The word “elan” is ­derived from a French phrase meaning “to dart.” From my first ­exposure to the Slovenian boatyard of the same name—­fittingly, if somewhat incongruously, Elan also manufacturers top-end skis—it seemed like a ­pretty proper handle for a line of high-performance cruiser/­racers that can easily rip both hither and yon. 

It’s always interesting when Elan imports a new model to the United States and enters it in our annual Boat of the Year contest. Such was the case with the introduction of its 49-foot-8-inch GT6 (the initials stand for Grand Tourer). Elan always seems to deliver, and once again they didn’t disappoint.

The GT6 is a collaborative effort from go-fast British naval architect Rob Humphreys, top-end nautical design house Studio F.A. Porsche for styling and accoutrements (topside and interior), and overall technical oversight ­courtesy of Elan’s in-house team—a ­happy marriage. The boat’s extremely contemporary profile is all low-slung business, with an understated coachroof, perpendicular bow and stern treatments that maximize the waterline length; an almost straight sheerline; and a hard chine accented by a trio of hull windows positioned ­exactly atop the chine. The overall look is, well, angular. It might not be for everyone, but I like it. A certain Elan indeed.

There’s double the fun everywhere: twin carbon wheels, twin rudders, twin Harken electric sheet winches, and twin cockpit tables spaced for easy egress from the companionway to the drop-down transom/boarding platform. The running rigging is mostly invisible, stashed under deck plates, and the entire deck is finished with Permateek synthetic-teak decking, which is just as pretty but more durable than the real stuff. The mainsheet is double-ended (no vang). Spars are from Seldén, as is the headsail furler stashed belowdecks. The fixed carbon bowsprit doubles as the anchor’s home and the tack point for off-wind sails. Just abaft all that, there’s a chain locker and sail locker, features I’m always glad to see.

The standard interior ­layout has two staterooms: one forward, one aft. Accommodations on our test vessel were the optional three-­stateroom version, with guests aft and the owner forward. The ­forward galley in both interior plans makes for a more comfortable and sociable saloon (it also speaks to how most of the GT6s will be used—as inshore and coastal cruisers).  

Our test boat was equipped with a 75 hp Volvo Penta, though a 60 hp Volvo Penta and an 80 hp Yanmar are options. All are saildrive configurations. A retractable bow thruster permits dial-in and ­dial-out docking. Under power and opened up to 2,500 rpm, we trucked along at just shy of 9 knots (when the wind dies, this boat will get you where you want to go, with dispatch). 

Construction-wise, the all-infused laminate incorporates an internal grid laid up with foam stringers. A ballast bulb is affixed to the fin keel; our test boat sported the optional Chesapeake Bay-friendly 6-foot-6-inch draft, though most models destined for the European market (many earmarked for the Mediterranean charter-boat fleets) have the standard 8-foot configuration. 

Even with the ­shallower draft, during our test sail on the Chesapeake in ­pretty ideal conditions of 10 to 12 knots, the boat had ­plenty of close-winded bite as we ­scooted along at a fairly effortless 6 knots. Unlike a lot of modern boats—where the purpose of the hard chine isn’t actually sailing performance, but rather to open up the interior volume—the GT6 really does lean in and stand up to its chine, which makes ­driving to weather a real pleasure. Sightlines forward are excellent, and that pair of rudders offers pinpoint control and feedback. An in-mast furling mainsail is standard, but I was more than pleased to see our ride equipped with a traditional main; a boat with this pedigree shouldn’t be saddled with a governor on its throttle. 

At $800,000-plus for a well-equipped model, the GT6 is in the upper price echelon of production sailboats (Elan builds about 140 units annually). But it’s a quality boat and a gas to sail. Measured on the fun meter, it might even be a bargain.

Herb McCormick is a CW ­editor-at-large.

The post A Certain Elan appeared first on Cruising World.

Dismasting is a ­worst-case scenario, and it can happen to any sailor in certain circumstances. The source of the failure is usually the chainplates, or lack thereof. A chainplate is a metal plate used to fasten a shroud or stay to the hull of a sailboat. One end of the chainplate is often fastened to a turnbuckle, which is then connected to the shroud or stay, while the remainder of the chainplate is normally through-bolted into the hull or bulkhead. Chainplates are commonly painted over, glassed into the hull, or out of reach in general, which unfortunately makes them out of sight, out of mind. 

In typical installations, chainplates are hidden belowdecks in a locker—and this was the case with the shroud chainplates aboard our 1979 41-foot Cheoy Lee Avocet. Like many shipyards in that era, Cheoy Lee had a few ways they built and installed their chainplates. Some of their older Clippers and Luders models sported external chainplates, which are about as robust and easy to maintain as it gets, but in the ’70s and ’80s, the builder began moving the chainplates closer to the mast. This allowed better sheeting angles for the headsails.  

In this configuration, the chainplates go through the deck and down into the cabin, where they attach to a bulkhead or a fiberglass knee. On Avocet,there are six substantial, dedicated knees for every midship chainplate, and one aft for the backstay. The chainplates for the shrouds are hidden behind cabinetry. 

We sailed and worked on other projects that seemed more pressing until we found the time to open up our interior to inspect the chainplates. We were shocked: Our chainplates were completely rusted through, hanging on by less than a thread. With horror, we thought about how many times we had gone aloft to repair something, and about the gales we had sailed through—all while putting stress on a very compromised rig. 

As what was left of our chainplates crumbled in our hands, we began the process of fabricating new, stronger chainplates, and of taking our close brush with disaster as a warning to be shared with sailors everywhere. 

Ross Hubbard, a Southern California member of the Society of Accredited Marine Surveyors who has become a good friend of the Avocet crew, told us that he had seen similar situations—and worse. 

“I think that on average, I see eight or so vessels with known chainplate failures a year,” he said. “After removing the plates, I’d say at least 60 percent have some type of plate problem such as pitting, cracks, fractures, etc. Unfortunately, the nature of the materials and installation methods almost guarantees failures.”

That assessment rings true for Avocet, which was built in Hong Kong—a place that was known for excellent fiberglass layups and poor metal compositions. 

A thorough survey can protect you from buying a boat that is on the brink of rig failure, but what about those good ol’ boats that have been under the same ownership for a while? Experts say that any boat older than 20 years should have the chainplates rigorously inspected or replaced, along with the ­standing rigging in general. 

“If there is any evidence of water leaking above and/or below deck (rivulets, rust staining, wood damage, veneer, varnish or paint failure/peeling on bulkheads where the plates are mounted) the plates should be removed,” Hubbard said. “If the boat is older, I suggest ­completely ­removing the plates for inspection rather than just observing them. The inspection should be conducted using at least 20-times magnification, as well as using a dye penetration system after an in-depth cleaning.” 

Of course, this process will confirm only whether your chainplates need to be replaced. If that is the case, then you should get a professional rigging expert to assist in the replacement and installation. 

Kim Weir, also in Southern California and a dear friend of ours, has been rigging there and in his native Australia since the 1980s. When we showed Weir the photos of our corroded chainplates, he was shocked but not necessarily surprised. 

“I would say that 90 percent of the chainplates I inspect need to be replaced, and most of them are compromised by water intrusion,” he said. 

Our boat had her fair share of leaks around the hull-to-deck joint and chainplate bases, resulting in some water damage belowdecks and the further deterioration of the original stainless chainplates. Back in the ’70s, Cheoy Lee used stainless bolts and bronze nuts to fasten the chainplates, a combination that led to dissimilar metal corrosion with the addition of salt water. Although our chainplates looked Bristol on the topsides, what was hiding underneath was an absolute nightmare. 

“Just because the tops look fine and the rest is hidden doesn’t mean problems don’t exist,” Weir said. “Honestly, the harder they are to inspect is all the more reason to be suspicious as far as the status of their structural integrity goes.”

Determined to build better, we contacted a friend who is a skilled metalworker. We started by removing the two cap shrouds and backstay, leaving the four lowers to help stabilize the rig in addition to the halyards we ran as extra support. These first three plates were in the best condition of them all but had hairline cracks right where the plates intersected the deck. We knew that we would have to make a copy of each individual plate because they were not identical. That’s what a metalworker can do. 

We chose 316L stainless, which is extremely durable, and in less than a week had three perfect replicas. After reinstalling the cap shrouds and backstay, we began to remove the four lower chainplates. 

Well, what was left of them anyway. All of our lowers looked like they had come from the actual bottom of the ocean. Instead of coming out in one solid piece, the forward two crumbled, breaking in half right down the middle. Our metalworker had to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle to create a template for the new ones. 

It truly is the little wins that can make a project all the sweeter. The fastener holes were drilled exactly to three-eighths of an inch, so the plates didn’t have any room to move when mounted. And the clevis pin holes were an exact fit for the five-eighths-inch and half-inch turnbuckles. These tight tolerances prevent the connections from side-loading or ovaled holes, which could lead to voids in the future. 

In addition to the perfectly fitting hardware, another improvement was the thickness of the chainplates themselves. Before, each one was different in terms of thickness. All seven new plates have the same three-eighths-inch thickness, which reinforces the integrity of Avocet’s rig. 

To install the chainplates, we used Sikaflex sealant around where the ­chainplate intersects the deck. In addition, our metalworker fabricated 316L stainless-steel caps to hide the sealant, better protect against intrusion, and give a more finished look. 

With the chainplates ­leak-free and fastened securely, it was finally time to reinstall the cabinetry—but this time, we made it easier to remove so that we can inspect the chainplates regularly for ­preventative maintenance.

Most people address issues they can see and tend to think that overbuilt equals more strength. Sailors regularly invest in stout, overbuilt rigging instead of investigating their chainplates. Unfortunately, this approach can compromise your rig entirely. 

“You really have to take the engineering into consideration when evaluating the rigging,” Weir said. “Many people think that by sizing up their wire that they will add integrity, but in reality, the designers calculated the vessel’s rigging during construction. If you really want to add strength and integrity to your vessel, as well as peace of mind in terms of the rigging, why not replace your chainplates? Rigging is like a chain: It’s only as strong as its weakest link.”

Marissa Neely and her husband, Chris, are currently refitting their Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet, prepping to cast lines and go cruising.

The post Check Your Chainplates for Rust, Cracks and Fractures appeared first on Cruising World.

We were tucked in behind the reef to windward of our anchorage in the Grenadines’ tiny isle of Petit St. Vincent aboard my old friend John Kretschmer’s Kaufman 47, Quetzal, and it had been a wild night indeed. 

In the breezy blasts of 30-knot gusts, the big superyacht just upwind of us had dragged anchor in the wee hours, and it was actually pretty comical watching its headlamped crew, their beams blinking like fireflies, scurrying about the deck trying to reset the damn thing. Come dawn, however, the unsettling view of the angry, whitecapped, deep-blue Caribbean Sea on the other side of that reef was a lot less humorous—and that’s precisely where we were bound. 

Ostensibly, if incongruously considering we were closer to the equator than the Labrador Sea, we were in the midst of a ­weeklong jaunt that Kretschmer had dubbed “the polar ­navigation summit.” He’d summarized it to me in an email a couple of months earlier:

“I have a great scheme and I’d love you to be part of it. I’ve become good friends with Mark Synnott, an amazing climber and writer. He was part of Alex Honnold’s team (when he climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan without ropes), and is featured in the movie Free Solo. But he’s done incredible first ascents on his own. He summited Mount Everest and wrote a great book about it, The Third Pole. Anyway, he’s totally into sailing, and is planning to do the Northwest Passage in his Stevens 47, Polar Sun, this summer. It’s part of a big National Geographic project and super cool. While Mark is tough as nails and really smart, he needs more sailing experience and certainly more navigation experience, especially high-latitude stuff. 

“I’ve also become friends with Porter Fox, ­another great writer. His latest book is called The Last Winter. It’s a beautifully written story of Northern travels and climate change, and is terrifying and poetic. His dad was Crozer Fox, who founded Able Marine and later sold it to Tom Morris. Anyway, he has a beautiful Whistler 32 and is contemplating a long voyage with his family but wants to sail aboard Quetzal for some experience, or at least spend some time aboard chatting about the ocean, climate, life, etc.  

“So, here’s the proposal. It’s crazy, but I was thinking of having you three join me aboard Q in Grenada, the perfect place for a polar voyaging and navigation summit meeting—straddling the 12th parallel! I am not sure what will unfold, but some thoughts on ice and navigation—Neptune knows you know a lot about that—some thoughts about serious passagemaking, some good trade-wind sailing, some drinking, some scheming, some talk of climate and of the North, just a boys’ polar navigation summit. It’s crazy but will be a great time. I kind of see this summit as a couple of old dudes like us sharing what we know, or think we know, with some ‘youngish’ bucks.”

As a veteran of the Northwest Passage, it appeared (­somewhat laughably) that I was the supposed “Arctic expert.” A superb writer and author himself, Kretschmer’s main business is running offshore training voyages aboard Quetzal, and he had a big ­summer voyage lined up to Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway, hence his interest in getting into his own ­high-latitude mindset.

During the pandemic, with his usual alluring, distant destinations off-limits, Kretschmer had kept his operation going by conducting offshore trips to waypoints (not landfalls, but “sea falls”) he’d set a few hundred miles off the US Virgin Islands (which were still accessible) on round-trip instructional voyages of several days’ duration that he’d jokingly dubbed “reaches to nowhere.” He’d included a briefer one in the itinerary of our trip.

It all sounded great in his email, and we’d had a good time sailing north to Petit St. Vincent from our meeting point in Grenada. But after upping our own anchor and plowing into the staunch easterly trades for an hour or so—the offshore “­nowhere” segment of our summit now underway—I was ­beginning to rethink the entire enterprise. 

Still on the relatively shallow inshore shelf fronting the Grenadines, the motion on board was quick and violent, and for the first time in quite a while, my mouth was suddenly very dry, the rising sweat on my brow was cold and damp, and my tummy wasn’t feeling so swell. Which is when the rather ­unsettling question regarding my suddenly shaky sea legs came to me: Son, it’s been some time since you’ve been offshore, hasn’t it?

As I waited in the customs arrival line at the airport in Grenada, it was quite clear that the very fit cat ahead of me was none other than the accomplished Synnott, also recognizable from the jacket photo of his bestseller The Impossible Climb, an excellent book that combines simultaneous accounts of Honnold’s famous ascent with a memoir of Synnott’s own career on cliffs and mountains. We made our acquaintances and shared a cab to Quetzal’s slip at the Port Louis Marina in St. George’s, where we were greeted by our shipmates for the week: Kretschmer, Fox and Nathan Zahrt, Kretschmer’s young protégé who also conducts training trips on his Compass 47, Ultima.

Seeing as how we had gathered for polar discussions, the talk quickly turned to “the ice.” As in, we required some for the rum. And with that, the storytelling portion of the summit was underway. 

Kretschmer is a master, and had some wild COVID-era tales to spin about his recent travels; Synnott was equally entertaining. His climbing remembrances were pretty crazy—his yacht, Polar Sun, is named after the nearly 5,000-foot Polar Sun Spire on Baffin Island in Canada, on which he lived for 39 days while scaling its sheer face. But he had some fine and outlandish sailing stories too. 

The best was the time back in 2005 when he convinced National Geographic to sponsor a climbing expedition to remote Pitcairn Island in the southern Pacific Ocean, where many inhabitants are descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers. This expedition required chartering a 66-foot yacht with a churlish Australian skipper to sail from French Polynesia with his team, providing several misadventures. Plus, the “climbing” on the shaky, volcanic peaks of Pitcairn was not exactly like summiting Everest; his editors weren’t exactly thrilled with the photos of everyone playing badminton on a reef. But the trip’s magical moment happened when he was standing a night watch by himself with the moon reflected in the shimmering Pacific Ocean. Bam! That’s when the sailing bug bit. And now, on his own boat, he was heading north, to Baffin and beyond.  

The next morning, understandably, our collective crew was not exactly moving with vigor or dispatch. But we rallied quickly. Once the coffee kicked in, we had sails to hoist. 

Kretschmer had laid out a course some 20-odd nautical miles to the north for the popular anchorage of Tyrell Bay on Carriacou; according to the notes on its noonsite.com webpage, the island was first settled by the indigenous Caribs, who called it Kayryouacou, meaning “land of the reefs.”

At the outset, ambling up the leeward coast of Grenada with a full main, staysail and genoa, we were sheltered from the easterly trades right up until clearing the hilly island’s north shore, at which point the easterlies commenced pumping. Time to shorten sail.

Kretschmer had promised us a bit of a sailing clinic, and our first lesson was his preferred style of reefing: bearing off to a comfortable reach at a wind angle of 110 degrees (as opposed to going head to wind, like many textbooks advise) and simply dropping the main and tucking in the reef(s). It was a gentle, no-drama maneuver, with the added benefit that we didn’t need to drop the genoa to accomplish it. Duly noted. 

After the long beat to Tyrell and a nice dinner with a dash of red wine, it seemed we’d be having a more restrained, mellow evening…right up until Kretschmer fatefully unscrewed the cap on a bottle of scotch. More stories, perhaps some even truthful, were dispensed. 

The next morning, we hired a cab for a nice tour of the island and to search for Kretschmer’s acquaintance who was building a schooner on a beach, the subject of the documentary Vanishing Sail. Alas, when we rolled down the hill to the purported building site, the hearty ship was complete and at anchor. However, we did chat up some locals constructing a very cool workboat nearby, then got underway for Petit St. Vincent, tucked around Carriacou’s northeast flank. Other than Kretschmer nearly drowning me in the early going on an exercise demonstrating tethers and man-overboard situations (see “Tethers and Other Matters” below), it was a pretty routine, ho-hum day.

Check that: It was a fantastic one, with absolutely killer ­sailing. Quetzal is named after the sacred birds of the Mayans, and is synonymous with the notion of freedom. “It’s one of the few animals that refuse to live in captivity,” said the skipper, another being who pretty much refuses the same. The boat was built in Taiwan in 1987, and Kretschmer has put in countless miles, in the six figures, aboard it. He keeps it in Bristol fashion; after all, it’s responsible not only for his livelihood, but also for his life. With its longish fin keel and skeg-hung rudder, it absolutely hauls the mail and is a flat-out gas to drive in staunch winds and rising waves, the helm always responsive and forgiving. 

I was happy to let the other guys steer until Kretschmer asked, “You want a go?” I couldn’t say no, my sole task for the next couple of hours or so keeping the telltales streaming aft while tacking to weather past Palm Island and Union Island and right into the paradisiacal isle of Petit St. Vincent, the steering as light and balanced as could be. Sorry, guys, but once I got hold of that wheel, there was no way I was going to relinquish it.

Nowhere:

That was our next destination. The original plan had been to reach offshore for 50 or 60 miles, heave-to for dinner, then jibe and enjoy another reach back to Grenada. But that had been predicated on an expected northeast flow to the trade winds. What we actually encountered was solid wind hammering directly from the east, which meant a more southerly heading toward Trinidad and, gulp, Venezuela, which these days is no place anybody wants to be. That meant closehauled sailing as we broke into open water. Which led to my brief, sweaty and, thankfully, passing moment on the verge of blowing lunch. 

Luckily, as we sailed into deeper water, I got back into the old familiar rhythm of being at sea. Like riding a bike, my friends, you never forget. 

And then we were ocean sailing. Conditions were squally and sporty, to say the least; those overnight 30-plus-knot gusts had not dissipated. But the cutter-rigged Quetzal was most certainly in her element, trucking along at an easy 7 knots under a shortened-sail combo of double-reefed main and staysail. Kretschmer kept an attentive eye on the compass. “I think we’re going to end up more south than we think,” he said prophetically.

He also was a nonstop fount of information: “On port tack, as we are now, all the loads are happening from left to right, so maintain your situational awareness. Right now, anything bad that happens will happen to starboard.

“When any sort of issue arises, bear off. When the wind angle changes from 60 degrees to 100 degrees, everything levels off and the loads are lessened across the board. Your whole world changes.

“If you detect water down below, tack. It has to be coming from the low side. It buys you time and will probably expose where the problem is. It can be hard to find where the ingress is.

“These are beautiful waves. Long, long waves. Feel that temperature drop a little bit? That means we’re about to get popped by a squall. Bear off a bit. We’ll drop down to 80-degrees apparent and sail right around it.”

To get my attention at one point when I was driving, Kretschmer suddenly appeared from below and tossed something over the side. “Man overboard!” he cried. We’d practiced the old quick-stop maneuver the day before, after I’d sputtered back aboard following the tether drill, and I once again immediately put the bow head to wind, jibed, and luffed up right next to it. To be honest, I was surprised it worked as well in the open sea. We heaved-to, and Kretschmer pointed out the defined slick to weather, settling the seas as Quetzal calmly bobbed among them. Yet another set of experiences to etch in the memory bank.

A pretty sunset punctuated the eventful day, and with no moon, at roughly 11 degrees north, the Southern Cross and North Star both magically appeared, in all their ­celestial glory. It was indescribably beautiful. Kretschmer served up a fantastic chicken dinner that had been percolating all afternoon in the pressure cooker. Life was damn good. 

At midnight, we spun the boat around back ­toward Grenada, some 45 nautical miles from our real ­destination: Prickly Bay on the island’s southeastern shore, a well-known hangout for cruisers from near and far. 

The squalls kept coming. Kretschmer and I stood the first watch of the new day, to 0300, shooting the breeze while dodging the weather. In an offhand remark, he mentioned that he’d conducted 153 training voyages on Quetzal. 

Make that 154, I thought. 

We dropped Quetzal’s hook at precisely 0730 after one final rip-snorter of a dawn squall, which I had the honor of negotiating. The resulting rainbow right as the anchor grabbed made for a storybook ending to our unique summit.  

I’d successfully been “nowhere” with a great group of characters. And now I want to go back. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. For more info on John Kretschmer’s books, seminars and voyages, see his website. To track Mark Synnott’s voyage aboard Polar Sun, visit his website.

Tethers and Other Matters

A professional sailor and writer who has knocked off seven sailing books in his “spare time,” John Kretschmer has nearly 400,000 offshore miles in his wake, including 26 trans-Atlantic crossings. Along the way, he’s come to many conclusions and beliefs about “safety and seamanship,” which he says equate to one and the same. Near the top of that list are tethers—the leashes that connect one from a harness or life jacket to a jackline, with the vested goal of keeping one aboard and alive—and the right and wrong ways to employ them.  

As he would on a dedicated training voyage, Kretschmer tugged on an inflatable life jacket and reviewed its operation, including manual inflation. He then made his way toward the bow, reciting the key points as he went: Always go forward on the high side of the boat. Keep your center of effort low. Take your time; in rough weather, when moving to the mast, two settled minutes is better than 10 frantic seconds. If you’re feeling shaky, sit down and regroup. Don’t hook into the lifelines; think of them as an electric fence. Do not clip into the jackline continuously; instead, clip and unclip, moving purposely to where you’re going, and then clip in. And above all else, do not use a tether too long, one that will allow you to go into the drink if you go overboard. If you do, make sure the tether has a dedicated quick-release fitting, and that you know how to use it.

To get his point across, Kretschmer gave us all too-long tethers and sent us over the side. Time for a drill.

Mark Synnott was first, his vest inflating on ­contact with the water. Being the athlete and climber that he is, as the boat bobbed along, not making way, he hauled himself back aboard. But Kretschmer’s point wasn’t about what happens when a boat is standing still; it was about when it’s underway, as it would be in any oceangoing situation. Synnott jumped back in, and Kretschmer instructed Nathan Zahrt, at the wheel, to put it in gear and throttle up: 1 knot, 2 knots, 3. And it was suddenly very clear that movement through the water introduced a whole new dynamic. At 4 knots, Synnott had had more than enough, pulled the quick-­release shackle, and swam back to the boat. Porter Fox was next, repeating the sequence.

Then it was my turn. I consider myself a good ocean swimmer and a competent seaman. I like to think that I know what’s up when I’m sailing and when I’m in the water. But once in the sea, at 2 knots at the end of the tether, I was pretty uncomfortable. At 3, I felt the first surge of panic. At 4, I was underwater and thrashing, signaling that I was in distress just before pulling the rip cord. What the hell would it be like being dragged at 5 or 6 knots, as you would be on any actual passage if you tumbled overboard? The answer was clear and unnerving. 

Kretschmer’s point was made. Short tethers. Considered movements. And the most important lesson of all: Don’t go over the bloody side in the first place. 

The post The Sail to Nowhere appeared first on Cruising World.

Diesel engines, because they generate a considerable amount of soot, are hard on oil. If you aren’t accustomed to seeing how quickly oil turns black after being changed, you might be surprised by it. 

Soot thickens oil, which makes it more difficult for oil to flow into tight tolerances, especially when cold. Also ­hastening lubricating oil’s ­demise: anything that slips past the piston rings and enters the crankcase. This includes the byproducts of diesel combustion (such as nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter), fuel (which dilutes and thins oil, lowering its viscosity), and combustion gases and moisture (which lead to the formation of acid). 

New oil is fortified with additives that stave off this deterioration—to a point. The single most important driver of oil changes is acid formation, which is offset by a base additive that neutralizes the acid. Oil analysis calculates this acid-neutralizing ability as the total base number, or TBN. Most new oil starts out with a TBN of 8 to 10; as acid production is offset, that numbers falls. When it reaches 2.5, it’s time for an oil change.

Technically, oil changes should be driven by this figure, however, unless you are prepared to carry out oil analysis (something I strongly recommend), you have no idea of your oil’s condition. You instead must replace it based on engine hours or the calendar. Some oil requires changing every 150 hours or six months, while other oil allows for as much as 450 hours or annual replacement. 

The oil you use must meet or exceed the ­specification in your engine owner’s manual. Oil designed to be used in diesel engines has an American Petroleum Institute-designated C prefix, as opposed to oil destined for use with gasoline engines, which has an S prefix. The C prefix is followed by a second letter that signifies the type of additive package. 

You must also use the weight of oil that your engine manufacturer specifies. This might include, for example, a 15W-40 or a straight 30 weight. Stay consistent, and avoid mixing letters or weights. 

Oil filters are every bit as important as the oil itself. Quality and construction run the gamut, so don’t skimp; you usually can’t go wrong using the engine ­manufacturer’s brand, but these can cost ­considerably more than common retail brands available at auto-parts stores. Having cut open many oil filters over the years, I am impressed by and have had good results with WIX and NAPA Gold filters.

Make certain the area around the filter is clean before and after removing the old filter, and remove the old gasket with the filter. An old gasket will not make a proper seal with a new filter; it can squirt out the entire contents of the crankcase in less than a minute.

Many sail auxiliary engines have a drain hose attached to the bottom of the oil pan, where an oil pump can be connected. (I prefer the manual-vacuum variety. Engine oil should be warm but need not be at full operating temperature to pump easily.) When you’re finished, make sure the drain hose cap is reinstalled. You’ll need two wrenches: one to hold the hex base nut and the other to turn the cap nut. 

Refill the engine to the full mark on the dipstick, run the engine for 30 seconds or so, shut down, wait a minute for the oil to run fully into the crankcase, check the dipstick again, and add oil if necessary to top off.

Steve D’Antonio offers services for boat owners and buyers through Steve D’Antonio Marine Consulting.

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When we arrived in French Polynesia in May 2013, we saw the island group as a stopover on our way across the South Pacific. We’d heeded the advice of Jimmy Cornell’s World Cruising Routes and arrived after the end of the cyclone season, but we found lots of contradictory information in our research about everything from temperature to ocean swell to rainy seasons. 

As it turned out, there’s a good reason for all the confusion. French Polynesia is a big place. It has 118 volcanic islands, makateas (raised atolls) and atolls that stretch out over an expanse as big as Europe. The five archipelagoes—Society Islands, Tuamotus, Gambier, Marquesas and Austral—have different languages, different cultures and quite different climates. 

Based on our pre-arrival research, we expected to find a tropical climate year-round. That turned out to be true for the Society Islands but not the Gambier, where we shivered in temperatures below 68 degrees Fahrenheit. In August, we fled northward from the Gambier to escape the cold Southern Hemisphere winter, only to roll miserably in the Marquesas during the season with the highest swell.

Despite these rookie mistakes, we fell in love with French Polynesia and decided that we needed more time than just one season to explore this vast and diverse cruising ground. The temperatures and seasonal variations can be quite different across the five island groups. If you know your way around (like we do after eight years), you can find a pleasant corner for each season.

The distances between the archipelagoes are considerable—sometimes 800 to 900 nautical miles. What we’ve learned during our years cruising the region is that you can use the weather patterns to your advantage for fairly comfortable, easy passages. 

With the benefit of hindsight, we would plan our arrival and itinerary for the first year in French Polynesia quite differently from what we did in 2013. Wind patterns and seasonal shifts play a major role in planning west-to-east passages between the island groups (see sidebar on page 55). Here’s more of what we have learned about each archipelago.

Marquesas

Sailboats crossing the Pacific in December or January from Central America or the Galapagos Islands should have fairly reliable wind on the way to the Marquesas. The northernmost group of French Polynesia, the Marquesas ­archipelago lies outside the cyclone belt, so there is minimal risk of running into a developing storm underway. 

An early start means that you will arrive before the fleet of puddle jumpers starts crowding the anchorages. The islands’ high, rugged mountains are great for hiking, but the often murky, dark water discourages snorkeling—even though you may have impressive encounters with manta rays, pelagic sharks and groups of dolphins around the anchorages. Southerly swell, which makes the open anchorages very uncomfortable during southern winter, should not be a big issue at this time of the year. 

With a bit of luck, you’ll spend quiet nights even without a stern anchor. No-nos (biting little flies) are always a nuisance, but the situation is better during the dry season from October to April.

Tuamotus

Continue toward the Tuamotus in April after the end of the cyclone season, when the region is still warm and not too windy. That’s a good time of year to explore the motus and lagoons, and to enjoy snorkeling the spectacular passes. The low atolls give access to an incredible underwater world (take nothing but pictures; the resources of atolls are limited), and from June to October, humpback whales are often sighted on the outer reefs and even in the lagoons. 

Cyclones are rare in this archipelago, but sitting one out in the unprotected anchorages would be a nightmare, so we avoid cruising here in the cyclone season. During the strong trade winds in July and August, it gets quite cool. High waves and swell fill up the lagoons, so the currents in the passes are faster. Snorkeling is less fun, and the choice of anchorages is limited.

Society Islands

Head to the Society Islands in July, in time for the Heiva i Tahiti festival, which is filled with spectacular dancing and drumming events. The pleasantly dry, breezy winter weather (Southern Hemisphere winter) is ideal to go hiking on the high, mountainous islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, Taha’a and Maupiti. 

Unfortunately, the coral in the lagoons is mostly dead, but there are some nice dive spots on outer reefs. Humpback whales roam the area between July and October.

Before the onset of cyclone season in December, it is time to leave again. The following months will be hot, humid and oppressive in the Societies. During an active South Pacific Convergence Zone, many lows pass over the islands and bring a certain risk of cyclones. 

Austral Islands

Start looking for weather windows to sail to the Australs in October and November. The islands of Rimatara, Rurutu, Tubuai, Raivavae, and Rapa are spectacularly beautiful and have a thriving culture. 

They are also the least-visited islands of French Polynesia. While southern summer between December and March would be the most pleasant time there, it’s also the cyclone season, and these islands are right in the path, particularly when the South Pacific Convergence Zone is active. The best time to visit is November and December, when it’s already warm but the cyclone season is only in its beginnings.

After March, it’s already southern autumn, when frequent depressions start moving by, sending high swell, strong winds and cold air masses. 

Gambier Islands

Finding a weather window to sail to the Gambier Islands with favorable winds might require some patience. Convergence zones often bring northerly winds that facilitate easting. If you arrive in the Gambier in December or January, you can spend the pleasantly warm summer months exploring the numerous anchorages. 

The Gambier has a mixture of high, mountainous islands with clear lagoons, healthy coral reefs and low-lying motus on the barrier reef. For us, it is the highlight of French Polynesia. 

This archipelago has well-protected anchorages and a low risk of cyclones, particularly during El Niño-neutral periods, when the temperatures can rise to the mid-80s Fahrenheit, but the days are usually pleasantly breezy (there can be rainy days or even weeks). 

Leave before the southern winter hits from July to September and the temperatures drop to 60 degrees, which feels much chillier than it sounds when it’s blowing hard and raining.

On the way west, there is still time to see more of the Tuamotus and Societies before heading on in the next sailing season, or you might even decide that you need another year or two to enjoy French Polynesia, just as we did.

Wind Patterns of the South Pacific

As a general rule, the trade winds blow predominantly from the east between February and April, from the east to southeast between May and November, and from the east to northeast in December and January. Disturbances are common: During southern winter, fronts of strong low-pressure systems move far in the south. During southern summer, convergence zones influence the weather patterns.

Sailing westward in the trade-wind belt is most comfortable during a stable period of easterly trades. Frequent troughs interrupt the trade winds in the Pacific, which is annoying during a long passage westward. It’s best to have a series of possible stopovers in mind in case the window does not last long enough to reach the planned destination.

When sailing eastward, we use those interruptions to gain easting. When a trough passes, the wind shifts from east to northeast, then north/northwest, followed by a calm period and sudden southern wind (when the convergence passes over your location), or back to east (when the trough moves by to the south). With some patience, it’s possible to sail from Tahiti eastward to the Tuamotus and then hop from atoll to atoll. The predominant southeast wind facilitates passages northeastward to the Marquesas from May to November.

Passages southeastward to the Gambier archipelago are better undertaken later in the year, when phases of northeast wind become longer and more predominant from December on. —BH

Birgit Hackl and Christian Feldbauer have been cruising for 10 years, eight of them in the South Pacific. They have explored westward to the Cook Islands and Tonga on their 41-foot S&S-designed Pitufa, but French Polynesia is their home base. They are currently in Fiji. Check out their blog for weather information, cruising guides and more.

The post How to Use Weather Patterns and Seasons in French Polynesia to Optimize Regional Cruising appeared first on Cruising World.

Returning your bareboat to the charter base always signals the end of a wonderful adventure, but too many crews rush the process. Smart crews plan ahead for the check-in process to avoid being hit with a sizable credit-card charge.

Turnaround day is a nightmare for check-in crews, who are under pressure to get a boat ready for the next bareboater. Divvying up your own crew’s responsibilities can help make sure things go smoothly. The skipper should be responsible for working with the check-in crew, but others can handle cleaning the boat, returning water toys, and disposing of food. One member of your crew can also go to the charter base to confirm your return flights, check the times, and arrange for taxi transfers.

You’re expected to leave the boat reasonably clean, or you’ll get hit with a cleaning fee. Gather all your belongings and repack your duffel bags so that you can move off the boat as soon as you reach the base. Most bases have secure storage areas for that purpose, and it makes the check-in process easier (and more accurate).  

If you have extra food (everyone always does), share it with the check-in or dock crew. They’ll appreciate it. If they can’t use it, offer it to a bareboat crew about to depart.

Nearly every charter company requires you to top off the fuel tank and empty the holding tank for the head. During your initial check-out, ask which is the least-expensive fuel dock.We discovered on one charter that there were several fuel docks, but one offered a free holding-tank pump-out if we filled the tank. Guess which dock we chose?

The charter company may have provided you with a maintenance checklist for use during the charter, and that often has a place to note any problems you encountered (pilots call it a “squawk sheet”). If not, then keep your own log of problems so that you can report them as soon as you reach the dock. Doing so absolves you of charges in the future for things that weren’t your fault, and helps the dock crew fix the problems before the boat goes out on the next charter.

If you borrowed or rented water toys, then delegate someone to check them in, and get a signed receipt as well as a completed credit-card slip. The same thing applies if you rented electronics such as a handheld VHF radio. Don’t leave town without signed receipts. 

Get the check-in crew aboard for a walk-through. Have a copy of the inventory, and go through it item by item. Remember that for many charter check-in staff, English is a second (or third) language, so there might be communication difficulties.  

Many charter ­companies send a diver down to look at the bottom of the boat. Prearrange to have this done while you’re aboard doing the interior check-in. When you’re done, get a signed receipt giving you a clean bill of health for the interior and exterior, as well as the underwater surfaces. That receipt will come in handy if, say, the dock crew wrap a line around the prop after you depart, causing damage that otherwise might be attributed to you.  

Remember the “out-of-sight” gear. Raise the main and unfurl the jib to show that they are in the same condition as they were received. The anchor windlass is often overlooked, so have your check-in team test it to show that you haven’t overloaded it and burned out the motor.

Speaking of motors, the outboard has a damage charge for dunking, so have the crew start it to prove that it hasn’t gone for a swim.

Take the time to document everything with photographs. Take pictures of the hull, deck, cockpit and interior from all angles. Last, make sure that your security deposit is refunded, and that you get a receipt for the complete cost of the charter.

One of the most pleasant check-ins we’ve ever had was in the South Pacific when our plane wouldn’t depart until late afternoon. We’d completed the return in a leisurely fashion, and settled into comfortable chairs in the shade of palm trees to sip cool drinks and finish the books we’d started on the trip. That’s the dream.

Chris Caswell is an award-winning writer, a regular contributor to CW, and the editor/publisher of CharterSavvy, the online magazine about bareboat charters.

The post The Checklist At the End of Your Charter appeared first on Cruising World.

Bright and roomy down below and ready for business up on deck, the scrappy new Beneteau Oceanis 34.1 is a thoughtful model in a size range that often gets overlooked as builders and buyers go big (and bigger).

Designed by Marc ­Lombard, with an interior by Nauta, the 34.1 is the latest ­addition to the seventh generation of Beneteau’s ­Oceanis line of cruisers. The 34.1 replaces the 35.1 in the French builder’s lineup, and offers a bit more volume forward in the owner’s stateroom than its predecessor did, thanks to a flared bow and hard chines that run stem to stern. 

The 34.1 that made its North American debut at the Miami International Boat Show in February was the two-stateroom, one-head version, which should appeal to sailors who don’t ­necessarily want a crowd spending the night but enjoy occasional guests. A double-berth stateroom is aft, to starboard of the companionway. Just forward, the L-shaped galley has a two-burner propane stove and oven, refrigeration, and a stainless-steel sink. 

The boat’s head is opposite, with a separate stall shower aft. A door from there provides access to a workshop/stowage area under the cockpit (that area can also be reached from above, through a cockpit locker). The shower compartment and stowage area can be sacrificed to add a third stateroom, if desired.

The central feature of the saloon is a drop-leaf table flanked by two settees that would both make excellent berths for additional friends and family. The after end of the port settee drops down to make room for a fold-down nav station adjacent to the boat’s electrical panel. Forward, double doors to the V-berth can be closed for privacy or left open to enhance the sense of space below.

On the exterior, the deck is also well-thought-out. Twin wheels and fold-up helm seats allow for easy passage from the drop-down swim platform past the cockpit table to the companionway. The table can seat six for meals with its leaves up, and the benches to either side are long enough for a person to stretch out, if not lie down. 

The 34.1 comes with a few different packages and configurations. A base boat is priced at $192,000. This includes a traditional main, ­self-­tacking jib, single halyard/sheet winch on the cabin top, and 21 hp Yanmar diesel and saildrive. The boat in Miami had the optional 106 percent genoa, and upwind and downwind packages that added a ­bowsprit (set up to fly a code zero off-wind sail), a second electric cabin-top winch for hoisting the main, and winches at either helm to handle the ­genoa sheets. Rather than fairlead tracks and cars, the genoa sheets were led to adjustable friction rings, an arrangement I liked because of the ­control they give you to shape the headsail. My only nit to pick: I wish they had led the mainsheet aft as well. 

All up, including double 30-amp shore-power circuits (to accommodate the AC while at the dock) and an upgraded Yanmar 30 hp diesel and saildrive, the sticker on a boat similar to the one we sailed in Miami is $295,000, ready to sail away. 

Three keels are ­offered for the 34.1: a shallow (­4-foot-11-inch) cast-iron foil, which the boat in Miami sported; a deep (6-foot-7-inch) fin, also of cast iron; and what Beneteau calls a “performance draft” hydraulic retractable keel that draws 4 feet, 1 inch up and 8 feet, 4 inches down.

Both the traditional mast and optional in-mast-furling spar have an air draft of 51 feet, 1 inch, making them ­suitable for trips up and down the ­Intracoastal Waterway. The traditional mast has no backstay, and a square-top main is an option.

Under sail, the 34.1 handled like a sports car on a mountain road. The twin rudders provided good control and feedback, and visibility forward from either helm was excellent. In 10 knots of breeze, we beat ­upwind at just under 6 knots, and I saw the GPS speed jump to 7.8 knots when we bore off to a beam reach. A code zero and spinnaker are two ­additions I’d add to my wish list if I were buying the boat. They’d be a lot of fun on a long reach home.

Mark Pillsbury is a CW ­editor-at-large.

The post Sailboat Review: Beneteau Oceanis 34.1 appeared first on Cruising World.

Well below the Mason-Dixon Line, the Lowcountry of South Carolina and the rivers surrounding Savannah, Georgia, provide unique and interesting cruising for sailors. The waterways are vast, with historic towns and vibrant life along them. Right from the beginning of a cruise, one learns that people in this part of the country know how to enjoy life.    

Just before summer arrived, I was able to join three other crew aboard a 33-foot catboat for a four-day cruise that started in Savannah and then meandered through the Lowcountry’s endless rivers and bays, with a stop in Hilton Head and the final port of Beaufort. We were joined by three other catboats for the Catboat Rally that happens every spring. This year, each boat flew a Ukrainian flag from the leech of the mainsail in a show of support for the country at war with Russia, lending this year’s rally a little extra purpose.

The atmosphere was relaxed around the docks, though it was clear from the start that the racing triggered everyone’s competitive instinct. With the race committee employing a pursuit starting sequence—where the smaller or lower-­handicap boats start first, and the bigger boats with higher ratings wait to start until the early starters’ time allowance has passed—it made for some anxious moments before the small catboats sailed off into the distance. From the second the first boat crossed the starting line, an official on the radio continuously counted the minutes and seconds until the next boat could start.

There was an interesting contrast between the racing on the water and the camaraderie on shore. My time ashore began at the Savannah Yacht Club, where I smiled at photos of native son Ted Turner’s yachts gracing the walls. It was here that Turner learned to sail shortly after World War II. The yacht club is a few miles east of the historic city, which we found to be bustling on the Wednesday night before our departure. Savannah was a target of General William Tecumseh Sherman at the end of the Civil War, which is more commonly known here as “The War Between the States.” When Sherman arrived in December 1864, a group of city elders met the army at the city’s outer border. They offered to surrender, and provide hospitality and safe passage, if the city was spared from ruin. The Yankee army agreed, which is why many of the historic buildings we see today remain intact. Interestingly, Sherman’s nephew, C. Sherman Hoyt, was the heroic tactician aboard the J Class sloop Rainbow, which overcame a two-race deficit to successfully defend the America’s Cup in 1934.

Savannah is a coastal gem made for walking. Cruisers who drop a hook here are rewarded with an endless array of charming shops, restaurants and bars along the waterfront. A walking trail winds around 22 beautifully landscaped gardens. (For any mariners considering a stopover in Savannah, I highly recommend reading John Berendt’s bestselling novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil before you arrive.)  

The Savannah River separates Georgia and South Carolina, and the amount of commercial shipping traffic on the river is staggering. Our fleet of catboats kept to the smaller estuaries; our boat had a centerboard, which served as a convenient fathometer. We bumped along the sandy riverbed a few times, but the board simply raised up, and we continued on our way. One boat’s crew was comprised of three brothers, all in their 70s. They hadn’t raced together in decades, but they had trailered their boat from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for the rally. After a slow start, they determined that they had too much weight on board, so they unloaded buckets of gear, which happily improved their speed.

We managed to sail the whole race without firing up an engine. The magnificent quiet of sailing can inspire a crew to talk more about their surroundings, careers, families and life philosophies, which ours covered extensively over four days of cruising. Throughout the contest, a small powerboat served a dual role as race-committee boat and escort vessel. The committee set a course about 10 miles long each day, and the rally chair, Sam “Woody” Norwood—a founder of the Catboat Rally—served as an enthusiastic leader in the event’s 16th year. 

Catboats are special craft. They are easily propelled by one large sail, maneuver efficiently, and are surprisingly fast. As we tracked along our course, the locals seemed intrigued by these handsome boats, which ranged from a Marshall 18 to a couple of custom builds and a 33-footer with a recognizable name: Silent Maid. All four of our catboats had gaff rigs. In light winds, the extra sail area is a bonus. Although there is only one sail, the mainsail can be a handful in a breeze. Jibes need to be made with great care. 

Tidal currents can be swift along the Lowcountry. I was constantly amazed at how the direction of the current would change as we transited from one river to another. For a few hours, we might be sailing against a flooding current, and then, magically, sail around a bend and be speeding along with the boost of a 2-knot favorable current. 

All the while, the view was ­intriguing. The Lowcountry has a lot of sand and marshland, with lush vegetation in abundance along the riverbanks. The watery landmass almost seems to be held together by seagrass. A large portion of the land is designated as a wildlife refuge; we constantly noticed fish popping on the surface, dolphins playing, and dozens of species of birds circling our boat. Perhaps they related the shape of our mainsail to the shape of their wings. We still noticed plenty of evidence of industry, which is also abundant in this part of the country, but most of the shoreline presented native plants that thrive in brackish waters. Such close proximity to nature, along with the omnipresent quiet, soothed the soul.

Aboard Silent Maid we sailed with four crew, who took turns at the helm during each leg. I spent a lot of time reading the wind that often seemed to be blowing above the water, but with high banks, there were few ripples to judge wind velocity and direction, which sailors can normally see on the water. Instead, we learned to sense the wind by looking at the shore—the trees, smoke billowing from stacks, and flag direction, in particular. (I should add there were a lot of flags flying in the Lowcountry.) As tactician, my job was to find the best wind and use it to gain on the smaller boats. 

The most exciting moments along the way were anytime we caught up to a rival. Instinctively, the competitive spirit kicked in, and every crewmember on each catboat seemed to work a little harder trimming, moving crew weight, and steering to hold or gain the lead. And there was little conversation between the boats, even when sailing within one boat length. It was a challenge catching up to the small catboats that disappeared around a few bends in the river. Our crew worked hard to gain distance on the leaders. It was never easy. In one race, all four boats were within a few boat lengths as we neared the finish line. It made for an exciting ending and an enthusiastic post-race cocktail ­party just across from the US Marine Corps training facility on Parris Island.  

At night, several of the crews slept on their catboats, while others retired to nearby hotels. Nightly social functions added to the camaraderie. A speaker was recruited to entertain the sailors each evening. One night, the former four-time mayor of Beaufort regaled us with a story about the trauma of capsizing a dinghy when he was 12 years old. In an odd twist of fate, a few days after the rally, he capsized a catboat and needed to be rescued. It was a sobering reminder to be careful when sailing: Sudden gusts can appear without warning, especially on enclosed waters.

The rally course kept our fleet well off the ocean. Instead, we sailed along Fields Cut and a turtle wildlife refuge. Later, we sailed past Daufuskie Island, which apparently produces good rum. (There was a nice, familiar smell on the breeze.) Our second stop was the South Carolina Yacht Club in Hilton Head, where the members race Harbor 20s. Gaining access to the local marina is a charming process via a lock where a handful of small craft can squeeze together to fit. On the other side, a crowd of locals had gathered to welcome us to the island, which sports multiple golf courses, expansive beaches, and plenty to keep transient cruisers busy.  

After an overnight in Hilton Head, the rally continued north on Skull Creek, which connects to the Chechessee River. We enjoyed sailing the 6 miles across Port Royal Sound to the southern tip of Parris Island in a fresh breeze. There was little evidence of military activity; rather, the shoreline was ripe with vegetation just like the other waterways we had put in our wake. 

On the final stretch, we sailed north on Cowen Reach and the Beaufort River toward Beaufort, a quaint old town with delightful shops, eateries and distinctive architecture. The tidal current was strong as we neared the finish line. Silent Maid took second in this race, after winning the other three, and our crew cheered for the winner on his Marshall 18. There was no discontent among the four competing crews. The real prize in this race was having the opportunity to navigate through such a special part of America.

The total cruise was approximately 42 miles as the crow flies, but longer when you count all the bends and curves in the rivers. Yearning for more, we planned an extra day of racing in Beaufort with a local fleet of 10 catboats, though it was not to be. Not a breath of wind appeared. No matter; at the post-rally dinner, the talk centered on returning next year anyway. 

CW editor-at-large Gary Jobson is a ­Hall of Fame sailor, television ­commentator and award-winning author based in Annapolis, Maryland. 

The post Lowcountry Catboat Cruising appeared first on Cruising World.

While I’ve almost never lived ashore, I have visited my wife’s mother’s house in Chicago, where she would send me scurrying to the basement to hastily retrieve odd, nearly forgotten household objects. Bilges are like that—we know they’re there, we stow stuff in them, and we seldom think about them. When we do think of them, it’s usually in a negative way: because they stink, are oily or have water leaking into them. 

Let’s start off with one central, indisputable fact: The bilges of a daysailer and a liveaboard vessel have little in common. Example: It is possible to keep a daysailer’s bilges sweet, but this is almost impossible aboard a vessel inhabited by Homo sapiens, a notoriously messy species. 

The problem starts with the largest organ in our body: skin. We shed our entire epidermis every two to four weeks. Each hour, your average sailor sheds around 200 million skin cells. This isn’t mentioning the 100 or so hairs we shed a day—unless we are stressed, when we’ll shed considerably more. 

Don’t worry: We’re not going below the hirsute belt in our discussion. This is a family magazine. Ditto our nasal mucous membranes. Offshore, there’s little actual dirt, but there’s a lot of salt in the air. And, in the tropics, sailors sweat profusely—especially when cranking sheet winches and hoisting sails. 

My wife, Carolyn—of Sicilian descent—is a gourmet cook. She also bakes daily offshore: bread every other day, and tasty treats in between. We’re both hedonists in every way. I always grab a cookie, cupcake, brownie or doughnut as I dash below. (No buns—I don’t grab buns!) Often, it’s rough in the mid-Pacific. My doughnut and I are tossed around. We bounce off bulkheads, companionway ladders and nav tables. Sugar and crumbs fly. 

Ganesh, our 43-foot ketch, has been to a dock for only 24 hours in the past three years—when some rich guests insisted that we visit a posh marina so they could take selfies with megayachts in the background. (No, they weren’t invited back.)

Anyway, while we seldom touch shore and have neither rats nor roaches, we do bring fresh food out to the boat, and thus have ants. And these sneaky ants do what ants do: They play nocturnal shell games with our crumbs. 

I know, I know…that’s gruesome to think about, but it’s a reality of our cruising lives. Yes, we can poison them to death, but not without poisoning ourselves to some degree, something that we’re not eager to do. I’m a child of the 1960s. I have no brain cells to squander.

Now, I hate to admit it, dear reader, but we regularly smear ourselves with various goop. Sunblock, for example. Cold cream. Aloe. Talcum powder. Hairspray. Mascara. Lipstick. Ditto the boat. We’re always smearing chemicals and compounds inside and outside the vessel. Hell, Carolyn just spent four days sanding the million square feet of varnish (well, that’s what the square footage seemed like with numb hands) in our aft cabin alone. 

We have clothes, bedsheets, blankets—and we all know that fabrics shed. 

Have you ever seen an Italian woman knead bread dough in 18-foot seas? I have, and it’s a messy business. Ditto frying flying fish for breakfast. 

Here’s another secret nobody speaks about from the days of yore when vessels were wood and the men were steel: In the deep, dank, dark bilges of the schooner Elizabeth that I grew up aboard were… actual fish. Their fertilized eggs would ­evidently get sucked in through our rotten butt blocks and soft plank ends.

At least the fish knew their place and were silent. Not so the crabs. The sound of their scurrying at night terrified me as a child. 

How many leaks did Elizabeth have? Well, as my father used to say back in the 1950s, “more leaks than the White House.” He loved to joke. Each time he’d spot a spaghetti colander while shopping, he’d wave it around and say loudly, “This reminds me of an ol’ carvel-planked vessel I used to own.”

If all this weren’t awful enough, suspended above an 8-foot section of our bilge on Ganesh is a Perkins M92B that brims with salt water, coolant, diesel fuel and lube oil—all under pressureat a temperature near boiling.

Now, of course, all offshore sailors know to sit down in the head. Sitting down is a must. Not sitting down is one of the few things that will get you tossed off Ganesh immediately. Sitting is an absolute rule. 

I’m not alone in this. There’s a famously fastidious female yacht-racing skipper in San Francisco Bay who, when a male sailor goes below, cautions him with the business end of a sharp fish gaff should he think about standing, swaying and potentially soaking the entire compartment in yellow as the boat rolls. 

Damn, yachting is a complicated sport.

But all this debris, garbage, trash, dust, dirt, dribble and hair ends up in the bilge pump—often choking it into submission. Also, a bilge at sea often has oily, filthy water in it that is being sloshed with great force under bunks and other storage areas. Yuck.

Back in the day of wooden boats, bilges were deep because the keel had to be supported. Nowadays, because many production builders have realized that supporting their detachable keels is really a viable option for only the most expensive yachts, bilges have become as shallow as their naval architects. 

This brings us to the subject of bilge chains and limber holes. On wooden boats, each frame (there are no ribs on a boat, dammit!) ended on an athwartship “floor” timber that spanned the bilge, tied together the frames, supported the garboard, and held the keelson in place. Thus a “bilge” wasn’t one bilge so much as many bilges. If you weren’t careful, they didn’t drain. It was common while sinking (I’ve been in the process of sinking many times) for the compartment with the pump to be dry while all the others brimmed with water. 

Thus, limber holes were drilled in these “floor timbers” to allow the water to drain. Why the name? I don’t know for sure, but you had to be pretty limber to clean them in a full gale while sinking.

Therefore, on Elizabeth, if you started to sink and the compartment that the bilge pump was in was dry, you just reached down and yanked the spring-loaded bilge chain. Instantly, the limber holes would be cleared. 

Now, here’s what happens when a modern boat sinks: Everyone is having a great time in the cockpit, and the floorboards begin to float. At the same time, a million other things begin to float: clothes, foodstuff, plastics, fabrics. Eventually, someone glances below and says, “Oh, dear!” 

The captain, of course, does the worst possible thing—as a rule, he flips on his high-capacity, 1,500-gallon-per-hour bilge pump, which stops within minutes because someone’s long-lost skivvies have been sucked into it. 

Here’s the truth of it: If your vessel is taking water and you are pumping it out as fast as it comes in, you are leaking. You might even be leaking massively—but in this situation, the status quo is being maintained. However, once you’re leaking faster than you can pump out the water, well, you’re sinking. 

And then, it is time to panic. A common way to panic is for a crewmember to jump below and snap his ankle on an unseen object under a wet floorboard that surfs away. Another is for the skipper to slip on the oily surfaces. 

While spotting the leak is dead-simple aboard Ganesh because it is equipped with a bilge alarm that rings if she takes aboard more than a few gallons, most vessels don’t have such an early-warning system. Once the floorboards float and the bilge sump is awash, it is almost impossible to find the leak, let alone stop it. 

Don’t forget: Everything in the boat that is buoyant will be floating. You won’t be wading around in water so much as logbooks, pillows, old wedding photos, shattered bottles of acetone, oozing boxes of couscous, and old clothes. 

We met two guys in South America who developed instant post-traumatic stress disorder in exactly this situation when one said to the other while foundering off the coast of Colombia, “We’re gonna die; what could be worse?” just as the half-full holding tank broke to the surface inside the waterlogged vessel, struck the fore bulkhead, split open and disgorged its contents. 

“You had to say it, didn’t you?!” the other shipmate screamed. 

Oh, there’s never a dull moment offshore. You really haven’t lived until you’ve been shouting your lat/lon into the VHF radio as your main battery banks go underwater. 

And to think that we haven’t even gotten to the subject of stuffing boxes. There are two types: one that drips, drips, drips a sailor into the psych ward, and the modern, more expensive type that sinks the vessel within minutes of having something falling on its ­always-ready-to-gush bellows. 

Are some of your seacocks frozen open? Are you sure? Why not, in an emergency, grab one by the handle and snap off its through-hull, just to be sure? Speed impellers are other fun bilge gizmos that have enlivened many an offshore passage. 

One thing I love is meeting a new yachtie who tells me, proudly, that his bilge is empty. I smile to myself as I think, No, it is not; it’s filled with terror. You just don’t know it yet.

Fatty and Carolyn are currently in Langkawi, Malaysia, slapping paint on their bottom. (Did that come out right?)

The post The Dirty Little Truth About Bilges appeared first on Cruising World.

EDITED BY LYNDA MORRIS CHILDRESS

We’d just hit the jackpot. We were docked in Tobin Harbor on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale aboard Sasha, our Island Packet 40, when the bounty appeared. It came along with a park ranger, who’d just happened by to check on things. As we chatted amiably, he blurted, “Would you like some fresh fish?” He’d caught far more than he could eat that day. “Call me Rick,” he said with a grin.

My husband, Radd, is a sailor, not a fisherman; he was thrilled to have any fish out of the lake. Of course, we gratefully accepted—and counted our blessings for having discovered this wonderful place. 

Our journey had been a long one. Florida is our home port, and we’d spent our cruising lives on various boats exploring the Bahamas and the US East Coast as far north as Washington, D.C. Then, inspired by an upcoming family wedding in Minnesota, we decided to cruise north, with an extended Great Loop adventure.

We started that March, heading up the Intracoastal Waterway and seeing New York City from a mooring ball on the Hudson River. We unstepped the mast in Catskill, New York, and then journeyed through the Erie Canal, where locals told us that we had the biggest sailboat they had seen all season. We branched off at the Oswego Canal, then crossed Lake Ontario and entered the Trent-Severn Waterway in Canada. 

Once we got to Midland, Ontario, we were a sailboat again, cruising on to Georgian Bay and the North Channel of Lake Huron. While most Loopers turn south at this point, we kept going straight into Lake Superior via the Soo Locks, near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Since we still had time before the wedding, we headed to Isle Royale. 

Forty-five miles long and 9 miles wide, Isle Royale is more popular with hikers than boaters, so it’s never crowded on the water. It’s a US national park, albeit one of the least-visited ­because of its short season and remote location. It can be cold even in July, and there’s fog. This is remote cruising at its best. 

The scenery is unrivaled. Fjords offer protection and shelter, and there are numerous no-service docks. Wildlife includes moose and wolves, as well as plenty of fish.

The fish we received that day were lake trout, four of them. This fish could not have been any fresher. Of course, we invited Ranger Rick to join us for dinner, along with Ted, our dock neighbor. 

I’d need a meal fit for company. I decided on a quick tomato-­onion salsa to accompany the fish, assembled it, and then set it aside to let the flavors blend. As I prepared to saute the fish, I had a moment of panic: I was out of cooking oil. I mean, totally out—no canola oil, no olive oil, not even butter. I was up fish creek without a paddle.

Then, I thought of mayonnaise. It was oil-based, and I was out of options. I tossed a couple of tablespoons of it in the hot pan and—voilà!—it melted. It resembled oil. 

I threw on the fish. While they sizzled, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

It was a memorable dinner, lively with good conversation and good company. Rick’s story was fascinating: We learned about his work with water management on the island (there is a lodge, a restaurant and regular ferry service) and his seasonal life in an island cabin. He spends every summer on the island; his wife joins him on weekends via ferry. Fish, he told us, is a staple of his diet, and he was most pleased with having it prepared in a different way. 

The “mayo fish” earned two thumbs up from all, as well as a toast to creative cooking. The fish was white, firm, mild and divine. The salsa was a classic hit too. 

Good as it was, the fish wasn’t the only thing that got caught that day. Lake Superior had worked its magic. We were ­captured—hook, line and sinker. It’s our new base for the near future. —Lorelei Johnson

Trout with Tomato-Onion Salsa (serves 4)

For the trout:

• 4 lake trout fillets, 6 oz. each (or ­substitute saltwater trout, grouper, salmon or tilefish)
• 3 Tbsp. mayonnaise
• Salt and pepper, to taste

For the salsa:

• 3 large cloves garlic 
• 3 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 1 medium sweet onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped
• Juice of 1 lime
• Kosher or sea salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Peel and mince the garlic. Leave it on your cutting board. Sprinkle with salt, and press the mixture with the flat side of a large knife; gather it back together, and repeat several times to form a paste. Combine remaining salsa ingredients in a medium bowl, blend in the garlic paste, and set aside. Do not ­refrigerate. 

Heat a large, heavy, oven-proof pan (­preferably cast-iron) over medium-high heat. Add mayonnaise, and spread it around with a wooden spoon. Saute fish fillets for 2 to 3 minutes without moving or lifting the fish. 

Gently lift one fillet’s corner to check for ­doneness. If it’s browned, then flip the fillets and place the pan in the oven. After 2 to 3 minutes in the oven, the other side will brown and the inside will cook.

To serve, place a fillet in the center of each plate and top with a generous amount of salsa. Serve any remaining salsa in a bowl on the table. Accompany with rice and fresh bread for dipping.

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