While I raced competitively as a youth in Optis and Lasers—and loved to sail big boats in all the Caribbean regattas during the ’80s and ’90s—I fell out of Grand Prix yacht racing as I began to focus on circumnavigating a couple of decades ago. The few times I hopped aboard others’ boats and raced in the Med, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa were unsatisfying on two fronts: One, I didn’t seem to be able to completely focus on winning for the entire duration of the event; and two, the vessels and crews were disappointments as well. Once you’ve raced on top-notch racing boats that are designed, built, financed, campaigned, and equipped to win against similarly serious craft, well, it’s hard to go back to the mom-and-pop beer-can races.

Thus, my racing skills atrophied—delightfully so. Where I once would adjust a boat’s cunningham as we accelerated after every tack, as a cruiser, I set it for winter or summer, if that. On the racecourse, I used to joke about yacht racers “rushing to get it over with”; then I adopted a go-slow philosophy and took it to heart. I was in no hurry. I didn’t want to beat anyone; I just wanted to be. I wanted to happily exist in a watery world where God’s smiling face is reflected in every wave.

When a salesman at a marine-supply store in Cape Town boasted that a certain $100 gizmo would “save you at least a day, or perhaps two” on my upcoming nonstop passage back to St. John in the US Virgin Islands, I smiled and asked, “Do you have anything for $100 that would allow me to spend an additional week at sea?”

After all, racing aside, the sole constant in my 61 years of living aboard is the desire to be at sea. For me, Mother Ocean always works her magic. Who needs Zen when there’s a tiller in your hand?

Then COVID-19 reared its ugly head. Not only were my wife, Carolyn, and I forced by logic and common sense to stay put in Singapore, our options to use our heavy-displacement ketch that’s set up for offshore voyaging were slim. Sure, we sailed to Lazarus Island and Pulau Ubin many times, but we practically could have swum there as well. Thus, our bottom fouled. And, as the saying goes, we ended up aground on our coffee grounds.

This is the reality of world cruising: Sh-t happens, occasionally and pandemically! As lifelong cruising sailors, our job is to roll with the punches. So Carolyn and I manage to eke out some watery fun in whatever manner we can in whatever port we happen to be anchored.

Does “eke out fun” sound frivolous? If so, it is because, dear reader, you’re not in cruising mode. For a sea gypsy, smiling blissfully at the horizon is what it’s about. We carry our joy aboard and, if we’re lucky and skillful, our joy never runs out.

Which brings us to the charming Changi Sailing Club, where we’re sitting out COVID and where no stink-potters are allowed. Its roots go back almost 100 years. For Carolyn and me, having a sundowner on the palm-shaded veranda is to experience a taste of classical colonialism, set within the diverse cultural rainbow of the ultramodern nation state that is Singapore. Think Bogie and Bacall. While the club’s core membership is Singaporean, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and Malay, there’s a smattering of imported expats from England, France, Italy, Holland and America as well.

Singapore is tiny. Land is scarce. Most homes are minuscule. And families often live multigenerational under the same roof. Thus, the British club concept never faded here in S’pore, and the pool, beach, clubhouse and three bars/eateries teem with family fun on the weekends. You can even rent a chalet for a mere $50 per night if you want a watery getaway from home.

At Changi, the focus is on affordable family sailing. The club has an extremely active fleet of big boats in the 20- to 40-foot range, and nearly 100 dinghies for rent by the hour. There are clouds of Optis, Lasers, Toppers and beach cats that flit through the large river anchorage seven days a week. The affordable sailing scene is further buttressed by the fact that a lot of expat sailors from Europe are stationed here by their global corporations for only a year or two, and they tend to buy expensive boats that they then have to sell quickly at a huge loss when transferred to their next high-paying assignment. As a result, boats are cheap in expensive Singapore.

As the pandemic restrictions dragged on from weeks to months, I, of course, could watch the local race boats milling within feet of our 43-foot ketch Ganesh for only so long without itching to be aboard.

And compared with other harbors we’d visited, in many ways the Changi Club goes to extraordinary measures to facilitate the racing. You don’t need a dinghy or tender because the bumboats, or launches, run 12 hours a day, seven days a week. There’s a small shipyard and launch ramp if you want to dry-sail. Gear lockers are available for your racing stuff, and after racing, nearly 20 sailors can shower at the club at the same time. During regattas, with three to four 16-foot Boston Whalers powered by 60 hp engines in use at all times, if a small boat capsizes or a larger boat runs aground, experienced assistance can be on-site within moments.

Best of all, there’s a permanent sea buoy for the leeward starting pin, and race-committee officials work from their own shaded world of flags and horns on the long T-pier that extends into the mooring field at the other end of the starting line.

Read More from Cap’n Fatty Goodlander: Cruisers Stuck Aboard in Singapore

But the most remarkable thing about racing in Changi is the course itself. It teems with freighters, cruise ships, sampans, junks, kayaks, windsurfers, kiteboards, pilot boats, resupply boats, fuel tenders, floating cranes, full-on oil rigs and, of course, the local fishing fleet. If it floats, it is zooming around crazily past the beach at Changi.

But those aren’t the only challenges to yachtsmen. Plentiful numbers of 7-foot-long monitor lizards are common; perhaps that’s what has driven away most of the crocs. And there is a major tide in S’pore, and the ebb current in particular is quite strong. Then, just to make the racing a tad more exciting, rocks and volcanic shoals lurk everywhere. There’s never a dull moment when waterborne off Changi. (For those readers who can’t recall where they’ve heard of Changi before, our current mooring is within sight of the Changi Prison of James Clavell’s novel King Rat. Or, if you’re a World War II buff, this beach is where the Japanese slaughtered 10,000-plus Singaporeans at low water so the rising tide would carry away the bodies—first into town, then out to sea.)

Yes, Singapore history is rich with blood, sweat and misery.

But all the grimness of the island’s past and the pandemic’s presence is now forgotten as the starting gun sounds. If I’m feeling multihull, I race with the large fleet of dry-sailed Corsair trimarans or swing from the trapeze aboard one of the many Nacra beach cats. If I’m in a one-design mood, it is a Laser with my American pals or a Topper if I want to share sea yarns with the Brits. Last week I helmed an Olson 34 named Sapphire Star so that its owner, a Brit named Simon, could sort out his asymmetrical from his symmetrical spinnaker running rigging. Winds tend to be gentle in Singapore, so light-air rags are a must on the downwind legs.

Of course, Singapore sailors are smart—as befits a country with such a high educational standard—so the races are short and the parties long. And they’re also more civil: At the mark roundings, we politely discuss what “clear ahead” means so that no sailor loses face. Back ashore, the awards ceremonies have so many grinning nationalities involved, it’s like a drunken UN meeting for sailors.

So, yeah, I’m getting in some laid-back, emphasis-on-the-fun club racing while learning that in the age of COVID, stopping for extended port stays is now part of the global cruising game as well.

The Goodlanders are spending spring weekends being entertained by the racing scene in Singapore.

The post Sailboat Racing with Singapore’s Changi Sailing Club appeared first on Cruising World.

The great variation from summer to winter in Alaska means that the residents of the Last Frontier are adept at catching and preserving wild food. Whether it’s with caribou or blueberries, Alaskans make sure their larders are stocked before the darkness and snow descend.

As transient sailors in Alaska for a number of years, my husband, Seth, and I got caught up in the notion of gathering wild food and preserving it for future eating. Long-distance sailing tends to draw people who welcome a life of self-reliance, and providing for yourself from land and sea is an obvious extension of that (see “Sailing for Fishing,” January 2020). In particular, we got excited about catching and preserving salmon. As nonresidents, we were limited to rod-and-reel fishing, and so our harvest wasn’t a patch on the year-rounders’ net-fishing, but we still pulled in much more than we could eat. We don’t have a freezer, and the catch would have taken up more room than a typical boat freezer offers anyway, so we canned it.

Canning fish or meat requires a pressure canner. Water-bath canning is acceptable for jams and pickles and the like, but the low temperature isn’t safe for low-acid foods such as fish and meat. Seth and I have a Presto 16-quart stainless-steel pressure canner, which holds 12 half-pint jars and can reach a pressure of 15 psi. Before setting up the canner, however, we liked to hot-smoke our fish.

When you buy smoked salmon, you are buying cold-smoked fish; it’s been brined, refrigerated, and then smoked for between 12 and 24 hours. We don’t have a smoker capable of that, so when we were in Alaska, our method was to hot-smoke fish in our grill, using green alder branches to provide the smoke.

In the meantime, while the fish was cooking, we washed all our Mason jars and got out new lids and rings. It’s a good idea to keep the jars hot (leave them in very hot water) so that they don’t crack. We then filled each jar with the fish, a little lime or lemon peel, and vegetable oil, getting rid of any air bubbles with a clean plastic spatula (metal utensils can damage the jar). It’s imperative to always leave about an inch of airspace below the lid and to wipe the rim of the jar very clean. Otherwise you risk not having a good seal, which can lead to spoiling and even botulism, which is odorless and very dangerous, and sometimes fatal.

Once the rims were perfectly clean, we put on the lids and rings, making sure not to tighten the rings all the way. This way air can escape during the canning and cooling. Once all the air is eventually released by the end of the process, a vacuum has been created and the lid will seal. It makes a characteristic popping noise once it does.

Read More: Hands-On Sailor

But we were still back at the stage of putting on the lids and rings. Once that was complete, the rack that came with the canner went into it in order to hold the jars off the bottom. I poured warm water into the canner to the amount specified (there’s a line on the inside of the canner), and then placed the jars in, careful to leave enough space between them. Then I secured the lid of the canner (which has a gasket), but I left off the pressure-regulator weight on the air vent. That way the canner could vent off all the air and create a purely steam environment for the canning.

After the water in the canner boiled, the venting took about 10 minutes before I could put on the weight and watch the pressure in the canner mount to the appropriate pounds per square inch—in this case, 11 psi. (There is a dial on the lid that measures pressure.)

The canner required fairly constant monitoring to make sure the pressure stayed at the right level; I frequently adjusted the gas on the stove to keep the right heat, even while using a “flame-tamer” heat distributor. For our salmon and canner, we maintained the 11 psi pressure for 100 minutes before turning off the stove and letting the canner and jars cool.

Once all the pressure in the canner was gone, we could open the lid and remove the jars with the tongs that came with the canner (the jars are still very hot!). I placed them on a thick dish towel and left them there to cool. When the lids had sealed and we’d tightened the rings, the jars were set to store. We always make sure to write the date on the lids with a Sharpie first though. It’s usually not that long before we’ve opened a jar for a delicious hors d’oeuvre, but it’s good practice.

I find canning in the galley to be fairly easy and straightforward, and not too much different from canning in a house kitchen. The three big differences are space, of course, the lack of a dishwasher, and the size of the canner.

Canning takes up most of the saloon space, between washing the jars and laying them out to be filled with fish, and then laying them out to cool at the end. So, it becomes an activity that everyone on board is necessarily involved in (there’s no room to do much else!), whereas at home I can do the canning in the kitchen, and life in the rest of the house goes on as usual.

Washing the jars is a bit more of a project on the boat than it would be at home, where I could simply put the jars in the dishwasher and take them out one by one to fill and place in the canner, thereby keeping them very hot from the dishwasher steam while they await filling.

And finally, the canner is smaller than the one I have at home and therefore requires about two batches for every one I make at home. But our boat canner fits perfectly on our galley stove, and it stores well in a deep locker, while a bigger one would not fit. Otherwise, the process is pretty well the same, and the resulting food is just as good!

Salmon To Go

Here are three ways we put our canned salmon to good use when we’re sailing:

• Hors d’oeuvres. It’s a classy and delicious topping to a cracker and cream cheese.

• Maki sushi rolls. Rolled up in nori (roasted seaweed) and sushi rice, it’s great on its own or combined with avocado, cucumber and/or cream cheese.

• Fettucine Alfredo. It makes your favorite homemade creamy pasta sauce a whole lot more interesting, and it’s fast and easy to add. This one is a stand-by for me on passages.

Writer and photographer Ellen Massey Leonard is a frequent CW contributor.

The post How to Can Fish on Your Boat with a Pressure Cooker appeared first on Cruising World.

Until recently, my husband, Bob, and I cruised the Bahamas and Caribbean every year aboard Scaramouche, our Tayana 58. As we headed south from Florida, our home port, my mind sometimes drifted to the favorite “meals out” we’d left behind. One was a delicious, juicy burger from our local bar and grill. I decided to create my own ideal burger on board, and it’s since become our benchmark, whether eating aboard or dining out.

The ideal burger is made from ground chuck with 20 percent fat (this is not the time to go lean), and is grilled to a crusty char outside and (per our own preference) perfectly rare to medium-rare inside. Use a digital meat thermometer to cook the burgers to your own desired level of doneness (see “Cook’s Notes,” below). The first bite of that ultimate burger should be juicy and full of flavor. Enjoy every bite!

Stuffed Bacon-Cheddar Burgers Recipe

• 6 slices bacon, diced
• 6-8 ounces extra-sharp cheddar cheese, diced in 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 1/2 lb. ground beef (20% fat)
• 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 4 hamburger buns (we like brioche)
• 1-2 tablespoons butter, softened (optional)

Serves: 4

Preparation: at anchor

Time: 30 minutes

Difficulty: easy

If using a grill, preheat it for direct, medium-high heat (at least 400°F).

Spread bacon in a nonstick skillet. Bring heat to medium, and cook bacon until it’s beginning to brown and almost crispy. Transfer to a paper towel on a plate to drain, and chop into pieces once cool. Remove skillet from heat. If you’re pan-grilling the burgers, set pan aside—do not wash.

In a large bowl, mix the ground beef with Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Add the bacon and cheese pieces. Mix by hand and form four equal-size patties, about 1 inch thick. Make a small indent with your thumb in each patty to prevent burgers from bulging as they cook.

Grill: Brush grill grates with a little vegetable oil. Place patties on the grill and cover for 4 minutes. Flip burgers and grill for another 2 to 3 minutes for medium-rare. If desired, top with cheese slices just before burgers are done; close lid until cheese melts. Remove to a plate and let rest.

Stovetop: Use a paper towel to wipe excess bacon grease from skillet, leaving a thin coating. Over medium-high heat, cook burgers for about 3 minutes per side for medium-rare. Add extra cheese as above if desired; briefly cover pan until cheese melts.

Butter the cut sides of the buns and grill briefly before plating. Add your favorite toppings. Serve with potato chips.

The post Galley Recipe: Stuffed Bacon-Cheddar Burgers appeared first on Cruising World.

Not so long ago, most production sailboats featured sail plans that were a bit different from what one might encounter when looking at how boats are rigged today. For example, older sloops typically carry 130 to 150 percent genoas that, when sheeted hard on the wind, extend well aft of the shrouds. While these large headsails demand some grunting on the winches to haul in the sheets during tacks—and typically require roller reefing or downshifting to a smaller jib when the breeze freshens—they allow boats to sail deeper angles without hoisting dedicated off-the-wind sails for reaching and running downwind.

By contrast, the current trend in sail plans typically features a larger mainsail and non-overlapping or just slightly overlapping headsail, typically in the range of 107 percent. While this approach makes it relatively easy to trim the jib while tacking upwind, as soon as the boat cracks off and sheets are eased, boatspeed drops, especially in the lighter airs that are common to coastal waters during the summer months.

To address this loss of power, today’s sailmakers offer dedicated off-wind sails that liven up performance when sailing deeper angles. I reached out to three leading sailmakers—Dan Kaseler, who owns Quantum Sails’ Seattle loft; Adam Loory, who works as UK Sailmakers International’s general manager; and Bob Meagher, from North Sails’ Fort Lauderdale loft—to learn more about the best options for cruisers.

In all cases, the sails they recommend are custom-designed and built for the owners and the boats that will use them. Here’s what I learned, starting with the most weatherly sail and clocking back to those that are better-suited for deep-angle runs.

Code Zeros

These rockets came to fame aboard racing sailboats in the late 1990s and early 2000s, allowing racers to quickly fetch deeper angles than a racing headsail could efficiently carry. For race boats, code zeros are subject to specific rules that describe their midgirth measurement (namely, 75 percent of their foot length). Cruising code zeros aren’t subject to these same constraints, however. As a result, midgirth measurements that run 55 to 65 percent of the sail’s foot measurement are common, making them easier to sail and friendlier to furl.

A cruising code zero typically would be used when sailing on any point from a close reach to a shallower broad reach, with their sweet spot ranging from 75 to 125 degrees true wind angle, depending on their midgirth measurements; the larger the percentage, the deeper the sail can be carried. They can be made from a variety of materials to match a customer’s needs and budget. “Code zeros take the place of 150 percent genoas, and then some,” Quantum’s Kaseler says. “But they’re not good for deep angles. If you try to fly them dead downwind, they’ll fall out of the sky.”

While the DNA of today’s cruising code zeros is rooted in the racing world, UK’s Loory makes it clear that these sails are far different from what can be found aboard a modern TP52 racing sloop.

“Cruising code zeros are flat, reaching spinnakers on furlers,” Loory says. “If cruisers want to sail closer to the wind with their code zeros, they’ll need a stronger sail that’s made out of laminated fabrics. If they’re not concerned with sailing close to the wind, the sail can be made from a performance 1.5-ounce nylon.”

As Loory notes, code zeros typically reside on furlers, allowing them to be deployed quickly, and are tacked to a hard point that’s in front of the forestay. Unlike jibs and genoas, which use furlers with drums that contain the furling line when the sail is deployed, code zeros tend to employ continuous-line furlers (pull one direction and the sail unwinds; pull the other direction and it refurls) that furl the sail from its bottom up or from the top of its leech downward (the latter are known as top-down furlers). This arrangement, Kaseler says, requires that the sailmaker incorporate a torsion rope on the sail’s front edge. This torsion rope can be attached to the head of the sail or it can be integral to the sail. Either way, the torsion rope’s job is to provide a stiff, shroudlike member that translates effort from the furling line to a clean and tight top-down furl.

Also, unlike furlers used to roll up jibs and genoas, code-zero furling drums are usually dedicated to the sail, so when it’s time to lower the rolled-up sausage and store the sail, the furler goes into the sail bag with it.

Unlike other sailmakers, North Sails refers to its code-zero-style sails as G0s, with the “G” standing for “gennaker.”

One consideration when buying a G0, says North Sails’ Meagher, is whether the sail will live belowdecks and come up for occasional deployment, or whether it will remain furled-up and hoisted, ready to be unwound as the wind angle dictates. While the always-up option is easiest to use, it requires special consideration when the sail is being designed. “You’ll need a sun cover, which is a light, 6-ounce fabric,” Meagher says. “But there’s a practical limit to a sail that can carry a 6-ounce sun cover—your sailmaker will need to increase the sail’s weight and stretch resistance.” This, he notes, typically means that the sail will need to be built out of 2- or 3-ounce fabric. “You can use lighter sailcloth, but the sun cover will usually shrink and pucker the sail material.”

Also, Loory says, it’s important to remember that a sun cover that’s light enough to be flown on a code-zero sail isn’t as typically burly as the fabric that’s used on a roller-furler genoa or jib. “It’s really lightweight material—it’s not like Sunbrella.” Code zeros, he adds, typically come with a Velcro closure on their clew, which keeps the sail tightly furled when it’s not in use. “It’s not a cover for leaving up for a month,” Loory says. Because of this, he advises that it’s best to lower code zeros after use (say, the weekend or a cruise) rather than leaving them up for the entire season, headsail-style.

While code-zero sails work just fine on monohulls and multihulls, one important consideration involves standing rigging on the latter. “Multihulls are limited by their wide sheeting angles,” Meagher says. This limits their ability to carry higher angles. “When sheeting outside the shrouds, they can’t get the sail in any closer.” Because of this, multihull sailors are likely to find that their code zero/G0 won’t carry at as high an angle as a monohull that’s flying a similarly shaped sail.

Cruising Spinnakers

Once the wind angle rotates to a deep broad reach, Loory, Kaseler and Meagher recommend that cruising sailors shift from a code zero to an asymmetric pole-less cruising spinnaker, sometimes called a flasher, screecher or cruising gennaker (see “What’s in a Name?” opposite). “A lot of cruisers don’t have a spinnaker on the boat or they haven’t used one,” Kaseler says. “So they pole out their jib, and they’re going slowly. But when they get a cruising kite, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened.”

Like all sails, cruising kites come in a variety of shapes and geometries, however most spinnakers are bigger and rounder than code zeros and are usually built out of ¾- to 1.5-ounce ripstop nylon. According to Loory, a bigger bluewater-bound boat will want to spec a heavier material, while a coastal cruiser who mainly plies flatter water can go with the lighter material for most summer days in places such as Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay or Puget Sound. Windswept San Francisco Bay, however, is a different story. “Ounce-and-a-half!” Loory advises when asked about this latter venue and other windy bodies of water. Others agree.

“A 1.5-ounce kite can be carried with a lot of breeze before it vaporizes,” Kaseler says, adding that a typical cruising spinnaker can be carried in breeze ranging from 4 to 25 knots. “Typically, cruisers aren’t stepping up to heavier fabrics—they just go with a smaller kite,” he notes.

Given that modern cruising kites are asymmetrically shaped, Loory advises that their effective range picks up where a code zero ends (roughly 125 percent TWA) and goes down to roughly 155 degrees off the wind.

While nylon is a much stretchier material than the laminates (or Dacron) that are typically used in code-zero sails, this can be an advantage on puffy days or when sailing in offshore swells. “It’s a shock absorber if the sail collapses and refills,” Meagher says. This absorptive quality reduces shock loading on the mast and standing and running rigging.

Cruising kites can be deployed and doused using furlers or dousing socks, sometimes called snuffers or sleeves. While both have their merits, they also have their drawbacks. For example, it can be physically demanding to furl a cruising chute in a breeze, while dousing socks requires a crewmember to go up on the foredeck to pull down the sock and snuff the sail.

Another consideration is room at the bow. “Most of the time, there’s room for a nonfurling sail on a tack line from the anchor roller,” Meagher says. Furling sails, on the other hand, require that there be room to attach the furler. He says that it’s easy to check if there’s room. “Just run the halyard to the designated tack spot and look. Sailmakers also can raise the tack to accommodate tight fits.”

While racing boats typically sport bowsprits or retractable sprit poles that extend the spinnaker’s tack far in front of the forestay to ease jibing, the three sailmakers I talked to were clear that this equipment isn’t a prerequisite for cruising spinnakers. “It can be tacked to the bow,” Loory says. The sail just needs to be forward of the forestay. One option, Kaseler notes, is to tack the sail to the anchor roller, provided that it protrudes far enough forward to accommodate the sail.

One drawback to flying a kite close to the forestay is that it can be tricky to jibe. While outside jibes (meaning that the sail’s clew and leech rotate in front of their luff) are usually possible, another option, Loory says, is to simply douse the kite, jibe the boat, and then redeploy the sail.

While spinnakers bolster the grin factor aboard most cruising boats, it’s important to know a crew’s limits and to act accordingly when an afternoon zephyr develops into a stronger blow. Loory advises that cruisers apply a simple rule for deciding when it’s time to take down the kite: “When the boat heels too much, or when it’s uncomfortable.” He adds that it’s more about the crew’s comfort than breakage. “Or if your autopilot can’t control the boat.”

Others advise similar thinking. “Ask yourself, Am I comfortable taking the sail down right now?” Kaseler says. “If the answer is yes, keep going; if the answer is no, take the kite down.”

While Meagher agrees that heel angle is a good indicator for when it’s time to take down the kite (or bear off) aboard monohulls, he notes that since multihulls don’t tend to heel much (unless they begin achieving vanishing stability), multihull cruisers should instead use windspeed charts to dictate their sail options, including reefing the main rolling up a code zero or dousing a kite.

North Sails divides its cruising spinnaker category into two kites: a G1 and a G2. Meagher says a good rule of thumb is that a G1 will carry an average cruising monohull from 100 degrees TWA to 140 degrees, depending on the wind speeds. A G1′s ability to sail to weather decreases by roughly 10 to 15 degrees for multihulls, however cruisers can sometimes move the sail’s tack to the boat’s windward hull to achieve lower points of sail. “A G1 is our all-purpose asymmetric,”

Meagher says. “If someone wants a one-off-wind-sail inventory, go with a G1. If you want the broadest angles and a two-sail inventory, go with a G0 and a G2.” G2s cover points of sail from deeper broad reaches to runs (roughly 120 to 165 degrees TWA).

Irrespective of what type of off-wind sail you fly, the laws of physics still apply. “Cruisers can get into trouble with shock loading,” Meagher says. This occurs when a spinnaker collapses and refills, or when sailing in seas that can cause the kite to collapse in the trough and refill as the boat rises on the back of the next wave.

“The sail’s breaking point can plummet with age and UV exposure, so the more you use the sail, the weaker it becomes,” Meagher says. This is especially important for sailors who spend extended amounts of time sailing under the Caribbean’s intense sun. Because of this, heavier-weight sails tend to outlast lighter-weight sails. On the other hand, heavier sails can be harder to carry in lighter air, take up more space belowdecks, and are heavier to physically move around. Also, as with G1s, the stretchy nature of their ripstop-nylon material helps to act as a shock absorber, saving the mast and rigging from unnecessary punishment.

What’s in a Name

“It’s an industry problem—there are too many names for the same thing,” Quantum Sail’s Dan Kaseler says when asked about the various names applied to off-wind sails. Talk to boat salespeople, and you’ll hear terms like blaster, screecher, reacher, gennaker, cruising chute, etc.

“As a sailmaker, we can see the same geometry, but for the general public, it can be difficult to parse it out. People don’t realize that they’re talking about the same thing.”

The key to navigating this nomenclature minefield, according to all three experts, is to establish the right rapport with a reputable sailmaker.

“A sailmaker needs to know how your boat is set up, so they come and measure the boat,” UK’s Adam Loory says. It’s important that the sailmaker understands your cruising agenda and how you plan to use the sail. “You don’t want to buy a mail-order cruising spinnaker.”

Bob Meagher from North Sails agrees: “It’s important that customers have a conversation with a sailmaker they trust. Don’t focus on sail names—focus on what you want to do with the sail. It’s a tool. Sailmakers can build a fantastic sail for any need, but they need to know what a customer needs.”

David Schmidt is CW’s electronics editor and frequently writes about sailing gear as well.

The post Off-Wind Sails for Cruising Boats appeared first on Cruising World.

This summer, with the pandemic and social distancing still in mind, taking the family on a Down East cruise to Maine might be just the thing. After all, it’s not only one of the world’s great sailing destinations, but also there are isolated coves, vacant beaches and uninhabited islands where self-isolation is just fine. If you take your own boat, there are ample shore services, yards, marinas and harbor towns in which to haul or moor your vessel between visits. Or you can charter a bareboat or reserve a crewed yacht. Let me provide an overview of what’s entailed in cruising Maine in the second summer of COVID-19.

The coronavirus restrictions remain fluid, and of course you’ll need to investigate the current situation before shoving off. Now, on to the fun stuff.

Sailing to Maine is the easy part.

It’s only 144 nautical miles on a rhumb-line course from the Cape Cod Canal to Monhegan Island. At 6 knots, that’s 24 hours. It’s another 24 miles up through Muscle Ridge Channel to Owls Head Lighthouse—the front door to what I feel is the greatest cruising ground anywhere: Penobscot Bay.

The distance from York Harbor, near the southern border with New Hampshire, all the way to the Canadian border is 200 nautical miles in a straight line…but the Maine coastline is anything but straight. If you add in the shoreline around each of the 4,500 islands—then include the coves, bays, harbors and tidal rivers—Maine has more coastline than the rest of the entire East Coast, more than 5,000 miles. Logic suggests there must be a few places along that stretch where you can find a secluded spot to anchor for a spell.

Maine’s largest bay, Penobscot, is split down the middle by a chain of islands: the Fox Islands to the south, Islesboro to the north, with a dozen small islands in between. There are half a dozen harbor towns, some small fishing villages, and lots of isolated coves in which to anchor. You’ll find uninhabited islands and beaches to explore, mountain trails to hike, waterfront restaurants and seafood shacks, and open-air farmers markets. There’ll be blueberries to pick, corn to shuck, lobsters to boil, and quiet evenings aboard in your own boat.

Nice, right? Now let’s get to the particulars.

The two-week cruise I’ve outlined below will keep you and your crew safe, in your own bubble, on your own boat. Each day includes a few hours of sailing to a new anchorage. Afternoons are for exploring uninhabited islands, secluded coves and a few villages. Evenings, you are alone, anchored in a secluded cove, as the sun drops behind the Camden Hills. There are enough wilderness islands there to fill up a few weeks—if not the entire summer, and many summers to come.

I’ve lived on and cruised along the coast of Maine for 50 years, and my ideal two-week getaway would be a circumnavigation of the Fox Islands. A couple of kayaks and a RIB with at least a 10 to 15 hp outboard are essential for this kind of serious gunkholing. The anchorages I’ve described are no more than a few hours apart, affording the crew some time to test their sailing skills, and the navigator to plot courses to keep everything off the rocks. You may also find your own anchorages. There are untold options galore, so go explore. I won’t mind at all.

Day One: Rockland is a good place to start (and also a good spot to leave your boat between visits). This large commercial port is easy to enter, with ample space for anchoring. There are rental moorings, docks, fuel, four marinas (including a mega-yacht facility), a large chandlery (Hamilton Marine), supermarkets, canvas shop, mechanics and boatyards. Main Street is abuzz with shops, a theater, two art museums, lots of art galleries, and half a dozen restaurants; the four-star Primo eatery is also nearby. Cape Air provides regular service to Boston from the local airport; the Concord bus line stops at the ferry terminal twice each day. US1 passes through town, and rental and loaner cars are available. Box stores are a few miles out of town. It’s almost civilized there.

To kick things off, leave Rockland midmorning and steer northeast for Pulpit Harbor on the northwest corner of North Haven Island. It’s only 10 nautical miles, and with a southerly breeze, you’ll be there by lunch. Leave Pulpit Rock, with an osprey nest atop, to starboard and find a spot to anchor inside. The moorings are all locally owned, so find a spot in midharbor in 25 feet of water to anchor, or in the two coves on the south side.

There’s a public dock farther in for your dinghy. The island’s food store is a half-mile walk south, from the bridge. Take your dinghy farther up into the cove, past the traffic bridge. Farmland, fields of lupine, and cottages covered in roses line the banks and roads. In the summer, the sun sets over the Camden Hills across the bay well after 8 p.m.

Day Two: Two options: north around the top of North Haven, or south. The wind that day will dictate. The northerly route offers up a scattering of islands with four possible anchorages. Hank and Jan Taft have described these in their comprehensive A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast (see “Resources and References,” page 51). The Barred Islands and Butter Island are accessible and a good place for lunch, beachcombing, a hike, or even an overnight stop in settled conditions.

Quick aside on dinghies: Finding a place along these islands to beach a dinghy is one thing; securing said dinghy is another. Pull it up on the beach, and when you get back from your hike, you might find that the tide has floated it off the beach and it’s drifting away, or it’s high and dry, 30 feet from the water’s edge.

There are numerous techniques to solve this problem. The captain can drop off the landing party and return to the yacht for a nap. Go ashore in kayaks; they are easily pulled above the high-tide line and carried back. Or rig a dinghy-retrieval mooring system: Secure a floating buoy to the dinghy anchor line with a shackle. Drop it in deep water. Nose into the beach, off-load, then with a long loop of line rove through a shackle on the anchor float, pull the dinghy back out to where you dropped the anchor. Tie the shore end of the loop to something above high tide. When you get back, just pull your dinghy in to the beach. Make your own, or try West Marine’s Anchor Buddy, a ready-made dinghy mooring system using a long bungee cord that snaps your dinghy back out into deep water.

Days Three and Four: With a fair breeze, steer southeast from Butter Island, down to Oak Hill on the tip of North Haven. Give the hodgepodge of small islands and ledges a wide berth on the way. Mind the current. There are two possible anchorages: Marsh Cove, below the hill on which sits the Watson Estate. No access ashore. Mullen Cove is better. The beach provides access to hiking trails through a town-owned park. Just south is Burnt Island, now a North Haven park, with a walking trail all the way around and a float to which you can tie a dinghy at any state of the tide. Or head for the beach off the northwest tip of Calderwood Island. You can’t go wrong with any of these.

Calderwood is tucked in between Simpson and Babbidge islands on the northeast side of the Fox Island Thoroughfare. Uninhabited and open to the public, it is now owned by Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which keeps the trails open now that the sheep have left. There’s a spruce forest at the southern end where the kids can build fairy houses. Anchor off the beach on the north side where hiking trails begin. Be aware of the rock in the middle of the anchorage. I spent a few hours there once waiting to be floated off. This is a popular anchorage, and if too crowded, there’s another spot to the east, between Calderwood and Babbidge. Two beaches provide access ashore and to the trails. The passage between the two islands is strewn with ledges and rock. When departing, go back around the north side of Babbidge or Calderwood. Calderwood might need two days to fully explore. I’ve spent weeks there photographing.

Nearby are two obvious anchorages for the night: Carver Cove, south of Widow Island, is calm, with views of saltwater farms, fields and forests. To the north, past the Goose Rocks spark plug lighthouse is Kent Cove. There’s no shore access, but if there’s a breeze, there’ll be no mosquitos.

Day Five: You have decisions to make: You could go east to Stonington, the Deer Isle Thoroughfare, and on to the islands farther down the Maine coast. (We say “down” up here in Maine when heading up the coast, as in Down East. The prevailing winds are southwest, meaning you’re mostly sailing “downwind.”)

But for the purposes of this itinerary, that cruise is for another time. So we’ll head west through the Fox Islands Thoroughfare, a narrow body of water separating North Haven from Vinalhaven. It’ll be busy with schooners, fishermen, gleaming classic yachts, and powerboats of all sizes passing through. The shore on the south side has a few summer cottages from the previous century. In the 1800s, Maine was a summer retreat for the wealthy from Boston, Manhattan and Philadelphia. With extended families and servants, they arrived by steamship to “camp out” in rambling cedar-shingled cottages. These “cottages” might look small from offshore, but up close, they are massive mansions with dozens of rooms, rambling porches, and servant’s quarters. They are still there. In recent years, the wealthy have returned to buy up fishermen’s shore frontage to erect even-more-lavish estates, with a jet-powered Hinckley picnic boat tied to the dock.

On the north side of the thoroughfare is the small village of North Haven, established by wealthy New York yachtsmen in the last century. North Haven is a world apart from its neighbor, Vinalhaven. The only grocery store is in the middle of the island, but the village might have places to order lunch, ice cream or dinner. This changes annually. Anchor outside the mooring field and out of the ferry’s approach to its terminal. Dinghy docks line both sides of the ferry terminal. The village has a library, art galleries and a community center with frequent performances, plays, lecturers and concerts. The roads wander inland past Victorian cottages, farms, fields and forests. Eric Hopkins, an island painter with a wide reputation, has a studio and gallery in the village, and there may be others. Seasons change, as do the residents.

Spend the night at anchor, or duck around to Perry Creek, a narrow cove on the south side of the thoroughfare. Ashore is a wilderness park with walking trails. Wander through spruce forests, over ledge outcroppings with views. It’s tight in there, but there are a few moorings that can be used by transients for a donation to the Vinalhaven Land Trust. Or drop the hook at the eastern entrance in 20 feet of water. If that’s too crowded, head farther south into Seal Cove. Watch the chart closely because rocks are about, but you should be able to find a spot with sufficient swing room. Take the dinghy back up to Perry Creek, where there’s access to the trails on the southeast side. Watch for a sign nailed high up on a tree. Set your dinghy moor and climb ashore.

Day Six: Heading west down the thoroughfare, pass Browns Light to port, the Sugar Loaves to starboard. You’re heading to Leadbetter Narrow. Pass north of Dogfish Island. To port is Crockette Cove, where there’s room for a boat or two, but mind the underwater cables. At high tide, you can take the dinghy or kayaks a mile and more up into the cove. There are more anchorages on the other side of Leadbetter Narrow.

Narrow is the operative word. It’s a tight squeeze between Leadbetter Island and the mainland of Vinalhaven. Steer north of the green can that marks a rock in the middle of the gap. The current is swift through there. Pass through, and you are at the head of Hurricane Sound, surrounded by a string of islands to the west and Vinalhaven to the east.

There is a lot to explore there, but first get the boat anchored. There’s a nifty spot to the east of Turnip Island, a small tree-topped isle at the entrance to Long Cove, a milelong fjord carved into the solid granite of Vinalhaven Island. There is an abandoned quarry on the hill that provided building blocks for the post offices in Boston and New York in the 1800s. At that time, more people lived and worked the granite quarries on Vinalheaven than live there now.

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The entrance into Long Cove, to the east of Hall Island, narrows to 200 feet, but once through, the cove opens up into a quiet pond with room for a few boats to anchor. The shoreline is tall, covered in spruce. There are a few floating docks along both sides of the shore. Pathways lead up to large private estates. No access there.

A third of the way in, there’s a ledge barring the way, so take the dinghy and explore. Be back before the tides are low because the bar might be too shallow to navigate.

Day Seven: From your anchorage in or near Long Cove, there are small coves and islands—including Fiddlehead and a spot called the Basin—to explore. Use the kayaks, but someone should be in the RIB as a chase boat. The Basin is a large, almost landlocked body of water that’s worth a whole day fussing around in small boats. The narrow entrance to the Basin provides a reversing-falls effect, so enter at slack tide, or with the RIB. Be warned: The narrows can be a whitewater experience.

Day Eight: There are dozens of small islands to the west, a few with limited anchorages. One is south of the neck between Lawry’s Island and Cedar Island. There’s enough room for one, so leave early enough or give it a pass if someone is there. Farther south in Hurricane Sound are White and Garden islands, with two possible anchorages. Go ashore on the beach and take in beautiful vistas of the Camden Hills, and across to Owls Head.

Day Nine: Sail south to the anchorage and mooring field off the east side of Hurricane Island. In the 1800s, this island was a bustling community working the granite stone quarry, still visible today. In the 1970s and ’80s, it was home to the Outward Bound School. In 2009, the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership took over the site, with science, technology, engineering and mathematics experiential education programs for youths between the ages of 11 and 18. Guest rental moorings might be available, and you are invited to go ashore. Anchoring is possible, but the bottom is rocky, with kelp. There are trails around the island and a center to visit.

You’ve been gone a week now, and you might need a few provisions. There’s a small grocery store nearby in Carvers Harbor. You can get there by going southeast around Herons Neck light or up and around Greens Island, then down the Reach, a narrow, twisty passageway between Vinalhaven and Greens Island leading to Carvers Harbor, the main settlement on the island. Keep an eye on the chart and markers as you go because they can be confusing. You might meet the ferry on its way to or from Rockland.

Just before the ferry terminal, drop the hook off Dodge Point or on the opposite side of the entrance, south of Potato Island. Send in the dinghy to see if there is a rental mooring available. Look for a buoy with a bottle wired atop a stick. It’s for the rental fee. Call the harbor master if necessary (207-756-0209).

Carvers Harbor is one of Maine’s busiest lobster-fishing harbors, landing some 5 million pounds of lobster annually. The harbor is narrow, full of lobster boats, and the shore is lined with floating docks piled high with the traps, wood crates and scales. It’s there where fishermen offload and weigh their haul, and cash out. There’s no room in the harbor to anchor, and the bottom is too hard anyway, so anchor outside.

There’s lots to do ashore, so take the crew to the dinghy dock at the head of the harbor, where you can tie up. Across the street is the Nightingale Restaurant, formerly the Harbor Gawker. There are shops, a grocery store, art galleries, pubs, offices and buildings that date back to when this town was a granite shipping port. The streets lead to lanes, past Victorian homes and farms, summer estates, forests, and abandoned, water-filled quarries. Stay overnight because tomorrow will be a long day.

Day 10: It’s just 4 miles from Carvers Harbor to Brimstone Island, a tall, rugged, uninhabited island on the outer edge of Penobscot Bay. It might as well be on the edge of the world. Anchor off the pebble beach at the northwest corner. This is a day-only anchorage. The bottom is rocky with kelp. Holding ground is better on the south side between Brimstone and Little Brimstone but only in settled weather. Dinghy ashore, but keep an eye on the tide or set a dinghy mooring.

The island beach is famous for its small, round, black basaltic pebbles, polished smooth by 100,000 years of wave and tidal action. The stones arrived there eons ago from far, far to the north, carried by the ice sheet as it moved slowly south. I’ve carried three of these small black stones in my left pocket for years. Wherever I am in the world, I can grab a handful of Maine. Stay clear of the east side of the island because it is a bird nesting area.

By early afternoon it will be time to gather up the crew and return to the boat for lunch and a discussion of what to do with the remaining days of the trip.

Day 11: Six miles north of Brimstone, halfway up the eastern shore of Vinalhaven, is Seal Bay, a nifty piece of water with anchorages, coves and islands. The entrance is between aptly named Bluff Head and Hen Island. The channel is narrow and the current swift, but inside there are five or six individual and secluded anchorages. You’ll be surrounded by a granite and spruce wilderness. The only trail access is through Huber Preserve, south of Burnt Island. With a kayak or the dinghy, you can explore the coves and islands, and watch wildlife, birds, dolphins, foxes, and perhaps see a deer. Next to Seal Bay is Winter Harbor, another narrow cove cut deep into the island. There are three or four spots to anchor, but mind the current and swing room.

Days 12 and 13: It’s time to get back into civilization, and cellphone service. Let’s head to Camden. This is a morning trip from Seal Bay. Head up through the Fox Island Thoroughfare, put the Sugar Loaves to port this time, and turn right at the Fiddler, a granite stone monument at the southern end of a ledge off Stand-In-Point. From there, it’s an 8-mile dash across West Bay to Camden. Watch out for the Graves, a ledge above high tide, marked by a light, a mile and a half southeast from Camden.

Put Curtis Island Lighthouse to port as you enter Camden’s outer harbor. There’s room to anchor inside to the right, east of the mooring field, west of the ledges. The Yacht Club, Wayfarer Marine and the town have rental moorings. Call ahead. The inner-harbor floats are filled with local craft, but Wayfarer and the town docks might have space to come alongside. Wayfarer has a fuel dock and pump-out station. The town has a pump-out boat that will come to you in the outer harbor. Call ahead.

Ashore, Camden is as charming a town as you could imagine. It was the film set for the 1950s movie Peyton Place. There are shops, a library, provisioning, laundry, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays, there’s an open-air farmers market. There are hardware stores, T-shirt shops, and art and home-furnishing galleries. Camden has also become Maine’s foodie town, with more a dozen restaurants, featuring Italian, Asian and French cuisine, and good-old New England seafood. There’s waterfront dining, and Harbor Dogs—a fish-taco truck—is right there on the public landing.

There’s a large, freshwater lake nearby and half a dozen hiking trails that wander through the Camden Hills. A half-hour climb to the top of Mount Battie, which oversees Camden, provides stunning vistas of Penobscot Bay. You can see the islands you just explored, with views all the way to Blue Hill, Cadillac Mountain and Isle au Haut. The trail begins just a 10-minute walk from the dinghy docks.

In non-COVID times, there are concerts and plays, as well as performances on the library lawn and at the Opera House. Wandering the streets or hiking over the hill to Rockport will get you back in shape from two weeks of cruising. It’s so nice there, you could move in. I did.

Day 14: Last day—it’s back to Rockland, 7 miles south of Camden. The crew can pack up, unload and head back to civilization. The boat can get parked on a mooring until the next adventure, or take you south. From there, it’s roughly 36 hours to Newport, Rhode Island. Or you can haul the boat for the winter, with plans to sail farther east next summer.

You can also think about future trips.

Northern Penobscot Bay needs a visit, including Warren Island, a state park next to Islesboro Island with hiking trails. Then into East Bay to visit Castine Harbor, Smith Cove and a dinghy trip up the Bagaduce. There are small coves and anchorages such as Bucks Harbor, along Eggemoggin Reach. Swans Island is next, then up into Blue Hill Bay, over to Mount Desert Island and Somes Sound. That’s another two-week jaunt before returning west, back through the Deer Isle Thoroughfare, with stops in Stonington and the islands of Merchants Row. Then a day’s sail back to Rockland.

The opportunities are endless. This could become a habit.

The Challenges of Cruising Maine

here are a few navigational challenges I should mention, such as fog, 10-foot tides, 4-knot currents, anchoring among rocks and ledges, and lobster buoys and trap lines. I didn’t say cruising the coast of Maine was going to easy, but it can be an exciting challenge for any cruising sailor. I can think if no better place to test your skills while exploring one of the world’s great archipelagos.

Fog: There are three degrees of fog, I’m told. With “normal” fog, you can see a quarter-mile ahead. “Thick” fog is when you can see only a few boat lengths ahead. With “dungeons” of fog, it’s so thick, you can’t see the bow of your own boat. In the old days, Mainers practiced potato navigation: a kid on the bow with a bag of spuds tossing them ahead. A splash? Keep going. A thud? Tacking!

Today, AIS, radar, GPS, chart plotters and VHF have reduced the anxiety, but many lobster boats fail to use AIS, radar doesn’t see trap buoys and lines, and the currents haven’t changed. Someone on deck needs to keep visual watch while you are below glued to the radar screen. The sounder doesn’t help much in fog. Your keel could be in 30 feet of water with the bowsprit tangled up in the spruce trees ashore. The most valuable piece of equipment to have on board in fog is the anchor. Fog will burn off by late morning—if it’s going to. In June and early July, fog is more common, less so later in the summer. September is the best month in Maine.

Tides and current: Tides in Maine run 8 to 10 feet. That’s a lot of water to push up into the bays and drain back out, twice each day, at six- and 12-hour intervals. The tidal current running in and out of bays and coves can reach 4 knots. An hour’s run across the bay can set you off a mile on arrival, unless you compensate. With all those ledges and rocks lurking about, even a few feet off course can put you aground.

Anchoring means deploying sufficient scope to cope with the tidal range. Then there’s the set of the current: When the tidal current switches direction, where will your boat sit? Best to have a few anchors and extra line aboard to deploy in a Bahamian moor, to anchor astern or to run a stern line ashore.

Lobster buoys and trap lines: Lobster buoys are as much a hazard as fog and currents. Maine is prime lobster-fishing territory, with buoys so thick in places, you could walk to shore on them. The colorful buoys are not the problem—it’s the line that floats just below the surface from the buoy to the toggle. The toggle is a small float that keeps the trap line off the bottom, but when the tide is low, the toggle might reach the surface, and the 20 feet of line to the colorful buoy floats just below the surface.

Steer around the top of a buoy, not the bottom end where the line exits the base of the buoy. Do not go between the buoy and the toggle; you’re liable to find that you’ve snagged the line and fouled the prop. This might require a dive overboard into frigid water to cut the line free. And in most places, the sea rarely gets above 60 degrees, even in the middle of the summer. Lobster boats have a wire cage around the prop to keep out their trap lines. You can have a line cutter bolted to your prop shaft to cut the line, but then the fisherman has lost his trap. Radar doesn’t see the buoys, and you can’t see them at night. Keep a constant watch when navigating in Maine, and steer clear of buoys and trap lines. Even sailboats with their prop locked can snag a line on the blades or the rudder. Divers can be hired in many harbors to free a fouled prop. Still, lobster buoys are helpful in seeing which way the current flows and at what speed.

Prevailing winds: A midsummer day in Maine is apt to be under a high-pressure system, resulting in sunny, fog-free days but little wind, especially in the mornings. As the land heats up, a southwest sea breeze is likely to fill in after lunch, and might get up to 20 knots by late afternoon, just before dying off before dark. Gales are infrequent in the summer, and when a low comes up the East Coast, it tends to pass by just offshore to the east, producing northeasterly winds. Most Maine bays and harbors are open to the southwest, providing a lee to those winds. Hurricanes are infrequent.

David H. Lyman is journalist, author, photographer and sailor. He sailed into Maine in the early 1970s and started a summer photography school, the Maine Photographic Workshops, which continues today as Maine Media Workshops (mainemedia.edu). He has been owned by four different sailboats, from an Alden 34-footer to a Bowman 57. He has sailed the entire East Coast, and made more than 24 offshore voyages between Maine and the Caribbean. His first memoir about his hitch as a Navy photojournalist with a Seabee outfit in Vietnam in 1967 was published in 2019. He lives and writes in Camden, Maine.

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If you’ve been on the hunt for a marine insurance policy over the past year or so, you likely already know that it’s a challenging market. Sailing and cruising groups on social media and web forums are filled with frequent posts about people struggling to find coverage, keep coverage, or just afford it. It’s a problem that seems to be affecting beginning cruisers and circumnavigators, with old boats or new. So what gives? How did the situation get to this point, and what can sailors do to protect their dream?

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I’ve never seen a market this hard,” said Morgan Wells, a yacht-insurance specialist with Jack Martin and Associates. “There’s been a great reduction in the number of insurance companies writing boat and yacht insurance, and the international-cruiser segment of the market has been more adversely affected, particularly for boats anywhere on the US East Coast, and even more so for people looking for new policies for Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.”

Indeed, cruisers across the spectrum of locations and sea time are feeling the pinch. When looking to renew their current insurance policy last year, circumnavigators Behan and Jamie Gifford, who live aboard their 1982 Stevens 47, were met with a surprise. “When it came time to renew, we were quoted more than double our cost for insurance the year we planned to cross the Indian Ocean, 2015—an arguably very risky navigational area—and we now had the added requirement of a third adult for passages,” Behan said. “In the end, we didn’t renew at all, and currently have liability-only insurance. I’m not pleased about that and hope to get back to full hull insurance when the market comes around.”

Owners of newer boats don’t seem to be having an easier time either. “We bought a 2015 Jeanneau 64 in October 2020,” Dan Stotesbery said. “I have a lot of experience sailing, but none of it was logged, so I don’t have any credentials like a Yachtmaster or anything like that. My wife has even less experience. When we heard it was tough getting insurance, we were definitely worried about getting covered. Complicating the situation was that the boat was in Turkey, and I needed to sail it across the Atlantic to get to my wife and family. We reached out to the company that insured our house to see if they could find us a company that would insure the boat and especially the crossing. We received two quotes back and ended up getting insured with Concept Special Risk. They did put in a lot of stipulations, like we needed to have a captain for the crossing and at least two other people with bluewater experience, a list of countries we aren’t allowed to go in, and a 250-miles-from-land limit once the crossing was complete. It was extremely expensive, and there was an additional cost for the crossing.”

Changing Marketplace

So how did it get to this point? “We need to put it into context of a market that was very soft for many years—underwriters were looking for business,” Wells said. “There was a bit of a hiccup in the mid-2000s with some fairly significant storms, but generally it didn’t cause much change, and underwriters were still looking for ways to say yes. But then in 2017 came hurricanes Irma and Maria, then Dorian in 2019—these were extremely large losses to very large fleets of boats. Since 2017 we have seen the market flip from a soft to a hard market, and in fact, a very hard market by early 2021. We really have a big change now with fewer insurance companies and greater demand for insurance. And the pricing is much higher than it was a year ago. Irma and Maria showed the vulnerability in the market.”

Laura Lindstrom-Croop from Legacy Underwriters, noted that “many insurance companies left the Caribbean market in 2019-20. Pantaenius America was the first to leave,” she said. “The agency that I work with had YachtInsure, which lost its underwriter, Aspen Insurance, last summer. They have recently secured a new carrier, Clear Blue Specialty, that is writing new business but has new guidelines. Our second underwriter, Concept Special Risk, lost its company, Great Lakes Insurance, on January 1, 2021, but now it has a new company, Clear Springs Property and Casualty, that is writing new business with new guidelines.”

Suzanne Redden, mid-Atlantic branch manager for Gowrie Group, has had a similar experience. “Traditionally, when we would have someone coming in with a sailboat who wanted to do extended cruising, we had five, six, seven…at least that many companies who were willing to write that policy,” Redden said. “So there really wasn’t too much of an issue finding coverage for the customer, depending on where they wanted to go and their level of experience, that sort of thing. What we’re really struggling with now—and it’s a struggle—is that so many carriers have basically pulled out that our options are very limited as far as who is willing to write Caribbean navigation and worldwide navigation. Our choices are few. And what happens then is, of course, the prices go up because the company’s philosophy is ‘no one else wants to write here; we’ll write here, but this is what our actuaries tell us it’s going to cost to allow us to do that.’ So that’s why the rates have gone up.”

The cost to insure his Jeanneau 64 was definitely a bit of a surprise to Stotesbery: “The policy had to be paid upfront. That was the biggest surprise to us because we are used to paying car insurance monthly. This is also a hurdle that I think can be hard to overcome for some people. Not a lot of people have that kind of cash on hand to just fork out.”

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Underwriting Difficulties

Along with higher costs, Redden also pointed out that the underwriting has changed a lot too. “Where before you would have had somebody who maybe had just a year or two experience, or they had just bought a boat, more companies would have been willing to let them take a trip. They look at it much more closely now when a new submission comes in. That’s made it more difficult, I think, for that sort of person to find insurance.”

According to Emma Whittemore, a service manager for BoatU.S./Geico Marine Insurance, underwriting has become much more sophisticated. “With the growth of data, insurance companies can really tell what group is a high-risk group,” she said. “We’re monitoring a lot more to make sure that the right people are behind the helm on these big, 35- to 60-foot boats. We want to make sure it’s not these customers’ first boat, and that they really know what they’re doing. Underwriting is fluid, but in general we always like to look at the ownership experience.”

This has been a particularly vexing problem for potential cruisers. Dana Fairchild and her husband live in Minnesota and have been planning for their cruising dream for the past few years. The couple has taken ASA sailing courses and chartered on Lake Superior but never owned their own sailboat. “Our cruising plans are to buy a boat large enough to live aboard; a 35- to 38-foot Island Packet is what we have in mind,” she said. “Due to the price point of Island Packets, we are looking at models from the 1990s. We plan to keep it on the East Coast of the US—somewhere above the hurricane zone during hurricane season, and probably down to Florida in the winter—for the first six months to a year while getting comfortable with the boat and used to the liveaboard lifestyle. After that we want to head to the Bahamas for a while, and eventually work our way down to the rest of the Caribbean and stay there.”

While the couple hasn’t purchased a boat yet, they’d heard the news that insurance might be difficult to find, so they reached out to a few companies to explain their plans and intended boat. “The short answer to what we’ve been hearing from insurance agencies is no. The reason for this is predominantly that we have not owned our own boat that is of comparable size, or at least within 10 feet. They don’t take into consideration that we have sailed and chartered boats of the same size, but really only want to see that a boat of comparable size was titled to us for at least two years”

Looking Ahead

So when faced with a denial, a notice of nonrenewal or a steep increase in premiums, what can a cruiser do? Is there coverage available? “What I am seeing, you have more choices if you limit your cruising to the US East Coast down to the Turks and Caicos,” Lindstrom-Croop said. “If you go to the Eastern Caribbean, you have fewer carriers, and some are writing coverage that doesn’t include hurricanes.

“I think cruisers are going to have to be patient and flexible. Also, update your sailing resume so when you shop around, you are giving the company a reason to give you the maximum credit available. Lower rates are probably not going to happen for a couple of years, climate change is weighing heavily on insurers, and the large number of storms recently is worrisome.”

Communication is crucial. Each of the insurance professionals I spoke with made it clear that underwriters are looking much more closely than in years past, and detailed sailing resumes and hurricane plans can help your chances. For newer cruisers, scaled-back sailing plans could help as well because finding coverage for a smaller cruising area will likely be much easier than, say, the entire East Coast and Bahamas. And for older vessels, a survey might be required for renewal.

“Some of the companies have gone to where they won’t write a boat over 40 years old,” Redden said. “Gowrie Group offers the Jackline program, which is a cruising program through Markel Insurance, which is really one of the last US companies still doing extended cruising, but they’re very restrictive on what they will write and how they’ll write it. But they will take older boats. Experience is the key.”

“It is harder to insure an older boat, but it can be done,” Lindstrom-Croop said. “There are just fewer markets. An older boat needs to be maintained well and have a current survey, within three years. I like to submit the survey along with the application when marketing so the underwriters can see the boat.”

For the time being, it seems that cruisers, such as Stotesbery, who currently have—albeit expensive—coverage are doing what they can to keep it. “We have had several major repairs to do on the boat, which we probably could have put in a claim for, but we are too worried about getting dropped or not covered next year, so we just paid for the repairs,” he said. “So it’s sort of a Catch-22. Unless we have a catastrophic type of claim, we don’t want to make one, but we still pay the high premium without really being able to take advantage of the protection. We will definitely start shopping again once we get closer to our renewal date. Unfortunately, there just aren’t a lot of insurance choices out there, so it is quite limiting, and they hold all of the cards.”

Others, such as the Giffords, are going without full coverage for now, while potential cruisers, such as the Fairchilds, might need to put their dream on hold. “As for how this is impacting our plans, it has really made us start to second-guess that this is even a possible plan. We have become discouraged, and this has really put a halt to most of the steps we were taking,” Fairchild said.

Wells, Redden and Lindstrom-Croop are optimistic for things improving in the insurance market over the next year or so, but all emphasize having patience. “We’re hoping that things will change for the better,” Redden said. “We’ve got some companies now that pulled out that are coming back, but it’s a very slow process.”

Jennifer Brett is CW’s senior editor.

The post How to Navigate Marine Insurance in 2021 appeared first on Cruising World.

If you harbor dreams of Patagonian sailing, backcountry skiing, or Antarctic peak bagging, you’re likely familiar with Skip Novak’s Pelagic Expeditions (pelagic.co.uk), which offers high-latitude sailing adventures to charter guests. Novak is a veteran of four Whitbread Round the World Races and has spent the past several decades sailing high latitudes and taking charter guests to some of Earth’s wildest places aboard his Pelagic (54 feet, built in 1987) and Pelagic Australis (74 feet, built in 2003). He was recently involved with the build of Vinson of Antarctica, a Tony Castro-designed Pelagic 77 that was built out of bare aluminum by KM Yachtbuilders, in Makkum, the Netherlands, for owner Nicolás Ibáñez Scott, a Chilean entrepreneur and adventurer. The high-latitude adventure-sailing yacht was launched in February and is named after Mount Vinson (16,050 feet), which is Antarctica’s highest peak.

All told, Vinson of Antarctica measures 77 feet, 2 inches LOA, and carries a beam of 20 feet, 9 inches. It has a displacement of 116,000 pounds.

Vinson of Antarctica employs a schooner sail plan that’s supported by twin carbon-fiber spars that were built by Axxon Composites. This sail plan was specifically designed to evenly distribute working loads so that all running rigging can be hand-controlled via winches. The boat carries a fixed keel box and a centerboard that allows the draft to vary from 7 feet to just over 14 feet, as well as twin rudders. Auxiliary propulsion is tackled by dual 150 hp Yanmar engines, and additional power can be created by the boat’s 9-kilowatt Cummins generator. An aft-mounted gantry supports an expedition-grade RIB, and an additional RIB can be secured to the deck.

The yacht’s accommodations plan includes six staterooms and two heads that can accommodate eight charter guests and three crew. Belowdecks furniture is made from lightweight, strong and sustainable bamboo, however, the vast majority of the boat is built from bare aluminum that doesn’t involve paint or fillers.

Read More: Underway

“It has to be a warm, cozy, comfortable boat but generally simple systems, very strongly built and robust, and bare aluminum,” said Novak in a video interview on Pelagic Yachts’ website. “I think the deck layout is superb…. It’s sort of the same concept as my 74-footer, and it works extremely well. It’s an extremely safe place to sail the boat, [with a] center cockpit and also a forward cockpit for reefing.”

As with Pelagic Australis, Vinson of Antarctica was designed around simple systems that can be crew-maintained in remote areas.

Work began on the schooner in summer 2019. Impressively, the pandemic slowed down its build schedule by only two months. The crew, which is led by skipper Kenneth Perdigon, plans to conduct sea trials on the nearby North Sea before a shakedown cruise to Norway this summer. Then Perdigon and company will sail her to Puerto Williams, Chile, possibly via the Northwest Passage, where she will begin her life as a high-latitude expedition vessel for private and charter trips, and as a platform for helping to train Chile’s next generation of sailors.

The post 77-Footer Joins Pelagic Expedition’s Fleet appeared first on Cruising World.

I don’t remember much about our sail down the Baja coast in February 2009. This seems strange because it was five days and nights at sea, our first real passage aboard Kate, our Newport 41. The ship’s log says that we had a fresh 25- to 30-knot breeze for most of the trip. Thankfully, it was a downhill run, and the motion of the boat was comfortable but lively. My husband, Steve, who had much more experience than me, called it a sleigh ride. I thought it felt more like a rickety roller coaster.

The days passed uneventfully, but my solo midnight watches were haunted by stories from my childhood. I saw sea monsters in the green phosphorescence of the large waves that periodically broke close enough to where I sat that I got sprayed with salty monster spit. I heard voices in the cockpit drains, whispering to me the secrets of sailors who had been lost at sea. I sat for hours with my arms wrapped around a winch and my fingers fondling the catch on my safety tether.

I was overcome by everything. By the enormity of the ocean, by the fragility of our boat, by our crazy plan to sail across it. By the beauty of the night sky, by exhaustion, by excitement, by fear. And yet, when we threw down the anchor at 0400 in Cabo San Lucas, at the very southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, I wasn’t ready to stop. Despite the anxiety I experienced while underway, being at sea out of sight of land made me feel full and connected.

Read More: from Heather Francis

Of course, I would spend many more nights on watch before I could put that feeling of wholeness into words. Nights that made us realize we were no longer looking for a home port because we were already home, no matter where we were. Nights that made the decision to turn our 18-month hiatus into a 12-year-and-still-counting way of life an easy one to make. Or perhaps it was the occasional nights spent ashore that made me realize how very unmoored I felt when not on the water.

This past year has been especially difficult. Due to travel restrictions, I’ve been separated not only from the ocean but also my partner. With my feet on solid ground for the past several months, I now feel as though I am completely adrift.

But, like any good sailor, I know this storm will pass. Experience reminds me that soon I will be sailing in the right direction once again.

The post Overcoming the Fear of Sailing at Night appeared first on Cruising World.

Departure Day: As the plane lifted off the runway, I muttered my final goodbyes out the window. My parents had purchased an Island Packet 445 10 months prior, and the day to board this boat had finally come. I was 11 years old and knew absolutely nothing about this cruising lifestyle my father had been speaking so highly of for the previous five years. I wasn’t on that plane by choice, but rather bribed on with the promise of a trip to Disneyland; the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to leave my home.

Because I didn’t have any say in this big life change, I did anything possible to avoid moving onto the boat. I didn’t help pack the house. I made my homeschooling exceedingly difficult for my mother. I filled my younger brother with lies and tales of how he wouldn’t get to bring his stuffed animals onto the boat, how we would die, and how we would run out of money and food; my brother ate up all of this with a big spoon. I am told the excuses I constantly presented to my parents became increasingly hysterical as we came closer to the departure date.

Despite my best attempts, we were on a San Francisco-bound plane that September morning. My father was excited, my mother nervous, my brother impartial, and I sullen. I was not at all eager about this change in my lifestyle. My attempts to wreck the trip had failed. I had finally accepted defeat after I sat down on the plane, and I, to put it simply, was an undesirable child for the next week (maybe a year, according to some).

The Adjustment Period

The first three months on the boat had not been very easy. What my dad called an adjustment period, I called a nightmare. My “adjustment” to a homeschooling program had not been going well. In fact, my school days started with endless yelling and ended with streams of tears; I still hadn’t got the hang of working so independently. To make matters worse, my most dreaded fear was coming true: We had not met any other boats with kids, as my father had promised would so quickly happen. In contrast to how my father guaranteed I would have fun, I was having increasingly terrible days. I was always quick to make suggestions to return to Canada, my desire to turn this idea around still strong in my mind.

But, after three months of traveling, we had a lucky break. In La Paz, there was another cruising boat with a 13-year-old boy aboard. At the time, I was quite shy and didn’t want anything to do with him. But my parents were determined to make me a friend, and two weeks later, Glen and I could be seen endlessly boogie boarding the crashing waves to the beach. As I began to enjoy myself more and more, many other things happened. A big one is that the amount of time I spent on my schoolwork shrunk from eight hours to four, and the tears I had so endlessly shed began to make fewer appearances. All I wanted to do was play on the beach.

After meeting Glen, cruising for me began to get better and better. Kids having other kids to do kid stuff with is really important, and for some reason, we did not meet any other boats with kids for a long time. I began to get up early and finish my schoolwork so I had the rest of the day to myself. This system was working out great for me; I was having to complete only a couple of hours of schoolwork a day, and then the rest of the day was mine. At some point during these months, I must have decided to give this cruising idea a chance. I tried to withhold my suggestions to return to Canada and kept my negative comments to myself. I tried to ignore the negatives and focus on the positives, and after a while, I permanently ignored any negatives and enjoyed all of the positives. Instead of refusing the idea of living on a boat, I refused the idea of moving onto land.

Six Months Later

The day I shot my first fish was the day I began to consider myself a true cruising kid. (You know the type: long sun-bleached hair, ragged clothes, skinny-looking.) Why? We had met a new boat with kids on board, just a week after parting ways with Glen and his family. This boat was called Exodus. The father on Exodus, Tim, introduced my father and me to spearfishing. This became the new sport for our little group. Every single day, the kids and the dads piled into a dinghy along with all of our wetsuits, snorkels, fins and spear guns for a day of searching for fish, lobsters, scallops and anything else we guessed to be edible. This new sport took up the majority of our days and was a large part of my life at the time. That activity, in a way, represented how I was growing up. I was learning new skills and learning how to work independently, as well as part of a team. I was growing up in a way most kids don’t; I had adults around who helped me succeed and gave me support whenever I needed it, always doing their best to guide me in the right direction.

Read More: Point of View

One Year Later

Leaving from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, we arrived in the Marquesas after a 23-day Pacific Puddle Jump crossing. What an experience to be so alone for so long. Well, we did have a radio and SSB email, but it was still a real test to be stuck with the same three people in a small space for over three weeks.

We continued touring through the South Pacific, soaking up the attractions of French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, American Samoa, Tonga and Fiji. During this time, my independence continued to grow. I often took a five-hour watch during the dark hours of long passages. This was quite a bit of responsibility to hand over to a 13-year-old, especially considering I was in charge of reefing and adjusting sails as the conditions changed, as well as dodging squalls using the radar, and keeping an eye and ear out for any problems. I woke up my father only when a ship was nearby and I wasn’t sure of its intentions. Almost everybody in the cruising community treated me as an adult while still understanding I was a child, thereby giving me the flexibility to make childish mistakes.

As of this writing, my family has now been aboard for three years. We have just left French Polynesia, and I am still enjoying this lifestyle we have embarked on. We have plans to return to Canada in 12 months and, similar to how I opposed moving onto the boat, I am now completely opposed to moving off it. I have so much fun and learn so many things on this boat that I can’t imagine ever returning “home”—a place I hardly even remember, where people are so different than the cruisers and the locals I have mingled with since.

Kyle Danielwicz and his family are back in Canada after cruising the Pacific aboard Lady Carolina, an Island Packet 445, for four years.

The post How a Young Sailor Learned to Love the Cruising Life appeared first on Cruising World.

Sailors are forever watching out for promising new gear while also keeping a weather eye on risky leaps from technology that’s long been settled. During Cruising World’s 2021 Boat of the Year roadshow this past fall, we judges saw a couple of new proprietary systems that test that tension and promise new ways of using our boats, one of which comes from Seldén.

We were sailing the new Island Packet 439 off St. Petersburg, Florida, when we first set eyes and hands on its Synchronized Main Furling system. (For a review of the IP 439, see page 52.) This system is actually two separate products—each a stand-alone device worthy of its own attention—joined by one electronic brain. The first is an in-mast furling motor that Seldén’s designers created for either new mast installations or for retrofits of existing Seldén manual-furling mainsails. Check out the video “How to Upgrade a Furling Mast to Electric Drive” at the Seldén website (seldenmast.com) to see a retrofit in progress and determine whether your rig qualifies.

The other new product from Seldén is arguably more exciting and certainly more applicable to a wider population of boats. The E40i electric winch is a powered winch that incorporates the electric motor inside the winch drum. That means no motor belowdecks, no drive shaft passing through the deck, and none of the usual noise, space, and joinerwork problems those motors introduce in the installation.

Both the in-mast furling motor and the E40i winch are built around brushless electric motors that run at 42 volts. Why 42 volts? The “power formula” tells us that power (watts) equals electrical potential (volts) times electrical current (amps). For a given wattage, as volts go up, amps go down proportionally. The size of electric motors and the wiring to supply them are determined by their operating amperage. Stepping up the voltage by a factor of 3.5 in a 12-volt system means that the amperage goes down by the same factor—all of which allows for a powerful motor that’s small enough to fit inside the winch drum, and wire conductors of just 10-gauge AWG to power it.

And why didn’t Seldén go with a voltage that’s higher still? The American Boat and Yacht Council has long deemed direct-current voltage up to 50 volts “safe,” as in nonlethal (ABYC recently revised that safe limit to 60 volts DC). Seldén designed its system at 42 volts to stay well inside that safe threshold, even in the peaks.

Read More: Hands-On Sailor

The electronic brains behind both the furling motor and the winch are two separate components: a power-supply unit and a motor-control unit. Each about the size of a car stereo, these are installed belowdecks, typically under a berth or settee. The PSU takes in voltage from your boat’s house battery bank at either 12 or 24 volts, then converts it to 42 volts. The small 10-gauge wire runs from this PSU through the deck to the winch or furler; you’ll need larger-gauge wire from your house battery to the PSU. The MCU uses a proprietary SEL-Bus protocol that communicates through standard NMEA 2000 cable to deliver commands among switches, other Seldén components, and the winch or furler motor. A single PSU can supply multiple winches or furlers on a boat, but each individual winch or furler gets its own MCU. A boat that has a Furlex electric headsail furler, an in-mast furling motor and an E40i winch would have three MCUs but just one PSU.

The Seldén Synchronized Main Furling system, or SMF, comes into play on any boat with both the in-mast furling motor and the E40i winch installed. With the mainsail’s outhaul loaded on the E40i winch, the helmsperson simply pushes the furler’s “mainsail out” button. Four brief beeps sound in the winch to alert any inattentive crew that the winch is about to go to work. Then the E40i and the in-mast furler work together until the mainsail is drawn all the way out. Initially, the furler automatically tensions the mainsail on the furling drum, then starts rolling it out. When the main is out, the furler stops. If the MCU senses a load greater than 400 pounds, it stops both the winch and the furler automatically—long before damaging any sails or equipment. To roll the mainsail in—or reef it—you simply take the outhaul out of the teeth of the E40i winch and push the furler’s “mainsail in” button.

We appreciated the seamanlike redundancy that was built into this system. Seldén provides simple mechanical solutions for any failure in the electrical components. The in-mast furling motor comes with a clutch that can be disengaged easily; a winch handle in the furler’s line driver provides ample mechanical advantage to roll in the mainsail. Same goes for the Furlex headsail furler. The E40i does not accept a winch handle for manual operation. In the event of an electrical failure of that winch, Seldén recommends turning the line once around the E40i and running the tail to a nearby manual winch.

My partner and I aim to add a single E40i winch to the cabin top of our Passport 40 as part of our ongoing refit. We’d always wanted one powered winch in the cockpit but never wanted to add a noisy motor into the sleeping cabin below, one that would interrupt the cabin’s only bit of standing headroom.

Problem solved.

Veteran sailing writer Tim Murphy once again was an invaluable member of the judging panel for the 2021 Boat of the Year contest.

The post Seldén’s New E40i Electric Winch appeared first on Cruising World.