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.

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.

With 345 gallons of fresh water, my 50-foot schooner, Britannia, has larger-than-­average tankage. The boat has two heads, each with a washbasin and shower, and a pressure pump as powerful as a house supply. Unfortunately, with ­only an 11-gallon hot-water tank, my hot water runs out quickly, especially if both showers are used at the same time. And if the hot runs out, you’re on your own, so to speak.

Britannia’s hot-water tank is the square Kuuma model, sold by just about everyone in the marine-supply business. Eleven gallons might sound like a lot to boats that have the smaller, 6-gallon version, but neither delivers its full capacity of hot water to a shower or sink faucet. This is because as the hot is drawn off, it is replaced with cold (ambient) from the boat’s tankage. This process dilutes the remaining hot, so by the time about half of the hot is used up, the rest is somewhat lukewarm. Of course, it helps to leave the electric element on, and even to run the engine to compensate for this loss, but that might not be practical every time.

This problem was exposed recently when we had four guests staying aboard who were new to boating. I had to explain (tactfully, of course) that they were on a boat, not in a house, and the hot water wouldn’t run endlessly. I suggested that only one morning shower should be taken at a time; otherwise, there would be a good chance of someone finishing with a cold rinse. It was embarrassing for me to have to admit that, even though my schooner has just about everything that a house has—a washer/dryer, freezer, fridge, air conditioning, 120-volt power in all rooms—it is woefully lacking in hot-water capacity. I therefore decided to look into rectifying the deficiency.

Another reason I wanted to increase the hot-water capacity was more personal. Britannia has a full-size bathtub in the aft cabin head. Many boats of Britannia’s size have bathtubs, but mine is not just any old tub; it has 10 power jets, making it a hot tub. The idea is to fill the bath with hot water now and again for a long soak. I actually consider this to be more important than the shower issue, because how many times do we have guests staying over and wanting dual morning showers compared with me enjoying a British pint in a massaging hot tub after a hard day’s work on the boat? 

For this, I needed to generate 50 gallons of water at a temperature of 102 degrees, and if that could be achieved, the shower problem would solve itself. (I only ever used the hot tub when tied up to a dock. Using it at anchor could be interesting when a big powerboat zooms past and bucket-loads of hot water slosh all over the floor.)

The heater supplied with this tub worked for only a few baths before burning out because it was intended to keep bathwater warm after it had been filled from a home’s hot-water tank. What I needed was a heater with enough power to heat a bath full of water from ambient cold to 102 ­degrees Fahrenheit. I learned that this could be achieved only with a 240-volt heater of considerable wattage.

My present marina berth has only one 120-volt, 30-amp outlet, so my first thought was, Could that somehow be converted to give 240 volts to run just a water heater? The answer, from much more knowledgeable electricians than me, was no. Not without the risk of blowing all the breakers in the marina.

I looked at propane-gas heaters, also called tankless water heaters. Those that are capable of supplying water at 102 degrees are quite large and need to vent their hot exhaust to the outside. Also, the boat has storage for only one propane tank, whose contents would be quickly used up.

INSTALLATION

To at least solve the shower problem, I decided to install a second 11-gallon water heater. I’d hoped, with two heating elements and double the engine calorifier capacity, that it would be enough to fill the bath. 

Britannia is a long-keel, full-volume hull with an amazingly deep 5-foot bilge stretching 27 feet from the stern gland to the chain locker, and housing all the other machinery as well. It is more like a long engine room than a bilge. The existing heater tank sat on a raised platform in this cavity. 

I removed the tank and its platform. Then I built a new one lower down in the bilge. I then positioned the new heater on top of the old one and piped them together in series. It was a welcome change to be able to work on the two tanks while they were sitting on the salon sole instead of having to hang upside down like a blind bat in some dingy cave. While doing this, I also replaced the electric immersion heater element, which was in the old tank when I bought it 12 years ago. 

Both units were then lowered into position using a tackle strapped to the overhead handrail supports. The engine’s hot-water outlet pipe was connected to “hot water in” on the lower tank, then from “hot water out,” it was connected to the top heater’s “hot water in,” then from “hot water out” to the return on the engine. This setup ensured a continuous flow of nearly boiling engine water pumped through both heat exchangers because water is heated in the tank in two conventional ways: from a 120-volt immersion heater ­element inside the tank, which takes about 20 minutes, and from hot water in the engine being pumped through heat exchanger coils inside the tank. Both methods can be used at the same time. Away from a dock, the boat’s 6.5 kW generator can also be used to produce 120 volts for the immersion heater element.

I also installed a stop valve on the engine-outlet pipe to close off the heater circuit and allow the engine to initially come to operating temperature more quickly. Ideally, valves should be installed at the engine fittings for both supply and return, to isolate the water heater and hoses, in the event of a leak.

Cold water from the boat’s freshwater tanks was pumped through the pressure pump to “cold water in” on the bottom unit, then from “hot water out” to “cold water in” on the top heater, and from “hot water out” to the hot water manifold, and from there to all the boat’s outlets, including both showers and the bathtub hot faucet. 

Britannia has two shore-power receptacles supplying two separate distribution panels. These split the load of some of the higher electrical draws, such as the twin AC units and the washer/dryer. I reconnected the original wiring and installed new wiring to the top heater through a breaker on the second panel. The reason for wiring the two heater elements separately is to balance the load over two panels, and to not overload the existing wiring to the original water heater.

In my present berth, with only one 120-volt supply, I use a splitter to interconnect these two panels, but if we go somewhere where there are two 30-amp outlets, I can plug them in separately. I also have a 50-amp plug and splitter for use where the larger amperage is available. Flexibility is integral on a boat with so much electrical demand.

THE DAY OF RECKONING

After all these shenanigans, both units were finally installed, wired and plumbed, and it was time to test my hydroelectrical engineering theories.

I first switched on both heater elements, and the gauge showed a discharge of 22 amps from the single 30-amp shore supply. I closed the shutoff valve, started the engine, and set it to run at 1,500 rpm, its normal cruising revs. When the engine reached its operating temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit, I opened the shutoff valve to allow hot engine water to be pumped through both calorifier tubes. I had to remind myself that the engine was now having to heat 22 gallons of water, which took 40 minutes. 

The thermostat on the heater elements is set at 140 degrees, and it’s nonadjustable. Therefore, when the engine raised the temperature above this temperature in the tanks, the electrical side switched itself off. I ran some hot water into one of the washbasins, and it was 178 degrees, so cold would need to be added for a shower. The increased capacity therefore solved the twin shower issue, but would it be enough to fill the bath with piping-hot water for a long soak? 

I opened the bathtub’s hot-water faucet fully, then watched and waited. Scalding-hot water crept slowly up the sides of the bath until water from the faucet slowly began to cool, as both tanks depleted their hot water. 

This was evidently running out faster than the engine and immersion heaters could reheat it. I let the cooling hot water continue to run in as it slowly lowered the overall temperature. The engine and electronics must have wondered what was happening to their valiant efforts to keep the water in the tanks at a steady temperature.

As the bath became almost full, the water was still too hot at 110 degrees, so I switched the hot tap off and cooled it to 102 degrees with the addition of cold water. 

I then climbed into the luxuriously warm water and switched on the jets. On the first speed, there is only moderate action, but on the second speed, it really belts it out and nicely massages an aching back. I even fitted a holder on the wall for my beer glass because it would be a major disaster to have that tip over, even if in a marina berth. 

When I installed the bath, I obviously needed a means of emptying it. For the showers, I fitted automatic, self-contained shower draining units in each head, incorporating a float switch and pump in a plastic box. This setup pumps shower water overboard about as fast as it comes in, so there is never much standing water during a shower. 

Draining 50 gallons was an entirely different issue, and it would have taken ages through the shower drain. I solved this by fitting a changeover valve in the bath drainpipe and a pipe leading to the large diaphragm bilge pump. With the valve switched to bath discharge, the pump emptied all 55 gallons in 10 minutes flat.

When we have been out sailing and motor back to our berth, the water is usually piping hot, solely through the engine calorifier. We now have loads of hot water for virtually endless showers and a nice bath. The total cost of this project was $450 for the second heater, $22 for a new heater element, and $42 for extra connector fittings—a total of $514. It’s a small price to pay for the luxury of lovely hot showers and a fully ­operational hot tub.

Editor’s note: For all water heaters that are plumbed to engines, the temperature of the domestic water can approach that of the engine coolant, which clearly can be dangerous. For that reason, these water heaters should be equipped with tempering valves to lower the water temperature to a safe level. (For more info: cruisingworld.com/how/dont-land-hot-water/)

The post DIY Projects: Some Like It Hot appeared first on Cruising World.

Perspective is everything. To Puritans, being publicly dunked was a humiliating punishment. To our grandkids, however, “the dunking chair” provides endless fun. 

Even the most modest ­cruising sailboats probably have all the bits needed to create a dunking chair: a bosun’s chair, a spinnaker pole and a couple of halyards. A kid swims into the chair, is slowly hoisted “super high” (which might translate to 6 inches for a youngster) amid much fanfare, and is then abruptly released as the crew cheers. 

“Again! Again!” is the immediate, universal response of the dunkees. 

Here’s the key: Your job as skipper and organizer is to make sure that everyone is safe without appearing to do so. Rule No. 2 is equally simple: Don’t teach. Allow them to learn. There should be no helicopter parents afloat. 

Fun is fun—and fun is best done for its own sake. Kids instinctively know this, while adults lose a bit of this sage wisdom each day. So, don’t turn this into a lesson. Keep the focus on the goofy fun. 

On the other hand, do ­display your lustful enthusiasm at every opportunity. What could be better than being dunked in the water? Not much.

Kids love to be watched, to receive attention. The audio track is important. “Look at that splash!” and “You were soooo high!” and “Did you see how Tessa swam to the surface, Grandma? Was that cool, or what?”

You can’t lay it on too thick. Life will soon temper their ­embryonic egos. Right now, the objective is to nurture and encourage—to make them preen with their newfound marine skills. (The most dangerous moment is when, underwater, they swim out of the chair. Beware. And be ready to hoist if a foot gets caught.)

Of course, our daughter Roma’s marine skills didn’t start with the dunking chair. When she was 2 months old, we started holding Roma Orion while in the water, to acclimate her to being wet, while we were wet and having family fun. We’d hand her back and forth. One of us would stay with her while the other parent swam and Roma watched. 

No pressure, and we never scared her or stressed her out. This wasn’t about her passing a test; this was about the family having fun together. 

When she was 4 months old, we’d take her to a pool almost daily. My wife, Carolyn, and I would stand a couple of feet apart. We’d grin, slowly rise up, take deep breaths, and then the person holding the baby would strongly blow into her face. Instinctively, babies hold their breath when blown upon. 

Then, we’d all three ­submerge. At first, for only a moment, but, within a couple of days, for increasing durations.

Roma loved it. She’d look around and see her other parent underwater. She’d see bubbles. Soon, she’d hold her breath whenever we’d take her underwater. 

We’d constantly hand her back and forth on the surface, and play games while doing so. Next, we’d submerge together, and I’d hand her to Carolyn underwater. Roma thought this was just about the coolest, most exciting thing in the universe. 

Gradually, we’d get farther and farther apart, and Roma would help by wiggling her arms and legs. Progress. (Kids’ heads are extremely heavy in comparison to their bodies, so holding their head out of the water is far more difficult than swimming underwater.) 

Roma learned to swim with a minimum of instruction. We’d later have her hold onto the side of the pool or onto our dinghy, and then swim to us while we inched away. 

Ever since, Roma has loved the water. And not only did she learn to swim well before her first birthday, but she’s since taught dozens (hundreds?) of kids to swim. She also earned her PADI scuba-diving card and is a PADI-certified rescue diver. 

First fun, then accomplishment, followed by high interest, and eventually success on all fronts. 

Roma Orion, her 12-year-old daughter, Sokù Orion, and Tessa Marie all come to sail, cruise, and swim with Grandpa and Grandma nearly every weekend now. Goodlanders easily bond over water, and we firmly believe that the family who swims together, stays together.

Each of our “bilge rats,” of course, vividly recalls the first time they were able to swim unassisted around the boat. By long tradition, I am forced to immediately jump into the water with all my clothes on. What could be more fun than having the befuddled skipper swim to the surface, sadly holding his (fake, prepared in advance) wallet over his head?

Did Roma or our grandkids balk at any point? Sure. Roma would happily dive over the side in nearly 30,000 feet of water (off the Puerto Rican trench) but get nervous at a beach if she discovered that she was in water over her head. Fine. We allowed her to work through it with our support and encouragement. It didn’t become a big deal, and, within the month, her fear was gone. 

Ditto Sokù’s sudden fear of live fish swimming up to her. And Tessa’s amazement at seeing a huge shark glide by in the crystal-clear Caribbean Sea. Eventually, all of these “greatest fears to be faced” turned into ho-hum, everyday fun experiences.

Swimming is great exercise, sure, but it is also highly empowering. Some rock-­huggers are too timid to get to this point. Those who do, however, profit for a lifetime. 

More About the Dunking Chair

Now, since I’m an adult and I’m writing for, mostly, adults, let’s take a moment to take a deeper dive into the dunking chair. 

First off, the connection ­between the bosun chair and halyard should be soft. A simple bowline will do. Why? So that no heavy or sharp hardware, such as a snap shackle, hits the kid during the drop. 

Also, the end of the spin pole should be held aloft independently of the hoisting halyard. That way, when the kid drops, the pole remains in place. 

Initially, it is good to have an adult in the water. While I operate the halyard myself for the first few hoists, I then complain that I’m too old and enlist one of the older kids to help. This allows me to talk to them about rope burns, how to operate a halyard winch, how to cast off a halyard safely, how to avoid having your head cracked by the winch handle, and the difference between casting off and easing. 

Obviously, no one should be standing in a loop on the deck; the deck crew must be all clear before the halyard is let go. 

In a few words: This is about teamwork and common sense. A dozen lessons in ­seamanship (and life) are revealed, but without anyone being a boring adult. Kids are smart. They don’t like being talked down to any more than adults do. Yet, they know little. It is the adult’s job to be one step ahead, always. 

Lessons for Life

Having been raised aboard the schooner Elizabeth, and having raised our daughter aboard the ketch Carlotta and the sloop Wild Card, we are now coastal cruising with our grandkids aboard the 43-foot center-cockpit ketch Ganesh in Southeast Asia. I can tell you, dear reader, that the key to kids, boats and learning is not to teach them when you feel like it, but rather to teach them during a teachable moment when they feel like it. The best teachers have students who don’t even realize they’re students. From their perspectives, they’re just fellow adventurers.

Is this difficult? Time consuming? Frustrating at times? Of course. Being a good parent isn’t easy, and nobody ­promised you that it would be. 

When Roma was born, I didn’t particularly wish that she did well academically, only that she be an avid reader. We’d be sitting at anchor with Roma playing with her (homemade) dolls on the cabin sole while my wife and I read on opposite sides of our vessel. When Roma would become bored, she’d bother me to see if she could stir me into action and capture my attention. 

“Don’t bother me,” I’d say as I returned to my Wilbur Smith novel. “I’m wrestling with a lion in Africa.”

“No, you’re not, silly Daddy-O,” Roma would say, “You’re reading a book.”

“How bad is it?” I would ask. “My shoulder wound, I mean. That lion bit me pretty badly. Am I losing much blood?”

“Don’t be crazy, Daddy-O!” she’d say with a giggle. “There’s no lions on St. John.”

And for the remainder of the day, we’d talk about Africa, medical first aid and lions.

“Could you check for me?” I’d ask Roma, “Just to be sure?”

“Mom, Dad thinks there’s a lion in the head,” she’d say with a giggle. 

One of our major cruising expenses from 1985 to 1998 was children’s books: first, the Ladybird series of books; then the Baby Sitters series; then Pippi Longstocking; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; anything by Judy Blume—right up to The Clan of the Cave Bear as Roma headed off to Brandeis University on a full merit scholarship. (With her master’s degree, she currently works with Singapore Management University.)

Here’s the truth of it: If you raise a child aboard, he or she is seldom more than a dozen feet from you or your spouse. Everyone hears one another other. Everyone smells one another other. Everyone experiences everyone’s moods, and the moods of mother ocean as well. The result, if you work at it, is a closeness and interdependence that landlubbers can’t even comprehend. 

My father was an orphan, deserted by his mother and taken away from his alcoholic father. His plan to buy our schooner wasn’t merely to sail to Tahiti; it was to raise his family aboard as we wandered the world. I guess it worked. I’m still wandering, if at a more sedate pace than when I first purchased my double-­ended sloop Corina at 15 years of age. 

And, I will say that the best thing in the world isn’t to be raised aboard; it is instead to be a second-generation liveaboard who is raising his child aboard. Ditto, our grandkids. 

Fatty Goodlander has lived aboard and ocean-sailed for 63 years, 53 of them with his wife, Carolyn. They still take turns hoisting each other in the dunking chair.

The post On Watch: Fatty Goodlander Tricks the Kids Into an Education appeared first on Cruising World.

57°38’07.3”N, 18°16’41.9”E
Port of Visby, Gotland, Sweden September 2022 

Sidse Birk Johannsen had just settled into an 18-hour journey across the Baltic Sea when her sailboat’s autopilot malfunctioned. Her sails were flapping. The waves were choppy. It was the middle of the night, and, to put it mildly, she was very cold and very alone. 

By all accounts, Johannsen’s first solo sea crossing had gone awry. With a sleepless night ahead, a pot of coffee was in order.

If you’re looking for an activity where everything sticks to the plan, stop now and cross sailing off your list. Sails tangle. Water leaks where it shouldn’t. Storms appear out of nowhere. Generators break. Engines fritz.

Things go wrong. A lot.

“Sometimes there’s a huge potential in being naive and not knowing what you’re walking into,” Johannsen says. “Because if you knew all the hassle beforehand, you would not do it.”

Five years ago, this 33-year-old Danish sailor’s life took a turn. Working in Greenland as a high school teacher, Johannsen broke up with her boyfriend of seven years. She had nowhere to live, no job. And a pandemic had shuttered the world.

“When life hurts, I run,” Johannsen says. “I go somewhere else. And that wasn’t really possible because of COVID.”

When Johannsen received an offer to work on a boat in Tahiti, she said yes. After a year of working on deck, she wanted more. Johannsen returned to Denmark, where, rather than sign a
lease on an apartment, she bought Anori, a 1976, 31-foot, Swedish-designed B31. The name in the Greenlandic language means “the spirit of the wind that will bring you home safely.”

Johannsen and the community of sailors she would discover fit within a broader story of travel and adventure in our post-pandemic world. But for women like Johannsen, many of whom are new to sailing, their launch out to sea meant joining a male-dominated community—one that frequently calls into question these women’s identities as captains. 

21°17’05.7”N, 157°57’35.4”W
Mamala Bay, Oahu, Hawaii April 2020

On the morning of April 17, 2020, Olivia Wyatt woke up anchored off the coast of Oahu. She had recently relaunched her 34-foot Ta Shing Panda, Juniper, after a series of maintenance issues required time in a shipyard. At home in the harbor once again, she was eager to explore the islands by sail. 

But that same morning, David Ige, then-governor of Hawaii, issued an emergency pandemic proclamation. It included a ban on more than two people inhabiting a single recreational boat in Hawaii waters, and a requirement that each boat remain at least 20 feet from the next. 

“Maybe I’ll just make loops around this island until I’m dizzy,” Wyatt wrote on social media.

Wyatt had arrived in Hawaii eight months earlier, having sailed Juniper 2,269 nautical miles over the course of 23 days from San Diego. Both places were a far cry from Wyatt’s landlocked hometown in Little Rock, Arkansas. Wyatt had learned to sail in her 20s, when she was working as a multimedia journalist in New York City. She received sailing lessons for her birthday from a boyfriend. It was the first time she’d stepped foot on a sailboat.

“I just fell in love with it,” Wyatt says. “It’s kind of like a game of chess. It’s unpredictable.” 

Wyatt wanted a strapping man to take care of the mechanical work while she braided sailor’s knots and danced on deck. After a string of boyfriends, Wyatt was living in Los Angeles, 34 years old and boatless. “I made a list of all the bluewater boats I liked and began searching for ones that were for sale,” she says. “I narrowed it down to a boat in Mexico, one in Hawaii, and one in San Diego. In the end, Juniper was the one I fell in love with. It was just by chance that it was the closest to me.”

She bought the boat in San Diego and sailed it up to Los Angeles. Six months later, she sailed back to San Diego for work.

“It was there that I met my friend Elana, who had already sailed solo across the Pacific,” she says. “I was considering sailing to Hawaii, and she encouraged me to do it.”

Wyatt spent a year learning her way around Juniper, sailing in Los Angeles and San Diego, and soon realized that she couldn’t fix and do everything herself. Between repairs, she’d sail out each ­morning, testing Juniper’s limits and quirks, and discovering her own.

If you’re looking for an activity where everything sticks to the plan, cross sailing off your list.

In the 23 days it took Wyatt to sail from San Diego to Hawaii, she found that ­writing kept her grounded. She ­experienced frequent auditory hallucinations, hearing questions in the air. Once, she started clapping to the beat of a funk song bouncing off the waves. 

“I try to recall the voices of my family now,” Wyatt wrote in a blog post in August 2019. “I want to hold onto those voices and take them with me, and I’m crying uncontrollably because I can’t. Because things like this can fade. Everything can fade and wilt on the vine of time. I can speak out here through satellites. When my ears are thirsty for a human voice, I call my mom, but our connection is distorted by the dance it does through space.”

8°26’18.9”N, 78°59’40.2”W
Pearl Islands, Panama March 2020

Holly Martin forgot to buy eggs. Normally, she would wait until the next grocery run, but she was starting her Pacific crossing from Panama toward Polynesia the next day. 

By the time Martin had returned to Panama City to get the eggs, the urban center was under lockdown. Guards were outside the grocery store, forcing ­customers to enter one at a time. 

Sitting in a small boat full of fresh food just off the shore of a city with 1.5 million people, Martin felt uneasy. With her Pacific crossing now off the table due to COVID, Martin had to stay put, so she and a group of 30 or so sailors sailed instead to the Pearl Islands, about 45 ­nautical miles away. 

After two months there, Martin heard rumors that Polynesia would open its ports. That August, she set sail for the Marquesas Islands. The winds were calm when she left Panama City. On her second day of what would be 41 days alone at sea, a little gray bird landed on her bow. 

“The buildup, it’s like a buildup of a storm,” Martin says in an online video. “And then once you leave, it just breaks, and suddenly, I’m sailing.”

The only communication device Martin had was a satellite tracker capable of receiving 40 texts with 140 characters each month. So, for 41 days, the only news Martin received was weather updates from her mother. 

“When I arrived in Polynesia, anything could have happened,” she says. “It could be gone. It could be worse—half the population could be dead, there could be nuclear war.” 

She describes her Pacific passage as being like “a very long meditation.” By the second week, she and her boat, Gecko, a 27-foot Danish Grinde, had become a single, mellow entity. Things still went wrong. But when Martin found herself free-climbing her mast in the middle of the night during a squall, she just did it. 

Sailing alone, Martin says, means no one is waiting for you to unravel. And when there’s no one to hold your hand, fear dissipates. Still, Martin says that she also has the space—an entire ocean of it—to air her emotions as they come. 

“I’m more likely to cry at a beautiful sunset at sea,” she says. “I think when we don’t have to protect ourselves from the people around us, we can allow our emotions to lie wherever they want to.”

For Martin, sailing wasn’t an unknown when she started her circumnavigation in 2018. In fact, Martin sailed before she could walk. Her parents sailed the world with their three young children for nearly a decade before landing in Round Pond, Maine. When Martin graduated from college in Maine with a degree in marine biology, she took a job on a vessel in Antarctica, working as a research support technician. 

“The out-at-sea alone part,” Martin says, “it’s quite irrelevant that I’m a woman.”

After six years of working with a crew, she wanted to learn how to make mistakes on her own. Until a year ago, she avoided inviting friends and family on Gecko. “I’ve spent a lot of weeks on passage thinking about my life and myself and digging in deep,” Martin says. “I feel like I’ve dug enough by myself now that I’m ready to start inviting other people into my world.” 

Though not quite as long as her ­to-dos, Martin also has a list of things she’s learned about herself while sailing alone. For one, she’s given up small talk. Often, silence is better. Martin has also realized that the stresses and burdens that exist on land can vanish at sea. 

“The out-at-sea-alone part,” Martin says, “it’s quite irrelevant that I’m a woman.”

38°54’19.6”N, 77°04’06.7”W
Washington, D.C. March 2023

It’s 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15, when Wyatt calls me by video. I’m sitting in a basement in Washington, D.C., wearing a wool sweater. She is tan, in a bright-purple tank top, on a boat in Fiji at 9 a.m. 

We chat about Martin — one of the few sailors Wyatt knows who is also sailing in the South Pacific— and Johannsen. If you’re thinking, Small world, you’re right. But the world of solo female sailors is also tightknit, despite these women sailing hundreds, even thousands, of miles apart. 

Wyatt, Martin and Johannsen connect on social media and ask questions about their latest boat malfunctions. When Martin was in New Zealand preparing for a Pacific crossing and needed a sewing machine, she posted a request online. Turns out, someone at the Richmond Yacht Club in Auckland had exactly what she needed.

Wyatt and Johannsen have similar ­stories. The sailing world, Johannsen says, is about finding a balance between trying to take care of things yourself and admitting when there is something you do not know. 

Back in the spring, Johannsen walked down the dock in Egå Marina, in Aarhus, Denmark, and approached a neighboring boat where a group of men chatted. They’d spent the past 40 years sailing. 

“Having this kind of connection is a huge value for me because it means I can call them and they can tell me what it means to buy a kind of boat,” she says. But, other times, Johannsen adds, “I want to be the one with the tools in my hands.” And if she doesn’t know what she’s doing, her followers online usually have the answer. 

If Johannsen’s female sailing followers have anything in common, it’s their camaraderie about broken engines, ripped sails, delayed starts, bad weather and mansplaining. Wyatt too: “All of the women who I’ve met along the way, we’re so similar,” she says. “It’s hard because you’re making all these decisions by yourself, and something is always breaking. It’s a financial burden. It’s a mental burden. It’s a weight.”

Martin says that they feel like sisters: “It’s just this unique community of people going through it all together. We have the same struggles.”

57°24’04.6”N, 21°32’27.3”E
Ventspils, Courland, Latvia September 2022

Out in the dark water of the Baltic Sea, Johannsen really had only one option. One way or another, she had to get her boat across the remaining 87 nautical miles between her and the Latvian coast. Her autopilot was broken. She had to hand-steer. 

When Johannsen docked Anori in Ventspils, a deepwater seaport, she knew that she’d have no problem falling asleep. After 18 hours of focus, she could allow herself to feel everything she had kept at bay for those long, cold hours. There is no room for fear, she says, in moments of ­discomfort or danger. But allowing ­yourself to feel those emotions after the fact, on land, is essential to staying sane. 

“You need to take those feelings seriously, because otherwise, they will build up in your body,” she says. “Your body will remember to be scared or very, very cold. It can turn your brain into oatmeal.”

And, alone on a boat only 34 feet long, extra baggage simply doesn’t fit. 

Follow these solo sailors online

Sidse Birk Johannsen: @sisi_atsea on Instagram

Olivia Wyatt: wildernessofwaves.com, ­@wildernessofwaves on Instagram

Holly Martin: @windhippiesailing on YouTube, @boatlizard on Instagram

The post A Singular Passion: Solo Sailing Female appeared first on Cruising World.

Among the many ­revelations I’ve ­experienced since purchasing a 1970s-era classic-plastic cruising boat and setting up shop on the Gulf Coast of Florida for half the year is the fact that yachts don’t get hauled out annually here for a fresh coat of bottom paint. In New England over the years, I’ve owned a series of sailboats, all of which spent every winter on the hard in a boatyard safe from the ravages of endless nor’easters. Their bottoms were all prepped and repainted before getting launched again the following spring. It’s not a particularly pleasant task, but one I’d always tackled myself—yet another annoying yin to the rewarding yang of owning a sailboat. 

So, when I bought my Pearson 365, August West, a year ago, I was pretty psyched to learn that I wouldn’t have to undergo the labor (and cost) on a yearly basis. In fact, I thought that I might get a pass altogether for a season or two. Then, two things happened: First, the diver I hired for a monthly bottom scrub, when asked about the condition below the waterline, had a pithy answer (“poor”); and second, the previous owner, when queried about the last time he painted the bottom, was equally succinct (“um, good question”). There really was no alternative: It was time to haul the vessel for new paint.

In Rhode Island, if in possession of a pulse and a ­valid credit card, this had never been an issue; plenty of yards in or near Newport were more than willing to relieve me of cash. In Florida, at least in the greater Sarasota area, it was more of a challenge. The first couple of places that I called flat-out said that they didn’t work on sailboats. And it was quickly apparent that, if I did find a spot, doing the work myself was out of the question. Finally, on a tip from a local sailor, I learned of an outfit called N.E. Taylor Boat Works, just a few short miles up the Intracoastal Waterway from my slip on Longboat Key, in a place called Cortez Cove.

The tiny adjacent community of Cortez, measuring just 2 square miles of real estate, was an oasis from the strip malls. Cortez is a commercial-fishing village founded in the late 1800s that still retains its old-timey Florida vibe. Home to a great fish market, a big fish processing plant and a couple of seafood shacks, it seemed of a different time and place, and an extremely welcoming one at that. 

The cove, however, is not such a simple spot to get into. Peering in from the ICW, the fleet of rather large fishing boats would suggest otherwise, but the actual channel is narrow and marked by hand-painted signs, one of which I, of course, missed. In what’s becoming a disturbing new habit, I ran aground…directly in front of one of the busy waterfront restaurants right at dinner hour. Free entertainment for all. Luckily, I’m getting good at getting off the bottom, and I made it to the yard unscathed. 

Descendants of the Taylor family, part of the original group of Cortez settlers from North Carolina, still run the yard. It’s both friendly and funky, and I mean the latter as a high compliment. From the time I pulled in until the time I pulled out, nobody ever bothered asking me for, well, anything: my full name, an address, payment details, nada. Almost as an afterthought, it occurred to me that, since I was in a boatyard and all, and I’d purchased a pair of deck hatches that were sitting in my V-berth, I might as well get them installed (a task I’d originally planned to do myself but was not relishing). No muss, no fuss, just two hours of reasonable labor costs that would’ve taken me much longer. 

Getting out of the boatyard was a lot easier. Back in my slip a few days later, my diver returned (he does several boats in the marina), noted the paint job, and said I was good to go for a while. “That could last you a few years,” he said, which made me smile. Whenever that time does come again, though, I’ll know to return to Cortez Cove. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

The post A Haul Out In Southwest Florida’s Cortez Cove Comes Packaged with a Few Surprises appeared first on Cruising World.

If you’d like to buy a ­cruising vessel, I ­recommend the classic five-step approach.

Step One: Decide what type of cruising you’re interested in.
Step Two: Research the market for suitable vessels.
Step Three: Talk to owners of those specific vessels for a reality check and, with the help of…
Step Four: a broker, and Step Five: a surveyor, sign on the dotted line. 

That’s my advice. 

However, I’d be disingenuous if I said that’s how I do it. I look for a worthless boat with a major problem and a ticking clock, and then assist the owner in getting on with his life by taking the vessel off his hands for a token, face-saving payment. 

How to find a worthless boat is easy. It is one that hasn’t sold for a year or three. Just look at two-year-old ads for boats that you’d like to own, and see if the boats are still for sale. If so, they’re worthless. 

Worthless boats are worthless for a reason. Most have a major problem. My double-ender Corina lacked an engine and rig, and had been used as a hangout for illiterates. How do I know? They spray-painted the word “fock” inside the vessel. And they burned parts of the interior to stay warm. As a parting gesture, they defecated in the bilges. Best of all, the vessel was illegally tied up behind a factory on the north fork of the Chicago River and had to be moved ASAP. 

Perfect. I paid $200 for the boat, lived aboard for four years, and extensively cruised the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. I eventually sold that boat for eight times what I paid for it.

Wild Card, a Hurricane Hugo wreck, was awash on the beach at Leinster Bay, St. John, in the US Virgin Islands, with tropical fish swimming through the cracked hull. The National Park Service was demanding that the boat be immediately removed or they’d do it and bill the owner, an alcoholic ex-stockbroker who’d already fled to Vietnam.

Perfect. I paid him $3,000, smeared the hole in the port side with dried snot (aka fiberglass), and sailed the boat twice around the world over the course of 23 years (at an initial cost of 3 cents a mile). I then sold the boat for 10 times what I’d paid. The buyer was a male stripper who paid with sticky cash straight from his jockstrap.

My current vessel, a 43-foot Wauquiez named Ganesh, was originally listed for $140,000—which, once upon a time, it had been worth. However, over the course of four years, a hurricane had heeled this boat over in a storm trench, a tree had grown between the mast and forestay, the engine had frozen, and no one had bid a single penny toward a purchase for two solid years. And, within 30 days, the boat’s $6,000 annual yard bill and almost-as-expensive annual insurance were due. 

Not perfect, but almost. I offered $40,000, saying, “Only one digit off, right?” We settled for $56,000 and left within the year for our third circumnavigation. 

Amazing? Not really. I just found a worthless boat with a major problem and a ticking clock—and offered the desperate owner a last chance to get out from under its ­maintenance costs.  

Why didn’t I mention my beloved 36-foot ketch Carlotta? Because I built that boat from scratch. The bare hull cost me only $600 in materials, back in 1971. 

Anyone can do this if they’re handy, crazy, tenacious, and married to a masochist who finds fiberglass dust oddly pleasing.

Did I know how to rebuild a marine engine or design a rig or patch a hole with dried snot? Or shape a plank or caulk a garboard seam? Or replace a section of deadwood? Or calculate the crown of a deck beam? Or loft a life-size yacht?

No, of course not. But I searched out people who did know of such things, and I hugged them until they opened their hearts and told me their innermost ­construction secrets.

I simply refused to take no for an answer. When I couldn’t afford to rent a small garage to build my Ibold-designed Endurance 36, Carlotta, I formed a commune. We built six boats in a giant warehouse in Boston. Unable to afford to transport my 20,000-pound vessel, I (and a fella named Momo) built a flatbed ­trailer from scrounged scrap iron—which still might be ­transporting yachts around New England, for all I know. 

At the time, the largest steam crane north of New York City was operated by a cigar-chomping guy who hated hippies—a fellow I had to set straight almost immediately upon meeting him. He said: “Don’t be silly. It costs over $20,000 for me to push the start button. Just the insurance rider alone costs…” 

“You misunderstand me,” I shot back. “I have no money. I’m not here to hire you. I need you to launch me for free.”

You should have seen the look of disbelief and revulsion on his grizzled face. I went back every day for a week, every week for a month, and every month for a year—­always with six-pack of beer, an herbally enhanced smile, and enough Zen to endure endless tirades against hippies, longhairs, and various other social parasites. 

Finally, one day, he called me and barked: “Listen, you little turd. I’ve got a contract in Maine. After I go through the Fort Point Channel Bridge, I’m gonna have a problem with one of the engine gauges. Just to be on the safe side, I’m gonna put down my spuds to check it out. I’m only gonna be there for five or six minutes—so you’d best have your goofy Titanic all set to go along the seawall. Damn, I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

It’s amazing what you can do if you’re tenacious and stupid enough to ignore being told no a few thousand times. 

A friend of mine named Eric lost the roof of his house and his Cape Dory Typhoon during Hurricane Hugo in 1989. His wife was hospitalized with stress. I felt bad for him. He was a good guy. 

So, my wife Carolyn and I went around to all the restaurants on St. John and collected empty milk and water jugs—or, as I thought of them, micro lift bags. Next, I collected all the PFD devices on the island, plus all the yacht fenders for good measure. St. John has a lot of yachts, and the logistics of all this gear was pretty daunting. 

I then purchased a can of fruit juice and a bottle of rum, and I announced a swim day in Cruz Bay. Dozens of folks showed up and swam with the empty jugs, as well as all the PFDs, down into the Cape Dory’s cabin. I encouraged them while lashing fenders from a loop of line encircling the keel. A dozen dinghies towed the awash vessel to the beach—where, at high tide, we hooked it to a Jeep and towed it into shallow water. When the tide dropped, we gravity-­siphoned that boat, and then we hand-bailed the rest. 

By nightfall, the boat was back on its mooring. Half the boats on St. John ended up with the wrong fenders afterward, but hey, that’s what happens when you mix good deeds and rum in the Caribbean. 

Why relate this story? Because you can’t make sizable withdrawals without making massive deposits in the karma bank.

I learned this, and more, from my father. He was the type of sailor who, if you gave him a Popsicle stick and a Swiss Army knife, could whittle you up a handy little vessel in no time. His first boat cost $10. He paid $5 for the boat and $5 for the team of horses to haul it to his yard. 

After coming back from World War II, he lusted after a lovely gold-plater that had just returned from a podium finish in the Newport Bermuda Race. It was a graceful, ­well-found John G. Alden (design No. 213, launched in 1924, ­sistership to Yvonne) schooner named Elizabeth. One day, the boat had a small fire in the gasoline-­powered engine room and sank. Instead of shedding a tear at the demise of another classic American racing yacht, my father tossed a $100 bill in the air and dived into the muddy water of Illinois’ Calumet River. 

Do you know what he said when he surfaced and called for the lift bags in the trunk of his car?

“Perfect.” 

Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander are holed up at the Changi Sailing Club in Singapore, slowly replacing all their running rigging from their favorite international chandlery, Dumpster Marine. Their book How to Inexpensively and Safely Buy, Outfit & Sail a Small Vessel Around the World continues to make readers giggle. 

The post On Watch: Fatty Goodlander’s Adventures in Boat Buying appeared first on Cruising World.

When Behan and Jamie Gifford warn cruisers to be realistic about budgets, they know of what they speak.

In 2010 in Tahiti, not even halfway through a planned three- to five-year sailing sabbatical with their three children, they had $100 left in the bank. Their house in Bainbridge, Washington, was underwater financially.

“We figured that we could either pull the plug and go back, or we could figure out how to make a living out of this,” Jamie says.

They proceeded to Australia, got shore jobs for a year and a half, and reinvented their sabbatical into a lifestyle: living aboard while selling stories, instructions, guidance and a fair amount of handholding to a growing clientele who dream of cruising. After circumnavigating and accumulating an encyclopedic body of practical knowledge, they established a cruiser-counseling business that ­manages to be both inspirational and practical. In six years, under their brand Sailing Totem, they have coached more than 400 clients.

You may have read some of their 2,500 pieces, many of them written for Cruising World, or spent hours on their website and social media sites. Maybe you drooled a bit during one of their motivational talks. Their goal, they say, is to make dreams real and realistic. 

The couple met in 1991 while sailing on Long Island Sound, where Jamie had established a reputation as sail designer for racing boats in Old Mystic, Connecticut. Both recall being inspired by the book Dove, which Jamie gave Behan on an early date. After settling in the Pacific Northwest, having three ­children, losing Jamie’s mother, and getting caught up in suburban mayhem, they realized that they needed to shove off. At the time, their kids—Niall, Mairen and Siobhán (names from Behan’s Irish-Celtic roots)—were 9, 6 and 4.

In 2007, they paid $190,000 for a 1982 Stevens 47 that provided room for five, and enough stowage and heft to cruise anywhere. They chose Totem as a name to reflect the spirit of native traditions, to “look out for us, take us where we wanted to go, a vessel of our hopes and dreams,” Behan recalls. 

They then spent more than $60,000 refitting what they had been led to believe was a turnkey boat. That experience underpins their first, best lesson for wannabe cruisers: “The economics of cruising is one people get wrong often,” Jamie says. Simply put, the negotiated cost of the boat is just the beginning. “No boat is ever turnkey.”

The list of bills can seem endless: haulouts, a survey, delivery—and that’s before any upgrades that a survey might reveal. For the past 10 years, the Giffords have spent approximately $3,500 a month to live aboard. That does not include the $30,000 needed to replace their engine.

The Giffords ask clients to fill out a form outlining where they want to go, their budget and their timeline. Almost immediately, problems show through. 

“People often come to cruising with the idea that they need a bluewater boat: ‘I want to be able to sail around Cape Horn in a storm fighting pirates, so it’s got to be tough,’” Jamie says. “And the reality is that boats have a lot more capacity than people give them credit for. Most people want to cruise the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the US East Coast.”

Behan adds: “There is a lot of dogma around good, old boats as kind of the right, proper boat for bluewater cruising. These boats have problems that the newer sailor doesn’t even know how to ask the right questions about, and the owner ends up in a pickle where either the boat has issues that they can’t manage or they get into a money pit trying to fix issues and never get to go. We want people to go. Our whole mission is helping folks get out there safely, comfortably, happily.”

One irony is that social media videos can make ­cruising look like a Disney movie. But if you hire the Giffords (on a retainer of $300 for three months or $1,000 per year), you start to get the real dope. You can sample a half-hour of their advice for $50.

“[Cruisers] come into this because it looks awesome on YouTube, and there’s umbrella drinks on the beach and all of that,” Jamie says. “Yes, we have sundowners and fun, because we love this. But the downside is that it’s hard work. The downside is passages that are lumpier than you thought and a toilet’s backed up.” 

Their job, they feel, is not to kill the dream but to recalibrate it. And they are talking about more than mechanical stuff.

“I had a crying-out session with a client this week,” Behan says. “They thought they knew what they were getting into, and then they realized they’re in way over their heads. So, we’re brought in to help them salvage the dream.”

According to Behan, one family with coastal experience took off into the Pacific only to learn, too late, that they didn’t like it. Another couple dismasted in a Pacific gale 1,000 miles west of Baja with three kids on board, including a 5-month-old born prematurely. A freighter rescued the mother and kids, while the husband worked on bringing the boat back.

The Giffords have found that a successful cruise rests on a three-legged stool: being financially sound, physically healthy and, Behan says, “everybody on the boat has to want to be there.”

Jamie has no problem telling people he doesn’t think they’re ready, but often, he’ll advise tiptoeing into cruising. “Go and have fun for a while,” he says. “Don’t run off into the deep end of the pool. We want people to have fun and be safe, and not risk the family’s safety and comfort.”

With their own children now in college and working, Behan, 53, and Jamie, 57, hope to wend their way through the north Pacific to Japan, Taiwan, Micronesia and Southeast Asia. “We’ve visited only 39 islands in Indonesia, and there are 16,000,” she says.

You can access the Giffords’ blog and other resources at sailingtotem.com.

The post This Ol’ Boat: Circumnavigators Behan and Jamie Gifford Offer Lessons for the Long Haul appeared first on Cruising World.

I’m cheap but not chintzy. I believe that I can do really cool, really fun things on my boat (for pennies) that make it safer and more seaworthythan the expensive, gold-plated boat anchored next to mine. Plus, because I’ve almost never worked ashore, I whip up these cruising gizmos on a microbudget. Saving money on such projects—and being able to spend it while cruising the world—is really important to me. 

Example: stepping masts. I purchased my first vessel as a teenager in Chicago. It didn’t have a mast. When I finally managed to finagle a Sitka spruce spar, I couldn’t afford a crane to step it. Not a problem: I laid it on deck on sawhorses and drove my boat under the bridge at the Lake Shore Drive S-turns in Chicago. At rush hour (to discourage pesky questions), my father and some friends pulled over into the breakdown lane and tossed over a block-and-tackle. Within minutes, they hoisted the heavy wooden mast in place—and we were gone before the Chicago police knew what happened. 

Thus, with all my vessels and in all my days, I’ve never once paid to have a mast stepped or unstepped. Why would I?

Alas, in the Virgin Islands, bridges are few and far between, but large sailing vessels are a dime a dozen. Thus, just before our first circumnavigation, when I wanted to pull the mast on my Hughes 38 Wild Card, I just jammed her between a Little Harbor 82 named Tala and a Hinckley 65 named Skeets. Both were anchored in Hurricane Hole, St. John, for happy hour. Before their skippers were able to sober up enough to ask me what was going on, I had tied both their spin halyards in a bowline around my mast and hoisted the halyards to my spreaders. From there, it was a simple matter to lift the keel-stepped mast gently out of the boat and lower it to my deck like a Fabergé egg. (Re-stepping it was just as easy.)

Ocean sailing on pennies is just a matter of imagination. I’ve never had self-tailing sheet winches—not ever. Instead, I put a figure-eight knot in the sheet’s bitter end, add two wraps around the winch, and toss it in the water. The drag of the line while under sail is just right—free and instantaneous self-tailers. (Try it. You’ll be amazed. And no rat’s nest on the cockpit sole. Just be sure to pull these sheet ends out of the water before you put your engine in gear.)

Don’t want to pay for an outrageously priced ­bilge-pump float switch? Attach a cheap, ­household mercury switch to a ­fore-­and-aft-mounted hinged toilet-­bowl float. How cool (and ­inexpensive) is that?

Speaking of toilets, I’ve found the ring of bowl wax (used to install a toilet in a house) to be a handy underwater sealant—and easier to use than expensive underwater epoxy products. Mix it with a little antifouling paint if you want it to match. And when it comes to leaks and underwater patching, old-fashioned bike inner-tube patches stick like crazy underwater.

Thick safety glass—­especially perfect-size pieces with rounded corners—are expensive. So, when I built the 36-foot Endurance ketch Carlotta, I used all the windows from a Volkswagen van that I found in a junkyard, for 2 bucks apiece. I’m not sure how long they last—only that they were perfect after 18 years of ocean sailing.

I don’t find most marine buckets strong enough for use underway. Their weak bails pull out. So, I use construction buckets intended for carrying cement. (Some can mar topsides; others don’t.)

Our narrow-of-beam 38-foot sloop, Wild Card, didn’t have much room below, so we practically lived in our cockpit. When we first salvaged this boat, it had typical (heavy, expensive and undependable) wheel steering. It soon broke. I almost fell over when the salesman on St. Thomas told me how much it would cost to replace. Thinking quickly, I asked, “How much for the 2-by-4 propping open your door?”

He gave it to me for free, and it worked perfectly during our first circumnavigation. This solution had the added advantage that tillers are superior to (faster to react than) wheels when coupled to a self-steer gear such as our Monitor. 

Since we almost never steer anyway, for our second circumnavigation, I mounted two tillers: a rigid one aft and a hinged one that could point either fore or aft. The aft racing one was where I could attach my Monitor windvane; the ­forward-facing tiller was hinged so that it could nestle in the aft-facing one, leaving our cockpit tiller-free and much more sensuous. Plus, we were able to incorporate a folding cockpit table—perfect for our food fiestas as well.

Of course, when one of our Nicro Fico ventilators (white with red insides) got snatched overboard during a spinnaker hoist, I replaced both vents on my dorades with stylish PVC plumbing elbows. They turned out to be better at scooping in air, and they’re great ­conversation starters. 

Toward the end of our first circumnavigation, something heavy flying around our cockpit shattered our steering ­compass. So, during our second circumnavigation, we used a ball automotive compass with a suction cup, designed for the inside of windshields. It was hardly perfect, but hey, why get uptight? I could have postponed my second circumnavigation, but I’m happy to say that I didn’t.

The insides of the galley cabinets aboard Carlotta were kind of funny. To save money, I used exterior plywood from billboards that had blown down during a Boston windstorm. In the galley, if my wife opened a cabinet to grab a can of soup, the eye of the Marlboro Man stared back at her.

No, I never throw away old fenders. I slice them up for rubber gaskets, vibration dampeners and other uses. My spreader lights aren’t marine; they’re underwater fountain lights that cost $3 each and have worked for 20-plus years now. 

Ditto my nonmarine windspeed meter. I use the ones that are a quarter of the price and last two or three times as long as the marine units.

Sure, modern depth meters are a marvel, but Joshua Slocum, Capt. Cook and Ferdinand Magellan used sounding leads that, if “armed” with wax, bring up a sample of the bottom as well. 

I’m a big believer in slowing drogues. But don’t tell anyone that the drag devices I use most often look suspiciously like fenders. They’re strung together in series as the breeze increases. 

Yes, I have a nylon Para-Tech sea anchor. But it must be kept damp after use and rinsed repeatedly with fresh water afterward to prevent weakening by salt crystals. Thus, I also use a plywood sea anchor/slowing device designed by Fredric A. Fenger in the 1920s. I find it more convenient to deploy during smaller, friendlier gales. (See my book Creative Anchoring for more details and dimensions.) Oh, and Fenger’s The Cruise of the Diablesse is my all-time favorite cruising yarn, always kept right next to Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World on my bookshelf. 

Some mechanical things never die. For instance, our Pfaff sewing machine from Germany has been in various bilges for more than 50 years and still sounds like a Rolls-Royce. Since voltage converters are expensive, we swap out electric motors from any old Singer as we change voltages. (Currently we have two inverters—one for 110 and the other for 220, so, problem solved.)

Portable, battery-operated drills are popular. I like them because they won’t electrocute you if you fall into the drink with one in your hand. With a little imagination, they can be used for many things, such as electric fishing reels while trolling. A friend made a little gearbox to allow his Ryobi grinder/buffer to hoist up the mainsail on his trimaran. Hats off, dude!

While I’d never be so cheap as to recommend replacing the long run of marine-grade battery cable that feeds the anchor windlass with nonmarine welding cable, I have done it in a pinch to reach the next port with a marine electrical supply. 

We’ve lived almost exclusively in the tropics and would never want air ­conditioning aboard. We do, however, have three different wind scoops, including a light-air one with big shoulders (­hurricane-force belowdecks) and a ­narrower one for warm gales. We also have numerous custom-sewn splash guards that allow our hatches to stay open, even in rough conditions while at sea.

Need funnels of different sizes? Then don’t throw away single-use plastic ­bottles. Use them and your glue gun to adapt their screw caps to perform many, many custom functions. 

And, think about diapers. Recently, to prevent an oil-leaking transmission from staining the bilge and polluting the harbor, I diapered it so that the bilge would stay fresh until its rear seal could be replaced. 

Need to have a small lumberyard aboard to carry wood for special projects? Your boat already has one. Cut the plywood an eighth of an inch smaller than the sides and back of your hanging locker, and you’d never know that the spare wood is there. Another hint: I used a beachcombed piece of PVC pipe fastened to the underside of my deck in the cockpit locker as my “long locker” where I stow wooden dowels, threaded rod, spare stanchions, extra sail track and more.

Ever been aground and needed to attract attention from a distant passing freighter? I fly the box kite I carry in my life-raft supplies with flashing CDs for a tail. It flashes far brighter than any strobe. You can also use a hand mirror to signal a passing vessel if you don’t mind aiming it and don’t require the elevation of a kite. 

Have permission to put down a heavy mooring but don’t have much money? Wrap some rebar around a large eye bolt, and then suspend it and some chicken wire just below the rim of a 55-gallon drum from your dinghy. Fill the drum with any steel or rocks hanging about, and then pour in concrete. If you want to gild the lily, add three cheap sand screws and a few spare anchors on some heavy chain. You can hold the Queen Mary for the cost of peanuts.

Need a fast dinghy for one? I built a super-lightweight dinghy out a single sheet of door-skin plywood, and it lasted for years. It was too tippy for drunks, although I’ve found that anytime you wrestle with whiskey in a dinghy, you lose.

If you’re worried that your expensive RIB might go on a walkabout with a snapped (or more likely, improperly tied) painter, then you can leave an Apple AirTag tracker in it. Where I’m currently anchored in Southeast Asia, that would mean 6 million folks would be helping you locate it 24/7, through Apple’s Find My network.

Can’t afford an electric autopilot, and have only a windvane? Rig a cheap tiller pilot to the upper vane of your windvane, and live happily ever after. That’s what I did on Wild Card. It worked perfectly during two circumnavigations. Was it as a good as a $6,000 unit? No, but it sufficed and barely used any 12-volts because all the muscle was supplied by my vessel moving through the water. 

If you’re worried that your expensive RIB might go on a walkabout with a snapped ­painter, you can leave an Apple AirTag ­tracker in it.

Could I go on for another 350 pages? Sure, and I do in my books. But for now, that’s a taste of what a handy circumnavigator with empty pockets and a vivid imagination can pull off. 

There’s a difference between a well-funded, two-year around-the-world voyage and a work-as-you-relax circumnavigation. On my first circumnavigation, I set out with $5,000. On my second, I had $800. In my experience, DIY sailors tend to spend more time in exotic locales and have more fun networking with the locals to save money than their more-well-heeled, rushing-to-finish counterparts. Each to his own, of course.

Currently on his fourth circumnavigation, Cap’n Fatty was raised aboard an Alden schooner and never grew up. He’s lived aboard boats for 63 years and has authored a dozen books on the subject.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own, are intended to be satirical in nature, and do not necessarily represent those of Cruising World.

The post On Watch: Fatty Goodlander Dabbles in Imaginative DIY appeared first on Cruising World.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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