Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Cruising World

When we cast off about four years ago, we yearned to get away — away from the urgent, crowded metropolis where we’d built our lives. The cruising life promised things no large city could offer. We couldn’t wait to see the shadow of our boat on the bottoms of remote, magazine-cover anchorages. By day, our kids would jump off the toerail into warm, inviting water, and by night, under clear, pitch-black skies, we’d show them the constellations. We’d kayak ashore, walk long beaches and savor sundowners in the cockpit. This was the stuff of our cruising dreams, and all of it eventually came to pass. But looking back, I find it interesting that not once, not for a minute, did I anticipate the allure we would find in something so…

Offshore cruisers and racers share oceans and cope with the same weather at sea, but each take a separate path when it comes to getting ready to go. While cruisers double up on ground tackle, pack freezers, load dinghy davits and stow as much food and spare equipment for the long haul as they can, racers strip away extraneous gear and fill the cabin only with sails. The disparities become most apparent, though, when you consider how each camp handles the nittygritty of safety training and vessel preparedness. Before the start of major ocean races (and many coastal contests), participating vessels go through formal inspections by experienced sailors appointed by the event’s race committee, or skippers conduct their own checklist-assisted, selfadministered inspections. These evaluations are based on a combination of…

Since the beginning of screw propulsion, boatbuilders have been dealing with ways to permit the propeller shaft to pass through a hull and spin freely while minimizing water ingress. The primary solution hasn’t changed much in over a century: Packing material, typically waxed flax, is compressed around the shaft, where it’s cooled and lubricated by seawater. While this design, called the stuffing box, has more than proven itself, it has one nagging drawback: By necessity, it leaks or drips. Unless, of course, it doesn’t, as so-called dripless stuffing boxes, or shaft seals, have been around for a few decades now too. Available from several manufacturers, most fall into one of two categories: face seals or lip seals. The most common face seal utilizes a carbon graphite stator and a stainless-steel…

Light, nimble and exceedingly quick, the Jeanneau Sun Fast 3600 was clearly a labor of love for the majordomos of the French builder, all of whom love to race. As the project came to fruition, marketing director Erik Stromberg actually had a canting mock-up of the yacht in his office, and between meetings with his colleagues they’d fuss with the deck layouts and other details — just a bunch of big boys playing with boats. If you love sailing, you’ll see that they came up with something pretty darn special. French naval architect Daniel Andrieu was ultimately tasked with merging the ideas into an actual design, and with its hard chine, open transom, broad beam and low coachroof, the 3600’s overall look is strictly business. Thanks to its vacuum-bagged, resininfused…

There’s an old adage that the happiest days of a sailor’s life are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it. My father and I just sold our Beneteau 473, Kāheʻa, after sailing her from my home in Hawaii down to Whangarei, New Zealand, but for some reason, I’m not happy. It’s not that the experience of selling the boat was a bad one. Whangarei, at the head of a long river, turned out to be a gorgeous, perfectly protected hub for world cruisers. Locals and officials alike welcome sailors with generous discounts, the town docks are well-appointed, and all supplies are readily available. I found that the local expression — “A Kiwi can fix anything with a length of No. 8 fencing wire” — proved…

When I first sailed into Neiafu, Tonga, in 1979 in my 18-foot open boat, Chidiock Tichborne, I was right behind Eric and Susan Hiscock in their Wanderer IV. I was coming from Pago Pago and they from Bora Bora. There was an old wooden pier sticking out into the harbor, and the Hiscocks tied to the south side, where there was deep water. Chidiock Tichborne drew only 12 inches with her centerboard and rudder raised, so I rowed to the shallow north side. The Hiscocks couldn’t understand why I was clearing in from what they assumed had been a daysail. Three Tongan officials walked out on the pier. They were big men and together displaced more than Chidiock Tichborne’s 800 pounds. They stood looking down uncertainly at me and the…

There’s a consequence to spending 55 years cruising: Life becomes too perfect. When that happens, you’re forced to reassess and refocus on the big picture. And so it was not long ago that I reluctantly decided our lives were becoming too tranquil. We had enough money. The local weather was perfect. Our ketch-rigged Wauquiez Amphitrite 43, Ganesh, floated right on her lines. Thailand was still the Land of Smiles. We had no problems. “Are you happy?” I asked my wife, Carolyn. “Absolutely,” she yawned from the other side of the cockpit. “Me too,” I said. “Damn it!” We were in the dreaded Paradise Rut, and I sensed trouble. I knew my job as skipper was as much about keeping it fresh as it was about keeping it going. And bliss,…

Dufours ranging in size from 37 to 56 feet, and Lagoons from 40 to 45 feet, are ready for bareboat or skippered trips from the base at the eastern end of the island. Most of the boats are 2015 or 2014 models; the 38-foot Dufour features two cabins and two heads or three cabins and one head. A Dufour Yachts agent, Med Caribbean Charter offers brokerage and charter management options for owners who want to sail the Mediterranean in spring and summer and the Caribbean in winter. Its other bases are located in Spain. For details, contact the company (medcaribbean.com; alquilavela.com). Sail to Tunes The Horizon Yacht Charters base at Blue Lagoon Marina, on the southern tip of the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, has expanded its fleet. More catamarans…

People & Food When my husband, Kostas, and I have charter guests aboard Stressbuster, our Atlantic 70 cutter, in the Greek islands, we introduce people not only to the beautiful seas and isles of Greece, but also to its culture and cuisine. On a typical day, we sail in the morning, anchor in early afternoon for a swim and lunch, and then sail again to that day’s island destination. As cook, I focus on Greek food as well as the Greek way of eating: no wolfing down sandwiches and potato chips in a rush, but rather a relaxed repast in a shady cockpit. For most Greeks, the midday meal is an event; it’s never hurried. It’s a time to pause, enjoy good food and company, and simply chill out before…

The goal was to sail farther. Since I’d discovered sailing, that had always been the goal. On my first-ever sunset sail out of San Diego just a few years earlier, I’d felt a slight but noticeable tinge of disappointment when the skipper called to come about and head back to port. This desire to keep going and explore what’s over the horizon is what first drew me to voyaging; the thrill and adventure of going to sea and navigating in harmony with nature are what’s kept me hooked. In the seven years since that inaugural daysail, the waters of California, Hawaii and Mexico have become my home, while roaming across the oceans of the world remains my destiny. In the early summer of 2014, when I sailed my engineless Cal…

In seven years of full-time sailing, my wife, Alisa, and I have dragged anchor exactly once. I can’t believe I wrote that; now I’ve jinxed us, and we’ll be dragging hither and yon in every anchorage we visit. But it’s true: only once, and that time barely counts. We were in a very shallow anchorage outside Townsville, Australia, and I had out a ridiculously short amount of scope in a misguided attempt to keep our Crealock 37, Pelagic, swinging inside a pocket of deeper water. Once the chop built up, our anchor was jerked out of the mud bottom and we started sliding downwind. When you’re just starting out chasing the salty dream, there are few things more potentially confounding than dealing with all the varieties of anchoring situations that…

I have logged more than 50,000 sea miles on two different versions of Easy Go, the latest being a Benford Badger 34-foot junk-rigged dory. Those miles include two Atlantic crossings, a number of trips to the Caribbean, and cruises through Newfoundland, the Great Lakes and associated canals. The majority of these voyages were accomplished engineless, using a sculling oar for auxiliary propulsion. Easy Go was upgraded with a motor and electronics before this final passage. I departed, singlehanded, from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, on Oct. 29, 2013, with a favorable weather forecast for a passage directly to the island of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean. The first two days of sailing were fantastic, with light to moderate northwest winds providing a good downwind run from River Bourgeois, Cape Breton…

It was drizzling and chilly the day the Boat of the Year team paid a dockside visit to the Dragonfly 32 Supreme during last fall’s U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis. With a half-dozen of us packed into the slender cabin to hear the builder explain the concept behind the Danish-built trimaran, I recall it being pleasant enough, but, well, tight. It reminded me of the way monohull sailboats used to feel down below, before designers started to widen things up to put three sleeping cabins, two heads and a full saloon into that size of a footprint. When a few folks moved topsides, though, it was easy to picture a couple or a small family nestled into the two settees that flank the centerline drop-leaf table, the boat rocking gently…