Bill Pinkney had a plan, and while it wasn’t exactly simple, it was pretty straightforward. The Chicago-based sailor, who spent his waterborne hours crewing on a Swan 44 race boat or pottering about Lake Michigan on his 28-foot Pearson Triton, was going to ramp up to a 35-footer and trick it out to sail alone around the world. The reason? He wanted to inspire his two grandchildren, to teach them by example what laid over the horizon, and what could be achieved if you put your mind to it.

He never set out to be a pioneer. Then he became one. 

This past fall, the 86-year-old ­mariner was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Sailing Hall of Fame in recognition of his two-year solo circumnavigation aboard his Valiant 47, Commitment, during which he became the first African American sailor to circle the globe via the five great southern capes. But that was only another chapter of his sailing odyssey. Next, he became the sailing master of Mystic Seaport’s replica cargo ship, Amistad—­inspired by the movie of the same name—and skippered her on voyages from Halifax to Key West, and on to Cuba in commemoration of a historic slave revolt in Havana on the ship’s predecessor in 1839.

Pinkney found sponsorship for his circumnavigation on Commitment, which enabled the trip to have an educational component with a special curriculum that was undertaken by school children in Chicago and Boston. Amazingly, his original idea to teach a couple of kids in his family some lessons ultimately reached thousands. 

At the outset, Pinkney’s plan was to circle the planet via the Panama and Suez canals (a voyage another Black sailor, Ted Seymour, had already accomplished). That changed after a trip to England prior to setting sail, and a chance meeting with the legendary Robin Knox-Johnston, the first man to sail around the world in the famous Golden Globe Race in 1968-1969.

“If you’re talking about solo sailing, I was meeting the lord!” Pinkney told me in an interview from his home in Puerto Rico. “And he said: ‘Look, you’re a Black guy. It’s not going to be a big thing if you cross the Atlantic and go through th­e canals, and the day after you finish, ­another Black guy does the same voyage but around Cape Horn. They’ll never know your name. If you’re going to do it, do it like a bloody man!’ So, the lord told me what to do. I had no choice. And it turned out, he was right.”

There were highlights all along the way. In South Africa, he sailed past Robben Island—the notorious prison island from which Nelson Mandela had just recently been released—flying a red, black and green spinnaker, the colors of the African liberation movement. There was the wicked knockdown in a microburst in the Southern Ocean, which doused the interior of Commitment in Vermont maple syrup and took weeks to mop up. 

But the very end of the voyage, when he came alongside the dock at Boston’s Constitution Wharf and was greeted by high school students “as far as the eye could see,” was unforgettable. So too was the reception aboard USS Constitution—“Old Ironsides”—soon after his arrival. “I come up the gangway and turn and salute the ensign and officer of the deck,” he recalled. “The loudspeaker goes, ‘Commitment. Arriving.’ I almost lost it. Here I am, an eight-year Navy vet, an enlisted man, getting piped aboard the oldest ship in the United States Navy. And my ship, that I’d just sailed around the world, is recognized as I come aboard. That was a mind-blower.”

More recently, Pinkney has been involved with getting more people of color on the water, and for more than two decades, he helped lead annual flotillas of 20 or 30 boatloads of Black sailors from all over the country on charter vacations through the British Virgin Islands. But Pinkney wants to make one thing clear.

“I want to give kudos to the National Sailing Hall of Fame,” he said. “At no time, in any place, have I ever been mentioned as a Black sailor. No place. Only as a sailor. And that’s the identity that all of us who sail want. We’re sailors. Religion, sexuality, color—none of that has anything to do with the fact that, first and foremost, we’re sailors.”

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor.  

The post Accidental Pioneer appeared first on Cruising World.

When we reached the South Pacific eight years ago, we were still newbies in coral-reef navigation. We’d had a few close encounters with rocks in murky water while cruising the Caribbean side of Panama and were nervous about dropping the hook near coral. We didn’t dare take our 1988 Sparkman & Stephens 41, Pitufa, with her 7-foot draft, anywhere near shallow water; we sought out deep blue anchorages, which we deemed safer. We’ve learned a lot over the past few years and know now that dark blue isn’t always synonymous with safety. Just because you can’t see coral reefs and other underwater obstacles doesn’t mean they’re not there. Unfortunately, many crews find this out the hard way, when an anchor gets stuck on a reef or chain wraps around a coral head.

If you dive on your anchor and check its placement (and the set of your neighbor’s anchor), you’ll find that coral growth is abundant in 30 and even 60 feet of water in many areas of the South Pacific. Sadly, due to global warming and pollution, many coral reefs are damaged or dead. But some are very much alive and can easily be damaged. In deep anchorages, where letting out a lot scope is necessary, 200 feet of heavy chain can wipe out a large area of coral during an unexpected windshift. Damaging a reef can lead to resentment toward cruisers from the local populations and gives all sailboat crews a bad reputation. This resentment can grow into open hostility and ultimately lead to anchoring bans, such as the recently enacted ones in Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine and Bora Bora. 

Safety Risk

Dropping a hook on or near coral is also, of course, a huge safety risk. During an unexpected windshift or rapidly deteriorating weather, if your chain is wrapped around a coral head, it can’t be cleared quickly. The result can be severe damage to both the vessel and the coral, and even the loss of the boat. We witnessed a neighboring boat in an anchorage on the outer reef of the Gambier Islands bend its bow roller when the wind shifted suddenly from east to north. The chain was wrapped, and the boat pitched violently on very short scope in rapidly increasing waves.

The fetch across lagoons should not be underestimated either, especially in large Pacific atolls such as Fakarava or Rangiroa, where the waves can build to 5 feet and higher surprisingly fast, even in light to moderate winds. Recently we were anchored in light easterly winds in Rotoava on the northeast side of Fakarava in calm waters when Pitufa suddenly started rolling. We wondered if a ship was passing by. Five minutes later, a squall reached us, packing 25 knots of wind from the south. In another example, we know of one boat that had its windlass ripped out of the deck during a northwesterly trough in the Tuamotus. And, in May 2020, several sailboats in Fakarava got trapped on a lee shore in front of the village on the eastern side of the lagoon when the wind shifted to the west. They could not get their hooks up quickly, and two boats ended up onshore and were total losses.

Prepare in Advance

Cruisers tend to tell the tales of wrapped chains and trapped anchors at sundowners and get-togethers, making light of the situation and tossing them into the this-happens-to-­everyone pile. But fouled anchor gear can lead to major disasters. Fortunately, there are many ways to avoid damaging your boat and the environment if you prepare ahead and follow some general rules.

Anchors: Make sure you have a reliable, heavy anchor. Rocna and similar designs dig into sand quickly and are ideal for atoll anchorages. Plow anchors—such as a CQR or Delta—do just what their name suggests before they set. We love and trust our 55-pound German Bügelanker (similar to a Rocna), which we use in combination with 10-millimeter chain in basically all anchoring situations. Our Bügelanker sets in sand within a few inches and allows precision work when picking a spot. In fine sand or mud, the Bügelanker needs a while to settle in, so we don’t immediately set it under tension; once it has sunk in, it stays put. In addition, we carry a light Danforth to be used as a stern anchor or as a sacrificial anchor in an emergency situation when we are not sure whether the anchor will come back up. 

Preparation: Prepare before arrival. We like to download and study satellite images before we depart on a crossing. That way we can plan ahead and mark large, sandy spots that look promising in our intended anchorage. 

Use the daylight: Try to arrive with good light. Early in the morning and late in the afternoon, the sun turns the surface of the sea into a glittering veil, often making it impossible to make out the bottom.

Have a lookout: Post a lookout on the bow; they can direct the helmsperson and give feedback during reconnaissance circles around the anchorage.

Anchor where you can see the bottom: When possible, drop the hook where you can see the bottom. The shallower it is, the easier it is to judge where a sandy spot is actually located. Refraction fools the eye in deeper water.

Take your time: We often do a dozen spins around an anchorage before we decide on a spot. It took us a lot of willpower to anchor in shallow water the first few times we attempted it. We’d watch the depth sounder rapidly dropping as we edged toward a sandy shelf, while our heart rates accelerated upward at the same pace! We quickly learned to associate the shades of blue—from dark blue to light turquoise—with water depth, even though we still get fooled when the water is so crystal-clear that you believe you can touch the bottom in 15 feet. 

If in doubt, I stay at the helm and circle with Pitufa in deep water while my partner, Christian, takes the dinghy and scouts ahead with a portable depth sounder, or just jumps into the water and tries to touch the bottom with his toes. If only the tips of his fingers stick out above the water’s surface when his toes strike sand, we know that Pitufa fits in the spot as well—but only just. We try to anchor in depths between 8 and 15 feet, taking into account both tide and elevated lagoon levels due to swell. Generally speaking, fewer coral heads grow on shallow reef shelves, and we need only about 60 feet of chain to have substantial scope.

Float the chain: Quite often, we don’t find that picture-­perfect, large sandy spot we wished for, but we can make do with a smaller, sandy spot near coral heads if it’s deep enough to allow us to swing over the top of the surrounding coral. In these cases, we make sure that the boat will clear any coral heads, and we drop the hook in the middle of the sandy area and slowly pay out chain. As we do so along the sandy bottom, we assess at which point the chain would contact any coral heads if we were to swing. When we reach that point, we snap in a float and add more chain. We find that it’s best to have multiple fenders or buoys individually tied to a very short line, each with carabiners attached to them that snap into the chain. If the scope is still not enough, we add another float, followed by more chain. During calms, the chain forms loops between the floats without touching bottom, so it’s impossible to get wrapped around obstacles. When the wind picks up, the chain stretches out and the buoys get submerged. Although some might argue that floats nullify the weight advantage of the chain and therefore reduce the overall holding power, we find that with a reliable ­anchor and enough chain on the bottom before the first float, a floated chain can be compared to chain followed by rope. In shallow water, it’s easy to have ample scope and therefore a flat, almost horizontal chain angle.

Buoying chains with ­pearl-farm buoys (where those buoys are readily available) has become a standard procedure throughout Polynesia, but unfortunately, we’ve seen several crews just anchor blindly in deep water and then busily add half a dozen floats. We call them feel-good floats, or alibi floats; the first ones can’t hold up the heavy chain and end up pinned to the bottom, while the last ones just bob decoratively on the surface off the bow. If there’s really no other choice but to anchor in the dark-blue deepwater areas where you can’t see coral heads, adding floats still reduces the risk of getting tangled up, but it is better if you tie two buoys together, or use one that’s a size bigger than the pearl-farm buoys so that it can actually support the weight of a longer chain section. It doesn’t make sense to keep threading floats onto the chain until it looks like a pearl necklace—such pretty designs only pose a hazard to local traffic.

Dropping the hook blindly is never a good idea. We dial up the patience, take our time, look around a little bit longer, and do our best to find a shallow, sandy spot—even if that means we’re a longer dinghy ride to our intended snorkel spot or to the pizza place ashore. Finding the ideal anchorage might take a bit longer, and using buoys on the chain takes practice and experience, but when you’re finally floating in a picture-perfect, light-turquoise swimming pool, you’ll find that it’s worth the effort.

Birgit Hackl and Christian Feldbauer have anchored their way across the Mediterranean, Caribbean and South Pacific since 2011. They’ve spent the past eight seasons in French Polynesia. Read more about anchoring, weather and other topics on their blog.

The post Hands on Sailor: Floating Your Anchor Chain appeared first on Cruising World.

We Goodlanders love boats and kids in equal measure. My two sisters and their husbands had little ones underfoot when each family built a boat to go live on. And my Left Coast brother, Morgoo the Magnificent (best brother ever!), raised oceangoing daughter Marelle upon, natch, Ocean Daughter in San Francisco Bay before eventually teaching her to sail aboard his 35-foot Swedish-built sloop, Maxi. Morgan always thinks slightly out-of-the-box. After naming one his boats after his daughter, he named his next daughter Carlotta, after one of my family’s most beloved vessels.

The four of us siblings were raised aboard the 52-foot, 1924 wooden schooner Elizabeth, and to this day, we sail together whenever possible. And my wife, Carolyn, and I raised our daughter, Roma Orion, aboard our home-built Endurance 35 ketch, the aforementioned Carlotta, and the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Hughes 38 Wild Card. Carolyn and I now sail weekly around Singapore with Roma Orion and her two daughters, Soku Orion and Tessa Maria, aboard our beamy 43-foot French Wauquiez Amphitrite ketch, Ganesh.  

While none of us pretend to be particularly moral or even nice, we have all managed to stay out of jail, rehab and the poor house—no mean feat in the circles of waterfront reprobates we often hang with. 

The bottom line is this: In my 62 years of living aboard and offshore sailing, I’ve either been a kid or had a kid aboard the vast majority of the time. 

Here’s the first key to children and boats: Always remember that kids don’t give a poop what adults are interested in, nor should they! Kids have their own fluid reality, and if their marine environment reinforces that fluidity, they’ll instinctively love it. If it doesn’t, or worse yet, if some adult is attempting to teach them something, they will not. 

Here’s key No. 2: As with everything, arranging for kids to love boats and cherish their marine environment takes sustained, focused work. 

For example, as we sail the world, we collect art at the $5 and $10 level. Since a lot of small islands have little but driftwood tossed upon their penniless shores, we have ended up as connoisseurs of carved tikis. Our favorite is Freaky Tiki. He’s big enough to wear a hat, and also big enough to intimidate a small child. So, when 2-year-old Soku Orion came to sail offshore with us for three weeks (in the Med? Caribbean? South Pacific? Who can remember?), she was a tad taken aback by Freaky, who was, admittedly, larger and more imposing. To remedy this, Carolyn tossed a modesty skirt on him and some friendly love beads, while I flipped a cool-looking hat on his mahogany head. 

Freaky suddenly looked a bit less freaky, and Soku began to play with him. All was well until she inadvertently knocked off his hat, and I rushed to put it back on. “Freaky Tiki is a wonderfully warm and friendly Polynesian fellow but he gets really, really angry if a wave or anything knocks off his hat,” I told her. 

“Why?” she asked, and I proceeded to explain about his difficult childhood in the Marquesas. I told her that his father, a fisherman, was lost at sea; about his poor mother being forced to move to Tahiti to work as a maid; his running with a bad crowd on the mean streets of Papeete; and his eventual redemption in Cook’s Bay, Moorea, where he joined our crew and became a Goodlander forever. 

As a 2-year-old, Soku didn’t realize that I was giving her a history lesson on the Society Islands and a literary lesson on three-act story structure. She knew only that an adult was catering to her, which is all a kid needs to know at that age to feel warm and fuzzy. 

Everywhere we sail, we shop at resale shops (as our cruising budget demands), and I make a point of buying heaps of costume jewelry. When we would play dress-up in the aft cabin, Soku would occasionally glance up and shout, “Grandpa!” Glancing up, the minute I noticed Freaky Tiki was sans hat, I’d scream. Carolyn would rush into the cabin, also screaming. Roma Orion as well would drop whatever she was doing, totally losing all motherly composure. The whole freakin’ crew would be there freakin’ out at Freaky Tiki, until Soku would manage to find his hat and make our watery world right again. 

That was an incredible gift of power to give Soku, and, of course, it intoxicated her. And we adults got creative. Carolyn would pretend to knock herself out in the walk-through to Tiki’s cabin, I’d spill my coffee all over my T-shirt, and Roma would arrive with grape jelly all over her face. 

Gradually, after I told Soku all I could tell her about ocean currents in the Pacific and how island migrations are often revealed by the evolution of local musical instruments, I had to branch out into other, stranger stories—for example, Charlie the Cowboy, who ate motorcycle parts. Why did he eat motorcycle parts? I have no idea, except that Soku and I had a sort of mind meld, and I realized that a cowboy munching on Harley pistons would appeal to her.

One fun game that lasted almost an entire passage was called Playing Guard. While sailing, Soku and I would make sure that Freaky had his hat on, and then protect him by closing the door to the aft cabin walk-through. Soku would stand (sit, actually) guard in the semidarkness. I’d be navigating topsides and occasionally ask her through an open porthole in the side of the cockpit, “Is Freaky Tiki OK?” She’d carefully crack the door, glance in, and tell me, “He’s fine, Grandpa.” 

After an hour or so, I’d grab a little stick I kept in the cockpit, poke it through the hatch, and knock off Freaky Tiki’s hat. 

“How ’bout now?” I’d ask. She would check again and dutifully report a hatless Tiki, then all the adults aboard would totally freak out screaming and bumping into each other Keystone Kops-style in a mad dash to help Soku get Freaky’s hat back on!

Crazy? Sure. But has any other kid ever loved being aboard a boat more than Soku Orion? I doubt it. 

Even better, around the age of 4, Soku came to me and asked matter-of-factly, “Freaky Tiki isn’t alive, is he?”

I assured her he wasn’t. I said that he was just part of a make-believe game we played aboard. She didn’t bat an eye, and, for our part, we didn’t stop freakin’ out as, with maturity, she gradually lost interest in the game. Then when her sister Tessa Maria came aboard at approximately the same age, Soku made a special effort to teach Tessa about Freaky Tiki’s care and feeding, and, of course, about the ­importance of his hat. 

Here’s the truth of it from an adult ­perspective: Our most cherished memories of cruising offshore revolve around raising our daughter and granddaughters aboard. Silliness isn’t something we frown upon; it is something we aspire to daily. The miracle isn’t how much we’ve helped them mature, but rather how much they’ve taught us about staying young. 

Wild Card, the 38-footer that Soku’s mother grew up aboard, was basically a narrow, one-cabin vessel with a tiny V-berth. My wife and I are avid readers, and Roma would often be bored. “We feed you and we clothe you, but we don’t entertain you,” Carolyn would tell her. (Thank God we didn’t have screens back then—and had a reasonable chance of raising a reasonable adult.) 

I’d be reading on the port settee, and Roma would come over for a snuggle and ask, “What are you doing?”

“I’m wrestling a lion,” I’d say. 

“No, you’re not, Cap’n Daddy-O!” she’d laugh. 

“Yes, I am,” I’d say and show her the cover of my Wilbur Smith novel. Then I’d tell her a long story about Africa, not because I wanted to or because it was a good time, but because it was the best time for her. You feed a kid when they’re hungry if you want them to gain nourishment.

There is no better place to teach a child about responsibility than a boat. At about age 7, Roma wanted a cat. I refused. But Carolyn guided Roma through the process of making a pitch, and eventually I succumbed to her logic and myriad promises. But before we brought a kitten home from the local animal shelter on St. John in the US Virgin Islands, Roma had to earn and save the money for the kitty-litter box and cat food by doing her boat chores. And, of course, she and her mother had to laboriously make a ­macramé ladder for the transom. 

Roma picked out the cat herself. It was a black one she dubbed Joker, in a nod to Wild Card. Even before we allowed the cat below, we gave it a tour of the cockpit litter box. And then we had Roma gently lower the worried cat in her open palm into the harbor water, right next to the rope ladder she and Carolyn had made. Tiny Joker immediately freaked out and climbed out of the water. Roma gradually moved the cat farther and farther away from the ladder each day, until whenever the cat ended up in the water (from, for instance, trying to catch a passing seagull), it would calmly swim to the transom and climb up—not happy, perhaps, but totally safe. 

The cat learned. 
Roma learned. 
And I learned. 

On ocean passages, Carolyn and I would be clipped onto a tether in the cockpit. Roma also had a harness, but most of the time that she sat in the cockpit, she was clipped in with a sort of marine seatbelt device I’d created for her. It was super easy to get in and out of, and totally safe while she was snapped into it. 

The important point is that Precious Cargo, one of our many affectionate names for Roma, was always clipped on while on deck. Joker, however, was a wild animal. One evening, while steering in boisterous trade winds, I heard Roma wake up a confused Carolyn. “Mom, Mom!” she said frantically. “Joker spit out his tongue in my hand!” 

Carolyn said groggily: “Don’t be silly, Roma. Joker didn’t spit out his tongue.” 

“Yes, he did,” Roma said as she handed it to Carolyn, who immediately let out a blood-curling scream in the darkness.

I dashed below and flipped on the light. Both girls were sitting up in bed wide-eyed, with a large flying fish wiggling in Carolyn’s hand. 

Joker the Hunter, of course, had proudly brought his catch down belowdecks to give to Roma, his Lord and Master.  

Once, when Joker dashed out of the companionway to fish in a full gale, Roma put a foot outside into the cockpit in a desperate effort to grab him. I grabbed her, set her down, and said simply, “If you ever go on deck without a harness or expose yourself to danger in any way because of that cat, I will get rid of Joker.”

We stared at each other. 
She knew I meant it. 

For years afterward, we observed her internal struggle as she watched Joker leaping around the wave-swept foredeck after flopping fish. I believe this was the beginning of Roma’s iron discipline that allowed her to graduate with honors with a double major from Brandeis and now work successfully at Singapore Management University. 

And, I might add, she (and her daughters) all love the Dunkin’ Chair, which is a castoff bosun’s chair suspended from an aluminum pole over the water. Though you didn’t ask, I built her a single-sheet-of-plywood dory for her 4th birthday, and she quickly learned to captain it herself. And, naturally, we took her swimming with sharks as a toddler, which is probably why she is a ­PADI-certified rescue diver to this day. 

Take it from me: The only thing that improves cruising is cruising with kids. And Freaky Tiki, of course!

Thanks to the pandemic, Carolyn and Fatty are enjoying an extended visit with their daughter, Roma Orion, and her two children in Singapore.

The post School’s In: Cap’n Fatty’s Take on Seamanship for the Kiddos appeared first on Cruising World.

During the many winters of living aboard our Tayana 58, Scaramouche, along the US East Coast, the ­weather often kept my husband and me hunkered down belowdecks. On cold days, a hearty stew was just the ticket for a warming, stick-to-your ribs dinner. This one-pot meal is also a great make-ahead dish for ­offshore passages when chilly nights are forecast. The recipe, which will please the meat-eaters in your crew, is real chili con carne—chili with meat, beans optional. This version is the captain’s ­preference: no beans! This is best made in a pressure cooker, but if you have time and a good propane supply, it can be slow-cooked in the oven at very low heat. Ultimately, the fuel use is worth it. This makes two or three hearty meals for two. It keeps for several days refrigerated, and it also can be frozen for future enjoyment.

MEAT-EATERS’ NO-BEAN CHILI

• 1 1/2 lb. stew beef
• 1 1/2 lb. stew pork
• 2 tsp. sesame (or olive) oil
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 large peppers, red and yellow, cut in 1/2-inch dice
• 1 large onion, cut in 1/2- inch dice 
• 1 12-ounce bottle beer
• 1 16-ounce jar salsa
• About 30 corn tortilla chips, broken into small pieces
• 2 chipotle peppers (canned in adobo sauce), chopped, or to taste*
• 1 Tbsp. adobo sauce, or to taste*
• 1 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp. chili powder
• 1 tsp. ground cumin *can be omitted if you don’t like spicy chili
• Toppings: Grated cheddar cheese, chopped fresh cilantro, sliced green onion, sour cream, and diced avocado or guacamole.

Serves 4 to 6

Cook’s Note: If you have a slow cooker, ­follow directions for a stew recipe.

Cut meat into ¹/2 -inch pieces. In a large bowl, toss meat with oil, and sprinkle with salt. Brown meat in batches in pressure cooker or a large Dutch-oven pot, and set aside. Add the peppers and onions to the pot, and saute lightly; don’t brown. Add the beer, and deglaze the pot. Return meat to pot, and add salsa, tortilla chips, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, tomato paste, chili powder and ground cumin. Stir to combine. Bring stew to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. If using a pressure cooker, lock pressure-cooker lid in place, and bring pot to high pressure. Reduce heat to low, and cook for 25 to 30 minutes. If you’re slow-cooking the chili in the oven, preheat to 300 to 325 degrees F and transfer pot to oven. Slow-cook, covered, for 3 to 4 hours, or until meat is fork tender. Check during cook time, and add water to moisten if needed. The tortilla chips melt to form a very thick sauce. Serve hot, in bowls, either plain or over rice, with your favorite toppings or sides. 

Preparation: At anchor 
Time: 1 to 4 hours, depending on cooking method 
Difficulty: easy

The post A Perfect Cold-Weather Meal appeared first on Cruising World.

Recently I have observed my husband, Matt, at various times of the day and evening, sitting with a half-smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye, betraying an inner glee. I know during these times that he is thinking about what I have come to call, simply, “The Hull.” Matt has taken offense to that term, deeming it “soulless.” Fair enough—it’s not just any hull, but one with a storied past and, hopefully, a storied future as well. For we are in the midst of refitting the late, great American solo sailor Mike Plant’s round-the-world racer, Duracell, for extended cruising. But before we get into that sailing story, let me tell you ours. 

To do that, let’s return to 2014, to a crisp fall evening during one of our first dates. We were walking on a moonlit beach here in Washington’s Puget Sound when Matt told me that one day he was going to cruise around the Pacific. He didn’t say it was a dream or that he hoped to do this one day: He stated it as a fact. And he said it in his unassuming, no fanfare, no drumrolls (he leaves that to me) sort of way. He asked whether such an ­adventure might appeal to me. I didn’t respond right away because I knew this was a serious question and that my answer could have big implications for my life. So I gave it a few long seconds and then I replied, with confidence, “Yes.”

Fast-forward to spring 2017. I was teaching middle school science in Seattle, and Matt was running Kolga Boatworks, his boat-repair business. We were living aboard Louise, a unique 40-foot homebuilt monohull from the 1970s that we adored, on the Ballard Shipping Canal. We were preparing for our Pacific cruise. We’d saved our money, Louise was ready to sail offshore, and we’d put our respective jobs and lives on hold. Our parents had slowly been persuaded that what we were about to do—with careful, trustworthy Matt as captain—was safer than driving on I-5.

We pushed off from Shilshole Marina in Seattle on August 10 of that year. As Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” filled our hearts with butterflies, our first day of sailing was gorgeous: The wind pushed us gently but persistently toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the great Pacific Ocean beyond.

The cruise that followed was everything we expected it would be: magical, challenging, uncomfortable, eye-opening, educational, nausea-inducing, at times maddening and, ultimately, life-changing. Here are a few snapshots of our two years at sea, based on journal entries from various anchorages or underway, as we sailed from Seattle down the west coast of North America; into the Sea of Cortez; across the Pacific to the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Tahiti and Bora Bora; north to Hawaii; and back home to Washington.

Smuggler’s Cove, Channel Islands

October 15, 2017: Smugglers Cove on California’s Santa Cruz Island is a shallow bay with clear, Mediterranean waters and a long beach. After anchoring Louise as close to the cliffs as possible to try to get some protection from the ­rolling swell, we decided to go ashore and explore. We were a little nervous because big rollers were coming in and ­breaking a little beyond the anchorage and ­pummeling the beach. But we discussed our strategy for a dry landing using our inflatable paddleboards.  

Matt explained that the waves come in sets, and if you wait out a set of big waves, there will be a short lull. During that lull, you position yourself between two gently rolling waves, then paddle, paddle, paddle fast enough so that the one behind you doesn’t break over you. With confidence, we put on our hiking boots, cinched on our wide-brimmed cruiser hats, got on our paddleboards, and headed toward the beach. Matt positioned himself just before the big rollers began to break. 

He turned around and gave me a look that said, “Watch carefully what I do.” He waited for the lull. It came. He paddled and paddled. I felt an especially large roller move under my board. The lull was over. Matt glanced back to see a big wave break right over him. I watched his board flip, his hat float to the beach and, a second later, a drenched Matt emerge from the ocean, ready to explore. He looked back at me and shrugged. I gave him a look that said: “Now you watch this. I’ll show you.”  

I was determined. I looked behind me; the ocean was flat. Now was the moment. Go. Paddle. I was riding high and dry. My impeccable timing resulted in a gentle wave breaking after it passed under my board. Perfect. I picked up some speed and surfed on in, graceful and dignified, a natural. Not a drop of water on my hiking boots. Matt watched from the beach in awe. I couldn’t wait to explain my strategy. But then the water slid under me a little faster, and the nose of my board started to drive down into the water. I was still going to succeed. No squishy hiking boots for me. Then I too was in the water, tumbling under the wave. Dammit. I resurfaced in time to see my hat make it to the beach before me. Oh well. Once deposited onto the Channel Islands, it was a wonderful place to explore. Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz and Catalina islands delighted us with their canyons, secluded beaches and windswept cliffs. The adventure had begun.

Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas

November 11, 2017: As I sat in my belowdecks nook typing, Matt leaned in from the cockpit and said: “I sure hope this weather keeps up all the way to Cabo. That’d be so awesome.” The sailing was, indeed, currently awesome. Sliding down the coast of Mexico, we had 10 to 12 knots of northerly breeze, filling our spinnaker consistently with the gentle waves right on our stern. There was a shh-shh-shh of the water trickling off the hull and a lovely little skimming motion of the boat down the waves as they passed under us. 

I’d been reading about Zen Buddhism and experimenting with meditation. I’d concluded that sailing your home around the ocean is a natural way to practice the teachings of Buddhism. I looked up at Matt and replied: “The present moment is perfect; however, since everything, including the wind, is impermanent, we mustn’t get attached. Ah, yes, the wind and the waves are constantly changing, like life, and we have to move with the change, not against it. Indeed, we must search for the stillness, the calm, deep within us that stays peaceful no matter how our external situations change; much like how if you go a little under the surface of the ocean, the water is calm.” At which point, he closed and locked the hatch. 

I’m kidding: I didn’t say this out loud, but I did think something along those lines and tried to persuade myself of its truth. I, much more than Matt, get frustrated by the constantly changing state of the ocean. Of course, if the weather is taking us to our destination and the sea is relatively calm, I’m as happy as a clam. But if we then lose our wind and have to “fire up the ol’ donkey,” or get a header, or if the waves built up and made for a miserable ride (as it always does eventually), I tended to let out audible groans and sighs, with a general feeling of being smote by the ocean. Sometimes I complained out loud to myself, and we sailed, or more likely, motored on. I’d recently realized that since this will undoubtedly continue to be our reality for the next two years when traveling to our next highly anticipated anchorage, I should probably figure out a way to deal with it more gracefully (for my benefit and, equally, Matt’s) when the weather changes. As it always, always does. 

Huahine, French Polynesia

November 3, 2018: After spending eight months in French Polynesia, we’d started to get a feel for this really special place. Here is what the shimmering surface of French Polynesia looked like: lush islands dripping with bananas, coconuts, soursop, cedar apples, mangoes, pineapples, cocoa, and fruits we had never heard of before; turquoise lagoons filled with imaginatively colored fish, warm waves that gently lap soft white-sand beaches; a hundred shades of green that blanket the steep mountains and jagged basalt spires that pierce the pale sky. At night, the Milky Way scatters in full splendor across the black expanse while the sweet smell of white gardenias lingers in the warm dark air. 

The beauty of the islands was reflected in the people. The older women here had a twinkle in their eyes like light reflecting off ripples in the water; they stand close to you and smile and press mangoes into your hands. Men frequently carry around their babies, cooing at them (this society loves their babies and seems to view them as gifts to the larger community rather than the property of nuclear families), and women seem empowered. They are authentic, confident, fully and naturally themselves, somehow. They laugh a deep, unrestrained belly laugh when they are with each other, standing in circles waist-high in the warm water. Outside Papeete, in the small villages, there are no movie theaters, no big-box stores, no places to buy the latest shoes in fashion, no billboards telling you what you need to buy to be cool. In the afternoons, families gather at the water’s edge. They spend time together on porches. They sing out “Io orana!” as you walk by. No one is ever in any kind of hurry. The ancient Polynesian names of the islands, such as Matairea, translates to “joyful breeze,” and the 21st century Polynesians seem connected to their past and the people from whom they descended. They bury their relatives in graves in front of their homes, adorn them with flowers, and have picnics on top of the graves.

Lihue, Hawaii

July 19, 2019: It was hard to believe it had been almost two years since we pushed off the dock at Shilshole and began our journey through the Pacific. We’d sailed and motored 13,000 nautical miles, visited 135 anchorages and 30 islands, and experienced less-measurable things too. There was nothing definitive about the end of the trip; it was more of a gradual ending that merged into new beginnings at the same time. That said, the 19th of July was momentous. I decided to fly home, and a friend of Matt’s flew in to replace me for the final passage. As we walked to the airport, it felt like there was so much to say, but we had no idea exactly what, so we ended up walking mostly in silence. 

The end of the voyage didn’t really feel like a hard and final conclusion because the cruise had fundamentally changed how we wanted to structure our lives. It set us on a path. We’d started to reflect a little, here and there, about how the previous two years had changed us. We can, and should, live our lives according to our own rules and dreams, and if those happen to go against the societal grain, so be it. 

We dreamed and schemed of a future in which we lived on a self-sufficient boat, powered by solar, wind and hydro, that Matt had built. We wanted to work for ourselves and try to find a good balance between our vocations and everything else life has to offer. We wanted to live minimally and frugally so that we could afford more free time. We wanted to be able to pull up our anchor and go exploring anytime. All of British Columbia and Alaska lay to the north, and Oregon and the rest of the planet to the south. We both were full of aspirations and dreams, and the conviction to make this vision a reality, though our dear friend Salty might read all this and with a roll of his eyes say, as he has said before, “Such bums!” Maybe he’s right.

Throughout our cruise, Matt became increasingly interested in the features of a good cruising boat. Many hours were spent sitting in our cockpit in anchorages around the Pacific, scrutinizing other boats. He read all of Steve Dashew’s books. He became intrigued by Open 60s, offshore racers that have evolved over the past few decades in round-the-world races such as the BOC Challenge and the Vendée Globe. He started sketching designs. He dreamed about all the ways he would create an ideal cruising boat if he had the opportunity.

Olympic Peninsula, Washington

January 2022: Which brings us to the present. We’ve sold Louise and bought a small house in the woods in Washington, and Duracell is now ours, parked right outside our home (see the photo below). How she came to be ours is a story in its own right.

Designed by Rodger Martin (who passed away in May 2021), Duracell was built by Mike Plant back in the mid-1980s and named after the battery manufacturer that sponsored the boat. Afterward, Plant circled the globe aboard her twice, setting the American record for a solo circumnavigation during the 1989 Vendée Globe, a dramatic story that’s well-told in the documentary Coyote: The Mike Plant Story (available on Amazon Prime and other streaming services). 

Thirty years ago, Plant sold the boat to a sailor from Seattle named John Oman, who renamed her Northwest Spirit and sailed her to victory in the Pan Pacific Race across the Pacific to Japan. He next set off on a solo, nonstop circumnavigation of the planet that came to a halt somewhere near the equator after a collision with a cargo ship. Northwest Spirit was dismasted, but the hull didn’t sustain much damage because the bowsprit took most of the blow. The cargo-ship captain offered him a ride, but Oman opted to motor to Turtle Bay in Baja California, where he refueled and carried on to San Diego, where he loaded the boat on a trailer and drove it to Seattle, where he put it in his front yard.

That was in 1992. 

In 2019, just a few weeks after we arrived home from our Pacific voyage, Matt was scrolling through a local sailing forum when he saw a new post from Oman:

“I bought Mike’s Duracell from him as he was building his next boat, Coyote. My plan was to do my own nonracing, solo, nonstop circumnavigation. After bringing her to Seattle (through the Panama Canal) and winning the Pan Pacific Race, I brought her solo back from Japan as a shakedown. My circumnavigation was cut short by losing the top 50 feet of the mast in a collision with a freighter. Putting her on the hard next to my home, it was my intention to put her back together and return to sailing. Shore life got in the way with business and family obligations, and now age and health issues. I no longer have the means to chase that dream. So what now? I love that boat. I can’t imagine a more easily handled, seakindly, safe, proven, shorthanded boat capable of sailing anywhere on Earth. So a refit for a solo circumnavigator? Or shorthanded go anywhere?”

Immediately the wheels began turning in Matt’s head. I got a text from him that simply said, “I found our next boat.” 

The pandemic delayed everything, but during that time, we got to know Oman, and worked hard to earn his trust and prove that we were worthy of this special refit project. Almost two years after his original post, Oman generously decided to release the boat to us.

But why this boat? Matt says that it’s the most solid, safest, best-built, fastest hull out there: a very special shell that we can turn into a comfortable home. Before the pandemic, he traveled to Rhode Island, where Duracell was built, and was thrilled to meet Rodger Martin, who graciously gave him copies of the original drawings. Armed with those, the refit is now well underway.

Former science teacher Janneke Petersen and her husband, Matt—a seasoned sailor who was part of the winning crew in the inaugural Race to Alaska in 2017—are well into their ambitious refit, which they’re chronicling on their YouTube channel, The Duracell Project. Also look for more updates in future issues of CW.

Mike Plant’s Famous Duracell

Before he was tragically lost at sea in 1992, solo sailor Mike Plant twice circled the globe aboard his Open 60, Duracell. His most memorable voyage came during the 1989 Vendée Globe. Midway through the race, deep in the Southern Ocean, Plant was forced to ­anchor in the remote Kerguelen Islands to address rigging problems. Though he ­completed the repairs himself, he did accept brief assistance from a team of New Zealand meteorologists when Duracell dragged anchor.

Though the Kiwis told Plant they’d be sworn to secrecy, he radioed race headquarters that he’d had help: an automatic disqualification. But Plant finished the course by sailing alone back to France, where he was greeted with a hero’s welcome and set the American record for a singlehanded circumnavigation of 134 days. He disappeared aboard his next boat, Coyote, en route to the 1992 running of the Vendée race. —Herb McCormick

The post From Offshore Racer to Performance Cruiser appeared first on Cruising World.

Everyone warned us that it’s bad luck, but Harriet and I did it anyway: We changed the name of our boat. Our Dolphin 460 cruising cat was called Hands Across the Sea after the Caribbean child-literacy nonprofit we founded in 2007. After we retired from running our charity in 2020, we decided to rename the boat Ocean, because that’s where we’re headed next.

After 14 years of “commuting to work” by sail from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to the Windward and Leeward islands of the Eastern Caribbean to create 473 libraries of new, amazing books in local primary schools and high schools, we’re going bluewater cruising again. Ocean seemed like the right name, given our new horizons. We’re sailing from New England to Bermuda, then to Puerto Rico, the Panama Canal, the Galapagos, French Polynesia, Fiji, and on to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. That’s about 10,300 nautical miles of voyaging. Neither Harriet—my voyaging wife of 35 years, three boats and 60,000 miles—nor I believe in sailors’ superstitions, but we’d sure welcome some good luck along the way. What if there’s something to this name-changing jinx?

Fortunately, a good friend of ours, Reverend Wendy Reardon, volunteered to research the mystery. Wendy discovered that the name of everything afloat on this ocean planet—every rowboat, every cruising yacht, every container ship—is entered in the Ledger of the Deep. All boats are known personally to Poseidon, or Neptune, the god of the sea and keeper of the ledger. If you change your boat’s name without purging the old name from Poseidon’s memory and the Ledger of the Deep, well, that’s serious bad luck.

Wendy advised us that a rechristening ceremony was needed. So, on a sunny fall Saturday, friends and family gathered in Ocean’s cockpit.

After Harriet and I had removed every trace of the old name, the crowd chanted to Poseidon: “Oh mighty and great ruler of the seas and oceans, to whom all ships are required to pay homage, we implore you in your graciousness to expunge for all time from your records and recollection the name Hands Across the Sea, which has ceased to be an entity in your kingdom.”

On cue, I poured a bottle of champagne from east to west over the bows.

Wendy continued: “We ask the sea gods of old and the God of creation to accept as her name Ocean, and to watch over her, and ensure her of safe passages.”

Next, all of us chanted to each of the four winds, who are brothers—to great Boreas, ruler of the north wind; to great Zephyrus, ruler of the west wind; to great Eurus, ruler of the east wind; and to great Notus, ruler of the south wind—for ­permission to use their mighty powers.

On cue, our niece, Charlotte, poured wine over the side of our boat.

Wendy shouted: “We rename this vessel again into recorded history of September 26, 2021, as Ocean!” Everyone raised their glasses and hooted: “Toast to Ocean! Toast to Poseidon, ruler of the seas! Toast to great Boreas! Toast to his brothers! Toast to adventure!”

Ocean it is. Let the journey begin.

At print time, Ocean had transited the Panama Canal without incident, and Tom and Harriet were planning their sail to the Galapagos.

The post Is It Bad Luck To Change The Name of Your Boat? appeared first on Cruising World.

French Polynesia is big. An overseas collectivity of France, the region’s 118 islands and atolls—the Society Islands (Tahiti is home to the capital city, Papeete); the Tuamotu Archipelago; and the Gambier, Marquesas, and Austral island groups—are spread across more than 1,600 square miles of the South Pacific. From the West Coast of the US, the passage stretches 3,000 to 3,400 nautical miles to the Marquesas, the northeasternmost islands. And from the Panama Canal, it’s a 3,800-mile voyage. The last thing you want is to sail all the way there and be denied entry, which happened to a gaggle of yachts in 2020 when French Polynesia locked down. Cruisers had few choices—peel off north to Hawaii, look for a sliver of a weather window to sail back against the trade winds to Panama, or come up with another option.

But all that was pre-vaccine. Going into the 2022 May-to-October cruising season, over 70 percent of French Polynesia residents have had at least one vaccine dose, and testing and treatment are available across the region. Still, to clear into French Polynesia, you’ll need to observe the French government’s requirements.

Do It Yourself: It’s possible to do all the legwork and the clearance process on your own. Cruisers are allowed to enter the territory provided they follow the steps listed on the government’s Entry Maritime flyer, a one-page PDF (see box). The document lays out the conditions of access, and steps to follow before your departure for the region and for the steps needed 48 hours before and after arrival. In general, if your crew numbers fewer than five people and everyone is fully vaccinated, you can enter French Polynesia without the need to quarantine. If your boat has more than five crew, there are options.

Official ports of entry are Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas, Tahiti in the Society Islands, and Mangareva in the Gambier Islands. You’ll need to contact the French Polynesian Authority for Maritime Affairs (DPAM) and the Department for Maritime Affairs of French Polynesia (SAM) and send your vaccination certificates. You’ll also need to email a Maritime Health Declaration 48 hours before making landfall. See the box above for information.

Upon entry into French Polynesia, the maximum allowable stay is three months. But there is much to see and do. On Ocean, our Dolphin 460 cruising cat, we applied for a Long Stay visa at the French embassy in Panama City in hopes of securing a six-month stay. This is a ­multistep online and in-person undertaking. See the box for websites and contacts. 

Use an Agent: Employing a yacht agent costs money, but their expertise with the clearance process will spare you some hassles and help non-French speakers navigate the language barrier. Yacht agents such as Tahiti Crew (tahiticrew.com) offer an array of services for different boats, budgets and cruising plans. 

Pacific Puddle Jump: The Pacific Puddle Jump is an offshore sailing rally with a cruiser-friendly entry fee of $125. It has been drawing boats from US West Coast ports since 1997. Rally founder and director Andy Turpin notes, “The government’s maritime agency, DPAM, has approved a special arrangement whereby participants in the 2022 Pacific Puddle Jump may obtain advance approval (several months before arrival) to enter French Polynesia, regardless if the maritime borders remain officially closed.” The Pacific Puddle Jump website offers lots of up-to-date clearance information for cruisers.

The post Clear In To French Polynesia With The Help Of An Agent, Or Follow the Do-it-yourself Route appeared first on Cruising World.

I still remember (­robustly) arguing with my dad when he announced his plans to add a windlass to the J/44 he owned. He was thinking of easy anchoring. I was thinking of weight and the boat’s ability to hit its polars. I lost that fight, and I’ll admit to having some smoldering feelings—until we went cruising and I was charged with anchor retrieval. I reached down to start sweating in the ­7-to-1 scope and the big Danforth anchor, until I saw the windlass foot switch. I ­remember pulling in the rode until it came vertical, waiting for my dad to break the anchor’s grip by nudging the boat forward with the engine, and then nonchalantly employing the switch, hoping he wouldn’t ­notice. No dice. 

Bottom line: As a racing sailor, I wasn’t going to admit that the windlass was an ­upgrade, but there’s no question that it allowed my parents to ­enjoy years of additional cruising, while also saving me from back pain more than once. 

The premise behind a ­windlass is simple: It ­employs power and mechanical ­advantage to make it easier to ­retrieve a vessel’s ground tackle and feed its rode into the anchor well. To do so, over time, windlass design evolved into two camps: horizontal and vertical, allowing boat owners or, more likely with new boats, the builders, to ­select equipment that best fits their particular yacht. 

While high-quality ­windlasses are effective and dependable, a cost-cutting trend emerged in the 1970s and 1990s whereby boatbuilders offered windlasses as optional—not standard—equipment. As a result, many cruising boats were delivered sans windlasses. Flash-­forward to the 2020s, and many of these boats are now ­changing hands. Their new owners, however, are less interested in footing chiropractic bills. Here’s a look at how a windlass works, the design and installation considerations involved, and the benefits it provides.

The Big Picture

A windlass functions as part of a larger system that includes the anchor, sometimes a swivel and chain, sometimes rope, some sort of a snubber or chain stopper, the anchor roller, the windlass itself, the anchor well, the windlass controls, and the windlass’s power supply. All of these ­individual pieces of equipment need to be correctly spec’d for the ­system to work properly. 

“Start with what size anchor you’re going to use,” Harcourt Schutz advises. He is Lewmar’s senior director of aftermarket sales. He explains that the total weight of the boat’s ground tackle (not just the ­tackle that you expect to deploy) should represent one-quarter of the windlass’s working load. “It’s based on the anchor and rode, not the boat’s displacement. The anchor and rode are what you’re picking up. If you ­already have the rope and chain, match what’s there.” 

If you’re starting from scratch, Fred Cook, ­president of Schaefer Marine, ­advises that not all chain is ­created equal. “I wish everybody would use high-test chain,” he says, adding that while this is more expensive than a ­standard galvanized marine alloy, it delivers considerably greater strength. 

Cook says that the windlass’s chain wildcat, or gypsy (the coglike mechanism that controls the chain), must be spec’d to match the ­specific chain with which it will be paired. (Wildcat is the term typically used in the States; gypsy is preferred by Brits. To further confuse matters, in the US, an additional drum around which an anchor rope is wound is called the gypsy; the Brits call it a warping head.) 

Wildcats typically ­are ­modular, and Cook suggests that cruisers mail a small section of chain to the windlass’s manufacturer (or distributor) to ensure that the chain wildcat’s web (that is, the teeth that engage the chain links) is properly matched.  

While chain-and-rope rodes are common in North America, this isn’t the ­international norm. “No one uses rope ­except the US. Everyone else ­uses all-chain rodes,” says Jim Thomas, Imtra’s product ­manager for Lofrans and Muir ­anchoring products. He says rope-to-chain rodes evolved in the 1990s as a cost-cutting measure. These setups are rigged with the chain attached directly to the anchor on one end and spliced to rope (typically three-strand) on the other. While this setup reduces bow weight (“aah,” the racing sailor says), anyone who might eventually want an all-chain rode should consider this when spec’ing their windlass. 

Swivels are sometimes ­situated between the chain’s last link and the anchor. ­Thomas notes that swivels are helpful in removing twists from the anchor rode during recovery. Meanwhile, if the anchor-roller wheel has a notch or a groove, this helps in aligning the links for entry into the gypsy, he adds. And the swivel’s
articulation helps align the chain as the anchor is pulled onto the roller. Additionally, swivels can help a set anchor negotiate windshifts and rising and falling tides, but Thomas and Schutz are both quick to point out that each additional proverbial link in the chain could be a point of failure. ­Because of this, both experts encouraged customers to use only high-quality swivels.

Any boat that’s equipped for anchoring with a windlass should have a bow-­mounted anchor roller, which ­safely contains the anchor on deck and helps keep the rode in line with the windlass. As ­mentioned, it’s important to ensure that the roller’s shape matches the profile of your ­anchor chain.

There’s still more to note when it comes to assessing a vessel’s anchoring system. “­Anchor lockers are ­unfriendly environments,” Schutz says of the belowdecks space where the rode is stowed. “They’re oversaturated with salt air.” This is a result of the ­inevitable water and harbor mud that windlasses raise along with the hook. The rub is that anchor wells usually contain the windlass’s power cables and, depending on the design of the windlass, its gear box. As a result, experts suggest that cruisers employ a bow hose or shower to rinse the rode as it’s ­hoisted, and to give the windlass, the ­anchor, and its rode freshwater rinses when possible.

Up and Down or Sideways

As mentioned, there are two common windlass designs: horizontal and vertical. While both retrieve anchor gear, the drive shaft on horizontal ­windlasses is horizontal, while vertical windlasses employ vertical drive shafts. This means that the chain wildcat on a horizontal windlass spins like a Ferris wheel, while the chain gypsy on a vertical windlass turns like a merry-go-round. 

“Horizontal ­windlasses don’t have as much ­contact with the chain,” Thomas says, adding that the wildcat on a horizontal windlass ­typically has 110 degrees of chain ­contact. Conversely, “a vertical windlass has 270 ­degrees of surface contact. Vertical windlasses are better with rope-and-chain rodes, while horizontal windlasses are better-suited for all-chain rodes.”

Because of their fixed-­volume nature, anchor wells often dictate how much rode one can carry, and they can ­influence one’s purchase decisions. “The distance between the windlass to the top of the line stack in the locker matters,” Schutz advises, adding that horizontal windlasses work best if this distance is at least a foot, while vertical designs work best when there’s 12 to 18 inches separating the windlass from the top of the line stack.

The other major design ­difference involves how much of the windlass is situated ­abovedecks. Horizontal windlasses are typically entirely deck-mounted. This frees up bow-locker space, but they occupy more deck real estate than vertical windlasses, which typically employ a belowdecks gear box. While Thomas advises that deck thickness can sometimes steer purchase decisions, given that most vertical windlasses use drive shafts that top out at 5 inches, Cook points out that custom shaft lengths can usually be accommodated. That said, unless you sail a wooden classic, odds are good that your fiberglass deck is only an inch or two thick. 

Besides their design ­orientation, there are a variety of ways to control their ­operation. One common way is to employ deck-mounted foot switches, with one pedal lowering the rode and the other reversing the ­direction of the wildcat to retrieve it. Manufacturers also offer ­handheld controllers, wireless ­key-fob-like controls and even helm-mounted controls. 

Lowering an anchor and its rode is fairly straightforward. Some cruisers install chain or rope counters in the system to help quantify the amount of deployed scope. Others paint the chain and rode at ­regular intervals or use a variety of plastic or cloth markers. It’s worth noting that at present, windlasses still employ solenoids to control the direction in which the wildcat turns. This means that windlasses have yet to become NMEA 2000 compatible, and therefore they currently ­cannot be controlled via the vessel’s chart plotter, a networked smartphone, or a digital-­switching system. However, the experts interviewed for this story suggest that NMEA compatibility is coming in the next year or two.

Put It to Use

Once the anchor is set and the scope properly ­adjusted, ­experts suggest transferring the load off the windlass’s gear box and onto independent hardware. If you’re ­running a chain-to-rope rode, the easy solution if all of the chain is out is to tie the rope to a bow cleat. If you’re using an all-chain rode, manufacturers offer various hooks and/or snubbers that attach to a cleat and to a link in the chain, thus transferring the load off the windlass. As an aside, most modern catamarans come with a bridle arrangement that’s been pre-installed and which keeps the rode centered ­between the two hulls.

One of the smartest things anyone told me about sailhandling involves ­constantly looking at the sail or ­running rigging that’s affected when jumping a halyard or ­spinning a winch to ensure that ­something isn’t ­accidentally overloaded. Windlasses are no different. All experts agree that it’s wise to station one crewmember at the bow and another at the helm for ­anchor-retrieval work. They all also strongly recommend keeping the engine in gear (low RPM) and using it to drive the boat toward the anchor, with the forward crew either manually sweating in the rode or using the windlass. Once the rode is taut and near-vertical, it’s best to use the engine—not the windlass—to break the anchor’s grip on the seafloor. Once the hook is free, the crew can reengage the windlass, keeping a constant eye on things to ensure that the anchor roller or bow section isn’t damaged by overstraining the system once the anchor is on board.

If used properly, ­windlasses can greatly simplify anchor retrieval, but it goes without saying, just as with any high-torque system, it’s ­critical to pay attention and keep one’s hands clear of lines and ­moving parts.

As with all electrical ­systems, windlasses require DC juice. In a retrofit, this means an owner will ­typically have to run two, or ­possibly three, heavy-gauge cables forward to the bow from the house batteries. If you have a bow thruster installed that’s serviced by a local battery, this well of DC ­power can ­service the windlass too. The experts stressed the ­importance of situating a suitably sized windlass ­breaker as close to the battery as ­possible. “The circuit ­breaker ­protects the wires and the windlass ­motor,” Thomas says, advising that it’s wise to use thermal breakers.

Given that boatyards typically require two days of labor to install a windlass aboard a 40-footer, it’s tempting for do-it-yourselfers to tackle a windlass refit on their own. “It’s pretty straightforward, but you need to be comfortable cutting holes in fiberglass,” Schutz says, ­adding that vertical windlasses ­usually necessitate ­larger apertures. “It’s not super easy, but if you’re comfortable with power tools, it’s not a deal-breaker. Running the wires is the hardest part.”

Maintenance is the last ­major consideration. Aside from keeping the rode clean and occasionally rinsing it with fresh water, it’s important to use your windlass several times per season (more is better) to ensure that the lubricating oil inside the windlass’s case is evenly distributed along its internal worm drive. “The worm gear is set in oil halfway,” Cook says. “The worm gear can rust out above the oil” if it’s not regularly used. Cook also suggested periodically checking your windlass’s seals to ensure that water isn’t entering the casing and affecting internal oil levels. Schutz recommends that owners with vertical windlasses keep the belowdecks componentry properly painted to avoid rust or ­corrosion—in other words, touch up nicks and dings. Thomas also recommends keeping the system’s clutch cones clean and greased. 

Provided that users apply proper care and maintenance, a modern windlass should ­provide years of great service. And while there’s no ­escaping the added bow weight, this matters only if you’re more ­interested in winning pickle dishes than enjoying peaceful nights in beautiful locales with your friends and family. 

David Schmidt is CW’s ­electronics editor and occasionally writes on other gear topics.

Vendor List

Bainbridge distributes Italwinch:
bainbridgeintusa.com/italwinch
from $1,060.

Imtra offers windlasses from Muir and Lofrans:
imtra.com; from $1,200.

Lewmar:
lewmar.com
from $1,000.

Vetus distributes Maxwell windlasses:
vetus-maxwell.com
from $2,210.

Quick Spa:
quickitaly.com
from $1,500.

Schaefer Marine carries the Ideal windlass brand:
schaefermarine.com
from $4,000.

The post Refit a Classic Yacht with an Electric Windlass appeared first on Cruising World.

This story, framed around the yacht Recluta, captures the 80 years of history that unites three generations of the Frers family. During summer 1942, in the South Atlantic Ocean, Recluta, skippered by owner Charlie Badaracco, was competing in a race between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata. Hit by violent storms in the middle of the night, the 20-meter yacht ran aground in the shallow waters off Cape San Antonio.

The author’s story began in 2017 when a family friend asked if she knew what her father, legendary yacht designer Germán Frers Jr., was working on. She realized she didn’t have a clear answer.

To lifelong sailors, Germán Frers is a household name, synonymous with beautiful boats, including multiple designs for Nautor’s Swan, Hallberg-Rassy and Queen Long Marine’s Hylas brand. Zelmira, the second daughter of the Argentinian designer, was “raised since birth in a nautical environment,” but as a young architect and photographer, she realized that her father’s boats were just a background to her own busy life. She asked her father if she could go with him to the shipyard. She was aware that her father’s and grandfather’s (Germán Frers Sr.) life work was designing boats, but she was unaware that the project currently underway had any unusual scope or significance.

The yacht that Zelmira saw under construction when she went to the shipyard was the brainchild of Frers Sr. (1899-1986), who’d started a boat-­design business in Argentina between the world wars. After the first Recluta was lost, Frers Sr. began building a new Recluta at the request of the owner. The yacht was to be the largest yacht ever built in Argentina. Work began, but boatbuilding materials were scarce, with wood going mostly to the war effort, and the project was abandoned. Years later, Frers Jr. discovered his father’s archived plans. He had them digitized, and decided to build the 66-foot ketch out of wood.

“If you sail, you are always thinking about a boat,” Frers told Zelmira.

Zelmira began documenting the making of Recluta, and as the work stretched into years, she became aware on a visceral level of her family’s history bound up in these boats. She carefully recorded and photographed every detail of Recluta’s construction. Frers Jr., who learned at his father’s side, had lost the familiarity of wood building in the years of designing boats made of fiberglass and aluminum. What he did remember was how the work was driven by shared ideas with a team. Zelmira evokes this spirit of both the emerging boat and the workplace of craftsmen. As Frers Jr. says in the book, at some point Recluta was asking for water, and she was launched in March 2021.

The Story Behind Recluta is not an ordinary book. It’s beautifully designed, with a heavy cover overlaid with canvas. It’s an emotional account of a yacht’s destiny, as much as it is a history of Argentina’s golden era of yachtbuilding.

“This book allowed me to review the concept of time, the flow of life, that which transcends and is transmitted from generation to generation,” the author says. She read everything her grandfather—whom she never met—wrote about the boats he designed. “I got to know him through stories, and I discovered an adventurous, curious man with a great sense of humor. From him I learned that life needs to be embraced as it comes. From his ability to adapt on high seas, I learned to accept that we are at the mercy of nature and the unexpected, and we must be smart enough to act accordingly.”

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How do you plan for a sailing voyage that promises extended time at sea? Aboard our Stevens 47, Totem, our family’s circumnavigation has included a number of memorable passages, enough to appreciate that each one requires careful research and preparation. And so, after a prolonged pause from voyaging brought on by an ­extensive refit of Totem, and the pandemic, we’re making our plans for sailing into the Pacific with extra care.

Careful planning isn’t called for just because we’re rusty, although what should have been a year or two in coastal Mexico will stretch to nearly four by the time we cast off for the South Pacific. What we’ve learned from past ­voyages is that it’s always appropriate to plan carefully, and even more so here because of the series of passages between relatively remote islands that our first crossing will set up. Here’s how we kick off that planning: with a zoomed out, big-picture view of the seasons.

Big-Picture Planning

A comfortable crew is a happy crew, so choosing good conditions sets up an easier and safer passage. But gazing at the trees on a hike tells you nothing of the forest and hazards that could be waiting weeks or months ahead. For sailors, focusing on the next passage creates a blind spot for seasonal hazards. Hurricanes, severe lightning, frequent gales, and monsoon winds from the wrong direction are a few ways discomfort and unsafe conditions force a stressful reality.

How do you work out that overarching plan? A ­fundamental task is to review pilot charts for a particular region to consider timing. These charts show monthly averages in wind directions and strength, ocean currents, storm tracks, average number of gales per month, and other weather data. 

Jimmy Cornell’s World Cruising Routes is another way to make big-picture plans. This tome distills the information encompassed by pilot charts into passage-by-passage recommendations, with notes on the best and worst time of year for each. These recommendations are a great shortcut to see when it’s good to sail from, say, Mexico to the Marquesas, but won’t provide the bigger view a regional pilot chart offers. 

What weather features bookend the cruising season in the region you will cruise? Does the season end with a hard stop, such as reversed wind direction in monsoon regions? We were lucky when we were sailing Totem over the top of New Guinea because of a later-than-expected arrival of a monsoon change. When it arrived, it would bring headwinds, and we were grateful to have extended calms to get west while they loitered from the forecast.

Or will the seasonal ­transition be more like ­cruising in New England, where mild summer ­conditions give way to cold temperatures and frequent gales? The stress from running late in a seasonal change might feel 1,000 nautical miles away from an idyllic anchorage in the good season, but the good feeling is gone when ­weather windows for an intended ­passage stop opening.

For boats headed along the storied coconut-milk run of the South Pacific, planning means debunking a popular cry claimed upon arrival in French Polynesia from the Americas: “We’ve crossed the Pacific!” Declaring “mission accomplished” promulgates the perception that once you arrive, the hard part is over. While it might be the longest passage in a westabout circumnavigation, French Polynesia is only about one-third the distance across the Pacific. There’s no easy way to reverse those miles, so another part of big-picture planning is the exit strategy. 

Plans and exit strategies are further complicated by the pandemic. In the past, gaining entry to nations in Oceania was mainly a matter of having current paperwork and providing advance notification for some countries. Our prior Pacific crossing aboard Totem was marked by a series of three- to five-day passages after our 19 days of sailing to the Marquesas. Planning for the upcoming Pacific sailing, we anticipate fewer short hops and several longer passages with at least three in the 2,000- to 3,000-nautical-mile range. 

Departure from Mexico is best made after the North Pacific high sets up west of Baja and Southern California, bringing better wind to an otherwise fickle wind region. This could be in March, but in reality, finishing Totem’s 40-year refit in preparation for future voyages might push our departure closer to the transition to hurricane season. This is a bookend we take very seriously.

Our exit strategy after a season in the South Pacific is based upon countries we know we can access. It’s a moving target due to the pandemic, but our endgame will be one that won’t look to the conventional destinations of New Zealand or Australia. Instead, our gaze is turned northward with the hope that one or more of the islands between Fiji and Guam will provide the opportunity to continue a westward migration while flipping hemispheres to remain outside a zone of active hurricane risk.

Set the Route

When creating a route for a passage, we begin with the start and end waypoints. The ­resulting track might be enough for a simple rhumb-line course, but usually there are hazards in the path. Additional waypoints added between the original two establish a route around fixed hazards. The goal is to create a route that is unquestionably safe.

Once we’ve added waypoints around all hazards and tweaked them for efficiency, we zoom in to ensure that every mile of our passage is hazard-free. Remember, electronic charts might not show small ­hazards when zoomed out. The consequences of not spotting them span from unfortunate to tragic loss of life. The most fundamental goal of creating a route is that it is free of fixed, known hazards. 

From this safe path, we can modify the route to incorporate sailing strategy. This can be to avoid a foul current, get to better wind sooner, dodge degrading weather, and many other reasons. In practical terms, this means that our passage from Mexico to the Marquesas has four distinct legs.

First: getting away from the coast. The region from which we’ll depart has variable winds that can make for a slow start to a very long passage if not accounted for.

Next come the northeast trades. They make for good and easy sailing but come with a tricky finish in staging for the best place to cross the ITCZ.

Then it’s time to cross the ITCZ’s doldrums. This area of little wind and many squalls is dynamic, shifting north to south and getting wider and narrower. The least amount time spent there, the better.

Finally, we’ll encounter the southeast trades. Within a few degrees south of the equator, these winds kick in for a fast home stretch to the Marquesas.

Each stage has a common set of conditions and tactics. We’ve also found that it helps shorten a longer passage by setting milestone (well, waypoint) goals along the way. At each, adjustments can be considered to account for weather or notice to mariners of possible developing hazards. Going north from Grenada in the Caribbean, for instance, there is one such notice to avoid the area known as Kick ’em Jenny, which is an underwater ­volcano that, when active, is best sailed around. Again, if you change course for a safer and more efficient route, zoom in, from start to finish, to ensure that no fixed hazards will be met.

Pick a Weather Window

The weather in which you depart to sail across a bay or ocean is a choice. Interpreting weather tools ­successfully takes practice. Hiring a weather router can be a terrific way to ensure better passage weather while improving your own weather game. 

But whether you plan to forecast on your own or rely on a router, start with a “we’re ready to depart on” date, rather than fixed departure date. It lowers a crew’s disappointment should the weather not be right to set out in. Look at weather patterns well in advance of the ready-to-go date. This can reveal trends helpful to routing strategy, the likelihood of getting underway when you hope to, and what the weather might be like. And look at the broader picture. Big weather far away might not have a direct influence, but it can deliver a complicating sea state.

Some passages will promise to be a joy, with terrific sailing, or tough-but-manageable conditions but with no hard stop at departure time because of the approach of bad conditions. When the forecast shows that the weather window will shut hard at some point during the crossing, then consider treating the passage more like a delivery. Set and stick to a minimum and realistic speed to arrive in advance of bad weather. If this includes the notion of racing to stay ahead of the bad weather, then there probably isn’t adequate buffer unless you are truly prepared for and capable of the consequences of running late. 

Since forecast accuracy decreases after three days, longer passages require more of the crew. On Totem’s 1,000-mile voyage to South Africa from Madagascar, a major gale showed up on the forecast about halfway through the passage. There was no bailout option. Forecast timing had us arriving in Richard’s Bay six to nine hours ahead of when gale-force southerly winds would smash into the strong, south-flowing Agulhas current. This recipe for disaster kept us pressing hard to maintain a buffer. Still, the gale arrived a little early, and we bashed our way through brutal conditions—but only for the last 5 miles.

Know Destination Details

When sketching out the passage plan, learn about the arrival formalities at your destination. It might be as simple as an automatic visa, using current vessel documentation and valid crew passports. Or it can be complicated, and our Pacific plans play out that version. Here are the questions that we’re asking:

• Are visas granted on arrival? Will they last long enough for what we are planning?
• Is a cruising permit required?
• Does the country ­require advance permission or notification for arrival?
• What is the arrival ­procedure and documentation required?
• Is an agent helpful (or necessary)?

Our plans to take Totem to French Polynesia tick many of these boxes, starting with visas. Like many other nationals, US citizens are granted a 90-day visa on arrival. For those who want more time to explore the archipelagoes and islands, the process to apply for a longer ­visa begins at a consulate months before actual arrival.   

Permission to arrive isn’t a given. Arriving in certain Pacific nations without ­permission, when a permit or visa is required, has resulted in boats turned away, or worse. A German crew arriving in New Zealand were fined, had their boat confiscated, and were deported—with a police escort.

When approaching the Polynesian islands, additional advance notice is required to alert officials of a boat’s pending arrival. Once ashore for formalities, a bond must be posted to secure the cost of repatriation should you be required to depart the country by air. The layers of this can mean it’s easier to secure an agent to facilitate the process—a step Totem’s crew is taking. Arriving without knowing the requirements and having the proper documents can mean being turned away or fined, or both.

In addition to the ­legal requirements of a new destination are the practical ones. What charts are most accurate for the area, if any? We usually have at least two chart sources for any region. Often enough there are discrepancies between them, a reminder that the burden lies ultimately on piloting skills. When we were in Madagascar, a cruiser lost his boat on a charted reef. One chart showed a submerged reef, while the other showed a visible reef. He didn’t see the reef and assumed that the second chart, the one he was using, was wrong.

When a country doesn’t have resources to update charts or aids to navigation (something to which research should alert you), proceeding with exceptional caution and conservative choices is good seamanship.

The passage to the Marquesas and beyond excites us so much, in part, because it’s not just one extended passage, but the promise of several extended voyages as well. And shaking out the cobwebs during the planning process reminds us of a core characteristic of cruising that’s one of the reasons we love it so much: The opportunities to continue learning, and to improve our basis for understanding the dynamics of the world around us, are ever greater and more rewarding.

Behan Gifford and her husband, Jamie, are frequent CW contributors. They and their family are currently in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, having recently completed a 40-year refit of their Stevens 47, Totem.

Plot a Voyage

Friends don’t let friends set autorouting and go! It might be fine for a snapshot, but no ­program anticipates the true ­complexity of a route.

• Begin by plotting in your starting point and destination.
• Zoom in to adjust departure and arrival points.
• Add waypoints to route you safely away from your departure point, and into your destination harbor.
• Add waypoints that shape the stages of your passage.
• Mark hazards (weather buoys) or possible ­hazards (debris areas) from research.
• Trace a zoomed-in view of the route for any ­charted hazards.
• Research and add bailout options and new routes in the event of changing circumstances that require rerouting ­underway, gear breakdowns, or unexpected weather or sea conditions.

Pilot Charts, Four Ways

Paper Pilot Charts:
Classic volumes are sold as a bound atlas, and are based on data going back to British Admiralty days, with one page for each month of the year; each book covers a major ocean region.

Cornell’s Ocean Atlas:
This spiral-bound book organizes monthly pilot charts for portions of the world in which cruisers are likely to be interested: a succinct format that allows breadth of coverage, and data is based on more-recent trends. These were developed by Jimmy and Ivan Cornell.

OpenCPN’s Climatology Plugin:
This free ­overlay to the open-source ­charting software allows users to scroll through historical weather data. It can be found online at opencpn.org/OpenCPN/plugins/climatology.html.

PDFs from the US Navy:
These are downloadable charts in PDF format, and are free from the US military, and are a no-cost option to get the ­information you want. Begin your search at www​.usno.navy.mil/FNMOC.

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