina today and judge for yourself what kind of success Nutting had. Or, you can simply flip through these pages.

It’s not for his seamanship that we remember Nutting today. “He was a charming character and good company, a good sailor in some ways, but foolhardy and had too much courage,” recalled George Bonnell, an early CCA member.

Neither is it for his yacht-design eye, the musical equivalent of a tin ear when you compare it with others of his CCA cohort: John Alden or Olin Stephens or Philip Rhodes.

But for infectious enthusiasm, no one ever beat Nutting. Shortly after founding the CCA and publishing Track Of The “typhoon,” he became infatuated with a boat type he’d seen on a Copenhagen canal during the war: the redningskoite, or Norwegian rescue boat, as developed by the Scottish-Norwegian designer Colin Archer (1832-1921). 

Virtually no one west of the Atlantic in 1924 had ever seen such a craft. He wrote: “Although strange to an eye accustomed to the racing type yacht, or to the fisherman type as we know it today in America, these boats held a fascination for me and I resolved that one day I should own one and try it out.”

On one winter’s evening, Nutting found a book that contained the drawings for a Colin Archer-designed redningskoite: “The lines scale to about 47 feet overall. After a few rough measurements we decided that if the boat were reduced to 32 feet overall, we could get the headroom under a trunk of reasonable height and sitting headroom under the side decks, and so, for convenience, we had the design photostated 16 inches overall, or to a scale of one-half inch to the foot. With these lines to work from, I spent a couple of evenings making a skeleton model.”

Nutting’s old pal Atkin helped him clean up the lines. Together, they named the design Eric for the Viking explorer Erik the Red, and Atkin published them.

It was aboard someone else’s version of a redningskoite that Nutting, with three shipmates, crossed the North Atlantic from Norway by way of Iceland in summer 1924, then set off from Greenland on September 8—after which, none of them were ever seen again.

“It is more than too bad that Mr. Nutting should not have lived to see the popularity of his child,” Atkin wrote many years later about the Ericdesign, “for some 175 sets of blueprints of the 32-footer were sold by the designer within three years after the plans appeared in Motor Boating, and many more have been sold since.” Argentine solo sailor Vito Dumas famously circumnavigated in anEric during the 1940s. And the fact that Robin Knox-Johnston’s Suhaili, the boat that won the 1968 Golden Globe solo round-the-world race, was built to an Ericdesign inspired a California entrepreneur to commission an adaptation for fiberglass-series production.

The result was the Westsail 32. Yes, the Westsail—object of so much love, and of so much derision. (“Wet Snail,” anyone?) The Westsail, with Nutting’s hand in its creation all but erased after the decades, was the very image that launched so many 1970s cruising dreams. 

“This wonderfully sturdy sailboat,” ran the 1976 Playboy ­feature, “embodies within its wide stubby hull all of the ­wanderlust fantasies harbored by each of us: that marvelous dream of shucking the niggling demands of daily life and simply taking off, boosted by the wind and sea, to probe the corners of the earth. A Westsail skipper turns each cruise into a long reach to Pago Pago.”

Or to Greenland.

Nutting started a fractious 100-year conversation that we, cruising sailors all, still gather round—whether we remember him for it or not.

CW Editor-at-Large Tim Murphy is the author of Adventurous Use of the Sea (Seapoint Books, 2022), which tells the full story of William Washburn Nutting and 16 other influential cruisers and yacht designers from the past century. Murphy develops marine-­trades curricula for the American Boat and Yacht Council.

The post The Most Famous Sailor You’ve Never Heard Of appeared first on Cruising World.

I know nothing about hauling in the good ol’ US of A. The last time I did so was in the early ’80s. However, during the past 20 or so haulouts in foreign waters, I’ve learned a thing or two about being on the hard along distant shores. 

Of course, my perspective might not be yours. I have little money, do all my own work, and continue to live aboard while out of the water. Plus, I’m prejudiced. I’d rather haul at a family-run yard managed by boaters than at a corporate-owned yard run impersonally for the benefit of landlubber stockholders.

Is that wrong to admit in print?

I don’t think so. The quality of our lives—my wife, myself and our vessel—is important to us. Hauling is stressful. I’m always on a mission to get my boat back into the water ASAP, and my wonderful cruising life back on track as well.

Obviously, I prefer being surrounded by like-minded people in the shipyard. That means workers and managers who admire determined sailors working on their own vessels and who don’t view us as cheapskates attempting to wreck the yard’s bottom line.

My favorite place to haul is New Zealand. Most of the yards are family-run. Dozens allow you to work on your own boat. In Whangarei, anything you need is within a short bicycle ride of Dockland 5 Marine Ltd. and other wonderful yards. Even better, any marine item you need custom-made, from a small padeye to an entire rig, can be fabricated locally. And it is cheap. And there’s trust. Admiration, even.

I once had an expensive, custom, stainless-steel exhaust flange made to my specs. The fabricator sent it to me for a test fit—not only before I’d paid for it, but also before I even had a chance to send him a deposit. That’s how the farmers and boaters of New Zealand treat one another every day.

South Africa is another great place to haul. While we never have anyone work on our boat, the labor is cheap there, as are the yards. We’ve had great luck in the Caribbean, Trinidad, Australia and Malaysia—even the Med as well.

The oddest, and one of the best, yards we’ve ever hauled at is Rebak Island Resort & Marina on Langkawi, in Southeast Asia. It was so clean that I had to visit the office to ask: “Are you sure you’re OK with me painting my boat here? I mean, I don’t see a drop of antifouling anywhere. I’ve been in doctor’s offices, in hospitals, even, that are dirtier.”

It was like hauling at the Ritz. White-coated Burmese waiters scurried around the yard wearing silk slippers that curled into a circle at the toe. They carried silver serving trays of lobsters, crabs and who knows what else. (Caviar, perhaps?)

“This is the finest resort I’ve ever been to,” my open-mouthed wife, Carolyn, said while wearing her grinding goggles around her neck. The yard was managed by Taj Hotels of India, and they literally treated us like rajas. See how much fun hauling can be in a nurturing environment?

Of course, language can be a problem. In Indonesia, many of the numbers sound the same—just like eight and 18 and 80 do in English—and one yard intentionally verbally quotes in the lower number but then bills in the higher. Buyer beware, and get the quote in writing.

There’s also sometimes shoddy work. I watched a yard in St. Maarten epoxy over a small, flush through-hull. Who needs a siphon break for the engine, anyway?

In Thailand, a bunch of house painters were gobsmacked when they learned how much an Awlgrip job cost in the West. Thus, they spray-painted three yachts for half that figure. 

The yacht on the portside with the red hull and the one on the starboard side with blue hull came out white as well. “Yep,” one of the distraught owners said. “Southeast Asia has the world’s most expensive cheap labor.”

On the other hand, you can get some amazing deals if you are careful. In that same area of Phuket, I went to a machine shop to have an item fabricated. The quote was for $125—far, far too cheap. I questioned it. No, the quote was firm. Two days later, the piece was finished and constructed in a more labor-intensive manner than requested. It was utterly lovely, a work of art.

“Estimate no good,” the grease-smeared machinist said. “It go fast. Ninety-eight dollars please.”

Which reminds me of the time in Malaysia when I had some work done on our chainplates. No one in the shop spoke a single word of English. Large, overhead leather straps powered some of the pre-World War II equipment. Not only didn’t they take credit cards, but they may never have seen a credit card. 

When it came time to pay for the work—which kept expanding as the project progressed—I reached into my pocket and pulled out $300 and change. They took the change. Just the coins. Try as I might, I couldn’t get them to accept any folding money. One man even held his hand over his heart as a sign of respect.

Once in the Kerala district of India, I didn’t want to carry my gallons of antifouling three blocks to the boat, so I grabbed a taxi. Distracted while loading the paint amid the trucks, snake charmers, limbless beggars and rickshaw carts, I failed to ask the price.

A minute later at our destination, the driver concentrated hard, then announced loudly, “One hundred dollars US.” This was probably the highest number the driver knew in English, given that the maximum fare within the city limits of Cochin at the time was something like 50 cents.

“You take American currency?” I asked.

From my murse (male purse), I took out a George Washington and handed it to him. His eyes got wide. I pointed to the number at the corner of the greenback, “One,” I said. “One hundred cents.” 

Cruel? Perhaps. Satisfying? Somewhat. 

Oh, India is a laugh a minute. I walked into a chandlery and was greeted with a low bow from a clerk with a wide smile who asked, “And where is our esteemed visitor from?”

“America,” I said.

“American No. 1!” the clerk cheered with a grin.

I purchased seven items. While checking out, I noticed eight items on the slip.

“Good eyes, sir, good eyes,” he said as he dramatically crossed out the overcharge.

“And that’s a pint of varnish, not a quart.”

“We use liters. Confusion understandable.”

“And that’s a single generic block, not Harken double.”

“Only one digit off,” he said, smugly.

“You’re trying to cheat me,” I said, my eyes narrowing.

“Cheat!” he screamed. “How dare you! I no cheat esteemed visitors. On the graves of my honorable ancestors, no!”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” I said, getting right into it.

“You insult the honor of India, sir!” 

He tossed the bag and my change at me. I was smug now that the sales slip and the items in my bag matched, so I went away happy—until, a block away, I stopped to count my change. Dammit.

That evening at the Cochin University of Science and Technology, I told my tale of woe at a cocktail party. Expecting commiseration, I was shocked to discover all the listeners grinning.

“Ah,” a professor said pridefully, “an Indian never gives up.”

Of course, none of this compares with Madagascar, where they populated an entire abandoned World War II hospital with invalids to scam me out of $25. After I forked over the cash, they all picked up their crutches and dashed into the bush at Usain Bolt speeds, high-fiving each other as they jumped for joy.

But back to shipyards in the tropics. Monkeys are a real problem. Not only do they wait to get into your boat and make a mess while you’re at lunch, but they also steal your washing soap and eat it, or drink it if it’s dish soap, and then blow rainbow-hued bubbles from the wrong end all day long as you work.

Another common trick is the “­jack-stand shuffle.” One yard changed our poppets every time the workers ­trotted by. It took some real wrestling to bring that yard bill back down to earth.

And then there’s the “110 shocker,” where they not only charge Americans twice what they should for half the voltage, but they also tack on an additional $30 a day for the converter.

Monkeys are a real problem. Not only do they wait to get into your boat and make a mess while you’re at lunch, but they also steal your soap and eat it.

One yard in Polynesia charges a fortune for the small sheets of plastic to protect your topsides from the rough, dirty slings. “Otherwise,” noted the chic, beret-topped travel-lift driver, “your barely dried boot top might end up smeared midtopsides.”

On the plus side, they toss in a croissant each time you pass their “No cash, no splash” signage.

Don’t get me started on scaffolding. Half the fistfights in my life have been over scaffolding planks and rusty, ­teetering 55-gallon drums to balance them on.

And we haven’t even considered the bait-and-switch horrors of having the crew in Sri Lanka charge for Awlgrip but then spray your entire vessel with exterior latex.

But of all the places in the world, our worst haulout was on the Delmarva Peninsula in Maryland, where four extremely interested yard workers watched Carolyn and me take down our mizzen. Their main travel lift was on the blink. The quartet gleefully watched us for four hours, and then shamelessly billed us for an additional 16 hours of yard labor while saying, in appreciation, “Gee, we’ve never seen a couple lower their mizzen via the main halyard before.”

Some days, foreign or domestic, you just can’t win.

The post On Watch: The Headaches of Haulouts appeared first on Cruising World.

This would really be a lot easier with stone counters,” I said to my husband as my fingers clawed at the stubborn dough adhered to our galley’s Formica countertops. Chris responded with a wink and a smile, jotting notes for our upcoming galley remodel. 

We’d been living aboard Avocet, our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41, in Southern California for three years, planning to head to Mexico and beyond in the near future. We’d always had an issue with the fridge failing to stay cold, causing the compressor to run nonstop. Ironically, the fridge had been a huge selling point for me because it’s large in comparison to those on other 41-footers. “It fits eight large pizzas” is how Chris describes it. Although we loved the space, we couldn’t ignore the inefficiency, and finally got around to planning a remodel centered on reinsulating the fridge and freezer.

I’m a dedicated baker, so space in the galley is important to me. I grew up watching my mom bake—family recipes that were then handed down to me. In my family, cooking and baking are a love language. Treats are gifted as love letters of sorts, so it’s only natural that I inherited this sentiment. Now I regularly bake for friends and family every chance I get. 

During our remodel, I had the opportunity to make some other key galley upgrades, from simple sink hardware to a new Force 10 oven, but the shining star is the real quartzite stone countertops. Although stone countertops are heavier than Formica, our boat is able to carry the ­additional 150 pounds well because our galley is near the centerline, parallel to our head and above our ­below-cabin-sole diesel. The added weight doesn’t cause us to list (unless one of the water tanks is empty), and the boat sails just as the designers intended—gracefully and relatively quickly.

Stone countertops are a dream surface for bakers. Quartzite is heat-resistant and generally holds an even, consistent temperature, which is important; if the countertop is too warm or too cold, dough will stick to it like glue. Stone also doesn’t need to be treated with chemical sealants, so you can work with dough (or anything) directly on the countertop without worrying about exposing food to toxins. 

When Chris finally packed up his tools and deemed the project complete, the first thing he asked was, “What are you going to bake?” I answered without hesitating, ­simultaneously pulling out the necessary ingredients: “Foolproof Focaccia!”

This recipe is one of my favorites because of how versatile it is. I’ve made it for years aboard Avocet in varying climates, with differing measurements, and even different rest times for the dough. I’m always pleasantly surprised by how tasty the bread is. You can dress it up or down, leave it plain, or add whatever toppings you’d fancy in addition to the standard salt and oil. 

As the dough magically transformed into focaccia in our new oven, the cabin was infused with the tantalizing aroma of fresh, baking bread. Chris and I patiently waited, mouths watering, while we tried our best to stay busy with other tasks until we could dive into the fluffy goodness. Finally, the timer went off. 

The focaccia had a beautiful brown crust, the sign that it’s been baked fully. Carefully, I removed it from the oven and placed the pan directly on our new, scar-proof quartzite counter before transferring it to a cutting board for serving. It was a divine reward for a day spent doing unending boatwork.

Even though I bake this bread for just the two of us, it’s also a surefire crowd-pleaser. Friends often ask me to bring it to potluck raft-ups, dinners and other casual get-togethers. 

Living on a boat and moving around so much means there can be a lot of trial and error with baking, but that also means I have the opportunity to pass down what I’ve learned to other cruisers who find themselves wondering where to start.

Sharing this recipe is my own love letter to my fellow cruising bakers, or wishful bakers, wherever you cruise. I hope you enjoy the warmth and comfort that this classic bread will bring you and yours, wherever you find ­yourself sailing.

Foolproof Focaccia

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 ⅛ tsp. active dry yeast 
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil, plus 1-2 Tbsp. additional

Combine flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl, then add warm water. Add 2 Tbsp. olive oil. Stir with a wooden spoon until all the flour is incorporated.

For best results, cover bowl and refrigerate overnight. If you’re impatient (like me) or in a time pinch, let the dough sit out while you clean the galley (20 minutes, but it yields flatter bread) or for 3 to 4 hours or more (for fluffier bread).

Lightly butter a round, 9-inch cake pan, line with parchment paper, and add a tablespoon of olive oil into the center. Form dough into a ball, and coat in the oil. Place dough ball in the center of the pan, cover, and let rest and rise for about 1 hour more.  

Heat the oven to 450 degrees ­Fahrenheit with a rack in the middle. (If your oven doesn’t have a reliable temperature ­setting, get it as hot as you can.)

Drizzle a bit more olive oil on top of the dough, and press down with your ­fingertips to create deep dimples.

Transfer to the oven and bake for 24 to 28 minutes, or until it turns golden brown on top (check periodically). Remove the bread, and let it rest for as long as you can resist it before cutting into it and indulging.

Prep time: 2 hours to overnight
Difficulty: easy
Can be made: at anchor

COOK’S NOTES

Our favorite toppings are cherry ­tomatoes, feta and basil, or tapenade. To keep it ­simple, use an infused olive oil and ­sea-salt flakes. If you do add toppings, first drizzle the dough with olive oil, then add the toppings and press them down lightly into the dough so that they are more incorporated into the bread. 

Do you have a favorite boat recipe? Send it to us for possible inclusion in Sailor & Galley. Tell us why it’s a favorite, and add a short description of your boat and where you cruise. Send it, along with high-resolution digital photos of you aboard your boat, to sailorandgalley@cruisingworld.com.

The post Sailor & Galley: For the Love of Baking appeared first on Cruising World.

When Jimmy Cornell set off with his young family in the 1970s on his first world voyage, there were no reference books for world cruisers. World Cruising Routes—which Cornell first published in 1987—was the type of book he wished he’d had. The only electronic navigation device he carried on board was a ­battery-operated depth sounder. Offshore cruising was done by celestial navigation, with time signals obtained by shortwave radio. GPS was decades in coming. 

But pilot charts have been an essential planning tool for sailors since the middle of the 19th century. Cornell’s Ocean Atlas, by Jimmy and Ivan Cornell, was first published in 2011 as a way to provide hundreds of pages of information drawn and updated from traditional pilot charts, and to illustrate the voyages that Cornell described in his 2012 World Voyage Planner. Changes in global weather patterns—some of which are extreme—made it necessary to publish an updated third edition this year.

Cornell has sailed 200,000 miles in all oceans of the world, including three circumnavigations, and voyages to Antarctica and the Northwest Passage. In the past 35 years, he founded the ARC trans-Atlantic rally, organized 36 trans-Atlantic, two trans-Pacific and five round-the-world rallies, and organized one round-the-world race. He is the author of 20 books, some of which have been translated into seven languages. 

When I set off from Florida to sail the world in 1989, World Cruising Routes was the most referenced book on board. We paired that with pilot charts to determine our sailing seasons and routes for more than 10 years. Cornell’s books have sold more than 200,000 copies and have helped thousands of sailors fulfill their bluewater dreams. 

I caught up with Cornell in mid-September as he was on his way to the Cannes Yachting Festival, where he planned to introduce the Exploration 60.

Q: What can we expect to find in the third edition of Cornell’s Ocean Atlas?

In the 12 years since the first edition of this atlas was published, there has been a marked intensification of the effects of global warming on weather conditions throughout the world. In this fully revised and updated edition, the main focus is on all changes that may affect offshore voyages. Its purpose is to provide the necessary practical data to plan a safe voyage in these changing times. 

The most significant and visible change has been the increased intensity and extent of tropical cyclones, both in the duration of the critical seasons and the areas affected. Because this phenomenon has such a major impact on voyage planning, in order to provide a full perspective on the current situation, this new edition contains all relevant facts for every area of the world that is affected by tropical cyclones.  

Because the main safety threats in any of the world’s oceans are tropical storms, the latest edition of the Atlas contains detailed information on tropical storms for the past 10 years, such as critical seasons and areas, and the earliest and latest cyclones in every ocean.

To present an accurate picture of the actual weather conditions that prevail in the world’s oceans, the pilot charts featured in this atlas are based on the data collected by a network of meteorological satellites, augmented by
observations obtained from meteorological buoys and other sources, during the past 25 years. The most detailed information is displayed in wind roses, with every single wind rose being based on a total of 218,000 samples of data. 

Q: You spend a lot of time talking about trade winds. Why?

One of the most noticeable phenomena is the decrease in the regularity and reliability of trade winds, as witnessed by sailors on some of the frequently traveled ocean routes. As the polar regions are getting warmer at a faster rate than the lower latitudes due to global warming, the poleward temperature gradient is weakening, and affecting the strength and consistency of trade winds. 

The most traveled ocean route in the world is the trans-Atlantic passage from the Canary Islands to the Eastern Caribbean, which is sailed every year by well over 1,000 boats. Once regarded as one of the most reliable trade-wind routes in the world, as the winds on the direct trans-Atlantic route have become increasingly unreliable, the majority of sailors now prefer to sail a more roundabout route by attempting to reach, as soon as possible, the lower latitudes, where there is a better chance of finding favorable winds before setting course for their destination. I’ve included information on the routes in the Atlas.

Similar tactics also apply to one of the longest transocean routes, from the Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas. As steady southeast winds can be counted on only well to the south of the Galapagos Islands, the accepted ­tactic now is to sail an initial ­southwest or west-southwest course until the area of ­prevailing southeast trade winds is reached. 

Q: To what basic safety measures should boaters adhere when planning a voyage?

Arriving in the tropics too close to the start of the cyclone-free season should be avoided, and a safe margin should be allowed by leaving a critical area before the end of the safe period.

Cruising during the critical period in an area affected by tropical storms should be avoided. Those who plan to do so should monitor the weather carefully and make sure to be close to a place where shelter could be sought in an emergency.

Q: I read recently that we might see large-scale changes in the Gulf Stream. Did you find any evidence pointing to this?

I’m dealing with this matter in some detail in the new edition of the Atlas, but it is a very complex issue, and I wouldn’t like to summarize it in a couple of short sentences.  

Q: How do the Atlas and paper charts fit in with today’s ­available GRIB files and offshore weather forecasts? 

GRIB files are of only limited use because they cover only the initial stages of a long passage. The entire purpose of the Atlas and its pilot charts is to assist in planning a voyage or a passage in any of the world’s oceans.

Q: Do you use pilot charts for planning or passages on your own voyages? 

Of course. All the time.

Q: Did you find any positive changes compared with prior editions of the Atlas?

There is no doubt that global weather conditions are changing: slower in some parts of the world, faster than expected in others. All I can say is that with careful planning, it is still possible to set off on a long voyage, even in these changing times. But I must advise anyone who is seriously planning to leave on such a voyage: The sooner you do it, the better. 

Visit cornellsailing.com for information on Cornell’s Ocean Atlas and Jimmy Cornell.

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