At first glance, Nathan Zahrt and Vivian Vuong might have seemed like unlikely types to go to sea. The young married couple, hailing from the deserts of landlocked New Mexico, didn’t grow up on the water or around boats. And yet, an adventurous spirit and a willingness to take chances in life led them to the ocean, then to distant shores, and eventually to their own business training fledgling offshore sailors.

Vivian says: “What drew us to sailing was simply our friends asking if we were interested in moving across the country to buy a boat and live on it. We knew nothing about boats, but we dived in headfirst!”

In 2014, they sold all their possessions, purchased a 37-foot sailboat in Florida called Hobo Chic with their friends, and moved aboard, intending to completely immerse themselves in a life afloat. Dreaming of setting sail for the Bahamas, they set about completely refitting the boat, teaching themselves to sail, and earning enough money to fund the long trip south.

As Vivian recalls: “At first, we used the boat as an apartment and worked full-time land jobs. Nathan worked in a call center, while I worked as a hostess at a fondue chain restaurant, then as a deli slicer at a meat market, then at a camera store, until I finally found a freelance gig photographing events for the local magazine. It paid the bills, but we both yearned to cast off and sail long distances to exotic ports.

“So when we were offered the opportunity to crew on a Hylas 54 from the British Virgin Islands to Newport, Rhode Island, we jumped at it,” she continues. The experience changed the course of their lives. “After that 1,300-nautical-mile passage, with a stop in Bermuda, we were hooked. Our purpose was no longer to make money to sail, but to make sailing our way of life.”

Nathan’s new goal was to become a delivery skipper, but they knew that to pursue this, he had to quit his land job. Determined to find work in the marine industry to build their skills and experience, the couple made the momentous decision to break off their cruising plans and sell their share in the boat. Despite the change of course, looking back they feel grateful for their time on Hobo Chic. Vivian says: “We were glad we had that first boat as an introductory crash course in sailing. It allowed us to practice living minimally, test our patience for living in a small space, and gave us time to think about the path we wanted to carve out for ourselves.”

Once the decision had been made to pursue sailing careers, Nathan and Vivian moved to the busy marine hub of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they knew they could gain qualifications and experience, and build connections.

Determined to get a foothold in the industry, they took whatever odd jobs would keep them on the water. Nathan says: “We jumped from boat to boat, living out of our suitcases. From superyachts to broken-down sailboats, we worked together and separately, sometimes apart for months at a time. It was super challenging.”

Vivian wanted to give up everything at that point: “For weeks, we communicated maybe once a day, via satellite messaging with a 160-character limit. That put a real strain on our relationship, but we kept our eyes on our goal and just kept taking it day by day.”

It was demanding and physical work, but the pair was determined to learn everything they could about boats and ocean voyaging. Their tenacity began to pay off as more opportunities presented themselves. Nathan crewed from Maine to England via the Azores, and then from France to the Canary Islands through Gibraltar. He set his focus on clocking enough hours to earn his US Coast Guard 50-ton Master’s license and completed his Yachtmaster Offshore ticket in between the trans-Atlantic yacht deliveries. Vivian worked as a stewardess and a deckhand, advanced to a mate, and eventually flew to Palma de Mallorca to complete a yacht cooking course, allowing her to work on board as a chef. “We kept gaining more certifications to expand our skills,” Nathan says.

Now, as a well-rounded and experienced team, the couple were reunited and able to apply for jobs together. They worked in tandem, delivering sailboats, working on board superyachts and managing a charter company together in the Grenadines.

Finally, after five years of hard work, couch surfing and living out of suitcases, Vivian and Nathan were ready for a new direction and a more permanent place to call home. They bought their own sailboat—a previously neglected South African-built Angelo Lavranos Compass 47—and began painstakingly repairing and refitting her for offshore passagemaking, and to live on. They named her Ultima.

Read More: 10 Best Used Cruising Sailboats

Nathan and Vivian knew their next goal was to start taking people aboard and run adventure sailing expeditions and offshore training trips. And so their company, Ocean Passages, was born. But it was a chance meeting that really launched their business to the next level.

The defining moment came when their paths crossed with legendary offshore sailor John Kretschmer. John and his wife, Tadji, befriended the duo, watching from the sidelines as they delivered boats and earned their stripes in the marine industry. They recognized something very special in Nathan and Vivian, and admired their persistence and eagerness to learn.

John took the Ocean Passages team under his wing as their mentor, offering practical and professional advice as they began to build their business. Eventually he and his wife approached them with an idea to expand his offshore sail-training business, with Ocean Passages as a central component.

On why he chose to work with Nathan and Vivian, John says: “They have a passion for offshore sailing and have logged thousands of miles, including three Atlantic crossings between them. However, Tadji and I were primarily attracted by their humility, their willingness to learn and share, and their terrific communication skills.”

A shared philosophy and compatibility of character is as important to John as practical experience. He describes Nathan as “patient, wise beyond his years, a natural teacher” and says of Vivian, “She is one of the most personable and friendly people I have ever met.

“Training passages, if they’re to be of real value to prospective voyagers, are all about communication,” he adds. “Experience and deep ocean miles are important, but the ability to share what you know openly and honestly, and not insist on being an expert who never makes mistakes, is the key. Nathan and Vivian were just who we were looking for when we decided to expand our training-passage business.”

This vote of confidence in the Ocean Passages team by an icon of the industry should not be underestimated. For many years a one-man show, some have described this new venture as John passing the torch to worthy and capable successors. But John sees it as an opportunity to expand his business, and free Tadji and him to concentrate on fewer but farther-flung passages.

Vivian and Nathan also view the partnership as simpatico. Nathan says, “Though we don’t feel anywhere nearly as accomplished as John, we do feel a strong desire to follow his lead and pursue sailing long distances for as long as we can.”

Ocean Passages is currently based in St. Thomas, USVI, and Nathan and Vivian are booking training voyages for 2021. They’re living their best lives, but for them, it is so much more than just having a dream job. “We want to encourage and empower fellow dreamers of any sailing experience to witness and share in the beauty and power of deep ocean passagemaking,” Vivian says. “We can’t imagine any land-based careers that would be as fulfilling as helping others achieve their sailing dreams.”

Hailing from the land Down Under, Erin Carey and her family cruised the Caribbean for two years before crossing the Atlantic Ocean aboard their Moody 47, Roam. Carey now runs her own PR Agency, Roam Generation, helping fellow sailors and adventurers share their unique and inspiring stories with the world. For more, visit her website (roamgeneration.com). For more about passage opportunities with Nathan and Vivian and Ocean Passages, visit this website (johnkretschmersailing.com) or contact them via email (info@sailoceanpassages.com).

The post Meet the Crew of Ocean Passages appeared first on Cruising World.

Last month I reviewed some of the reasons an engine or genset might not start. This month I’ll delve into reasons an engine might crank but not actually start.

When an inboard diesel cranks, several things happen. Air is drawn into the cylinder or combustion chamber via the air-intake manifold/filter, passing through intake valves as the piston is drawn down the cylinder, creating a vacuum. As the piston returns, the intake valve closes, pressurizing the air. On a common gas engine, the compression ratio is roughly 10-to-1, and the compressed air is mixed with fuel vapor. On a diesel engine, the compression ratio is much higher, roughly 20-to-1, and the fuel is not mixed with the air until after compression has occurred.

While a higher compression increases the thermal efficiency of an engine, in the case of a diesel, it’s mandatory. As the air is compressed, its temperature increases, and in the case of a diesel, it’s hot enough to ignite the fuel when it’s injected into the combustion chamber by the injection pump and injector. If a diesel’s compression is insufficient, the air will not be hot enough to ignite the fuel. For this reason, a conventional diesel smokes on startup; the combustion chamber is still relatively cold, inhibiting complete combustion, and that white smoke is minute droplets of unburned fuel. So, low compression can be a reason for difficult starting (or not at all). This can be caused by worn piston rings, sticking or improperly adjusted valves, or a starter that turns too slowly (between 150 and 250 rpm are required for a diesel engine to start). Malfunctioning glow plugs—either the plugs themselves or the solenoid that controls them—can also make for hard or no starting.

Another aspect of this is the injection of the fuel. For conventional pump-line-nozzle (i.e. non-electronic) injection systems, fuel passes from the tank to a primary coarser (usually 10 to 30 microns) filter, usually via rubber hose, often to a water separator with a clear bowl. From there it’s on to a low-pressure (or lift) pump, after which it flows into a steel line, where it then enters the finer (in the 2- to 7-micron range) secondary fuel filter. It’s then on to the high-pressure injection pump, and finally to the injectors, again via steel lines. In this sequence, the most common causes for failure are clogged filters, a defective lift pump or air in the lines.

Your primary fuel filter should be equipped with a vacuum gauge; without one you are essentially flying blind, with no way of knowing how hard your lift pump is working to draw fuel through that filter. So if you don’t have a vacuum gauge here, I strongly recommend you install one; it’s a valuable troubleshooting tool, and it will alert you when that filter should be replaced. If, while cranking, you observe the vacuum gauge climbing, there is a restriction somewhere between the lift pump and the filter; naturally, the element itself should be checked and changed if there is any doubt.

Read More: Monthly Maintenance

If the vacuum remains low, below roughly 3 inches of mercury, then move on. The vacuum gauge will not alert you to restrictions that happen after the lift pump, including the secondary filter. However, if you change that filter when you change the primary filter, it’s unlikely to be the culprit. Regarding filters, it’s worth noting that some lift pumps include their own integral filter or screen, which can become obstructed.

Air can make its way into a high-pressure fuel system several ways, but most often at primary filter housings, in tanks low on fuel, and in plumbing unions between the tank and lift pump. Air will be drawn in only where a vacuum is present, between the tank and the lift pump, so concentrate on inspecting those areas: At rest, they might leak some fuel. Make sure everything is tight. Then try bleeding the high-pressure system to purge any air that might be present.

Finally, on older engines, it is possible for the injection pump and injectors to wear out, and/or become fouled with carbon, respectively. If the engine has more than 3,000 or 4,000 hours on it, pump wear reaches a point where fuel pressure is low enough to prevent combustion. This is often preceded by easy cold starts, where fuel viscosity is higher, and hard hot starts, where fuel viscosity is lower. Also, if the injection pump uses an electric solenoid-type stop plunger, these can fail or become stuck. Some engines energize the plunger to run; others energize it to stop. That’s an easy fix and well worth checking.

Steve D’Antonio offers services for boat owners and buyers through Steve D’Antonio Marine Consulting (stevedmarineconsulting.com).

The post Troubleshooting a Sailboat’s Auxiliary Diesel Engine appeared first on Cruising World.

Our first warning was the stillness. You might find it cliche that, as sailors, a calm morning would spell ominous weather on the horizon. But we were at the bottom of the world—Puerto Williams, Chile—and we were about to make a run for Cape Horn.

We’d arrived in Puerto Williams on Christmas Eve, having sailed a year and a half to get there. Our 36-foot sloop was warped, weary and falling to bits after battling a barrage of storms along the coast of Patagonia. We ourselves were beaten and fatigued. But we had a window, and we didn’t know if another would come for weeks, or even months.

Cape Horn, South America, is where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans collide. Waves have been recorded at over 100 feet high—the size of a 10-story building—with winds frequently reaching hurricane force. The rock itself withstands a siege of low-pressure systems year-round. These storms originate in Antarctica, work their way north across the Southern Ocean, and then slam through the passage between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula. The size and intensity of these storms—and the steepness of waves off Chile’s continental shelf—are enough to break any boat. But these systems also follow each other in such close succession that each storm barely has time to clear the passage before the next is closing in.

The conditions ahead, however, looked almost perfect. It was December, and summer had begun its brief visit to the bottom of the world. The low-pressure system currently sweeping around the Horn promised to leave a vacuum in its wake, while the following storm was poised to miss its mark, making landfall farther north up the coastline of Patagonia. The ensuing conditions were supposed to leave the Drake Passage clear of western winds for a whopping three days.

Perfect.

We wanted badly for a break in our misfortune. After overcoming a survival storm way back in the Gulf of Mexico at the outset of this journey, it had become a running joke that when we finally arrived at Cape Horn, the ocean would be glassy-calm. We didn’t want the shirtless, smooth-sailing conditions that we’d been robbed of in the Caribbean; we just wanted a window. After all that we’d overcome to get to there—hurricanes, pirates, bureaucracies, starvation, even each other—it seemed fair (if not overdue). We thought that we had earned it.

Our forecast was promising. Some of the local expedition boats were making their first run to Antarctica for the season. Plus we had a community of sailors, military veterans and civilians cheering us on from the sidelines. But even as we cast off our lines and began motoring down the Beagle Channel, something felt wrong. Icy water rolled out in a viscous wake behind us. The sun rose low over the mountains surrounding the channel. None of us spoke. I could see it in my shipmates: Taylor’s grip on the helm, and the way John’s back stiffened at every minute sound. The stakes were too high. Besides, there was a trend that had plagued our journey from the first leg—that a serene start always preceded a tumultuous end—and our key takeaway from the Furious 50s was that, at the bottom of the world, calm seas come at a price.

We were desperate for a handout—an easy sail around the world’s most treacherous waters—but Cape Horn didn’t care what we’d endured to get there. You pay a toll when crossing what some of our predecessors had nicknamed “the sailor’s graveyard.” Almost everyone pays it. We weren’t about to get a free pass.

Even if the tale that had brought us here, and the motivation for it, was almost too hard to grasp or believe.

Three years earlier, Taylor Grieger and I were lounging on a beach in Guam. Rounding Cape Horn certainly wasn’t on our radars. In fact, sailing anywhere particularly remote wasn’t on mine. I’d flown to Guam from Scotland as a student to conduct interviews with female helicopter pilots in the Navy. Taylor, meanwhile, was wrapping up six years as a Navy rescue swimmer. His four-year stint on Guam had left him with an outstanding record of rescues…and a belly full of bitterness.

Guam was the first time we had seen each other in eight years. Taylor had gone into the military after high school, while I’d taken the academic route. Despite polar-opposite pipelines, we were able to pick up right where we’d left off: as buddies, and former teammates on the varsity swim team.

It quickly became apparent, though, that Taylor’s time as a rescue swimmer was far from the hero’s journey he’d been promised, or originally envisioned. His motivation had been to help people on maybe the worst day of their lives, and yet he found himself constantly training for combat. The pace on Guam was equally ruthless. It wasn’t unusual to have back-to-back flights scheduled, barely giving time for Taylor to stretch his legs before beginning the next mission. Their position off Mariana Trench, meanwhile, meant that whenever they got called for a search-and-rescue operation, it was safe to assume the missing people were already dead.

“A lot of times,” Taylor said, “all we’ll find is a pool of blood. Body parts in the water.” We were drinking whiskey in his living room, but the numbing effects didn’t soften his words. “They would’ve been dashed against the coral a hundred times already.”

Taylor had real, palpable anxiety about returning to the civilian world, which he was on the cusp of entering. His other deployments had been to some of the worst areas of conflict in the world: the Philippines, the South Korean DMZ and a number of typhoon/earthquake disaster-relief missions that still kept him up at night. He had already attended the military’s joke of a transition course—TAPS—but he came out more confused than when he’d gone in. So after I asked him what he wanted to do when he got out, it didn’t come as a complete shock when he said, “I want to buy a boat and sail it around the world.”

That had been Taylor’s dream since he was a kid. And the military, he said, had been his means to that end. Taylor had been putting away hefty chunks of his salary for years. Enlisted soldiers have a reputation of blowing their hard-earned cash on lavish expenditures or wild nights on the town, but Taylor had made it a point not to fall into that trap. Still, sailing around the world is a common enough dream, and lots of people talk about it. Even I had dreamed of sailing the Greek Isles. What did surprise me was what he said next: “Join me.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. The impracticality of this dream notwithstanding, I had virtually no sailing experience; I was—by all First World standards—flat broke; and I was in the middle of a doctorate program, on course to become an associate professor and a writer. Why he thought I might say yes, I can’t imagine. He didn’t even have a boat. Even so, my natural, initial response, was simply: “Sure. Why not?”

Whiskey had helped fuel that conversation, and a large part of me assumed the whole idea would be forgotten by the time I returned to Scotland. But it wasn’t. In fact, our conversations continued well into the final year of my Ph.D.

I’d been conducting interviews with combat veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for about five years. My dissertation was a collection of short stories about combat veterans adjusting back into civilian life. And so, after reconnecting with Taylor, I made him one of my authenticity buffers. We worked well together because he’d never hold back. “There aren’t sergeants in the Navy,” he’d say. Or: “It’s a galley, not a mess hall. Nobody says they’re going to eat ‘mess.’”

When Taylor got out of the military four months later, our roles reversed. Where I had looked to him for confirmation, he now turned to me. Taylor would call from his car, after a party, or from home sitting on his bed. His heart rate would be through the roof, as if he were in the middle of a rescue or about to leap out of a hovering helicopter. But he’d been doing nothing of the sort. Talking to a friend. Driving his truck. Staring at a wall.

“Have you heard this before?” he asked. “In the guys you interviewed? Is this normal?”

My answer was always: “Yes.” I’d heard similar variations from every single veteran I’d interviewed. But what struck me most were the similarities between Taylor’s experience and those of combat veterans.

Taylor and his fellow rescue swimmers had adapted to working back-to-back flights; they were frequently denied more than four hours of consecutive sleep; and their job was jumping out of helicopters. They ran off endorphins, epinephrine, cortisol and supplements that simulated the same effects. Taylor’s adrenal and pituitary glands had adjusted to producing excess amounts of fight-or-flight hormones. So when he left the military, those glands didn’t just stop producing; they kept right at it. And when he couldn’t provide an outlet for his pent-up hormones, they’d release of their own accord.

For Taylor, this was all incredibly foreign. And scary. Having no control over your body—when your profession relied on absolute control—is nothing less than terrifying. It feels like you’re losing yourself.

Then the unthinkable happened. Taylor—the fun-loving, generous, excitable kid who had gone from the slowest swimmer in town to captain of the varsity swim team; the rescue swimmer who had dedicated six years of his life to helping others; and one of the most positive, energetic humans I’ve ever known—put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

The round didn’t go off.

It’s not my place to describe what drove Taylor to that moment, or how he was able to pick himself up and carry on, but I can say that it was nothing short of a miracle that he survived. And because of it, both of our lives changed forever.

Taylor often credits me with helping him through some of his darkest moments, but it was his dream of sailing, and his determination to see it through, that pulled him out of the dark. He was alone and confused, disillusioned with, and undervalued by, the civilian population. But our proposed voyage gave him a purpose.

Taylor threw himself into this new endeavor, and he began by searching for a boat. Not just any boat though. We needed one that was affordable, and that could withstand just about anything. It took months of research, reading and traveling—not to mention thousands of dollars hauling out boats for surveys—but Taylor applied himself to the task with everything he had.

Meanwhile, I was in a frenzy to finish my degree. It was around this time that I stumbled upon the largest, most comprehensive study of veteran suicides ever released. It involved over 1 million US military personnel who served between 2001 and 2007—the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—and the findings were startling. Veterans who had not deployed to a combat zone were more likely to commit suicide than veterans who had. Taylor had never technically deployed to a combat zone. And while he was being discharged, despite exposure to a number of seriously traumatic experiences, PTSD

—post-traumatic stress disorder—wasn’t even mentioned.

This sailing trip, then, became something else entirely: a mission and an expedition. It would be Taylor’s own Odyssey—his transition to civilian life—and we would document the entire endeavor. Our plan was to showcase the struggles veterans face when leaving the military, and tell the story of Taylor’s personal journey to overcome them. But to be heard, truly heard, we couldn’t simply sail a road-mapped route around the world; we needed to do something big. Something that would grab hold of the public and maintain their attention long enough for them to see. And to do that, we needed to sail the harshest waters on the planet.

We needed to round Cape Horn.

Taylor closed on a boat in Tampa, Florida, at the end of March—the last possible moment if our plans were going to stay on track—and our fantasy expedition became real. We still had months of work to do, and Cape Horn was just a speck on our charts, but we had a boat. Our journey had begun.

Taylor had purchased a Watkins 36, a Bill Tripp-designed, center-cockpit sloop with a long fin keel and skeg-mounted rudder. As a novice sailor, 36 feet sounded pretty small to me—until I stepped on board. Down below, there was standing headroom. And she was beamy, with room for a good galley and head, a comfortable saloon, and two cabins with berths for three or four crew. A reinforced cockpit Bimini would shield us from stormy weather, and she had wide working decks for sailhandling and maneuvers.

“Plus she’s sturdy,” Taylor said. “She’s built for the high seas.”

It was spring 2017, and I had flown from Scotland to see her for myself. I was not disappointed. But the clock was ticking. If we were to round Cape Horn in a single season, we would have to leave by September at the latest. There were still countless repairs and preparations to make if we were going to sail to the bottom of the world, and neither of us could afford a year of idling. And so our race started.

The next several months were a blur. I was juggling a half-dozen commitments to finish my studies, but in May I still flew back to Pensacola, where Taylor had moved the boat for the refit, then again for all of August, to help work on it. For a month straight, we woke up every morning around 0600, and it wasn’t uncommon for us to return home after sundown. Fiberglass clung to our pores and burned in the showers. The peak summer heat, meanwhile, was suffocating.

But we covered a lot of ground. Together we repaired and painted the hull, replaced and mounted a restored Perkins 4108 engine, and refurbished the entire interior. On scorching-hot afternoons, we’d sew cushion covers in Taylor’s living room. We became whatever our girl demanded of us: mechanics, carpenters, electricians, even seamstresses. And if we didn’t know how to do something, we’d learn. That month was one of the most physically taxing of my life. I sweated and ached more than I ever thought possible. It was edifying.

As the weeks passed, we drew closer to splashing her back in the water, and I began to love our beat-up old boat. All of the work we put into her created a bond unlike anything I’d ever experienced. We even referred to her as our ol’ lady. “Gotta check in with the ol’ lady before bed,” Taylor would say. And so, when it came to naming her, the answer came too easily.

Ole Lady.

We performed all of the rites and rituals required for changing the boat’s name before I returned to Scotland. Then a month later, and five days after submitting a hardbound copy of my final dissertation, we cast off our lines for the open ocean.

The first leg was a 600-nautical-mile stretch across the Gulf of Mexico. It was September 25, 2017. Smack-dab in the middle of hurricane season.

Attempting to detail here every adventure and misadventure of what next transpired would be an incredible disservice to Taylor, Kellen Warner, Jonathan Rose, and all of the many other veterans who joined us, physically or vicariously, at some point along the way. But I will say that we were baptized by fire.

Crossing the Gulf turned out to be one of the greatest trials of our entire trip. We certainly knew what season it was. Hurricane Harvey had just flooded the Houston area, and Miami had narrowly dodged its dance with Irma. With the addition of Maria—which obliterated the Dominican Republic—the 2017 hurricane season became the costliest of all time. But we were not to be dissuaded.

For one, we were already facing a tightened timeline to get to Cape Horn before winter. Not that we felt prepared for the Horn. We weren’t even prepared for the stormy Gulf of Mexico! But there’s an axiom that spoke true to us then, which I stand by today: “If you wait until you’re fully prepared, your boat will never leave the harbor.” So Taylor called one of his Navy buddies, Kell Warner—who took a week’s leave to help us reach Cancun—and we planned our departure around a high-pressure system moving south. Our plan was to ride it to Mexico.

But…the forecast high pressure never came. We enjoyed about two days of smooth(ish) sailing before the storms began, and when that first major front hit, well, it could’ve been disastrous.

Taylor had shortened our sail plan well in advance of the front, with our smallest jib and a triple-reefed mainsail. But when this storm struck, it did so all at once. From my spot on the helm, it felt like running into a wall. The wind and seas, one moment coming from port, almost immediately shifted hard to starboard. The boat heeled heavily, the mast just a few feet off the water. Waves were breaking over the bow and across the deck. We needed to fall off to a broad reach, but to do so we had to drop the main.

I was hardly aware of the evolution of the maneuver. It was all I could do to keep our mast out of the water.

Together, Taylor and Kell moved up the deck. They hadn’t even reached the mast when a wave broke over the bow, the kind of wave I’d seen only in movies, a proverbial wall of water rising out of a black sea. It was like diving headfirst into the River Styx. It broke on Taylor and Kell, crashed into the Bimini, and blurred my view completely. I thought the whole boat had been swamped, or that we had capsized.

Once everything cleared, Taylor and Kell were gone. No headlamps flashing on deck. No silhouettes moving in the dark. Only the shrieking howl of the wind. The thought that we could die on this journey had occurred to all of us a number of times. But never, in all those imaginary scenarios, had I imagined it would come so soon.

They had to be in the water, astern, adrift. I had to turn around. I wasn’t sure I could. But I had to try.

I braced myself to spin the wheel and whip the bow around after the crest of the next wave when a speck of light glinted off the jib. It was so dark, with rain so thick, that I knew it couldn’t be anything else. My grip slackened. Together, as if a single body in motion, Taylor and Kell rose from the forward edge of the bow. They’d been swept off their feet, knocked down and thrashed about, but both had managed to grab rigging and stanchions before being washed overboard. They were alive.

We dropped off Kell in Cancun after an eight-day Gulf crossing, and celebrated surviving what we hoped would be the most difficult leg of the voyage. Of course, we were wrong. Storms to come would be much worse. But we had survived our initiation; it was a trial that we sorely needed and would rely upon going forward.

It would take nine more months to cross the equator into the Southern Hemisphere, months riddled with obstacles. We battened down for Hurricane Nate off the Yucatan Peninsula, and later withstood two tropical storms off the Honduran island of Roatan. Our engine seized after a pair of oil lines burst in the middle of a tropical depression that struck between Honduras and Nicaragua. We were stranded in the middle of the Caribbean Sea—without an engine, with no breeze, for two weeks. When we finally limped into Colón, Panama, we were parched, malnourished and eating peanut butter out of a jar.

We transited the Panama Canal in early December 2018, and by the time we reached Ecuador, we had punched each other in the face, spent our life’s savings, and faced down pirates off the Pacific coast of Colombia. We’d also nearly given up on the voyage a handful of times, the most recent being right before John Rose, a former rescue swimmer, volunteered to help us sail from Ecuador to Chile.

The three of us drifted into Valparaiso after over a month at sea, arriving in late April 2018, sunken-eyed and hungry, in the most confusing landfall of our journey. We had just sailed 3,200 nautical miles without an engine. Our transmission had failed, for the second time, a few hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador, again leaving us becalmed. A fire in the engine compartment almost cost us our lives. We had been rationing food, were taking on water from a crack in the bow, and had snapped a furling line in the middle of a storm. We had totally missed our original, proposed plan to round Cape Horn. Our Ole Lady was falling to pieces.

“It’s time to call it,” Taylor had said the morning after our engine fire. We were becalmed and surrounded by a glassy, windless ocean. “This boat’s not going to make it. We’ll scrap her in Valparaiso. Use the money to fly home.”

We found a pub in Valpo, took turns cleaning up in the men’s room, and inspected the alien features of our reflections. Then we huddled into the dry warmth of a corner booth and allowed the simple pleasures of hot food and a cold beer to wash over us. It took time for our cellphones to charge, and even longer for the messages to pour in. There was going to be a treaty with North Korea, John said. Taylor announced that his sister was having a baby. Amy Flannery, a producer of documentaries, wanted to help us tell our story. Glasses were raised. Pints were drained.

Then Taylor read a message that overshadowed the rest.

“Serna’s dead,” he said. The words fell onto the table. He was already blinking tears out of his eyes. “He committed suicide.”

“No,” John said. He turned to his own phone for confirmation. “Not him.”

Serna was a fellow rescue swimmer. He had deployed with Taylor and John, but he was more than a friend. He was their brother. He was the guy everyone wanted to be around. Serna had enlisted because he believed in serving his country, and he became a rescue swimmer because he wanted to help people. He was the embodiment of rescue swimmers everywhere, but—more than anything else—he was a good man.

There had been a handful of other times on this journey when we’d bent to the point of breaking. Serna’s death hurt. Bad.

We didn’t change our minds overnight. There was no conversation about continuing on despite the risks. The choice was made gradually. We were broken; hell, we were broke; there was really no reason to believe that we would succeed. But we couldn’t give up. We were still in a position to make a difference, to help our friends and our peers. To do nothing would’ve been worse than to try and then fail.

Before flying back to Texas in June 2018, Taylor found a marina in Valdivia where we could store Ole Lady for the Southern Hemisphere winter. John spent the summer teaching sailing courses off Lake Michigan. I began working with FreshFly Films in Philadelphia to transform our voyage into a feature-length documentary. It took a Kickstarter campaign, with contributions from our small—but incredibly loyal—following, to get us back to Chile. But we made it happen. And when we returned to Ole Lady that November, we were reinvigorated and ready to finish what we had put into motion two long years before.

Our work was far from done. Ole Lady was still hurting. There were still repairs to be made and provisions to find. We had no idea what would be available to us in Puerto Williams, or our next landfall after rounding Cape Horn. We were preparing for the unknown. And we had to be ready for, and anticipate, everything.

For the most part, I’m proud to say, we did just that. Despite facing the worst seas of the entire trip—and battling more snapped lines, shattered blocks and broken rigging than ever—our next leg, from Valdivia and into Patagonia, was, by far, the one we were most prepared for. We even addressed a sheered roller furler at the mouth of the Magellan Strait, in some of the steepest waves I’ve ever seen.

When we finally checked in to Puerto Williams on Christmas Eve 2018, we weren’t just tired; we were wiped out. What we wanted now, more than anything, was to be done. To be safe. To be finished with what had evolved into our own real-life Odyssey. And that played into our decision to just keep going. On December 26, just two days after making landfall at Puerto Williams, we cast off and steered west down the Beagle Channel.

We approached Drake’s Passage from Paso Picton, traversing Bahia Nassau before looping around the Horn from west to east, to ride the prevailing westerlies past the cape, then tuck back inland behind the shelter of Isla Deceit. The wind began picking up and heading us later that morning though, and by late afternoon, we had to tack our way south. Night fell by the time we reached Bahia Nassau. I took the midnight watch.

Bahia Nassau is the notorious stretch of water that Charles Darwin coined “the Milky Way of the sea.” Joshua Slocum recalled it as the scene of “the greatest sea adventure of my life.” It lived up to its reputation.

Even in these relatively calm conditions, the wind kept shifting from all directions. Swells from Drake’s Passage rebounded off the surrounding islands, and struck back with surprising size and speed. Hours seemed to pass where it was difficult to discern if we were going forward or backward. It was a cloudy night, and so dark that, at times, I could hardly see my hand in front of my face. An eternity stretched before the glow of dawn, and at 0400, I handed the helm to John. We hadn’t even rounded the Wollaston Islands.

John spent the rest of the morning negotiating the currents and headwinds at the entrance of the Hermite Strait, the final stretch before Cape Horn. But he managed to set up Taylor for a run at the Drake Passage. Taylor hit his stride. The sun broke through at the beginning of his watch as we flew south at 5 knots, against the current.

We passed False Cape Horn, off Isla Hoste, and broke into the Drake. By now it was afternoon, and the conditions were…disheartening. We were disoriented, and not a little dismayed, to meet sharp, biting winds from the east. This wasn’t the weather window that had been promised—the calm winds and blue skies that were forecast to follow the preceding storm—nor was it the supposedly reliable westerly breeze that we had planned our entire voyage around. Instead there were low dark clouds on the horizon, a gray haze of rain to the east, and large, steep swells pushed up by a continental shelf that climbs from over 4,000 meters to a mere 100 meters within a few kilometers. We were battling upwind, into waves the size of large buildings, and against the current.

Yes, it sounds absurd, but we’d been hoping for a calm sail around Cape Horn. We’d even had conversations about cruising within a mile of the cliffs, posing for pictures in the sun, even landing on shore (drawing straws for who had to remain on board) and hiking to the monument, and getting our passports stamped by the lighthouse operator. It had been done before, and it had been our dream since the very beginning to bask in that moment. We imagined it would be an act of balance, of karma, after all the hardship we had faced to get there.

It wasn’t going to happen.

As quickly as Cape Horn appeared over the horizon, she faded behind a veil of mist and rain. A gale was approaching, and we were still 20 miles away.

Despite the warnings and lessons of our journey so far, we chose to keep going. We were determined to keep on as close a course as possible to the Horn itself. We reefed down to maintain our closehauled track, but the conditions weren’t having it. We were slamming so hard, we felt it in our bones.

After flying over a steep wave that literally knocked us off our feet, Taylor eased the mainsheet and furled most of the jib. Cracked off slightly, on a true wind angle of about 60 degrees, we were now on a heading to pass the Horn some 20 miles offshore, in the dead of night. But if things deteriorated further, we’d have no choice but to turn tail, bear away, and abandon the Horn attempt.

I was devastated. John was furious. But Taylor was heartbroken. We were so close. John disappeared below, and when he returned with a bottle of whiskey, Taylor let it out.

“Everything we’ve worked toward,” he said. “All of the shit we’ve put up with, and all we wanted was a break. Why was that so much to ask?” He looked up as he spoke, his eyes welling.

Then something remarkable happened. The sun, behind layers of mist and cloud, glowed through the haze. The waves and wind weren’t letting up, but the skies were hinting at a respite. When the wind started backing from the east to the north, we allowed ourselves to hope once more.

It didn’t happen in a single moment, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, our course was lifted inland, and we came within 3 miles of the legendary rock before passing it. The sun broke through, igniting that battered rock, and the curtain of rain that had veiled Cape Horn all day lifted to reveal her face—in all of its mean and malevolent glory.

Cape Horn demands a tribute from those who pass. Charles Darwin realized this during his first passage on Beagle, and we learned it on Ole Lady, after paying a toll on both sides. The fair weather held through late afternoon. We posed for pictures, launched the drone, and shared a celebratory dram of whiskey in the cockpit. But as the sun fell over the Isle of Deceit, we were blasted by another gale, this one with twice the force of the last.

Ultimately we did turn back—passing Cape Horn a second time—before cutting back up the passage we had come from in the first place. We motored our way up tight inlets into the Beagle Channel and aimed for Puerto Williams the following evening, but only after our engine overheated and we had to tack upwind to the Chilean port. We arrived at 0300 on New Year’s Eve, and the rest is, well, history. Our production team flew down to Ushuaia, Argentina, a month later to interview us in Patagonia. Taylor sold the boat to a young Chilean captain. Then we flew home to begin postproduction for our documentary, Hell or High Seas.

There were no parties to celebrate our return; no news outlets stood by to film our reunion with loved ones in the airport. Flying home was as anticlimactic an ending as we could’ve imagined. And yet, it wasn’t the end. Because the real journey is just beginning. Our expedition to sail Cape Horn was the first step, and Hell or High Seas is going to be the next. But more will need to follow if we’re going to make a difference. Our soldiers, for instance, need a more comprehensive out-processing program, facilitated by veterans and civilians—not the military. We need longer transition periods for veterans to reassimilate, with optional pipelines that educate as well as exercise the mind. But we also need a change of culture, not only in the military, but also outside it. I emphasize the latter because we, as civilians, are our military’s first point of contact when they return home. We set the tone for the rest of their lives.

Sailing was Taylor’s transition period. It offered an ideal mixture of serene reflection and adrenaline-packed fights for survival. We dealt with hurricanes and gales, but there were also moments of profound beauty and tranquility, from the sublime, raw grandeur of Patagonia to the ripple of bioluminescent plankton in the wake of dolphins diving at night. And so, as our trip progressed, sailing became more than an adrenaline outlet or a balance between the highs and the lows. It became a reminder about the value of living.

But there’s still a question: Is Taylor going to be OK?

I have much to say on that end—and I’ve got a lot of faith in him—but right now, after two years together on the high seas, the reality is that I don’t know.

What I can say is that he’s survived the most dangerous period of a rescue swimmer’s life—his first year out of the military—and that, by all points of evaluation, means he’s doing better. Most of this progress came from learning to live with PTSD rather than trying to overcome it. But the cost of his service will continually affect his body and mind. Taylor will always have his demons, and no measure of therapy or sailing is going to change that.

But there were other takeaways that neither of us anticipated. Like how, after all that we’d been through, it wasn’t rounding Cape Horn or achieving our goal that guided Taylor in his transition home. It was the sense of purpose that it gave him, and it was the journey, the adventure and the excitement of rediscovering the world, of recalling that there will always be more for us to experience.

And to explore.

Stephen J. O’Shea is a writer and documentarian—and now sailor—who tells stories for a living. His first book, From the Land of Genesis, was published in 2020, and he is a credited writer, videographer and producer for the upcoming feature documentary Hell or High Seas, about this epic journey to Cape Horn. Taylor Grieger, meanwhile, is captaining sailing charters out of Kemah, Texas, and delivering sailboats around the globe. He is currently the director of operations for veteran sailing nonprofit organization American Odysseus Sailing Foundation (amodsailing.org). His next dream, to lead proper high-latitude expeditions with veterans, is still very much alive.

The post Sailing Around Cape Horn For A Good Cause appeared first on Cruising World.

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

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

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

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

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

Not all globe-trotting cruisers were so lucky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They had no choice but to roll with the punches.

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

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

And then there’s the growing family aboard Adamastor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange, right? Limbo? Purgatory?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdant mountains plunging into a blue sea, dark basalt spires piercing the clouds, jungle vines growing over stone ruins: the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia have an almost mystical aura about them. At the far eastern end of the South Pacific islands, only 9 to 10 degrees south of the equator, they are remote, hot and humid. They are high islands, volcanoes that have eroded into deep valleys and vertiginous ridges. In some ways, they are the ultimate South Seas idyll: secluded, tropical and ruggedly beautiful. But in other ways, they are far from the postcard picture. Because of their geological newness and because they are on the outer edges of the cold Humboldt Current, the islands have not developed extensive barrier reefs. So they don’t have the lagoons and consequent calm, protected bays that many other Pacific islands boast.

For sailors, this means anchorages exposed to the rolling ocean swell. Even though one finds protection from the strong southeasterly trade winds on the leeward sides of these islands, the swell inevitably rolls its way in. Most sailors don’t consider this a problem. After all, to reach the Marquesas, most voyagers have spent three weeks to a month sailing across the open ocean, in swells much bigger than what one encounters in the islands’ leeward anchorages; we’re acclimated to the motion and hardly notice it. But the fact remains that there is nothing so peaceful as a flat-calm anchorage, sheltered on all sides—especially after a long ocean passage.

Enter Anaho Bay. On the north (leeward) coast of Nuku Hiva lies this beautiful, calm bay, encircled by hills and headed by a bare basalt peak. In all but a north wind, it is perfectly protected. The necklace of beach ashore is soft, white sand, and there’s even a coral reef (a rarity in these islands) that’s built itself along the edges of the bay, home to the colorful and often unique reef fish of the Marquesas.

Read More: Lessons from the Sixth Circumnavigation

There are no roads into Anaho Bay. One can reach the place only by boat, or on foot or horseback along the trail that leads across a little mountain pass to the neighboring village of Hatiheu. The only sounds in the bay are the quiet lapping of water on the beach, the rustle of wind in the trees, the splash of a fish, and the thunk-thunk of the locals cutting copra. A few people do live in Anaho Bay, fishing, farming, and even running a small restaurant for sailors and any other tourists who hike over from Hatiheu. At the time of the lockdown, when the Nuku Hiva government was ordering cruisers to sail to the main town of Taiohae (where the police could more easily keep them under surveillance), the locals in Anaho Bay refused to let their cruisers be taken away. Those at anchor there at the time had been helping the locals with all kinds of projects on their houses and fishing boats. So the lucky sailors stayed in Anaho for the whole lockdown. While I wasn’t among them, I was thrilled to hear the story after the fact, a wonderful instance of the mutual generosity of visiting cruisers and their local hosts. That, even more than the stunning scenery, is what makes the South Seas such a special place.

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I woke up with the sun and climbed into the cockpit with a blanket and a hot mug of coffee, breath steaming in the crisp morning air. The shoreline was luminous in the soft light, the empty beach alluring. The boat rocked gently in the breeze as an eagle called out from high above. I had to pinch myself; I was not in the San Juan Islands near Seattle or in the Gulf Islands of Canada. I was on Lake Superior in Wisconsin, a lake that both looked and acted very much like an ocean.

I am an ocean sailor. I learned to sail in the Pacific Northwest and left to go cruising from there, my sights pointed south and west. I had never been sailing on fresh water. When travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak kept us from returning to our boat waiting for us in a boatyard in French Polynesia, my husband, John, and I looked around to get our sailing fix locally. We found it in the unlikeliest of places: right in the middle of the country.

The Apostle Islands is a grouping of 22 protected islands nestled in the corner of one of the biggest lakes in the world. “Lake” is a bit of a misnomer; “inland sea” is a more accurate description. This particular inland sea is the size of Austria and at places is over 1,200 feet deep. It has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake on Earth, over 31,000 square miles, and holds 10 percent of the entire planet’s fresh water. That’s crazy! It’s also hard to conceptualize because the entire sea is situated 600 feet above sea level. To reach the ocean, boats must sail 2,400 miles across three lakes and navigate 16 locks to descend those 600 feet.

I simply couldn’t imagine it: a lake like an ocean, a contained body of water capable of throwing challenging weather conditions to test even the most seasoned sailors. Unpredictable wind, sudden pea-soup fog, navigational hazards and steep wind waves are all common conditions. The rewards are just as sweet too. Secluded anchorages, stunning sunsets, vibrant contrasting colors of red sandstone, verdant green trees and clear blue water. I just had to see it for myself.

Superior Charters & Yacht Sales in Bayfield arranged for us to sail a Jeanneau 349, aptly named Bliss, for a four-day cruise through the Apostle Islands. These islands, along with the nearby mainland coast, make up a 70,000-acre National Lakeshore area. Only one of the islands is inhabited; the rest are home only to healthy populations of black bears, deer, eagles, otters and more. It was the beginning of September and the start of their shoulder season, which meant quiet anchorages, fewer bugs, cool crisp nights and unpredictable weather.

Bliss was well-appointed with a full galley, plenty of water and diesel, good sails, an anchor windlass and an autopilot. One of the benefits of chartering from Superior Charters & Yacht Sales is that they encourage guests to board the boat the night before the official start of the vacation. We picked up an envelope at 7 p.m. with a map of the marina, codes for the bathrooms and a checklist of items we should verify on the boat. That evening we introduced ourselves to Bliss, unpacked and settled in. It was a wonderful, stress-free way to start the vacation.

The next morning, checkout was a breeze. Mike, a captain with Superior Charters, arrived promptly at 0800 to review the checklist and answer questions. He ensured that we knew where everything was, what safety equipment we had and how to use the systems on board. He then revealed his love for this unique place as he bragged about the beauty of the islands and shared with us some of his favorite secluded spots.

By midmorning, we waved goodbye to Mike, slipped our dock lines and hoisted the sails in a sporty 15 to 20 knots from the southwest. The weather forecast kept us conservative in distance and anchorage choice that first night. The wind was predicted to make a 135-degree shift in the evening and blow a gale from the north all night. There are no all-weather anchorages in the Apostles, so one thing Capt. Mike coached us on was to always have a backup plan in case the winds decide to buck the forecaster’s predictions. We chose the southeast hook of Stockton Island, a popular choice judging by the six other boats in the bay, all nestled into the northern corner.

The forecast was not joking. Just as the sun dipped below the horizon, the wind made an about-face and started blowing from the north without lessening in intensity. A new boat in a new place in 35 to 40 knots of wind overnight is never a recipe for a good night’s sleep, but Bliss handled the weather like a champ. We got up to confirm our position and check the anchor rode for chafing a few times, all without incident. She held well in the sticky sand, the wind whistling harmlessly through the rigging.

A gale was an exciting way to start the trip, and a good reminder that shoulder-season sailing means being prepared for a variety of conditions. It was just like cruising in the San Juan Islands in September, when summer and winter collide overhead. A fresh breeze turns cheeks red; puffy jackets and beanies appear from the depths of lockers. It was so similar to sailing in the San Juans, in fact, that I kept watching for whale spouts in the distance!

We fell into a familiar routine. Our days started with an unhurried cup of coffee in the cockpit while listening to the weather forecast on the VHF. We would then haul the anchor and hoist the sails for a few hours of exploration. By late afternoon, we would set the hook in a new anchorage, with plenty of time to explore the shore by kayak or foot before happy hour. A glass of wine, a beautiful sunset, a big hearty dinner and a quiet evening with a good book. It felt so good to be back on the water.

The Apostle Islands are bunched together, which makes them easy and accessible for fun daysailing. While our conditions were not always (well, ever) a perfect 15 knots on the aft quarter, we never felt exposed or in danger. In fact, most of our time under sail was fully voluntary. We were never far from our next anchorage and would often take the meandering way, easily turning a 10-mile passage into a 30-mile sail that laced us through rocky outcroppings and along sandy shorelines.

Each island in the Apostles has its own personality. Stockton has an intriguing mix of lakes, forests and wetlands. Wonderful hiking trails crisscross the island, often on raised boardwalks above the delicate grasses and swampland.

Oak Island is the tallest at 1,000 feet above sea level (and 400 feet above this sea’s level). It was the first Apostle island, emerging about 10,000 years ago as the level began to drop in a giant lake that had formed between the retreating glacier edge to the north and high ground to the south. Today Oak Island has steep cliffs that rise abruptly out of the sea and a very active black bear population.

Outer Island is the guardian, a sentinel standing tall in the northeast corner, with the other islands huddled behind it. It is this island that gets pummeled by the most vicious northeasterly gales. As evidence of its protective responsibility, the rugged coastline is dramatically pocked with sea caves where waves have battered the sandstone for thousands of years.

Madeline is the only populated island, with 302 full-time residents. The main street through town is dotted with a handful of tourist shops and restaurants, served by a quaint car ferry from Bayfield. It was particularly quiet when we arrived midweek and out of season, following an unstable and worrying summer. Only one restaurant was open, offering burgers and sandwiches for takeout only. The impact of the pandemic is most apparent in places like this, where the whole town relies on summer tourism. With a high season only 90 days long, even in a good year it is hard to stay sustained through the slow winter. This year, some shops and restaurants never opened at all.

Too soon it was time to sail back to the marina. Or rather, motorsail; by then we had a wispy 6 knots from the northeast. The cruise had been just the antidote to my landlocked blues: a wonderful wilderness escape with no cell service or Wi-Fi, and few other people. It was four days of communing with the wind and waves, punctuated with visits to picturesque havens of sandstone and verdant conifers.

We only just got a taste. The crystal-clear water beckoned me for a swim, but the cold north wind dampened my enthusiasm to jump in. The leaves started to change while we were there, taunting me to come back and see the islands when they explode in color. And in winter, when conditions are just right, it’s possible to walk to some of the sea caves instead of sail. Icicles protrude from the caves, the whole scene still and quiet as if frozen in time. That is something I simply cannot imagine, and so I know I’ll be back.

Cruising the Apostle Islands

Bayfield, Wisconsin, is the home of Superior Charters and the Gateway to the Apostle Islands. The small town is located on the coast of Lake Superior and is about a 90-minute drive east from Duluth, Minnesota, which has an international airport.

Charter season: Late May through September, with the summer months being in greatest demand.

Guide Books: Superior Way by Bonnie Dahl and Sailing Adventures in the Apostle Islands by Lawrence W. Newman.

Provisioning: Grocery stores are available in Bayfield and nearby Washburn.

Fleet: Superior Charters’ current ­bareboat fleet comprises 26 monohulls and two catamarans.

Becca Guillote is a freelance writer and full-time sailor aboard Halcyon, a Valiant 40.

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If you’ve been attending boat shows for the past 10 or 20 years like I have, you have surely noticed significant design evolutions from the major sailboat builders. Wide beam carried all the way aft to a plumb transom—which often articulates into a sweet boarding deck, sometimes even opening up a garage for a tender and motor—are becoming the norm. Dual helms and twin rudders are commonplace, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a boat without installed air conditioning and sophisticated refrigeration systems. Boats 30 feet and longer often have a bow thruster as an option, and shore power is standard equipment.

Recently I had the opportunity to turn on the not-so-way-back machine and take a trip to the 1980s to remind me what life on board back then was about. Let me share with you some of my observations and what I would consider changing if I were to buy such a boat.

The sample boat here is a Germán Frers-designed 1983 Beneteau First 42, offered for sale by Dave McKenny at Brewer Yacht Sales in Rhode Island. It is a one-owner boat that was repowered about 10 years ago, and its hull and deck have been repainted. The interior woodwork is the classic dark bright finish of the era and is in excellent condition. More common to that time, the boat has two proper sea berths port and starboard, amidships above and behind the standard saloon settees. And the upholstery has been updated.

The onboard electrical and electronic systems, however, are mostly original, with the exception of a fairly recent autopilot, a 1,000-watt DC-to-AC electrical inverter and an Isotherm seawater-cooled DC refrigeration/freezer upgrade for the original icebox in the galley. The boat has no shore-power system installed, which amazingly was not that uncommon back then. There is no bow thruster or electric windlass; winches are all sized properly but fully manual. So the question is, what would I do to bring this boat’s almost-40-year-old electrical/electronic systems into the new century?

Charge It

Step one would be to analyze the existing source of electrical power. Currently the boat is equipped with a pair of Group 31 flooded-cell lead-acid batteries. They get recharged by a stock 65-amp alternator controlled by an ancient Balmar voltage regulator. This battery bank has an amp-hour capacity of about 200 amps, but unfortunately flooded lead-acid batteries like these suffer from cycle-life reduction if they get continually discharged below about 50 percent of their capacity. In effect, this boat currently has about 100 amp-hours of power available for running accessories.

In my dream redo, this would not be adequate, and I consider it marginal even as the boat is equipped now without a bit of engine run time to keep those batteries charged.

For me, one of the first upgrades would be to replace these batteries with a pair of group 31 absorbed glass-mat batteries. AGMs have considerably higher recharge-acceptance rates compared with flooded-cell batteries, and can be discharged up to 80 percent of capacity, meaning that engine run times will be at a more acceptable level when away from the dock, at least in terms of electrical-power generation. Upgrading the alternator and voltage regulator to a 100-amp Balmar set would also be on my list for this boat to minimize engine run time.

My intention is to add quite a bit more electrical equipment to this boat, and I prefer not to run things such as alternators near their maximum capacity for extended periods of time. Limiting the amount of full output extends their potential service life considerably.

Plug and Play

AC power on board today is almost a must for boats that are going to be berthed at a dock. Yes, global warming is real, and sleeping on board without air conditioning at this point in my life just isn’t happening.

I’ve lost my enthusiasm for cold showers as well. In the old days, we used sun showers hanging from the boom in the cockpit and got by just fine, but that was then and this is now. The luxury of hot water on demand is not too much to ask in this day and age. So besides adding air conditioning to this boat, we are going to need to add a water heater and appropriate plumbing to deliver hot water to the galley and two heads.

The current refrigeration system, an Isotherm ASU unit, is only a 12-volt, and I would think about swapping that out for a 12-volt DC/120-volt AC unit. Or, as a money saving measure, I might just leave the 12-volt unit in place because I’m going to be installing a proper battery charger to keep my new AGM batteries charged up anyhow. We’ll let the charger replenish the power used by the Isotherm unit.

The bottom line here is that the boat is going to get shore power installed for the first time. The question becomes whether a 30-amp system or a 50-amp system will be needed. Determining that requires performing a load analysis. Here’s how I would go about doing it.

First we have to determine how many Btu we’re going to need to cool the boat. A visit to marinaire.com will connect you with a calculator that will provide the Btu per hour needed to air-condition the boat in either moderate or tropical environments. I chose moderate for this boat because based on MarineAire’s world map, only South Florida is in its tropical zone, and the plan for this boat is to stay in the mid-Atlantic to Northern states the majority of the time.

Based on the calculator results, I still came out needing one of the company’s largest units, which can produce 16,000 Btu of AC and 17,000 Btu of heat when needed. This unit draws just under 11 amps of AC power at 110 volts.

My new water heater will draw 13 amps, and I’ll need another 8 amps for my P-12 Blue Sea 40-amp battery charger.

With an air conditioner, water heater and battery charger plugged in and running, we’re looking at just over 30 amps of AC power needed. That figure does not include any provision for a microwave oven, coffee maker, hair dryer or any other small AC appliance while at the dock.

Knowing this opens up two options for shore power: either a 50-amp service or possibly two 30-amp setups. The potential problem here is the marina itself; many don’t offer a 50-amp option at the dockside pedestal. There are myriad adapters available that would allow you to tap into multiple outlets to get to 50 amps, but remember: You don’t want to pull more than 30 amps from a 30-amp service.

One additional shore-power consideration on this boat is the 1,000-watt DC-to-AC inverter that has been installed. This was possibly done to facilitate running a laptop at some point, or maybe an electric shaver or small hair dryer. It is located in the aft head compartment, so I’m going with the shaver idea.

My inclination would be to relocate the inverter behind a panel in the navigation-station area, probably under the settee at the nav station, and resize it to a 2,000-watt unit. I would add a dedicated battery to supply DC power to the inverter and make sure the battery is connected to my Blue Sea charger. Since I am going to be running only intermittent loads from the inverter, a group 27 AGM will get the job done.

Note that I am not considering a generator for this major upgrade. Space is tight, and I don’t want to carry the extra weight. This is a performance cruiser, and I want it to stay that way. Besides, my plan is to stay mostly in slips when traveling, and so I’ll have access to shore power when I need it.

A Wednesday-night race series is in the plan as well, so I won’t be adding a bow thruster, anchor windlass or electric winches. For the occasional overnight away from the dock, I will still have the power I need to microwave some popcorn and run a laptop to check a weather forecast or watch a downloaded Netflix movie.

Side note: I have no plans to add solar panels or a wind generator either. I love the lines of this boat just the way Frers designed it.

In Control

Based on the proposed changes to the electrical system, a new AC/DC combined panel is in order. The boat is currently equipped with 12 DC circuits and no AC circuits. We will also need to modify the battery-switching system, so that will allow the three new batteries, combined, to be separated.

For the panels, Blue Sea, Paneltronics and Bass Products are all possibilities. I just need to take some measurements to see what will fit where the existing panel is mounted. The design will also depend on whether I decide to go with a single 50-amp shore-power service or two 30-amp services.

In either case, rather than having two cigar-lighter-style outlets, we’ll swap those out for a pair of Blue Sea USB plug adapters, which are more relevant in today’s world.

Instruments and Toys

With the exception of the autopilot, the original onboard electronics need to be replaced. A pair of multifunction displays are in order here, with one mounted at the traditional nav station down below and another in a pod at the helm. An updated VHF with digital selective calling and possibly integrated AIS will also be needed. And since trips north to Maine from Annapolis will be part of the plan, we’ll add radar. Air, wind and speed instruments will also be integrated via NMEA 2000. Since coastal cruising is going to be the primary use for this boat, satellite communications will not be part of the permanent upgrades.

I’m not a television person, so a boat with a flat-screen TV that rises up from behind a settee and interfaces with the chart plotter means nothing more to me than just one more thing that can break and need repair. I do have an iPad loaded with my favorite tunes though, so some speakers and a small AM/FM stereo set that connects to my iPhone or iPad via Bluetooth will augment the good company I plan to have on board for entertainment.

Dollars and Sense

The used-boat market has a huge inventory these days, and there a lot of really great boats available for any price range—and at considerable savings compared with the cost of a new boat.

This Beneteau First 42 that I have my eye on has an asking price of $59,900. Although there is no direct comparison for the 2020 model year from Beneteau, a similar boat in this size range would cost over $200,000. That’s at least a $140,000 differential.

That can buy a lot of upgrades!

The proposals I suggest here will not be inexpensive, but when compared with the cost of a new boat with similar equipment (much of it optional), you can come out tens of thousands of dollars ahead with careful selection of the right used boat. I think the biggest part of any decision here is to be totally honest with yourself about your genuine needs versus your dreams and desires.

Ed Sherman writes frequently on a range of technical topics for CW. He is a longtime Boat of the Year judge, and recently retired as vice president of the American Boat & Yacht Council.

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Fiji set a glowing example for other Pacific countries this past sailing season by successfully opening its borders to cruisers. The country consequently welcomed over 90 foreign boats, over 300 crew and an estimated $10 million to its shores.

The Blue Lane initiative, launched in June, set strict guidelines for pleasure craft to follow in order to enter Fiji. This protocol involved sailors having to activate their AIS for their entire trip so that the Fijian navy could confirm uninterrupted sailing, along with quarantining crew on board their vessels for a total of 14 days, including passage time. Additionally, all crew had to take a COVID-19 test and obtain a negative result within 72 hours of leaving their original country and again two days before their 14-day quarantine was up.

While Port Denarau is currently the only port of clearance in Fiji, once finished with their quarantine, boats are free to cruise the different island groups as usual.

Though small in number compared with the usual 750 boats that visit Fiji every year, the cruisers that arrived have helped contribute toward Fiji’s suffering tourism industry. They’ve provided the sailmakers, mechanics, electricians, taxi drivers and dive operators with a much-needed income, without which they might not have been able to survive the past few months. Due to a lack of onward destinations, the majority of these boats remained in Fiji during the 2020-21 cyclone season, providing further income for the industry.

United States Ambassador to Fiji, Joseph Cella, invited cruisers who’d participated in this initiative to a buffet brunch to celebrate its success, and there he highly commended the Fijian government for the way it has contained COVID-19. With only 35 cases in total, and no community cases for nearly 6 months, Fiji has handled this pandemic extremely well, with its Blue Lane initiative being a testament to its success. Let’s hope more countries follow suit next season.

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The executives, design team, and craftsmen at the sailing division of Groupe Beneteau have made some interesting, innovative, and even surprising decisions ever since a regime change took place in the marine conglomerate’s upper-management ranks a couple of years back. This was clear from last year’s launching of Beneteau’s First Yacht 53, a sleek and powerful performance cruiser with the contemporary lines evident in the latest offerings from the top European naval architects. Now the company is continuing its ongoing design evolution with its latest dedicated cruising boat, the Oceanis Yacht 54. We tested the boat this past fall on a gorgeous day on Chesapeake Bay with a Beneteau team that couldn’t have been more excited about its potential, and deservedly so. It’s a rangy, clever, impressive yacht.

Over the years, when testing Beneteaus, we’ve become accustomed to reviewing the work of the crème de la crème of the leading practitioners of French naval architecture. So one of the first surprises with this new 54-footer is its design collaboration between a pair of Italians: architect Roberto Biscontini, a veteran of several high-profile America’s Cup campaigns who created the hull, and Lorenzo Argento, the stylist behind many high-end Wally Yachts, who designed the interior layout and accouterments. The Oceanis Yacht 54 actually borrows the basic hull platform from the earlier First Yacht 53, but make no mistake about it: This is a completely new and fresh vessel.

In profile, the Oceanis Yacht 54 is a handsome, purposeful-looking craft. The plumb bow and equally vertical transom maximize the long waterline. A nifty fixed bowsprit is home to the ground tackle and serves as a potential launching pad for reaching sails. There’s a trio of horizontal windows in the hull to port and starboard that look smart and provide natural light and cool ocean views to the interior. The low coach roof slopes forward and transitions to a flush deck forward of the mast. The main feature that links it to the range of Oceanis sisterships is the cockpit arch over the companionway, which anchors the double-ended mainsheet and, on the boat we tested, is the structural centerpiece of a superb Bimini aft and an excellent dodger forward. We’re talking serious shade here.

The cockpit itself is pretty astounding and is a focal point of the design. In 2021, we’re seeing a trend to separate the helm and working sailhandling stations from a dedicated social area free of winches and sheets, aimed purely at comfort. This Oceanis Yacht 54 does this as well or better than anybody. A Beneteau rep referred to this, alternatively, as a “terrace by the sea” and a “rethinking of the center-cockpit” layout. OK, I’ll buy that. There certainly is a lovely, natural, unimpeded flow in the open aisle from the companionway aft, through a passageway between the twin wheels, to the drop-down transom with teak decking that serves as both a boarding/swim platform, and the door opening to a dinghy garage capable of housing an 8-foot-2-inch RIB. The designers clearly feel this big back porch will be the spot where the crew congregates and spends a lot of time, both underway and at anchor, and there’s no question that it’s a very inviting space.

Interestingly, there are no hull chines on the boat, a feature Beneteau introduced with its innovative Sense line that has become ubiquitous on contemporary production cruising boats. The chines were billed as something that would promote stability under sail, but they also expanded interior volume and made for roomier accommodations. Then again, with a 16-foot-5-inch beam, the interior of this yacht is already plenty voluminous.

When it comes to accessing the deck from the cockpit, the Oceanis Yacht 54 has borrowed an idea from its Groupe Beneteau stablemates at Jeanneau, with a slight alteration. Moving forward is a simple matter of stepping outboard from behind the helms and onto an ample side deck, protected by a big bulwark, that gradually rises and transitions into a couple of steps that guide you onto the foredeck. True center-cockpit designs are notorious for the sometimes-difficult gymnastics it requires to step out of them. This is a very elegant solution. Scattered about the teak decks are a quartet of sun pads for spreading out when the hook is down.

There are many, many options to consider on this vessel. For example, take the three different auxiliaries: an 80 hp diesel in a saildrive configuration; a 110 hp engine with a traditional shaft; or Beneteau’s proprietary Dock & Go docking system, a 360-degree rotating pod coupled with a retractable bow thruster that permits the driver to spin the boat in the tightest of spaces. Two rigs are offered: a standard in-mast furling spar measuring just under 79 feet, or a performance stick with a full-batten main and a towering air draft of 85 feet. Likewise, the cast-iron keels, with affixed bulbs, are available in a standard deep version (8 feet, 2 inches) or an optional shoal-draft (6 feet, 7 inches) package.

The boat comes with a full suite of B&G instrumentation, which is as good as it gets, and a standard, proprietary “Ship Control” feature that allows you to monitor and control all the boat’s systems, autopilot, tankage, and so on via a monitor, a tablet, or an app. We’re talking thoroughly modern here. The fiberglass construction is straightforward and employs a balsa core from the deck rail to the keel, as well as an aluminum subfloor that provides structural rigidity to the yacht.

The accommodations and furniture below are clean, contemporary and striking; the Wally influence is clearly very much in play. The standard wood employed is walnut Alpi, which I found hard to beat. There are two floor plans, both of which have a generous saloon and a large owner’s cabin with an en suite head forward and twin, double staterooms aft; a choice of two or three heads are the difference between them (the third head tightens up the galley, to port, opposite the navigation station to starboard). The three-head layout also provides for a tight captain’s quarters in the bow, a space that is otherwise reserved for a giant step-down locker for sails, fenders and such.

We sea-trialed the boat in fairly perfect fall Chesapeake conditions: bright sunshine, blue skies and a sweet, ideal southwesterly of 15 knots or so. And I can state unequivocally that the Oceanis Yacht 54 is simply a blast to sail. The helms are equipped with comfortable seats. All running rigging is led below the deck to winch stations within arm’s length of the wheels that provide ready access to sail trim; this is a boat laid out well for shorthanded maneuvering (the Harken AST system, which stands for “assisted sail trim,” is optional). Upwind, the easily tacked 107 percent genoa further facilitated the easy operation, but the real fun began when we cracked off and unrolled the powerful code zero headsail and cleaved through the small chop effortlessly. The boat was fitted with an impressive suit of excellent sails from French sailmaker Incidence.

With the Oceanis Yacht 54, Beneteau has tacked off on a slightly different but very smooth direction. It’s clearly evident in this distinctive design.

Specifications

Length Overall: 56′2″ (17.2 m)

Waterline Length: 50′6″ (15.4 m)

Beam: 6′5″ (5.0 m)

Draft: 6′7″/8′2″ (1.85/2.49 m)

Sail Area (100%): 1,227 sq. ft. (114 sq. m)

Ballast: 9,918 lb. (4,498 kg)

Displacement: 36,586 lb. (16,595 kg)

Ballast/Displacement: 0.27

Displacement/Length: 127

Sail Area/Displacement: 17.8

Water: 190 gal. (720 L)

Fuel: 106 gal. (250 L)

Mast Height: 78′9″ (24 m)

Engine Specifications: 80 hp Diesel with Saildrive

Designer: Biscontini Yacht Design – Lorenzo Argento (Interior)

Price: $875,000

Sea Trial

Wind Speed: 14 to 15 knots

Sea State: Moderate

Sailing: Closehauled 8.3 knots – Reaching 7.5 knots

Motoring: Cruise (2,300 rpm) 8.4 knots – Fast (2,800 rpm) 8.9 knots

beneteau.com

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor.

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I am always looking for creative ways to reduce waste. So when I had a pair of wet-weather bibs that no longer kept me dry, I didn’t automatically assume they were no longer useful. If sailing has taught me anything, it is to adapt to the conditions and work with what you have.

The overalls looked good, but they didn’t work. This was evident during a wet passage from Fiji to New Caledonia. When I got off my midnight watch, I was soaked. And when I woke for my 0600 watch, I noticed flecks of the neon green all over my body. Either I was slowly morphing into the Hulk or I was covered in the bib’s waterproof lining.

I was extremely disappointed that my newish gear had failed, but there was no way to return it. That ship had sailed, literally. It seemed a waste to put the heavy, durable fabric in the bin, so I put it in my sewing stash under the bunk. Of course, like most things shoved under the bunk, it was forgotten for months. OK, maybe years, but when I rediscovered it, I knew exactly what to do.

I’d been wanting to replace my defunct heavy-duty tote bag that I use for provisioning. I needed a bag that could comfortably sling over my shoulder and had a wide enough opening for large items such as a leafy head of Napa cabbage but could be tied shut so nothing fell out on a bumpy dinghy ride home. It had to be lightweight and foldable but sturdy enough to carry at least 20 pounds. It was time to turn those old overalls into the provisioning bag of my dreams.

Read More: Green Wakes

The obvious choice was to utilize the bib and body of the overalls. After removing the elastic shoulder straps and saving them for a future project, I cut off the legs. What was left was a good-size bag with a slight hole in the bottom, but it was nothing that a few seams and details couldn’t fix. I sewed the bottom closed, and doubled the reinforcement on the seam for added strength. Then I added webbing straps and created a long tie in the center of the bag opening, using both to keep the top closed and to tie the bag when folded small.

With the remaining fabric from the legs I made a smaller bag. I used webbing from an old camera bag for the shoulder strap, incorporating a plastic hook for somewhere handy to hang a dinghy key. I also added a narrow pocket on the outside, just perfect to keep a phone or radio within reach.

Strong, lightweight and washable, these two customized bags have become a staple when I head out to provision. I love that I am avoiding single-use plastic-bag waste. As the old saying goes, everything on a boat should do two jobs.

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