As every sailor and music lover knows, the world became a quieter place in September, when the one-of-a-kind songwriter, mariner and balladeer Jimmy Buffett passed away after a bout with skin cancer. The outpouring of grief, appreciation and remembrances on social media was substantial, and nearly everyone seemed to have their own personal memory or tribute. Here’s mine.

I met Buffett in Fremantle, Western Australia, in the Down Under summer of 1987. I was there covering the America’s Cup during what became Dennis Conner’s Redemption Tour, when he won back the trophy he’d lost four years earlier. Buffett was a huge fan of Conner and his Stars & Stripes crew, and had flown to Oz for the duration, often playing sets at their waterfront base. It was pretty cool.

We had a mutual friend in writer P.J. O’Rourke, on assignment for Rolling Stone, where he’d more or less been handed the “gonzo journalist” baton from Hunter Thompson. P.J. knew absolutely nothing about sailboat racing, and we became press-boat mates. I could explain a jibe-set spinnaker hoist or leeward mark rounding, and he could crack me up with his endless array of anecdotes. They included his time roaming through the islands under sail with his pal Jimmy on Buffett’s Cheoy Lee cruising boat. Through P.J., I caught a couple of Buffett’s impromptu gigs in Fremantle dive bars, and was always happy to hang with that crew. 

All that said, at that stage, I wasn’t all that much of a Buffett fan. My taste changed in the ensuing years after I caught a couple of his live shows with the Coral Reefer Band (it was always hilarious to see 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley shaking the castanets). But what finally sold me on Jimmy Buffett’s music was when I started to pay serious attention to his lyrics. Specifically, those on one of his earlier records, the one named after the ­highway running down Florida’s Atlantic shoreline: A1A. 

A1A is not only my favorite Buffett album, but it’s one of my favorite records ever. So much so that I’ve come to think of the person, JB, and the album, A1A, as a single entity, one and the same. None of his truly famous hits are on it; there are no paradisiacal cheeseburgers or soothing blender drinks or folks getting drunk and getting down. Instead, there are 11 exquisitely crafted tunes, only about three or four minutes apiece, but with tales, lessons, and wordplay as carefully rendered and nuanced as almost any 300-page novel. If I were marooned on an island and could bring only five CDs with me, this would be one of them. 

Buffett’s genre has been dubbed Gulf & Western, which seems pretty accurate, but A1A is known for being part of his “Key West phase,” which also fits. By whatever term, one thing is certain about this collection: Nobody without a deep understanding and affection for the sea, nobody but a sailor, could’ve written them. 

Oh, the lyrics, like “Squalls out on the Gulf Stream, big storms coming soon” from “Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season.” Or “I’m hanging on to a line from my sailboat, all Nautical Wheelers save me” from “Nautical Wheelers.” Or “Got a Caribbean soul I can barely control” from “Migration.” Or this, from my favorite Buffett song, “A Pirate Looks at Forty”: “Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call, wanted to sail upon your waters since I was 3 feet tall.” 

The ode to Mother Ocean. Our very essence, our lifeblood. Damn straight, brother. 

Even the spare, inviting cover of A1A is just about perfect. Before he was an author, pilot, restaurateur, real estate mogul, Broadway producer, cultural icon, and just about every other bloody thing under the sun, he was just Jimmy, tanned and smiling in his rocking chair, under a palm tree with the white sand and blue sea behind him. A man in his element. It’s how we all should remember him. 

So, RIP, A1A. And thank you. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

The post So Long, Jimmy Buffett appeared first on Cruising World.

“Can you come up here? It’s getting pretty shallow, and I think I’ve lost the channel.” 

This inauspicious statement from the skipper, coupled with the shrill beeping of the depth sounder, had become familiar the past two days. I finished putting the coffee on to perk, and hauled myself up through Wild Rye’s companionway. 

Our Wauquiez Centurion 32 was en route to Pedregal, Panama, a small fishing town some 20 miles from the sea via a winding network of estuaries. It’s the country’s westernmost port of entry on the Pacific side. Our depth sounder, circa 1980, had been working overtime ever since we’d cruised up the Estero Boca Chica Channel the morning before. We had already touched bottom twice: Once, we were able to reverse off the sandbar with the engine throttled all the way up; the second time, I got a crash course in kedging. Happily, that second time, a panga whizzed past us, saw our dilemma and did a U-turn to assist. Its skipper led us slowly back toward deeper water and around the last few bends. We sighed with relief as Pedregal came into view. 

The return trip, when we could rely on our own GPS track, was much less twitchy. We had two beautiful days to appreciate the serenity of our surroundings. The wide, calm estuaries were edged with thick mangroves. A chorus of birdsong erupted at dawn and dusk. Pangas emerged from narrow tributaries and disappeared back into narrow cuts, hinting at a hidden way of life behind the dense growth.

While the Panama Canal is a crucial crossroads between the Atlantic and Pacific, our journey taught us that Panama is more than a place to pass through. It’s a place to linger. 

We had departed Boca Chica’s narrow, rock-lined channel and made the sail to the Islas Secas, 15 nautical miles away. Anchored on the northeast side of Isla Cavada, our views—of deep, clear water and rugged islands—were strikingly different from the murky estuaries of the mainland coast. Crescents of pale sand fringed the deep green jungle and stark gray rocks. The afternoon haze reduced the mainland to a moody indigo smudge on the horizon. We saw no other boats, and the resort appeared to be empty. 

In fact, with the exception of Panama City, we would find almost every anchorage deserted in our explorations of Panama throughout the fall season. The country had a sweet silence, only occasionally marred by our desire to share the experience with others.

Our next stop was an estuary at the mouth of the Rio Tabasara. My boyfriend, Liam, had used satellite imagery to pinpoint the location as a likely convergence of calm anchorage and surfable waves. It’s an important combination for a surf-­loving guy whose girlfriend doesn’t like being seasick on the hook.

We anchored just east of the river mouth and motored upriver in the dinghy, using its anchor and rode as a lead line to find a route that would be deep enough for Wild Rye. We later dropped the bigger boat’s hook in a mangrove-lined riverbank indent. At slack tide, the water was still; with the tide running, it rippled gently on our hull. From the deck, we could see the surf break out beyond the river mouth. A few small homes dotted the edge of the estuary, with the chatter of children playing and the smell of cooking smoke. With no roads or power lines, nighttime brought silence and velvety darkness. 

We spent a week in that piece of paradise. Fishermen in pangas and dugout canoes would wave. Liam found the surfing to be best at midtide. Slack tide was our cue to jump in the dinghy and head down to a rocky outcropping to jig for some dinner.

Next, we ventured east to Bahia Honda, a quiet spot where a local family has a reputation for trading with passing cruisers. Almost the moment we dropped the hook in front of Don Domingo’s property, he motored out to greet us with one of his grandsons at the helm. We bought eggs and fruit, and traded fishing lures and matches for citrus, papaya and taro root. His 10-year-old grandson gave us a picture of Wild Rye colored in painstaking detail, in exchange for a fishing lure. He returned later with two small fish for our dinner. Sitting in the calm bay, ringed by green hills on all sides and a low ceiling of stratus clouds, we felt completely removed from the outside world. 

In all our travels along Panama’s Pacific coast, our interactions with local people were relaxed and genuine. Our short ventures into remote communities left an impression of a simple way of life quite far from the glossy tourist towns of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, or the abundance of Panama City.   

After we anchored at Isla Cébaco, we went ashore to explore by foot. The road was red clay and slippery-smooth from the daily rain. Water pooled in the deep ruts. A mixture of fenced pastures and lush farmland lined the road, and the air was earthy with the scent of manure and wet grass. We bumped into a farmer on a mule with a full propane tank slung across the saddle. Once he understood that we weren’t lost, he bid us goodbye with a wave. Later that week, when Liam was surfing Cébaco’s beach break, another local farmer stopped for a chat. Leaving his horse, he waved Liam over to give him advice on a better surf spot, and then proceeded to split a six-pack of beer. The only Spanish phrase Liam recognized was uno más (“one more”) every time he tried to leave.

We slowly worked our way eastward toward Panama City, which is a great place to stock up and work on the boat (it really does have everything a cruiser could need). But it wasn’t long before we craved quieter places. As soon as we could, we set sail for the Islas de las Perlas, an archipelago 30 miles south of the city, in the Gulf of Panama. 

Squally conditions mellowed out as we cruised, and we enjoyed several weeks of beautiful daysailing among the islands. With numerous well-charted anchorages available and a wealth of fascinating nooks and crannies, the Perlas could easily keep a cruiser busy for months. On Islas Saboga and Contadora, we snorkeled in the clear, silky water and scrambled along sculpted slabs of sandstone at the tide line. We walked to a beach with pure, shimmering black sand, and to a tree with buttress roots that towered over our heads. The locals say it’s more than 700 years old. They call it arbol de vida, the tree of life. 

We then broad-reached south to Isla Bayoneta on the falling tide, and picked our way through a narrow, rocky channel before dropping the hook in a cove tucked snugly between three small islands. One afternoon on Isla Pedro Gonzalez, where we filled our water jugs at the village tap, several hundred cormorants landed right in front of me. They descended in a smooth, dark cloud and alighted on the water for a moment before taking off again. 

On Isla San Telmo, we saw the rusted hulk of the Sub Marine Explorer, one of the world’s first submarines, circa 1865. We stayed for hours to walk the beach and admire the marbled patterns of black and white sand.

After a two-week, counterclockwise circumnavigation of the archipelago, we still felt as though we had barely scratched the surface. From the Perlas, we ventured into Golfo de San Miguel, the meeting place of some of Panama’s largest rivers, and an access point to the remote province of Darien. Our first anchorage, at Punta Alegre, proved the most social. We woke to an authoritative tap on the hull at 6:30 a.m. We poked our bleary heads out of the companionway, and a cheerful man welcomed us to his town and offered us a ride to shore. After several cups of coffee and breakfast for the three of us, our guide took us on a tour, collecting various grandchildren along the way. We spent several dizzying hours fielding rapid-fire questions in Spanish. We accepted gifts of tiny shells and hermit crabs, listened to explanations about natural phenomena, and got shepherded up and down the beach by a flurry of tiny hands.

The rest of our stay in the Darien passed much more quietly. We sailed up the Rio Sabana and explored a few of its smaller tributaries, sinking into a meditation of motion and stillness that flowed with the tides. The magnificent, deep rivers offered some of the best sailing we’d ever had. With the current in our favor, not a wave in sight for miles, and a steady afternoon breeze, Wild Rye felt like it had grown wings. We skimmed smoothly at 6 or 7 knots, and experienced marvelous tranquility every night at anchor. 

When we left the Darien to prepare for our departure from Panama, it was with a sense of regret for all the things we had yet to see and do. Five months, it turned out, was not enough. Beneath this region’s quiet surface is a wealth of experiences waiting to be had for cruisers with the time and patience to linger.

The post Cruising Panama: A Hidden Gem appeared first on Cruising World.

There’s an alarm clock on the nightstand beside Tim Jackett’s bed in his home in Erie, Pennsylvania, but he doesn’t need it. Every weekday morning, at the otherwise sleepy hour of 5 a.m., he’s already wide awake, up and at it, ready to go. The drive to Painesville, Ohio, the current home of Tartan Yachts, is a 75-mile straight shot down I-90 that he can generally knock off in a bit over an hour (though he once got stranded on the highway for 11 long hours in a lake-effect blizzard). 

Jackett started working for Tartan as a summer job in college almost 50 years ago. Though he hasn’t toiled there continuously since then, the work has been the central thread woven through his long, eventful ­career as a boatbuilder and naval architect. These days, he not only designs the boats at Tartan, but he also oversees the operations and production. The plant gets ­underway at 7 a.m. sharp, and he won’t be late. 

Jackett’s a boatbuilder all right, but, to be more specific, because his roots play such an important role in who he is and what he does, he’s a Midwestern boatbuilder, a born-and-bred northeast Ohio boy, a child of Lake Erie, where his passion for sailing was kindled and the seeds of his lifelong craft were sown. 

The sixth of seven kids, Jackett’s the son of a US Navy veteran who briefly set down stakes in Florida following his service in World War II but soon returned to good old Cleveland, where he and his wife were raised. The family eventually moved to the east-side suburb of Mentor, pronounced Menner: “No ‘t’ in there,” Jackett said. “If you’re from Menner, you’re from Menner.”

Jackett attended the public high school there, but, more important, the little town had a cool, cozy, ­communal sailing club. It was a no-frills outfit (unlike the nearby hoity-toity yacht club) where his parents sailed their little wooden sailboat, a Privateer named Jacquette (the original spelling of the family name, in honor of the old man’s French-Canadian heritage). That club is where the racing bug bit Jackett.  

“There certainly wasn’t any junior sailing program, but it was a great place,” he said. “We were kind of the outcasts. We raced on Thursday nights because the yacht club raced on Wednesdays. And we used their marks. We did try to be courteous about it, but, yeah, we were the hoodlums across the water.”

Following high school, Jackett applied to exactly one college: the tiny, focused Cleveland Institute of Art. “I thought I was going to be a painter,” he said. “I was a bit of a loner at that point, and going up on a mountaintop somewhere and painting sounded pretty good. But my very practical dad didn’t think much of that as a career choice and encouraged me to go from the fine-arts side to the more-commercial program, which was industrial design. So I went down that path. And I spent my whole time there drawing boats. I got a copy of Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design and learned how to draw lines plans. When everyone else was drawing toasters and headlights, I was drawing boats.”

The boat-crazed lad searching to find his place on the watery planet went through a family friend to land the ideal summer gig: as a gofer at the busy local boatbuilding concern, Tartan Yachts. Launched in 1951 and originally called Douglass & McLeod after its two founders, the company switched in 1961 from building small one-design racing dinghies and launched the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Tartan 27, a wild success commercially and on the racecourse. By the mid-1970s, however, after a fire wiped out the company’s base in Grand River, it was owned and run by a passionate sailor named Charlie Britton, who would come to play a major mentoring role in Jackett’s life. 

Jackett’s job involved mostly warranty work, though he once leapt into murky Lake Erie to see if one could reattach a centerboard pennant on a Tartan 37C without hauling the boat (one could). During the couple of summers that he worked there, he never actually crossed paths meaningfully with Britton. That all changed thanks to, of all things, a local bar called the Beachcomber that the after-work Tartan crew frequented. 

Jackett’s sister was a friend of the owner, who wondered if her art-school brother could build a model sailboat to display in the center of the joint. (If you strolled to the men’s room, you couldn’t miss Jackett’s framed boat renderings from his college classes lining the walls.) Jackett was mightily enamored of the slick Tartan 41, of which there were several on the lake, including the one campaigned by Britton.

“I’d spent a lot of time looking at the boat and found a brochure and decided to do the 41,” he said. “The model was fully rigged, sheathed in fiberglass, had the keel, winches, everything. Charlie had a look and asked, ‘Who the hell made that?’ And that’s when I got to know him a bit.”

That first impression proved lasting. The summer after graduating, in 1977, at the tender age of 22, he was hired full time at Tartan. Little did he know then, but he’d embarked upon his lifelong pursuit.

If, at the time, jackett had any inkling about the tenuous future of American production ­boatbuilding, or about the twisting, turning marine-­industry journey that lay ahead of him personally, he just might’ve packed up his easel and headed for the hills. In the moment, however, there was no time for deep contemplation. His first project was the 33-foot, one-design Tartan Ten racer, and it was full-on.

Britton was betting the farm on the boat, with the ambitious goal of having 40 boats on the starting line the following season (other than the prototype, none had actually been built). Sparkman & Stephens had drafted the lines for the hull but little else. So, Britton set up Jackett in the development shop with a drafting table and told him to get to work. 

“I ended up doing the deck design and what little interior there was to it,” he said. “Charlie was a product guy, not a designer, but he loved the development side of it. If you had a sketch, he’d put his notes all over it. And we’d sit down and talk about stuff, and I’d take his thoughts and help him turn it into what we were trying to do. I felt really privileged to work with Charlie. He was such an experienced sailor.”

Collaborating with Britton on this inaugural ­effort was an almost perfect introduction to the business of creating yachts for a consumer market. And it would lay the groundwork for so much more to come. But ­working with Britton was also an adventure because it was almost never exactly clear what would happen next.

For instance, the union situation in Ohio was ­problematic, so much so that Britton shut down the production floor and moved that whole shooting match to Tartan’s second facility, in Hamlet, North Carolina, to which Jackett was also dispatched. In Hamlet, Jackett graduated from conjuring deck layouts to engineering entire systems, with Britton once again looking over his shoulder and working through problems and challenges. “It was a great experience,” he said. “Talk about a hands-on education.”

Also in Hamlet—because what else was a ­boatbuilder going to do with his time off—Jackett decided to rent a little shop and design loft, and build his own cold-­molded, 24-foot-6-inch racing sloop (it was ­actually his second personal boat, having completed one earlier in Ohio). 

“I’d work all day at Tartan, grab a six-pack, and go to work on my next boat,” he said. “One day I’m down on my hands and knees, and Charlie comes in and says, ‘What are you doing?’ And I tell him I’m building my next boat. Next thing you know, he’s down there on his hands and knees with me.” The sensei and student, back at it.

Like Jackett, Britton always had a side project going; under the auspices of a company he called Britton Marine, he commissioned Southern California naval architect Doug Peterson to draw a powerful 43-foot offshore racer, exposing Jackett to yet another facet of design work and the approach of a renowned designer. But the move also signaled Britton’s own growing wariness with union labor and Tartan in general. In 1984, he pulled the plug and put it up for sale. 

Partners John Richards and Jim Briggs (of Briggs & Stratton power-equipment fame) were the next ­owners, and their five-year tenure was characterized by ­missteps and false starts. But Jackett said that he will forever be indebted to them for one satisfying opportunity: to design his own boat, soup to nuts, the Tartan 31.

“Charlie was so enamored of Sparkman & Stephens,” he said. “I don’t know that he ever would’ve given me free rein to be the complete designer of the product. I made my pitch to John and Jim, and they said, ‘OK, we’ll do it.’ At that time, the development cost for a 31-foot boat was about $400,000. At that point, I’m like 30 years old, and I’ve got a company committing major resources to something that I conceived and drew up. It was cool.”

The new owners’ confidence was not misplaced; the production run for the 31 totaled 165 units, which made it profitable. The design also earned a Cruising World Boat of the Year award, which made it a critical success. Moreover, it gave Jackett a new title: chief designer of Tartan Yachts.

But Briggs and Richards weren’t in it for the long haul. When they decided to bail out in 1990, Jackett took the molds for a Tartan side effort called the Thomas 35, a one-design racer, and hung out his own shingle to build them: Jackett Yachts. Which is just about the time everything once again came to a fork in the road. A businessman named Bill Ross picked up the Tartan pieces and lured Jackett back into the fold, this time not only as the brand’s designer, but also as chief of operations.

Ross cared little about boats, per se; his expertise lay in finding distressed companies and making them whole. His stewardship was oftentimes a rough ride down a road littered with potholes. But two significant events occurred during the time he owned the place. The first, in 1996, was acquiring the popular, longtime Canadian brand, C&C Yachts. Jackett was thrilled, and in rapid order designed three C&C’s: the 110, 99 and 121, of which some 400 yachts would eventually be built. 

“They were my favorite boats growing up, even more than Tartans,” he said. “Really good performers, more toward the racing side, and now we could take on
J/Boats a little bit. The two brands worked together very well. Dealers were hungry for them. It was a really smart move. I stopped racing my own little boats and started racing the C&Cs I designed. I took the 99 to Key West and did some nice events with it. It was all fun stuff.”

The second seismic shift happened in the late 1990s. With their Fairport, Ohio, plant bursting at the seams, Ross enlisted the services of a fellow named John Brodie, who was exporting some of Tartan’s stainless-­steel parts from a facility in China, to build the Tartan 4600 there. The tooling was loaded on a ship, and Jackett landed in China the same day the molds arrived. After inspecting the decrepit infrastructure, he almost immediately realized that the entire idea was disastrous and wouldn’t work.

But one significant development arose from the ­otherwise failed experiment: Brodie wanted to build the boats in high-tech, vacuum-bagged, two-part ­epoxy laminates—a superior mode of construction—and Ross was all in. He told Jackett to make it ­happen (his arm didn’t need twisting; he’d been ­employing West System epoxy, which he loved, on his own cold-molded boats for years). Jackett enlisted some of the top names in materials and composite structures, eventually bringing all the new technology to the Ohio floor. At the same time, Tartan acquired an autoclave and started fashioning its own carbon-fiber rigs and parts. It was a major shift in how the boats were built, and, for that matter, marketed. 

“All of that dovetailed into our advertising, which Bill was really smart about,” Jackett said. “It was all about ‘engineered to perform.’ Audi was running a similar marketing program at the time, and Bill didn’t mind plagiarizing from the auto industry. It was an important element back then, and it still is. Our boats are different from a run-of-the-mill production boat.”

But the roller-coaster ride was far from over. The early 2000s were good years for Tartan, right up to the Great Recession of 2008, when the hammer fell on the entire economy. Tartan wasn’t immune: Ross sold out. Jackett Yachts reopened for business. There was a collaboration with Island Packet on a boat called the Blue Jacket 40; the launching of a new little daysailer, the Fantail; and the acquisition of the Legacy powerboat brand from Freedom Yachts. In 2014, thanks to the Legacy business he brought with him, Jackett teamed up with Tartan’s latest owners and rejoined the firm. 

If Jackett had never done another thing in the ­marine industry, you could say he’d enjoyed a rewarding, stellar career. But it turns out that there was another chapter yet to unfold.

the heart attack—yes, heart attack—that Jackett suffered after racing sailboats on Lake Erie this past August was certainly unexpected. At first, he thought the tightness in his chest was from sitting too long in an awkward position on the boat. Once ashore, he realized it was something far more serious. Quick action by several folks at his yacht club averted what otherwise might’ve been tragic. And he was a lucky dude indeed, surviving with all systems intact and sparking. 

I learned of Jackett’s health situation and other ­personal matters on a visit to the Painesville plant this past September while on an assignment to ­review the Tartan 455, his latest design. It’s a pretty sweet, ­powerful sailboat, with a raised deckhouse very much outside his usual purview. But as I discovered on a windy test drive on Lake Erie, like every Jackett design I’ve ever helmed, you get some sail up and it will haul the mail. So there was no real surprise there. Instead, the surprises came, one after the next, on a tour of the factory.

It was bustling place full of frenetic activity but with a palpable feeling of camaraderie and purpose. Pink Floyd blared from the wood shop. A makeshift help-wanted sign was placed near the entrance: “Marine Mfg, Now Hiring, Apply Inside.” Jackett was bearded (his last shave was the day he graduated from high school; his wife, Donna, and their three kids have never seen him without it) and bedecked in a Cleveland Browns hoodie (his beloved Brownies were playing that evening on Monday Night Football), and he looked every bit the image of the burly, no-nonsense Midwestern boatbuilder. He was clearly quite proud to show some visitors around. “We make two things here,” he said by way of introduction. “Boats and dust.”

At the front of the shop, a trio of older Tartans, including a 4400 that had been thrashed in the Bahamas during Hurricane Dorian, were undergoing complete refits, which is a welcome and steady stream of business. Around the corner, a new rudder was being cast for a Tartan 37C. If you have an older Tartan that needs parts or an upgrade—“regardless of vintage,” Jackett said—the company’s happy to address it for you. 

The hulls and decks for several new Tartan 365s, one of three models currently in production, including the 395 and the 455, were in various stages of construction. The 365 is Jackett’s latest critical triumph, the Cruising World Domestic Boat of the Year for 2022 and one of his 31 overall designs, including the C&Cs and the five backyard boats he ultimately built. (When complimented on that impressive number, he cracked, “We become prolific and old at the same time.”) In the rigging shop, a worker was laying up swaths of carbon fiber, straight out of the fridge, in the autoclave for a new spar. Out back, the original Tartan 27, Hull No. 1, was propped up and ready for a complete makeover, set to coincide with the 65th anniversary of its launching in 2025.

Jackett led us from the factory floor to the stairs and his second-floor office, where a window overlooks the entire hectic scene (and where his contented pooch, Ella, a German shepherd/husky mix, waited ­patiently). At the foot of the staircase was a pair of sneakers ­painted gold and mounted on a plaque. 

“That’s the Golden Tennis Shoe Award,” he said with a laugh, “for the guy most improved in staying at his workstation and not wearing out his shoes.”

This is where Seattle Yachts, the latest entity to own Tartan, comes in. In early, pre-pandemic 2020, Jackett was running the place with Rob Fuller, but matters “reached a financial rough point.” They reached out to Peter Whiting, a managing partner of Seattle Yachts, an established Tartan dealer that had several boats on order. Whiting paid a visit to the plant. And, in rather short order, Seattle Yachts took over Tartan Yachts. It was a strong move by the Pacific Northwest firm to commit to a good, old American brand.

Originally a brokerage office, Seattle Yachts had pivoted into boatbuilding and owned several brands. After purchasing Tartan, it made several six-figure investments, including the purchase of the new plant in Painesville. Eventually, the new owners put Jackett back in charge of overall operations. Always a stickler for running things efficiently and incentivizing his workers, Jackett witnessed a few too many folks taking too many breaks. Hence, the Golden Tennis Shoe Award for sticking to the task at hand, one of several new employee incentive programs. 

The new overall responsibilities have once again changed Jackett’s life, adding a daily commute back and forth from Erie, where he’d moved to be closer to his grandchildren. On top of everything else—­actually, more than anything else—Jackett’s a family man, and being closer to his kids is a huge priority as he navigates his 60s. Taken in context with his recent health scare, this desire leads to inevitable questions. Like, do you ever consider wrapping up your career? And what, exactly, does it feel like to be one of the business’s lone survivors, the proverbial last man standing? 

The answers took some of those old twists and turns. Under a photo on his office wall of the Tartan 31 under full sail—his first design, and still a fond memory—he offered a few thoughtful responses. 

Sure, he’s given some thought to moving on, but he needs a successor, someone he trusts, to whom he can pass the baton. He enjoys the operations side of management, building the team. He’s proud of continuing the long manufacturing tradition in northeast Ohio. He likes the fact that he’s there for owners of older Tartans, that when you buy one of his boats, you join the Tartan family. And the feeling he gets when setting the sails of a new design after months of hard work, that initial rush as it heels into the breeze, remains a cherished one. 

But what about it, Tim? How long? 

“There’s a country song that asks that question: ‘What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?’ And the answer is: ‘I’d be doing this,’” he said. “Maybe not with Tartan, but maybe I’d set up a little shop and build my own cold-molded 25-foot boats. Just for the pleasure of building them, putting them in the water, and sailing them.”

Once a boatbuilder, always a boatbuilder. 

Jackett had one last remembrance and anecdote to share. Fittingly, it goes back to where this story began, on that nightstand in Erie, next to the useless alarm clock. 

“Back in the mid-1980s, I actually sent a job ­application to Sabre Yachts, and I asked Charlie Britton to write a letter of recommendation,” Jackett said. “And he wrote one, in longhand. I tell people, you have your wooden box that you keep by your bed, and Charlie’s letter is in there. He was a man’s man, and there’s a line in there that I really appreciated: ‘The men have respect for you.’

“And that’s a cool statement, you know?” 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

The post Last Man Standing appeared first on Cruising World.

Unless you are moving on to something better, few owners look forward to the day that a buyer surveys their boat. It’s the day they hand the lines of their beloved vessel to a new caretaker. 

Regardless of whether the sale is cause for jubilation, reflection or melancholy, it’s in one’s best interest to ensure that the day goes as smoothly as possible. Having attended scores of surveys, I’ve been witness to how and why things can go awry, and I’m convinced that most of the worst scenarios can be avoided.  

On many occasions, I’ve muttered to myself, often while hunkered down in a bilge or engine compartment, How could this owner believe this vessel was ready for a survey?  Every problem that is identified becomes an opportunity for a buyer to negotiate, and rightfully so.

Clean Sweep

For a surveyor, there’s nothing worse than having to spend time aboard a dirty vessel. Therefore, make certain your boat is clean, particularly below, including the lazarette, engine compartment and chain locker. Bilges should be free of dirt, debris, oil, loose fasteners, hose clamps and excessive water.

While you are cleaning bilges, look at keel bolts for signs of corrosion or leakage. Lockers and stowage areas must be accessible for inspection. They should be free of all but essential gear.  

If the vessel has an odor issue, then identify the source and get it fixed. Don’t try to cover it up. I’ve seen it all: air fresheners, dryer sheets, scented candles, cinnamon and baking soda. These cover-up techniques will simply confirm that there’s a problem of the odoriferous sort.  

Does It Work?

All equipment aboard should work, from the toilet, inverter and microwave to the windlass, winches and watermaker. Anything that doesn’t work should be disclosed prior to the start of the survey. 

Ideally, you should test everything yourself. I’ve heard far too many owners confronted with nonfunctioning gear say, “It worked the last time I tested it—three months ago.” 

Expect the vessel to be sailed and motored during the sea ­trial, and be sure that all running rigging, blocks, and winches are in good working order. The engine should be able to run at full throttle for five minutes without overheating. If a generator is present, it should be able to run while heavily loaded for at least half an hour.

Navigation electronics and the autopilot should function as designed, along with navigation and deck lights. Chainplates, abovedecks and belowdecks, should be free of leaks and signs of corrosion. 

You can conduct all of these checks yourself in advance of the survey, and I strongly recommend you do just that.

Looking at the Bottom

A haulout will allow for an inspection of the hull below the waterline, along with the rudder, through-hull fittings, gudgeon, shaft, strut, shaft bearing, prop and ballast keel to stub interface. A savvy surveyor will look for signs of corrosion. They might even carry out a reference electrode test, or look for osmotic blisters, both of which can quickly devalue a boat or even scupper a deal.  

If you don’t want to be surprised, carry out your own pre-survey short-haul. For fiberglass vessels, corrosion is usually one of two types: galvanic or stray current, with the latter occurring more rapidly and often with greater destruction. Osmotic blisters, while rarely a structural issue, strike fear into the hearts of most buyers. Proper, warranted repairs (with a minimum of a five-year warranty) are almost always costly, depending on where the work is done, the depth of affected laminate, and the size of the vessel. These repairs can cost $10,000 to $50,000. If you know that your vessel has blisters and you are unwilling to make repairs, then make certain the asking price reflects reality.

It’s Just Lunch

Finally, it’s in your best interest, once again, to ensure that the survey crew, buyer and brokers are happy and well-fed. Provide snacks, doughnuts, coffee, soft drinks and sandwiches for lunch. It’s a small investment that almost always pays dividends. 

Steve D’Antonio offers services for boat owners and buyers through Steve D’Antonio Marine Consulting.

The post Preparing a Vessel for Survey appeared first on Cruising World.

My husband, Dan, and I are based in Bellingham, Washington, in the sailors’ paradise known as the Pacific Northwest. For almost 20 years, we’ve sailed Moonlight, our 1979 Seawind 31, surrounded by the beauty of the blue-green Salish Sea, the San Juan Islands and, to the north, Canadian waters. We bought Moonlight as a 25th wedding anniversary gift to each other, and raised our three young teenagers as sailors.

Our teens’ ever-changing priorities made us seriously consider changing the boat’s name to Intuition because we always had to guess whether they’d want to join us for weekend or vacation cruises. But through the years, sailing brought us together in good times (there’ve been many) and hard times, such as when, in early 2007, our oldest son was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It was a difficult three years with an outstanding medical team and cutting-edge treatments before his disease went into full remission.  

That same year, the ­entire family joined together aboard Moonlight to sail in the annual Leukemia Cup Regatta, sponsored by the Seattle Yacht Club. It raises money to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, with sponsors supporting each crew. Usually, about 50 teams compete for top spots. Live music, silent auctions, parties, food, drinks and awards round out the fun. We’ve since participated in eight of these regattas; team Moonlight always sports sponsors’ decals on our sails, and we always place in the top three teams for donations. 

Every year we did the regatta, the kids and their spouses came to Bellingham to help sail Moonlight to the venue—Seattle’s Elliott Bay. On those pre-regatta cruises, we shared many memorable meals aboard. Moonlight’s relatively small galley means that a one- or two-pot meal is our absolute go-to, especially when sailing with a full crew. We regularly cook up a good, hearty soup. 

Pacific Northwest weather can be brutal, with ever-­changing seas, winds and temperatures. Hot soup is a must, and Pacific Northwest Salmon Chowder is one of our favorites. It’s easy to make, and the flavors are all about the Northwest, with the salmon simmered amid peas, carrots, onions and potatoes in a creamy broth. The wild-caught salmon and almost everything else is locally sourced. What could be better? 

Our family, with the sea as our playground, learned to enjoy and appreciate nature’s bounty. This salmon chowder uses that bounty, and brings back happy memories of ­sailing in those regattas. Above all, every time we eat it, we’re grateful that our son is thriving: Sixteen years later, he’s still in full remission. Thanks to that, we hope we’ll all be sailing—and eating chowder—together for many years to come.

Pacific Northwest Salmon Chowder (serves 6 to 8)

• 4 Tbsp. butter
• 6-8 baby potatoes, sliced, or 2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• ¾ cup celery, chopped
• 2 medium carrots, grated
• 2 cups frozen peas
• 3-4 cups seafood or chicken stock
• ½ cup white wine 
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp. salt
• ¼-½ tsp. black pepper
• 1-1¼ lb. fresh, skinned salmon fillet 
• 1 cup heavy cream (or to taste)*
• 1 bunch fresh dill, to taste
• Dash of Worcestershire sauce (optional)
• Liquid red-pepper seasoning or red pepper flakes (optional)
• 2-3 Tbsp. flour (optional)

* at least 35 percent fat or it might separate

Melt the butter in a large soup pot. Briefly saute the potatoes and vegetables in the butter. Add stock; bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer, cover, and let cook until the potatoes and veggies are al dente (8 to 10 minutes). 

Meanwhile, poach the salmon. Add white wine and water, plus a few sprigs of dill, to a large saute pan with a lid. Bring the liquid to a steady simmer over medium heat. Salt and pepper the salmon fillets to taste, and add to the pan. (If skin remains on the fillet, place the skin side down.) Add additional water, if required, to just cover the fillet. Cover the pan, and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on thickness. The fish is ready if it begins to flake when prodded with a fork; the inside might not be cooked. Remove it from the liquid with a slotted spoon, and let it rest on a plate. Peel off any skin and discard. 

Add heavy cream to the soup pot, stir, and bring to a low simmer. Flake the salmon into the pot in chunks. Add chopped fresh dill to taste and, if desired, Worcestershire and red pepper. Simmer and stir until cream is thickened and salmon is cooked, about 5 minutes. 

For thicker broth, place the flour in a small bowl. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of broth from the pot, and blend until creamy. Stir the mixture into the chowder. 

Taste, adjust seasonings, and ladle into soup bowls. Garnish with snipped dill, and serve immediately. 

Prep time: 1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Can be made: At anchor

Cook’s Note: You can substitute thawed frozen salmon, or use 15 ounces of canned salmon.
Editor’s Note: Leukemia Cup Regattas are held throughout the United States. Visit lls.org/leukemiacup.

Do you have a favorite boat recipe? Send it to us for possible inclusion in Sailor & Galley. Tell us why it’s a favorite, and add a short description of your boat and where you cruise. Send it, along with high-resolution digital photos of you aboard your boat, to sailorandgalley@cruisingworld.com.

The post Sailor & Galley: A Northwest Nature’s Bounty appeared first on Cruising World.

There are times when turning back while ocean sailing is the best choice, but those times are, hopefully, few and far between. I’ve turned back twice in the past four circumnavigations, and the figure seems about right for a well-prepared vessel attempting to cross an ocean during the correct weather pattern. 

However, turning back often isn’t about the boat or its prep. It’s about the soul of its skipper. 

There are good reasons to return to port: taking on ­water, for example, and ­having no way to remove ­water from your boat, or breaking a piece of your standing rigging, or having your self-steering gear fail. But do note that the first two reasons are strength and safety issues, while the third is a matter of basic seamanship.

If a couple is so fatigued by steering during their entire watch that they can’t eat, sleep or poop properly, they can quickly turn into numbskulls. Trust me on this. I’ve turned into a numbskull many times and almost made stupid decisions that cost our lives. Fatigue offshore is real, and it must be guarded against at all times. 

Take the story of one cruising couple I know. Back in 2000, they turned back to the Galapagos Islands with just 2,700 miles left to go to Fatu Hiva in French Polynesia. Only a fool would sail that vast distance with a Hurst transmission that was acting up, right? 

Perhaps.

Their boat was a typical 40-foot overloaded cruising vessel. Its boot top had been raised three times and needed a fourth. It had two heavy anchors forward and (because of the depth of Polynesian harbors versus Caribbean ones) 250 feet of brand-new 10 mm chain. 

Now, Galapagos is famous for its westbound currents. This particular year, the trade winds were piping up. The couple knew that their boat wasn’t a fast racer, but it always nobly completed the course. Then again, this was before the couple put the “tower of power” aft with the wind/gen, solar cells and radar. And added tankage for water and fuel. Oh, and doubled the amperage of the main battery bank. Plus, all the cruising supplies.

Thus, the two-day sleigh ride downwind and down-­current turned into a six-day slog to windward against wind and current, with the couple seasick and the hatches dogged tight in the tropics. 

Part of the problem was that their reefing system worked well off the wind, but it didn’t allow the mainsail to have enough foot tension in heavy airs upwind. They were dragging a balloon-shaped sail when they needed a flat one. 

But, hey, safety first, right? 

Alas, the Galapagos isn’t a great destination to have major mechanical work done on your boat. The couple were still in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz, a few months later when all their cruising buddies were in Tahiti, partying their guts out at the (oh, what butt-shaking!) Heiva festival. The anchorage in Santa Cruz was rolly. The local officials smiled nicely as they put out their hands. The harbormaster shrugged and suggested that the couple sail to mainland Ecuador to get the work done, only 650 miles to windward. 

Eventually, the couple was so frustrated that they sailed directly to Tahiti without an engine, slapped in a new, preordered transmission, and then dashed for Nuku’alofa, Tonga, to catch the weather window down to New Zealand. There, for a ­combination of reasons, they sold the boat. 

Did they make the right choice turning back? I don’t know. What I do know is that 200 miles downwind ain’t 200 miles upwind in most overweight cruising vessels. When I later asked them how they enjoyed the Pacific, they asked: “Which part? The rushing part or the twiddling-our-thumbs part?” 

I can’t help but wonder if they would have felt differently if they’d just said, “Well, we don’t really need anything that Joshua Slocum didn’t have” and kept going. We’ll never know. 

About five years ago, other friends of ours left Maine on a 56-foot gold-plater bound for England but turned back after five days. Their hull was watertight, rig up, keel down, and the CD player still worked. But still, they turned back. 

Why? Their brand-new radar didn’t work, nor did their super-duper sophisticated watermaker or a couple of other new electronics. Water had, somehow, worked its way into the wiring that the shipyard had just installed. Oh, and there was a ­problem with the new lithium batteries—something about the system monitor. 

Luckily, the untouched starting battery still worked, but the most discouraging problem was a low-tech one. Their 8-year-old hatches, while totally watertight in ­vertical rain, leaked badly as the boat twisted in the boarding seas. The forepeak was awash. Even the skipper’s bunk was soggy. 

Now, because they’d left early in the season and had nearly unlimited funds, you’d think they’d have returned to the dock and hired an experienced marine electrician to sort things out. They didn’t. Instead, they returned to the dock and booked themselves into a coastal resort—never to mention their desire to go trans-Atlantic again, not that year or the next. 

Which is fine; they either got scared or didn’t enjoy it. And soon, some lucky sea gypsy might get a nice boat at an affordable price. But imagine if they had pulled into Bermuda and had a wonderful, exciting time while they casually dealt with their issues in between snorkeling trips to the reef. And then hopped to the Azores and, ultimately, wintered in the Mediterranean. 

The owner had expected, after all the money and time he’d spent, that every aspect of the cruise would go smoothly. But what he experienced was reality, not expectation. The marine environment is a harsh one for electronics, especially ­untested units that haven’t been through a shakedown. 

Turning back, in my humble experience, is often a worried captain turning his back on the trip and the dream. And we are nothing without our dreams. Of course, I wasn’t there and shouldn’t second-guess those folks who were. All I know is that I’ve crossed many oceans without any of the stuff they lacked, and I was happy to do it. 

Which brings us to the subject of fear. 

Fear is good. It helps keep us alive. And there’s no denying that being on a small boat on a large ocean can be scary. It’s true—we don’t have gills. 

But when it comes to fear offshore, 95 percent of the time, it’s blamed on the boat, yet boats don’t fear. Their skippers do. Their crews do. 

Fear is weird. I always go offshore with a storm trysail. I believe that many sailors bristle at the idea of buying such a wonderful, bulletproof, easy-to-set sail because they don’t want to acknowledge the fact that they might actually end up in weather that requires it.

And fear is contagious. I nip it in the bud whenever possible. Just one too-timid member of the crew can ruin the cruise for all. (I immediately assign jobs to the “we’re all gonna die” crewmember to see if I can make him too tired to stoke the fear in others.) 

Of course, I’m not saying that you should never turn back. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve turned back twice, and issued a mayday once. Am I proud of issuing that mayday? No. Did I do it lightly? No. Would I do it again? Yes. 

We were in heavy weather at night in the lower Caribbean during the 1970s, and the trade winds were howling into the high 20s and low 30s. I could see a freighter’s dim lights to leeward. I checked our main bilge. It was almost dry. We were under jib and jigger (­mizzen). Then we tacked. Within two minutes, our bilge alarm went off. I visually checked, and we had a lot of water in the main bilge. How could that be? I pumped it out, but it took a long time. 

I tasted the water. It was salt, not fresh. The best-case scenario would have been a water tank that burst. I stationed Carolyn forward and myself aft. I then shut off the sucking bilge pump to determine whether the leak was aft or forward. It was neither. And, two minutes later, we had another bilge full of water. 

There was a major point of water ingress in my boat somewhere, and my battery bank was in the engine compartment. 

A strong gust hit us, and we buried the leeward rail. We were held down like that for many minutes. And I could no longer see the freighter. 

Was our only chance of assistance or a radio relay to the US Coast Guard getting farther away with each passing minute? I called mayday. A local captain came back immediately. He was skippering an interisland freighter transiting from Venezuela. I gave him the pertinent information (from a little plastic card I kept by our VHF radio) and then asked him to stand by on Channel 16. He agreed. 

Once our trusty, extra-large submersible bilge pump sucked dry again, I had Carolyn switch it off while I shone a portable spotlight on the pump. It was immediately apparent to me that the pump was back-siphoning—sucking an inch and a half of raw seawater back into our bilge. 

I shut off the bilge pump’s seacock, confirmed that we were no longer sinking, and called back the West Indian fellow standing by on Channel 16 to cancel our emergency message. Actually, we repeatedly canceled it at five-minute intervals just to make sure, and we requested that the freighter (greater antenna height and, thus, greater range) do so as well. 

The truth is that most offshore ­passages that fail do so at the dock, with poor preparation. But most transoceanic voyages have a few surprises that are unfortunate and disconcerting. This is just the reality of cruising offshore. And the farther a person is from an emergency room, the more these surprises stand out in importance. 

If you want everything perfect—and all the conveniences of home—don’t go out there. And if, for some reason, the topic of abandoning ship or turning back comes up while offshore, the skipper should convey confidence and firmly tamp down such chatter. I’m a big, big ­believer in ­democracy ashore but not afloat. Somebody has to call the shots and bear the responsibility for the voyage, and that someone is the captain, not the greenest, most fearful lubber aboard. 

Not sure about this? Then consider the people from the 1979 Fastnet race who got into their life rafts, never to be seen again, while their vessels ultimately survived.

If there’s a semi-legitimate reason (or, more likely, reasons) to turn back, then ask yourself, What’s changed? Is it unneeded creature comforts? Or a real strength and safety issue? Tough out the former; respect the latter. 

And look deep within yourself. Are you fearful? If you are, is that fear warranted? If so, take logical, seamanlike steps to mitigate your circumstance. If not, take internal steps to mitigate your fear. In layman’s terms, chill, dude.

An adventurer should be brutally honest with himself or herself. There is no greater advantage in survival situations. Cowards really do die a thousand deaths. A brave man? Only one. 

Sailing offshore involves a certain amount of risk. It would be silly to deny that. But aboard a well-found vessel in the right ocean at the right time, that risk is acceptable if we don’t allow clips of Jaws to take up residence in our heads. 

Fatty Goodlander and his cottage-cheese stomach have been racing Lasers lately, with Carolyn in the dinghy at the finish line asking: “What happened? Did you get lost?”

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed in On Watch are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Cruising World. We welcome feedback and differing points of view, which can be directed to editor@cruisingworld.com.

The post The Pros and Cons of Turning Back appeared first on Cruising World.

A couple of summers ago, I took a Sabre 30 from New Jersey to Maine. The first half of the voyage from Atlantic Highlands through New York City to the Cape Cod Canal required intricate timing of wind and current in constricted waters with long distances between harbors. We had cell service the entire way, so we could pull up tidal information online, but it was always point-based. What I needed for ­planning was information on how the tidal currents changed throughout a day and over a geographic range. 

Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book, aka the Little Yellow Book, was my solution. And I’m far from the only boater who sings this book’s praises. This year, Eldridge is ­publishing its 150th ­edition—an ­impressive feat of continuity dating back to 1875. That’s even longer than the federal government’s stand-alone tide and current tables, which started with the year 1867 and ended their physical printings when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration took them online-only in 2020. 

Today, Eldridge covers the East Coast from Canada to Key West, Florida. But the book got its start in Massachusetts, where George Eldridge, a cartographer living on Cape Cod, published his Pilot for Vineyard Sound and Monomoy Shoals in 1854. He sent his son, also named George, to Vineyard Haven to sell the book, which was a combination of sailing directions and nautical dangers. Their target audience was the crew from schooners waiting for a favorable tide to depart. Those boats had to dodge shifting sands and hidden rocks because the Cape Cod Canal didn’t yet exist. 

By 1875, the idea for the book had grown into the first edition of Eldridge as we know it today. It was 64 pages long and cost 50 cents. Over the years, new information was added, such as an explanation of unusual currents in the “graveyard” in Vineyard Sound. Many stores began to sell the book around the region.

Today, Eldridge is printed in Indiana after being created at the home of Jenny and Peter Kuliesis in Arlington, Massachusetts. Jenny is the sixth generation of descendants to keep the title going.

“Much of what has helped the book stay in the family is that it has been thought of and treated as a family member,” she says. Parents managed the editing and publishing, and they talked about it over dinner. Children were brought to marinas and boat shows. “As a child, I ­marinated in the family pride, as I imagine each generation must have before me. It was both a duty and an honor to keep the legacy going.”

I’m particularly fond of Eldridge current charts. Instead of just tables, or even current diagrams, they distill the information into arrows and numbers that show direction and speed on 12 charts, one for each hour of the tide cycle. Using the charts along with tide tables, I can quickly see how a day’s planned trip fits in. 

For instance, the trickiest part of my voyage from New Jersey to Maine was timing our entrance into New York’s East River. If the current is right, a small boat will fly along to Hell Gate like a rubber duckie. To achieve this, we had to arrive at The Battery, at the bottom of Manhattan, two hours past low tide. 

A look at Eldridge revealed a big problem: It’s 18 nautical miles to get from Atlantic Highlands to The Battery, and almost the entire time we’d be headed north, the tide would be ebbing quite briskly out of New York Harbor. We had to consider not only our average boatspeed, but also the velocity of the current streaming south at more than 2 knots.

Much of what has helped the book stay in the family is that it has been thought of and treated as a family member.

Eldridge’s 12 current charts worked well for us. Eldridge also provides the ­convenience of having charts and ­data  together because storage is limited on most boats.

“One aspect of Eldridge that we feel surpasses apps is the ability to easily plan for ­future trips, as most apps focus on the present,” Jenny says. “We have seen no difference in sales of Eldridge since NOAA’s switch to online tide and currents. Our readers have made it clear to us they value the book in its physical form.” 

George Eldridge’s first chart was inspired by a storm that tossed up a new shoal off Chatham, Cape Cod, right across the path that vessels used to pass along the coast. That chart is oddly reminiscent of “mud maps” that my husband and I used in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia: hand-drawn diagrams with all kinds of information that boaters shared. 

Since GPS has now been invented, Eldridge still publishes distances between ports, but it no longer gives compass directions. That space in today’s book goes to information about weather, boating safety, first aid, fishing, celestial data, and expert articles chosen by the generations who continue to evolve the content.

“A critical and frequently missed part of our story is how in-laws and the women in the family have contributed, sometimes acting as the primary publisher and not always getting the attention for doing so,” Jenny says.

Jenny watched her grandmother, Molly White, do the lion’s share of the work while her grandfather ran his nautical instruments business. 

“My mother, Linda, apprenticed for decades with my grandmother before taking over as publisher along with my father, Ridge,” Jenny says. “My parents were the first generation to shift the role from a family duty to a choice. They had discussions with my sister and me periodically throughout our lives about the true work of publishing the book, and wanted us to go into it with eyes wide open. My parents were slightly surprised, quite excited and, I think it’s fair to say, relieved when Peter and I expressed interest.” 

After Linda died in 2015, Jenny and Peter joined Ridge as publishers. Peter has helped by writing programs and formatting data in new and efficient ways.

Are they sailors? Of course. “I grew up messing about in boats, and Peter picked it up when he met me,” Jenny says. “The modest craft in our fleet are greatly affected by tides and currents, and we do much of our boating on a tidal lake with a narrow channel out to the sound.” 

They use Eldridge every time they go out and, more often than not, before going out, to plan their ­voyages. “We have a copy on our sailboat and motorboat, and one at home, so we ­always have an Eldridge within arm’s reach,” she says.

 Today, Jenny and Peter are looking to the future of the book, which some boaters call “The Sailor’s Bible.” 

“Our readers let us know that they wouldn’t leave land without it,” Jenny says. “We feel that we must be doing something right, as I can’t think of many other publications that have made it to 150. At the end of the day, if your GPS is on the fritz or your smartphone gets dunked in the drink, you can still navigate safely home with Eldridge in hand.” 

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Many, many months after rock star David Crosby struck a deal to sell his classic schooner to Beau and Stacey Vrolyk, the deal was instead stuck, dead in the water. But that’s not where this story ends—or begins. Two stories, really. 

John Alden design No. 356B launched in 1947 in British Honduras, land of the Mayas, and the 59-foot schooner Mayan is a celebrity today wherever she goes. Pampered inch by inch and pound for pound, all 70,000 pounds, Mayan is home-ported in San Francisco Bay as the flagship of St. Francis Yacht Club. Under 2023 Commodore Beau Vrolyk, there is gravitas in that. How it came to be, after those many, many perplexing months of waiting to buy, is one story. 

Mayan, however, had already touched the hearts of millions—millions who might not know the boat beyond their imaginings of a song about “wooden ships, on the water, very free and easy.” A reader might recognize the words and phrasing of the troubadour who owned Mayan for 45 years, from 1969 to 2014. If something made to go places can be said to be an anchor, Mayan was that, the emotional anchor in Crosby’s rich but tumultuous life. 

When Crosby bought Mayan out of the charter trade in 1969, he was riding the height of fame. His earliest musical hits with the Byrds had included a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tambourine Man” that defined folk rock. Later came the Byrds’ own (ahem) “Eight Miles High.”Now, the eponymous debut album of Crosby, Stills & Nash was shooting straight to the top, and the three were honored as best new artists at the 1969 Grammy Awards. It was a heady time. Woodstock lay on the horizon. The political landscape was ablaze. And along with the discovery that he could harmonize with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash to create a unique sound came a preference to think of the group not as a band, but as individuals. They would be together or not, harmonizing or not and feuding or not, for the rest of their personal and professional lives. 

It was in a period of ­feuding and drifting that Crosby spotted Mayan for sale in Port Everglades, Florida. Think of it as one of the great love-at-first-sight sagas of his generation. A loan from Peter Tork of The Monkees—flush with TV money—closed the purchase, and Crosby called it “the best money I ever spent.” By and by, he cruised the boatfrom Florida through the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, and up the coast of the Americas to the Golden Gate Bridge, where Mayan became a fixture on San Francisco Bay. 

Arriving in the early 1970s, Crosby docked Mayan at a new home in downtown Sausalito, a long walk out Pier 2, which might as well have had a red carpet for all the names-you-know who made the walk. To pick just one, Joni Mitchell was inspired to sing, writing herself into the story: “There’s a man who’s been out sailing, in a decade full of dreams, and he takes her to a schooner, and he treats her like a queen.”

Sausalito was turning from a quaint, bohemian village with a Riviera vibe into a tourist town with a view of San Francisco, but it had a pulse. The hills were rockin’, and there was still a five-and-dime on the main drag a stone’s throw from the scene-makers’ scene, a waterfront ­restaurant called the Trident. Rock impresario Bill Graham chose the Trident to host the Rolling Stones, more than once. Janis Joplin had her own table. And an outbound, starboard-tack flyby and a wave to the Trident might cover Crosby’s launch of any bay cruise aboard Mayan. Plant a stake in the mandala for that brief moment in time. Crosby asked in a song in 1974: “Will our love beat on (after we are gone)? Traveling beyond (what do we become?).”

The five-and-dime disappeared as the tourist shops moved in. For Crosby, the hits kept coming through ­breakups, reunions and solo albums. And the sea beckoned. As the years went by, Mayan carried Crosby and friends beyond San Francisco Bay to the far reaches of the South Pacific, into its rainbow of colors not otherwise known to nature. The air is soft there. The water is warm. Crosby was an avid diver, and Mayan’s shallow draft of 4 feet, 5 inches with the centerboard served up perfectly. An air-tank rack was built into the cabin to keep the action going, and the skipper once said that he “could just jump off and dive on some of the most beautiful reefs in the world.”

Much of the reflection that followed the singer’s death in January 2023 recalled his high-handed difficulties with fellow musicians or his descent in the 1980s into addictions and legal trauma. At one point, with the law on his mustachioed, long-haired trail, he imagined all would be well if he could just get to that saloon where songs had been born and sung, where he would be wrapped in the arms of Mother Mayan. That delusion was soon punctured, and there are more twists to the Crosby story: eventually thanking a judge for sentencing him to the harsh confines of a Texas prison because he came out clean and sober—with a future. Giving up the boat. Getting it back. 

Crosby’s delusional episodes intersect our stories where we began, with the sale of the boat up in the air and the frustrated would-be buyers, Beau and Stacey, wondering what in blazes was going on so many months after the owner had promised to sign. 

They found the answer, but first, here is Beau Vrolyk’s description of Crosby as a sailor’s sailor, respected dockside in every harbor he visited: “David was a careful sailor, in the true meaning of that word. He cared for Mayan and her crew. He knew his ship, and made sure she and all she carried were safe. His love of Mayan showed in how he handled her at sea. There was none of the irascible rock star showing when we talked of sailing, just the normal swapping of sea stories.”

Stacey was reading David [Crosby]’s book Long Time Gone, and it dawned on her that he wasn’t selling a boat. He was letting go of a piece of himself. 

That’s the man they were dealing with, a gem except for his quirky refusal to close the sale. To address that, we need to start our story again, around 2012, with the Vrolyks realizing that their lovely, lively Spirit 46, innocent of lifelines, was not a playground for the grandkids. Vrolyk is himself a sailor’s sailor, starting as a kid at the Los Angeles Yacht Club, covering serious miles on the family’s 23-foot gaff-rigged cruiser. He continued through a career in software and investing, with a lot of sailing and voyaging in the mix. In his college years, on weekends, he skippered the celebrated schooner Salee. “That is where I fell in love with Alden schooners,” he says, and with that passion, he sold the notion to Stacey as she moved into the sailing life from a career in marketing for multibillion-dollar companies. Thus began their collaboration and an international search. 

“We looked at 12 schooners in all, in the US and Europe,” Vrolyk says. “I was even willing to consider a Starling Burgess, but Burgess put on too much sail. A schooner like Niña, for example, was a history-making race boat but never intended for cruising. Eventually, I made an offer on a boat in San Diego, and I called up an old friend who also grew up at LAYC, Stan Honey. He told me, ‘Don’t buy anything until Wayne Ettel has a look at it.’”

Well-regarded for ­restorations at Boatswayne, his Wilmington, California, boatworks, and always keen to credit his start in the Sea Scouts, Ettel studied the prospective purchase on the hard at San Diego’s Shelter Island. He quickly dismissed the schooner in question. Then he suggested lunch down the street at the Red Sails Inn to consider the background and experience of the purchaser, and the intended use. The answer: coastal cruising and perhaps a foray into the Pacific. With that on the table, Ettel declared, “Mayan is the boat you need.” 

As Vrolyk recalls: “We had been aware of Mayan, but the asking price was outrageous. Wayne said to ignore that because Crosby doesn’t want to sell, but he needs to sell, and he won’t sell to just anybody. Write a half-page letter with a résumé attached, and tell David what you intend to do with the boat. He gave me a number that he said was a fair price to offer. I sent it off in the mail, and two days later, the phone rang. It was David telling me to come to Santa Barbara: ‘We’ll eat tacos and talk about the boat.’ So, I drove down from the Bay Area, and we ordered tacos at a hole-in-the-wall, and then spent three hours going over the boat.”

Vrolyk says he realized later that Crosby had been studying every move he made, to see if he was the real deal. “Then, standing in the parking lot, I asked, ‘Where do we go from here?’” Vrolyk says. “David said, ‘We shake hands, and I sell you the boat.’ It was that simple. I called Stacey on the drive home to tell her, ‘I think we just bought a boat.’” 

Ettel could speak with confidence because he had gone deep on Mayan only a few years earlier. As Vrolyk tells it: “David had poured money into the boat. Ettel had taken off every plank and replaced 90 percent of the frames with purpleheart. He put in stainless-steel floor frames to replace the cast-iron originals, and double-planked the hull with sapele and cedar. Oh, and the planks were set in epoxy and fastened with bronze screws instead of the original galvanized nails. The people who used to build boats like this projected a life expectancy of 15 to 20 years. Wayne made this one pretty much bomb-proof.” 

Add another trip to Santa Barbara with brokers and paperwork, and, Vrolyk says: “I signed the purchase papers. David said he would sign that night.”

But Crosby didn’t sign.

And there they were, many months along, a pair of frustrated, perplexed buyers but with a fresh insight. As Vrolyk recalls: “Stacey was reading David’s book Long Time Gone, and it dawned on her that he wasn’t selling a boat. He was letting go of a piece of himself.” When Vrolyk pressed his case again: “David burst into tears on the phone and told me he had promised his youngest son, Django, that they would sail together to Hawaii someday. If he sold, that day would never come: ‘What do I tell my kid?’ 

“‘Bring Django, and we’ll sail to Hawaii together,’ I said. ‘You’ll be the skipper. I’ll crew. And every time, and I mean every time, Mayan goes anywhere more than a daysail, I’ll let you know a week ahead, and you can come with us.’

“‘You would do that for me?’

“I said, ‘Give me a break! Who wouldn’t want to go sailing with David Crosby?’ He cracked up.”

So the boat changed hands, and Vrolyk set to work fulfilling his vision of the ultimate Mayan. He is a hands-on owner, but a boat 60 feet on deck is too much for any one person, and the transformation was gradual. The skipper was inspired, one step leading to the next, to return the boat from staysail schooner to its original rig as drawn by Alden. That meant a transitional ­schooner with the traditional gaff foresail and a Marconi main. In the 1930s, that hybrid setup had become a popular means to reduce crew numbers, and by then, Marconi mains had proved fast to weather.

Alden liked gaff foresails for their efficiency on a reach. The crew could pull the gaff to windward with a vang led to the mainmast without ­overtightening the leach. Also, a gaff forward is much smaller than a gaff on the main, making it easier for smaller crews to manage. 

Eventually, however, and following a different trend, Mayan’s forward gaff had been removed in favor of a more manageable main staysail. That is how Crosby sailed it, and that is how Vrolyk found the boat. By midcentury, staysail schooners were fashionable, pegged to the 1928 staysail schooner Niña and her trans-Atlantic and Fastnet Race wins. Having thus simplified things, racing crew quickly turned to complicating the schooners again with topmast staysails to fly above the main staysail. Now we add names such as Little Fisherman, Fisherman, Advance and—everybody’s favorite—the Gollywobbler. Vrolyk says, “There’s definitely a ring to shouting, ‘Hoist the Gollywobbler!’”

But as he piled up miles and got into classics racing (“David thought I was nuts; he never raced”), Vrolyk became disillusioned with the topmast staysails that he had inherited. In the process, he was backed by the likes of Stan Honey and, as frequent crew, a man who helped revolutionize downwind racing, naval architect Bill Lee. 

“We were blessed with a cadre of professional minds who wanted to sail on the boat, and we began the process of shrinking sail inventory when Bill Lee observed that, once you get to hull speed, more sail doesn’t help,” Vrolyk says. “Among Bill’s designs was the quintessential downwind flyer for Transpac, Merlin, and nothing could be more different from a 70,000-pound schooner, but Bill’s an engineer through and through. He enjoyed the challenge of making an old boat faster. It was a game to him.”

And so, Mayan today is back to her original configuration as a transitional schooner, gaff fore and Marconi main. And Mayan wins races. More ­important, the Vrolyks can doublehand because the ­individual sails are manageable. 

“The main is about the size of a main on a modern ­40-footer,” Vrolyk says, “and there are lots of lines and sails for our grandchildren and guests to call their own.” 

Add multiple changes to the arrangement belowdecks: Crosby had a sultan-size bed in the salon—or perhaps we call it a rock-star bed, certainly not a bunk. That is now history, and the head and shower were repositioned. Below the waterline, Mayan got a new rudder shape that balanced a once-heavy helm. Meanwhile, a thick book’s worth of fine woodworking went into bringing the deck and house to Bristol presentation, along with new sails and new lines. Now it’s “just” a matter of maintaining a wood boat, rather in the way that a plane in the sky must keep moving or else. 

True to his word, Vrolyk invited Crosby sailing many times, “but he was always on tour or in the studio.” It went on, and it went on. “David always responded quickly, but it was always no. Eventually I said, ‘Sheesh, just come sit on the boat.’”

A beat.

“That’s when David finally told me, ‘I can’t. I like what you’re doing with the boat, but I just can’t do it. It wouldn’t be the same.’”

Decades before, the same voice had sung: “If you don’t like the story or end, well then pick up your pen, and then write it again.” 

It wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be the same. 

The post Giving Up the Helm: A Lesson in Letting Go appeared first on Cruising World.

From Martinique to Grenada, the Windward Islands trace the border of the southern Caribbean Sea. They include four countries, dozens of islands—many of them uninhabited—steady trade winds, and hundreds of miles of navigable coastline. This tropical playground is an ideal sailing destination for seasoned sailors and first-time charterers alike. 

At the northern end of the Windwards is Martinique, the only French territory of the group. With its fine wine, boulangeries and chic Paris fashions, it’s the island where resisting indulgence is ­hardest. It’s also a major yachting destination with skilled technicians, though it’s often the most expensive. Colorful colonial architecture dots the coastline, and cafes and restaurants line the beaches. 

St. Lucia’s mountainous coastline beckons to the south of Martinique, with tourist destinations such as the Pitons bringing well-deserved fame. Diving and snorkeling can provide equally spectacular views underwater. There is no shortage of all-inclusive luxury resorts and romantic retreats, especially in the area around the Pitons.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines, by contrast, is where sailors get away from the crowds. The west coast of the St. Vincent mainland is ­rural, secluded and steep, making anchoring and mooring a challenge. Almost no yacht services are available, ­except at the Blue Lagoon Hotel and Marina at the southern end of the island. 

From there, sailors can leave the mainland behind and head south to the Grenadines for idyllic turquoise Caribbean water. Sandy, uninhabited islets speckle the horizon. The Tobago Cays are on par with the Pitons as far as cinematic vistas, and are the destination for charter yachts.

Grenada, the southernmost island in the Windwards (just outside the hurricane belt), has a charming, rural, mountainous interior flanked by palm-shaded white-sand beaches. With its abundant boatyards and marine services, Grenada is now a thriving yachting community that many sailors return to season after season.

A consistent 15- to 20-knot breeze, sunny skies and the fact that most islands are within a half day’s sail mean the options are so vast, where to go really depends on what you’re seeking. With that in mind, here are the best anchorages in the Windwards. 

Best for ­Provisioning and Shopping

Le Marin on Martinique is a place where boulangeries and affordable French imports (yes, cheese and wine) abound. Many sailors make the hop from St. Lucia to Martinique just to go shopping. 

Provisioning is made easy by services such as Appro-Zagaya and Appel à Tous, which offer provisioning, knowledgeable advice, and delivery to the dock. Appel à Tous also has an app to place an order and mark the boat’s location for delivery, whether it be on a dock, on a mooring or at anchor. If fashion is what you’re after, anchor in Fort-de-France and explore the boutique-lined streets. A short bus ride away you’ll find La Galleria and Genipa, shopping malls with chic clothing and jewelry.  

Best for Diving and Snorkeling

The Tobago Cays, part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has a shallow, fringing reef that forms a gentle arc between ­sandy islets, dividing the crystalline, turquoise water from the plummeting Atlantic Ocean. Channels of white sand cut through dense reef, where damselfish dart in and out of their coral homes. Inside the reef, the anchorage encompasses a marine protected area frequented by green and hawksbill turtles. Don a mask and fins, and watch the turtles munch on seagrass, or venture out with the dinghy to Horseshoe Reef and tie onto a snorkeling mooring. (Scuba enthusiasts must dive with a local dive shop.) 

Carriacou, which belongs to Grenada, has one of the Caribbean’s most spectacular dives. Sister Rocks is northwest of Tyrell Bay, with black corals, soft gorgonians and ­iridescent-blue sponge vases that spill down the steep, sloping reef. The top 30 feet of ocean is often teeming with schools of baitfish or purple creole wrasse dancing in rays of sunlight. The current sweeps divers around the base of the islands as seabirds nest in craggy cliffs above. Harmless nurse sharks nestle into rocky overhangs below. This is an advanced dive with currents that can be especially strong. 

St. George’s is the capital on Grenada, an island where 15 wreck-dive sites scatter the southern coast. They include the “Titanic of the Caribbean,” the Bianca C. This 600-foot cruise ship sank in 1961. Advanced divers can explore the intact swimming pool at 120 feet deep. For beginners, the Veronica L, in less than 50 feet of water, is a favorite. The site is shallow enough for light to illuminate the coral-encrusted open cargo hold and the intact crane, making for a striking scene. 

Best for Hiking 

Sainte-Anne is a village on Martinique, providing access to more than 100 miles of hiking trails that are mostly well-designed and -marked. Sailors can try everything from an eight-hour round-trip hike up to the summit of Mount Pelée (about 4,580 feet above sea level) to moderate trails that follow the coastline. A trailhead for the nearly 17-mile coastal Trace des Caps is in Anse Caritan, just south of Saint-Anne. The trail links a series of interesting areas to explore, including Etang des Salines, a mangrove lagoon with winding boardwalks, and Savane des Pétrifications, an arid, coastal-desert landscape reminiscent of the moon. 

Soufriere and the Pitons on St. Lucia have terrain that can be moderately to extremely challenging. Gros Piton, despite its name, is the easier of the two pitons to hike, though the second half of the hike consists of steep stairs dug into the hillside. Petit Piton is shorter in elevation, but the climb is significantly steeper, much of it relying on the use of ropes to pull yourself up the cliffside. For less of a challenge and more-rewarding views, trek up Tet Paul, which offers spectacular views of both pitons, the bay below and the coastline on the other side.

Bequia’s deeply ­ingrained ­seafaring heritage is a major draw to the ­island, while ­sailors make the hop to Martinique for ­superb provisioning. 

Grenada’s inland section is lush and mountainous, with trails that cut through ­tropical rainforest, along mountain ridges, and into verdant valleys of cocoa, spice and fruit plantations. There are also 18 waterfalls and a crater lake to explore. Sailors can join the Grenada Hash House Harriers, an informal hiking group that lays a different trail and meets every Saturday afternoon. Upwards of 100 sailors, expats, locals and students gather for a jovial romp through the bush, and there are almost always carpooling options to get to the trailhead. 

Best for Artisans and Handicrafts

Bequia, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has a deeply ingrained seafaring heritage that includes whaling. It also has a long history of artisans and handicrafts, which means sailors can find great examples of scrimshaw (intricate carvings on whale bone) and model-boat building. A single boat model can take weeks to produce. Generations of skill go into everything, from selecting and felling the tree and curing the wood to painting and varnishing it, and threading delicate rigging. Most craftspeople set up stalls along the waterfront town of Port Elizabeth, where sailors also can find brightly painted calabash bowls, woven hats and baskets, coconut ­sculptures, and jewelry made from seeds. 

Best for Nightlife

Most islands in the Windwards have annual festivals or carnivals that are worth checking out. Grenada Sailing Week at the end of January is a Caribbean Sailing Association-accredited regatta with prizes, parties and nightly live music. Serious competitors and casual cruisers alike come together for the friendly competition. The Bequia Easter Regatta in April draws an even larger crowd. Traditionally, there are events for yachts and local double-enders, and the island buzzes with newcomers and returning champions. For music lovers, the St. Lucia Jazz and Arts Festival in May is the place to be. Within the past 30 years, its genres have expanded to include reggae, pop and gospel. An array of international stars take the stage for more than a week of live performances that go on into the wee hours. 

Best for Foodies

Fort-de-France on Martinique is the place to sample foie gras, caviar and escargot. Martinique has the best of the Caribbean’s fine French dining, with contemporary wine pairings and sophisticated presentations. Casual bistros and boulangeries on every corner overflow with fresh pastries. Even the simplest of lunches—a baguette layered with brie and sausage—is of a quality not found on the other Windward Islands. 

Bequia, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has restaurants along the waterfront of Port Elizabeth. The Belmont Walkway divides the turquoise bay from bistro tables and barstools. In the Windwards, this is the widest variety of restaurants in one area, including many casual Caribbean Creole options. For a sweet treat, try Marianne’s homemade ice cream in the picturesque waterfront courtyard of the Gingerbread Hotel. 

Best for Solitude

The Windward Anchorage at Mayreau, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has coral heads that dot a small barrier reef off the Atlantic coast. A deep channel runs along the rocky shoreline and opens up into a sandy bay inside the reef. With only the Tobago Cays in the distance, the wind blows unencumbered across the glistening sea. A single restaurant ashore provides the only connection to the outside world, offering the convenience of not cooking if the anchorage gets too rolly. 

Sandy Island is part of Grenada. Not to be confused with Sandy Island in Carriacou, it lies just off Grenada’s northern coast. The island is surrounded by a shallow coral reef. Boats need a shallow draft and skippers need a sharp eye to make it through the narrow, 5-foot-deep channel into this secluded, one-boat anchorage. 

White Island at Carriacou, also part of Grenada, has ­windswept vegetation that spills from a rocky pinnacle overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, tapering to a small ­peninsula of fine white sand. Both this island and its neighbor, Saline Island, are uninhabited, but Saline can be popular and crowded. By contrast, sailors usually have White Island to themselves, perhaps because anchoring can be difficult on the edge of the deep channel between reefs.

Best in a Big Blow

Grenada’s Port Egmont has a deep bay on the Atlantic coast. It takes a dogleg as the ­coastline transitions from rocky scrubland to thick ­mangroves. The entrance to the outer bay is reef-strewn and can be tricky, especially in a swell, but inside, there’s a deep lagoon that provides shelter from the surge. Port Egmont is the best option when offshore hurricanes disrupt the regular trade winds, and the prevailing wind and surge swing to the west. 

Tyrell Bay at Carriacou is a long and winding ­mangrove lagoon that’s one of the best hurricane holes in the Caribbean, especially for shallow-draft vessels that can make it through the ­4-foot-deep bottleneck into the inner bay. A wide, dense perimeter of mangrove forest protects the inner lagoon from heavy winds and surge. The lagoon is part of the Sandy Island/Oyster Bed marine ­protected area, and is accessible only under threat of a named storm.

Le Marin at Martinique is a deep, sprawling bay where mangrove lagoons finger off into 10 to 20 feet of water, deep enough for most yachts to tuck in and ride out a storm. The innermost bay is further protected from the wind by hills on either side. Anchoring in the mangrove lagoons is permitted only under threat of a hurricane, and the lagoons tend to fill up fast, as Le Marin is the yachting capital of Martinique. 

Best for a Last-Minute Haulout

Grenada has three large boatyards and many skilled, affordable technicians. If you’re coming from the north, and if time and distance are a major factor, then Grenada’s sister island of Carriacou is a day’s sail closer and might be the better choice. Carriacou has two haulouts, both in the main anchorage of Tyrell Bay, where most yacht services are located. Though Carriacou’s selection of services isn’t as vast as Grenada’s, parts can often be brought up within a day or two.  

Martinique is an option in the northern end of the Windwards. Le Marin is the island’s center of yachting. Though there is only one yard, it is large and ­well-equipped. Parts and technicians are top-notch, with a price tag to match. The nation’s capital, Fort-de-France, also has a boatyard. It is geared more toward motoryachts, and it’s a good choice for engine or mechanical issues.  

In all of these destinations, the time of year will affect space and availability. At the beginning and end of hurricane season (May and November), many boatyards are booked up months in advance. Some make space for a quick haul and launch in an ­emergency.

The post Best Anchorages in the Windward Islands appeared first on Cruising World.

It’s not every year that the Boat of the Year judging panel has the opportunity to review cool little boats that totally accentuate the pure joy of sailing, and that get a bonus point if they offer simple but functional camper-cruising accommodations. For manufacturers, the all-too-frequent dearth of these boats is a result of Economics 101: Building boats is a tough business, it’s not always easy to make a buck, and the greater profits to be had make a strong case for building larger vessels. 

But at their very core, the BOTY judges are, first and foremost, sailors. So, when not one but a pair of nifty mulithulls received nominations for the 2024 awards, it was a happy occasion indeed. Better yet, once under sail on the Chesapeake, these crafty pocket entries proved to be as much fun to drive as they appeared on the dock. 

Winner: Xquisite 30 Sportcat

The South African brand Xquisite Yachts was familiar to the BOTY panelists; the builder’s fully found X5 range of highly sophisticated cruising cats have earned a pair of awards in the past: Most Innovative in 2017 and Best Cruising Catamaran in 2022. But Xquisite’s latest entry in the contest caught the judges by surprise. It’s a trailerable 30-footer with the most basic of accommodations that bears little resemblance to the other models in the Xquisite quiver. 

Tim Murphy summarized the thinking behind the design: “The Xquisite 30 Sportcat is a vinylester, foam-core-infused structure designed for training, racing and cruising with occasional overnights. The prototype we sailed was built in Poland; the actual production run will be in Portugal. The design was a senior project from noted multihull designer François Perus when he was finishing his mechanical engineering degree in Brest, France. The purpose for this boat is to have two or three available at the Xquisite Yachts base in Freeport, Bahamas. Builder and owner Tamas Hamor recognized that many buyers of the Xquisite X5 or X5 Plus [sophisticated 50-foot cruising cats] might not come with much prior sailing experience. The SportCat would give them direct, sporty feedback of pure sailing in Bahamian waters while they learn to operate their larger cruising cats.”

Judge Mark Pillsbury added: “This was a really fun boat to sail once you got the hang of handling its long tiller extension and crossing back and forth across the nearly 16 feet of beam, hull to hull. The boat is intended, in part, to be a training vessel for Xquisite’s big-boat owners. One thing’s for sure: They’ll get a taste of the pure joy of simply sailing.”

Judge Herb McCormick had his own take: “It’s a niche boat, for sure, and at $250,000, I think that the broader market for it is pretty limited. That said, I’d love to own one. It would be a perfect boat for gunkholing around Narragansett Bay and New England waters. The accommodations are pretty spartan, but there are berths in the hulls, and you could rig a boom tent on the trampolines and have plenty of room to camp. And the joyful experience under sail would make up for the rustic one under the stars.”

Runner-up: Astus 20.5 Sport

The BOTY judging team had a unanimous verdict for this unusual little trimaran: For a compact boat, it has grand ambitions, most of which it meets or exceeds. 

Tim Murphy provided the overview: “This is a 20-foot trimaran sportboat built in Brittany, France, by a company that’s been in business since 2004. Astus builds four trimaran models (14.5, 16.5, 20.5, 22.5); its sole US importer is Red Beard Sailing, a Chesapeake Bay dealer. This boat is designed by VPLP Design, named for founders Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prévost, which now has a staff of some 30 designers who specialize in everything from Lagoon cats to America’s Cup winners to foiling Open 60 IMOCAs. Astus’ goal is to offer multihull sailors a boat in a size range smaller than Corsair offers.” 

Judge Herb McCormick said: “That VPLP connection is huge. They’re a big-name player, and the fact that they’ve put their reputation and blessing on this design is a major positive. The hardware and Selden spar they use is first-rate. They’re not cutting any corners. Under sail, it felt like a good, stable platform. I think it’s a great entry-level boat for someone who wants to get into multihull sailing.”

Judge Mark Pillsbury also gave the Astus his thumbs-up: “The Astus tri is a simple little boat with a high fun factor. We sailed the boat in about 10 knots of breeze, and with four of us aboard, we were probably a bit overloaded. But with the screecher set, we saw lots of speeds over 7 knots, and flirted with 8s in the puffs. And sitting on the tramps watching the waves right under us was a real hoot. The amas are mounted on tubes and can be pulled in and out for docking and sailing. I was aboard as they were being deployed, and the process was pretty simple: Sit on the center hull and push out on each ama with your legs (or step in on the tramp to pull it in) until a set pin can be dropped into place. Engage the pins fore and aft for each ama, and you’re off to the races, simple as that.”

To summarize: easy, fast and fun. Hard to beat that trifecta. 

The post 2024 Boat of the Year: Best Sportboat appeared first on Cruising World.