COVID-19 has taken away much, but at the same time, it has given us vast stretches of uninterrupted time. I’ve used mine to catch up on my reading and to putter around my boat electrically. Since we’re particularly blessed with cheap LED components here in Southeast Asia, where my wife, Carolyn, and I are sitting out the pandemic aboard our Wauquiez ketch, Ganesh, I started out by focusing on lighting.

We now have nearly hidden red night lights gently illuminating our teak-and-holly cabin sole. They’re on two switches just inside the companionway. One we use if we’re headed forward from our amidships cockpit, the other if we’re going aft through the walk-through into the aft cabin. Obviously, both circuits are independently fused and the wires loomed away from any water or dampness. Each LED bulb is placed behind something—a door, bulkhead lip or ledge—so that coming below at night, we don’t see bulbs directly, only the glow of faint red illumination.

The new lighting makes it easier and safer to move around the boat at night in a seaway and helps preserve our night vision. It has the added benefit of making our varnished mahogany interior look stunning.

Speaking of our walk-through, it is quite dark in this area and easy to trip on steps built into the sole. It’s an airless, stuffy part of the boat, and we had replaced the sea bunk there with our offshore safety gear. The Paratech sea anchors, Jordan series drogues and various other slowing devices (and their rodes) take up a lot of space. Anyway, the bottom line is that this area not only needed gentle red illumination that preserves our night vision while we transit it, but also bright illumination if we need to access our portable Edson bilge pump, our ditch bag or our three dry bags of life-raft supplies. The problem is that anywhere you put a light switch would be wrong. The solution was a double-pole double-throw switch that can be turned on and off at either end of the passageway.

Too posh? Perhaps, but kind of cool as well. Why not do projects and make repairs that make you smile? (Actually, our 43-foot cruiser had something like this as original equipment, we just had to replace the switches and run new wires.)

Since we have little money, we do a massive amount of entertaining aboard for two reasons: One, we can control the cost, and two, we can repay the favors done by others who picked up a bar tab or paid for dinner ashore.

The good news is that our folding cockpit table is massive and sits six, but illuminating it wasn’t easy. To correct that, we used a strip of warm-yellow LEDs that now spreads the illumination and still allows the food to look good. Carolyn isn’t merely a good cook—her dinners are as visually pleasing as they taste. And I like to see my food, so this strip is fairly bright.

After dinner, however, we switch it off and turn on a single, softer warm-yellow LED cocktail light, which is totally waterproof as well. As an aside, I’ll say that dim lights and romance go hand in hand, especially at 70 years of age.

I’ve installed a 360-degree anchor light on our mizzen that automatically turns on at dusk and shuts off at dawn.

Since we regularly sail in the Indian Ocean, our cockpit is often awash and fire-hosed by breaking seas, so using top-quality waterproof components here is a must. I not only use heat-shrink terminals, but I also put an additional, longer piece of heat shrink over them so I have double the chance of keeping out the aerated salt crystals that eventually cause bad electrical connections.

From time to time, we have to throw our rum-guzzling friends back into their dinghies at some point in the evening. Now we have a dedicated mizzen LED spotlight that shines down on the aft deck area by our stern ladder. In addition, our stern light is mounted on our transom and arranged in such a manner that it illuminates the dinghy and the ladder as visitors board or tipsily debark.

Just in case we pass out with relief once our guests leave, I’ve installed a 360-degree anchor light on our mizzen that automatically turns on at dusk (or even during dark squalls) and shuts off at dawn. This is in addition to our brighter main masthead light, which is manually switched.

Because we spend so much of our time in the tropics, all of our boats have featured fans at the berths, galley and nav station. In the name of efficiency, we use cageless 12-volt fans with on/off switches conveniently located so that our sleepy fingers don’t get bitten by the spinning blades.

At this point in our lives, we’re more interested in small projects with immediate benefits.

In both heads we have a normal light, a reading light and a muffin, or computer exhaust fan, to carry away odors.

Strangely, since we often sail in high winds, our windspeed instrument is both dirt cheap (it’s a nonmarine Maximum) and manually switched. Yes, I want to occasionally know the windspeed during a gale, but only at times. The last thing I need is for nervous guests to watch the wind gust into the 40-knot range and have their blood pressure rise with the breeze.

Since we’ve lived most of our lives at anchor near islands in developing nations, we have a panic button—a doorbell, really —by the side of my pillow. The idea here is to passively and non-confrontationally scare away boarders before they get below, especially if they’ve swum out to our boat with a machete in their teeth. This button unleashes loud sirens and bright strobes at both the companionway and on the ­mizzen mast. I’ve used them four or five times over the years, and they are so bright and loud, they are panic-inducing. I’ve found that they’re particularly effective if da teef’s dinghy has just “touched” our hull and the bad boys are still in it.

Since we earn our pennies as we sail, we have to have our computerized tools conveniently with us wherever we work. We have 5-volt chargers in the aft cabin, saloon, nav station, tool room and cockpit. Whew! We’ve gone on daysails with eight or 10 executive-type paper pushers, and just keeping up with their iPhone charging needs is a full-time job.

While we now use wireless Bose portable speakers in our cockpit for music, we just installed a removable RAM3 remote mic and speaker there for our Horizon VHF radio. We seldom chat on our VHF, buddy boat or convoy with other cruisers, but I find that having a cockpit speaker and remote mic is extremely useful during boat-to-boat rescues or in other situations where immediate communication becomes necessary.

Meanwhile, down below, we now have two lights in our engine room. One provides soft light that we use when routinely checking our fluids; the other is a bright one in case we’re chasing a major ­mechanical problem or leak.

In addition to the panic alarm I mentioned earlier, we also rely on our $17 burglar alarm system, though not while in Singapore, because in this ­city-state of 6 million people, we never lock our vessel, dinghy or even our bikes. How crime-free is S’pore? To reserve a table in one of the busy food courts, elderly male Singaporeans will leave their iPhone to mark their spot, while the ladies just drop off their purse amid the sea of strangers. Ah, Singapore is utterly amazing. The last item that went missing off a boat at the Changi Sailing Club was just after World War II!

However, while cruising Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, we do set our burglar alarm as we leave our often-­solitary anchored vessel. Thus, we feel the $17 dollars we gave Amazon was well-spent for the relay timer that automatically shuts off all our bells, sirens and strobes after five minutes of unbearable racket. The alarm is triggered by a high-tech pressure-sensitive switch made from two broken sail battens wrapped in copper that make contact as you step into our cockpit. We also have a trip thread at the boarding ladder that we can add if we’re in a particularly worrisome area.

Here’s the truth of it: I’ve built entire boats from a few sheets of paper plans, and I’ve made expensive repairs to other vessels. Sailboats are complicated, and maintaining them is time-consuming. But there’s nothing like sailing across an ocean on a vessel that was once just a glimmer in your eye as you stared at a ­distant horizon. At this point in our lives, however, we’re more interested in small ­projects with immediate benefits. We need gentle lights to hide our wrinkles. Most of these projects cost almost nothing, only time. Carolyn and I often work on them together. Romance, after all, can be fostered while stripping wires as much as anything else.

And we keep our sense of humor while doing so. Every time I ask my wife a ­question, she says, “Watt?” As former hippies, we love our om-meter. Nothing impedes us. Don’t be shocked; we still get a charge out of making each other smile.

Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander report that they are beginning to go stir-crazy sitting aboard Ganesh in Singapore in Year Two of the pandemic.

The post Switching to LED Lights appeared first on Cruising World.

There are two situations that accelerate vessel maintenance: one, using your sailboat too much, and two, using it too seldom. For the past six decades of living aboard, I’ve erred on the too-active side of this equation. During the past 20 years of our cruising lives, my wife, Carolyn, and I have averaged between 5,000 and 8,000 ocean miles annually. That’s a lot of wear and tear on our sails, chafe on our running rigging, and hours on our Perkins diesel. Now, totally unexpectedly, we find ourselves staying put, tethered to a mooring at the Changi Sailing Club in Singapore due to the new normal of COVID-19 international-travel restrictions.

The result is, simply put, electrical issues. That’s right—I used to wear a rigging knife, but now I’m thinking of getting a holster for my ohm meter. I’m surrounded by bad electrical connections.

Part of the problem is that Ganesh, our 43-foot French-built ketch, grows ever more complicated electrically, with burglar and bilge alarms, automatic anchor lights, and 5-volt USB charging outlets springing up from the bilge like weeds. Yes, I attempt to keep our vessel simple. Despite this, we now carry 12 computer hard drives and three DSLR cameras, each of which is stowed in a humidity-controlled environment. Worse, we have more Apple products than a floating orchard. But our laptops, tablets and mobile communication equipment, along with our cameras and digital-storage devices, allow us to be digital waterborne sailing nomads, as Carolyn likes to say. Not only are we able, but we’re required, to keep in touch in order to earn our living daily in the far corners of our planet.

Another contributing factor electrical-wise is our abhorrence of marinas. We just don’t like the ­trailer-­park lifestyle, even afloat. Plus, the ­meanest trailer park in America doesn’t pack its ­residents ­toe-rail-to-toe-rail as tightly as a posh ­marina in Monte Carlo. Thus, we’re always on our own hook or hanging on a mooring ball, which has the additional benefit of being able to pivot into the wind, eliminating the need for electrical air ­conditioning. (Thank God for wind scoops!)

Needless to say, we have to share our natural resources. Currently, in Singapore, we are joined in our Changi anchorage—actually, it’s just a bulge in a constricted commercial waterway—by moored yachts, passing fishing boats, cargo ships, ferries, entire fleets of government craft, cruise ships, and international warships from numerous nations. My point? We regularly get wakes—big ‘uns. Often they slop on deck, and more than once we’ve had salt spray bound aboard through our fore, midship or aft deck hatches. We regularly roll from rail to rail. This is the price we pay for living almost for free in the most expensive, most sophisticated city nation on our planet.

Here, there’s a long fetch to both the west and northeast, and a strong tidal current is a factor as well. And while the winds are generally light, the nor’easterlies during winter are brisk and the summer squalls severe. And we’re often tide-bound and sitting sideways to the seas in a heavy haze of tropical salt spray.

Actually, as challenging as this sounds, we love this place. It’s like living in a three-ring aquatic circus. Something exciting is happening every second, day and night, just outside our portholes. However, as much as we’re enjoying our salt-laden environment, our electronic doodads aren’t. The aforementioned haze of tiny specks of sea salt eventually settle on every surface of Ganesh. Worse, salt is hydroscopic, and the warmer the temperature, the greater the effect. Not only do these drifting salt molecules ­attract water to all our wires and electrical connections, but they also bathe and boil them in a mild acid solution as well.

The unfortunate result is, as my wife Carolyn jokes, “Christmas year-round.” Our cabin lights blink on and off—and then don’t function at all.

Luckily, I’m a regular Sherlock Holmes of bad electrical connections. I can sniff them out either by testing for voltage or checking for continuity. The trick is to remember that electrons don’t just have to arrive at our 12-volt devices, but they also have to return to the other post of the battery to complete the circuit. To put it another way, it’s not just the two wires that deliver power to, say, our depth sounder that must be in solid contact with our main battery bank; it is the entire circuit that must be making contact. Think battery terminal, monitor shunt, main battery switch, terminal block, panel switch, fuse or circuit breakers on the positive side, plus any surprises on the negative ground side as well. (Note: This is a best-case simple example; many branching and re-branching circuits on Ganesh are far more confusing!)

Of course, a circuit, like an anchor chain, is only as good as its weakest link. Let’s consider our nine mismatched solar cells. Obviously, they’re outside. That means they’re not only misted with salt continually, but they’re occasionally struck by exploding seas as well. And they come from the factory with short wires but are mounted a long way from our batteries. This means that they have to be connected to each other and the vessel’s electrical system in such a manner that they (hopefully) function for long spans of time.

And whose job is this? Well, at our ­income level, it’s mine, and over the years, I’ve used a variety of ways to keep power flowing: marine-grade crimp connectors, soldering and, occasionally, twisting and taping. The latter is crude but cheap, and works—for a brief while. But the problem isn’t connecting the wires; it is keeping them connected or, to put it another way, to prevent the intrusion of those dreaded salt crystals that lead to corrosion.

Crimping on a quality connector is a good first step, for instance, but sealing it is the real challenge. Don’t forget: When two pairs of wires are joined, not only is a firm connection necessary, but each crimp needs to be moisture-proof, and negatives and positives must, of course, be kept separated.

Think about this real-life challenge: When I bought her, all of Ganesh’s mast wires had been cut to remove the main and mizzen spars. I could have spent the time and money to fix this correctly, but I sailed around the world instead. Am I sorry I did this? Not really. I have only a few dollars and a limited amount of time. I don’t want to squander too much working on a boat that I could be sailing.

But back to my wiring example. Mast wires are located in a very active and very damp part of the boat. The masts vibrate, the deck flexes, the sun beats down, the rain pours. Yikes! So here’s the bottom line: Crimping on a connector and saying “good enough” doesn’t cut it if you want the electrical connection to still be conducting when you return to safe harbor.

Personally, I live in a practical world with only a handful of pennies, so ­throwing money at the problem isn’t practical. My solution is to use a redundancy of techniques. So, back to the mast wires again. If I’m using a crimp connector, I use liquid tape to seal each wire into the connector once crimped. Then I add a heat-shrink tube over the top of that, and another, longer heat-shrink tube to cover the first. Thus, I have three physical barriers against moisture absorption. Enough? Probably. But on certain critical wires, I don’t stop there. I coat the heat-shrinks with silicone seal, wrap the whole gooey mess with plastic wrap, and then tape it.

Crazy? Yeah. But effective. I’ve had exterior connections such as this last more than a circumnavigation.

Why not solder? I often do. However, soldering on deck in a breeze isn’t easy. Temperature is critical. If a connection is not hot enough, the contact isn’t good; too much heat, and the insulation melts. Of course, I attempt to use quality marine components such as tinned, double-­insulated marine-grade 12-gauge stranded wire. But I’d be lying if I told you that I’m as careful wiring a cabin fan as I am our GPS, bilge pump or starter motor.

While in cruising mode, I find it ­relatively easy to keep everything humming electrically. I just slowly fix, fix, fix until it is all good, then immediately deal with anything that ceases to function. However, if I’m not in cruising mode, things gradually deteriorate without me realizing it.

The way I deal with this is by having a weekly, monthly and quarterly maintenance routine, in addition to our normal haulout-work checklist. Every week as I wind my eight-day ship’s clock, I also run the engine and bilge pump, and physically look into the bilge. Before I crank the engine, I check all its fluids, and feel under the transmission and pan for any early signs of leakage.

The moment the engine starts, I check to see if it is pumping raw water, and then I stare at its flow for a while. Does it appear to be pumping the same amount as last time? Is the exhaust gas invisible? If not, white smoke has a different meaning than black. I allow the engine to get up to temperature, then shift it into forward and reverse under mild temporary load to lube the transmission and keep the rear seal moist.

Next, I exercise my electronics by ­turning them all on and, for example, ­keying the mic of our SSB, etc. This not only keeps the copper surfaces of the switches clean, but the heat from each device dries out the electronics as well.

On a monthly basis, I spin the ­anchor windlass and steering wheel, and ­momentarily engage the autopilot. Ditto our burglar alarm (which is useless in ­zero-crime Singapore). On a quarterly basis, I check the lower-unit lubrication on our tender’s outboard and basically spin or move everything on the boat, specifically all 12 winches and Monitor self-steering gear. I move and rotate the sheave of every block on board, paying particular attention to aluminum masthead and boom sheaves that can freeze up in the blink of an eye. I also confirm that my bilge float switches are working and check my life rafts for water intrusion.

There’s a great irony here: After a lifetime offshore, not sailing my boat is the only thing I’m uncomfortable with. But we cruising sailors must embrace change. In a sense, that’s what our lifestyle is all about. An avid sailor by the name of Charles Darwin agrees. To paraphrase his writing: “Adaptation is more important than intelligence.” On a warming ­planet, while anchored directly below the ­equatorial sun, this is a life lesson I cannot afford to forget.

Cap’n Fatty Goodlander’s most recent project is to figure out how to remove the bilge pump from the sump under his engine, which he installed when the diesel was out.

The post Digging into Sailboat Wiring appeared first on Cruising World.

Longtime Cruising World contributors Carolyn and Cap’n Fatty Goodlander talk about their current circumnavigation, sailboats and their life at sea with editors Herb McCormick and Mark Pillsbury. This is the latest episode of Cocktails with Cruising World, a webinar series featuring sailors, writers and friends.

The post Cocktails with Cruising World featuring Carolyn and Cap’n Fatty Goodlander appeared first on Cruising World.

On our first circumnavigation, we didn’t even budget for clearing-in costs because they were so minor. Alas, they have skyrocketed.

For example, it used to cost every vessel a dime to clear ­into the BVI; now, a St. Thomas charter boat pays hundreds of dollars per visit. Tonga was $4 and is now closer to $400 for the winter season. The Bahamas used to be $12, and now, it is $300 minimum for a 40-footer; some boats pay nearly $500 if they want to toss over a fishing line. There are countries that even tack on a $4-per-day liveaboard fee, in addition to a boatload of other landing, garbage collection and port security charges.

In Funafuti, I was asked to pay $30 for a “navigation-light fee,” and shot back, “Are you kidding me? There’s not a single nav light working in this entire nation!”

The guy smiled, shrugged and said, “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.”

“Yes, I can,” I said, while looking him in the eye. “And I do.”

African officials sometimes force you into an expensive dock (owned by their brother-in-law) in case they might need to do a random spot inspection.

In Oman, a permit is required to dive over to clean your prop, and you have to hire a designated translator to fill in the form. They attempt to fine boats clearing out for “improper insurance ­compliance” as well.

Once, in Puerto Ayora, in the Galapagos, the harbormaster would not allow us to anchor without paying a fumigation and de-ratting charge. Once paid, a smiley guy came out to our boat with a tank of poison, pointed out that his poison was really poisonous stuff and graciously offered not to spray the boat for an additional fee. I’m ashamed to admit I paid rather than sail westward across the Pacific sleeping on deck.

One greedy but confused fellow in Panama was demanding yet another cruising permit fee and visa to clear out. “No freakin’ way,” we laughed as we scooped up our passports and fled.

For a while in St. Lucia, the customs man demanded that you fly an expensive courtesy flag that his wife sewed. If you refused to buy it because you already had a courtesy flag, well, he’d then inspect your boat for drugs in such a damaging manner that you’d gladly pay for the darned flag to get him to stop.

Madagascar became so imaginative with these what-can-we-dream-up-next fees that all the cruising boats left en masse. They were only wooed back when a list of five minor official charges was announced. Regardless, the thugs on the dinghy dock of Hell-Ville (yes, how aptly named) still demanded a dollar a day not to sink your dinghy.

When visiting a new country, some charges are legitimate, of course, and some aren’t, but you have to deal with them regardless.

Here’s how my wife, Carolyn, and I do it. First off, I wear long pants and we dress neatly but not expensively when clearing in. In many former British colonies, officials are insulted by shorts or bare feet. Second, particularly in Southeast Asia, we never lose face by getting angry. (“That which angers you, conquers you,” is the local belief.) Third, we’re patient. In the Philippines, they tell you to wait and wait and wait — and we wait as obnoxiously and loudly as possible until they tell us cheapskates we can go. Fourth, we do our research.

Research? Yes. We ­determine beforehand what fees are legitimate and which aren’t. We are perfectly OK with paying legal fees, but dreamed-up ones, not so much. Noonsite.com is a valuable resource for this. Here’s the truth of it: Many ports are charging, year in and year out, five fees, but only three are legit. Thus, they have a profitable scam going. They simply pocket the other two fees. However, if you calmly tell them that only three are legit and you are happy to pay for them if you get a receipt, they will often just nod and accept it so as not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Occasionally, this doesn’t work. If they demand payment and refuse to give us a receipt, our only option is to leave. And don’t forget, you can leave. Just return to your vessel and head back out to sea. We have anarchistic French friends who do this all the time. They just stumble in, turn their pockets inside out and say, “Sorry, no money!”

Then they watch what happens.

“Amusing, yes?” laughed the anarchistic skipper.

“Better than a kung fu ­movie,” agreed his loopy wife.

While clearing in, we never give or show the officials anything they don’t specifically request. We’re polite and attentive and friendly, but often silently take the Fifth, so to speak. We’ve learned that ­volunteering info often backfires, especially when corruption is present.

We’ve always “just arrived,” because many countries charge overtime fees if you anchor in the dark, or double overtime if you drop your hook on Sunday, while they’re snoring away.

Occasionally, in the backwaters of South America, they demand you bring them your original documentation and then make a big deal of locking it up in their safe if you don’t pay a bribe. Thus, they have you over a barrel.

Well, maybe not us.

We carry a dozen high-quality photocopied “original” documentations. Thus, when an Ecuadorian official once demanded a large bribe and theatrically locked up our original U.S. documentation ship’s papers in front of all the staff, I just looked glum and asked woefully, “Do you have any idea how much time and expense it would entail for me to get another one of those?”

Carolyn tried not to snicker and blurt out, “About two seconds and 10 cents!”

Ah, the games we frugal sea gypsies are forced to play!

The grimmest gimme trend is yacht agents. While a few are legitimately needed to smooth the way, many conspire with the government officials (to whom they kick back) to not clear you in without their assistance. For instance, one agent in the western Pacific kicks back $100 of his $400 fee to the customs guys in exchange for their allowing him to be the sole person in possession of all the complicated government forms. Even the customs employees can’t give you paperwork without you giving the agent $400 for nothing other than providing sheets of paper.

We’ve learned to keep our ears open for certain words and phrases while clearing in. For example, when a customs or immigration official starts talking about discretionary matters or on-the-spot fines or irregularities in your ­documentation, he’s asking for a bribe. Some unsophisticated ­government workers just smile and blurt out expectantly, “How ’bout something for me?”

When that happens, Carolyn bats her pretty brown eyes and says, “I’m sorry. Our owners don’t allow us to pay such additional fees. Maybe next time!”

This makes no logical sense but allows the rebuffed official to save face.

If I had a penny for every foreign official who said, “But it’s nothing for you,” I’d be a rich man.

In a sense, the West teaches the locals how to cheat. In Tonga, they never cared about foodstuffs aboard yachts until nearby New Zealand started to make such a fuss over biohazards and invasive species. Thus, on our last visit, they confiscated our fresh apples. Lucky for us, the market ladies had just received a shipment of suspiciously familiar-­looking apples at the local market that very same day!

The amazing thing, really, isn’t that there is some corruption in the world, but how little of it we actually encounter. While rising fees are a major problem for us, rising corruption isn’t yet. Though, when it does occur, such corruption isn’t limited to the smaller countries. One of the worst, carefully crafted rip-offs by customs and immigration officials — we’re talking about hundreds of dollars in bogus overtime charges — that we’ve ever experienced was in ­modern Brisbane, Australia.

In Fiji, by contrast, you have to bring the chief some kava and get stoned with him, but that’s not too hard to take.

And we yachties are partially to blame ourselves. One of the reasons that the Galapagos officials became so greedy so fast is because (­reportedly) a dot-com ­billionaire brought a megayacht stuffed with wealthy guests from California. An official made a joke about how much it would cost to clear such a magnificent vessel, and its flush skipper paid that amount without batting an eye.

We have a friend who is the captain of one such zillion-­dollar yacht. He’s instructed by his owner to never waste time clearing in. Only a small fine is incurred, and the owner will happily pay it if they’re caught in foreign waters. The skipper isn’t happy about this but doesn’t want to lose his cushy job, so thus complies.

The main thing to remember is not to panic when encountering officialdom. This ancient dance between bewildered visitor and avarice-inspired locals has been going on for thousands of years. The Suez Canal, for example, is a lockless drainage ditch between the Red Sea and the Med that has generated billions of ill-gotten dollars for the Egyptians.

As I circumnavigate, landlubbers often ask me, “What about pirates?” I always respond brightly, “There are lots of ’em, and most are wearing government uniforms.”

The Goodlanders are avoiding onerous fees and continue to make their way across the Pacific on their ketch, Ganesh.

The post On Watch: Clearing In appeared first on Cruising World.

It’s not easy finding four line handlers smart enough to catch a rope and dumb enough to get involved with a Panama Canal transit aboard Ganesh, our hard-used 43-foot ketch. Here’s the truth of it: The only common denominator among my friends is that they lack judgment. Thus, I coaxed aboard Handsome Henry, of London; the notorious Sailor Sandy Lord, of Vermont; and Greg and Liz Ann Mulvany, of Lagniappe, a Pacific Seacraft 37 from New Orleans.

This wasn’t our first transit. My wife, Carolyn, and I have used Neptune’s Stairs so often the Panama Canal Authority gives us frequent-flyer miles. And our last transit had been a piece of cake. We’d ­center-locked through, with two other vessels rafted alongside as potential fenders. No problem; their crews did all the linehandling while I gave Carolyn a pedicure.

Still, a Panama Canal transit requires four physically able onboard line handlers regardless of the ease of passage, so Carolyn and I had no choice but to beat the bushes for the unwary.

Once we had our pickup crew aboard, we moved into place on the Flats to await our adviser pilot — on April Fools’ Day no less, which seemed wholly appropriate.

Here is a little-known fact: The poorly paid hands working on the lock walls in the canal don’t have iPhones, Sony PlayStations or Microsoft Xboxes. Thus, they are entertainment deprived, so they spend a lot of time on target practice with their encased-steel monkey fists (outlawed in most places), and are said to be able to hit the eye of a fly in midflight.

The guys on the wall can be dangerous, in other words. Before entering the canal, Carolyn had covered every solar cell and breakable object on the deck of Ganesh with mattresses held down with duct tape, or cockpit cushions tied off with string. I would have gladly worn a football helmet had I had one aboard.

Our first pilot was Roy, a careful man intent on doing a good job. “My transom backs to port,” I told him, just to let him know I understood prop wash and other esoteric nautical tendencies.

“No problemo,” he said. “Tranquillo!“

There was a problemo, however. A decrepit tug boat by the name of Tito One kept getting too close to us as we were awaiting our first lock. The tug was covered in rust, flaking paint and thick grease, and carried a battle-scarred crew to match.

There is a swift current as you enter the three-stage Gatun ascending locks, but it is on your bow and thus can be used as a brake. I felt in perfect control as I maneuvered to be center-tied between two other boats.

“No,” said our adviser Roy. “We side-tie to the tug.”

My cakewalk transit suddenly turned into a grease-smeared, tire-marked nightmare. The problem wasn’t merely that I didn’t want my vessel to touch the filthy Tito One. A commercial tug has its own agenda. When it needed to go to assist the ship locking through, it went. I’d best be able to grapple or untie in an instant if I didn’t want to be damaged.

“Do not worry,” said Roy. “We’ll be portside to, so your transom will tuck in easy.”

By chance, it was Handsome Henry standing by on my aft port cleat. Once Sailor Sandy realized she’d have nothing to do on starboard, she rightly went to gently assist nervous Henry.

Since I had the strong lock current to use as a brake, I was able to approach the tug, kick my stern in by tapping reverse and hold Ganesh stationary alongside, which was a good thing because there was no one to take our lines. Finally, a crewman wandered over and Handsome Henry handed him his stern line. Then we cheered. “Good job, Henry!” I said.

“It was easier than I expected,” he replied, grinning.

Alas, the deckhand who took our stern line disappeared without taking our bow line or springs, so I had to hold Ganesh in place with my engine until our pilot, Roy, corralled another crewmember to assist.

“No problemo with a side-tie,” said Roy with a smile, and who certainly would not be around when Carolyn and I buffed out our once-white topsides.

Suddenly, the water exploded all around us as millions of gallons rushed into Gatun lock at the same instant. Picture a toy boat buffeted in a strong Jacuzzi.

We instantly began to surge on our lines, but didn’t have to tend them for the rapid rise of water level because that was the job for the crew on the tug. Only they weren’t doing it. They’d all disappeared into the engine room on break.

I had a moment of panic. The stern of the tug pulled away from the wall and then swung wider. Both vessels surged back hard. Now the tug was 90 degrees to the wall, loudly smashing its rusty bow plates into the concrete. Just a few more meters of slack in the lines as we rose, and Ganesh‘s bow would be ground off. We all started screaming in unison. A sheepish crewmember ambled on deck, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and begrudgingly took in enough scope to prevent our being crushed.

It had been close, and I’d felt powerless. I was now on full alert, amazed to have been so near to disaster. Ganesh is everything we own, and she is uninsured. It would not take much of an accident to force us to abort our circumnavigation.

That evening, we moored in placid Lake Gatun, right around where a penniless Paul Gauguin (the French painter, pre-fame) shoveled dirt as his Spanish friends died of malaria.

On the way into the final series of three locks (there are a total of six), I told him what I’d told Roy: “My transom walks to port in reverse.” He showed no signs he understood.

Ganesh has a full keel. I cannot back her straight under most conditions. This makes close-quarters work stressful.

Once in the lock on the downhill descending side (Pacific) of Lake Gatun, I realized the current was behind us now, and stronger. I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. We were going too fast toward the south lock gates even though I was in neutral. I tapped Ganesh into reverse, but she started to slew. I jammed her back into neutral to realign, but we had too much forward momentum.

To confound things, we would be tied starboard-to this time.

This was going to be tricky. I had planned on having the experienced Sailor Sandy make the line toss to the other vessel, but at the last minute, Ivan had told me to put my strongest man to starboard, aft. I would have preferred not to, but did not want to ignore my adviser. Plus, I was struggling with the current. So I asked Sandy to change places with Handsome Henry. It was a mistake on my part.

Henry thought he could hand the line over as before, but as I gunned it in reverse to slow, thanks to the prop walk, he got farther and farther away from Tito One. Everyone started yelling at poor Henry, especially the impatient guy on the tug. Henry sort of pushed and shoved the coil of line away from himself and it plopped into the water right next to Ganesh‘s prop.

I am, perhaps, not the best skipper in the world, but I have spent a lifetime attempting not to make bad matters worse during an emergency.

“Sandy, help him keep it clear of my prop, OK?” I said as calmly as I could. And then, I did nothing.

This was very hard to do because we were still moving forward and Greg already had his bow line cleated off.

I did not shout. I did not make the newbie mistake of leaving my helm to help.

Sandy and Henry were asses and elbows as they desperately attempted to get the heavy hawser back aboard.

“Clear,” said Sandy, as I jammed Ganesh into full reverse, but a tad late as the bow line took up and my transom fully swung out.

“Slack, Greg,” I shouted forward and saw he understood what was needed. Greg was, all joking aside, magic on the foredeck.

He eased.

We were now sideways to the strong current in the lock, and I was just about to have my $4,000 Monitor windvane wiped off my transom by the east wall. I gave my Perkins M92B full power forward. The lock wall missed my Monitor by inches. But now my bow was lunging for the opposite side of the lock. It was clear to me that I was not going to have enough room to round up into the current before smashing hard into the gate. All I could do was buy time.

And I bought some, even though I was doomed.

Ivan, our adviser, suddenly came alive. He dashed forward and snatched the bow line from Greg. Then he yelled in Spanish for the tug crew to run it aft. Ivan moved as gracefully as a rotund ballerina as he trotted the heavy hawser aft at the same time. I suddenly realized he was more than an iPhone adorer, he was a sailor’s sailor who could think on his nimble feet.

Once Ivan had the long hawser aft on both Ganesh and the tug, he snubbed it off, and my bow straightened just before it rammed the lock door. Once straight, I was able to reverse with good effect, with Big Ivan grunting in the ensuing slack.

“You saved her,” I said to him in both admiration and appreciation.

“Only because you kept her off the wall long enough,” he replied.

We smiled at each other. I tipped my hat (well, my head scarf) to him.

“Well that deserves another Coke-with-ice for Ivan,” said Carolyn, and everyone laughed.

“Did I screw up?” asked Henry.

“Not at all,” I said. “The comedy of errors was entirely mine. Thank heavens for the fleet-footed Ivan.”

When things go sideways, there is only one person to blame on a boat, and that is its skipper.

We all gave Ivan three loud and hearty cheers as the lock gates opened and we were spit into the Pacific. Well, almost. As Ivan was taken off by a crew boat, I told my mates, “There is only one more challenge: We’re going to refuel in Balboa.”

This was not easy, because a crowd of land sharks descended upon us at the fuel dock, demanding all manner of imaginative fees, charges and mystical payments. At one point, a dock hustler physically grabbed Greg, and I had to wade into the crowd of greed-heads to mellow things out.

“Fatty, I am ready to cast off,” yelled Carolyn loudly from the bow. I could plainly hear the worry in her voice.

I didn’t rush to step back aboard. After all, I am a captain. I calmly and lovingly hugged Greg, Liz Ann, Sailor Sandy and Handsome Henry goodbye and said, “Thanks. You guys were great. I would sail with you anywhere, anytime.”

“It’s been, well, like a dream,” said Henry, and there was a catch in his throat.

His hug was strong.

Then I was back aboard Ganesh, ­gunning her away from the dock as Carolyn tidied up our tangle of grease-caked dock lines. We’d already cleared out in Colón. We were free.

“Ready to relax at sea for the next 45 days or so?” I asked Carolyn.

She smiled. “I’m all yours,” she said, and meant it.

Sometimes, after 48 years of bluewater sailing together, I have to be careful not to tear up around my best friend, my lover and my wife.

I glanced up at my masthead Windex. The wind was fair.

“Take the wheel,” I told her. “I’ll hoist the main.”

Cap’n Fatty and Carolyn are wrapping up three months in French Polynesia and setting sail for Tonga.

The post Transiting the Panama Canal appeared first on Cruising World.

I confess to having the wrong ­perspective when it comes to the city of Colón, Panama, at the ­Caribbean mouth of the Panama Canal. I see it as the last barrier, the last stand, if you will, of bureaucratic dirt dwellers ­attempting to prevent me from reaching the ­comparative paradise of the Pacific. I know that this is so geographically unfair. The port of Colón is more than a den of greedy thieves intent on robbing you with a ­fountain pen — or, so they say.

But my own personal prejudice is ­revealed in the first factoid I tell people about Colón: It is pronounced like the perfume but smells like the body part.

Oh, the stories I could tell about the old Panama Canal Yacht Club ­before the wharf rats stormed it ­into ­oblivion! The fly-speckled restaurant on ­premises sold a delicious and spicy “chicken special” (complete with tiny rib cage) that ­welcomed no inquiries as to ­ancestry. Where else but Colón does a ­shotgun-wielding security guard clear the street before allowing you to dash from your taxi to the cybercafe?

But every dark cloud has a silver ­lining. On one visit, we met a pugnacious ­German yachtsman who field-trained in martial arts each night by strapping on a fake Rolex and strolling into the no man’s land just outside the PCYC and taking on all comers. I ask you, where else but ­Panama offers a steady stream of young, eager live combatants willing to fight to the death daily? Where, indeed?

“And only four times have I lost a watch,” said the German warrior. “Only when someone pulled a gun or knife. You must come with me sometime, Fatty! The ghost of Bruce Lee would be proud!”

Yes, there were some interesting lounge lizards at the dilapidated PCYC. But that was 20 years ago, when the place had a certain Third World, tequila-­scented charm. It’s much worse now. Put it this way: In my watery world, the cowards choose Cape Horn rather than risk a night or two of slithering through the bureaucratic sewers of Colón. Nonetheless, we shoved off from St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands on our fourth circumnavigation with joyous hearts. Part of the bliss of being a sea gypsy is philosophical; you have to take the sweet with the bitter. We’d do a shakedown across the ­Caribbean, ­survive the greedy paper-pushers of Panama and be back in our beloved pearl-strewn Tuamotus in no time.

Alas, a persistent low-pressure zone just south of Santa Marta, Colombia, ­intensified and decided to have some fun at our expense. We’d just spent a year tooling around the benign Lesser ­Antilles, and it was time for an offshore reality check. Yes, we knew we were sailing ­into gale-force winds and an area of strong ­currents, but the low-pressure system was rudely in our way, and I’m a macho guy.

“How bad can it be?” I asked my wife, Carolyn, who looked stricken and ­replied, “That is always a stupid thing to say, ­Fatty. Always!”

It wasn’t the steady 36 knots of breeze that got us, or the gusts to 47; it was the weirdly jumbled current and ­confused seas. Oh, yes, and the cross swell too. It was like sailing through a wave-heaped storm cauldron with huge geysers of water clapping together into random ­mountainous wave trains.

Translation: It was rougher than I’d ­anticipated.

I have another confession to make: I’d just spent the past year shaking the ­money tree by giving cruising seminars, during which I was forced to listen to ­myself publicly proclaiming some small degree of intelligence coupled with a ­massive dose of bravery. And, well, it was impossible not to start to believe some of my sophomoric drivel! So, evidently, Mother Ocean and Neptune had a little meeting and decided to take De Fat Mon down a peg or two.

The first incident took place just ­after midnight, when the steering line that connects our Monitor windvane to our ­cockpit wheel broke. I was dozing au ­naturel in the aft cabin when we unexpectedly jibed, were caught aback, ­sharply heeled and started to round up. All this before I could say, “Where are my shorts?”

Normally, jibing our storm staysail isn’t too bad, but in these boisterous seas (think waves breaking astern and some coming aboard) it was somewhat exciting, believe me.

At once, I rushed on deck, ­pantsless, shoeless and brainless — evidently, the ­exact combo Ma Ocean and King Nep had hoped for. It was overcast. ­Numerous squalls were about. There was no moon, and the seas looked like dark, ­looming liquid mountains. Our intermittent ­compass light (the problem was hard to ­troubleshoot and fix because the bulb ­always worked in harbor) oriented me as to the vertical. I grabbed the helm, glanced at the Windex aloft and forced Ganesh‘s bow back down in the 30 to 40 knots of wind trying to round us up.

Sad to say, Carolyn, my partner offshore for 48 years, found this all amusing, especially my clothing disarray, so to speak. In the cockpit, there were snapping lines and a spinning self-steering clutch on the wheel, right at belt level.

She’s a bit of a feminist. “Ah,” she said with a smile from the companionway, “the advantages of an inboard rig! Watch the soft bits, honey.”

Then just when I had things back on course, our compass light strobed off. Then on. Then off.

“Damn it,” I hissed to her. “I haven’t been this disoriented since Studio 54.”

She sounded amazed. “Bits of the 1970s are starting to filter back into your ­consciousness?”

Gosh, she was in a playful mood!

I ­ignored her and instead ­concentrated on the blinking compass light while ­attempting to keep the careening ­surfboard of a boat on course.

“Loose connection,” I blurted out at one point. She knew that I’d replaced the compass light switch just before we left Great Cruz Bay.

“Perhaps the problem is in your ­brainstem,” she said, misunderstanding me completely.

In order to save money, we keep most of our electronics belowdecks to prevent water intrusion. In this case, I had to have Carolyn hand me the electric-powered ­autopilot head so I could connect its wires while steering with my hips amid the lumps and potholes. Occasionally, she’d shine her flashlight out at me, just to spice up the challenge.

“Give a man some modesty!” I bellowed.

“Must be scared,” she teased back as she tossed pieces of clothing my way.

Finally, I managed to dress, if ­wearing one shoe and inside-out sailing shorts qualifies as such.

“You are a fashionista,” she ­said, then added coyly, “Should I grab the ­camera for your many fans?”

“No time for posing,” I said hastily after the Robertson autopilot was engaged and tracking. “This SOB must fix the Monitor ASAP, OK?”

“L-O-L,” she replied.

It was a wild, storm-tossed night, and we both felt giddy. We came here for ­adventure, and we were getting it. What could be better?

Now, our Monitor windvane lives low on our boat’s generous transom. Re-­reeving the control line was difficult in a shipyard, and rather more so in 18-foot waves. Plus, I had to hang upside down, practically by my ankles. Occasionally, a tumbling sea boarded and made me wonder if that pain in my chest was my ribs breaking, my back straining or both.

Carolyn came out into the wave-dashed cockpit just in case she could help. I felt a surge of love. How lucky can one man be?

Finally, I managed to get the ­control line routed through the long stainless-­steel tube and out the turning block. Then I had to thread it through the ­rudder hole and secure it, with the wild gyrating ­rudder still mostly immersed in large seas.

“Ten,” I said aloud. “Ten.” Then a bit later, “10!”

“Meaning?” Carolyn asked from ­forward and above in the cockpit.

“Meaning I want to end this process with the same number of fingers I began it with!” I replied.

“You are such a wuss,” she chuckled.

Finally, I completed the task, crawled back into the cockpit, shut off the ­autopilot and engaged the Monitor. It held course.

I was too tired to do anything but ­collapse in Carolyn’s arms.

“My hero,” she said simply as she ­patted my head. We stayed that way for a long time. I was utterly content to remain within throbbing distance of her heart.

Bang! The Monitor’s other control line snapped.

This time I was quicker, and caught the wheel before we jibed.

“You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?” Carolyn asked.

“Well, a man can hope,” I said ­wearily as I crawled aft again. It turns out the problem wasn’t chafe so much as age and sun damage to the synthetic cordage. I guess hoping for two circs with the same steering lines is one too many.

A few days later, the wind was down to 25 knots and we were steering for a ­persistent smudge on the horizon. ­Carolyn, my Pactor babe, was twiddling the dials of her single-sideband radio. Her ham call sign is NP2MU, aka Miss ­Universe. There was an email from Herb McCormick at Cruising World. One of my fans (Andrew B) had messaged him to give us a heads up: There were riots in Colón.

“That smudge is tires, police cars and at least one major building downtown in flames,” Carolyn said.

I smiled. It was a test, just another ­cosmic trial. The gods were toying with us. Nothing new, really.

I shrugged, just as I’d seen Bogie do to Katharine Hepburn in the movie The ­African Queen.

“You ready for the pandemonium of civilization, Panamanian-style?” asked Carolyn.

I mimed rolling up my sleeves and ­taking the cheap wristwatch off my arm and putting it in my pocket, something that males born on the south side of ­Chicago are all-too familiar with doing.

“Let me at ’em,” I said confidently.

After an April transit of the Panama Canal, the Goodlanders pointed Ganesh’s bow straight at the Marquesas and French Polynesia.

The post An Eventful Sail to Panama 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.

– – –

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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Growing up aboard the 1924 wooden schooner Elizabeth in the 1950s was a trip: We had canvas sails of Egyptian cotton, a tarred manila anchor rode, a mechanical windlass, a well-swung compass, a calibrated chronometer, a cherished sextant and kerosene running lights. I’ll never forget the time my father brought me on a tour of one of the sailboats he was delivering to South America and pointed out that it had two switchable batteries! Why in hell anyone would want two batteries aboard a sailboat was beyond us.

I write this more than 50 years later, on a boat with 12 6-volt Trojan T-105 batteries in my bilge. I used to carry a rigging knife with a marlinespike on my belt. Now I can whip out my digital multimeter from the same location. Yes, I’ve seen some changes, a very mixed bag of changes. And during the witnessing, I’ve come to realize that progress is a double-edged sword.

Let’s glance at onboard watermakers, for example. When Carolyn and I started cruising offshore in the late 1960s, these were unheard of aboard a small sailing vessel. Then, as the units grew more common and dependable, they seemed only a plus. But as soon as your average circumnavigating craft possessed one, your average marina stopped using water as a way to lure you to its fuel dock. Thus, many shoreside facilities that had clean fresh water for boats simply stopped providing it, and at the same time, those few that kept the flow going realized they now had an increasingly rare and precious commodity, and started charging accordingly. A few even began charging, by the quarter-hour, a dockage fee while you took on water. Suddenly fresh water was hard to find for the cruising vessel. It’s ironic that the widespread use of watermakers caused the devices to come into wider use!

Let’s stay with the watermakers for illustrative purposes a moment longer.

About 15 to 20 years ago, watermakers really came into their own by dramatically decreasing in size and increasing in dependability. Still, these early robust desalinators owned you as much as you owned them. I started hearing people say, “Oh, I can’t. I have a watermaker,” meaning they didn’t want to pickle their unit to avoid problems, so they didn’t want to go up a river, into a certain bay or to a dock because of the bad water quality. Thus, a mechanical device purchased to free you from the land sharks started to compromise and limit your cruising itinerary. Strange!

At the same time, some marinas simply said, “Our water is for our customers.” That meant you now had to overnight at the marina if you wanted water, and overnighting can be very expensive compared to a weekly or monthly charge. Thus, the transient cruiser had better bring a pocketful of gold if he wants a glass of semiclear water. (At the pricey Bali Marina, the fresh water comes out with clumps of seaweed and wiggling worms, and has the faint odor and sheen of sulfurous gasoline.) Pocket cruisers fare the worst. They are too small to have watermakers, and their crews often can’t afford them. But alas, many marinas that desire to attract the profitable megayachts now have adopted a policy that states, “Sure, small boats are welcome — with a minimum charge of 45 feet.” Yikes!

And then there’s the case of modern cruisers who have spent their lifetime earning enough to afford their vessel, and who aren’t as mechanically inclined as their forefathers were. Thus, simplicity of use has become a real selling point. Highly dependable watermakers started marketing set-it-and-forget-it back-flushing units — and rapidly became so complicated that you can barely find the watermaker buried in the electronics. So what we now have are sailors circum­navigating aboard small-tankage vessels that have freshwater washdown pumps and even freshwater heads!

I’m often asked a simple question: “Should I buy a watermaker before crossing the Pacific?” My long and rambling answer seldom satisfies. The condensed version is this: Yes, buy a simple one, if you can afford it, but if you can’t, go anyway. I’ve circumnavigated twice without one and once with. It’s a mixed bag.

Now here are a few more conundrums to consider.

I personally hate bow thrusters — two potentially deadly holes in the hull, a giant increase in drag, lots of weight forward that increases hobbyhorsing and a million complicated seals to leak. But marinas are shrinking as bow thrusters come into widespread use. I’ve recently been assigned slips that were impossible to get into without one. Unfortunately, Ganesh, our 43-foot, 30,000-pound Wauquiez ketch requires a football field to turn around. We used to occasionally see couples in their 80s cruising offshore in very basic vessels. We marveled at their ability to crank their sheet winches at such an advanced age. Now we see older couples offshore with electric sheet winches. They get so little exercise it is difficult for them to fend off another vessel as they drag through the harbor.

While I’m in favor of having free email aboard via ham radio (and inexpensive email via SailMail), I have no desire to have an Internet connection while offshore. Many cruisers end up spending as much money to surf the Internet at sea as frugal sailors do on their entire circumnavigation.

Each to his own, I guess. Sure, I love our single-sideband radio and Pactor digital modem because they allow me to talk to all the boats around me, but I have no use for a satellite phone that expensively prevents me from doing exactly that. Security offshore is an issue, especially because we’ve repeatedly crossed the Sulu Sea, Malacca Straits and South China Sea, as well as cruised the Gulf of Aden off Somalia. One cruiser I know wanted to be sure he was well-armed before heading out across the dreaded Indian Ocean. Thus he attempted to purchase an AK-47 in Thailand, a criminal act for which he went to jail for five years. (Yes, security against Somali pirates was excellent in the Big House.)

One of the questions I ask myself when purchasing an expensive marine item (actually, during any major life decision) is: Does this make me more free or less free? Basically, I want a simple and robust boat that is capable of going to sea at a moment’s notice. The problem is that the concept of simple varies from one individual to the next. For instance, I never want a boat with air conditioning or a generator, yet I have many dear friends here in the tropics who would not consider living aboard without both.

Air-conditioned boats, of course, spend 99 percent of their time in marinas, with their temperature-sensitive owners held prisoner inside in morgue-like conditions. Many of them don’t even know their next-boat neighbor, whom they seldom meet in passing. Only occasionally do they leave the dock and go anchor out. And even then, they sit indoors, hiding inside and polluting the anchorage with diesel fumes and engine noise. Interested? Not me.

Contrast this with a non-air-­conditioned sailboat. My wife, Carolyn, and I eat the vast majority of our meals outside in the cockpit, in full view of our many cruising friends with whom we are constantly interacting. People passing in dinghies stop by to chat. Our seven silent solar cells provide all our renewable energy. We don’t give off any noise or pollution — only self-sustaining and nonpolluting good vibes.

One of the coolest (sorry for the pun) aspects of living aboard (air-conditioned or not) is that there is no right way to do it. We have wonderful friends on engine­less 24-foot sailing vessels and just as wonderful friends on 74-foot Deerfoots with all the conveniences.

My purpose here isn’t to claim my way is the right way, but rather that all ways have advantages and disadvantages.

For example, my wife, daughter and I lived aboard Wild Card, a Hughes 38, from 1989 to 1995 without an engine. We cruised the entire Caribbean, including northern South America, without a problem. However, after installing a Perkins M30 diesel, we found our cruising life vastly improved. True, having no engine freed us of the expense and time of diesel maintenance, but it came at the added inconvenience of making many harbors off-limits to us. In essence, we didn’t need an engine to move our vessel over vast distances offshore, only to fully enjoy the harbors within sight of us.

For us, having an engine was more of a lifestyle choice than a navigational one.

Ditto for our dinghy propulsion. On Elizabeth, Carlotta and Corina, the first three cruising boats I was involved with, I rowed our tender. However, as our family grew, I aged and our ability to anchor cheaply pushed us to more challenging locations in more remote areas, the distances to shore became too great. We used a 2 or 5 hp engine during all our circum­navigations. The motors were small enough to be easily lifted and yet powerful enough to push a loaded dinghy against a major squall. While living aboard in the Virgin Islands, our dinghy acts as our car. Just recently, I purchased a 10 hp Tohatsu so Carolyn and I can plane off between St. John, St. Thomas, Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. This saves us vast amounts of time and money, and has no drawback in terms of weight because we rarely remove the engine from the tender. In spring 2018, when we leave on circumnavigation number four, we will probably trade it in for a 5 hp Yamaha.

Each form of power was the right choice at the time: rowing when I was young and the distances were short, a small outboard while actively cruising and a slightly larger, more powerful model for living aboard and interisland transport. Of course, all my dinghies have been set up to be easily brought aboard, ever since my father told me to “tow any dinghy you don’t mind losing.”

The bottom line is that the cruising lifestyle is infinitely customizable, but everything is a compromise and inter­related. Figuring out your own right answers is part of the fun.

– – –

Fatty and Carolyn plan to weather hurricane season in Grenada this year.

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