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

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

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

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

Things go wrong. A lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow these solo sailors online

Sidse Birk Johannsen: @sisi_atsea on Instagram

Olivia Wyatt: wildernessofwaves.com, ­@wildernessofwaves on Instagram

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

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

On the evening of October 17, 2008, 30-year-old Dustin Reynolds drove his street bike a short distance from his house on the Big Island of Hawaii to meet with some friends at a local sushi restaurant. After a couple of hours and a good meal, in the early hours of the next morning, Reynolds hopped back on his bike, anticipating an ­uneventful ride home.

At approximately 1 a.m., a drunk driver in an oncoming pickup truck suddenly swerved into Reynolds’ lane, and despite his quick reflexes and a drastic swerve to the right, the truck hit him with such force that his left arm was ripped off, landing more than 50 feet away. Traumatically injured, he was thrown from the bike, which went into a ditch, and he found himself dazed by the side of the road. He tried to take off his helmet and couldn’t understand why his left arm wasn’t responding.

The enormity of his situation flooded into his consciousness when he reached over and touched his bloody stump and then, with some effort, he pulled out his cellphone to call for help. Suddenly, as the full weight of his situation set in, he stopped to assess things. The driver of the truck had kept going but then swerved off the road into a ditch quite a distance away. There was no sign of movement there. Nobody else was on the road at this time of the night, and he realized this was where he might very well die. He thought about what it would be like to go through life missing an arm and hesitated, but finally called 911.

The ambulance arrived only about six minutes later, and while the paramedics tried to stabilize him, the driver went off searching for the missing limb. After about 20 minutes and with Reynolds’ life fading, they had to abandon the search for his arm and rushed him to the hospital.

In the emergency room, the doctors assessed his situation. In addition to the missing arm and a badly mangled leg, which would require amputation, he had suffered a punctured spleen and lung; his stomach had been forced through his diaphragm; he had aspirated acid into his lungs; he had broken several ribs; and he had numerous other broken bones, plus other unknown internal injuries. A CT scan showed massive internal bleeding, but without exploratory surgery, the doctors couldn’t tell where this was coming from.

Urgent action was required, but before he was taken into surgery, one of the doctors told him that his chances were not very good, and did he want to try surgery, or just spend his final hours with his family and friends who had all arrived and were around him. He told the doctor: “You really shouldn’t be putting this question to me now. I made this choice when I called 911.” Looking up at his tearful girlfriend who had just arrived and was mirroring everyone’s concern, he tried to lighten the moment and said, “Well, if I don’t make it, you’re not getting any tonight.” As he was wheeled away to surgery, he realized that if he did die on the operating table, these would have been his last words.

Amazingly, Reynolds did pull through, and after 17 days in the hospital, and over the next several months of rehabilitation, he eventually managed to get around with a prosthetic leg. And while the remains of his missing arm were too short to allow for a useful prosthetic there, he began to realize that there were still many things he could do, even despite two missing limbs.

With mounting medical bills—and because his small commercial-fishing business and carpet-cleaning company had fallen into shambles during his absence—financial ruin seemed ­imminent. When his own insurance ­company sued him for nearly a half million dollars in medical bills, his only option was to declare bankruptcy.

Three years after the accident, Reynolds had neither money nor a job, and was drifting with regard to his purpose and goals for the future. Then, one day while surfing the internet looking for ideas of what to do with his life, he ran across the website for the Joshua Slocum Society—an organization that tracks records for singlehanded sailors, particularly circumnavigators. He discovered that no double amputees were in the record books, and so his new life goal came to be: He would somehow buy a sailboat and sail it around the world.

There were only a couple of problems to overcome: He was nearly broke and didn’t know how to sail.

Somehow, with the sale of his old fishing boat, he came up with just enough money to buy a well-used 1968 Alberg 35 on nearby Oahu. While basically a sound old boat that had recently completed a circumnavigation with its aging owner, it had a tired engine, worn-out sails and many other issues, but it was a good, seaworthy design. Now with a suitable boat, he immersed himself in fixing it up and readying it for extended voyaging. His next hurdle to overcome was to learn how to sail.

Taking lessons was unaffordable and none of his friends were sailors, so he scanned the internet for videos on how to sail. After a few weeks of watching how-to videos on YouTube while he completed repairs and readied his boat with nearly the last of his cash, he provisioned it for the upcoming challenge. He named his boat Rudis, after the wooden sword issued to gladiators while they learned their deadly trade; if they won their freedom, they were allowed to keep their rudis as a symbol of their emancipation. So, with his Rudis, Reynolds set out from the Kona coast of Hawaii to take on the world.

When I first met Reynolds, six months after he’d left Hawaii, he was already in Western Fiji. We had sailed there on our Flying Dutchman 50, Small World II, after a cruise through parts of Kiribati, the Northern Cooks, the Samoas and Tonga, and were there preparing for another season of sailing when we walked past a slip and saw a young man with one leg and one arm swiftly and agilely moving about his boat. I stopped and spoke with him for a bit, and learned that I’d sailed virtually the same somewhat-off-the-­beaten-track route across the central Pacific. Later that day, I met up with him at the sunset bar on the point in Vuda Marina and learned a little more of his story. Over the next couple of weeks, I saw Reynolds often. We became Facebook friends and ultimately went our separate ways.

We kept in touch online, and I learned that he had gotten as far as Thailand. Upon reaching this milestone, Reynolds was tired. He had been without a reliable engine since Fiji, had just spent 24 days on a 900-nautical-mile nearly windless ­passage, and his aging Alberg needed a big influx of money to keep going—more than it was worth. He seriously considered giving up, but some of his friends convinced him to try a crowdfunding campaign.

This was difficult for Reynolds. He’s not the type to ask for help, and yet he finally did put up a GoFundMe page, and within a couple of weeks managed to raise $20,000, which, along with some money from the sale of his well-worn Alberg, was enough to buy a bargain-priced Bristol 35.5. This new vessel was named Tiama, which the previous owner told him meant “freedom” in one of the Polynesian dialects. With this vessel he was able to continue his way around the world.

In 2018 and 2019, he crossed the Indian Ocean with stops at Sri Lanka, the Chagos archipelago, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa. As his travels continued, he was met by many welcoming sailors and yacht clubs, some of whom provided sponsored dockage and assistance with his repairs.

Beginning in Thailand and continuing on his westward voyage, he’d begun to feel the effects of the enormous amount of goodwill and camaraderie within the world-cruising community. As his journey has continued, he told me he has been more and more impressed with how cruising sailors share and help each other out. After his crossing from Chagos to Madagascar, he ended up in a bay with about 22 other boats, 20 of which he knew from previous months and years. On what was the 10th anniversary of his debilitating accident, the cruisers in the bay threw a party for him on the beach. By the time Reynolds had reached Cape Town, South Africa, his reputation had preceded him, and he was hosted by the Royal Cape Yacht Club, where he was awarded the prestigious Ocean Cruising Club Seamanship Award.

Several months later, he’d made the 5,000-nautical-mile crossing to the Caribbean, with stops at most of the islands in the chain from Grenada northward. I finally caught up with Reynolds again at Nanny Cay Marina on Tortola, where they were hosting him for his time in the British Virgin Islands. He gave a well-attended, inspirational talk for local sailors and was interviewed there by a West Coast sailing magazine. Another presentation at the posh Oil Nut Bay Resort on Virgin Gorda brought donations and a future yacht-delivery job.

When I asked him what the high and low points of his travels had been, he told me about the time he was boarded in the Solomon Islands at night and scared off the boarders with a bright light and by telling them he had a gun (he didn’t). He spoke of breaking off his self-steering rudder just after leaving Niuatoputapu in Tonga and how he had to fashion a new rudder blade out of an old oar that ­actually served him well all the way to Thailand. He said he’d had persistent engine problems and was becalmed for many days in the area around Sumatra. He recounted losing his prosthetic leg overboard and trying to fashion a homemade one out of several broken parts.

But he also spoke of high points, such as being welcomed by a village chief and his family in Vanuatu; swimming with whale sharks while his boat drifted at sea; being immersed in village life in Indonesia; hiking the mountains of Dominica; freediving in Chagos; and barter trading with locals at small villages along the coast of Madagascar, where money was of no value.

While in Thailand he had met a sailor who hoped to do a documented voyage to Antarctica. So, upon reaching South Africa, with help from the Zululand Yacht Club, Reynolds flew to Puerto Williams, Chile, and joined a documentary filmmaker, the sailor and one other crew aboard his friend’s 38-foot Dudley Dix-designed cutter for a voyage to the Antarctic Peninsula, which whetted his appetite for future high-latitude sailing. His perfect 24-day passage from Ascension Island to Grenada was another high point of what has become an epic adventure.

In our lives, we are seldom given the opportunity to meet an extraordinary person, and for me meeting Dustin Reynolds certainly falls into that category. He has so far traversed approximately 30,000 nautical miles and has sailed through some of the most challenging areas of the world, all literally singlehanded and with virtually no outside assistance. His upbeat and optimistic personality is magnetic and energizing, and his endeavor is an inspiration for almost anyone who dreams of doing extraordinary things but might be apprehensive about trying.

After sailing to New England, where he spent the summer, his current plans are to sail south to visit Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and then to carry on to Colombia and the San Blas Islands of Panama before transiting the Panama Canal, with an eventual return to his home waters of Hawaii via French Polynesia. Reynolds has been offered a captain’s job for a Greenland expedition in the coming year and sees his future tied to the sea. Sailing around the world started out as a way to establish a goal and to succeed, but over time, the people he has met and places he has visited within the cruising world have become the rewards in and of themselves for his efforts.

Voyager, adventurer and writer Todd Duff is a frequent contributor to Cruising World.

The post Dustin Reynolds: One Arm, One Leg, All Heart appeared first on Cruising World.

Nothing happened when I pushed the tiller hard to leeward. Gecko remained on a ­starboard tack, and the 15-foot waves continued to roar under her bow. I was in the strongest section of the Gulf Stream on day two of my planned solo circumnavigation. In defiance of the weather forecast, a 40-knot easterly had sprung up, and was methodically pushing me north onto Cape Hatteras. The large paddle on my Monitor windvane had blown out of its bracket, and I was steering with my foot while I desperately tried to fit the smaller paddle into place.

Although I was mentally exhausted from the intensity of the storm, I wasn’t worried about the integrity of Gecko. I had just finished a 10-month-long overhaul, and she had never been more seaworthy.

I found Gecko, a Grinde 27 double-ender built in Denmark, when I was laid up in Maine, recovering from a ­mountain-biking accident I’d had in the Philippines. I broke my wrist in the last week of a three-month solo backpacking trip in Southeast Asia. The accident sent me skidding home to completely rewrite my summer. It was the first time in four years that I wasn’t transient, and I quickly grew bored with the predictable routine. I felt the need to introduce some uncertainty back into my life, so I decided to get serious about buying a boat. I’ve wanted to sail my own boat around the world since I was 11 and my parents moved our family ashore after a 15-year circumnavigation. My siblings and I had been raised along the way, and our boat was my first home. There aren’t many activities you can do with one hand, but boat shopping is definitely one of them.

It wasn’t just my current condition that was perfect for spending hours browsing boats online. I also was living with two resident experts on bluewater cruising boats. My parents—Dave and Jaja Martin—met in the Caribbean when my dad was solo sailing on his Cal 25 Direction. They fell in love and decided to circumnavigate together; they recounted many of their adventures in stories written exclusively for Cruising World. A 25-foot boat is small, but they were only two people. Why would they need anything bigger?

When they were halfway across the Pacific, they ­discovered they were going to become parents. Instead of selling Direction and flying back to the States, they continued sailing. Chris was born in Australia, and I was born 18 months later in New Zealand. Four years later, having just finished their ­circumnavigation, my parents had their third child. Teiga was born on Direction, delivered by my dad. Shortly after, we traded Direction for a 33-foot steel-hulled sloop, Driver, and headed to the Arctic. After five years of high-latitude sailing, we settled down in Maine, where my parents designed and built their off-the-grid solar home. To say they were supportive of my decision to buy a boat is an understatement.

The first boat I looked at was Gecko, which was the only boat my dad was visibly excited to go see. On a rainy May morning in 2017, the two of us set off on a three-hour drive to Salem, Massachusetts. Gecko (then Seamark) was on the hard, and my dad and I first walked underneath her to inspect the hull. With her fin keel and transom-hung rudder, we were already salivating before we had even checked out the topsides. We climbed aboard, and I wiggled around with my cast held aloft, trying not to get too excited, because this boat seemed perfect. After my dad conducted a thorough survey, the two of us convened on the bow to have a private conversation. “I think this might be the one,” I said. My dad, ever the silent type, just grinned.

I didn’t sign the final papers until Gecko had been launched and proved seaworthy. My mom spent the first night on board with me, and then traded out with my dad, who drove down to help me sail Gecko back up to Maine. The electrical systems weren’t working, so we used suction-cup running lights and a chart plotter borrowed from my dad’s Wharram catamaran, which we hot-wired onto one of the batteries. That night we steered by the stars, with the occasional flick of a flashlight onto the compass to check our heading. The following afternoon, we were in Round Pond, Maine, and my real work began.

The first project I tackled was to pull out the holding tank and all the plumbing. The tank had not been completely flushed since it was installed, and the smell was unbelievable. The only way to get rid of the odor was to throw out all the cushions, and paint or epoxy-coat every stick of wood on the entire boat, including the insides of the lockers. Once I could breathe freely, I pulled out the wiring and redid the whole electrical system, adding LED running and cabin lights.

Next, I stripped and refinished the floorboards, and painted the faded bulkheads white. I ripped out the entire galley and rebuilt it to include better storage, a new sink and countertop, and a two-burner stove with an oven. In the main cabin, I converted the pilot berth into lockers, and pulled out the sink in the head to make more space. Since I’d thrown out the old cushions, I had to learn how to make new ones. I glued together foam scraps, and sewed new covers from fabric remnants. Sewing was far more stressful than the carpentry projects I’d been working on. My sewing battle-face scared away a few visitors, but the sweat in my eyes prevented me from noticing.

On a trip to Washington state that spring, I found a used Monitor windvane at a salvage yard. I shipped the frame back to Maine, and flew home with a 4-foot-long box containing the delicate paddles—not your average carry-on item.

When my mast finally emerged from the melting snow, I turned my attention to the rig. I replaced all the standing rigging and added a set of spreaders I’d found at a local marine salvage yard. Since the spreaders changed the whole rig design, I had to measure out all the new shrouds with my mast lying on sawhorses next to Gecko. This led to a tense moment when the mast was being stepped in the parking lot near the launching ramp. I had a stack of shackles waiting in case I’d made a mistake, but everything miraculously fit.

Gecko’s 10-month haulout was a marathon through which my dad acted as encyclopedia and mentor. I completely trusted his knowledge and skill set, and he was an amazing teacher. The sailing community in Maine also provided invaluable assistance throughout the refit process. I was humbled time after time as seasoned professionals offered their skills and expertise, and even gave me parts for my boat.

Over winter I had been commuting between Maine and Antarctica for my contract-based job as a marine technician for the United States Antarctic Program. In this way, I was able to maintain a reliable income while dedicating all my time off to renovating Gecko. Finally, in late October 2018, I was ready to head south.

On a crisp fall morning, I set out from Pemaquid Harbor to cross the Gulf of Maine, bound for Cape Cod. It seemed that every ship and fishing boat in the Northeast also thought this was the best time to head out, and I spent the night dodging running lights. It was just above freezing, and I shivered in the cockpit, wrapped in a sleeping bag and all my warm clothes. Picture a colorful maggot, clutching the tiller and siphoning oatmeal. At sunrise, the wind died, and I motored, steering by hand because the tiller pilot wasn’t working. I kept falling asleep at the helm, and at one point as I drifted off, I remembered thinking: It’s OK to sleep. Holly’s on the helm. She knows what she’s doing. Luckily I made it to Cape Cod unscathed.

Nor’easter after nor’easter barreled up the coast that November, and there was never more than a two- or three-day weather window at a time. I sailed down Long Island Sound to avoid the 50-knot storm that blew offshore for three days. Snow was chasing me down the coast, but luckily I was always a few days ahead of it. I lived in my down jacket and wool long underwear. The wind continued to blow with a vengeance. Coming around Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 35 knots of wind, Gecko was almost completely knocked down. I clung to the tiller as the cockpit became vertical and the sea lapped at the leeward cabin top. Everything below ended up on the floor in a puddle of water, but I couldn’t leave the helm to rescue it. When I finally turned back onto my course, Gecko was surfing downwind at 10 knots.

That night, as the sun set and the windvane was steering in gloriously sweeping S-curves, I went below to begin the first in my series of 20-minute naps. It was so cold that I was sleeping in my full foul-weather gear and sea boots. I would just start to get warm when my timer would go off, and I’d have to get up to check my course and look for ships. Without an AIS or radar, these checks were critical.

At about 0200, I discovered that my biggest problem wasn’t outside the boat. Although conveniently out of the wind and weather, the trouble was alarmingly located in my forward bilge. A disconcerting splashing prompted me to peek forward, where I found standing water above the floorboards in the head. It wasn’t a significant amount of water, considering the beating I had taken for the previous 12 hours. Even if there were a leak, it wasn’t serious. But where was the water coming from?

This is my least favorite game to play on my boat, and I started in unenthusiastically. After some time, I discovered that the water was entering through the anchor chain hawse holes, flooding the locker and overflowing into the entire V-berth, and eventually into the forward bilge. My bedding did such a good job of filtering out the salt that I momentarily considered marketing it as an off-brand watermaker. Grabbing a bucket and a hand pump, I emptied 5 gallons of water out of the chain locker. Next, I turned my attention to the water intrusion. Using a hair tie and a plastic bag, I sealed off the starboard hawse hole completely. The port side had the anchor chain coming up through it, so I stuffed handfuls of plastic bags into the hole, and kept up with the pumping until I arrived in Cape May, New Jersey.

I had to wait three nights for the next nor’easter to pass through, and I took advantage of the delay to get some exercise by accidentally trespassing on the US Coast Guard beachfront. A few days later, I jumped out on the back of another nor’easter and rode the winds down to Norfolk, Virginia.

It was fairly late when I dropped the hook the next night, but I was itching for a walk. Rigged up in my duct-taped down jacket and faded sea boots, I set off for my favorite destination: the nearest grocery store. While walking home with a full pack, I found myself suddenly flanked by two women with suspiciously cheery grins.

“Our church is giving out free dinner tonight,” the short one said. My exhausted mind tried to make sense of the situation. Was she trying to get me to donate money to their dinner? It seemed a worthy cause, and I tried to remember if I had any cash left.

Then the tall one spoke.“Everyone is welcome,” she said. “It’s just right down the street.” Suddenly my genius brain put it together: They thought I was homeless! I desperately tried to explain that I wasn’t homeless—I was a sailor. But the current between the two was strong, and I felt myself unwillingly swept up and whirled through a series of food tongs and well-wishes. Apparently, people dress a bit differently in the South.

After Norfolk, the going was easy. I shed layers as I motored along the Intracoastal Waterway. I arrived at my final stop—Oriental, North Carolina—on Thanksgiving Day. I was drawn to Oriental because my family and I lived there for a year on my parent’s first boat, Direction. My sister was born in Whittaker Creek Marina, and I had a long-dead hamster buried somewhere in the woods. Family friends Jennifer and Tim helped me find a slip for Gecko, and agreed to look in on her while I was gone, it was time to go back to work. I patted Gecko on her stupid leaky bow and told her I’d be back soon.

Returning to Oriental in early March. I had about a month’s worth of projects to complete before I could to take off, and I tackled them with vigor, excited to sail to warmer climes.

My plan was to sail from Beaufort, North Carolina, to Culebra, Puerto Rico, by heading due east and then hooking a right at Bermuda, a distance of about 1,200 nautical miles. I didn’t have a way of getting weather while I was at sea, but the forecast looked good, and I was anxious to start.

I headed out of Beaufort on April 4, and motored all day in no wind. With a 10-horse engine, motoring is slow, but I was in high spirits. All the old salts had warned me about the Gulf Stream, but the forecast looked great, and I was determined to prove them all wrong.

The following morning, I was only halfway through the Stream when the weather changed; the 15 to 20 knots from the southeast became 40-knot easterlies. By the time I realized I was getting swept north, it was too late to turn around and head back for Beaufort. I had already been pushed more than 10 miles up the Stream, and going south was no longer an option; I was getting pushed north no matter which tack I was on. If this keeps up, I’ll be back in Maine soon, I thought. The sun was setting, the waves were 15 feet, and the wind was blowing a steady 40. Having just swapped out windvane paddles and struck the main, I decided to heave to. Although I was sailing with just a storm jib, I discovered I could heave to using the current. My worry was that I was now drifting toward the nasty shoals lurking around Cape Hatteras. However, there was nothing else I could do, so I curled up below, using my iPad to keep tabs on my course.

As the sun rose, the wind veered slightly south. Seizing the moment, I put up a triple-reefed main and pointed my bow east. I slowly eased out of the Stream’s sticky clutches, and the last of the current slipped below the keel. I’d done it! The wind mellowed throughout the day until midnight, when I was completely becalmed. I bobbed around with limp sails for a full day until a breeze took pity on me and pushed me onward.

On day seven, I was on the same longitude as Bermuda and ready to make my right-hand turn. If I’d had access to a weather forecast, I would have hightailed it for Bermuda instead and hidden out for the next few days. However, I remained ignorantly blissful until sunset, when a storm cloud approached over the horizon. I quickly clipped in to switch out my genoa for a working jib and throw a reef in the main. Here was another storm to contend with.

The first wave broke over my boat at dawn, while I was below napping. I waited as Gecko sorted herself out, hoping the wave had been an anomaly. The second breaker hit a few minutes later. Green water rushed over my hatches and poured into the cockpit. Grumbling, I suited up and went topside. The cockpit was full of ankle-deep water, with a few dead flying fish floating around in it. Never get a pet, I said to myself. You can’t even keep a fish alive in a flowing-seawater aquarium.

I was already closehauled, but the seas were hitting me right on my beam. I unhooked the windvane and hand-steered, pinching so that the waves would strike just forward of the beam. This prevented them from breaking over my boat, and made for a smoother ride. Five hours of hand-­steering later, I was exhausted and soaking wet. My foul-weather pants leaked so badly that I’d given up wearing them a few days before, and my feet had been immersed in cockpit water for hours. I decided to see if my windvane could handle pinching. Taking a deep breath, I hooked it up and then let go of the tiller to see what would happen. It took a minute, but the vane held Gecko exactly where I wanted her. I retired below to my sleeping bag to dry off and warm up.

The storm blew out overnight and was replaced by the beautiful easterlies I’d been so eagerly anticipating. I watched a rainbow grow from sea level up inside of a squall, starting as a red fire on the horizon and then lazily unfurling into a low-slung arch. On my last day before landfall, I hand-sewed my quarantine and Puerto Rican flags in the cockpit. At 0300, I poked my head out of the companionway to see St. Thomas glittering off to port. Puerto Rico lay waiting for me in the dark. I was excited to take my first steps onshore, but 14 days at sea had made me patient—and a little reticent to hurry up and get in. As the breeze quieted and the sun broke, I left my small headsail up and enjoyed the slow approach of the scrub-covered hills of Culebra. I had been out for two weeks. A few extra hours weren’t going to make a difference.

The subsequent months of sailing in the Caribbean were blissful and lazy. Because I left the States late in the season, I was also at the tail end of the Caribbean cruising season. But I’m in no rush. Most of the leaks and repairs from Gecko’s shakedown cruise were quickly addressed, and life became slow and peaceful. I’m excited to test my skills on the longer passages of the South Pacific, but after the trip from Maine to the Caribbean, the overnighters between islands were perfect. I finally felt that I was right where I belonged.

After a spring and summer thoroughly exploring the Caribbean, Holly Martin sailed to Panama, with immediate plans to transit the Canal and carry on into the South Pacific. For more on her continuing adventures, visit her website.

The post Maiden Voyage appeared first on Cruising World.

With her sights still fixed firmly on the big picture—becoming the oldest person to circumnavigate alone and unassisted—Jeanne Socrates has pulled over to the breakdown lane, so to speak, to repair at least some of the damage done to her Najad 380, Nerieda in a knockdown that occurred as she approached New Zealand.

At present, Nerieda is tied to a mooring in the port city of Timaru, on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Socrates can moor or anchor without it affecting her record attempt, so long as she does not touch land or seek assistance.

Nerieda was knocked flat in strong winds and tumultuous seas on May 15. The knockdown tore away the boat’s solar panels, damaged the wind generator and left some electronics, including her chart plotter, inoperable. There was also considerable flooding, thanks to a lost Dorade vent.

Still, Socrates kept sailing, rounding the last great southern cape as she passed south of Stewart Island on May 23, an event she celebrated with a rum punch. Her voyage began last October from Victoria, British Columbia.

Socrates arrived in Timaru late last week. She has worked on repairing tears in the mainsail, replaced broken lazy jacks, and sorted through a number of electronics issues. Earlier, she found a spare set of wind generator blades and had replaced them while underway. She is also able to recharge the boat’s batteries using her generator.

According to her blog posts (svnereida.com), she is conserving power by using headlamps instead of house lights, and for now at least, she’s not replying to emails, though she continues to receive them. With stormy weather due to arrive at week’s end, she plans to stay put at least until early next week. After that, her next sighting of land will likely be French Polynesia or possibly Hawaii en route back to Victoria.

The post Jeanne Socrates Pauses Her Record Attempt appeared first on Cruising World.

At dawn on Monday, April 29, 2019, Gannet, my ultralight Moore 24, and I ghosted past Point Loma and entered San Diego Bay completing my sixth circumnavigation and her first and one of the most difficult and frustrating passages of the entire voyage.

I started my first circumnavigation in San Diego in 1974 and I am pleased with the symmetry of completing my last here 44 years later.

The voyage took almost five years, but could have been done in three. I spent an extra year in New Zealand because of a severed left shoulder rotator cuff and because I like New Zealand, and I spent last year on the East Coast after my wife and I bought a condo on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island.

The final passage from Balboa, Panama to San Diego was brutal without any severe weather. It was more prison of the sea than monastery. We never had more than 25 knots of wind and perhaps not more than 20. We had little rain.

I knew that there would be light wind for the first part of the passage and that we would be beating to windward for the last 800 or 1000 miles, but the windless hole for most of the first 1500 miles was beyond my experience or even imagination, and we were hard on the wind for probably the last 1500 miles, not 800.

RELATED: Gannet Arrives in St. Lucia

Five of the six weeks of the passage were five of the six slowest weeks of the entire circumnavigation. One day we had a noon to noon run of 16 miles, and I had the spinnaker up some of the time. That was the shortest daily run of the circumnavigation until 10 days later we had a day’s run of only 14 miles.

There were times when if I could have ended the passage I would have, but I couldn’t, so I carried on. In an absence of joy, there is much to be said for honor and perseverance. And once completed there is the satisfaction of having gone the distance and accomplished something difficult.

Gannet‘s daily runs for the entire circumnavigation total 29,989. I think it fair to round up to 30,000.

The post Webb Chiles Completes Sixth Circumnavigation appeared first on Cruising World.

There were times, in the immensity of the Indian Ocean, when David Pollitt would look out from his boat and see around him a great symphony.

Alone again before a ­powerful force, he swayed between risk and control in that space, known to circumnavigators and conductors, that lies between catastrophe and rapture.

“It’s a moment you work so long to get to,” said Pollitt. “You have a hugely powerful instrument in front of you. You are amid 2,500 people, or in the middle of an ocean, on a small platform. There’s adrenaline, motion. You are in danger the whole time. You cannot make a mistake, you must get it right, to bring the composers, these great men, right to your side, to take you to places that are so difficult to describe.”

It was a quest for such rare transport that led Pollitt off the international music circuit to Shearwater, a 47-foot ­catamaran, and a three-year solo round-the-world sail. He was 57 years old when he began in June 2009.

I happened upon Pollitt in June 2012 in a West Palm Beach, Florida, marina just after his homecoming. I snapped a few pictures, and later caught up with him in a Skype interview from Colombia, where Pollitt had sought refuge.

Pollitt had always lived in high profile. His Hungarian grandfather, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, won the 1937 Noble Prize in physiology for his discovery and distillation of vitamin C. Later, as an American citizen living at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, he helped unravel how muscles contract.

Summering at his ­grandfather’s Cape Cod home, Pollitt learned to sail on dinghies. “If you learn on a Sailfish in very rough weather, you develop an instinct for sailing, and very good ­reactions,” he said.

Though he earned his captain’s license at the Chapman School of Seamanship, Pollitt took up the violin at the Juilliard School, and later, after a motorcycle accident, the baton. Adopting Szent-Gyorgyi for a middle name, he guest-conducted orchestras in Turkey, Italy, Uruguay, Hungary, China and other countries, and became a music director at symphony orchestras in Arlington, Virginia; Tallahassee, Florida; and Greenville, South Carolina.

The nine-year Greenville gig ended in 1999 on a sour note as he pressed efforts to open the symphony experience to African-American children and fought with the board over finances. Mulling his future, a childhood fantasy came in focus.

“It’s very hard to come up with anything that can absorb, or captivate, one as completely as music and conducting. I’d been on the ocean, and was fascinated and challenged by the emotion. It was one of thefew things that I thought could maybe fill that huge space that, given one little life and the small time we have, matches the magnificence and hugeness of the places that music took me.”

Being on a boat in an ocean, he found, was like standing in front of a symphony orchestra. “You are geared up. Many people are counting on you to get it right. I felt on the podium that I was in danger the whole time, getting a whole lot of nuts and bolts right, while at the same time transporting the musicians and audience to an inspired place.”

Pollitt’s circumnavigation is captured beautifully on his site wingmast.com, which shows his route dotted with photos and video. His blog sailblogs.com/member/­mangoandme, named after a dog he had to send home, contains a detailed diary.

Among the highlights that caught my eye: his efforts to keep the big wing-masted cat reined in; his top speed was 22 knots under a third reef in the middle of the Pacific; he could make 250 miles a day, and burned less than 500 gallons of diesel in three years.

There was the terror of land — approaching both the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and the southwest coast of Africa. He carried no life raft. Though equipped with an EPIRB, a satellite phone, new electronics and backup autopilots, he felt mentally safer with his boat’s flotation than the false assurance of abandoning ship to a raft. Because of his years on that Sailfish on Cape Cod in very big seas, “it was never a fear of mine to end in the water.”

He took no music. “I never listened to music. It knocks off your senses,” he told me. “The first warning sound is my sense of hearing. Suddenly, the wind sounds different. Sure enough, you’ve changed course.”

And, it wasn’t fun. “It was too great and too dangerous to have fun. The great pleasure was in the challenge, and facing this very animist ocean. It is waiting to swallow you.”

Pollitt rounded Africa with dread. “Before leaving Cape Town, every conversation is about what are you going to do now. I was scared to touch land again. I appreciated what must have happened to [Bernard] Moitessier,” the yachtsman who gave up winning a circumnavigation prize to go around again. (Pollitt also posted on his website Fatty Goodlander’s CW column on the circumnavigator’s post-trip depression, April 2005).

Sure enough, when he touched Florida, he felt ­pressured. “I’d spent ­everything I had ($500,000). I had no nest egg, no security. There was no going back to music. As much as I miss it, the United States is a very, very competitive country. Every job in a U.S. ­orchestra gets 600 applications. It takes years to pay your dues. When you exit, the little void you left is immediately filled by 600 people who want your job. If you leave at 50 or 55, you are now considered very old.”

He sold Shearwater and moved to Colombia, which he’d visited on his cruise. He found the people “warm and friendly. You don’t feel the government breathing down your back. The women are beautiful, and there is no bias. I’m learning Spanish. I’ve been alone all my life, and I don’t like it. I guess I’m much more afraid of dying in a hospital bed alone than dying out on the ocean.”

He built a big modern house on a piece of land outside Armenia, a town in western Colombia, and tried to settle down. He told himself it was the end of the road. But periodically, he’d hear the echo of a conversation with a crusty Cape Towner.

“Will you continue sailing?” the old mariner had asked.

“No. I’ve done it.”

“In five years you’ll be singing a completely different tune.”

The old man was prescient. At age 66, with no partner in view, and fading memories of the terror he felt on Shearwater juxtaposed against a recent violent house robbery in which he nearly lost his hands, Pollitt is thinking again of the sea. I spoke with him in November.

“The beauty of it all has captured me again. I’m asking myself, When I’m on my death bed, do I say I spent my last years alone in a house, as beautiful as it is, or going around Cape Horn and around the world again? The answer is very clear.”

Jim Carrier is a CW contributing editor.

The post Conducting of Circumnavigation appeared first on Cruising World.

Walking down the dock at Sydney’s Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, I nervously approached the pale-blue yacht, noting its pronounced tumblehome that harked back to another era. At first glance, Perie Banou II was a fairly ordinary-looking IOR-style ­design, but the logos emblazoned along its topsides and the heft of its deck gear confirmed that it was no ordinary Sparkman & Stephens 39. Its skipper, Jon Sanders, had just called into Sydney on one of the last stops of his remarkable 10th circumnavigation before crossing the Australian Bight to his home waters of Perth. As I stepped aboard, he laughed and said, “This will be my 47th crossing of the bight.”

Singlehanders have a reputation for awkwardness or downright grumpiness as I remember with the late Tristan Jones and John Ridgeway, but the tall and spritely Sanders immediately disarmed me with his easy charm and friendly manner. His piercing blue eyes, lightly tanned face and thick thatch of hair made it hard to believe he’s 78 years old and a survivor of open heart surgery only two years ago.

“I never get out of puff on the boat, but when I walked up that hill behind the yacht club I did get a little tired,” he said. The only difference seen in earlier pictures that he sent me — which he took on a previous voyage by self-timer while becalmed off Cape Horn — is his dark hair. Sanders has rounded the Horn five times while completing both east and west circumnavigations.

On this journey, he avoided the Horn, setting off from Perth in October 2016 and later transiting the Panama Canal. His modesty belies a determined appetite for ocean voyaging, which includes several outstanding records, the greatest being his solo, nonstop triple circumnavigation from 1986 to 1987. This remains the longest distance — 71,023 nautical miles — ­ever sailed continuously by any sailor unassisted and alone; it took 678 days at sea and earned Sanders an Order of the British Empire (OBE) and the coveted Blue Water Medal from the Cruising Club of America. While working in Perth a few years ago, I visited that record-breaking boat, a 46-foot Curran sloop named Parry Endeavour, in the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Along with the 1983 America’s Cup winner, ­Australia II, it’s one of the museum’s prized exhibits.

“This trip is my swan song,” he said while sitting below aboard Perie Banou II. A confirmed bachelor, he’s close to his brother, Colin, whom he stays with when ashore. Like some of the other solo sailors I’ve met, such as ­six-time ­circumnavigator Webb Chiles, I got the impression that shore time for Sanders serves as a rather mundane gap between sea time. Unlike Chiles, who has been married six times, the sea is perhaps a steadier mistress for Sanders, one that takes him to favorite ports such as the British Virgin Islands and, on this voyage, New Caledonia.

Sanders’ S&S 39 was built in Sydney in 1971. “It’s the second-stiffest boat in the whole of Western Australia, according to the stats,” he said. “The lead keel weighs nearly half of the boat.” It’s taken a few tumbles over the years. “She went right over once, but I held on, sitting on the cabin sole, and she righted herself fairly easily,” he said.

Walking around the deck, I noticed that most fittings, like the huge hinges on the main skylight, were oversize. “It can open both ways,” he said. Sanders still fondly recalls his first seagoing yacht, a Sparkman & Stephens 34 called Perie Banou, the name of a fairy in the book The Arabian Nights, which his mother — the well-known Western Australian writer Dorothy Lucy McClemans — was fond of (under the pseudonym Lucy Walker, she wrote 42 books). She, along with his father, an academic, encouraged ­Sanders’ sailing, and by the age of 14, with his brother and ­sister, Lucy-Anne, he owned his first sailboat. His late mother’s estate has helped him fulfill his sailing dreams. “She left me a small legacy, which works out like a pension and has given me a bit of money to go on with,” he said.

Perie Banou II has a fairly conventional Bermudan rig with a roller-furling headsail and slab reefing on the mainsail, but the deck-stepped spar also has a tabernacle for raising and lowering. Sanders runs downwind under the main alone, on a preventer, with the headsail furled. When I asked about the twin spinnaker poles lashed to the gunwales, he said, “On other trips I’ve run with twin headsails, but I didn’t use them this time.” At 78, safety and comfort are high priorities: “I’m in no hurry, so I always sail with one reef in the main now, which allows me to sleep for 20 minutes at a time. I don’t need alarms to wake me; my body does it itself.” There are three reefing points in the main. “And the third one is like a trysail — it’s been up in 50 knots and was fine.”

Sanders doesn’t engage dedicated meteorologists and weather routers, unlike younger Aussie circumnavigators Jessica Watson and Jesse Martin. “I watch the barometer!” But his approach is far from old school.

“I have the iPad connected to the Iridium satellite for emails and comms,” he said. One of his major sponsors, Navico, installed most of the navigation gear for this trip, including a B&G chart plotter, VHF/AIS-radio and a Simrad tillerpilot. “The tillerpilot is ideal when I’m motorsailing, and the Aries windvane handles the rest,” he said.

In the cluttered confines of his saloon, there’s memorabilia from all over the world. One of the plates above the chart table is a certificate from his last transit of the Panama ­Canal (his seventh), and another plate commemorates his participation in the Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro race (he’s done two). Sanders usually sleeps on the port saloon bunk, equipped with both a lee cloth and a cup holder for his usual can of Pepsi. His ­­galley is a two-burner gimbaled stove with a big gap beneath it. “I had an oven there that I used to bake bread in, but took it off for this trip because I’m not eating so much.” Instead, his meals mostly consist of dehydrated fare.

After the tour of the boat, we retired to the bar at the CYCA. “There’s no grog on board when I’m sailing because at my age I might not wake up for my watch!” he said, laughing. Back home, he’s usually seen puttering around the pontoons of the Royal Perth Yacht Club, another major sponsor.

“Jon is really easy to work with, and he’s just a great man,” said the club’s Kelly Scott.

As host club for the annual Rolex Sydney Hobart yacht race, the CYCA was a busy place, but a few of the sailors stopped by to say hello, though the majority had no idea about the identity of this tall, innocuous mariner. I sort of felt sorry for them.

The conversation shifted to motorcycles, and when he noticed my Yamaha dirt bike parked behind the club he confessed that a road in Perth was named after him. So he’s not exactly anonymous back home.

After a few pints of beer, Sanders glanced at the acres of shiny fiberglass floating along the pontoons and said, “I’d like that big Beneteau 60 over there. With the thrusters and all the luxury accommodations, it would be perfect for my retirement!” When I asked him if he would ever really retire from ocean sailing, he said, “Oh, maybe. Then again, I might just sneak off again one day without letting them know I’m gone. Not until I call them from Malaysia or someplace!”

Kevin Green is a writer, sailor and editor based in Sydney, Australia. For more on Jon Sanders, including his history of record-setting voyages, visit his website.

The post 10 Times Around the World Alone appeared first on Cruising World.

Very few of us are brave enough to jump into the deep end of our wildest dreams, throw off our self-doubt and muster the courage to just do it. Nike Steiger is one of the few. Toiling away at her day job in Hamburg, Germany, Nike (pronounced nee-kay) had a dream of conquering one of her personal goals by sailing off into the sunset. The problem wasn’t her inexperience as a sailor or that she knew very little about the cruising lifestyle, it was simply that she didn’t have her own boat. That she would be untying the lines alone never entered into the equation. She searched for several years before finding Karl in Colón, Panama. The seller had informed her that the vessel had been left unattended for five years, but Nike was still surprised by the “forest of mold” covering the cabin that was so toxic she had to don a hazmat mask just to go below deck. She hadn’t signed the bill of sale yet, but at the agreed price of 8,000 euros, even a little toxic mold wasn’t going to deter her. With the help of a local mechanic, she got the engine to turn over, and her dream of sailing the world was once again revved up.

It would be almost a year, and another 25,000 euros, before she left the dock, but Nike says, “I will never forget that moment, when I took out Karl for the very first spin inside the breakwaters of Colón, being the captain of my own sailing vessel.”

More than three years later, not only has Nike figured out the cruising lifestyle but she’s a successful video blogger, or “vlogger.” The third season of her ­video-blog series Untie the Lines is now on YouTube. She describes it as “the story about the ups and downs of buying, refitting and living on a boat, and of course sailing singlehanded. All of that on a rather small budget and with not a lot of previous knowledge, but with heaps of enthusiasm and quite a bit of endurance.”

Since we are sailing on opposite sides of the world, I caught up with Nike online, where we talked ­vlogging and swapped sailing stories. I found her enthusiasm contagious, and her insights on sailing and maintaining a boat singlehanded inspiring.

Heather Francis: Did you have much sailing experience before you decided to embark on your sailing adventure?

Nike Steiger: Not a lot, around 2,000 nautical miles. Those miles were coastal sailing, with some overnights but no multiday passages nor big ocean crossings. I had never singlehanded a boat before in my life — well, except an Optimist; does that count? But I did go sailing twice with the stepfather of one of my best friends, and he let me pretend I was singlehanding his boat while he was on board. That was on a pretty Hallberg-Rassy 35.

**HF: Can you tell me a little about your boat and why you decided to name it Karl?

NS: Karl is a Reinke Super 10, built in 1992 from aluminum. He is a tough boy, sturdy as a tank, and I love him with all my heart. He surely has not been built for racing, but with his twin keels and therefore little draft, we can enter into many shallow bays and rivers.

For some reason, I wanted my boat to be a male companion. I was looking for a short and easy name, and Karl was always a name I have liked. Karl is derived from the old German word karal, which means “husband” but also “the free one” — the perfect partner for me to sail the world.

HF: Eight months after you bought your boat, you found several holes in Karl’s aluminum hull. You had to weigh your options: sell up, as people were encouraging you to do, or invest more money and sail on. Why did you decide to continue?

NS: At the point when I found the holes in my hull it was actually the time when I was finally supposed to set sail and become a cruiser, not just a boat fixer. That is why I think that moment of finding the holes was an even bigger shock than if it had happened in the beginning.

One night, I sat next to Karl, and I looked at the moon and asked myself if I should give in, admit that I had taken too big of a bite and that I was just not able to pull this whole journey off. And the answer that I found inside myself was so clear: I wanted to go sailing. I wanted to see what was out there, test myself and finally start what I had been fighting for during the past half year.

I made a decision that the boat there next to me was the right one, and I believed in Karl and his general strength. And I believed that if I just truly wanted this journey to happen that I would find a way and the energy to get out of this situation, come what may. Seems I was right after all.

HF: After transiting the Panama Canal in 2016, you ran into major problems again, forcing you to delay sailing to the South Pacific.

NS: Yes, engine troubles. The timing belt that moves the camshaft slipped, and the pistons smashed into the valves and cracked the cylinder head where the valves sit. One could open the engine up and rebuild it. But this would cost quite a bit of money, and time too. Since I am still dreaming of sailing a bit farther away from the mainland with all its supplies, I decided to invest in a new engine. I was able to work with Beta Marine and recently installed a new Beta 43. There were many things that were new for me in this re-power project. It was super interesting, but also at times tiring and scary. But the moment of firing Big Red up for the first time blew away all the stress and worry and gave way to pure excitement and happiness.

HF: When sailing alone, you really get to know your true self, your strengths and weaknesses. What have you learned about yourself?

NS: On the one hand, I have learned that I carry way more fears inside myself than I had thought. When I went sailing before I owned my own boat, I never felt seasick — OK, once, but not really badly — and I was never really afraid. I cannot recall thinking, Oh my god, we are going to capsize, or Hmm, I wonder if maybe we might sink, or Will I be fast enough to do this task if something happens all of a sudden. The nights I spent at anchor with my family on vacation, I just slept peacefully; now that never happens since buying Karl. So, yes, I had to admit to myself that I was not as fearless as I had assumed I was.

But on the other hand, I have also been assured that I can trust my physical and emotional strength when times get rough. Even if I have anxieties before departure or during a passage, when something does happen, I have always found a way out without seriously hurting myself or my boat.

HF: What difficulties or obstacles have you faced as a female singlehander?

NS: I get annoyed when I am not strong enough to loosen something or to carry something. But I have learned some little tricks and life hacks to make up for my lack of strength.

I was nervous at first to ask someone to lend me a hand, because I didn’t want to seem like the typical stereotype of a woman needing help from a man because she isn’t strong enough. I have to say, though, that the men I have asked for help have not been disrespectful in those situations, but usually rather impressed that I was trying to go for it anyway.

In addition to the typical surprise — “Oh, you are alone on your boat?” — comes the astonishment that I also do most of my work by myself. This is then usually followed by the “Don’t you feel lonely/scared/vulnerable all by yourself?”

And yes, sometimes I do feel ­vulnerable. I try not to let it overtake me too much because I think the more you think and worry about it, the more likely it is something might happen to you.

HF: I admire you and other women who sail singlehanded, who are willing to get dirty and work on their boat. You make the Untie the Lines videos as a way to inspire others to chase their dreams and to conquer their self-doubts. Who are some of your inspirations?

NS: Wow, there are many great books, blogs and videos out there — it’s hard to keep the list short. One of the first books that inspired me was Dove by Robin Lee Graham, and I also enjoyed Tania Aebi’s book Maiden Voyage a lot.

It’s a big dream of mine to head to Alaska one day, which is why I enjoy the great videos of Yacht Teleport and S/Y Zero. One of my new favorites is that French sailor Guirec Soudée, who just did the Northwest Passage on his wicked aluminum sloop with his chicken, Monique.

Someone who always inspires me to learn new skills and dare to trust more in myself is my friend Maria LaPointe. She is an awesome sailor and great mechanic, welder and rigger, and she is the one who kept me going when I had doubts that I was not strong or good enough to be out here by myself.

HF: Making a video blog is more work than people think. You work with a professional videographer, Patrice Lange, on Untie the Lines, sending hard drives of footage back to Germany every few months for editing. Did you know each other before you started the project?

NS: I didn’t know anything about filming or editing when I started my journey. Patrice was convinced that we should give it a try, and we did not really have anything to lose. I worked with Patrice when I was still working back in Hamburg. I was running the marketing department of a medium-size company, and we had contracted him for some product shots and videos.

During the second season of Untie the Lines, I filmed so much more that it was too much work for Patrice by himself to browse through the material. That is why Daniel Dohlus joined our team and does the pre-editing before Patrice gives the episodes the final touch.

HF: Untie the Lines is into its third season. What is in store for us next?

We released a full-length documentary in January titled Untie the Lines: A Journey of Salt, Sweat and Determination. It’s about the first part of my journey, the circumnavigation of the western Caribbean, and the previous/ongoing refit, of course.

It is a mix of footage that was already published, and interviews and material that were not released yet. The movie is another step up in terms of professionalism — for example, extra color grading and such. We wanted it to have a slightly more cinematic touch to it.

Money-wise, we decided to go for ­private investors that will provide the money for the production and be paid back, step by step, once the movie starts selling.

HF: Video blogging has gained popularity in the past few years. Do you have any advice for new vloggers?

NS: In my opinion, it helps if you start vlogging because you really want to put something out there for some other reason than purely for making money with it. Start with putting some videos out there, see how people react, ask for feedback, watch your numbers for a while and see how you deal with the extra workload while you travel and if you feel OK with it. Give yourself some time to get in your groove, to improve yourself and to build an audience.

Now, once you have done that for a while, if you decide to keep going and have a feeling that your fan base might like to support your work, give them the opportunity to do so.

For me, it is important that people understand that they are paying for something that I produce. I make videos, people consume them and pay for them, even if it is voluntarily. Crowdfunding is a sensitive topic — lots of people call it e-begging — which is why it is important to me that my documentary is seen as a business, not that I am collecting donations just so I can live my dream. If I come to a point where I cannot afford to live the way I do with the work I do, I need to come up with something different to get some extra cash or to improve my business model.

HF: When you set out to untie the lines, you estimated you would be sailing for three years. Now that you’ve surpassed your three-year projected timeline, what are your future plans?

NS: I untied the lines to sail the world, not to circumnavigate. In my dreams, I will sail to French Polynesia, and from there, I would love to head north to Hawaii and then Alaska. If I ever get there, I will be the happiest person ever. Untie the Lines will continue. It has been such a comfort to have all these great people traveling along with me; I don’t think I would want to miss that.

You can follow Nike’s adventure on her YouTube channel WhiteSpotPirates, at whitespotpirates.com, on Facebook and on Instagram @whitespotpirates.

The post Sailor Profile: Nike Steiger appeared first on Cruising World.

The post Video: Company in the Southern Ocean appeared first on Cruising World.

At 0500 Monday, August 22, our 53rd day at sea since leaving Darwin, Australia, the wind died, and Gannet, my Moore 24, and I were becalmed 10 miles from Durban Harbor, South Africa. Confident that the remainder of the 6,000-mile passage would be over in a few hours, I took advantage of the smooth conditions to fit the outboard bracket and electric Torqeedo onto the stern. The Torqeedo had not been used in months, not since I’d powered the last half-mile to the marina in Bundaberg, Australia. I was pleased when it started at the first push of a button. Then I removed the tiller arm and tilted the Torqeedo from the water. It has a limited range, and I would use it only after entering the port.

A few minutes later the wind, which had been light and behind us, returned with a rush, but from directly ahead. I raised a triple-reefed main and partially unfurled the jib.

The wind continued to build and build. Had I not so wanted to get in, I would have stopped sailing by 0600. But I did and kept on. Gannet was heeled 40 degrees, thrashing through and under water, the lee rail buried. Activity below was impossible. One of the rules on Gannet is the same as in boxing: Protect yourself at all times. Trying to heat water for coffee, momentarily I didn’t, and was thrown across the cabin. That wasn’t far, of course, but I lost some skin and got a good-size lump on my elbow. I drank the coffee with room-temperature water and ate a protein bar for breakfast.

With the wind coming partially over the point of land to the south, I thought it possible that the sea would be smoother closer to the coast. I was wrong. The wind there was as strong and the waves steeper. I threaded my way through a half-dozen anchored ships awaiting entrance to the harbor, until I ran out of room and a mile offshore tried to come about. Despite moving at speed, Gannet didn’t have the weight to do it. The wind stopped and shook the boat like a dog shakes a bone. I had to do what I didn’t want to, and jibed. The power of the boom going over was immense. Gannet went to almost 90 degrees, but Moore 24s are self-­correcting boats. They seem to want to do the right thing, and as I eased the sheet, she came up. Some. As I steered back past the anchored ships, one of them gave a blast on her horn that I decided to interpret as applause. To the south I could see the breakwaters at Durban, 7 miles away.

Wave after wave swept over Gannet and me. While being flailed in the failed attempt to tack, the jib sheets had tied themselves in a Gordian knot. Once clear of the ships, I tied down the tiller and lowered and subdued the mainsail, then went forward to untangle the jib sheets so I could furl the headsail.

All brutal and dangerous.

Finally, under bare pole and being pushed north, I called on the handheld VHF to the anchored ships, asking for wind speed and forecast. One of them answered, reporting a wind speed of 45 knots, forecast to go to 50 with 20-foot waves and easing in 24 hours. Gannet’s cabin was as wet as it has ever been, but she felt safer and much less likely to be rolled. She had taken a beating. We both had.

I don’t think the waves ever reached 20 feet — perhaps 12 to 14 — but I have always preferred to err on the low side rather than high. Whatever their height, they were steep walls of seething water and big enough.

After an unrelenting afternoon and night, the wind began to drop at 1000 Tuesday, almost as abruptly as it rose. Even after all these years, I am sometimes amazed by how quickly waves decrease with the wind. By 1300, Gannet was headed back toward Durban, now 40 miles away, making 3 and 4 knots under full sail across a mildly undulating sea on a sunny afternoon. Two whales spouted a few lengths away. Albatrosses glided above us. We entered the harbor late the next morning and tied to the international jetty at noon.

This 6,000-mile passage had been difficult and sometimes tested my limits, first with too little wind. A week out of Darwin, we’d been becalmed for almost 24 hours on a glassy sea, and Gannet had her slowest day’s run ever, of only 28 miles. I went overboard for a swim, startling a fish that seemed to be living beneath us.

Then we’d had two weeks of too much wind: 25-plus knots going to gale force twice. This was complicated by tillerpilot failure. I probably did 5,000 of the 6,000 miles using sheet-to-tiller steering. In strong wind, this approach can result in accidental jibes. Twice I had to lie ahull because the risk of being rolled was too great. And Gannet’s interior was entirely wet, as was I. Every surface was covered in slime and mold. My sleeping bag was intolerably sodden, so I slept in wet foul-weather gear beneath a foil survival blanket. Finally that ended, and we again had mostly too-light wind.

On a moderate day, with only 6-foot waves, one of the waves broke and caught us just right, rolling the masthead into the water. I know it went in because afterward the masthead Windex was hanging off the side, and the masthead Raymarine wind unit was gone. I somehow don’t think this will be covered under warranty. (Gannet is the fourth boat whose masthead I have put in the water. This is a club you ­probably don’t want to join.)

Gannet has covered more than 9,000 miles since we sailed from Opua, New Zealand, less than four months ago. Despite being driven and tossed on the deep blue sea, she hasn’t suffered any structural damage that I can see.

We have done what we planned to do this year. We are both going to rest.

Six-time solo circumnavigator and writer Webb Chiles began his most recent great circle aboard Gannet in San Diego.

The post Gannet Makes Landfall appeared first on Cruising World.