A rain-disrupted two-day safari in the usually arid plains and mountains north of Cape Town, cruising across windy Table Bay to view Robben Island from a power cat, and wild World Cup soccer fans filling
the streets nightly each provided entertaining sideshows to the main event on a recent trip to South Africa: a media tour of the Robertson and Caine boatbuilding shops, where Leopard catamarans are built. It was an adventure that the builder arranged to coincide with the launch of its newly designed 40-foot power cat, to be marketed as the Leopard 40PC and the Moorings 403PC. 

R&C operates six manufacturing ­facilities in Cape Town, where it builds models that include 42-, 45- and 50-foot sailing catamarans, and 40-, 46- and 53-foot power cats. All models are available to private owners under the Leopard brand, and for charter through Sunsail and The Moorings. The 403PC will be available for on-water vacations this year.

All the R&C facilities that our small troupe of writers visited were bustling, though they were winding down the 2022 production year in anticipation of the plant’s closing to give employees their annual holiday break. The company built 182 boats in 2022 and plans to produce 213 this year, according to Donovan Thomas, R&C’s technical director. 

The three-stateroom 40 PC is being constructed on a new production line, in a building previously used for research and development. Hull No. 1 had just launched, and we saw four more in various stages of build. Construction of the first few boats includes hands-on workforce training; full-on production commenced early this year.

The busiest shop we found was the Bolt facility, where the Leopard 45 sailing cats—the company’s most popular model—are built. There, assembly-line manager Rotenda Randima walked us through the various workstations, from bare hull to finished boat. At each ­station, a swarm of technicians added to the overall sensation that there was, ­indeed, a lot going on. From the plant, she said, a new boat is trucked every four-and-a-half days to the harbor, where it undergoes sea trials before being loaded onto a ship for delivery.

On the 45’s production line, large fans kept the air moving, even on a hot South African morning. Hulls sat in cradles fitted out with wheels that roll along rails in the floor. At each workstation, lists of tasks were posted, along with progress notes and reports on things such as the number of injuries incurred, if any. At the station where the 45’s deck and cabin top are bonded to the hull, workers had gone 204 days without a mishap, I noted as I strolled by.

Throughout its plants, the R&C workforce includes experienced boatbuilders and trainees, the latter easily identifiable, dressed as they are in orange overalls. The company trains 100 to 150 people a year in skills that include carpentry, lamination and mechanical systems, among others. The overall number of employees runs right around 2,000.

R&C is somewhat uncommon in the world of boatbuilding because it has just one customer: Travelopia, the parent company of Leopard Catamarans, The Moorings and Sunsail. 

Franck Bauguil, vice president of yacht ownership and product development, says that besides the Leopard 42 sailing cat, which won CW’s 2022 Boat of the Year award for Best Cruising Catamaran Under 50 Feet, R&C has introduced three new power cats in the past three years. The company plans to refocus on sail in the coming months, with a couple of new designs in early stages of development. 

The post South African Boat Builders Bringing a Leopard of Different Sorts appeared first on Cruising World.

Had I not fallen in love with a sailor from the other side of the world, I could’ve happily stayed in Mexico aboard Circe, my family’s Catalina 400, for the rest of my life. 

Starting from a young age, I’d spent my life sailing the California coast with my family aboard Tango, our Catalina 30. Later, on the larger Circe, we spent every spring cruising the Sea of Cortez, smitten by the region’s warm water, stunning wildlife and pristine anchorages. I never grew tired of sailing, exploring, snorkeling, spearfishing and enjoying delicious meals aboard. (I was a family cook.)

Then, I met Tristan, a Welshman who shared my love of boats and the sea. He joined us aboard Circe for a few seasons, exploring Mexico before we married. We moved from the warm, familiar shores of Mexico to a rainy isle called Great Britain, my husband’s homeland.

 We settled in Pembrokeshire, Wales, a county on the country’s western tip known for the breathtaking national park that spans its coast. The area is a step back in time; people either love or hate the slow pace of life. Those who love it have one thing in common: a lifestyle that revolves around the sea. We fit right in.

 Not long after arrival, I set sail on a weeklong Royal Yachting Association Day Skipper course. What better way to get to know my new sailing ground? Two other student crew and I boarded our 40-footer, met our professional skipper, and got settled. We sailed from Milford Haven, a tidal estuary that divides Pembrokeshire County in half from north to south. The week’s plan was to allow the tides and weather to dictate our daily passages. By the end of the week, we’d be able to confidently day-skipper our own boats. 

 Britain’s cruising grounds differ from California’s and Mexico’s in a few ­noteworthy ways. The tidal range in Pembrokeshire is more than twice that of San Francisco Bay. The weather is famously fickle. Navigation takes some getting used to. (The red-green buoys are reversed from what boaters know in the United States. Here, it’s green, right, returning.) And, unlike the Sea of Cortez, the water is cold. Snorkeling off a boat requires 4 millimeters of neoprene, followed by hot cups of tea to thaw frozen fingers.

 When I boarded the boat that gray Friday evening for the start of my course, I knew to expect these differences. In fact, what surprised me most wasn’t the dismal weather or nautical nuances, but the discovery of something Britain is most certainly not known for: delicious food.

 My fellow crewmembers and I took turns cooking the evening meals. Most of the dishes on rotation were familiar comfort foods such as curry, chili and spaghetti Bolognese, which the Brits affectionately call “spag bol.” When it was my turn to cook, I was handed a bag of pasta, some canned tomatoes and a few cans of tuna. My instructions: “Make a tuna pasta bake.” 

Truth: I’d never even heard of a tuna casserole, never mind a tuna pasta bake. I suspected that the crew had invented it just to use up our remaining provisions, but they were adamant that it was a British classic.

 As I stood in the galley, eyeing up my ingredients and forming a plan, the crew could sense my ­apprehension. One by one, they began popping their heads into the ­companionway to offer advice.

 “My mum always added sweet corn,” one said.

“I bake mine until the top is a little crispy,” another chimed in.

“I’d add that third tin of tuna,” yet another offered.

 I listened to some of their suggestions (the crispy top) and respectfully ignored some (the sweet corn). The result was a tuna pasta bake that I’m proud to say won the British crew’s stamp of approval. It was everything a cold-water boat meal should be: simple, hearty, and the perfect excuse to turn on the oven and warm up the cabin. 

British-Style Tuna Bake (serves 6)

• 1 lb. rigatoni or penne pasta
• 3-4 Tbsp. olive oil
• 2 small or medium onions, chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste 
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 3/4  cup red wine
• 1 12-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 2 tsp. sugar
• Pinch of oregano and basil 
• 3 cans tuna in oil (3.5- to 5-ounce cans, drained)
• 1 generous cup fresh baby spinach leaves or kale, chopped
• 1 cup mozzarella, grated
• 1 generous cup cheddar, grated
• Dusting of Parmesan, grated

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Boil pasta in a large pot of generously salted water, until one stage before al dente. (Use package directions as a guide.) Drain, but reserve about 1½ cups of the pasta water. Set pasta aside. 

Heat olive oil in the pasta pot. Sauté onions with a pinch of salt and pepper until they soften. Add garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Add tomato paste and blend, stirring, for another minute. Stir in the wine, and allow sauce to simmer for 2 to 3 minutes. 

Stir in tomatoes, sugar, herbs and tuna. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add baby spinach or kale and cook briefly, until wilted.

Remove from heat. Thin the sauce with a bit of pasta water, then gradually add cooked pasta and mozzarella, stirring gently and adding more pasta water as needed to keep the mixture moist. Transfer to a greased 9-by-13-inch baking pan or casserole dish. Top with cheddar and Parmesan. 

Bake until cheese is melted and ­bubbling, and the edges of the bake are slightly crispy. Serve warm.

Prep time: 30 minutes (including cook time)
Difficulty: Easy
Can be made: At anchor

The post Sailor & Galley: Classic British Comfort Food Warms the Boat in Wales appeared first on Cruising World.

I’m constantly asked, after more than six decades of offshore cruising and four circumnavigations, what the most difficult part of the sailing lifestyle is. The challenge now, I always pontificate, is to find a harbor where I don’t owe a lot of people a lot of money. 

Yes, the most important item you can bring aboard your boat is your sense of humor—not to laugh at others, but to laugh with them as they laugh back at you. Everything marine can be humorous if you view it the right way. 

Let’s take oars or propellers as ­examples. Many newbie sailors ­aren’t sure why propellers even exist on small sailboats. The truth is that ­mean-spirited, desk-bound designers include them to unexpectedly “suck in” dropped dock lines, stray sheets and wayward halyards. That’s right: King Neptune and his pals are sadists. There’s no other way to explain it. 

Ditto inboard engines. Their job is to stop in narrow harbor entrances, up-current of jagged rocks and upwind of closing bridges. And the lowly tiller. This is an ordinary wooden stick that, once at sea, forces the person holding it to yell nasty insults at all the other folks aboard—and not quite grasp why the crew isn’t smiling. 

There’s no end to the creative ­humiliations that sailboats provide. I’ve powered away from the dock so many times with my power cord attached that my wife thinks huge blue sparks catching the dock on fire is a normal part of casting off. 

And it’s not just me. A rum-soaked Floridian friend of mine traded his fiberglass sloop for a classic wooden yawl at the Bahia Mar Resort and Yachting Center—and went sailing while hugging a bottle of rum. Alas, he wasn’t too sure how to reef his new vessel. In a relatively minor squall, he lost his mainmast over the side. It had to be cast off when it threatened to poke a hole in his semi-rotten planking in the Gulf Stream. Oh, he was bummed, though not as bummed as when he went under the (closed) 17th Street bridge an hour later and lost his mizzen as well. 

My wife refuses to let me use my ­portable drill without supervision. Why? I once drilled through the top of our water tank. Then, to prove that my mistake wasn’t a fluke, I drilled through a picture of our daughter (which was, like, hiding on the other side of the bulkhead). No, I’ve never drilled through our hull, but, according to my long-suffering wife, it is only a matter of time. 

Electrically, I’m no better. All the marine electronics I buy are filled with smoke—which usually leaks out the moment I (mis)connect them. “Did you check polarity?” my wife always asks with a smirk as their plastic cases begin to melt. I long for the good ol’ days of my sailing youth, when tube radios tuned to 2182 AM had metal chassis. 

I also regularly wear wraparound Tahitian pareos around the boat. I’ve had them get entangled in my windlass, my engine’s flywheel and various other moving parts. Once, during the America’s Cup in New Zealand, while powering in front of a dock crowded with Kiwi spectators, my outboard engine lost power. I immediately whipped off its cover to wiggle its spark-plug wire. Somehow, this act yanked off my pareo and spun me around in the dinghy like a top while those on the dock covered their eyes. 

Dinghies are as ego bruising as their motherships. I’ve face-planted myself coming onto beaches too fast, bonked my head standing up too quickly while going under docks and, of course, guillotined myself on a dozen evil dock lines.  

Dock hoses? Oh, please! I’ve filled up many a fuel tank with water, and vice versa. Seriously, never attempt to shower with diesel fuel, no matter how dirty you are.

Booms are aptly named. The first time I was hit in the head while tacking, I vowed never to allow that to happen again—and I didn’t until a few minutes later, when the thought was knocked out of me during a jibe. Of course, now that I’m sans hair, I can knock myself out just standing up under a boom. 

Don’t get me started on navigation. Once upon a time, during my celestial daze, er, days in the ’60s, it was easy to mistake Bermuda on the East Coast for Catalina Island off the West Coast. Nowadays, with modern GPS included in each toothpick that Apple sells, not so much.

Things were much more laid-back in the Caribbean when I arrived in the ’70s. For example, if people spoke French and served croissants, it was probably Fort-de-France on Martinique. If they spoke Spanish and whipped up tortillas, it was probably Mexico. Or Colombia. Or Barcelona in Spain. That’s why it was called dead reckoning, because that’s how many of us ended up when our doctors were off a thousand miles or so. 

Marine radios present their own set of problems. While it is perfectly OK to talk about a September day over the VHF radio, never use the same phrase for the month between April and June, unless you want a search-and-rescue helicopter hovering overhead. Speaking of those folks, it is always good to know what ocean you’re in. It speeds things up if you can inform your rescuers about needing assistance in, say, the Pacific instead of forcing them to guess.

Why are marine toilets called heads? Well, because that’s always what they’re messing with—your head. Seriously, they do call it a joker valve, don’t they? It’s impossible to explain to a landlubber the indignities of such satanically possessed devices. I’ve been squirted so many times that I wear my heavy-weather gear while pumping. In fact, this is how foul-weather gear got its name. (Not really.) 

As a result of the pandemic and my shrinking income, we hadn’t hauled in a few years. This meant we had to scrape the boat’s bottom before we went sailing. And here’s the truth of it: As an aging sailor gets arthritic, those freaking barnacles are fast. And not only that, but we’re tenacious too. I used to remove them with a putty knife. Now, I use a cold chisel and a sledgehammer. 

In the tropics, ventilation is important if you live aboard, especially in places where the local cuisine includes beans, beans and more beans. Yes, wind scoops can be cruising necessities in laid-back Mexico. Tugboats aren’t the only vessels that toot. (Why exactly is Montezuma so vengeful?)

This brings us to the subject of tender traps. The bottom line? I’ve never had a dinghy I couldn’t fall out of, capsize or pitchpole. Wanna know how to swamp a dinghy? Buy a new outboard. In my experience, both will be upside down and underwater within days. 

I remove the engine covers of my new outboards before I even mount them, and I paint the insides with antifouling paint. Think I’m kidding? I’ve found crabs swimming in my carburetor float. I’ve had seaweed snarling our starter cord. Our murderous dinghy drowns our outboard so often that I don’t need to tilt it up to check its prop for nicks. Hell, our lower unit needs sunblock. 

Batteries? I use the lead-acid variety for the convenience of being able to remove their caps and peer inside to see if they’re full of juice. Simple, eh? Why waste money on an expensive battery monitor?

Yes, I have a laptop aboard to keep track of our finances. The moment I keyboarded in our floating home as an asset, the software quickly transferred that amount into its liability column, and then the whole screen started flashing, beeping, and proclaiming: “You’re broke, Skipper. You’re officially bankrupt in every currency in the whole watery world.” Ah, the joys of circumnavigating. 

Of course, I prefer not being too ­negative. In fact, I once wrote a book singing the praises of cruising vessels. It fit on the back of a postage stamp. 

Actually, I’d have included more positives in this article, but, if I remember correctly, my short-term retention has been poor since the ’60s. Where were we?

Don’t get me started on the customs process. Once the guys in uniforms begin asking me for money, I whip out a rubber hose from my back pocket and strike myself in the head with it. This saves time. If they ask me if I’m carrying drugs, I always reply, “None that I haven’t already ingested,” with a wink and a grin. 

Regrets? None! I look back on watery life and remember all the glorious free rides I’ve had on US Coast Guard vessels, on search-and-rescue choppers, in the back of various squad cars—oh, what a lucky guy am I.

Incidentally, I’ve developed a cosmically cool way of dissuading those determined bean counters with long memories who foolishly want us to pay back the money we borrowed from them on previous circs. As they approach, I calmly inform them that there are three types of people in this world: people who can count and people who can’t.

That line usually gives us just long enough to hoist anchor and sail away. Ah, the great blue sea. 

Currently on his fourth circumnavigation, Cap’n Fatty is an eternal “boat kid” who was raised aboard an Alden schooner and never grew up. He’s lived aboard for 63 years while amassing hundreds of thousands of miles under his keel and has authored a dozen books on the subject. He says his biggest problem as a serial cruiser is “finding anchorages that don’t contain people who I owe a whole lot of money to!”

The post On Watch: Chuckling Our Way Around the World appeared first on Cruising World.

A fracture in the pressurized shore-water line in my 50-foot schooner, Britannia, caused major flooding. It would have sunk her had I not managed to pump out the water ­quickly. I subsequently stripped and thoroughly cleaned five electric pumps, which worked again flawlessly. I also drained the engine oil and transmission oil and replaced them. Then, remarkably, the engine fired up immediately, as though nothing had happened.

Because the engine continued to start every time, I assumed that the starter motor was fine. During the hot summer months in Florida, we hardly visited the boat anyway, and rarely started the engine. This was a mistake. 

Over time, the starter began to turn the engine slower and slower, as though the dedicated battery was at the end of its five-year life. I installed a new battery but saw no change in the sluggish turnover, which was by then hardly sufficient to fire the ­engine at all. I also cleaned the heavy cable connections, but it made no difference. There was only one thing left to do: Remove the starter (Figure 1) and examine it. 

The thing about starter motors on heavy diesel engines in boats is this: They’re darn heavy. My engine is a Perkins 4.236 that weighs half a ton, and the starter is low down in the bowels of the bilge, secured with three very rusty three-eighths-inch nuts—one of which was almost impossible to reach with a wrench. After hanging upside down over the engine for half an hour, I finally got it off and hauled out the thing using the battery cable attached to the solenoid. It is 15 inches long and weighs 34 pounds. That’s the same weight as my number two CQR anchor.

Dismantling the Starter

There are two main parts to these normally reliable starters (see Figure 2). There is the solenoid (Figure 3), which throws a tiny pinion gear on the motor shaft into mesh with the flywheel attached to the crankshaft. The 10 teeth on the pinion gear are tapered, so they mesh smoothly with the flywheel teeth. It is called a Bendix Drive, after the inventor, Vincent Bendix, who patented it in 1915.

The other, much-larger part is the ­actual starter, containing the armature that spins the pinion gear (Figure 4) and turns the flywheel, thereby firing the engine. There could be numerous reasons why this was not happening, so ­everything on the starter needed looking at. I began with the solenoid.

Solenoid

After securing the starter firmly in the jaws of the big swivel vise in my garage, I removed the two screws holding the solenoid to the starter casing, along with the screw holding the electrical cable to the body. The solenoid still would not come away from the body, until I discovered it needed rotating a little to dislodge it from the groove it was locked in. It then almost removed itself, thanks to a large, heavy spring inside the solenoid that keeps the pinion disengaged until it’s electrically activated.

Removing the solenoid revealed the 1-inch-diameter piston (Figure 5), which throws the pinion gear forward about three-quarters of an inch in to mesh with the flywheel. There is actually nothing else inside the body of the solenoid. All the electrics are in the endcap.

I unscrewed the two small electrical terminals and the screws holding the endcap of the solenoid, and carefully pulled off the Bakelite cover. The contacts inside were dirty and badly pitted, telling me that a good electrical connection was no longer being made (Figure 6). The contacts can be removed from the endcap and cleaned. It’s best to clean electrical contacts with nonmetallic abrasives like Scotch-Brite or equivalent. Then I cleaned the inside of the endcap, greased the piston, and oiled the lever arm and pinion shaft with waterproof lithium grease. Finally, I put it all back together.

When the starter key is turned (or the button pressed on my boat), an electromagnetic field is created in the solenoid, causing the piston to retract against the spring and throw the pinon gear with great force in to mesh with the flywheel. Simultaneously, at the end of its travel, the piston also pushes the contacts together, transmitting the full voltage from the battery into the starter. This rotates the starter, which in turn rotates the engine, causing it to fire. On releasing the button, the starting current is discontinued to the solenoid, the pinion gear retracts, and the starter stops rotating.

After replacing the solenoid on the ­motor, it can be tested by applying a 12-volt positive voltage to the small terminal and the return on the body of the motor. The pinon gear should shoot forward on the shaft. Warning: Do not connect the heavy-duty battery wire to the solenoid during this test, or the starter will also rotate, creating significant counter-torque.

Starter Body

I next withdrew the two long setscrews from the rear of the starter casing, and removed the backing plate. This revealed an unbelievable mass of sludge and grime covering the four brushes and the commutator (this passes current from the brushes to the starter motor’s coils or windings). Some of it was so heavily encased that it refused to be dislodged, even after prodding with a screwdriver. Other parts dropped out in solid chunks. 

It was quite remarkable that the starter had even turned with so much water and conductive dirt inside. I washed out as much as possible with a strong jet of water from a hose—three times. I then sprayed the inside with degreasing liquid and dried it all out with a heat gun. 

Even these steps didn’t remove all the dirt, so I removed the armature to clean and inspect the windings. This was done by holding the casing in the vise and pulling out the armature. The brushes remained attached to the outer casing, and the commutator slid off them. 

The windings inside seemed quite clean, no doubt because of the dousing they had just received. I mounted the armature in the vise, with aluminum soft jaws installed, and then gently rotated a strip of 400-grit sandpaper around the commutator until it gleamed. The armature windings were then cleaned, and the end bearing and throw lever greased.

Before I could reinstall the armature, I first had to retract the four brushes so that the commutator would slide between them. On this motor, the complete brush assembly pivots, making the task easy using two small slivers of wood wedged between the arms on the brushes (Figure 7). When the armature was fully installed, I pulled out the bits of wood, and the brushes seated perfectly on the commutator. I then replaced the end plate, and the job was complete. [Editor’s note: The above procedure would benefit from a blow-down with compressed air, and then a washdown with a solvent such as brake cleaner, to remove all sanding dust, which contains copper, to prevent any possibility of a short across the windings.]

I decided to make a bench test of the operation of the starter, mounted securely in my vise. Using a car battery, I clipped a jumper cable to the larger positive solenoid terminal and the negative to the starter body. Nothing happened because the contacts inside the solenoid were open. 

Then, I held a second, thinner green wire to the terminal that normally carries the wire from the starter key or button (Figure 8). The motor pinion gear flew forward, and the motor spun furiously. On removal of the green wire, the motor stopped and the Bendix Drive retracted the pinion gear. I was sure that I heard the starter heave a sigh of relief, being free from all the foreign matter that was buried inside it.­ 

A final touch was to repaint the whole assembly black. I had built myself an almost new starter motor. 

It has performed perfectly on multiple starts, even when the battery was low, and it is a reassuring feeling to know that the engine will start at the push of a button.

Hailing from New Bern, North Carolina, Roger Hughes has been messing about on boats for half a century, as a professional captain, charterer, restorer, sailing instructor and happy imbiber. He recently completed a full restoration and extensive modification of a well-aged 50-foot ketch. Learn more at schooner-britannia.com.

Editor’s note: CW does not recommend the use of pressurized shore-water lines
on any boat. If you have one, water pressure should be off whenever you are not aboard.

The post How To Rebuild a Starter Motor appeared first on Cruising World.

Quetzal had recently glided into Lunenburg Harbour under spinnaker, five days outbound from Bermuda. It was great to be back in one of my favorite Nova Scotia haunts, and time to get ­serious. Polar Sun, my friend Mark Synnott’s Stevens 47 cutter, was also in Lunenburg. Mark is a ­climber, professional adventurer and bestselling author. We had most recently sailed together in Grenada, and now he was also bound north, leading a National Geographic expedition through the Northwest Passage, hoping to find new evidence about the fate of British explorer Sir John Franklin. We gathered in Quetzal’s salon and chatted long into the night, discussing our preparations and aspirations for our upcoming voyages.

On June 15, Quetzal slipped her mooring and steamed into the fog. It was reassuring to have Alan, a dear friend from Lunenburg, back aboard. Ron, a Quetzal glutton who has crossed the Atlantic with me twice before, and Mark, a terrific shipmate from Montana, completed the crew. Our job was to sail to Newfoundland, where our Viking voyage would commence. However, our first landfall was fabled Sable Island, a crescent of shifting sands 90 miles south of eastern Nova Scotia. It’s notorious as the “graveyard of the Atlantic,” and more than 350 wrecks form a necklace of tragedy. It’s also home to an unlikely herd of 500 wild horses. It’s also not easy to visit, so when Alan arranged a coveted landing permit, we had to stop.  

After a two-day sail from Lunenburg, we dropped the hook just off Sable’s northern shore. We hailed the park authorities, launched the dinghy, and prepared for a beach landing. There are no harbors on Sable, and landings often go badly because of stealthy wave breaks. We were the first boat to arrive in 2022 and had been warned not to attempt to get ashore unless the conditions were favorable. It was calm and clear as I searched for a stretch of beach with a minimal break and then gunned our 6 hp Tohatsu. In my mind, we were marines storming a beach. As the dinghy plowed into soft sand, a modest wave plopped aboard. We struggled to jump out and haul the dink up the beach. Reality hit with the second, soaking wave. We were four post-middle-aged guys in an overloaded dinghy, but we were ashore on Sable Island.

The park rangers helped drag the dinghy to a spot beyond the reach of the tide. Trekking through sand and marram grass, we encountered the horses. Perched on a low dune near a freshwater pond, we observed an injured stallion fend off unwanted inquiries from a pair of frisky colts interested in his harem of mares. The once-proud stallion was limping badly, and Mark, a veterinarian, assured us his days were numbered. Parks Canada has a hands-off policy concerning all wildlife on Sable, where the horses, introduced in the 1700s, have thrived. Originally from Acadian stock, they have developed into a unique breed to withstand the harsh climate of the North Atlantic. As we made our way back to the beach, we encountered a plump of gray seals, and a few curious harbor seals, a mere fraction of the thousands of seals that breed on Sable.

With strong winds forecast by late the next day, we decided to cut short our visit and head for Newfoundland. After a breezy passage across the Grand Banks, we made landfall in St. John’s. We secured every fender we had and eased alongside an unfriendly wharf. Alan’s friend Mike Riley delivered two beefy 12-foot spruce sections that we later fashioned into ice poles. In the spirit of Viking plundering, we enjoyed great food, drinks and Irish music along George Street, whose claim to fame is having the most bars per square foot of any street in North America. Continuing north, we made landfalls in Trinity, Fogo and Twillingate before arriving in Lewisporte, a small town with the nicest marina in the Canadian north. 

The crew for the next leg, the challenging 1,800-mile, 18-day passage to Iceland by way of Labrador and Greenland, turned up on July 7. Scott, Antonio, Levi, Brian and Jeff had all sailed aboard Quetzal before, some many times and most across an ocean. After a dry run of stuffing ourselves into survival suits and a sobering safety briefing—falling overboard was a very bad idea—we shoved off for an overnight passage to L’Anse aux Meadows, the only documented Viking settlement in North America and a national historic site administered by Parks Canada.

We had icebergs on our minds. Environment Canada provides ice updates online, and I studied them daily. I also downloaded the app Iceberg Alley, which documents icebergs and whale sightings. There were reports of a few stray bergs along our route, and we kept a sharp lookout through the night. We didn’t see any icebergs, but a pod of minke whales escorted us around Cape Bauld at the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula.

As the dinghy plowed into soft sand, a modest wave plopped aboard. Reality hit with the second, soaking wave. We were four post-middle-aged guys in an overloaded dinghy, but we were ashore on sable island.

We came alongside a new wharf at Garden Cove. Two local fishermen took our lines. They didn’t seem to mind the driving rain and near-freezing temperatures. When I told them that we were headed to the nearby park, one informed me, “You can’t walk there from here.” I was surprised because it was just over a mile away and I’d made the walk before. “Nope, can’t walk there. It’s too wet. But you can take Rabbit’s truck. Keys are on the dash.” 

The visitor center at L’Anse aux Meadows, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, details the Vinland voyages of the Vikings, who reached this faraway shore sometime around 1000 A.D., nearly 500 years before Columbus. Sagas, originally oral histories, tell the story of Leif Erikson’s voyage to Vinland. With a crew of 35, they departed Greenland and made their way north and west. Their first landfall, which Erikson dubbed Helluland, or place of stone, was likely somewhere on Baffin Island. It was a forbidding land, and they sailed on. Their next landfall, Markland, meaning wooded land, was probably along the Labrador coast, but they didn’t tarry and rode a favorable northeast wind farther south. Finally, they came to the shallow, rocky anchorage near today’s L’Anse aux Meadows and decided to make the grassy knoll overlooking the harbor the first European settlement in the New World.  

The term Vinland, or place of grapes, has historically been problematic. The ­sagas are clear that when Erikson sailed for Greenland the following spring, his cargo included grapes and vines. While it is unlikely that wild grapes have ever grown in Newfoundland, the Norse ­artifacts at L’Anse aux Meadows are indisputable evidence of a settlement dating from around 1000 A.D. First discovered by Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad in 1960, these remains are of Norse-style sod buildings, including a forge and small shipyard. Artifacts include slag from forging, numerous iron nails used for shipbuilding, and more than 50 wrought-iron pieces. It is possible, or even probable, that Erikson’s landfall was farther south, and many historians now believe L’Anse aux Meadows may have been where his brother-in-law, Thorfinn Karlsefni, tried to establish a permanent settlement a few years later. Hiking around the respectfully restored site in a bone-chilling rain, I had deep respect for the men and women who sailed from Greenland in a low-slung boat, probably less than 60 feet long, with a single square sail and only their natural instincts to guide them.

That night, one of the local fishermen provided the crew with lobsters for a feast. Before we shoved off the next morning, Scott took a swim, an invigorating ritual he undertook at every landfall, even when we were surrounded by ice. We made our way across the Strait of Belle Isle and approached mainland Labrador. Fog closed in as we neared Battle Harbor, but, undeterred, we threaded our way through a maze of rocks, racing darkness to the wharf. 

Battle Harbor occupies a rocky outcropping that is steeped in history. A Marconi wireless tower was raised in 1904. Five years later, Robert Peary used the tower to telegraph news that he had reached the North Pole. Reporters from all over the world were dispatched to Battle Harbor, though today, significant historic and scientific research has concluded that he most likely did not reach the pole.  

I had deep respect for the men and women who sailed from greenland in a low-slung boat, probably less than 60 feet long, with a single square sail and only their natural instincts to guide them.

Continuing up the Labrador coast, we finally encountered an iceberg. It was a classic wedge berg, and we cautiously sailed toward it. I used my sextant to measure its altitude and the radar for a distance off reading. A quick calculation put the iceberg at more than 160 feet high and about 250 feet wide. We were in awe and shot photos from every angle, paying homage to the giant castaway from a distant glacier. Little did we know that a week later, we’d be routinely punching through ice-choked waters, casually dismissing isolated bergs like this one while searching for passages through sea ice. 

We anchored in Eagle Cove, a ­fishhook-­shaped harbor carved out of Hawk Island. This was genuine wilderness. We had been warned by veterans of Arctic travel to be on guard for polar bears, and some suggested that we carry a gun for protection. Instead, we carried bear banger cartridges and a pen launcher, which travels about 100 feet and then explodes with a mighty blast. It would certainly get a bear’s attention.

Scott and Brian were a long time ashore before I noticed them in a distant corner of the cove. When I retrieved them in the dinghy, there were shivering in their underpants. They had discovered a bed of mussels and braved frigid water to stuff their pants with hundreds of them for dinner. 

After a swift passage through a steep-sided strait intriguingly called Squasho Run, we made our way offshore. We timed our departure to catch strong but favorable winds on the back side of a deep low-pressure system, and to have as much daylight as possible to get beyond the numerous icebergs that Environment Canada’s weather and climate-change website assured me were hovering near the coast. The first 24 hours were rough as Quetzal ran before near-gale-force westerlies while being rocked by seas from every direction. Not for the first time, we came to appreciate the hard dodger and full enclosure that kept us dry and warm. A day later, conditions moderated, and soon we were under power gliding over quiet seas with a squadron of fulmars tracking our every course correction. On Day Four, 60 miles from land, we encountered many large icebergs. Then, through a clearing in the low clouds, Brian spotted the towering, snowcapped mountains of southwest Greenland. We were entering another world.

Icebergs come in different shapes and sizes. The big ones, which are masses of frozen fresh water, are generally easy to pick up on radar. Bergy bits, usually fragments of larger bergs, are 3 to 12 feet high and more worrisome to sailors, ­especially in bad visibility. Growlers, which occasionally hiss or growl as trapped air escapes, are 3 feet or less above the surface but can be deadly. They’re typically around 200 square feet in size but can weigh up to 1,000 tons. Imagine smashing into a growler at 6 knots.

With the sun shining, Levi launched his drone. He managed to land it on deck while we sailed between bergs. In addition to beautiful photos, it was also nice to get a view of what lay ahead. The wind freshened as we made our approach. We tried to stay upwind of the larger bergs, knowing that bergy bits and growlers were likely to be on the lee side. We slipped around several growlers, and one small berg that tried to block the entrance to the town of Qaqortoq. Its harbor was crowded with local boats, so we tied up alongside the commercial dock. Later, we moved across the harbor to an open fishing dock. Finding secure dockage in Greenland requires that you be ready to move when a commercial ship arrives and that you have long lines with chafe gear and heavy-duty fenders.  

Qaqortoq, the largest town in ­southwest Greenland, is also close to the site of the Vikings’ original Eastern Settlement. Founded by Erik the Red, Leif’s father, around 980 A.D., the ­settlement remained vital into the 14th century. Several Norse remains are visible in nearby fjords. We took on provisions, topped off our fuel and, surprisingly, had a delicious Thai meal in a small restaurant in the port.  

In Greenland, I shifted my attention to the excellent daily ice reports provided by polarportal.dk, a Danish ice- and climate-­monitoring institute. Our intended route was to follow an inside passage south to Nanortalik, then enter Prince Christian Sound. This spectacular 70-mile passage north of storm-ridden Cape Farewell provides a protected channel to the Irminger Sea and the east coast of Greenland. Protected, that is, if you can get through the ice. We were now worried about sea ice, or storis, which is frozen seawater that forms quickly and disappears just as quickly. Driven by wind, current and bathymetry, storis can completely block a passage. Looking ahead a week, our planned exit would likely be blocked by ice.  

High-latitude sailing and planning don’t mix. You take things a day, or even an hour, at a time, then react to drastic changes in weather and ice conditions. We had a hard upwind slog from Qaqortoq, tacking and motorsailing to stay clear of hundreds of large icebergs and countless smaller ones before finding an open spot along the wharf in Nanortalik. It’s a quiet village whose name translates to “place of polar bears.” The protected harbor ­provided a respite from the strong winds. 

The following day, July 19, we picked our way through minimal sea ice and entered the Ikerasassuaq Strait. Gale-force north winds were forecast, so we made our way to a landlocked bay, Paakitsuarssuaq, and conned our way past rocks and ice into the stunning anchorage.

The passage here is, simply, ­magnificent. Sheer-sided 6,000-foot mountains explode from the water’s edge, and several ­glaciers reach down to the sea, calving off bergs and bergy bits. It was calm, and we motored most of the way. Several times we slowed to a crawl, usually just downstream of a glacier, as the channel became choked with ice. Brian and Jeff manned the bow all day long, guiding us through narrow openings and using the poles to shove growlers out of our way. We nosed up to Kangerdluk Glacier and let Quetzal drift. Levi and I stayed aboard, and once again the drone was aloft. The crew took the dinghy to the foot of the glacier and snagged a few nice chunks of ice for captain’s hour.  

Luckily, the strong winds of the night before had pushed the storis south, leaving a clear path out. That night was the most stressful of the summer as Quetzal sailed toward Iceland in fog, gusty winds and ice-strewn waters. Jeff was a champion, manning the bow for hours in the dark despite the cold, wet conditions. We monitored the radar and became adept at picking up even very small bergs. It was an incredible relief to finally gain sea room, and the five-day 600-mile passage to Hafnarfjordur, Iceland, was surprisingly smooth. 

Quetzal and I took a well-earned break in Iceland. My wife, Tadji, my daughter, Narianna, and her fiance, Steven, flew in, and we toured the island by car. Iceland is a rugged land of fire and ice. The Fagradasfjall volcanic eruption was ­greeted with nonchalance by locals and intrigue by visitors. Nari, Steven and I hiked 6 miles each way on a rough trail to get a firsthand look at molten lava. Quetzal was treated well by the Icelandic Keelboat Association, and I gave a talk in Reykjavik in appreciation. We toured the Settlement Exhibition at the City Museum. The first humans in Iceland were Viking settlers who arrived around 870 A.D. In just over 100 years, these bold mariners had made their way to Greenland and Canada.  

The new crew turned up on August 7, and we were underway the next day. Fridrik, a photographer and dauntless sailor who circumnavigated Iceland solo in his 33-foot X Yacht, filmed our departure. Jim, Chris, Sean and Denise, all Quetzal veterans and good friends, had a lumpy first sail as we pushed north through a leftover swell opposed by strong winds. We decided to take the long way to Norway, along the north shore of Iceland, which would also take us just above the Arctic Circle. We skirted the dramatic headlands of the Vestfirdir (west fjords) and made landfall at Isafjordur, where several sailboats were holed up. They were waiting for the ice conditions in East Greenland to improve before carrying on. In what had become a pleasant ritual, we made our way to the pool for a soak. Every town in Iceland has a pool that usually includes a hot and (really) cold tub. You alternate from one to the other. 

We had fair winds as we headed east, rounding the headland of Horn at latitude 66 degrees, 30 minutes. I had a reminder of the many miles Quetzal has before her. In December of next year, we hope to be rounding the other horn, the infamous cape perched at the tip of South America, nearly 7,500 miles of latitude away. 

We made landfall at the small island of Grimsey. Known as the “island on the Arctic Circle,” it’s home to 30 permanent residents, thousands of puffins, and seemingly millions of pissed-off Arctic terns that dive-bombed us as we hiked to the monument that denotes the actual position of the Arctic Circle. It’s a massive round block of concrete. It’s round because the circle keeps moving a few feet each year, and it’s easier to relocate a round monument than a square one. That night, Magnus—the busiest man on the island who runs the fuel dock, airport and his own fishing boat—came aboard for a drink. He informed us that the puffins were getting ready to depart. Apparently, a memo goes out, and within a day or two, all the puffins head offshore and don’t return until the following spring. The terns were also getting ready to start their epic migration from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle and back. 

From Grimsey, we made a nonstop passage to the brooding and beautiful Faroe Islands, the next waypoint on the Viking route across the Atlantic. We were never alone; doughty fulmars and soaring gannets kept us company. We hove-to just west of the island of Kalsoy to wait for a 5-knot tidal current to change our way. It’s critical to time the tides right, and the Rak app was incredibly helpful. Riding the current, we zipped through the starkly beautiful Leirvik Fjordur channel and made landfall in the capital of Torshavn. The Faroe Islands need time to explore properly, and the few days we had were not enough. We departed for the Shetland Islands, our final stop before Norway, at 0300.

The morning was clear and the wind crisp. Chris and Jim are devoted celestial navigators, but opportunities are rare in the often cloudy north. This was the perfect morning. Chris skillfully measured the angular distance between the silvery crescent moon and Jupiter, a process called lunar distance, and a challenging sight to take. He then patiently worked Jim and me through the process, and, many calculations later, we were able to check the accuracy of our ship’s chronometer. This technique was used by Joshua Slocum and other early voyagers, which liberated them from the need for accurate timepieces. 

The North Sea was determined to keep us from calling at the Shetland Islands. A hard east wind accompanied by 8-to-10-foot seas with an annoyingly short period between persuaded us to carry on for Norway. Denise and Sean took long stints at the helm, conning Quetzal to weather. 

The last three days of the crossing proved to be the toughest as we pounded our way east. Conditions finally eased as we approached the coast. We sighted the red-and-white lighthouse on the tip of Fedje Island in the late afternoon of August 19. It was a bittersweet moment for me. Quetzal had completed her ninth Atlantic crossing, successfully retracing the Viking route, the result of two years of planning and three months of challenging sailing. It was hard to believe that we had pulled it together. But as we made our way into the quaint harbor, the only sailboat in sight, I realized that plenty of adventures lay ahead. 

The post In the Wake of Vikings: Sailing Nova Scotia, Greenland, Iceland and Norway appeared first on Cruising World.

Ever since we cruised from Acapulco, Mexico, to Bay of Islands, New Zealand, in 1988 on Freelance, our 28-foot Bristol Channel Cutter, my wife, Harriet, and I longed to return to the South Pacific. In spring 2021, while going through a closet full of stuff in our condo, out slid a box of old paper charts from our voyage. A large chart of Bora Bora unfolded in my hands. The perfect circle of reef, the lagoon of dazzling blue, clouds streaming like cotton from the island’s volcanic peaks—the South Pacific had enchanted us again.

We sketched a plan: From our home port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, we’d head to Bermuda, then Puerto Rico, then the Panama Canal, the Galapagos, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, the Kingdom of Tonga, and Fiji. We’d arrive in New Zealand a year later. It would be about 10,300 nautical miles, most of it ­downwind in the northeast and southeast trade winds. 

Ocean, our Dolphin 460 cat, had ­recently undergone an extensive refit and was up to the task. So, off we went.

Massachusetts to Bermuda 

Bermuda is an old friend for us. During the 13 years we operated our Caribbean child-literacy nonprofit, Hands Across the Sea, we called into the island 22 times. But getting to Bermuda from the US Eastern Seaboard in the fall is tricky. 

First, we looked for the tailwinds of a departing front to launch us off the continental shelf. Next, we looked for the Gulf Stream to quiet down. Finally, we looked for a favorable slant to get us into Bermuda after a three- to four-day hop.

Powerful autumn and early winter gales can be dangerous, so we checked and double-checked the forecasts (we find PredictWind helpful, and we rely on meteorologists at Commanders’ Weather to determine a weather window). We also had an old friend, Capt. Bill Truesdale, join us. Bill is a circumnavigator, and is cool, calm, and able to diagnose and fix anything. 

With breezy winds abaft the beam, we made great time on Day One. Ocean pushed through chunky, confused seas, flying a full main and the code zero. But after dinner, I felt seasick. Really seasick. Nine times over-the-rail seasick. Bill, who rarely gets seasick, felt similarly ill. He stood his watch, and Harriet held down the fort. 

In the morning, we decided we’d been pushing the boat too hard, sailing too fast for the sea state. Plus, I had started out the passage on four cups of coffee and not much breakfast; my stomach never had a chance. We knew all this was wrong, but we’d been away from passagemaking for a year and a half, and we’d forgotten. Lessons relearned: Ditch the coffee, eat enough noncombustible food to head off the stomach growlies, and take our foot off the gas until we get our sea legs.

The final two days into Bermuda were smooth and fast, pulled along by the code zero. 

Bermuda to Puerto Rico

Commanders’ Weather advised us that in a couple of days, a massive system would move south and overspread Bermuda, slamming shut the weather window to Puerto Rico. The choice was to leave the next day, or hunker down for weeks with uncertain prospects. We quickly wrapped up some engine maintenance, saw Bill off to the airport, and hoisted the main for Fajardo, Puerto Rico.

Harriet and I had both been looking forward to getting south, into the tropics and the soft, warm trade winds. It is certainly possible, however, that our hiatus from passagemaking had turned us into softies. Chunky seas bounced us. We slowed down Ocean enough to keep our stomachs calm, and to keep the off watch rested. Our sailhandling skills—reefing the main in the dark, rolling up the code zero before squalls—were a bit ragged, and we revisited our teamwork. We felt more tired than usual.

We’d been pushing the boat too hard, sailing too fast for the sea state. We’d been away from passagemaking for a year and a half. We’d forgotten.

On Day Five, the profile of Puerto Rico rose in the dawn light. We’d been there before only for connecting flights between the United States and British Virgin Islands, so everything about the island surprised us, mostly in a good way. Puerto Rico is larger than we realized, more developed (with malls that have US big-box stores and franchises), and uniformly welcoming to visitors. The shores are ringed with high-end marinas—we spent two nights at what’s now Safe Harbor Puerto Del Rey, the Caribbean’s largest marina—and the island has luxury housing developments, along with funky settlements behind barrier mangroves, and more. 

We spent 10 days exploring from the Spanish Virgin Islands to the sheltered south coast of the main island. Nature preserves have kept Puerto Rico’s cruising grounds in good shape, with lots of hidey-hole mangrove anchorages, plus some bioluminescent coves. On holidays, anchorages are crowded with raft-ups of local sport-fishing boats and personal watercraft.

Puerto Rico to Panama

Finally, an entire passage in the trade winds. The course from Boquerón, Puerto Rico, to the entry breakwater at Panama is nearly dead downwind, so we jibed to take advantage of shifts in wind direction and to avoid the near-permanent low-pressure system (possible winds to 35 knots with steep, ugly current-against-the-wind seas) that lurks off the northwest coast of Colombia. 

Our sail-carrying plan called for a single reef in the main, and Ocean’s 95 percent overlap jib (roller-reefable) and furling code zero (nonreefable) to suit the daily variation in wind strength. But just a couple of days out, we concluded that we’d idealized the trade winds just a wee bit. “I can’t recall seeing so many squalls like this,” Harriet said. “Maybe on the passage from Fernando de Noronha, in Brazil.” 

On Day Three, powerful squall clouds—to the south, west and north—triangulated on Ocean. Each announced itself with alarming gusts, and followed up with sheets of rain just short of a whiteout. We had little choice but to reef down or furl up. We’d peer out at the rain, then turn the ignition key and trundle along behind the squall in weak, ascending air and leftover chop. The squalls meant sailhandling work and slower progress—and nighttime squalls seemed worse in every way.

One evening, a prolonged 25-plus-knot blast sent us surfing down a steep sea at 18 knots. The autopilot steered blithely onward. (Ocean’s hull has lots of buoyancy forward, and a cat’s twin hulls are not prone to broaching, as a monohull might.) But the brief thrill ride through the darkness freaked us out. We double-reefed the main—we were happy averaging 8 to 9 knots—and concluded that we needed a better sail strategy for running deep in intensified trades. 

Later, we talked to a cat crew on the same passage who had used only a reefed jib. Their mainsail stayed in the lazy bag. We needed to keep reminding ourselves that, even though we are ex-racers, we were not in a race. We love fast ­passages, but quality off-watch rest for our ­doublehanded crew was the top priority.

When we pulled in the second reef, we disturbed a red-footed booby that had taken up residence on our solar panels; the bird squawked, moved to the tip of the port bow, tucked its beak into its wing, and continued sleeping. Later, we found a small black bird, maybe a petrel, snoozing on the dinghy davits. Later still, a flying fish flew into our dinghy. All of it seemed to say: “You are in the trade winds and you are a part of the trade winds, so pull up your socks. Enjoy.”

Some evenings, of course, were ­astoundingly beautiful, an impossible canopy of stars arcing across the horizon. “There’s the Southern Cross!” Harriet exclaimed, pointing out her favorite. 

Nearing Panama, the trade winds ­mellowed out: 15 knots, 20 in squalls, and far fewer of them. The seas grew smaller and kinder. These were more like the trades we remembered. 

By the time we jibed into the inbound lane of the ship-traffic separation scheme for the Panama Canal, I’d finished David McCullough’s 700-page The Path Between the Seas, so I was already in awe of the place. Unfortunately, we were stuck on the Caribbean side for three weeks because of issues with our mainsail batten pocket ends and steering cylinders (Ocean has hydraulic steering). We tied up in Shelter Bay Marina, at the Caribbean entrance to the canal, and the marina’s shipment wizard wrangled our repair materials for us. All the help we needed—a sailmaker and hydraulic guys—was on hand. 

After several weeks of work, Karen and Paul Prioleau, cruisers we’d met back in 1988, flew in to join us as line handlers for the canal transit. We also had a required Panama Canal Authority pilot and a specified line handler, who between them had more than 2,000 canal transits. So the 10-hour transit was easy. These 47 miles were a milestone and the gateway to a new life for Harriet, me, and Ocean. 

By the time 26 million gallons drained from the Miraflores locks, the final southbound lock, lowering us 27 feet to sea level, and we motored around the bend and under the final bridge, we saw a thin blue horizon waiting ahead: the Pacific. 

After 20 years of dinghy racing, the siren song of bluewater cruising called Tom Linskey, aka TL. In the ’80s, he built a 28-foot Bristol Channel Cutter in his ­backyard from a hull-and-deck kit, and sailed with his wife, Harriet, from Southern California to Mexico, French Polynesia, New Zealand, and Japan. Together, they’ve covered more than 50,000 doublehanded miles, most recently in their Dolphin 460 catamaran, Ocean.

The post Sailing From Massachusetts to Panama With Just Two Stops appeared first on Cruising World.

After 45 years of running into each other at boat shows but ­uttering no more than a brief hello, Doris Colgate and Lin Pardey sit side by side in Newport, Rhode Island. They’re talking, laughing, giggling, smiling. And ­reminiscing about sailing and their lives.

They’re about to join an exclusive club of nautical notables that’s 114 members strong, all inductees into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, an honor that Doris’ husband, Steve, received in 2015. The Colgates are responsible for teaching 160,000 people how to sail and explore the world. Doris also founded an organization dedicated to furthering women’s participation in the sport and lifestyle: the National Women’s Sailing Association.

Lin and her husband, Larry, who died in 2020, are known for two leisurely circumnavigations aboard engineless, self-built wooden boats. They published extensively about their experiences, encouraging countless others to set off on their own cruising adventures.

Here’s what Doris and Lin had to say on the eve of receiving sailing’s highest honor this past November.

[Full transcript]  

CW: You’ve made a significant and sustained impact on sailing domestically and abroad. What stories stick with you?

DC: For me, it is really all the people we taught and whose lives we changed. At the recent US Sailboat Show, there must have been at least 50 people who came up to us, and these are the words they use: “You’ve changed my life.” Some of them say, “You cost me a lot of money,” but that’s because they’re buying boats. That’s the good part, but it’s really the gratification we get from the graduates of our courses that makes us feel good every day.

LP: It’s amazing how many people say, “I read your book when I was a youngster, and it just helped me.” It wasn’t always that it got them out sailing; it was that it got them out trying something new.

After a tsunami in Thailand, there was a boat at anchor, just outside the breaking waves that had destroyed a lot of boats. There was a doctor on one of the boats, who, after finding his wife and son, spent the next three weeks helping with medical care and ended up getting an award from the government. They then sailed to New Zealand for boat repairs. I ran into him in a boatyard, and he said: “You’re the reason I went sailing. I never realized the adventure it would give me and my family.” Before that, I’d never realized how far it keeps spreading. When people get away from their own comfort zone and get out and do things, they end up doing something as big as we did. It was terribly gratifying.

CW: Themes that are integral to this award include longevity and volunteerism. How are these qualities related to your careers?

DC: I do believe that working in the sailing industry has kept me and my husband, Steve, young. We’re in our 80s. I don’t know where all the years have gone, but they’ve all been good, with a few little hitches. 

Regarding volunteerism: When I started the NWSA, there was no way that I or anyone else was going to make a living off it. But it was so important to get more women into sailing, to get women to enjoy sailing the way I have enjoyed it. There were no ifs, ands or buts—it was going to happen. 

LP: Longevity is the unbelievable magic. I met Larry when I was 20, and he was building a little boat. He took me to see his etchings on our first date: his loft floor and his keel timber. By the end of the evening, I thanked him for such an amazing date. He said, “Stick with me baby, and you’ll go a long way.” It’s been 55 years, and I’m still sailing and voyaging, and the longevity was that there always seemed to be something new and interesting added to our lives because we were sailing.  

And of course, the writing. It kept life so interesting. It gave us a really important thing—real stress—but not the constant stress of a normal life. I think that kept me healthy. Stress is good for you if you can let go of it completely. To have a stressful time on shore, then go to sea and relax for ten days, away from it all—I think that’s contributed tremendously to having very fortunate health.

Voyaging and the voyaging schedule is stressful but in a different way. You learn so much and you want to share it with people. You say, OK, I’m going to go to a boat show. Then, I remember Larry and I ended up doing 30 different cities in 3 months going to seminars and presenting lectures. It was exciting to meet people we could enthuse. It was wonderful that we were giving something back to people who had been reading what we wrote. We did raise funds for junior sailing programs, along with our writing. We ended up with pneumonia, both of us! But it was so exciting and wonderful. One of the things Larry told me early on after our first book came out and people started coming up to us asking us questions was to “take every question really seriously. You can break their dream if you don’t give them good, encouraging answers.”

CW: Bob Dylan is in his 80s… How do you keep it new, as was written in a recent New Yorker profile of him?

DC: Oh my gosh. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of a new idea that we need to be doing. It sometimes becomes a big bone of contention with our staff. Have you ever read Who Moved My Cheese? It’s about change. It’s a teeny little book (96 pages) but it’s “Oh, no, not something else?!” Not another thing. We’ve just gone through Hurricane Ian. We lost our offices, we lost all our memorabilia. Over 59 years of slides. Everything. I had the original Yachting magazines with an article I wrote in 1967. It’s gone—though I scanned it.

But, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity for us to start and do something new. We’re opening new locations, we’re coming up with new programs, specifically, some for women, some for men. Every day presents an opportunity.

CW: Let’s talk about women and sailing. 

LP: I came into the sailing world as an utter novice. I’m not a normal size: I’m 4-foot-10. When I met Larry, I looked like I was 14 years old, and I was the only woman 99 percent of the time on charter and delivery boats. Not one man put me down. Every single one was willing to give me a hand. It was only me who could stop me from doing things.

Larry said, “You’ve got to realize that in a sport like sailing, yelling is part of it.” Women immediately associate yelling with fear or they’ve done something wrong. Guys think it’s all part of the sport. They go out on the football field, they yell at each other to make sure they’re heard. They yell at each other because it’s getting exciting. They yell at each other because of frustration. And they walk back off the field, pat each other on the back and say, “What a great game.” 

DC: It’s like lawyers in court. They’re against each other, and then they go have lunch together. 

LP: Larry said you’ve got to realize that no matter how carefully we get our communication right on the boat there still will be times when it’s going to get loud. Don’t take it personally. Get on with the job. As I started sailing more, I started trying to encourage other ­women I saw to enjoy it more. Women are gradually finding out that it’s OK to get dirty, messy. Women have to get out and do it themselves and try it and learn. It’s wonderful to see how many women are getting out on their own and buying their own boats and introducing their partners to sailing.

DC: There’s a difference between the learning process for men and women. Women like to really learn why and how something works. Men will just go straight into it. When we started all the NWSA programs, we really wanted to give them that background information: the whys, the hows, not “just do it.”

There are tendencies for the man to grab the line because he feels that maybe it’s too much for the woman. That happened to me on one of our flotilla cruises, and that was the last straw. That poor guy took that line out of my hand. I’d had it. I am sorry now for what I said to him! 

LP: One of my favorite New Zealand sailors—a gal named Penny Whiting—I’ve sent many people to take her courses. One of the things she always says is: If it’s hard, you’re doing it wrong. In many ways it’s true. I now do a little shorty course called “Yelling, Lifting and Pulling.” I start off talking about the yelling aspect. Women are not being addressed as well as they should be in the equipment and positioning of equipment on boats. Some of the ergonomics of making it easier for women aboard comes down to the fact that they don’t address the fact that men have more shoulder strength, women have more hip strength. If you could get it so that women don’t have to extend their arm fully, they can use a winch better. The minute a woman’s hand is straight up a guy has seven times the strength to pull back than a woman does. On some boats, they don’t make it easy for a woman to position herself above a winch, the recommended position.

I went aboard six boats at the boat show. Of those over 35 feet, there wasn’t one where I could easily step from the cockpit sole out onto the cockpit seat and over the cockpit coaming. Not one of them. This is crazy. Even a little footstep in the corner would have made it easier for the smaller person on board and safer for the big person.

DC: Another thing about sailing is that it’s a lifetime adventure.  As you do get older, balance and strength become quite an issue. The newer boats don’t have handles where they should be.

LP: Tell me about it.

DC: The old racing boats; they did, because they knew what kind of condition you’d be in. For us, when we buy cruising boats for our courses, we look very carefully at the safety features because of our customers. They’re middle-aged, ranging between 40 and 85 years old, mostly. We’re getting younger people but that’s the bulk of it. When you get the mean, in the 55-60 range, they’re not all in super condition.

CW: When you were young, you were both sassy with volatile mother-daughter relationships. 

LP: My mother and I had a terrible falling out when I was 14, and I ran away from home at 17. I was a civil-rights a­ctivist, I thought. Later, my sister Bonnie told me that we were alike and that my mother wanted me to do what she’d dreamed of doing. We became very close friends after I’d been off sailing a few years. I wish I’d been more patient with my mother when I was younger. On the other hand, it forced me to grow up and realize that you’d better take care of yourself, or you can get into trouble very easily. 

DC: My father was a very well-known biochemist and microbiologist, and when I was 17, we went to Paris. That was the first thing that changed my life. I’d never traveled like that before. We walked in circles where everybody adored my father, so we got introduced to Nobel Prize winners. It was pretty cool. Those were the best years between my mother and me. 

It also gave me the feeling that I was better than my classmates when I came back, which was a huge mistake. That’s not something you want to express. I started going into acting and writing and ended up at Antioch College. I was a beatnik. I wore black all the time, had long blond hair, all the way down. I smoked for a while. At Antioch, men could be in the women’s dorms, and you didn’t have to go to class. That was my undoing.

CW: You two were ‘break the mold’ young women.

DC: I wanted to be a journalist because I loved writing. I investigated topics like you do. Somehow or other I got off that path. Early on in high school, I got into the high school newsletter. I wrote controversial stuff; things that the principal didn’t like. I was writing that what they were doing was wrong.

CW: You both got called into the principal’s office.

LP: My mother said to me one day: “Lin what do you want to do? You’re such a butterfly—interested in this one week, that another.” She said “What do you want to be?” I just looked at her and said, “Different.”

DC: Exactly.

LP: I knew I wanted something different. I never had any interest in writing, but I always loved storytelling. My mother was great; she was just very different from me in some ways. She was much more into security because she was a Depression child. When I was twelve, I got pulled into the principal’s office because [they thought] I was telling lies. They called my mother because I refused to back down about the stories I was telling. My mother came to the office and said “I’ll be back,” and walked out. My mother returns 20 minutes later, lays down a bunch of pictures on the principal’s desk and said, “there, that proves Lin’s story happened.” My parents did take us camping and to meet unusual people.

DC: We went to the lab every Sunday with my dad. He was clearly a driven man. So we did “supposements.” We called them supposements. He would give us indicators, little trays where you could put a different solution in each one. You dip something in each one and this one turns pink and this one turns yellow, this one turns blue and this one turns green. He did all that kind of stuff. He was always introducing my two younger sisters and me to something new.

LP: My father was a tool and dye maker, a specialist in tool measurement. He used to take me out to the garage and show me what he was making. He kept showing us things. I remember one of the adventures he took us on, when he was working for Hughes aircraft. He took us round to climb all over the Spruce Goose [Hughes’ H-4 Hercules commonly known as the Spruce Goose]. My dad showed me this other world…

CW: Both of your fathers.

LP: Both of our fathers.

DC: All the travels, the science, the art, music. He was a piano player. Classical music, he had walls of 78s.

CW: You have each enjoyed unique partnerships with the men in your lives. What’s the secret to this success?

DC: Compromise. And doing things you like together.

LP: I would say having overlapping skills—overlapping skills where we very comfortably divided up our lives. I made all the financial decisions. I would ­discuss them with Larry, but in the end, he’d say, “It’s your call.” He made all the mechanical, physical decisions on boats, strength and design. Other qualities that made it work were having a sense of ­humor and taking a break. I’d say, “Larry, I’m taking a nonresponsibility break.” I’d go off with a girlfriend for four or five days. Larry raced around Britain; he was six weeks off racing. I took the boat, for the first time ever, I singlehanded Seraffyn around England.

DC: I made a promise to Steve that I’d never interfere with his racing. And I’m glad I did that. And I think the longest he was gone was three weeks, then of course he was in the America’s Cup, so he was away all summer, and I’d go back and forth during the trials. Those breaks allowed me to do what I wanted to do as well, and it gave me the full responsibility of the company. Steve’s the creative person in terms of our courses and how to do everything. That’s the difference between us: I run the company and he supports me. But when something needs to be decided on, or there’s a new course, how are we going to do this, that’s Steve.

LP: We had different spheres in decision making.

DC: My experience is some racing on our own boat and lots of cruising, but not the type of cruising that you’ve done. We’d get on a plane, go with 30 people, be with them, be in charge of them. (laughs) Poor Steve. “Steve would you get me a Coke?” —when he’s trying to navigate. You become their servants.

CW: Neither of you felt overshadowed by your spouses.

LP: It takes a special man. I remember when my writing was becoming popular. It was always Lin Pardey. I started putting Lin and Larry Pardey in the bylines and he said, “but I didn’t write it.” I said, “Yes, but I’ve discussed every bit of this with you, and I changed this area because you said, “Lin, you didn’t really tell them the details that might help them.”

Larry was wonderful on the technical details, so I put it in both our names. One day I said, “You know, Larry, you should try to do a bit of writing.” People would say, “Oh I’ve read about you in the magazine.” He was a terrible editor but very willing to be edited. So we worked together and he ended up writing some popular and useful articles. I found that was the only time there was an imbalance. I was starting to overshadow him and I didn’t want that. I wanted it to be equal. It worked out wonderfully in the end. It was very much a cooperative writing career. I wrote Bull Canyon. This was my memoir, and I told him, “If something really hurts you that I write then we’ll talk about it.” There was one section that he said, “Do you have to tell them that? I sound terrible. It sounds like I lost my cool.” I said, “Larry you lost your cool!” (laughter) But he came to love it.

I came into the game knowing that he was the professional sailor and he got paid to teach people to race their boats. One of our first weeks together, he was going racing with someone who said my boat is just not up to the fleet. It was a Kettenburg. It was very popular in California. This guy was going to sell the boat and get another one because he wasn’t doing well. He paid Larry to go out sailing with him. I was standing on the dock as they were getting ready to leave and he said, “Bring her along.” Larry said, “She’s never sailed before and we’re out here to win this regatta, the California state championships.” Guy says, “I’ve never won a race with this boat so what’s it matter?” So they dragged me along. I was wearing slippery tennis shoes. Halfway up to the windward mark, I’m sitting quietly as I’m supposed to, Larry turns to the skipper and says, “Do me a favor: Shut up and steer and trust your crew.” And we won the whole series. I said, “You just got paid several hundred dollars to tell a guy who owns the boat who was paying you to shut up!” He says, “That’s all he needed.” The guy went on to do wonderfully. He wrote Larry a Christmas card every year and says “I’ve shut up.”

DC: Steve overshadowed me for a long time because he’s the expert. He wrote all the textbooks. I’m a different kind of writer.

CW: It gradually evened out…

DC: But in the early days, he was the person out racing and very well-known and asked to be on winning boats. One day I said, “We need to get our own boat.” He said, “We can’t afford that.” I said, “It doesn’t cost anything to look.” And we bought the boat. (laughter)

LP: Right from the beginning, Larry was amazed at my mathematical ability. One time somebody came by and said, “Larry, you laid out the topsides on your boat so beautifully. How did you line them up?” “Oh, it was Lin’s idea, she did it.” By giving me the credit—Larry was a special man in that he was so willing to share the credit on everything, sometimes more than he should have, but it built me up. He never made me feel put down.

DC: I had the same experience.

LP: Yeah, it takes a good man.

DC: You have to understand each other. When I say compromise, you really do … have to give in when you need to give in. That’s how you stay together.

LP: You give in, and then you change them.

(All laughing)

LP: Gently, gently.

CW: What other advice would you give to women who aspire to a career around sailing and the water? 

DC: I want them to know that it’s one of the best things you could ever do in your whole life. Get on a boat, learn how to make it go where you want it to go with wind power alone. Sailing is challenging, and I do think that women need to be challenged and step up to the plate. If something’s a little bit hard, you can do it. Then the next thing is a little bit hard, and you can do that even better. For me, it all came from sailing. 

LP: I feel that getting in a smaller boat teaches you faster because you actually see what happens when you pull the jib or main in. You feel it immediately. But what’s my legacy? Don’t make sailing a man’s thing or a woman’s thing. It’s a wonderful, human thing, and the magic is the people it introduces you to. I have thousands of friends I still haven’t met. Sailing got me to foreign countries; it helped me make friends everywhere we went. It opens up a whole world to you. You can learn to accept discomfort.

DC: It doesn’t matter if you can’t shower every day. 

LP: It doesn’t matter if your muscles get sore. 

DC: Probably then you know you have some muscles.

LP: I do see more women getting out sailing. I’m loving that. I just wish we’d get more young people, keep them interested in sailing. And the way to do that is these small little foiling boats.

DC: Very young kids need to be stimulated by color and activity, and all we’ve had these years is little white boats.

LP: Little white boats!

DC: We start people off on the Colgate 26 because it is the way to really learn: You’re close to the water, you’re feeling the wind, you’ve got a tiller not a wheel…

LP: Good!

DC: The wheel—you turn it, the boat finally turns and then it keeps turning too far. It’s harder to really learn the feel of a boat at the wheel. But then we move them right into cruising boats because the women who were taking our courses are not necessarily racing people. They want comfort—too much comfort—everyone “has” to have a private head. We’re teaching them that isn’t always the case. Originally we would take six people on a Bermuda 40, where four of us slept in the main saloon and two got the forepeak. Try that now, with one head. Nobody would sign up for a flotilla cruise with us if that was the case.

LP: That’s true. I want to share a quote from a friend: “The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower,” Oliver Burkeman wrote. “It’s shocking to realize how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness. It is possible, instead, to make a game of gradually increasing your capacity for discomfort, like weight training at a gym. The rewards come so quickly that it soon becomes the more appealing way to live.”   

CW: Are there any second, third, fourth fifth acts to follow in your lives?

DC: I’m gonna keep going!

LP: I’ve had the wonderful fortune, after Larry was no longer with me, of meeting an Australian sailor who came in looking for me to autograph our book. He stopped at our Kawau Island in New Zealand.

He came for a drink and we’ve been voyaging together. We’ve sailed the Tasman Sea, heading out to New Caledonia very soon.

DC: I’m not sailing as much these days but we’re forever pressing forward with the company and getting people sailing and taking care of our employees. We’re no better than our instructors. We can boast all we want about what we do but that’s the person who’s going to make or break us when they’re with the customer on the boat. We can do all the marketing in the world but if we don’t have the right instructors we’re doomed.

CW: Is there anything over the course of your long and successful careers, outside of sailing, that has made an impression on you.

LP: We became involved helping sailors with disabilities such as CRAB (Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating). Don Backe wrote to Larry to ask him to come up with some rigging to help lift people off the boat. We sailed down and did a big fundraiser with him. So we had a paraplegic in our hotel room. And I watched how hard it was. If he left his glasses on the wrong side of the bed, to get out of the bed and into a wheelchair, roll around the bed, because he can’t roll over on the bed on his own, he made the most wonderful jokes about it. I’ve never laughed more than when I shared a room with Don Backe and learning what true heroism was. He had a long, good life. It made my own life easier. When I had to have major surgery on my legs, and there was a chance that one would never come right completely, I said “Don would be thrilled to get around as well as I can.” I’d say it was such a profound thing: Sailing led me to it, but looking at those people who are so brave compared to anything I’ve ever done in my life.

DC: For me it’s the arts. I’m very involved in the Florida Repertory Theater as board secretary. We go to the performances. When I came back from Paris, I immediately jumped on stage. Acting can take you away from whatever’s bothering you. You go into another role and you’re just out there doing something different. At home I’ve decorated in Southwestern art. It’s very appealing to me, I like the colors that come out of it. We have a couple of rooms that are nautical, but the whole house is definitely not nautical.

Being involved in theatre and seeing actors assume roles, they come out of themselves and become something else. It’s very stimulating to me. Same thing with ballet. We’re mildly involved with the Florida Gulfshore Ballet, which is training mostly girls, some of who are going on to New York, San Fran. It’s cool to see people go off on tangents that aren’t part of their bodies. They become something else. It’s a creative thing which I really enjoy.

CW: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

LP: It’s never too late to start.

DC: Absolutely.

LP: I’m 78, I’m going to get in as much sailing as I can over the next few years. I’ve never gotten tired of sailing. And I will say there’s now color in my life; I’m sailing on a bright-red boat with a big, bold main.

This is all surreal to me. Sitting here in the National Sailing Hall of Fame on the East Coast. I’m a West Coaster, we’re uncouth! Sitting in this lovely museum.

DC: The museum’s fantastic. While sailing can be challenging, life is incredibly challenging. Business is incredibly challenging.

CW: I remember little things you’ve both said to me over the years.

LP: Did we say interesting things? (laughter) We have things in common: We both love the numbers in business and that’s really helped our lives tremendously and being involved.

DC: I like running it. I like being in charge.

LP: I used to take care of all the books. I keep a profit and loss sheet I update every two weeks. One day, Larry walks into my office. “Lin, are we rich or poor?” We’re doing quite well at the moment. We’re rich. He says, “Prove it.” I said “What do you mean?” He said, “I haven’t seen anything more than 10 dollars in the last year.” So I went to the bank and got my banker to loan me $10,000 cash.

DC: Oh geez.

LP: In small bills. I picked up this bag full of money, 10K in cash, most of what we had saved up. I gave it to him. He sat there, laid it out in piles, and looked at all this money and said, “Is that really all ours?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Great.” I put it all back in the bag, I gave him ten dollars and took it back to the bank—and my banker charged me three dollars for the loan.

(laughter)

Elaine Lembo is editor-in-chief of Caribbean Compass as well as an independent journalist, a former ­longtime CW staff editor, and a CW ­editor-at-large. Based in Newport, Rhode Island, she also develops content for the Sailing Museum at the National Sailing Hall of Fame, collaborates on book projects with America’s Cup tactician Gary Jobson, and contributes to publications of the New York Yacht Club. 

The post Lin Pardey and Doris Colgate Inducted Into the National Sailing Hall of Fame appeared first on Cruising World.

Over the years, I’ve heard marketing folks offer some pretty ambitious descriptions of a given vessel’s aims and capabilities. A couple of years ago, a sales rep said that I could take his company’s new 40-something-footer and “do a Bermuda Race on it, or live aboard, or sail around the world.” Except the deck layout was horrible for racing, the galley and storage were too tight for long-term ­habitation, and there wasn’t nearly enough tankage for crossing oceans. In reality, it was a pretty fair coastal cruiser. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t win any prizes.

In sharp contrast to that experience, it was refreshing to step aboard the Voyage 590. The marketing was actually the straightforward skinny: This 59-foot cat, built in South Africa, is a high-end charter boat with a half-dozen equally sumptuous staterooms. Not a long-range cruiser. Not for living aboard. 

What’s more, it has one and only one chartering venue: the British Virgin Islands, from a base at Tortola’s Soper’s Hole. Not the Mediterranean or South Pacific—just the BVI. Simple, no? What wasn’t said is that the 590 is an engineering marvel that addresses its design writ superbly. But I was about to discover all that on my own. 

Voyage founders Robin and Jo-Ann Downing set out from South Africa to the Caribbean aboard their own boat—a custom monohull design that Robin was not only sailing, but also selling—nearly 40 years ago. They then returned home and switched allegiances to cruising catamarans. The first two Voyage cats launched in 1995. By 2017, Voyage ran some 30 charter boats in the BVI and offered dedicated cruising boats beyond those sold into their ­charter-management program. 

Then Hurricane Irma happened, decimating their fleet. With help from their three kids (and their spouses), the Downings regrouped and carried forth with their family-run BVI charter business. It is now replenishing its charter-boat numbers, at this time exclusively with the 590. Going forward, the company has completed preliminary designs for “owner’s layouts” with fewer staterooms, as well as different amenities for long-range cruising and living aboard. The first is expected to launch in early 2024.

Phil Southwell is the ­company’s current naval ­architect of record, but the 590’s concept, layout and objective are all Robin Downing’s. And he is clear about what he was after. 

“It’s a six-cabin layout with slightly different configurations but all of equal size,” he said. “It fills a niche in the market.” 

Of course, not everyone wants to vacation with a dozen companions, but if you do, here you go. Bareboats are available to super-qualified sailors—we’re basically talking longtime, repeat customers—but many charter parties go all-inclusive with a captain and chef, or at least a captain. Which makes sense. The 590 is a lot of boat, my friends. As such, it was named Best Charter Boat in CW’s 2022 Boat of the Year competition. 

The comfort of vacationers was on Downing’s mind when it came to propulsion and charging systems. The 590 is available in a dedicated all-electric version, or a hybrid setup with a diesel engine for propulsion augmented by a set of Bellmarine electric generators (and accompanying solar panels). In all instances, there’s a bank of lithium-ion batteries. Voyage wants its guests to enjoy full nights of air-conditioned comfort without the noise and bother of a diesel generator. Anyone who has picked up a mooring in a crowded BVI anchorage will also appreciate this silence.

“It’s a techy boat, and they’re doing a lot of cool things with lithium tech and 24-volt systems,” BOTY judge and systems expert Ed Sherman said. “In terms of the systems integration, they’re using very high-end inverters with variable-speed air-conditioning systems that step down as it gets cooler at night. That’s pretty cool stuff. They’ve selected the MG lithium battery banks, which were originally created and designed by Victron Energy in Europe. And there are a lot of refrigeration units on board. They want to make sure the beer is chilled, and they went to great lengths to ensure that it is.”

Nothing is simple about the 590’s construction, including the hand-laid, three-piece hull mold. There’s another vast mold for the deck. All of it, including the structural grid, is foam-cored and vacuum-­bagged in a laminate that incorporates a vinylester skin. It’s all extremely solid and well-executed. 

How to describe the rest of the boat? My notes had two related entries: “laid out for gracious living” and “party palace.” Both were meant to be high compliments.

Stashed in the hulls, those aforementioned six staterooms—four with athwartships bunks, and another pair with fore-and-aft berths—are indeed of equal size and appointments, though with different color schemes and accoutrements for a bit of variety. Topside and aft, swim platforms in each hull step up to a wide boarding platform that accesses the cockpit, with sliding doors that lead to the saloon. With those doors open, the layout makes for a sweeping, integrated space. There’s an outdoor grill, naturally, and a couple of members of the related fridge family. The dining table is long and wide enough for the entire New England Patriots offensive unit. 

The galley is forward with a window for ventilation and easy entree to a forward cockpit, in the event one wishes to throw separate parties at the same time. Five steps lead up to the flybridge, which hosts all the sailing controls and running rigging, ably tamed by a trio of electric stainless-­steel Andersen winches and a series of Spinlock clutches managing color-coded lines. A single wheel is to starboard, with engine controls for the twin Yanmars and a suite of B&G instrumentation. There’s a hard Bimini overhead with windows to the mainsail, in addition to the windshield. Sun pads for lounging are here, there and everywhere. 

The gargantuan mainsail is of course raised by an electric winch, and I was surprised to see what I thought was a black carbon laminate, but it turned out to be Dacron painted black (it still looked cool as could be). The next surprise under sail was the steering, which I thought would be hydraulic on such a beast of a boat. It turned out to be a standard wire Lewmar arrangement that wasn’t exactly sensitive, but it was more than adequate. In 8 to 10 knots of breeze upwind, we made better than 6 knots and sped up to better than 7 on a reach. The fact that these boats are delivered on their own bottom to the Caribbean is a testament to their seaworthiness. 

I asked Robin about top-end boatspeed, and with a look of mock horror, he said: “You don’t want to ever do more than 12 on this boat. It’s 26 tons.” He then listed the many things you’d need to compromise to go faster: slender hulls (which would erase the spaciousness of the accommodations), a higher bridge deck (ditto) and so on. Besides, on the 590, haste is definitely not the point of the exercise. 

BOTY judge Gerry Douglas said that the 590 reminded him of “a boutique hotel.” His words ring true to me, and I personally would be more than happy to check in anytime. 

Voyage 590 Specifications

The post Sailboat Review: Voyage 590 appeared first on Cruising World.

This February, I was on a powerboat off Anse Marcel on the French side of the Caribbean island of Saint-Martin when a fleet of fast performance-cruising multihulls set sail into the windy Anguilla Channel for the rally portion of the annual Caribbean Multihull Challenge. A pair of Balance 442 cats named Sage and Umoya, with reefed mains and drawing spinnakers, were blasting their way into the channel’s whitecapped waters, roiled by the 20-plus-knot easterly trade winds. 

Though they were practically the smallest cats in the fray, the 442s were more than holding their own against the bigger craft, which included a quartet of Balance 482s (including company president and founder Phil Berman’s In Balance). Five months earlier, during our annual Boat of the Year contest, I’d sailed the very same Umoya in somewhat lighter air. Now I knew what the 442s looked like under sail in sportier conditions while hauling the mail: buoyant, sprightly and packed with horsepower. The yacht’s angular aesthetics are crisp, clean and, to my eye, quite fetching. There’s a deck-stepped mast and a working sail plan consisting of a big, square-topped fully battened mainsail and self-tacking jib; relatively narrow hulls with high freeboard and curved, wave-piercing bows that maximize waterline length; an integral sprit for the reaching and running sails; and a substantial coachroof topped with solar panels
and accented by generous, tempered-glass windows. 

Balance Catamarans are built in South Africa, where almost 500 employees operate out of two separate facilities, building about 25 boats a year spanning several models. They all share, as Berman told me, a common purpose and the same DNA: They’re performance-oriented, liveaboard cruising boats that are bluewater capable and sail well on all points of sail. The carbon-infused daggerboards, a feature shared with every model in the brand, are largely responsible for their notable windward ability. 

The build, systems and layout are, at once, both complex and straightforward. The hand-laid hull and deck laminates are vacuum-bagged and employ a vinylester outer skin with a polyester inner skin sandwiching a closed-cell foam core with carbon reinforcements in high-load areas (and in the structural crossbeams). To keep the ­vessel as light as possible without compromising strength, the bulkheads and furniture are foam-cored. 

While the contemporary construction techniques and materials are decidedly high-tech, the power and charging systems aren’t especially complicated; Berman said that another overall goal was to keep the boats as simple as possible to sail and operate. For example, Ed Sherman, our BOTY judge who concentrates on systems, was somewhat surprised that the builder did not opt for the digital-­switching configurations so prevalent now across the industry. Still, he liked what he saw, perhaps even more so.  

“This boat is yet another variation of the ‘no-dedicated-­onboard-generator direction’ we are moving in. It uses integral engine-driven alternators—in this case, a pair of them—that create 48-volt power and run this power through Victron converters to run 24- or 12-volt appliances (or the 48-volt equipment just becoming available in the marine marketplace). Energy is stored in lithium-ion battery banks and can be run through DC/AC inverters to run 120- or 220-volt AC appliances. I see the future of onboard electrical systems on this boat.” 

The accommodations plans are also well-thought-out. At 44 feet length overall, and with the daggerboards to account for, this boat has less interior volume than you’d find on other production cats in this size range. But the Balance team maximized the space available, particularly with the big sliding-glass doors that, when open, incorporate the interior lounge, galley and salon with the cockpit. There’s a choice of four staterooms or, as we had on our test boat, three. In the latter setup, a pair of double-berth ­staterooms are to port (one with an athwartship berth forward and a fore-and-aft bunk aft) while a dedicated owner’s stateroom spans the hull to starboard. In either configuration, stowage is abundant. 

The deck also has nifty things of note: the dual mainsheet system that allows the boom angle to be fine-tuned, negating the need for a traveler; the taut, split trampolines forward that provide an excellent bridle system for the ground tackle centered between them; the grab rails on the coachroof top, serving as handholds and rain catchers; the dedicated winch forward for the spinnaker halyard or code zero; and the huge sail locker that can be accessed from the deck. The davit system also works well. Ullman sails are standard. For electronics, owners can choose Garmin or Raymarine kit.

It was under sail, however, that I truly began to appreciate the 442’s proportions, and came to realize what an ideal-size boat this is for a cruising couple. It’s large enough to address most any cruisers’ plans and itinerary, but not so big that you need to bring additional crew on board to go cruising. 

Our test sail was conducted in considerably more mellow conditions than those off Anse Marcel, but in a building southerly that topped out around 15 knots, there was more than enough breeze to strut the 442’s stuff. The VersaHelm that’s offered on every Balance lives up to its name: The convertible wheel can be locked down at cockpit level in inclement conditions, out of the weather, though thanks to those wide windows, there’s good visibility. Or it can be raised up to the elevated helm station to starboard, where a pair of winches and three sets of rope clutches serve the color-coded ­running rigging that’s all right at hand. The engine controls and instrumentation are mounted here as well, making this an easy boat to sail solo. 

We tacked upwind to gain sea room, gliding along at a pretty effortless 8-plus knots, then swapped the jib for the code zero, turned and burned on a broad reach, and easily topped 11 knots. That was clearly the cat’s sweet spot. It was evident that you could easily match that speed for miles and miles and, on passage, knock out consistent 200-plus-mile days. 

To sum up, what you get with the Balance 442 is comfort at anchor and performance underway. Sounds to me like it all balances out.

Balance 442 Specifications

Herb McCormick is former editor-in-chief of Cruising World and the yachting correspondent for The New York Times. The author of five nautical books, he’s owned several sailboats, including his current Pearson 365 and Pearson Ensign.

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Geese were flying low overhead when I first met the pair on a Malletts Bay dock in Vermont. It was raw, spitting cold rain, and everyone was heading south. The geese were practicing V formations. The two ­humans were packing more stuff into something that resembled less a sailboat than a shipping container for a dream.

“Send me a picture from the beach at Christmas,” I said to the young men as I waved goodbye.

Three months later, when they did, they were no longer farm boys. They were ­bluewater sailors.

Finbar Curtin and Rob Root met in high school, went off to colleges in Montana and Virginia, returned as engineers, found good jobs, and, two years later, wondered where they were going.

While their friends held on to security during the pandemic, Root (designing roads for solar arrays) and Curtin (doing analysis for a major bank) daydreamed of adventure together. Kayaks? Hiking? Biking? What about a boat? 

For $2,500, they found an O’Day 20, a swing-keel pocket cruiser. They watched online videos and taught themselves to sail. Pretty much every day, sometimes overnight, sometimes in storms, they had a blast. For these engineers, a sailboat was an “autonomous system” that provided shelter, power and a place to sleep while going places that would be hard to get to otherwise. 

Four months later, they found a 1969 Tartan 34 C named Sofia. They paid $20,000 and, despite a reassuring survey, found that one thing led to another. While hooking up a windlass, they were shocked by the boat’s wiring, which they replaced. The hoses were connected to original through-hulls. A coat of antifouling uncovered scary fiberglass issues.

While their friends held on to security during the pandemic, Root and Curtin daydreamed of adventure together—what about a boat?

Working in a boatyard through the Vermont winter, they kept regret at bay by picturing themselves, cocktails in hand, on a Caribbean beach. To taste the ocean, they signed on with an experienced captain to deliver a Leopard 50 catamaran from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Panama. Back home, nearing launch, they bought a life raft, a refrigerator, lightning and battery protection, a spearfishing gun, a drogue and, they say, because “we both have moms,” a Garmin inReach ­satellite communications ­device. Curtin wrote software to translate SSB weather data to their laptops.

A year and another $15,000 later, they had a sailboat they knew inside and out. What remained was a cruising kitty that would allow each man $1,000 a month. With entrepreneurial optimism, they packed away Vermont cheese and 200 pounds of maple sugar produced from their families’ stands. They hoped to sell it in the tropics. They also found room for Root’s grandfather’s sextant, a chessboard, ­e-readers loaded with books, and, in keeping with Curtin’s Irish roots, a flute, a whistle and a concertina.

As they set off through dense fog in September 2022, with a goal of Christmas on a tropical island, I followed along on their blog. Through their eyes, I enjoyed reliving my own—really, every sailor’s—lost virginity. It comes only once, and Sofia’s crew conveyed an honest, sweet innocence.

“I pretended we were 17th-century voyagers, ­exploring this inland waterway for the first time,” Curtin wrote in the first post.

After raising their mast on the Hudson River, they caught an ebb tide and ran aground. As New York City’s skyline rose ahead, they anchored and braved the city for pizza. To shelter from Hurricane Ian, they rounded Manhattan, entered the East River, and passed under the Brooklyn Bridge on an 11-knot tidal wave.

A long wait for a weather window in Norfolk, Virginia, as Hurricane Nicole passed by left them nervous as they faced the Gulf Stream and 1,600 miles in the Atlantic. Then came two weeks of radio silence, finally broken in late November.

“Made it!”

Their first blog entry led with Curtin describing that first night at sea, leaning over the rail: “I couldn’t see the churning ocean through my teary squint, but my stomach felt each violent lurch, pitch and roll. I shuddered, partly from the cold, partly from the puking, and tried to collect myself. Weakly pushing myself upright, I gazed into the nighttime abyss and wondered, What have I gotten myself into?”

There were great moments: the dawns, the dolphins, the stars, the fish they caught and ate. Then the routine returned, and Root wrote: “After two nights of restless sleep, the days and nights felt like they were melting into one blurry and slightly anxious dream. The constant underlying fear of something breaking, or going disastrously wrong while hundreds of miles offshore, kept eating away at the pure excitement of taking our boat to the Caribbean.”

Finally, the trade winds, and the sight of Saint-Martin. They anchored and dinghied to “the nearest beach bar, and in nearly unintelligible French, ordered a grand meal of beer, chicken, French fries and ice cream.”

On New Year’s Eve, I reached them via video call. They were on a national park mooring off St. John in the US Virgin Islands. The sun was shining, and they were reflective.

Like all cruisers, they had used their boat to go somewhere, starting from knowing nothing about sailing just two or three years earlier. Theirs was also an inward journey: “The only thing out there is your boat and your mind and the things that you can really think about, like what you value within yourself,” Curtin said. “I want to live more—a virtuous life in a way, instead of trying to chase the ­corporate hustle.”

Root added: “I feel more strongly that I really want to do things that make me happy and not get sucked into doing things that make other people happy. Working on boats would be really fun.”

Sure, there were cruising lessons learned, like a better meal plan to stave off being hungry and grumpy and seasick. Come spring, they might head to Maine, but they don’t foresee any more ocean passages. They had set out to test the boat and themselves. As such, the voyage was a success. They both agreed that they feel like they are the same people, just more confident.

What I saw in these ­24-year-old men was a wisdom often mouthed but not always heard: Don’t wait until old age. You don’t necessarily have to cross an ocean to live a life as wide and deep as one.

Based in Vermont, Jim Carrier volunteers as a captain for Sail Beyond Cancer, a ­nonprofit providing respite sails for cancer patients on Lake Champlain. A CW contributing editor since 2009, he is the author of The Ship and The Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the loss of the Fantome.

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