A wealthy Dutch doctor asked me a few years back, “Can I retire and cruise on 20 grand a year?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.

I was confident that I was correct because my wife, Carolyn, and I were cruising on considerably less at the time. But then I added this sobering kicker: “The trick isn’t to cruise into the sunset on a modest amount of money; the trick is to maintain your vessel to your personal standards as you do so.”

Ah, there’s the rub!

No one has ever starved while circumnavigating, yet many an extended cruise has come to grief on empty coffers.

Let’s take the Dutch doc as an example. He not only owned an expensive German car, he also had a full-time chauffeur to drive it between five-star eateries in Amsterdam. His wife wore Jimmy Choo heels and sported a Rolex big enough to require its own PFD. Could they live and cruise on 20 grand a year? Sure! Were they going to? Not likely.

The bottom line on offshore cruising budgets: Sailors usually spend what they can comfortably afford to, often citing the familiar refrain of “You only go around once!” Maximizing your fun is human nature, as it should be.

One thing that should be taken into account when voyage planning is that people are vastly different. Couples are different, families are different, and crews are different. And a long-term cruising budget and financial plan should embrace these enriching differences, not deny them. Example: The moment we reach a port Carolyn begins planning our shore trips, both near and far. While I love to check out the local museums and historical sites, I’m often not as keen to hop on a plane, train, or rent an expensive car to do so. Nonetheless, we’re a team, and she goes through more gales at sea than she’d like. So I tag along on more historical walking tours than I’d prefer. We’re different, and both of us need different payoffs to fully enjoy our cruising lives.

Food ashore is another variable factor. The chances of starving to death while cruising developing countries populated by folks earning the equivalent of $2 a day are nil if you eat what the locals eat. Often the regional food of Oceanis is plentiful, delicious and nutritious. However, if you sail to Madagascar and want to eat off the Stateside menu at a fancy hotel, well, it is going to cost you a pretty penny to consume imported foodstuffs.

Which takes us back to my opening hedge about maintaining your sailboat to “your personal standards.” Ashore, our Dutch doc had his chauffeur wash his car once a day, and he had it professionally detailed every month or so. It sparkled, and the good doc really appreciated that. He felt his pristine auto was, quite naturally, an extension of his personality, and that it indicated his personal and professional success.

When he moved aboard, he transferred this concept to his vessel. The result had maintenance costs that were four to five times higher than the sea gypsy anchored next to him.

Interestingly, he told me a decade later, his glorious yacht didn’t impress the people he wanted to impress. Oh, sure, if he tied stern to at Portofino in the Med amid the mega power yachts with their toy boxes open (huge doors engineered specifically to show off the owner’s glittering leisure possessions for the edification of strolling dock gawkers), his new sailboat attracted plenty of admiring landlubbers. But the folks who the good doctor now wanted to impress were the offshore sailors who regularly transited oceans. And they didn’t give his vessel a second glance. Why? Because they were interested in practical globe-trotting boats, not ostentatious displays of wealth.

I, for one, have never been impressed by owners of yachts who pay others to bring them to Haiti and then tie stern to in Port-au-Prince to watch the locals die of dysentery. To each his own, of course.

Let’s come at this from a different angle though. Race boats have to be fast because they have an obvious yardstick with which to measure their split-second success. Race boats can’t just look fast; they have to actually be fast.

Cruising vessels are more diverse in aim and application. There are no easily defined criteria. During my last boat show, I stepped aboard a half-million-dollar “offshore world voyager.” While talking with the broker, I leaned down to open a galley drawer to see how far back it went (to judge wasted interior space), and the entire front of the wobbly drawer came off in my hand. It was made of quarter-inch door-skin Meranti plywood, stapled into soft pine with too-short staples.

Yikes!

But, on the other hand, she gleamed! And had a generator, air conditioner, electric heads, Bose cockpit speakers, and a huge OLED screen mounted on the main bulkhead in case the cruisers buying the boat were feeling adventurous enough to watch old reruns of Sea Hunt on YouTube.

My current vessel, the 40-year-old, 43-foot Wauquiez Amphitrite ketch Ganesh, cost us $56,000 and a year of sweat equity. Am I saying that she’s currently more seaworthy than some of the new boats being sold today?

That’s exactly what I’m saying.

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

Here’s my viewpoint: Harbors are filled with failed fancy-looking yachts that don’t go anywhere, haven’t gone anywhere, and may never go anywhere. At the same time, right now there are dozens of happy circumnavigators aboard $20,000 to $50,000 craft in Mexico, Tahiti, the Caribbean, New Zealand, Tonga, Thailand and Madagascar who have calluses on their hands and epoxy on their sailing shorts.

“How is this possible?” you ask.

Most successful sea gypsies on limited funds have learned how to prioritize their spending. It’s that simple. Why spend money when it buys only paltry convenience? Instead, they focus their finite freedom chips on strength and safety issues—and occasionally allow marine cosmetics to briefly suffer if need be. I, for instance, don’t allow my sailboat to look like a garbage scow. It just appears to be what it is: a seaworthy vessel with a low-income skipper who can’t afford frills (let alone extravagances) because he sails more than he earns.

We haul out only once every two years, and we do all our own work. Is grinding fiberglass and inhaling antifouling fumes fun? Not really. But being able to endlessly cruise internationally is, and this is the only way we can afford to do so on my modest writing income.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying don’t maintain your vessel; I’m merely indicating that every offshore skipper should consider prioritizing their budget, and the more limited the kitty is, the more important the scrutiny.

Let’s return to the Dutch doc once again. At first, my 40-year-old “dumpster” vessel was far better prepared for offshore sailing than his $800,000 brand-new one was.

Is that my ego talking? No. Did he waste his money on a piece-of-crap boat? No, not at all. In fact, he purchased one of the three yachts I suggested to him.

Then how could this be? Well, quite understandably, Doc had little experience offshore. He simply didn’t know how to prioritize his spending, even though he had plenty of money.

For instance, our Ganesh has over 1,000 pounds of safety equipment aboard. We have a storm trysail on a dedicated track that has its own halyard. Ditto, a storm staysail. Both our main and mizzen sails have three sets of reef points. We have running backstays on both masts that we can set up in extreme weather. We have an inspected four-man life raft ever ready to tip over the side, but we also have a pristine six-man German raft below that is totally out of the weather.

Overkill?

Precisely!

Aboard Ganesh, are our three main cameras and 14 hard drives kept in humidity-controlled environments? They have to be or they wouldn’t work after a year or two. Do we carry four anchors, two of which are oversize? Yes. Lofrans windlass? Check. An all-chain rode and spare nylon rodes? Of course.

We have three electric bilge pumps, a bilge alarm, and a manual pump that can be operated from the cockpit. But we also have a large, portable Edson manual pump on board as well. And while this pump has never been used in anger aboard Ganesh, it has saved many another sinking vessel.

Does our cockpit have surround sound, which the doc’s boat has? Occasionally, especially when we invite other guitar pickers aboard for world-music acoustical jams in, say, Borneo.

Lots of modern boats have no SSB radio. We have two, one that we use primarily on the marine bands (an Icom IC-M710) and the other, an Icom IC-706MKIIG, which we use for our ham contacts. (I’m W2FAT and Carolyn is NP2MU.) And I should mention that some well-intentioned publication gave us a satellite phone, which we appreciated—at least, at first. But then, in midocean, an angry editor called us and started yelling at me. What the heck? After hanging up, I thought about invasive technology and how to harness it and not have it harness us. Why have a device aboard that allows a frustrated dirt dweller to rattle my ocean-blissed brain? That unit made a very satisfying splash 1,000 nautical miles southeast of St. Helena.

There’s something to be said for poverty. All of our winches on Ganesh are manual, and only one is self-tailing. These days, we both spend about four hours in the water per month scraping our bottom and prop of fouling. Each evening, we hand-over-hand hoist our dinghy up on davits. Ashore, we walk or ride our bikes; we almost never rent a car.

All this just because we’re cheap? No, such daily physical activity keeps us both spry and sensuous as well. Just ask the surprised mugger I encountered who was half my age. I am a man of peace, but the surprised look on his face as he went down was gratifying.

Yes, health and spending decisions have consequences. We haven’t spent our cruising lives chasing the false god of convenience, which is why I’ve been able to live aboard and sail the oceans for the past 61 of my 69 years. Or, as I smugly tell my lovely wife, Carolyn, “Isn’t it marvelous the level of international poverty I’ve grown you accustomed to?”

While weathering the pandemic in Singapore, the Goodlanders reported many restrictions during Chinese New Year festivities.

The post How to Stay Within Your Cruising Budget appeared first on Cruising World.

As a liveaboard child in the 1950s, I didn’t get ashore often, so I clearly remember the first time I played musical chairs. It was a strange game, but almost everything the dirt dwellers did struck me as strange back then.

For one thing, we didn’t have stand-alone chairs aboard our 52-foot schooner, just places to sit on deck, in the galley, or around the cockpit. But ashore they had these individual chairs, and when the music stopped, you fought for a seat or you lost. I didn’t like the game. It was exclusionary. Somebody always lost. The game eventually turned all but one of us into a loser.

In March 2020, the music stopped globally for us international circumnavigators. Around the globe, each vessel and its crew had to unexpectedly fight for a chair in an anchorage, if you will. And with out a doubt, some spots were far more preferable than others.

Aboard our ketch, Ganesh, my wife, Carolyn, and I, for instance, lucked out because we had planned on being in Singapore in late 2019 to visit our daughter, Roma Orion, and grandkids Sokù Orion and Tessa Maria.

I always say, “I’d rather be lucky than smart,” primarily because I have such little hope of the latter. Nonetheless, we truly were fortunate. At the time when the music stopped and the cruising curtain fell, we were exactly in the right place at the right time: in COVID-free Singapore, with a mooring and a multiyear visa that allowed us full shore privileges.

Not all globe-trotting cruisers were so lucky.

Take Peter and Ginger Niemann as an example. They circumnavigated from 2006 to 2010 aboard a 47-foot “slutter-rigged” boat (a sloop/cutter they’d converted from a schooner) named Marcy. Then they left Seattle again for circle No. 2 on Irene, a stout 52-foot fiberglass C-Flex ketch, in 2016.

Not wanting to follow their former westabout route, they instead banged a right and transited the Northwest Passage west to east. This is a notoriously rough trip, and they experienced hurricane-force winds in exposed anchorages numerous times. And the timing was tricky. The ice-free window was brief between Canada (to starboard) and the ice pack (to port).

Three-quarters of the way along their passage, they almost turned back at the choke point of Bellot Strait, on the edge of the ice pack, where there was a real danger of either being crushed by or entrapped in the frozen brine. But they persevered and eventually made it through without assistance by laboriously hopscotching through the bergs amid the thickening slush—occasionally almost within touching distance of polar bears.

At the time, theirs was only the 30th American vessel (there have been 267 vessels in total) to transit the Northwest passage, according to the local record keepers.

Then, just to make matters even more challenging, the remnants of tropical hurricanes Irma and Maria forced them to Greenland before heading down to the States. When they finally arrived in chilly Maine, they thought they were in the balmy tropics!

Next stop was the Med. But by early 2020, they were under COVID-19 quarantine in Turkey, though eventually they were allowed to clear out, bound for Batam, Indonesia. Officials there assured them repeatedly that they’d be welcome. Two months and a few thousand miles later, however, when they actually arrived at the Nongsa Marina, Batam officials had changed their minds and allowed them only to briefly reprovision.

Nearby Singapore was their only reasonable port of refuge. But while S’pore would allow them and their vessel to clear in, they would not be able to go ashore because of the pandemic.

They had no choice but to roll with the punches.

As I wrote this, Ginger told me, with a twinkle in her bemused eye, “Gee, Fatty, I really didn’t think this second circumnavigation would involve a 235-day stretch of never being allowed ashore in any country!”

Their hope is to sail home to Seattle via Japan sometime in 2021.

And then there’s the growing family aboard Adamastor.

Decades ago, an artist named James Mostyn was skipping around South America, as artists (and descendants of the Duke of Wellington) tend to do. One drunken night, he hooked up with a bunch of sea gypsies partying on a beach in Central America and unexpectedly fell in love with the cruising community, us included.

An architect by trade, James returned to Jolly Ole England to earn some freedom chips. It took him a number of years to find his dream vessel, the 42-foot Bermudian sloop Adamastor, built in South Africa in 1990.

Hooking up with Jess Lloyd, a fellow artist with a delightfully bubbly personality, they left London for a “two-year cruise nine years ago,” as Jess explains it.

Now, as strong as their combined knowledge of design and art might have been, biology and reproduction weren’t their strong points. Or perhaps they were. Regardless, their oldest daughter is Rocket. She’s as smart as a whip and a budding artist as well. She was born in Mexico, along the way toward the South Pacific. Their son, Indigo, was born in New Zealand. He’s 5. And Autumn, their youngest, just turned 2, but swings around the boat like she’s a teenage trapeze artist instead of a graphic one. (The interior of their vessel is like a floating Louvre of children’s paintings.)

They’d been drifting around in Indonesia for three years and were checking out the Komodo dragons when they got a whiff of a rumor about the approaching COVID-19 pandemic. That’s when Indonesia promptly tossed them out as a result of border closures. Or, more accurately, wouldn’t renew their visa.

They too were at loose ends and in dire straits while near the Singapore Strait. They too needed to stash themselves and their boat for a while to figure out their next move.

Now Singapore isn’t exactly yacht-friendly, but it has a huge commercial-freighter industry, and the ships enjoy a type of “seaman visa” that allows transiting crew to enter the country as long as they don’t get off their vessel.

Thus, at the Changi Sailing Club, where we hang out in Southeast Asia and where we are long-term members, these two unrelated cruising vessels suddenly appeared on moorings like ghost ships.

Both crews were legal-eagle with the local laws and, thus, were in strict quarantine for the first 14 days. They couldn’t leave their vessels, and we couldn’t board. However, once we realized their plight, we started spontaneously delivering them shore treats such as fresh juice, fruits and bakery goods.

In order to do this, we’d just holler from the dinghy, wait for the respective crews to gather in sight on their aft deck, then place our unasked-for-but-greatly-appreciated offerings on their bow with our 12-foot-long boat hook. It was not only legal under Singapore law, but completely COVID-safe as well.

Meanwhile Carolyn and I, not realizing their strict visa limitations, waited patiently for the 14-day quarantine to be up so we could show them the town. (We’re head over heels in love with S’pore and enjoy introducing newcomers to its delights.)

The only problem was that even when the time was up, they couldn’t go ashore. Instead, they were confined to their craft for the duration of their visit. Of course, they and their vessels could leave at any time, but instead they chose to stay because they were safe from COVID and, well, no other country would have them.

Strange, right? Limbo? Purgatory?

The crew on Irene have now been here for over two months. Peter and Ginger haven’t been ashore except to deal with officials. In fact, it’s been nearly five months since they’ve wandered down any beach hand in hand. Plus these high-latitude sailors are Arctic-explorer types. Living in the tropics isn’t their cup of tea. The cabin heater on Irene, ordinarily a top priority, is designed to be the social heart of their happy, stout ship. Cheery cabin heaters, though, aren’t much good directly on the equator.

Ordinarily, their idea of a pleasant day in the cockpit involves snow on deck and icebergs over the bows. And yet here they are—grateful for the resting stop but unable to stretch their legs ashore.

But it is the artists James and Jess and their three-member playpen crew that blows Carolyn and me away. I tried to count those kids from my dinghy once—and stopped when I got to 18 and realized I was counting the same three over and over again because they were popping and repopping out of the hatches like jumping beans.

“Yeah,” James admits wryly, “it is kinda strange to be cruising around and always eyeing the next port to pop out a baby in.”

I mean, a 42-foot sailboat must shrink 10 feet per kid, right? And since the entire family is art-struck, each would, of course, like to lead you by the hand to where their pictures are tacked up on the bulkhead.

Glancing through a porthole, I realized I’d forgotten what it is to see a young child without their face illuminated by the glow of a screen. We watch Rocket and Indigo endlessly play on deck, able to amuse each other seemingly forever. (All under the watchful eye of their careful parents, of course.)

So yeah, we do a lot of rail hanging, and we’ve all become great, if socially distant, friends. Since James, Jess, Autumn, Indigo and Rocket number five souls, we can’t visit them because no private vessel can have more than five people aboard.

However, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Last weekend, Carolyn, Roma, and our two grandkids anchored our dinghy not too far off their portside and sort of allowed the kids to co-party within sight of each other. We also dumped off a ton of old books and used toys from Roma’s house, and a good, if weirdly strange, kiddie time was had by all.

The truth is that the cruising community is adapting to new circumstances and travel restrictions in entirely novel and diverse ways. We all love each other in the sea-gypsy sphere, but we have to be more creative during a pandemic.

For the record, no pint-size crew could possibility be more lovable (or creative) than Rocket, Indigo and Autumn. Now if we could only figure out a way to broach the subject of birth control with their parents!

Cap’n Fatty and Carolyn are still having a ball despite being forced to keep a safe distance in Southeast Asia.

The post On Watch: Cruisers Stuck Aboard in Singapore appeared first on Cruising World.

You can’t sail away your whole life!” I’ve heard that more than once, and at age 68—with 60 of those years spent afloat—I’m not sure that it’s true. Is bean counting ashore that much better? That much more fulfilling? Is having a loyalty card at Starbucks truly the end-all of ­workaday ­modernity? One thing that such chiding illustrates is the land-centricity of the speaker. I, however, am a sailor. I’m not sailing away from their concrete jungle; I’m sailing toward my own private Nirvana Bay.

One of the ways my wife, Carolyn, and I do this is by ­shunning ease. I know that sounds like a worse blasphemy than being against generosity! But bear with me and allow me a second to unroll the dusty chart of an alternative view. We recently cruised many of the 17,508 islands of Indonesia for four months with a totally different objective than most: We sought out cruising inconvenience.

Please don’t misunderstand—we have spent years in Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, the Bahamas, Virgin Islands and Lesser Antilles, not to mention the Med, the Pacific and New Zealand. We know what sailing into a crowded bay with all the water toys feels like. We’re just a bit jaded. We need a new thrill. We no longer want to step into a tourist brochure; we want to leap out of one.

Sailors can still do this, perhaps even for another decade or two. But the window of opportunity is closing, perhaps forever.

In Indonesia, we looked for isolated, small island communities without an airport or commercial port. All the better if there was no power or transportation grid. Any section of planet Earth that doesn’t kowtow to the automobile is relaxing. Also, no internet. And the icing on the cake: no harbor whatsoever. How do you safely anchor without a harbor? Easy—you drop the hook in the lee of an isle in the trade winds, with the breeze pushing you offshore. You either remain in place or you get blown out to the safety of the sea. What’s the big deal?

In such a spot, is there a harbormaster who will guarantee you a good night’s sleep? No, thankfully, there is not. By design, more than half the stops we made in Indonesia fit into this sans-harbor, -road or -airport category, with Pulau Matasirih in the Laut Kecil Islands being our favorite.

Actually, this community exceeded our expectations by having only footpaths and no pier, not even a dinghy dock or floating pontoon to facilitate coming ashore. (There was a dock on the other side of the island, many hours away by foot.)

Is such a destination a lot of work? It is. But your sweat buys you something unique: Nobody tries to sell you anything on any level; you’re a human, not a dollar sign.

In today’s commercial world a-go-go, to sail into a community without oversaturated video screens loudly blaring commercials touting the freedom of credit cards—that’s priceless.

Of course, not only did Ganesh, our 43-foot ketch, have to have good ground tackle intelligently deployed, so did our 12-foot Caribe dinghy. I not only had to get my wife, Carolyn, ashore, but I also had to leave the dinghy so it would not destroy itself on the sharp rocks in the frothing surf.

To say that our appearance created a sensation is an understatement. Waves of running children followed us down the coast as I attempted to find a safe place to scramble ashore. Later, the town fathers told us that they’d seen a number of sailboats over the years, and about five years ago, a two-master had sailed down their lee. But we were the first yachties ever to come ashore.

Do we think we’re like James Cook or Magellan? Not at all. We merely have found, over the decades, that we prefer cruising places like Indonesia more than standing in line to ride the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disney World. Does that make us weird? I hope not. Life is to be lived, not passively watched.

As we stepped ashore on Matasirih, I carried a bundle of used guitar strings I’d collected from Western musicians; Carolyn carried consumable school supplies we’d purchased in bulk. Soon, we split up. I found the local pickers, and Carolyn was escorted to the school with the ladies. Did the community need any used reading glasses? Why, we just happened to have a few pairs that we’d collected from the lost-and-found boxes at willing stateside restaurants.

The problem wasn’t figuring out a way to be invited into a local home, it was how to avoid having to drink tea and dine in every abode, most of which were totally devoid of anything save a pot, a dish and some fire.

There was only one fellow on the island who (sort of) spoke pidgin English. He was the Jakarta-trained nurse/­medical practitioner/surgeon for the island, and his name was Anwar. In one of those crazy out-island moments, he ran up to a local youngster, pulled up his sarong, and proudly showed off the child’s ­still-healing circumcised penis!

No, we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

His clinic consisted of a few ­cardboard cartons in the living room of his ­mother’s house: bottles of aspirin, boxes of Band-Aids and rolls of gauze, mostly. He also proudly showed us four test kits for malaria.

We asked how he liked his job, and he said that he did, except for the time when a massive mudslide buried a third of the village. That wasn’t a good day. Or maybe it was: Seven villagers were still limping around, thanks to him. We never found out how many died. The poor fellow seemed too sad for us to press him for details.

On Matasirih, basically everyone fishes to stay alive. A few female entrepreneurs place canned goods with a price tag in the dirt outside their door when the crew of fishing vessels from other islands visit. One hardworking fellow ships in a 55-gallon drum of diesel fuel on a barge that he then laboriously rolls up the rocky beach once a month or so.

Our favorite craftsman, smithy and machinist made lovely handcrafted knives from broken wrenches (high-­carbon steel) that he collected from passing vessels.

Yes, I brought my guitar to town and played at the school. “Hit the Road Jack” was their favorite, and it seemed as though the whole village would start singing the chorus the moment we stepped into our dinghy to come ashore.

But we also learned to be cautious when dealing with youngsters, who rarely see Western visitors. A couple of times we spoke to young ladies who immediately froze under their headscarves, bug-eyed, then screamed in panic, and finally went running into the bush as if chased by Satan.

RELATED: On Watch: The Two Cover Girls of Borneo

In this part of the world, rice, eating, hospitality, politeness and friendship are all interwoven to the point where many people you encounter ask, “Have you eaten any rice today?” rather than offer a mere hello. Everywhere we went on the island, we were offered food. Even if the family had only one small cooked fish, the husband or father would imperiously demand an additional two plates as we hove into view.

Obviously, as good visitors, we needed to be aware of this. We didn’t want to bankrupt our hosts. So, in a sense, we began to engage in a sort of reverse bartering: The more they gave us, the more we gave them. Carolyn brought trash bags filled with hot popcorn to the schools and playgrounds. Each time we went ashore, she baked a cake and brought a cake knife along so we could slice as needed, depending on how many hospitality visits we partook in.

We always buy fishhooks wholesale by the kilo while passing through Australia. Each hook is worth its weight in gold on the outer isles of Indonesia.

In many ways, being ashore on Matasirih was like being in a time machine, only we could return to the present at any time, with our proud ketch-rigged yacht and its fluttering Stars and Stripes anchored just offshore.

And speaking of Ganesh, we couldn’t let the hospitality flow in only one direction. These people were welcoming us into their homes, their hearths and their hearts; we couldn’t fail to reciprocate. And, hey, the beach was littered with dugout (and I mean dug out using hot coals) canoes.

So, we had an open house (open vessel?) aboard, during which our guests could peer into our private quarters just as we had theirs.

Did this require a bit of thought and planning? Yes, it did. I made sure no irresistible items like Swiss Army knives, can openers and small tools were left in plain sight to tempt the youngsters. While Carolyn remained in the cockpit to entertain the larger group with food and laughter, I’d take individuals or couples down below for a guided tour. Yes, the men were agog at my tool room, and the women were amazed at the compactness of Carolyn’s tiny galley. Visiting seaman were astounded by the efficiency of our anti-roll flopper stoppers, and now understood why we’d kept our flat-cut, fully battened mizzen hoisted to keep the boat’s nose into the wind.

In essence, we became people rather than strangers to one another. We had millions of things in common and only a few at variance. Yes, their culture is older (their ancestors immigrated 4,500 years ago from Taiwan) and in many ways more refined than mine. But we both want the same thing for our children: peace and prosperity.

I now knew in my heart and soul that they wished me well, and after having visited Ganesh, they then knew I wished them well in exactly the same way. We were friends.

And friendship is no small thing in a world increasingly divided.

Cap’n Fatty Goodlander and his wife, Carolyn, are riding out the current global storm aboard their ketch, Ganesh, in Singapore.

The post On Watch: In Search of Nirvana Bay appeared first on Cruising World.

Thirty-eight years ago, a Frenchman named Henri Wauquiez built our 43-foot Amphitrite ketch Ganesh with an emphasis on the culinary arts. This is one of the reasons my wife, Carolyn, and I purchased her. We’re unabashed epicureans.

What other production cruising sailboat has a dedicated baguette drawer, two sinks with three faucets or three built-in wine racks — one of which is illuminated by a 12-volt light wired to a hidden door switch? Ganesh even boasts three extensive dining areas: the main dinette that spans the entire width of the cabin; a commodious folding cockpit table that can accommodate four to six; and a pullout aft cabin table that’s stored athwartships under the double bunk and is perfect for holding the grapes we eagerly peel for each other.

Sailing is a sensuous pursuit. We’re sensuous ­people. Why shouldn’t our Ganesh reflect our joy at being alive, in love and hungry for the taste of tomorrow? Food is vitally important to us, not only for nutrition, but also as holy sacrament. Carolyn’s ancestry is Sicilian. She is driven to feed people.

While our relative poverty doesn’t allow us to match many of our wealthy cruising friends in picking up the yacht club bar tab, we make up for it by throwing dinner parties aboard nearly every week. If we love you, we want to break bread with you. Family, friends and food are forever interwoven in our hearts.

The cruising lifestyle involves both the yin and the yang.

Alas, our French galley builders went a tad too far during Ganesh‘s construction. In a desire to replicate a typical country kitchen, they used small tiles as a counter surface. Tile and boats don’t mix. Fresh water soon worked its way under them and rotted the plywood underneath. We knew the entire galley was waterlogged in 2012 when we purchased the boat but could not afford to do anything about it while repowering, rerigging and circumnavigating.

So what if the entire galley counter was spongy, the rig was stout.

Carolyn is a strong gal who makes fresh bread every other day while offshore, even in huge seas, and eventually she began to knead the entire galley counter into the bilge. She repeatedly requested a new work area, but it was wasn’t until our port sink started to heel at an odd angle in relationship to our starboard sink that I realized I had no choice but to grant her wish.

However, our cruising kitty happened to be low, so the first thing I did was to start a “Jah list,” the kind of thing a young child might write to Santa. Why? On the simple premise that the gods can’t give you stuff if they don’t know you need it.

Ask and receive. Visualize!

Is life that simple? No. But desire has to precede accomplishment or no effort is expended. We knew that we’d never have enough money to commission a new galley to be constructed by local shipwrights. We’d have to build it ourselves from scrounged and discarded boat bits. We simply won’t allow the silly little fact that we lack sufficient funds to stop us from accomplishing our dreams, whether galley or transoceanic.

Step one was making a list of things we’d need. Step two was deciding to do the work in New Zealand during our fourth circumnavigation. New Zealand is very can-do; the blokes here don’t buy stuff, they build it. Call it fate, but right across from the boat in Whangarei are a number of custom cabinetry shops with locked dumpsters. I’d often stroll by and peer in longingly at the discarded lumber. One day, a carpenter on cigarette break explained to me that the trash bin was locked to prevent people from putting stuff in, not taking it out. He said I could have any of the discarded wood I wanted.

I wanted!

We became friends. He appreciated that I made no mess during my dumpster dives. I explained about our endless voyage toward Nirvana. He mentioned his father-in-law was building a Wharram catamaran. Soon he was taking me into his shop to see if there were any shorts in the lumber pile that I might be able to use.

More than half the wood I used in the galley project was free.

Of course, marine plywood doesn’t grow on trees, so some parts of the new galley had to be paid for. But the good folks at Scooters Plywood & Joinery supplies sold half-sheets, one of which had some water damage on a corner. I purchased it for a quarter of what I was expecting.

Instead of buying new sinks, we patched and polished the old ones. Both had holes but judiciously placed bolts solved that.

Carolyn wanted Corian for the countertops but I vetoed the material because of its weight. We went with Formica, which itself cost more than I would have liked. Worse, the roll of pricey countertop unexpectedly cracked diagonally as we were removing it from its cardboard tube, so I thought we’d blow the budget by having to replace it. But the gods were merely toying with us. We were able to get the countertop out of one randomly cracked half and the backsplash out of the other.

RELATED: Upgrade Your Sailboat’s Galley

Carolyn wanted all new hoses, fittings and fixtures, but we mostly polished the old ones or discovered better ones at Stanley’s Marine, our local used-boat-gear store.

I’m on my 59th year of living aboard, and one of my core concepts of ship husbandry is to do a major vessel improvement every year. That’s exactly what we were attempting here. Unfortunately, the ever-playful gods weren’t done messing with us. Just as we were taking an ax to the galley, our 12-volt refrigeration system quit. Damn! That’s the whole story of my cruising life: one step forward and another back.

We had no choice but to soldier on as frugally as possible. I’m goal-oriented. I know that you can’t lose if you don’t quit. And I was encouraged when the biggest lumber yard in town allowed me to dig around in its pile of discarded wood so old it wasn’t even in the computer inventory — and thus fair game for penniless do-it-yourselfers with a handful of gimme and a mouthful of thank-you-much.

I used to do stuff like this all the time when I was a 15-year-old Tom Sawyer-type and rebuilding my first vessel, Corina. But I never thought at age 66 I’d still be skipping through foreign lumberyards while whistling at planks and saying loudly, “My, ain’t that a purdy, purdy piece of timber?”

Is this scrounging of goods too much? Should I have stayed in America and frowned at my bank account instead of heading offshore? Maybe. Life is a judgment call. But I think of myself as more creative than frugal. It’s all about value. I earn money, but I’m just more careful about how I spend it than those who fail to leave the harbor.

But even I can dream — and honestly, material objects aren’t bad, per se, which brings us to the stove.

The stove on Corina in 1968 was a camping two-burner. Our next boat, Carlotta, had a salvaged ungimbaled Crawford house stove that worked OK during the 1970s and ’80s. Our previous sailboat, Wild Card, had a succession of steel RV stoves during the 1990s. And Ganesh‘s corroded stove was always a “will it work or won’t it” proposition. Carolyn had never had a new or fully functioning gimbaled marine stove in her 49 years of living aboard. And, like any infatuated, love-struck husband, I wanted to give my bride the tools (and galley jewelry) she desired. After all, a stove is her primary instrument as a gourmet sea chef. And every sailor knows the heart of a happy vessel is its galley.

Ditto, with refrigeration. The 52-foot schooner Elizabeth that I grew up on lacked refrigeration, as did Corina, Carlotta and Wild Card, the various sailboats aboard which Carolyn and I have plied the seas. A major reason we purchased Ganesh, in fact, was to have a cold glass of water on a hot day while transiting the sweltering equator.

Thus the extreme frugality of our 2019 galley rebuild wasn’t merely because I squeeze a penny so hard that Abe Lincoln cries. No, it was also because I desired to help my sailing partner to accomplish her culinary dreams just as she has assisted me with accomplishing so many of my cruising dreams.

Does luck play a part in these wacky, seat-of-our-pants DIY boat projects? Of course. And not all luck is bad. Just as I was routing the edges of the Formica flush with the marine ply, our long delayed royalty check from a piece of writing arrived. I glanced at the amount and did a double take.

“I was skeptical as well,” Carolyn admits. “So I checked. It was correct.”

We were able to immediately replace our Isotherm Compact Classic refrigeration compressor unit as well as purchase a brand-new, ultrashiny Force 10 gimbaled stove with three self-igniting stovetop burners, a broiler and a large temperature-regulated oven with a glass thermal door that locks. Carolyn has an entirely new work area to juggle her spices in. The only problem now is that she keeps singing out, “Sugar daddy, sugar daddy!” as she prepares our gourmet meals while sipping a wine cooler.

After taking a break in New Zealand, Fatty and Carolyn were bound for French New Caledonia, where they planned to gorge on escargot.

The post On Watch: Counter Measures appeared first on Cruising World.

Coming out from under the lee of Tongatapu, Tonga, we were ­rail-down despite flying only our small trysail and tiny storm staysail. The wind was easterly. It was blowing a steady Force 7, gusting to gale force. The ­resulting seas were huge. Our boat speed was 8 knots on the crests — slightly less as we ­labored in the troughs. We were ­attempting to punch through the high-­velocity wind wall of a BFH (big fat high) that had established itself between us and our destination: New Zealand.

Ganesh, our rugged but weary 43-foot Wauquiez Amphitrite ketch, was beam-reaching amid mountainous seas, not the most comfortable point of sail when Mother Ocean is in a boisterous mood. Rolling is a real possibility while beam-on.

Occasionally, a boarding ­breaking wave would ring us like a bell. We had a thousand miles to go to reach Opua, with air and sea temperatures plunging the whole way. Wise?

“Damn it,” said my wife, Carolyn, ­irritably. “I thought you said it would be fresh, not frightening.”

It was a tricky weather window. This passage is usually the most difficult of any circumnavigation. Speed was of the essence. We needed to be anchor-down in the Land of the Long White Cloud before an intense low-pressure system rolled up from the Tasman Sea. There are lots of ­reasons for a sailor to loathe a high-­pressure system in the Southern Hemisphere, but a fair wind is a fair wind, even if there’s too much of it.

Sure, Carolyn and I had repeatedly discussed this emerging window, as a blockage in faraway Cape Horn caused the BFH to stall out. But the final call to leave safe harbor had ultimately been mine, and perhaps I’d called it wrong. Hell, we’d only been offshore for a few minutes and I was already thinking of running off before it or heaving-to — hardly a positive sign. And the sleepy inner harbor of lovely Nukualofa, which we’d just left, had been flat as a pancake. Tonga is a very romantic place. We were in no rush. Happy hour at Big Mama’s is always fun. So, how stupid was I?

Ganesh heeled sharply to starboard, buried its bow up to its windlass and ­attempted to round up. Our trusty Monitor windvane muscled the boat back on course. Wet, straining halyards tat-tat-t­atted against the mast. I glanced at the wind speed: a sustained 37-knot gust. Carolyn and I locked eyes. I could tell she was forcing herself not to ask, “Why do you call this pleasure boating, Fatty?”

Our lee rail dipped into solid green water, and a frothing deck sweeper boarded us. Our cockpit filled. A hardcover book that had stayed wedged in place across the entire Indian Ocean flung itself across the main cabin with pages splayed. Something plastic fell and rolled. Our Dyneema staysail sheet hummed like a taut bowstring.

RELATED: Unwinding in Tonga

“Oh, it’s a sailor’s life for me,” I sang without conviction. Carolyn glared at me again, as if to say, “Misery loves company.” I stood with cold seawater swirling up to my knees, asking myself how old I’d have to become before I’d know better.

I considered turning back.

“I hate this,” Carolyn said from the ­companionway, eyeing her pilot berth below. “This is silly, sailing into 30-plus-knots when we could be in safe harbor.”

I remained quiet. She’d be back to her jolly old self soon. Why agree on the obvious: that Ganesh had an idiot for a skipper?

Traditionally, I’ve not been overly fond of weather routers. It strikes me as somehow dishonest to consult some electro-dirt-dweller who sits ashore surrounded by broad-banded computer screens; it’s as if I’m unfairly conspiring against the wind gods. Did Joshua Slocum use a weather router or defer to PredictWind? Buoyweather? Windy.com?

Then why should I?

“Perhaps because you want to stay ­married?” a feisty Carolyn would ask.

Well, there’s that.

Whenever I launch into my “Embrace the storm!” rant to a group of unsuspecting sailors, Carolyn rolls her eyes and twirls a finger at her graying temple to visually add her two cents. As far as she’s concerned, the only good storm is the one you ride out in a protected harbor.

She’s not alone in being weather-shy. More and more sailors are purchasing various professional weather products while circumnavigating and sailing offshore. “You’re talking through your hat,” I’ve been told more than once by a wealthy sailor with a satphone, a credit card, and an expensive custom forecast from some unseen weather nerd in Boston, Florida or South Africa.

It used to be that every Jack Tar was his own weatherman, but not anymore. Now you’re supposed to ignore your barometer falling into your bilge and wait for your remote weather guru to consult with NOAA to inform you thereof. Ditto dew on the decks, a halo around the moon, or the wind backing or veering. Nowadays, only a supercomputer can figure what our ancestors used to know by glancing at the sky.

If the above isn’t bad enough, I’ll admit that Down Under weather forecasting is more difficult. The highs and lows rotate backward from what we Northern Hemisphere sailors are accustomed to. Worse, not everything goes the opposite direction. The tropical trades on both sides of the equator still blow from east to west regardless of the Coriolis effect.

As a young, brash sailor, I focused solely on my boat prep and ignored long-range weather predictions. But as slivers of maturity intruded on my life, I began to realize that passage didn’t have to be a synonym for suffering. I developed a system of getting in sync with the weather before shoving off. We’d plan to sail in 72 hours’ worth of benign conditions at first, then stoically take whatever came next. After a half-century of offshore sailing, last month I asked myself how this was working out and came to the undesired conclusion: not too well.

We’ve done the trip down to New Zealand five times now. It would usually take us more than two weeks and two full gales to reach the Bay of Islands. Yuk!

Enter David Sapiane and Patricia Dallas of Gulf Harbour Radio (ZMH286). They are two wacky ex-sailors who washed ashore in New Zealand and have a sort of demented morning marine weather show on 8 megs SSB (ghradio.co.nz). She’s a Kiwi-born unfulfilled news presenter, and he’s a frustrated weatherman. Their program sounds as though it’s written by the ghost of Groucho Marx. Best of all, David proclaims, “We will never, ever charge for a weather forecast!” Even a struggling writer like myself can afford free.

So I listened for a couple of weeks, and was impressed by how David could convey complex global weather concepts so that even I could understand them. The whole trick of our upcoming passage was to ride a slow-moving high-pressure system down to Kiwiville — the only problem being, the higher the pressure, the higher the initial winds of the outer bands.

“Anything over 1030 millibars will have high winds in the Tongan area as it stalls, and often a full gale in a trough on its ­backside,” noted David.

The center of this particular BFH was 1038 millibars, and it was predicted to just sit out there for 10 days, blowing anyone into New Zealand who could survive the first two days of heavy air. Hence our current predicament.

RELATED: 7 Affordable Low-Bandwidth Satellite Systems For Offshore Sailing

Of course, since weather forecasting consists of dealing with both pattern (weather systems) and chaos (how they interact), it is as much art as science. Any modern sailor with the proper ­communications equipment can download GRIB files, but those are only a part of the picture, the raw data. This data needs to be ­interpreted. David is good at this. Damn good. And he has the advantage of having studied the same little watery patch of our planet for decades.

I decided to give his advice a try.

In order to do so, I had to pry Carolyn out of port, which is never easy. Carolyn loves with the open heart of a child, and was firmly embedded in her watery tribe. Each evening we’d have a different cruising couple over for dinner aboard Ganesh: Kyle and Maryann of Begonia, Rob and Carly of Yonder, Hank and Lisa of Harlequin, and Franco and Cath of Caramor. They were all part of our rainbow cruising community, a true movable feast.

The good news is that everywhere we sail, my wife loves dearly; the downside is that she never wants to leave her current Harbor of Eden. Over the past 49 years, I’ve learned I have to lure her away with the combined promise of fresh adventure and old friends.

“Won’t it be great to spend Thanksgiving on Kawau Island with Lin Pardey again?” I asked Carolyn. “And having Alvah and Diana Simon of Roger Henry aboard in Urquharts Bay will be a blast, right? Comforting Sequester’s Ted after Karen’s passing, and visiting Sharron and Brian at the Town Basin in Whangarei, it’s all good, no?”

My shipboard challenge was entirely different. Normally, we have days at sea to prepare for a gale, but this time we were going to experience 30-plus-knots and large seas just beyond the harbor mouth. We had to be ready or chaos would result and morale would plummet. I double- and triple-lashed the upside-down dinghy on the foredeck, stowed all jugs belowdecks, and inspected every inch of the rig with a magnifying glass. (Yes, I spotted a corroded mainsheet shackle in the nick of time!)

Fuel, check. Water, check. SSB, check. Jordan series drogue and Para-Tech sea anchor, check, check. Good luck charm, check. A non-Friday departure, check!

Finally, I cranked up our Perkins diesel and watched the oil pressure build.

“Are you sure?” Carolyn asked as she came on deck.

“I’m never sure,” I said. “That’s for dirt-dwellers who return to the same ­dreary place each evening. Uncertainty is the price of adventure. Life is risk. Anchor snubber off, please.”

Carolyn ambled forward, leaning into the wind and shaking her head ruefully.

So, how did the passage pan out? Thanks to David’s superb long-range offshore forecasting, nearly perfect. We suffered no damage and averaged twice our normal speed because we were never forced to heave-to or sail to windward. Hell, we never even tacked as we clicked off seven 150-plus-mile days in a row.

“Those shrouds on the starboard-side were dead weight,” I joked to Carolyn as we powered past the old whaling town of Russell on the way to Opua. “We didn’t need them a’tall!”

Ashore in New Zealand, Carolyn immediately immersed herself in a weeklong welcome-back party, courtesy of the local marine industry and a dozen cooperating bartenders. And as I write, we’re on a mooring in front of Lin Pardey’s island home and about to dinghy ashore for a ­traditional American Thanksgiving feast.

I smelled baked apple and cinnamon as I stood on our aft deck, yards away from her tidy dock. It felt good to be alive, even if I was wearing long thermal underwear and a wool watch cap.

“I love New Zealand,” a hungry Carolyn whispered to me as we hugged before climbing into the waiting dinghy.

“Even the bad parts?” I asked.

“Bad parts?” she asked, and smiled at me. “What’s a capful of wind between lovers?”

Cap’n Fatty and Carolyn are recovering from hosting their daughter, Roma, and granddaughters, Sokù and Tessa, for the holidays aboard Ganesh in New Zealand.

The post On Watch: Using a Weather Router appeared first on Cruising World.

Immediately after ­completing a 38-day passage from Cape Town, South Africa, to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I raced on a lovely yawl named Osprey. And I was honored when Larry Best, a highly ­competitive Virgin Islands racing skipper, allowed me to helm her on the downwind run with the massive chute up.

There is a certain irony here. Larry probably figured my helming skills would be pretty good after such a long downhill South Atlantic passage. I knew, however, that Larry had already steered his vessel, that very day, more than I had hand-steered my cruising sailboat in the past year or two.

The fact is that offshore sailors almost never steer their boats, and with good reason. Steering is fatiguing. If a cruising couple steers their vessel watch-on, watch-off, there is little time for seamanship, navigation or even proper nutrition. That’s why many offshore boats in the 1930s crossed the Atlantic with a crew of five plus a cook. There were three helmsmen to steer continuously; the navigator was free to massage his sextant and chronometer; and the owner/skipper acted as coordinator. (Back in the old days, sea cooks weren’t considered fully human, hence the common nautical curse, “son of a sea cook!”)

In our travels, my wife, Carolyn, and I have met only one circumnavigating couple who steered 24/7 and had no autopilot. The fairer member of that crew hinted darkly about jumping ship.

I believe strongly in not having to constantly hand-steer a sailboat. Joshua Slocum agreed. That’s why he was so proud of Spray’s remarkable ability to steer itself upwind and downwind, a task beyond most modern fin-keel ­production boats.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you cannot afford an autopilot or windvane, but still want to circumnavigate. OK, then you’ll need an easily balanced boat, the sailing skills to do so and the knowledge to understand basic sheet-to-tiller steering.

First off, most well-­mannered sailboats will steer forever to windward with the main slightly under-trimmed and the headsail slightly over-trimmed. Here’s how it works: The over-trimmed headsail forces the bow down, which fills the main and forces the bow up. If done crudely, the boat wildly hunts, but with a little tweaking, a steady (if slightly slower than normal) course results.

When beam-reaching on my 1932 wooden sloop, Corina, balancing the sails often worked the same way in steady winds and smooth-seas conditions. But in the rough stuff, the boat required a shock cord to leeward and the jib sheet led to the windward side and then to the tiller to maintain course in gusts and lulls.

Many a cruising vessel has reached around the world with sheet-to-tiller steering. But it is complicated and requires frequent monitoring and adjustment. Worse, most courses are mainly off the wind, and this method works poorly “dead-down” as we call it.

Enter the “heavenly twins” of yore. Basically, two same-size headsails were set off twin over-length whisker poles in such a manner that the moment the boat got off course, the relaxed sheet would allow the now-straining sheet to yank the tiller back on course. This is, in part, why tillers were so popular in yesteryear. The same effect can be maintained today with a wheel clutch on a well-tracking vessel.

The problem with all of the jury-rigged steering systems isn’t their dependability — such cobbled-together rigs are amazingly robust — but they presuppose a perfectly balanced boat and a skipper willing to play with the sheet-to-tiller concept until mastered. Most cruising sailors today can’t be bothered, and make do with an electric push-button autopilot. These modern units steer the boat quite well under normal conditions, but they require massive amounts of electrical energy. Thus, one problem is exchanged for another.

For example: On our Wauquiez ketch, Ganesh, we have an expensive hydraulic Robertson autopilot that steers quite well even in severe conditions. But we cannot keep it supplied with electrical energy (8 to 12 amps) during gales without cranking up our diesel, despite having an Air X wind generator, seven solar cells and eight deep-cycle batteries.

Our solution is a Monitor windvane, which works well on a properly balanced and designed semi-full-keeled vessel. If Ganesh sails at more than 2.75 knots and the wind is below 40 to 45 knots, our Monitor steers us perfectly, with zero energy requirements.

We even use our Monitor during extreme weather in conjunction with slowing drogues. It is far faster to react, more robust and automatically adjusts to temporary changes of wind direction.

In fact, after three ­successful circumnavigations with a Monitor on my ­transom, I personally would not go to sea in a cruising monohull without a dependable self-steering windvane from a trusted manufacturer.

So there you have it. There are four stark choices: 1) spend most of your waking hours chained to the helm; 2) learn the basics of balancing your vessel and using sheet-to-tiller techniques; 3) bear the expense of buying a dependable autopilot and keeping it supplied with electric energy; or 4) buy a servo-pendulum self-steering device that requires no electrical energy.

Far and away, the most popular option is No. 3, which means owners must focus on making their craft a seaborne electrical generation station. We know one boat that is covered with solar cells, has two wind generators and tows a hydro-generator — plus, it employs a large smart alternator with battery-temperature sensing technology.

“No problem!” says its happy skipper, who always carries a quick-draw ohmmeter in the old leather pouch where his rusty rigging knife used to go.

To each his own.

But the ultimate truth I’m attempting to steer you to is this: Happy cruisers and contented offshore marriages live aboard sturdy, ­well-found vessels that have robust abilities to steer themselves efficiently without human involvement.

A dependable autopilot or the practiced ability to get the vessel to self-steer is a major component of the accomplished ocean-voyaging lifestyle. If a ship’s captain has failed at this all-important goal, he or she has probably failed at the upcoming voyage, they just don’t know it yet.

The positive side of all this is that once you’re freed of the helm, life offshore becomes bliss. You get plenty of rest. You can maintain your vessel. You can monitor your navigation. You can look forward to your exotic destination.

And, best of all, you can focus on what is really important in life: your partner, your mutual pleasure and the vast joy of sailing through God’s own cathedral.

Fatty and Carolyn were in landless Beveridge Reef, finishing up a writing project, while writing this On Watch. Soon, they will steer for New Zealand, while alternating between their Monitor windvane and their electro-hydraulic autopilot.

The post On Watch: Self-Steering for Sailboats appeared first on Cruising World.

To the uninitiated, chartering can seem expensive, complicated and confusing. It’s not. In fact, it can be surprisingly affordable for families, yacht-club groups, corporate get-togethers, motivational seminars, etc. The main reason it seems complicated is because there are as many reasons to charter as there are boats and skippers.

One thing to bear in mind is that you are buying an experience, not merely renting a boat. So, let’s see if we can demystify chartering in terms everyone can understand.

The two main divisions of yacht chartering are bareboat and fully crewed.

A bareboat charter is exactly like renting a car. They toss you the keys. This gives you maximum freedom, and maximum responsibility as well. In essence, the bareboat you rent is your private yacht for the duration, with all the advantages and limitations that entails.

Chartering a fully crewed craft is more like renting a limo. It comes with a driver who does all the work and takes care of all the transportation, navigation and safety details. All you have to do is lie around and be catered to; the crew attends to that. You have the world’s smallest, most luxurious, most mobile seaside resort entirely at your beck and call.

Think of it this way: You can have your limo pull up before your destination and circle while you party ashore. On a bareboat, you cannot. Every bareboat has a skipper who has signed on the dotted line that they will return the boat as received. And he or she must be directly responsible, 24/7, for doing so.

If you’re interested in fully crewed chartering, you either have to go with an experienced friend’s suggestion (chancy) or use the services of a professional charter broker. Good brokers don’t merely match customers to boats, they match crews and customers as well. A family of Mormons, a group of cruising couples or some vacationing friends of Bill (Alcoholics Anonymous members) all require a different package than, say, a group of West Coast rappers with an emerging interest in watersports.

Many established brokers don’t allow a client to charter with a skipper or crew they haven’t personally met both professionally and socially, so charter customers and skipper are compatible while underway.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Our main focus for the readers of Cruising World is on bareboats, for the simple reason they allow our sailing readers maximum freedom at minimal expense to enjoy exactly the sailing-style vacation they desire.

Are there other variations? Sure. You can bareboat with a liveaboard captain or “adviser” to help you with the ropes and nav work. (But never forget the toss-you-the-keys aspect of bareboating. You temporarily have all the rights and privileges of a yacht owner for the duration of the charter. Thus, if your adviser tells you to sail into some rocks and you do, the courts only see that you’ve sailed into some rocks. They don’t care who was ­bending your ear at the time.)

Or you could charter a fully outfitted racing yacht with the pre-negotiated understanding that you and your hometown racing crew will be using the trip to sharpen your racing skills.

The Bitter End Yacht Club in the British Virgin Islands’ North Sound used to offer part-hotel and part-bareboat stays. They catered both to cruisers (Anegada, anyone?) and club racers with entirely different packages. There are also fully crewed so-called “head” boats that will book singles or couples by the cabin to form a larger group — with mixed results.

Or, if you already have a boatload of eager crew but aren’t sure you’re ready to tackle unfamiliar terrain, you and your friends can embark on one of the many flotillas available. You’ll follow a lead boat and have an experienced captain nearby to answer any questions, but you can still get away on your own at times if you like.

And there are many learn-to-sail ­charters, including those that issue bareboat certifications. (I’d recommend one that provides a certified instructor and established curriculum, not a piña colada-waving skipper who burps, “No problem on de learning-to-sail ting, mon!”)

Another important decision is the destination.

I’ve cruised South Africa many times, but I’d never consider a charter along the Wild Coast because it has long stretches of bad weather, extremely rough seas and dangerous harbors that are physically far apart and difficult to anchor in. Plus, the water is cold and (in the Simon’s Town area, anyway) filled with great white sharks. Areas of the Med can be similarly challenging, with strong seasonal winds, plus the need to Med moor, that is tie stern to, on a nightly basis.

It is hard to beat the benign Lesser Antilles for first-time charters. I recommend the BVI, St. Maarten and the Grenadines, in that order. Then the tamer areas of the Med. And then Tahiti/Moorea/Bora Bora. After those, the sky is the limit, with New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia, Thailand and the Philippines beckoning.

It’s time now to return to this ­buying-an-experience concept.

A boat’s a boat, but newlyweds in search of privacy, large family reunions, diving groups, club racers, fishermen, nudists and drinking clubs with a sailing problem will all benefit from slightly different craft and totally different anchorages and party styles.

I’m a confirmed monohuller, but I’d love to have a family reunion aboard a catamaran with a bunch of water toys. What fun we’d have belly-flopping for a week with our grandkids!

Honeymooners might, however, prefer a smaller shoal-draft vessel to get as far away from the distracting crowd as possible.

Fishermen might choose a more heavily powered craft than, say, club racers, who might enjoy the deepest-drafted, lightest, most weatherly vessel in the charter fleet.

Sailors interested in the evolution of West Indian sailing craft (that would be me, for sure) always gravitate to Anguilla, just north of St. Maarten, and Bequia, just south of St. Vincent, as well.

The last time my wife, Carolyn, and I were cruising the Med, we met a doctor from Austria who had flown into St. Vincent specifically to charter a particular model of Catana catamaran. He ultimately purchased a brand-new sistership.

That’s the beauty of bareboating: If you know the ropes, it can be the most fulfilling, most individually tailored vacation in a lifetime.

Cap’n Fatty wrote this issue’s On Watch while on watch aboard the Goodlanders’ Wauquiez ketch, Ganesh, somewhere in the Pacific between Panama and French Polynesia.

The post The Skinny on Charter Vacations appeared first on Cruising World.

There are a number of happy reasons why much of the Caribbean cruising fleet gathers in Grenada for hurricane season. The most important is that, statistically, we’re fairly safe here compared to Antigua, St. Maarten or the Virgins, most of which, we all know, were hit hard this past fall.

Another factor is that many insurance companies don’t provide coverage in the Caribbean during hurricane season while north of 12 degrees north, but you can hang with us on Grenada’s south coast, say in Mount Hartman Bay (from which I write), where you’re still covered.

Speaking of Mount Hartman Bay, my wife, Carolyn, and I are only minutes away from Egmont Harbour, which is about the finest hurricane hole in 500 miles. (It is ringed with soft, soft mangroves, and the holding is excellent.) And then there is Trinidad. Once upon a time, hundreds of boats would shelter there despite the heat. But the crime spun out of control, and some jokers started pirating just off the coast. Damn! Ditto Los Testigos and Venezuela, which brings us back to Grenada.

Perhaps the most important things to know about Grenada are that we cruisers are welcomed with open arms, there’s almost no violent crime and the political situation is stable. I’ll admit it wasn’t always that way. We had to flee Grenada in 1979 when Maurice Bishop and his cronies smoked a tad too much ganja and temporarily took over the government. But that was then.

More recently, boats have been gathering here for many seasons in peace and harmony, and many businesses have sprung up as a result. We have our propane, bottled water and various other goods delivered right to our boat. Of course, the local laundry ladies are happy to have your folded wash waiting at the dinghy dock. There’s even a Champagne delivery guy. Fresh fruits and veggies? Yeah, our smiling Rasta mon both grows them and rows them out. Fresh baguettes and croissants? There was a French couple distributing them throughout the anchorage off St. George’s, though I think they left for Tahiti. Or Martinique. Wherever! It’s hard to keep track of such a fluid group.

The reality of the social scene in Grenada is that you’d never be able to keep track of it all if you didn’t have the Grenada cruisers net at 0730, six days a week, on VHF Channel 66. This is an hourlong free-for-all of news, gossip, weather and what have you. All security issues are discussed, as are social activities, business announcements, etc. You can sell stuff (but not mention the price) during the famous Treasures of the Bilge segment. There’s even a trivia question of the day.

Is this net usually fun? Yes, it is. And is it occasionally ugly? Yes, sometimes, but never for long. We each bring our cultural baggage with us, for better and worse.

In Grenada, there isn’t merely something to do every day. There are numerous things to do every second of every day!

Yoga is currently staged at two different locations, and you can join up for $1 a week. Tai chi is happening in Prickly Bay. Volleyball is big here in Secret Harbour. A huge crowd turns out and rotates in. The Big Electric Music Jam happens on Tuesday nights at the brewery. Don’t forget a dinghy light (that is, if you can find your dinghy at midnight).

There’s a monthly boat jumble. It hops from bay to bay for the convenience of all.

The Hash House Harriers are notorious around these parts. Not only do you get to run as a group through some of the most majestic scenery in the Caribbean, but they also make you drink beer from your shoe in baptism. The 1,000th local hash occurred in October, and the whole island seemed to be chanting, “On-on!” as the runners swept between watering holes.

Are you a tad more serious? Great! Then you can help teach West Indian youngsters to read with Boaters for Literacy or the Mount Airy Young Readers Program.

Like reggae? Who doesn’t! Every Sunday, the whole of Hog Island goes nuts with an island-wide beach party and local reggae blast that winds up at 0300 on a slow night and goes until after dawn if the locals are particularly lit. Or maybe you’re into acoustic? That’s early afternoon at the Sel & Poivre Restaurant and Cocktail Bar at Secret Harbour Marina. See the Aussie lass Vanessa, on Neptune II at the end of the dock, to join the singalong. Oh, and there’s a growing learn-to-play-guitar group as well. Who knew so many 70-year-old skippers secretly lust to be Keith Richards?

Are dominoes your thing? Texas hold ’em? Kiteboarding? Well, there’s a bay or anchorage filled with similar-­minded sailors, just waiting for you to sail in, drop the hook and join up.

The locals really love the sailors here, and of course, they love their local music too. So, to show their appreciation, they have a giant all-day concert on a semi-sunken steel commercial boat. All the sailors come in their dinghies — and stay in their dinghies with their growing piles of empties — to take part. But people can’t sit still. They stand up and attempt to dance, and what fun it is to watch them fall in the water repeatedly.

Do you have kids aboard? There’s so much for cruising kids to do that parents sometimes lose track of what kid is attending what activity.

Most harbors have their taxi mons. In Mount Hartman Bay, ours are Shade Mon, Survival Anchorage George, Rasta Chris and Chico. They will take you anywhere, with good rates, and will never leave you stranded. Their vehicles range from funky old cars to brand-new air-conditioned vans with broadband Wi-Fi!

There are island tours, barhopping extravaganzas, grocery-shopping trips, treks to Budget Marine and Island Water World — you name it. If you can get there on wheels, these smiling guys have you covered. I will note that the tour of the chocolate factory isn’t nearly as much fun now that the genius inventor of the place electrocuted himself.

We love all the local Grenadians in Secret Harbour. They value their collective reputation highly. They never bait-and-switch on prices like that taxi dude in Madagascar who drove us out into the bush, jumped out of his vehicle, did some one-handed pushups and some handstands, ripped off his shirt, flexed his ginormous muscles, puffed out his well-defined chest, practically tore off the car door on my side, stuck his face within an inch of my mine and said loudly with lots of spit, “I want to renegotiate the fee!” (I replied, while cringing, “Sounds reasonable to me.”)

The whole south side of Grenada is littered with fine anchorages, each of which is both dinghy and vessel accessible. So we are a 10-minute tender ride away from numerous rum shops, Euro bars and eateries that range from the most informal and inexpensive to the most high-class bring-your-credit-cards establishments.

Need to haul and leave your boat? Can do! And many of the yards will dig you a hurricane trench or surround your vessel with an extensive number of joined-together poppets. Whatever you want to make your vessel secure, they’ll find a way to provide it.

If you anchor off St. George’s, shh, listen. There! You hear that conch shell blowing? That means a local fishing boat is docking. If you’re willing to go elbow-to-elbow with the local ladies, you can buy a flopping fish that was swimming just moments ago.

Clearing in and out of Grenada is easy and fast (well, relatively, meaning same-day service) either at Port Louis or in Prickly Bay. Basically, it costs about a buck a day to stay the season here, payable every 90 days. For those coming to visit, or cruisers ready for a break, there is even a modern airport. And did I mention that there are good medical facilities should the need arise?

It is impossible to get bored here. It’s more likely all the choices might drive you to Trinidad. It’s only a 75-­nautical-mile beam reach away to the isle of Tobago. The Tobago Cays, to the north, are even closer.

Our routine here in Grenada fits us well. Each day, at 0600, I put the kettle on and tune in to Chris Parker’s weather. This gives us a superb overview of everything happening in the Caribbean, stormwise. By 7 in the morn, I’m writing. A half-hour later, Carolyn dons headphones and listens to the net to sign us up for various “excitements,” as she calls them. After the net, Carolyn works on the boat, varnishing, polishing or cleaning. At around 9, we break for coffee and fresh doughnuts — she uses the same dough to also make our lunch bread.

We break at noon for a long, sensuous lunch. By 2, we’re usually ashore. I hike in the mountains or stroll through the bush (lots of loose bulls here). We then occasionally join a group. I’m coaching a few future Hemingways for free. Then we usually attend happy hour at one of the nearby watering holes. There’s almost always a cruisers-special dinner nearby, but Carolyn’s cooking is so spectacular that I hate to take a step down at a gourmet restaurant.

Is Grenada truly safe from storms? Absolutely not. Hurricane Ivan hit here in 2004, and scores of boats were wrecked. What a mess!

That’s the bad news. The good is that you’ll be so busy you won’t have time to worry. Our biggest complaint about Grenada is that it is so exhausting. Why exhausting? “We’re having too much fun,” Carolyn shouts happily as she signs up for a taxi ride to Clark’s Court to thump the fresh veggies. Along the way, she’ll take a side trip to the meat market and a drive-by at the beach barbecue to see who’s there.

Our cup runneth over in Camp Grenada!

– – –

After hurricane season in Grenada, Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander are back in the Virgin Islands.

The post Sailing into Camp Grenada appeared first on Cruising World.

While growing up aboard the schooner Elizabeth in the 1950s, I used to swing through the rig, much to the disgust of the timid adults ashore. I loved being aloft. I felt comfortable there, like a proud frigate bird surveying the ocean.

Once, in St. Petersburg, Florida, while standing atop our starboard ratlines, I noticed a blue kite stuck in a tree in nearby Vinoy Park. We were poor; I had no toys, and kites were fun. So I quickly slid down our galvanized shrouds, leapt onto the dock of slip No. 7 and dashed across the street.

It was tricky because the kite was caught at the very top of a large banyan, but I eventually managed to get it down. Alas, it wouldn’t fly. Again and again, I tried to launch it, and it would just spin out of control. I soon became frustrated, but fortunately, my brother-in-law, the Gyroaster, came by. He was a giant of a man, and handsome as heck. My sister, Gale, would melt when he was around. Yuck! Actually, you’ve probably seen him — he was the Marlboro Man for many years. And anyway, he knew a lot of stuff.

“You need a tail,” he said, as he returned to his pickup truck and ripped up a greasy T-shirt.

Once a few knotted strips of fabric hung from the kite, it was a totally different beast. It flew sweetly. I had perfect control. I’ve never forgotten that day.

At the beginning of our third circumnavigation, this one aboard Ganesh, our new-to-us and unfamiliar ketch-rigged Amphitrite 43, I quickly realized that my learning curve would have to be steep. Ganesh behaved completely differently than our previous S&S-designed Hughes 38, Wild Card. Gusts over 30 knots would send our old boat zooming like a scalded cat; ditto for large, breaking seas. Once we did 150 miles in 24 hours under bare poles using our Monitor self-steering device, and Wild Card felt like she was on rails.

In a blow, Ganesh was different.

Way different.

Off the coast of Colombia, with an apparent wind of 34 knots and a speed of 8 knots, Ganesh was beginning to scare me, and I don’t like to be scared. Worse, I could see that look of concern that my wife, Carolyn, had in her eyes. “She’s really, um, slewing, isn’t she?” Carolyn noted.

Since a large part of seamanship consists of stoically observing, I began watching the building seas with great attention.

In the troughs, Ganesh was fine. She’d point dead downwind. But as a wave picked her up and she accelerated down its foaming face, she’d start frantically hunting. The further off course she became, the more her bow would dig in, the less effective her rudder would be, and the more she’d want to carve out like a runaway surfboard. It was disconcerting, this uncomfortable feeling that our transom might attempt to pass our bow. What if we got sideways to the seas? Would all 15 tons of her broach?

I didn’t want to find out.

One solution would have been to heave-to, but we were making great time and pointing directly at the Panama Canal. I hated to stop her. Sure, it would be safer, but these heavy wind and sea conditions would last all week. I didn’t want to heave-to for five to eight days. I wanted to keep moving.

The towing of warps is an old trick. So I took a 150-foot-long anchor line and connected its end to my port cleat, led it through my strong aft chock and lowered the bight into the water. At first there was almost no pressure, but as I paid out the line, the drag increased. When I came to the end of the line, I cleated it off on the starboard aft cleat. Now I had a large bight of line 75 feet astern. It didn’t do much of anything, but took about a quarter of a knot off my speed.

I watched and watched and thought and thought. That’s all heavy-weather management is, really, just experiencing and seeing what happens, which, in this case, wasn’t much.

Next, I took one of our fenders with a stout line on it, tied a bowline around the bight of line, and tossed the fender into the water. It ran aft and stopped, and I immediately felt a difference. I added a second fender. Even better! Now we weren’t slewing around nearly as much. However, occasionally both fenders were yanked out of the water and would start skipping over the waves. When they did, we’d slew badly until they bit in again.

I watched.

Next I relieved the pressure on the port end of the dragging line with a rolling hitch and short length of line secured on board. I tied the bitter end of another anchor line to the first, then cast off the rolling hitch.

The added length of line paid out, and now my two fenders were trailing 150 feet aft, and coming out of the water far less. I let her ride like this for a while as the sea continued to build. I decided we needed more drag, so I tied another two fenders onto the line — and then extended it with another rode.

Now I had four fenders 300 feet aft. And I watched.

Next, I adjusted the length of my towline until all four fenders sat directly behind one of the waves, completely out of my sight. I reached down and felt the moderate strain. Suddenly a huge breaking sea approached, Ganesh started to surf off, the towline load spiked dramatically and all four fenders were completely pulled though the wave, from backside to front, and then dug anew.

I knew I had the right idea when Carolyn appeared in the companionway with her novel and asked, “Is it calming down?”

There was no longer any tendency for Ganesh to get squirrelly. I wasn’t scared of broaching, and our speed was still averaging around 6½ knots.

Each storm is different, and thus, a skipper needs flexibility in his decision-­making. This requires having the correct gear and knowing how to deploy it.

I’d put a tail on my kite. I was in perfect control.

One time, we came out of New Zealand with a perfect weather window — not! A major gale was on the way, in the same area as the infamous and fatal 1994 Queen’s Birthday storm. Yes, there was a squash zone involved this time too. Even the Kiwi skippers I heard on the radio were getting nervous, which is enough to make any sane sailor gulp. When a Kiwi or South African sailor says, “There’s a bit of breeze on the way,” that means you should check your last will and testament.

The whole reason I carry a Para-Tech sea anchor and a Jordan Series Drogue is so I have options in an ultimate storm. Was this one? I wasn’t certain, but I decided to deploy one or the other slowing device just in case. If I’d wanted to make speed downwind and stay with the system, I’d have deployed the series drogue, my experimental homemade fat-bag or my webbing drogue. However, the last thing I wanted to do was travel with this particular storm. I wanted to remain in it for the shortest time possible, so I decided to set my Para-Tech sea anchor off the bow so we could park and let the storm pass by.

I heaved to and rigged the Para-Tech’s retrieval line exactly as recommended. Next, I ran a 400-foot nylon rode from the aft deck, outside the stanchions (tied with yarn to keep it from unraveling) and up to the bow. Here’s the sobering truth of it: People occasionally get severely injured while deploying or retrieving large parachute-type anchors. It’s dangerous. The ads don’t tell you this, but it is. Once that parachute is in the water, your vessel might as well be shackled to a block of granite on the bottom. Thankfully, we had no problem deploying ours from our nearly stationary position.

Once the sea anchor took up and I’d doused our storm trysail, it was just like being anchored in 20-foot swells. Of course, our masthead was scribing large arcs in the sky and we were rolling violently from rail to rail. At first, we took to our bunks, Carolyn green at the gills. Gradually, we started crawling around on the cabin sole. Twenty-four hours later, Carolyn was making bread while I was jammed in a corner, playing guitar. We felt perfectly safe, if not comfortable.

Luckily (actually, luck had nothing to do with it) we’d removed both the anchors that normally live on our bow, as well as all our chain. These were now tied inside our boat to our mast base. Our boat’s ends were as light as we could make them. Thus she rode the giant waves like a swan.

Every two hours, day and night, I’d change the chafe point on the Para-Tech’s rode. That sounds easy, but it wasn’t; not when the line was shock-loaded with 5,000 pounds or so.

Here’s how I did it: I donned my foulies and sea boots, put on my safety harness, grabbed a crowbar and carefully made my way forward. (Picture crawling on the back of a rearing stallion in pitch-black darkness and you’re close to seeing me move about on deck.)

Once at the bitts, I made sure the 40 or 50 feet of extra rode was all in front of me, so if it got away, I wouldn’t be killed instantly. Then I paused and said to myself, “Fatty, this is what you came for. This is all part of it. But if you lose control of this line or end up in the water, you’re dead. Right now you’ve got 10 fingers. Let’s keep it that way.”

That’s exactly how it happened. I actually whispered that to myself. Some people think I have no fear; that’s silly. Everyone has fear. Life is precious. The trick isn’t to ignore your fear but rather to harness it.

And that’s what I did. I loosened up the line on the cleat, working gingerly, like I was playing with a bomb that could blow any second. More and more I loosened the line until any more loosening might allow it to come off the cleat. Then I carefully stuck my crowbar into the final crisscross of line and wiggled it. Instantly, with a sickening snap tightening sound, the line on the cleat slipped and took up once again.

I’d changed the chafe point by about an inch with complete control.

A little over two days later, the wind had gone down but the seas were still high. The smart thing to do was to stay put, but alas, another storm was spinning off the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand, and if we didn’t set sail we’d have to stay parked for another four days or so.

Thus, we decided to retrieve the sea anchor and try to get northward out of the worst of the weather.

What happened next, well, I still start whimpering just remembering it.

First off, my good friend and sailing hero Larry Pardey had once advised me to remove the retrieval line on the Para-Tech. “They never work, and they often get in the way,” he said. “Trust me, Fatty, just cut it off.”

On the other hand, the manufacturer of the unit said folks successfully use the retrieval line all the time.

So, I decided to try it. I followed all the instructions as faithfully as I could. In theory, the retrieval line collapses the parachute, making it easier to haul back aboard. But when I went to actually use it in battle conditions, it was totally useless: completely snarled in a jumbled mess.

Score one for Larry.

As mentioned, the sea was rougher than I would have liked, and I have one more confession, dear reader. My 400 feet of ¾-inch nylon rode wasn’t in one piece. I’m a poor man. Most of my shopping is done at Dumpster Marine. The anchor line was cobbled together from various discarded bits and one new 125-foot piece of black Samson braid.

Now, I wasn’t worried about my knots coming undone because I’d tied double-­carricks and whipped the bitter ends with strong wax twine. But a knot is a lump, and this greatly complicated things. I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow. Let’s just say getting each knot through the roller chock and around the rope windlass gypsy took about 45 minutes of tying and untying various short rope pennants with rolling hitches. Had any of those knots slipped while shock-loaded, well, bye-bye Fatso.

So here is the reality of the more than three hours that I wrestled with Satan up there on my foredeck: Retrieving my Para-Tech sea anchor was, far and away, the most dangerous thing I have ever done intentionally. In hindsight, I should have cut it loose. But, as mentioned, I’m a poor man, and it is a costly bit of fabric. And, yes, another factor came into play: I’m stubborn and pigheaded as well. I put that damn thing in the water, and I was going to get it back aboard!

Over the next couple of years I became fascinated by slowing devices. It didn’t take long to realize that the ideal one would create little drag at 4 knots and lots of drag at 6 to 8 knots of boat speed. Over the years, many attempts have been made to improve the proverbial mousetrap, and of course, I couldn’t resist the challenge taken up by some of my childhood heroes. My early idol Frederick A. Fenger (father of the wishbone rig) invented the plywood sea anchor, and John Voss came up with various fabric devices during his adventures made famous in The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss. I have no doubt that when Ulysses lost an attached sail overboard in a storm, he noticed the calming effect as it trailed behind his ship.

So, I sidled up to the prettiest little seamstress I know, gave her a hug and a smile, and placed a number of drogue designs in front of her.

“The Flat Fat drogue,” I told her, “uses cheap seat-belt material for the webbing and nylon for the slowing flaps, and stows well. The Fat Puffer has slits that bulge as the force of the water increases. And the Fat Web is basically just a bunch of webbing with maximum wetted surface that takes up minimal space.”

Carolyn frowned. I’m always asking her to sew up crazy ideas, most of which don’t work. However, occasionally she adjusts one of my stupid ideas brilliantly — and I steal all the credit. (Well, I’m a man, right?)

Don’t forget, heavy-weather management boils down to controlling two things: angle and speed. A drag device is one of the simplest, most basic ways to achieve this.

Carolyn looked at the various designs and scratched her head. “What’s my budget?”

“The usual,” I said. “Zero.”

She grimaced and gave me a look.

“Hey, babe,” I said. “There’s no challenge in buying one!”

“Darn you, Fatty,” she said, as she hauled her rusty Pfaff sewing machine out of the bilge and began hosing it down with WD-40.

Soon she was hunched over her rattling, jiggling machine, spewing out various drag devices and a brand-new Jordan Series-style drogue (136 cones) for good measure.

Perhaps the most important thing to be learned from this article is that “anyone can play,” as my father used to put it. You don’t have to be a scientist or mathematician to tame the elements. The truth is that a spare tire (even a retread) tied astern can save your life in certain conditions.

To put it another way, I may have sailed around the world twice on a $3,000 boat — but Wild Card had far more safety gear aboard than some of the $3 million yachts sailing next to me.

Why not heave-to in a storm? I do. I love to heave-to. It is a basic skill of any offshore sailor. But sometimes I want to keep moving for various reasons, perhaps to sail out of a strong (and dangerous) ocean current, for example. I want options, lots of options. I need flexibility to survive offshore year after year. And, frankly, my boat is usually fine heaved-to in up to 45 knots. However, if I get a 70-knot gust, will my sail track pull out or the gooseneck shatter or sheet break? I don’t know. And I don’t want to find out in hurricane-force winds.

As Carolyn and I endlessly voyage, we’ve found that I like places she doesn’t. Take Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, for example. There are odd currents, fierce storms and dangerously shifting sandbars. It’s a perfect place for an adventurous soul like me. “And how, exactly, did this area get its name?” Carolyn asked as we sailed Ganesh northward along its dramatic West African coast of shifting desert sands.

“From all the wrecks of the old sailing ships,” I said. “The vessel frame ends sticking up out of the dunes were easy to spot and kind of eerie. Once the rescuers rowed ashore, they’d then follow the footprints of the thirsty sailors in the sand to find their dehydrated bodies. So, it was kind of a two-for-one skeleton hunt.”

“Oh, lovely,” Carolyn said, rolling her eyes.

We’d gotten a good weather window out of Cape Town. There were a number of cruising vessels within 50 miles on the same passage. We had all tracked the moderate gale sliding toward us from St. Helena. A couple of the crews had real problems in the 40-knot gusty winds. They became fatigued from hand-­steering for more than 35 hours in the large breaking seas.

For Carolyn and me, it was a romantic time-out. I set out version No. 4 of my Fat Puffer. It’s a large bag that fills with water and has slits that enlarge and, hopefully, create turbulence in the gusts to break up a wave. I also unrolled our storm staysail. Our Monitor windvane was steering us straight and true. Our AIS transponder was on, ditto our radar. Our new LED tricolor is very bright, so we figured we’d be seen if other vessels were near.

We both went below; only occasionally peeking out to see the majesty of Mother Ocean in a grand mood.

I had a cup of tea, Carolyn opted for a single glass of red wine. We smiled at each other.

“What’s your favorite part of storm-strutting?” she asked.

“You,” I said.

– – –

Cap’n Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander recently completed their third circumnavigation and are restocking in anticipation of setting out to see the world again. The Cap’n is the author of Storm Proofing Your Boat, Gear and Crew.

The post Take it Slow in Bad Weather appeared first on Cruising World.

May I speak bluntly? Of course I can. If you’re going to gather together a hundred or so sailors on a dozen boats on Thanksgiving Day with the specific goals of 1) eating too much, 2) drinking too much and 3) laughing too much, then you best do it properly.

Of course, there is the option not to raft up. This makes sense from a seamanship perspective, but not from a social one. I love a large gathering where I endlessly stroll from sailboat to powerboat to sea-spider racing trimaran, not only to check out the various vessels and their gear but to run into enclaves of nudists, animal-rights advocates, parents, herbologists, gaffers, kitesurfers, home-schoolers, scuba divers, Frenchies, revolutionaries, bread-makers, wood butchers, anarchists and writers, all tucked into aft cabins and forepeaks, on swim ladders, sitting on booms, gathered in cockpits and just strung out on happiness along the side decks.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Christmas has grown too commercial, and New Year’s is amateur night for folk who don’t know how to drink. While I like the edginess of Halloween, there are too many razor blades in apples for me to relax. Thanksgiving, however, is just a glorious food orgy of good vibes. I look forward to the gluttony all year.

OK, that’s my party-animal side. The other part of my personality is the technical sailor who knows that if you want to get stupid with lots of people, you’d best think it through prior to playing macramé with the actual boats. Let’s get some basics down: Each vessel should tie four fenders on each side, have its anchor gear ready to deploy, and have four nylon dock lines with chafe protection ready to run.

Why should all vessels have their anchors ready when most will not need to deploy them? So the raft can break up at a moment’s notice, at anyone’s request. Basically, that’s our rule. Anyone can raft up, but only if they can cast off in a heartbeat. Obviously, this means each vessel has to have a designated skipper.

Why nylon line? It makes a huge difference in noise compared to Dacron. Plus nylon dock lines will be much kinder when led over varnished cap rails. We love varnish and have no desire to kill it.

Why so many fenders? Obviously, all the boats are going to have to tie up to each other, so the more fenders, the merrier. In addition, having a giant tri, two catamarans, a schooner, three ketches, two yawls, and a dozen sloops and cutters rafted together draws attention. Invariably, at some point a 60-foot Donzi will roar by at high speed, see the raft-up and decide to check it out, dude! The rafted vessels must be ready to handle a sizable broadside wake in addition to any squalls that might blow through.

Here’s where it gets a little delicate. Chances are that there are going to be boats with various sorts of gear and skippers with various levels of expertise. Thus, well before the event, you need to pick the proper center boat. This boat needs to have a good anchor, rode and windlass, as well as a nonintoxicated, nonstoned skipper.

This boat should arrive early (perhaps even the day before), in a spot with plenty of room if the wind should shift, and put out at least 8-to-1 scope for its anchor. Why so much? We’ll get to that.

In our annual Thanksgiving raft-ups in the U.S. Virgin Islands, we used the schooners Liberty or Cassiopeia, or Capt. Dave Dostal’s lovely 56-foot yawl Rob Roy. In a pinch, we’d go with Lon Munsey’s Flying Circus, even if hanging off a wooden vessel more than 100 years old was a bit daunting.

Next we’d pick a few smaller vessels, say Thatcher Lord’s yawl Trinka and Larry Best’s graceful U.S. Coast Guard Academy yawl Osprey, for our wing boats rather than have these lovely boats raft alongside the center vessel. To begin the raft-up, we liked having all the boats gather around noon. Since we were doing this in the U.S. Virgins, chances were very good that the wind would be from 112 degrees to 118 degrees and not falter. Predictable conditions are a real plus.

The larger boats (without the best gear) rafted on each side of the center boat. In theory, four vessels would raft up to the center boat, two on each side. At that point, the wing boats deployed anchors 45 degrees from the raft-up, dug them in, drifted back and then pulled themselves sideways into the raft.

With the wing boats tied in place, we’d have a raft of seven boats hanging on three large anchors — one directly forward, and the other two spread out at 45-degree angles. We would adjust the rodes so the center boat always took up first and then the side boats. This meant we not only had a very wide and stable stance, but the vessels got slightly pulled apart in any sizable gusts.

This approach to a raft-up is a bit tricky to imagine, but it is easy to do. In fact, with a seven-boat raft and a steady wind, it’s possible to stay rafted together for days without getting any pressure on your fenders if you’re OK with a long step in between vessels.

Needless to say, when tying off the boats, you have to look aloft because masts must be staggered. I’ve been on rafts that resulted in broken spreaders and entangled rigging because the locations of the rigs weren’t properly considered.

At night, in the Caribbean at least, sometimes the trade winds die for a couple of hours after midnight. Thus our center boat often deployed a light aluminum Fortress anchor off the stern to keep the whole raft from spinning. (It would be deployed after everything else was in place so it couldn’t get caught in a prop while maneuvering.)

The beautiful part of this arrangement was that if a large, violent squall was sighted, within moments the boats on either side of the center boat could cast off and the wing boats could dump out more scope, while the center boat reduced its scope from 8-to-1 to 6-to-1. Instantly, you had three smaller rafts, equally and safely spaced.

What if more people and boats show up? Here, again, this arrangement shines. If the wing boat casts off its springs and aft line from the boat closer to the center of the raft, both boats can pull away from each other by easing their bow lines. The new arrival, meanwhile, can pull into the just-created “slip” between the vessels as easy as pie (pumpkin is my fave, although I love blueberry and apple too).

Any multifreaks or yacht racers who might show up at the last minute can temporarily hang off the side boats because their vessels are usually light in weight and won’t stay long. (Multifreaks, I should explain, are multihull speedsters, folks who refer to our monohulls as lead mines or sea slugs. Yes, we seek revenge by taunting, “I’m not sure I want to go offshore in any vessel that needs to be stamped ‘This side up’ at the factory!”)

When rafting, dinghies can be a problem, especially when the motherships have outboard rudders, boomkins and self-steering vanes, the latter of which don’t like to be tapped even slightly, let alone have a Boston Whaler get caught under them during a large wake.

One solution, if someone is just stopping by, is to allow the “Sure, we’ll have a beer” speedboat to drift aft on a very long painter. This can work fine or end in disaster, depending.

A safer solution is to anchor a dinghy astern and off to one side of the raft-up. Since everyone will be swimming throughout the day anyway, direct all extra dinghies there, especially rigid ones with iffy rub rails. (There’s always a teenager in the water who will happily swim a dinghy back if you don’t want to get wet.)

Another factor to consider is landlubbers. Since we did our Turkey Day raft-ups on St. John, many of our best friends used to be intelligent — oops, I mean used to be sailors — and have now swallowed the hook. So we liked locations convenient to a beach so we could ferry these folks back and forth at predetermined times.

We used to do this in the national park until it installed for-profit moorings and nixed the practice. After that, we gathered in Round Bay, on St. John’s East End, which was hassle-free, close to a number of beaches, and didn’t get a wind swirl or backwind during our normal trade-wind conditions.

Now, a bit of advice once the food arrives: Don’t get lax and allow conversation to distract you. Wolf down your meal and immediately tack back into the crowd for seconds, thirds and fourths. If you don’t make your move quickly, there is a danger you’ll get slowed up by the gluttons. Yes, you can use your elbows and hips on your fellow sailors, just go easy on any elderly guests or crawling infants.

If your tummy hurts the following day and there are no scratches on your ­topsides — you did it right.

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The Goodlanders spent this past ­tropical-storm season in Grenada, where on Thanksgiving Day, they hoped to give thanks for having survived hurricane season, and to say a prayer for all their less fortunate cruising buddies.

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