Blue Water Sailing March 2018

SUMMER SAILING VACATION GUIDE

CRUISING WORLDWIDE

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MARCH 2018

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MARCH 2018

{ CONTENTS }

28

16 28 Cruising Life

16 World Cruising

Sailing to the Revolution

Denmark

From Liston on the Atlantic coast, they cruise to Gibraltar, the south of Spain and the Balearic Islands

by John Neal

Part 1: Looking back at a family cruise that took them straight into the Cuban revolution

by Mark Florman

34 Bluewater Adventure

Francois Gabart: Superman The handsome, mild mannered Frenchman, did the impossible when he knocked six days off the solo round the world record

by Brian Hancock

38 Practical Passage

Cyclones in French Polynesia

24

When compared to other tropical cruising paradises, French Polynesia is the least likey to suffer hurricanes or cyclones

by Dr. John Freeland

42 World Sailing Adventures

24 Classic Passage

The Maiden Voyage Part 1: Hong Kong to the Phillipines in the ongoing saga of the new Kraken 66 White Dragon’s maiden voyage from China to Gibraltar

by Dick Beaumont

42 We Love Morocco

From Mallorca in Spain’s Balearic Islands, to Morocco and then the Canary Islands

by John Neal and Amanda Swan Neal

54 Summer Sailing Vacation Guide New cruising grounds and new cruising skills

52 Blue Water Boats

Moody Deck Saloon 54 The new Bill Dixon design is a proper yacht that a couple could easily sail around the world

by George Day

DEPARTMENTS 6 8 12 42 4

Captain’s Log Blue Water Dispatches Biewenga Offshore Charter Companies

66 69 72 74

Chandlery Brokerage Classifieds Broad Reaching-Andy Cross

Cover photo: Kraken 66 White Dragon in Madagascar Photo: Trystan Grace and Kraken Yachts

BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

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{ CAPTAIN’SLOG }

BLUE WATER

Skippering a Bareboat Charter

M

ost BWS readers are experienced sailors and many have taken bareboat charters in the Caribbean and around the states. But not all of us have had the chance to be the actual skipper of a bareboat charter and there is a real difference between sailing as crew and running the boat

as the skipper.

To begin with, the boat you have chartered is likely to be new to you and may be quite a lot newer and more modern than your own boat at home.

In a monohull, it is likely that you will have an in-mast furling mainsail.

If you haven’t sailed with one before, learning how it works and using it safely requires a bit of study and some caution as you get used to handling the outhaul and furling lines together to deploy and then reef and furl the sail without jamming the system.

In a multihull, you will probably have a large, fully battened mainsail with a boom that is quite high off the deck or above the flybridge. Getting the main halyard attached can require an acrobatic mast climb. These sails can be quite heavy and may have a double purchase on the halyard.

Just raising it can be difficult without an electric winch or a way to lead the halyard to the windlass. And, if you haven’t used an electric halyard winch, remember to watch the top of the sail as you hoist so you don’t rip the headboard out at the masthead.

All charter boats have roller furling headsails and there are few of us who have not sailed extensively with a roller furling genoa. But, as you are new to the boat, the sails and the sheet leads, you will have to experiment with the position of the leads to make sure the headsail is setting properly and trimmed for optimum performance.

It’s the skipper’s job to make sure the full crew knows how to roll out, hoist, reef and trim the sails so that everyone can take part in the sailing process and so that sloppy sheet handling in a sudden squall doesn’t end up with a damaged sail or a line overboard and wrapped around the propeller.

And, it’s the skipper’s job to know where and how to use all of the boat’s safety equipment including the radios, flares, flashlights, and fire extinguishers. On the first day, it is prudent to run a quick man-overboard drill just to get everyone aware of the danger of falling over the side and to appreciate the maneuvers needed to make a safe recovery. Practicing a drill will help build your crew into a functioning team.

Bareboats are usually well equipped but there are a few things we always bring with us when we charter a boat. Here’s my list: a hand-held GPS, a paper chart of the area we’ll be chartering, the local cruising guide, my own hand-held VHF, a couple of bright flashlights and at least one head lamp with spare batteries, a roll of duct tape, a multifunction hand-tool, a good knife, my own mask, snorkel and fins, a simple fishing rig with a couple of lures and a good quality bottleopener with a corkscrew.

Being prepared is the essence of being a good skipper and getting everyone onboard up to speed on sailing, safety and emergency procedures is how a good skipper forms a good crew that will not only enjoy being in a fun charter destination but will also have more fun sailing the boat.

6

photo by Bill Kund

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BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

{ CRUISINGDISPATCHES }

ANTIGUA

L

A sailor’s home away from home in the Caribbean by George Day

ast fall, the Salty Dawg Fall Rally, which usually ends at the Bitter End Yacht Club in the BVI, had to go to plan B after Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the Virgin Islands. The obvious choice was to end the rally in Antigua, which had been only lightly hit by the hurricanes and had all of its marine services up and running.

There were over 70 boats in last fall’s rally and about 50 of them sailed straight to Antigua, which added a day to the passage as compared to making landfall in the BVI. Rosie and I didn’t sail down; instead, we made use of a 757 and then rented an Airbnb overlooking Falmouth Harbour.

We did not have any sea stories to tell from our trip. But that’s okay.

We were there as part of the rally but only in a kind of unof8

ficial way. SDSA board member Bob Osborne, sailed his Aerodyne 47 Pandora in the rally and was instrumental in arranging for on the ground support and events when the fleet got there.

Antigua knows a thing or two about hosting sailing events and the rally arrived just at the start of the winter season when there is not a lot going on. So, marine vendors, the Antigua Yacht Club, The Inn at English Harbour and many local businesses extended the fleet a very warm welcome. There is no question that Antigua has a well-earned reputation for being the sailing capital of the Caribbean and the island that sailors often call their second home in the Caribbean.

WHERE THE ACTION IS For sailors there are

three harbors that are both very secure and well served by marinas, anchorages and marine service companies.

Jolly Harbour, on the island’s west coast is part of a fully builtout resort, condo-development with a large marina. The Horizon Yacht Charter fleet is based there.

Cruisers have access to good nearby markets, restaurants and ground transportation. If you are leaving your boat for any length of time, Jolly Harbour is a good choice where it will be safe from bad weather and also safe from

Mill at Betty's Hope BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

the possibility of theft. Plus, Customs and Immigration are right next door, so coming and going is fairly easy.

English Harbour at the southern end of the island is where the yachting business got its start in Antigua after the second World War. Commander Nicholson sailed his 72-foot schooner Mollihawk across the Atlantic from his home in Ireland and launched the first sailing charter business in the Caribbean. The Nicholsons took up residence in English Harbour and restored some of the old buildings left behind by the vanished British Fleet.

English Harbour has a long and storied naval history and was once home to Lord Nelson when he was a young man. Today, the whole Dockyard area is a national monument and a tourist attrac-

Shirley Heights

tion. There are two hotels, the Inn and the Copper & Lumber Store as well as a couple of good restaurants. Sunsail Charters has their base here. Nearby you will find a good grocery store, a North Sails loft, good canvas shops for repairs or new boat canvas, and a couple of marine hardware stores.

Antiguans are famous for their professional marine repairs and maintenance and if you want to have your varnish renewed, this is

the place to do it. Marine service workers used to be very inexpensive but that is not the case anymore.

English Harbour is the best hurricane hole in Antigua since its inner harbors are surrounded by mangroves that provide a very secure place to moor your boat when a big storm is forecast. Barbuda, Antigua’s sister island, was leveled by Hurricane Maria last summer and is only just beginning

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{ CRUISINGDISPATCHES }

to recover but Antigua was largely spared.

Falmouth Harbour is a large well protected bay just north of English Harbour which has become the winter home of many large mega-yachts. Three large marinas offer dock space at a price and the open anchorage is very secure. The Antigua Yacht Club is open to the public and welcomes cruisers and sailors with open

arms. This is a great place to meet local sailors and to get involved with the local racing scene. All the marine service businesses that serve English Harbour are also right next to Falmouth Harbour.

CRUISING ANTIGUA You can spend lots of time exploring the bays and harbors around Antigua and many of them have beautiful beaches and good

beach bars or resorts. The most popular are Falmouth and English Harbour but once you have spent time in these two it can be fun to explore elsewhere.

All along the west side of the island, inside Cades Reef along Goat Head Channel, there are several attractive anchorages where you will find secure holding and relative peace, except for the day tripping cruise ship tourists who come and go in high speed motorboats or large catamarans. But these crowds will be gone by late afternoon.

Five Island Harbour, just south of the capital St. John’s is a good place to anchor when you want to make use of the shopping in the town and Parham Harbour on the northeast coast is a good place to meet folks flying in to the airport nearby.

The whole east coast of the

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• March 2018

Devils Bridge

island is strewn with reefs and there are few channel markers so you have to use eyeball navigation and good light to stay in the channels. That said, there are some good places to anchor that will not be overrun by tourists and day trippers.

Our favorite anchorage, when there is not a big easterly swell running, is behind Green Island on the southeast corner of Antigua. The beach is beautiful and the snorkeling and diving around the island spectacular.

ANTIGUA ASHORE There are a few touristy things to do ashore that will be fun ways to stretch your legs and to get to know more about the island. A visit to Betty’s Hope, an old sugar cane mill, will give you a good insight in to the history of Antigua and Barbuda. A drive out to Devil’s Bridge on a day with big swells running will give you a spectacular wave show. You can climb the island’s tallest hill which was recently renamed Mount Obama after our last president. It used to be called Boggy Peak. The views are said to be spectacular.

You don’t really go to the Caribbean for its fine dining, but Antigua does have a few really good restaurants. You’ll them around Jolly Harbour and at some of the resorts that are open to the public. Our favorite is the Inn at English Harbour.

If you are in Antigua on Sunday, then the weekly party at Shirley Heights overlooking English Harbour, is a fun way to end a weekend with a cold beer or two and barbecue. The music is good, the food delicious and the views as the sun sets beautiful. On a clear evening, this is a prime spot to witness a green flash as the sun sinks into the Caribbean.BWS

Falmouth Harbour www.bwsailing.com

11

{ BILLBIEWENGA }

@Laurie Warner

It’s a cry that is so alarming that it’s against the law to falsely scream that word in a movie theater. It’s no less alarming at sea. But the time to prepare for emergencies is long before the dock lines are tossed off. Safety at sea begins now!

F

ire, of course is only one example of a potential emergency offshore. I don’t consider it any great claim to fame that I’ve faced most of them already: heavy weather, rigs over the side, structural failures, men overboard, failed steering systems, water gushing in through the bottom of the boat. The few problems I haven’t faced, I don’t want to face. But the fact remains that as long as I continue to click off more sea miles, the possibility still exists that I might have to confront a few more situations. Whether we’re diehard racers or cruisers, whether we day sail or prefer ocean crossings, safety and a knowledge of how to handle emergencies is important for all of us to know and understand. In fact, it may be more crucial for those of us who cruise with a limited number of crew. In an emergency, there will be fewer people to help remedy the situation. It could be more critical 12

for us to know how best to deploy the right solution for a given emergency.

A few years of experience and dealing with more than a few problems has certainly helped me to realize that I prefer problem avoidance to problem solving. Even the best preparations, however, do not eliminate the possibility of emergencies. People get sick, weather forecasts go bust, leaks occur, wiring short circuits and problems arise. It happens. Fortunately for all of us there are people in this country and around the world who are dedicated to helping sailors better understand safety at sea and how to be prepared for most of the common emergencies one might run into “out there”. Now, during the Northern Hemisphere winter and spring, we have some of the best opportunities available to sharpen our safety at sea skills.

Perhaps one of the best ways in which we can BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

{ OFFSHORE }

improve those skills is by taking a US Sailing Safety At Sea Seminar. (See: www.ussailing.org/education/ safety-at-sea/) Whether you’re a racer preparing for an offshore race or a cruiser planning to take your family down the coast, attending the lectures presented by experienced, knowledgeable sailors will help you to develop emergency plans and select and better understand the appropriate equipment. US Sailing offers four types of courses, based upon the type of sailing you’re planning to do and how you would prefer to take those courses. For blue water sailors, there is the Offshore Safety at Sea course, a one day lecture-type series, and the two-day International Offshore Safety at Sea with Hands-on Training.

US Sailing’s one day Offshore Safety at Sea seminar covers personal safety gear, man overboard procedures, emergency communications and search and rescue as well as heavy weather, storm sails, crew health, jury rigging, life rafts and other topics. tThe topics are presented by people who understand the subject matter intimately, and they are there to help spread their knowledge to other sailors.

The two day course with hands-on training includes time in a pool, as you actually inflate your lifejacket to

Learn best case scenarios for man overboard maneuvers at safety-at-sea classes

discuss how best to use it and what are its limitations.

Time is spent with each person getting into a life raft so they thoroughly understand the best procedures for getting into a raft, how various rafts work and are re-righted if necessary, and what the value of the features are that they may have on their own life rafts.

Attendees actually fire off flares so they understand how to safely use those pieces of equipment if necessary, and they hear from additional experts on topics

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such as life slings, rigging and deployment of storm sails. To find out the location of US Sailing’s Safety at Sea Seminars, please see: www.ussailing.org/education/safety-at-sea/find-a-seminar-near-you/ If you have the mistaken impression that jumping into the water with an inflated personal flotation device, unequipped with leg / crotch straps will be fine, you should try it in a pool – with supervision. The experience will be enlightening.

Of course, not everyone can get to a suitable location, so US Sailing has made courses also available online. Those can be found at: www.boaterexam.com/sailing/safetyatsea/ Additionally, numerous experts have contributed to US Sailing’s Safety at Sea book, The 220-page book was written to help people better understand how to deal with many of the common emergencies encountered while at sea. You can find the book online at: www.landfallnavigation.com/us-sailing. The book presents real life situations by people who know what they’re talking about. Regardless of how experienced you might be, I’m sure you will find new and interesting approaches to safety in this book. I have, and the review is always helpful.

US Sailing isn’t the only organization offering insights into safety issues encountered at sea. The Storm Trysail Club is, and has been, a strong advocate and educator on how to effectively deal with problems at sea. For years they have also offered hands-on training

14

BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

and junior safety programs. For a modest fee to help cover costs, sailors can conveniently access videos covering a variety of topics: Practical Man Overboard Recovery (24 mins.)

Understanding Weather (23 mins.)

Understanding Offshore Weather (24 mins.)

Flares and Pyrotechnic Devices (6 mins.)

Storm Sails (12 mins.)

Shipboard Firefighting Strategies (4 mins.)

Fighting Shipboard Fires (7 mins.)

Personal Safety Equipment (27 mins.)

Cold water survival & Life Rafts (3 min.)

Deploying a Life Raft (6 mins.)

(See: https://stormtrysailfoundation.org/21safety/114-safety-at-sea-videos) For sailors interested in how to steer a boat that has lost its rudder, I would suggest watching Mike Keyworth’s video available for free at: www.youtube. com/watch?v=ABSCT7y9vnI&feature=youtu.be Regardless of where you get your information, it is worthwhile to put yourself in front of the knowledge that will serve you and your crew well. Now is the time of year during which you can prepare yourselves for the summer ahead. Having a “pizza night” with your crew, during which you watch some of the above videos, you can add to your planning session while potentially making a critical difference in your own safety and that of your crew.

Several years ago, George David, owner of Rambler, the 100’ record setting sailboat, privately arranged for Dan O’Connor to oversee a safety at sea pool session for his crew. Dan is the man who has overseen the pools sessions for the US Sailing Safety at Sea Seminar at the U.S. Naval Academy as well as numerous other events, and he represents the type of quality of speakers that are available at other safety at sea events.

Other boat owners have privately arranged to have personalized weather seminars presented to their crews or yacht clubs. The Cruising Club of America makes materials available for groups to host their own “Suddenly Alone” program – now called “Safety for Cruising Couples”. (See: www.cruisingclub.org/ safety/suddenly) Surround yourself with knowledgeable people, and learn all you can so you can contribute solutions when the inevitable problems arise. The talent that you help to create will be there when you need talent the most.

BWS

Bill Biewenga is a navigator, delivery skipper and weather router. His websites are www.weather4sailors. com and www.WxAdvantage.com. He can be contacted at billbiewenga@cox.net

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12/1/2017 11:20:25 AM

{ WORLDCRUISING }

With a changing cast of crew, the skipper of Skylark, sails up the North Sea from Holland to Sweden, down the Baltic Sea to Germany and home through the Kiel Canal

CIRCUMNAVIGATING

Denmark in Six Weeks

E

v e r y s u m m e r, m y teenage sons have sixweek summer holidays allowing me and my 1973 Pearson 36, Skylark to visit more distant European harbors from her European base in Enkhuizen, The Netherlands. We did the Malts Cruise, several trips to the Channel Islands, the 2015 America’s Cup trials in Portsmouth, UK and the summer of 2017, we sailed around Denmark. All the way around.

For these longer trips, I begin a call for crew the preceding fall.

Also, I place an ad on Crewfinder. com detailing the tour I was plan16

by George DuBose, photos by Skylark's crew

ning and Virgilio F. contacted me wanting more information. Virgilio is from Portugal, speaks and reads English very well and is building sea miles. I informed him that he could join the boat in The Netherlands and remain onboard until the Admiral (my wife) arrives.

The plan was to reach as far east as Sassnitz on the island of Rügen in Germany. Sassnitz was once a major East German ferry port and I thought it would be easy to reach for my wife and one son by the good German train system.

As winter turned to spring, Dominic, an English sailor and old friend signed on, followed by Paul,

an American friend and finally, Rick, another American friend from my college days. It was arranged that Richard, Jack, Virgilio and myself would take Skylark to Gothenburg and make a crew change. Richard and Jack only had one week and that got them to Gothenburg. Dominic and Paul would arrive in Gothenburg and help me get Skylark to Copenhagen.

Crossing the North Sea wasn’t the highlight of the tour. It all started well enough. Richard’s baggage had been left in Frankfurt and was to be delivered later to Schiphol, Jack, his son, was flying into Schiphol and would collect BLUE WATER SAILING

• October 2017

Richard’s bag. Rather than wait for Jack at Skylark’s Dutch marina, we decided to head for Vlieland, one of the Dutch Friesen Islands eight hours away where Jack met us by high-speed ferry.

PASSAGE TO GOTHENBURG The next morning, July 18th, we left Vlieland at 0930 and headed northeast to Skagen, DK. Of course, the wind was coming from the northeast but the weather was sunny. Our first evening, the sky was clear and there was no land on the western horizon, so there a chance of seeing a green flash. Over evening cocktails, we watched the sun slowly set and just as it dipped below the horizon, we saw not only a green flash, but the green flash was followed a nanosecond later by a smaller blue flash.

I have seen green flashes at sunrise, double green flashes at sunset, but never a green/blue combo.

That night, the skies turned grey and began to drizzle off and on for the next two days. The winds were from the northeast and reached 25 knots in the gusts.

I had prepared chili con carne and spaghetti sauce in advance to cut down on cooking in a seaway and it was good that I did. As it was, we ate chili for three meals in a row.

The waves seemed to be coming from two directions and, since Skylark has a fin keel, she was being tossed around and wanted to be steered by hand. The autopilot wasn’t keeping up with the wave action. Even though Skylark has several good sea-berths with lee cloths, we were having a very bumpy ride and sleep was difficult.

By the time we reached Skagen, the weather was still lousy. We were into our third day crossing the North Sea, so we decided not to stop and continued on straight www.bwsailing.com

to Gothenberg, Sweden.

I had just updated the Navionics compact flash cards for the trip.

At €100 for each chart card, I had my local boatyard do the updates for me. But, when I changed the chart card from the UK/Netherlands to Skagen/Kattegat, the chartplotter began to freeze leaving one-to-two minute lags in the ship’s position. Navigating through a narrow, but well-marked channel in the rocky islands southwest of Gothenberg and having the chartplotter freeze wasn’t relaxing.

When we reached Gothenberg, I sent emails to Navionics and to Raymarine to ask if it was a chart problem or a problem with the chartplotter. Should I refresh the system of the chartplotter? Raymarine said that wouldn’t help and Navionics told me that the problem was my old chartplotter. Apparently, Navionics chart updates are designed for Raymarine’s newer MFDs and that there is a problem with using these updates on a nineyear-old chartplotter.

I was instructed to put the

Navionics card into my laptop’s card reader and delete the “data” file and all files ending in .bp2. The Skagerrak/Kattegat card worked smoothly after that so I removed these files from my other two newly updated cards. Somebody should have told me before.

Reaching Gothenberg 85 hours after leaving Vlieland, we motored up the harbor to the marina that is closest to the center of the city, right next to the Gothenberg Opera House. Richard and Jack left on Sunday, July 23rd and Dominic and Paul arrived on Monday, July 24th.

DOWN THE KATTEGAT We left for the Danish island, Læsø, on Tuesday, July 25th, and arrived late in the afternoon. The day sail was only about 55 miles and we arrived in Vestero Havn.

We called the harbormaster on the VHF, who said he would meet us in the harbor. We spotted the young harbormaster in an inflatable and he signaled us to follow him. As we entered the marina, I didn’t see any spaces available. I

Feeding the crew from dog bowls when in a seaway has been a long tradition aboard Skylark. The bowls don't slip or tip 17

Docking is not for the faint of heart; Skylark at the Darsser Ort dock

did notice that the boats packed into the harbor were fixed to buoys by single stern lines. The young man stopped and pointed at the moored boats and said, “Go in there.”

“Go in where?”, I replied.

I didn’t see any spaces available.

Evidently, one just slowly pushes one’s bow into the pack and the

new neighbors fend you off with boathooks and roving fenders. The final trick is to catch the ring on the stern mooring buoy and use the tension on the stern line to keep one’s bow off the dock.

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks?

The fairway in Vestero’s harbor was so narrow that while maneuvering out of the pack the following morning, our prop caught one of the lines from the stern buoys.

Of course, all the Danes and Swedes were watching our “haven kino” to see what we were going to do. Paul didn’t hesitate to dive under Skylark and untangle the buoy line from our prop while the rest of us made sure that we didn’t play bumper cars with the other boats in the tiny harbor.

We left Læsø for Anholt, a smaller Danish island with only one harbor. We sailed past what was described as the world’s largest wind park. I thought I had already seen that on the west coast of Denmark, after we sailed all night past a steady line of distant blinking red lights. Again, we were faced with the stern line, catch the ring on the buoy and squeeze into the scrum.

Anholt is a treat and has a long history as a strategic military point in the Kattegat. There is a small selection of restaurants and shops near the harbor, but one can rent a bicycle and pedal up the long steep hill to the village.

The village consists of small year-round houses, vacation homes, a few more restaurants and that’s it. Eighty percent of the island is what they call Ørkenen, “the des-

ert”. Acres of unfarmed land the east end of which is home to the largest seal colony in Denmark.

COPENHAGEN

From Anholt, we headed towards Copenhagen and since we wouldn’t reach the capitol until sometime in the evening, we decided to anchor in a cove on the north shore of the Isefjord, near Nykøbing on the island of Zealand.

The cove was well-sheltered and had good holding in mud.

The following morning, we headed towards Copenhagen and had to fight a strong northerly current for several hours in the channel between Hamlet’s castle and the Swedish shore. As we approached Copenhagen, we opted to find a slip in Svanemollehavnen marina.

We were beginning to experience harbormaster phone numbers and VHF calls that weren’t being answered. The rest of the Danish marinas we visited in the following days had automatic machines that when presented with a credit card would print out a proof-of-payment sticker to fix to one’s bowrail and also a card for electricity use and showers. One could “load” the card with money for showers for the whole crew and actually get a refund for any unused money to one’s credit card when checking out.

When we learned just how far Svanemollehavnen was from Copenhagen’s center, we thought about trying to berth in the small marina directly in the center of town, but surveying that harbor after we taxied into the center of town, we decided it was too crowded and too noisy.

The following morning, we left Svanemollehavnen early and went to Langelinie Havn, the marina next to the famous Little Mermaid statue. We learned that it was imBLUE WATER SAILING

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portant when trying to get a slip in a popular marina during the holiday season, to arrive very early and wait for a departing boat to vacate a slip. This strategy served us well for the rest of the tour.

There was a Netto supermarket a few blocks from Langelinie Havn and I was happy that I brought along a folding hand truck, as carrying 22-liter bottles of drinking water back to the boat was made much simpler. Although Skylark’s freshwater tanks are clean and treated seasonally with water purifying chemicals, I prefer not to trust unknown tap water from the docks.

Having never visited Copenhagen and knowing what an interesting and historic city it is, we did the tourist thing...took a bus tour around the city and then extended our tour by taking an open tour boat around the channels that make up Copenhagen.

Copenhagen was and is a very wealthy city, the kings and queens having “his” and “hers” castles and much of the older architecture is unique. In Copenhagen, Dominic and Paul left Skylark and my college pal, Rick, arrived. Virgilio was into his third week on board and proving to be a real asset. He was showing me features of my chartplotter that I wasn’t aware of and I was correcting some of his knots.

We headed south for the harbor of Rødvig and again, found no harbormaster present. But the showers were clean and there turned out to be an excellent Thai restaurant nearby.

The next port-of-call was Gedser, in the most southern part of Denmark. Great showers, diesel paid with a card, but the town, once a thriving ferry port and fishing harbor, seemed to be in decline with the ferries relocated, the train station closed and no convenient www.bwsailing.com

restaurant. We had so much food on board that it was a relief to have to eat on board.

ON TO GERMANY

Virgilio left us at Gedser. Rick and I filled the diesel tanks and left for Sassnitz, originally a ferry port on the East German island of Rügen, near the the harbor, we just tied alongside.

Polish border. I was to meet my As we began our cocktail hour, wife and one of my sons in Sass- we saw plenty of cranes and herons nitz, who were taking a train from along the marshy shore and, later, Cologne where we live. we were surprised to see an eightI read in one of my English cruis- point buck appear on the shore. ing guides to the Baltic Sea, that The following morning, we there was an emergency harbor arose early, made a nice American called Darsser Ort, in a German breakfast of pancakes, maple syrup Nationalpark Vorpommersche, and bacon and left the harbor. near the town of Vingst. I was Again, there were no buoys markcurious about this harbor and the ing the channel and this time we cruising guide warned it is neces- ran aground. Hard. Not knowing sary to check the channel depth, as where the channel was for sure and it is often silted in and for Skylark’s knowing that Skylark’s keel doesn’t six-foot draft, unapproachable. like to reverse when aground, we Thanks to the AIS onboard, I tried to turn the boat around. The saw that there was a boat in the depth sounder showed 14 feet, but emergency harbor. The AIS further we weren’t moving. We were thinkinformed me that the boat was a ing of inflating the dinghy and usGerman search and rescue vessel ing a leadline to find the channel, named Theo Fischer. I radioed the then kedge off, when we saw the vessel and asked how deep was daughter ship approaching. the channel into the harbor. They They very kindly pulled us replied, “Three meters.” around by the bow and off the edge Noticing that there were no of the channel into deep water. buoys marking the channel, we They explained that the channel proceeded slowly and entering had only been dredged the previ the harbor saw that there was not only The ever-vigilant Theo Fischer, a one boat,but two. Theo German SAR vessel with its daughter ship pulled up on to its stern.

Fischer had a daughter boat on her stern.

Ms. Fischer was probably 25 meters long and the daughter boat was at least 10 meters.

We approached a low wooden bridge and since we were the only recreational vessel in

{ WORLDCRUISING }

Some tourists ride the covered wagons to get a guided tour of Hiddensee, others choose to rent bicycles. E-bikes are a great invention

ous week, so the sides were very steep, going from three meters to half a meter in just a short distance.

The buoys were to be reinstalled the following week.

Pointing us in the right direction, off we went. Favorable winds drove us along the north coast of Rügen, past the chalk cliffs, one of which is the famous “Konigstuhl” (King’s chair). Apparently, all the chalk cliffs on Rugen have names.

We reached Sassnitz in the early afternoon and entered the large former ferry harbor. We stopped at a new marina that wasn’t there when we had visited by land 15 years earlier. The German government has plowed a lot of money into the infrastructure of East Germany. There were now several major supermarkets in town and artists had moved into unused buildings and turned them into studios.

When my wife arrived, there was a music and art festival running. The ambience of Sassnitz and its waterfront had undergone a remarkable improvement. The only problem I found in Sassnitz was that the marina had no washer or dryer and the whole town of Sassnitz had no laundromat. So, it was back to washing in a bucket 20

and drying on the lifelines.

From Sassnitz, my wife, son and I headed for the island of Hiddensee. The approach to the harbors on the west side of Hiddensee is through some very narrow, but well-marked channels. It was a bit unnerving to be motoring in the three meter deep narrow channel to the recommended harbor at Klöster and seeing ducks and swans standing just 10 meters away.

Again, arriving around noon meant we could get a slip in the very popular small harbor there.

Hiddensee is an old tourist destination and there are no cars allowed on the island. There are plenty of bike rentals and using an e-bike was a blessing for my old knees.

After Hiddensee, my family and I headed to Warnemünde near Rostock. My wife went to pay for the slip, returning with the complaint that the marina had doubled the normal price. It was the weekend of the HansaSail Rostock, a two-day festival of tall ships. The German navy’s sail training ship Gorsch Fock, a three master from Brazil and many old gaffers from Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands were parading up and down the Warne river.

For two nights we were treated to world-class firework shows 500 meters from our slip. Well worth the extra 20 euros.

From Warnemünde, we headed to the German island of Fehmarn and got a slip in the marina at Burgtiefe. There was a sandy beach there with a waterpark. That meant my son wanted to stay another day to play on the waterslides and trampolines. I, on the other hand, occupied myself half a day battling for the washing machines and dryers to catch up on the laundry chores.

THE KIEL CANAL

After Fehmarn, we went to Kiel to be close to the entrance of the Kiel Canal as I was planning to head west through the canal after my wife and son departed and my two Dutch crewmen, Casper and Krijn, arrived.

That day, the chartplotter began to lose the GPS status and although we could see the chart and embedded information, the boat’s position wasn’t showing up.

My 30-year-old Magellan Pioneer handheld had finally given up the

BLUE WATER SAILING

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ghost. I googled reviews of the best new handheld GPSs and the Garmin 78 series seemed to have the best reports. Then I googled where in Kiel I would find one and the only result I found was at the German chain of chandleries named A.W. Niemeyer.

The Garmin 78 out of the box only came with a “world chart” giving no buoyage or depth details. To get a Garmin chart of the North Sea would take three days so I was going to have to content myself with using the Garmin to get a fix and then placing that on my paper chart.

Since arriving in The Netherlands, I have learned how to negotiate locks. I was a bit intimidated by the fact that large ocean-going freighters use the Kiel Canal and my options were either transiting the 50 mile long canal from east to west in one day or stopping at one of the midway marinas. It isn’t permitted for recreational craft to be on the canal after sundown.

My Dutch crew and I arrived at the east entrance of the canal at 0700 and had to wait about 45 minutes for permission to enter the locks. We tied to a floating platform and waited for the water level to rise and the gate to open.

Then, it was pedal to the metal, 3000 rpms for the next nine hours to the lock that takes you to the Elbe River.

As we left the canal and entered the river, my crew was on the foredeck stowing the mooring lines and suddenly we were in a wind against tide situation with one meter waves every two meters.

My crew got soaked immediately before I could tell them to get off the pitching bow and back in the cockpit.

We battled the waves and southerly currents for two hours before the current in the Elbe www.bwsailing.com

My Dutch crewmen at the helm of Skylark during her one-day transit of the Kiel Canal.

slackened and after four hours we reached the marina at Cuxhaven.

The following morning, we topped off the fuel and water tanks, headed back out into the Elbe and headed down river towards the North Sea. The Elbe carves a deep channel through its delta and one has to watch the chart and the buoys carefully. There are drying sand banks on both sides of the channel.

On top of navigating carefully, one has to watch for the dozens of ocean-going freighters, container ships and pilot boat heading up

and downstream. Very fascinating, but at the same time nervewracking.

HOMEWARD BOUND

We had departed at daylight in order to see and be seen by the heavy river traffic, but that meant we were again fighting the current flowing into the Elbe, but unlike the day before, the wind had turned to the north and was blowing the same direction the tide was flowing, which meant we faced a headwind all the way to Helgoland island, our next port-of-call.

The harbor at Helgoland is divided by moles and the yacht harbor often experiences over-crowding with yachts rafted together, sometimes 5-6 boats deep.

{ WORLDCRUISING }

Skylark is a regular visitor to the small and always crowded harbor on Vlieland, one of the Dutch Friesen islands. The harbormasters know her from her frequent visits and always find a space. Again, it’s always good to arrive in the morning when boats are leaving.

The yacht harbor on Helgoland is not small, but it can often be filled with yachts rafting five deep from the docks. Such was the case for us, but we were only the third boat out on our raft, with the other two boats initially trying to discourage us from tying to them by telling us that they were leaving at 0500.

I know this trick. No one likes drunken sailors stomping across their foredeck or falling in their cockpit at 0200. The good news was that both the other boats were going to be leaving at the same time and we would be able to tie directly to the dock, allowing us to reach shore power.

We had a very nice meal at the “Bunte Kuh” (colored cow) and spent the next day sightseeing and shopping for bargains. Hordes of tourists arrived on passenger ferries in the morning and departed in the afternoon and several yachts were having cases of booze delivered to the dockside for loading.

The morning of Thursday, August 23rd, we left for Vlieland, where we originally departed The Netherlands. There are four shipping lanes that follow the Dutch 22

and German coasts in an east/west direction. Our chartplotter was giving us fixes on a schedule of its own so we had to keep a careful watch.

As we sailed west, it took us almost all day to pass another wind park. It seems there is no end to the development of these wind parks in the seas around The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Though rather unsightly, they don’t really seem to be a risk to navigation, although they might be problematic in a fog and high seas. Besides wind parks, the North

Sea is also peppered with oil and gas platforms.

Continuing to sail with a south-east breeze, we headed west outside the northern most shipping lane. The weather forecast told us that the winds were to change from the southeast to the southwest sometime in the early morning of the next day. We wanted to position ourselves north of the Vlieland/Terschelling channel so we would reach it on a good point of sail.

We had dinner as the sun set and began the night watch schedule.

Around 0300, the wind died and then began to pick up from the southwest. We were sailing due south towards Vlieland. At 0400, Krijn and I were on watch and as we approached the east-bound lanes, I spied what appeared to be a 300 meter freighter. The nearer we got to the ship, the more it became apparent that the ship was moving very slowly.

Our AIS was not showing any ships at all or our ship’s position. I kept my eyes on the large freigher.

I could see the well-lit bridge deck on the stern and what appeared to

I spied what appeared to be a 300 meter freighter, as we got closer I was amused to see what I had thought was a freighter was in fact...an oil platform BLUE WATER SAILING

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be white lights on the bow. As we got closer, it looked as if the ship was at anchor. I thought they might be waiting to enter a German port for loading and were anchored to save fuel. Closer and closer we approached and I began to debate crossing in front of the massive freighter or being more prudent and going around her stern.

When I finally took out the binoculars to have a closer look, I was amused to see what I had thought was a freighter was in fact...an oil platform. The bow lights were a smaller ship, now moving away to the east.

When we finally reached the entrance to the small harbor at Vlieland, it was around 0700 and a call to the harbormaster was answered by a machine with the message that there were no vacancies. We anchored out of the channel next to the entrance and took naps. Around 1000, I radioed and got one of the harbormasters on the VHF who ho replied that he would call us after 1100 and would surely have a berth for us.

A day spent biking through the dunes of Vlieland out to the Old Post House for coffee and cakes was a nice well-repeated habit of Skylark’s crews and the next morning we timed our departure with the rising tide that would push us up the channel towards Harlingen, Netherlands on the mainland.

When we reached the lock at Kornwerderzand and the northeast entrance to the IJsselmeer, there was quite a scrum of boats to get into the lock. We were cut off by what I thought were very rude Dutchmen who jumped the que and then didn’t moor closely enough to the boat in front of them, leaving Skylark barely fitting into the lock.

Once through, one of the Dutch crew told me that the ship’s www.bwsailing.com

The usual lock scrum. The Dutch have no qualms about pushing each other around in the locks. If there is a race going on, they forget all their manners entirely.

voltmeter showed both banks were being charged at 18 volts! I quickly disconnected the cables to the engine bank and turned the battery switch so the house bank wasn’t being charged. The engine had been making a strange sound related to the rpms.

So, the next day after tidying up Skyark, I disconnected the alternator belt and seawater pump belt to see what was making an odd sound and quickly saw that the pulley on the Yanmar

3GM30F’s freshwater pump was wobbly. I think one of the water pump’s bearings had gone south.

So, the chartplotter isn’t receiving satellite data, the freshwater pump is history and the Balmar alternator is on the fritz. Luckily, this all happened at the end of what was otherwise, my best cruise to date.

BWS

George DuBose is an American living in Cologne, Germany. He sails his boat Skylark, a 1973 Pearson 36 with family and friends.

The massive lock doors at the east entrance to the Kiel Canal slide across the lock rather than swing open and shut. There are floating platforms that one secures one’s mooring lines too and the platform rises and falls with the lock’s water level

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The Maiden Voyage Part One: Hong Kong to the Philippines in the ongoing saga of the new Kraken 66 White Dragon’s maiden voyage from China to Gibraltar by Dick Beaumont

W

e were finally ready to leave Hong Kong on the Kraken 66 flagship White Dragon’s 18,000-mile voyage to Gibraltar.

We were a couple of days later than intended, but that’s how it normally goes when getting everything done before departure It’s been a frantic few days as we filled all of White Dragon’s storage spaces with food and drink plus all the paraphernalia one needs to be self-sufficient for an extended period at sea. Spares, filters, oils, sprays, glues, tapes, 24

fishing tackle, dive gear, hoses, pipes and every conceivable tool we might need have now been stowed away for the first leg of the trip. And we have provisioned up with special items that we may not be able to find easily on our voyage. Steve and Jack kindly brought a huge pack of 1000 PG Tips tea bags out from the U.K., so a good cup of tea will be assured for a good while!

We waved goodbye to the Kraken Yachts team of Roger, Sasha, Carrie, Raymond and Filip on the fueling dock at Gold Coast Yacht Club and headed out towards the South China Sea and the open ocean. White Dragon’s crew of Clive, Steve, Jack, Mike and I busied ourselves stowing the fenders and mooring lines and securing everything below decks as we sailed through Hong Kong’s

spectacular Victoria Harbour.

Our first leg was Hong Kong to Subic in the Philippines. This is a 576-mile passage and should take us three days. The weather GRIB files were showing perfect 17-to20 knot southeast winds for the first two days but this stretch of the South China Sea is notorious for testing fresh crews with stronger winds than forecast. So, no one was surprised when the wind built to 25 knots during the first few hours then steadily increased to 30-to-35 knots on the beam. We reefed down for the first night but still made 8 knots through 10-foot seas. White Dragon, older sister of the Kraken 50, was in her element as she stretched her legs and reveled in the conditions.

THE FIRST NIGHT & LANDFALL SUBIC The first night was uneventful as the crewmembers found their sea legs and we settled into our watch system. With five crew we run rolling watches. The first crew had two hours on helm full BLUE WATER SAILING

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watch. Then as the next crew comes on watch the first watch crew becomes standby watch for two hours in the cockpit.

As the second watch crew is relieved at the helm the first watch crew then goes below off-watch. I think this is an excellent system because off-watch crew rarely gets woken for sail changes since there are always two crew in the cockpit at any time. Once off-watch, each crew member has six hours in his bunk if needed.

We had prepared pre-cooked meals before leaving Hong Kong so no one needed to spend much time in the galley in the first few days. The wind stayed on the beam at 30 knots and we were running at 8 to 9 knots.

As we sailed into the lee of Luzon, The Philippines, the dawn broke and the wind began to ease slowly. By midday we had 18-to-25 knots slightly aft of the beam and the wave height had www.bwsailing.com

gone down to six feet. Since we only had 50 miles to go, I decided to keep sailing at top speed aiming so we could anchor for the night in a beautiful bay just outside Subic Bay. White Dragon performed beautifully, exactly how any luxury sailing yacht should do. We used the invaluable forward sonar to con our

way safely in and dropped anchor in 60 feet on a sandy seabed at 2200 hours.

We awoke early to weigh anchor at 0700 hours for the short run round into Subic Bay and tied up at Subic Bay Yacht Club at 1000 hours. White Dragon had ex 25

{ CLASSICPASSAGE }

ceeded our best expectations and maintained just under 9 knots for the duration of the trip. She had coped beautifully with quite big seas coming dead across the beam and she maintained a very steady motion the whole way. All in all, it was an excellent passage for the first leg of our big trip.

We stayed a few days in Subic adding more provisions and going out to dive on the wreck of the SS New York. We normally dive directly from White Dragon but were not permitted to do so on the wrecks in Subic without a licensed dive guide.

SUBIC TO CORON We left Subic at midday to sail 140 miles overnight to Coron.

Then, to liven things up a bit, just as we were about to set the sails at the mouth of Subic Bay,

the port side trolling reel screamed out. Jack duly landed a 25-pound Spanish mackerel, which is one of the tastiest game fish in the sea!

We picked up a 15 knot southerly wind and cracked on again averaging 8 knots for the trip.

As we approached Coron, the wind increased to 20-to-25 knots and shifted to ESE. Coron is a great area to cruise and dive because there’s always good shelter, many safe anchorages and almost

y e a r- r o u n d good winds to sail by. Coron is an interesting small town and diving tourism means there are plenty of good bars and restaurants. La Sirena is our favorite. It is located on the seafront in the west town anchorage and is an excellent place to eat great Filipino food or kick back and relax with a sundowner.

All the crew on White Dragon are avid wreck divers. So, the wrecks of the Japanese auxiliary

fleet in Coron Bay were high on our target list. Thanks to great visibility of 60-feet plus, they didn’t disappoint. These wrecks are not where they are shown on the chart. But, luckily, I had visited here 10 years before on my previous boat Moonshadow and had kept the GPS positions for the best wrecks. So, all went well. We dived on five of the wrecks during our three-day stop in Coron.

CORON TO PRINCESA We needed to leave Coron a day early. Despite being assured

by Customs and Immigration at Subic that we could clear out of the Philippines at Coron, there is in fact no customs and mmigration o f f i c e t h e re .

So, we had to change our plan.

Instead of sailing from Coron to Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, Malaysia, we had to divert down the east coast of Palawan to clear out at Puerto Princesa. White Dragon’s bimini gives www.bwsailing.com

much needed shade under a tropical sun; another aspect of great yacht design.

The passage was 270 miles.

Despite a forecast of very light winds after the Coron area, we had a great sail all the way, again averaging 8 knots for the passage.

We stopped at a reef 40 miles from Puerto Princesa to dive and were treated to a fantastic aerial display by a feeding thresher shark. It jumped 10 feet clear of the water before crashing back

into the sea, slapping its tail on the surface to stun its prey. The shark jumped several times only 50 feet from the yacht, but, unfortunately, we didn’t get to see it underwater.

We continued on after the dive and sailed right into Puerto Princesa Bay, heading over to the quaint and friendly Puerto Princesa Yacht Club. The yachties there directed us to customs and immigration and we rode into town on one of the thousands of motorized tricycles.

This is not the most comfortable mode of transport, but it’s certainly one of the most economical! Our trike driver took us to town and drove us around then back to the yacht club. The three hours cost 360 pesos (just over $4) for two people!

After clearing customs, we set sail from Puerto Princesa with a great 16 knot breeze on our beam, heading for Kota Kinabalu. Malaysia, here we come.

BWS

In Part Two of this series, White Dragon sails on to Maylasia and Indonesia.

27

{ CRUISINGLIFE }

Sailing to the

REVOLUTION

Part One: Looking back at a family cruise that took them straight into the Cuban revolution

by Mark Florman

F

lying fish and flying spray were keeping my dad from lighting the cigarette he so fervently desired.

“Nils Jr., can you please pass me up a lit cigarette?” he yelled down the main hatch of our 1938, 33-foot Hereshoff ketch Winds Way IV. We were attempting a rough Gulf Stream crossing from Key West, Florida to Varadero, Cuba in the revolutionary summer of 1958, and everyone was seasick except Dad; but poor brother Nils still had to light Dad’s cigs for him.

It turns out, we got to Havana before Fidel did, although his shadow would fall on us frequently 28

during our three months cruising the North Coast of Cuba, “The Pearl of the Antilles”, as a family of five. Before there was Outward Bound or other adventurous team building activities common today, we created our own adventure on our little wooden sailboat that only had four bunks.

We were our mother, Dorothy, who was such a good sport, father Nils, I was eight and a half, my brother (and our first mate) Nils Jr. was 15 and our baby sister, Cynthia, who was almost two and a half. We were not a very imposing bunch and certainly not a revolutionary force (as we would later be suspected of in both Cuba

and Haiti!)

I guess we were well ahead of our time as a family cruising on a small sailboat, which in those days, was a very rare occurrence; but then my father Nils K. Florman had always been somewhat of an adventurous chap, usually marching to the beat of his own independent drum. When he was a young man, he had sailed with the famous Count Von Luckner, the German “Sea Wolf”, who ran a training ship on his Seadler between the Wars.

Dad had done some writing for Yachting, The Rudder and other boating magazines in 1957 and 1958, so while we were in Cuba BLUE WATER SAILING

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various political types came to talk second, more cautious thoughts.

After all, hadn’t my Mom and to the “American Journalist”, usually at night. That and the novelty Dad’s friends all told them that of a young family cruising on a they were crazy to even consider small wooden sailboat provided making such a dangerous jourus with access and introductions ney (and with two and a half and to a wide variety of the friendly, eight and a half year old children curious and very hospitable Cuban no less). But then we would have people we met along the way. Ev- missed all the incredible, life enerywhere we went, we were invited riching experiences that to this into people’s homes to eat, shower, day have influenced our lives in or socialize (which was of special so many positive and beneficial ways. I doubt there is anyone who interest to teen brother, Nils Jr.).

A great deal of the conversation has cruised on a boat, especially a at that time was about the bud- sailboat, with a family or a group of ding revolution and the pros and other people who doesn’t feel that cons of Fulgencio Batista versus Fidel Castro. Many of the Cuban people we met wanted to believe that Castro would improve their lot and that of the country. We didn’t know then how that was going to turn out, although many people had their suspicions.

We met a lot of helpful and interesting people while we were in Varadero, including a justice of the Dorothy and Cynthia on Winds Way IV Cuban Supreme Court, who was also a cruising boater. He gen- the experience contributed richly erously spent hours dictating notes to their entire life experience. It from his cruising experiences certainly was an incredible bondalong the Cuban coast as the charts ing experience for us that created a we had were old and had not been wonderful closeness in our family that exists to this day. updated in many years.

Heading east from Varadero, we We had a very pleasant stay in Varadero, consuming fresh fruit encountered the Jardines del Rey and ice cream sold on the beautiful archipelago, (as it now known,) beaches and riding on the gua guas a series of bays and barrier is(the happy, funky, Cuban buses). lands, not unlike parts of Florida’s We made the obligatory trip to two coasts. It was here, cruising Havana’s Morro Castle and visited through this beautiful, completely the El Floridita bar of Hemingway unspoiled, tropical scenery that we fame. Soon, we continued our became immersed in the mysterijourney down the Cuban coast. If ous and exotic essence of the iswe could have foreseen some of the land and her people as it was then.

Cruising inshore of these barchallenges and wild experiences that lay ahead, we might have had rier islands through an unmarked www.bwsailing.com

passage of mostly shallow waters and sandbars, we experienced our first grounding near Bahia Santa Clara. Wind’s Way drew less than four feet but we managed to find a sandbar that offered less than that.

We were befriended by a passing motor yacht that attempted, rather clumsily, to pull us off. After securing our tow line to their stern cleat from our stern cleat, they then took off at full speed until they came to the end of the slack in the tow line at which time they became quickly acquainted with

Newton’s Second Law of Motion; the stern cleat pulled out of their “unstoppable force” and almost decapitated Nils Jr. on the stern of the (for now) “immoveable object”. Nils and Dad had just enough time to jump forward into the cockpit, but despite all that brute force pulling, our boat budged not an inch.

The tow lines were now permanently joined together with a square knot that we were never able to undo, owing to the incredible force that had been applied. The motor yacht owner, a brave and kind man, still wanted to help us, so after some brief consultation, he tried again and was able to pull us off stern first, 29

{ CRUISINGLIFE }

Mark and Nils, Jr. horsing around on Winds Way IV

from the sandbar.

Later, as we made our way down the coast, we experienced another grounding; the resolution of which was remarkable. We were sitting there on a sandbar unable to get off with our Graymarine gasoline engine alone, when along came a Cuban sailor, a carbonero by trade (a maker and vendor of charcoal), who used his 30-foot, very simple gaff rigged sailboat, with sails made of flour sacks sewn together, to make his living transporting the charcoal that he sold. This incredible seaman stopped to offer his help.

We felt there wasn’t much that he would be able to do with sail power only on his little boat, but having no other options, we were 30

certainly willing to try and we watched in amazement as this man skilfully dashed back and forth raising and lowering his sail and succeeding in helping us get off of that sandbar.

My father tried to compensate him with money but this proud man refused. Dad then ran down into the cabin and came back with a half bottle of rum and couple of Cuban cigars. This man, who could have easily been mistaken for the hero of The Old Man and the Sea accepted the rum and cigars saying, “These I will take for they are good for the soul!”

Continuing down the coast we began having problems with our generator so we put into what would be the largest port we

stopped in along the coast of Cuba, Puerto Sagua La Grande. There we were referred to three gentlemen who were electricians and mechanics. These three fellows were like all the Cubans we met along the way, very friendly and eager to help us any way they could.

The problem with our generator required the commutator to be rewound and these ingenious mechanic friends hand wound the commutator and got it to work.

They too, would not accept any payment, but expressed a desire to be transported along with a few family members on our boat, to a nearby island where they were going to pass a short holiday.

We had a very interesting encounter with them as my dad and mom got into a political discussion on the topic of the day which was “Is Castro a communist or is he not?” After this had been discussed for a while one of the gentlemen ended the conversation by saying to us, “Senor, if Castro is a communist then you are speaking to three communists as well”.

Politics was decidedly the major background theme during our time in Cuba. It seemed that almost all of the people we met were tired of the Batista regime but many were also apprehensive about Castro.

The Batista government saw us as potentially being aides or allies of the Castro uprising and so they kept tabs on us throughout our journey down the coast. We were frequently flown over by military aircraft, at one time overhearing a lighthouse keeper asking a military plane about the whereabouts of the Lancha Americana on the AM radio. (Our radio, in those days, was one of the old double sideband AM radios).

We were also shadowed at various times by people keeping an eye BLUE WATER SAILING

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or spying on us. Humorously, one time my mom and dad, growing tired of being watched constantly, suggested I invite the spy of the moment out in our dinghy. It was an eight-foot Optimist Pram that my dad had purchased as a dinghy in order for me to have something to sail as well as being a tender.

The very relaxed and friendly Cuban spy (we were on a first name basis) accepted my offer and we had a grand time rowing around the harbor for a couple of hours while mom and dad got a break.

After leaving Sagua La Grande with our newly repaired generator, our next notable experience on this voyage was sailing past a group of two large barrier islands marked on the chart as Cayo Romano. This passage was our only overnight passage along the coast and we must have been bucking a lot of tide and head seas because it seemed like we were abeam of the Cayo Romano light the whole night. It was a rough not fondly remembered night passage.

At our next stop east of Cayo Romano, we had been told about an interesting place called Cayo Lobos or Lobos Cay, which is a small Bahamian island with a lighthouse on the Bahamian side of the Old Bahama Channel. It is only 13 miles north of Cayo Confites, Cuba, so we ventured across the channel to have a look.

One of the more interesting places we visited on the cruise, Lobos Cay marks the north side of this narrow part of the Old Bahama Channel. It was inhabited by two Bahamian lighthouse keepers and their families. The Cuban people who had told us about this place described them as Ingleses De Colour or “Englishmen of Color�.)

These warm congenial people were very happy to see us as they did not www.bwsailing.com

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{ CRUISINGLIFE }

One of the lighthouse keepers at Lobos Cay helped Cynthia with her tangled fish line. The sailing wasn't alway rays of sunshine

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get a lot of visitors to this remote island. They shared their lives with us and showed us the little cemetery where a couple of family members had been buried and then, when, the island freighter Inagua Trader showed up one night to bring them their monthly supplies, they shared with us their ice, lettuce and fresh Holsum bread from Miami.

Not having had fresh bread like that in a while, we were glad to store the leftovers and we had a little midnight feast with our benefactors in the cabin of our little ship. The lighthouse keepers had a little dog that had been given to them by a Cuban fisherman that they had named “Amigo”.

The following year when we were resettled in Fort Lauderdale our new dog was named “Migo” by sister Cynthia who remembered the little dog on Lobos Cay. Another great memory was created at another island near Lobos Cay that we visited that was a seabird rookery. It was covered with seabirds of all kinds that seemingly had no fear of us humans and only grudgingly moved out of the way when we walked near them. (Nils still remembers the little hummingbird that sat in his hand and let him pet it.)

From here we only stopped briefly to rest overnight as we were trying to get to the eastern end of the island at Baracoa as soon as we could. Our last stop in Cuba, Baracoa, would turn out to be the most eventful by far. We had not noticed that the little yellow flag on our man overboard pole had come unfurled and was mistaken by the port doctor as a yellow quarantine flag.

So, the doctor came out to clear us in and we became friends, which was a very good thing as Hurricane Ella was headed our BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

way and would strike Cuba on September 2, 1958. The harbor of Baracoa is a five-mile-long, nearly land locked harbor, which offers great protection. While anchored there, we were treated to flashes and sounds of gunfire up in the hills above the harbor which the good doctor told us were the Castro rebels fighting with Batista forces. Yikes!

Meanwhile, with Hurricane Ella heading our way the doctor invited my mother, sister and I, to come stay with his family in his house, while Dad and Nils Jr. rode out the storm attached to a ship’s mooring in the harbor. We were anxious to have the best weather information possible about the approaching storm, but our old double sideband radio was not capable of reaching Miami. Nils Jr., who was our radio

operator, was overheard trying to raise Miami weather by the Alcoa Warrior, a ship hauling bauxite to somewhere in the U.S. Her radio operator overheard Nils and volunteered to provide us with weather bulletins the whole night.

By the time Ella got to Baracoa she was only a Category 1 storm but still able to pack a pretty good punch. I remember, as we were leaving the boat to go ashore before the storm, being barely able to stand up and walk against the force of the wind. We, the boat and the town, survived just fine.

When we left Baracoa, it was with fond memories of yet another group of good friends that we had made in Cuba. None of us have ever forgotten the friendliness and hospitality of the Cuban people, who took us into their

hearts and their homes wherever we went. BWS In Part Two, next month, Wind’s Way sails across the Windward Passage to the island of Hispaniola, where Mark and his family visited Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

After this life-changing experience, it was inevitable that Mark Florman would become a yacht captain, and then a yacht broker. After 31 years owning Latitude 26° Yacht Sales, Mark joined Waterfront Properties and Waterfront Yacht Brokerage in Jupiter, FL, as a dual threat waterfront realtor and yacht broker. He dedicates this story with much love and respect to his two unique and adventurous parents, Nils and Dorothy Florman, without whom none of this would have happened.

The harbor at Baracoa, Cuba. Here we dealt with Hurricane Ella. The author's father arranged for his wife, Mark and Cynthia to go ashore to stay with the port captain and his wife while the two Nils' stayed aboard Winds Way

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Francois Gabart:

Superman The handsome, mild mannered Frenchman, did the impossible when he knocked six days off the solo round the world record

by Brian Hancock

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magine yourself on board a massive 100-foot trimaran.

You are alone, sailing through the Southern Ocean in an attempt to break the singlehanded, non-stop circumnavigation record. It’s just before dawn and the visibility is terrible. Your boat speed is sitting nicely in the low 30-knot range when suddenly your radar picks up a mass directly ahead of you. You are sailing well below the northern limit for icebergs and chances are what you are looking at on your radar screen is an iceberg. To make matters worse you are closing fast. You need to gybe in order to pass to windward of the berg. You know that you always have to pass to windward because the growlers, or bergy bits as they are sometimes called, break from the main iceberg and drift off to leeward. What do you do?

That is precisely what happened to French sailor François Gabart while he was on his record breaking lap of the planet. Gabart did what he had been doing since setting off from France a few weeks earlier. With a cool head he rolled his jib away and gybed his massive mainsail. He then pulled out his video camera and shot a short video of the iceberg as he passed by safely to windward.

It was just another day in what became an extraordinary set of days strung together that allowed Gabart to not only break, but shatter the existing record. François Gabart aboard his Ultime trimaran MACIF knocked a full six days of the previous record and set a new record time for a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of 42 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes and 35 seconds.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE François Gabart was racing against a reference time set by his www.bwsailing.com

fellow Frenchman Thomas Coville who is one of the world’s best, if not the best solo, offshore sailor. He has seven circumnavigations under his belt. He sailed a flawless circumnavigation to gain the record and the wind gods dealt him some pretty decent cards along the way.

When Coville finished, I was as certain as anyone that his record would stand for a long, long time.

It was a superhuman effort and would require a superhuman effort to match or break the record, but Gabart felt that he was up to the task. He had already won the grueling Vendée Globe in his IMOCA 60 and had enjoyed some victories aboard MACIF. In the summer of 2017 he and a small crew won a transatlantic race from France to New York City. They also won the ArMen Race USHIP, a series of races in Europe. Those events were all part of the shakedown for his new boat and having put MACIF through its paces, Gabart felt that it was time and he was ready to take on Coville’s record.

After waiting for a favorable weather window he took off from northern France and was slingshotted out into the Atlantic Ocean and down toward the equator. The six days that it took him to cross that imaginary line that separates the North and South Atlantic was fast, but not quite as fast as the pace set by Coville who still holds the record for the fastest singlehanded passage from France to the equator.

Once across the equator Gabart took advantage of a very nice weather window and turned on the after-burners. The South Atlantic is dominated by a large high-pressure system and in order to get into the deep south you have to skirt the western edge of the high. Cut it too close and you run out of wind.

Don’t cut it close enough and you sail extra miles. Luckily for Gabart, as he entered the South Atlantic the high pressure moved closer to Africa meaning that he was able to cut the corner without any fear of running out of breeze. He passed the longitude of Cape Town a full two days ahead of the reference time, but faced a very tricky weather pattern ahead of him.

INTO THE SOUTHERN OCEAN The Southern Ocean is known for a series of cold fronts that circumnavigate Antarctica. These Ultim trimarans move at such high speeds that, unlike most boats that sail in those waters, they look for the system ahead of them to hook onto, rather than a system approaching from behind.

Unfortunately for François, there was an unusual pocket of high pressure directly in his path and in order to get by it he was going to have to dive south to pass under the system. He sailed out of the Roaring Forties into the Furious Fifties and at one point it looked like he was going to enter the Screaming Sixties. He was in dangerous iceberg territory and the detour around the area of high pressure cost him a full day of his lead. When he passed south of Cape Leeuwin on the southwest coast of Australia he was still ahead of the reference time, but the gap had closed considerably.

Feeling the need to have some “money in the bank” before turning north after Cape Horn, François pushed his boat as hard as possible and managed to claw back a day so that when he rounded the famous cape at the tip of South America, he again enjoyed a twoday margin on the reference time.

In order to get that cushion, Gabart had to push his boat, and 35

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planet faster than him was the legendary Francis Joyon who, along with a five-man crew aboard the giant trimaran IDEC Sport, clocked a time of 40 days 23 hours and 30 minutes.

himself, to the limits of possibility and endurance. At times his boat speed was in the low 40-knot range and often he was averaging in the mid 30s. His daily runs were consistently over 700 nautical miles, back to back, and he ate up the miles rounding Cape Horn in record time just 29 days after leaving France.

NORTH TOWARD HOME With the Horn astern, he turned his bows toward the north and toward the finish in France. In a message to his shore team François admitted to being a little fatigued.

“The fatigue is there,” he wrote.

“Accompanied by its faithful friend, the pain, which pulls on the muscles, paralyzes the sore hands ... You have pain. All the time.”

While his performance in the Southern Ocean was beyond impressive, the way he ate up the 36

South Atlantic and spat it out the back was unreal. By the time MACIF arrived back at the equator, Gabart was a full five days ahead of the reference time and was showing no signs of slowing down.

The problem was that ahead of him the North Atlantic was a minefield. He would have to skirt the Azores High and deal with a series of cold winter gales rolling across the Atlantic toward Europe, but in his usual uncanny way he was able to dodge and duck and keep the boat moving fast. He waited until he was around the latitude of London before turning his bows towards France and the finish. He crossed the imaginary finish line in the early hours of December 17 and sailed into the history books.

Gabart’s time for the 27,859mile voyage makes it the second fastest circumnavigation ever.

The only team to have lapped the

SUPERHUMAN SAILING It’s hard to find the words to describe what an enormous accomplishment it was to shatter Coville’s record.

MACIF is massive and one can only imagine what it must take to manage the boat, all alone. It is 100 feet long with a beam of 69 feet.

The mast is a towering 115 feet, the mainsail is quite a bit larger than a tennis court, in fact the downwind sail area is the same size and two-and-ahalf tennis courts.

All of this is managed from a central pod mounted on the main hull. All the lines are led through an array of rope clutches to a bank of winches operated by two grinder pedestals. The entire pod can be fully closed off from the weather with the dual steering stations also located within the pod.

That does not mean that Gabart is safe from the elements. Much of the time he is sailing with Code 0 like sails that have to be hoisted with a 2:1 halyard. Gabart has to drag this huge sail up from down below, hook up the halyard and grind 230 feet of line until the swivel reaches the top of the mast.

The anti-torque line is stretched bar tight and then the powerful sail, once unfurled, has to be sheeted in. All the while Gabart needs to be trimming the mainsail and dealing with a large traveler that stretches in a semi-circle from one hull, across the transom of the main hull to the other hull. Just BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

winding the traveler up a foot or two must be an exhausting undertaking.

One of the luxuries, if you can call it that, is that his routing information was done by an onshore team led by quite possibly the best weather guru on the planet. JeanYves Bernot is widely considered the master and it was his job to study the global weather patterns and guide François around and between conflicting weather systems.

As mentioned before these boats are sailed different from most because they are able to sail at speeds that are faster than the speed that most weather systems move at. It’s a bit like a game of chess studying weather patterns that will occur many days ahead and coming up with a strategy to intersect with a

www.bwsailing.com

favorable wind pattern that will slingshot the boat toward the next system be it an area of high pressure or low pressure.

While it’s not possible to avoid gale force winds, Jean-Yves Bernot tried as much as possible to keep Gabart in a steady 10-15 knot breeze. In those conditions the boat can trundle along quite nicely in the low 30-knot range especially if the seas are not too disturbed.

At that pace you can eat up quite a few miles and spit them into your wake.

There really are no superlatives in my already superlatives soaked vocabulary that can describe just what an accomplishment this is for a sailor who must now be recognized as one of the best in history.

For the six weeks he was out there,

Gabart needed to keep himself and his boat together. We all know how things chafe, how things go bump in the night, and how the constant pounding grinds at both man and boat. He managed it all and he even managed to make it look effortless. When François Gabart sailed back into his home harbor of Port-la-Foret it looked like he had just been out for a quick spin around the Bay of Brittany rather than a fast sprint around the world.

BWS

Circumnavigator, sailmaker and raconteur, Brian Hancock follows the hairy leading edge of offshore sailing closely with a combination of vast experience and consummate wit. He lives and develops sails and sail programs for all types of sailors in Marblehead, MA.

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CYCLONES IN FRENCH POLYNESIA When compared to other tropical cruising paradises, French Polynesia is the least likely to suffer hurricanes or cyclones

by Dr. John Freeland

A

fter the devastating 2017 hurricane season in the Caribbean basin and Gulf of Mexico with estimates of 63,000 boat destroyed or damaged, many boaters are thinking about safety related to tropical cyclones. French Polynesia was for

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many years considered to be relatively safe from tropical cyclones, for instance the well respected Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator placed it outside the cyclone area. These perceptions changed abruptly during the 1982-83 El Nino season when five cyclones passed through the Societies and Tuamotu Islands.

To obtain a reasonable understanding of cyclones in French Polynesia, several factors are important to review: the patterns of these revolving tropical storms; the measurement scales used in different areas;

the very marked impact of the El Nino cycle; and, in comparing cyclones (hurricanes) incidence to other cruising grounds, the ocean temperature data and geography come into play.

The following review will focus only on cyclonic storms with wind speeds above 64 knots. Also, as it is the nomenclature in the Southern Pacific basin, the term cyclone will be used for ‘revolving tropical storms’ rather than hurricane or typhoon. When reviewing information regarding cyclones regional differences in record keeping are important to understand. Scales for cyclones are different in the Pacific than the more common Saffir-Simpson scale used in the Caribbean. For the purpose of this article, the wind velocities are converted to Saffir-Simpson scale and only storms of 64 knots and above are reviewed. Tropical depressions can produce distressing and worrisome situations but should not pose the risks to life and vessels that are associated with cyclones.

BASIC GEOGRAPHY French Polynesia has five sepaBLUE WATER SAILING

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rate island groups that collectively take up an area almost the size of Europe. The Marquesas have had no reported cyclones with winds above 64 knots and therefore are safe from cyclones. The Gambiers, which are in the south-eastern corner of French Polynesia, are generally safe from hurricane force storms. The Austral Islands are most at risk for cyclones due to the pattern of cyclones in the region, which is discussed later.

Finally, the Society and northern Tuamotu Islands comprise the majority of the cruising area for sailing yachts in French Polynesia.

As will be discussed later, these two archipelagos are at some risk but generally only during the El Nino cycle. The Societies are also known by their French names, Iles du Vent and Iles Sous Les Vent.

As a cruising ground French Polynesia has distinctly fewer cyclones than the rest of tropical South Pacific. The question on many people’s mind this year is: “Is it safer than the Caribbean?”

The short answer is much safer but examine some of the data yourself.

One of the main factors that influence tropical storms in French Polynesia is the cooling effects of the Humboldt Current. It is the fluctuation of this cold current traveling up the west coast of South America which is primarily responsible for the El Nino / La Nina cycles. In fact, the temperature in the ocean near French Polynesia is the basis for determining the El Nino/La Nina index. Hence, the El Nino condition involves the waters in French Polynesia becoming warmer (more red in illustration A).

Warmer ocean temperatures are conducive to the formation of cyclones. It is therefore no surprise that the generally cooler Eastwww.bwsailing.com

ern South Pacific a ro u n d F re n c h Polynesia has far few cyclones than, say, the Caribbean.

Much of the data in this article is illustration A derived from research by two French meteorologists, V. Laurent and P. Varney, and uses meteorological data collected between 1969 and 2010 for all of French Polynesia. This article focuses primarily on the Societies and the Tuamotus.

CYCLONE DATA French Polynesia is affected by two separate patterns of cyclones: the south easterly moving storms and the “recurving” storms that begin forming near the Marquesas and steer southwesterly before recurving to steer southeasterly.

Most cyclones in French Polynesia arrive from the west via the Cook Islands, usually passing south of the Societies but more regularly passing over the Austral Islands. This pattern is seen in all three climate conditions ( El Nino, Neutral and La Nina.) The recurving pattern is common primarily during the El Nino cycle and generated the two strongest storms recorded for French Polynesia.

Satellite imagery of big Caribbean hurricanes suggest that cyclonic tropical storms create an area of extreme danger, which reaches hundreds of miles from the eye. In fact, the hurricane force winds generally do not extend more than 50 miles from a storm’s center. Those familiar with hurri-

canes in the Caribbean will know that despite numerous hurricanes passing near to Trinidad, the island remains a safe zone. In applying this proximity factor to French Polynesia, the typical Category 1 cyclone must pass very near to an island to create more than gale force winds.

The El Nino / La Nina climate condition is today based on ocean temperature. Originally, it was based upon barometric pressures but more accurate water temperature measures have been the basis of the ENSO or El Nino Southern

Oscillation Index. This more accurate data came into usage in the 1960s. To best demonstrate its impact on cyclones in French Polynesia, two authors from Meteo France, Laurent and Varney, measured the passage of cyclones through areas 2.5 degrees by 2.5 degrees or 150 nautical mile squares.

All cyclones from 1969 to 2010 were grouped into the three different climate conditions. For our purposes, only the areas surround 39

{ PRACTICALPASSAGE }

ing the Societies and northern Tuamotus (as far south as Hao) have been included. A further analysis of the data shows there were 13 cyclones in the Societies and Tuamotus over a period of 41 years but only in seven of the 41 summer seasons did cyclones pass within

Gambier Islands is very low and in the Marquesas non-existent.

THE BRUNT OF THE STORM Television images of Category 5 hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico such as Katrina or Harvey leave the perception that all hurricanes

produce extreme tidal surges. Two factors produce tidal surge: very low barometric pressure and shelving shorelines.

Barometric pressure has a relatively small effect compared to shoreline geography. The Societies and Tuamotus have no continental shelf and fringing reefs generally have precipitous cliff edge drop offs. So, tidal surge is much less of a consideration than might be anticipated.

In considering French Polynesia as a cruising ground one conclusions is that during an El Nino period a careful owner would consider taking his or her vessel to the Marquesas, hard standing their vessel at one the five boat yards in the Societies or Tuamotus or consider hunkering down in one of the four hurricane holes on Tahiti, Raiatea, Taha or Bora-bora.

FORECASTING CYCLONES

From a metrological standpoint, 300 nautical miles (five degrees) of the Societies or the Northern Tuamotus.

Only two cyclones occurred outside of El Nino conditions, which passed within five degrees of the Societies or Northern Tuamotus. These two passed over a 100 nautical miles from these islands, resulting in below hurricane strength conditions but they did produce waves well above average.

In short, except in El Nino years, the likelihood of hurricane force winds in the Society, Tuamotus or 40

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• March 2018

specific cyclones are difficult to predict. In the Caribbean and continental North America, forecasters generally attempt to predict how many named storms will occur in a given season. French Polynesia is a different kettle of fish since prediction depends strongly on one factor, the El Nino condition.

Millions of dollars for research and supercomputer processing time are spent predicting this cycle.

On the second Thursday of each month, NOAA illustration B publishes the predictions for the next 12 months. Another or near the region from 1969 to aspect of the El Nino climate 2010. In the North Atlantic basin prediction puzzle is that the phe- during the same time frame there nomenon can occur in any month were a total of 286 hurricanes, the of the year. Cyclones, on the other majority of which passed through hand, have only been recorded the Antilles (see illustration B). between October and April in the Safe areas in the region of French area of interest to us (Societies and Polynesia include the Marquesas and the Gambiers; the Caribbean Northern Tuamotus.)

Over a 66-year period, only one has Trinidad.

With regards to storm intensity, in four of these (southern hemiCaribbean storms are far bigger sphere) summer months had an on average; FP had only four El Nino condition. Another way to look at the El Nino effect is to storms greater than Category 2 in quantify the summer months with 40 years, which would not even El Nino conditions in at least one compare with just 2017 in the month, which accounts for 20 Caribbean. Predictability and the seasons in the past 66. To put this ability to plan ahead in French information into a cruising plan, Polynesia is rather special in this approximately one in every four regard with its very strong linkage southern hemisphere summers it to El Nino. Monthly reports give might be wise to choose to hard strong prediction data well ahead stand your boat or to sail to the of the cyclone-prone months. AnMarquesas. We have found fees for other factor to consider is the sheer hard standing comparable to those volume of boats in the Caribbean which makes spectacles like the in the Caribbean. boat bomb in Paraquita Bay in the BVI’s or St Martins Lagoon much CONCLUSION So back to the question of French less likely in FP. For many sailors, like myself in Polynesia compared to the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. In the 1998, French Polynesia was just a Societies and Northern Tuamo- beautiful stopping off place on the tus, 13 cyclones were recorded in long path of a circumnavigation. www.bwsailing.com

But for me today it also represents the best trade winds-based tropical cruising grounds left, with its (still) healthy coral, friendly, welcoming people, good infrastructure, uncrowded anchorages, very low crime rates, excellent health care facilities, stunning landscapes and vibrant culture.

In addition to all these advantages, the French Polynesian cruiser will be confronted not only with many fewer tropical cyclones but can much more readily predict the possibility of a cyclone during the summer months than is possible in any other tropical paradise. BWS Sailing has been a part of John Freeland's life for 59 years. Over the past 31 years, he has cruised extensively and made a circumnavigation aboard Mary Ann II, his beloved Westsail 32. Since 2010 John's wife, Julia and Murphy, their King Charles Spaniel, have cruised the Med, the Caribbean and now the world's best tropical cruising grounds, French Polynesia.

Reference: Historique des Cyclones de Polynèsie franchise de 1831 á 2010. Laurent, Victoire & Varney,Patrick. Meteo-France 2014 41

It’s not for everybody, but that’s the beauty of it.

Don’t let life inhibit your adventure potential. Break free from uninspiring daily routines to reconnect with the open-water, where the sweet sound of buzzing lines and the irresistible scent of salty ocean breezes captivate your seafaring soul. With the helm in your hands and the world at your feet, you’re free to play by your own rules and frolic between uncommon coordinates.

Come aboard, embrace the exotic, and let Sunsail whisk you away one nautical mile at a time.

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{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES} } { WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES

WE LOVE

MOROCCO

A

s soon as our Leg 6 crew came aboard our Halber-Rassy 4 6 M a h i n a Ti are, we departed La Lonja Marina Charter for lunch at anchor on the waterfront in front to the huge, 1250 AD Palma, Mallorca, cathedral. It was a magical scene.

After lunch, we practiced Lifesling Overboard Rescue as we sailed to our evening anchorage, five miles to the west. Although it was Friday night, we found a secure place to anchor at Las Illetas and the next morning several of us went running along the waterfront.

After completing orientation, we set sail for tiny Isla Tagomago, 60 miles away and off the east coast of Ibiza where an evening snorkeling and a colorful sunset dinner rounded off a perfect day.

We completed the Marine Weather I class the following 44

From Mallorca in Spain’s Balearic Islands, to Morocco and then the Canary Islands, the crew of Mahina Tiare had one adventure after the next by John Neal and Amanda Swan Neal morning and then set off on the 165-mile passage to Cartagena, Spain, which had been by far our favorite stop between Gibraltar and the Balearic Islands on our last leg. Perhaps it’s the absence of tourists and party goers, or maybe it’s just the location and super helpful marina staff but Amanda and I really wanted to show our new crew this beautiful city.

Even though rain threatened our crew were each eager to explore the city and after visiting the outdoor Roman amphitheater they hiked all over the old town center. In the cool evening, Amanda and I again enjoyed wandering through the pedestrian-only marbled boulevards that were filled with families and friends out socializing.

MOROCCO HERE WE COME

Morocco has held a fascination for many years with us, fueled by the pictures and stories from previous expedition member Jack Hoopes along with Vickie Vance and Roland Olsson aboard Bella Luna. Both recommended Port Marina Smir, just 30 miles south of Gibraltar. When planning our 2017 expedition two years ago, getting to check out Morocco and Spain’s Balearic Islands were two of the reasons for leaving the South Pacific.

On the 165-mile passage from Cartagena to Morocco we encountered some of the most intense and fast ship traffic we’ve ever seen.

Upon landfall, we spotted Marina Smir’s breakwater several miles off BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

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{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES }

The extensive Roman amphitheater in Cartegena, below the iconic Icue on Calle Carmen (the boy with the fish)

and, after calling them on the VHF radio, we entered the channel.

After making a 90 degree turn just inside the breakwater, we ended up at the fuel dock where an attendant motioned us to tie up.

We were surprised by how few boats were in the large marina.

Checking in was painless: first the marina office, then police/immigration who have a tiny office open 24 hours per day within the marina building. The police/immigration officer knew I’d earlier emailed the marina office about hiring a minivan and driver to drive our crew up the mountain to the city of Chefchaouen and while I filled out passport entry cards he rang a friend of his whom I spoke with on the phone.

By the time I’d completed clearance, our guide, Rachid, showed up, came aboard and learned exactly what we wanted to see. After we’d fueled two taxi vans with

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Rachid to take hausted and then Akmed, the us to Tétouan, camel, arrived. Mohamed, the a l a r g e c i t y camel owner asked if any of our with a vibrant crew wanted a camel ride, but we medina, or an- were content with just bringing c i e n t w a l l e d the camel onto the pier where we inner city. For were moored. four hours RaAt 9am the following morning, chid guided us Rachid picked us up in a nine-pasthrough the me- senger van in which we all just fit dina, stopping and we headed up the mountains to point out var- for Chefchaouen. But even before ious sites with a special focus on we were out of the marina car park, old doors. We viewed shops selling we came upon an assembly line of a wide assortment of items, pur- goats being sacrificed, hung up, chased fresh fruit and nuts at very reasonable prices and never once did we see any nonlocals or tourists.

Rachid took us into a carpet shop owned by friends where a f t e r f r e s h Falling under the spell of Moroccan carpets mint tea and a flamboyant display of many car- inflated, de-skinned, gutted and pets Lisa and Tommy fell under parceled out – all in the marina their spell and purchased two. car park!

Rachid told us that Tétouan and The roads were nearly empty as Chefchaouen were places where we climbed up the Rif Mountains Muslims, Jews and Catholics had to Chefchaouen. Upon arrival, Rapeacefully lived, worked and in- chid parked just inside the medina termarried since 1494 when the and led us to the Casa Hassan guest Spanish in Granada house. He had made reservations had expelled both for us and introduced us to the Muslims and Jews. owner. The guest house was newly It was the last shop- renovated and comprised of four ping day before Eid, towers with rooms surrounding an important Muslim the open courtyard on the ground holiday, and many floor. We saw only a couple other people were purchas- guests and after getting checked ing and leading home in, headed to Aladdin’s Restaurant, sheep and goats to also owned by a friend of Rachid’s, sacrifice the follow- for an excellent Moroccan lunch ing morning. on the canopied roof-top terrace, We arrived back with spectacular views in all direcaboard MT elated but tions. overwhelmed and exSeveral of us were exhausted BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

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“Life was getting a little drab, and this was the perfect way to put some color and sparkle back in. Being in some of the most spectacular scenery on earth, while learning a skill was rewarding on many levels.”

— Paul Sheldon, Whitecourt, Canada

OffshoreSailing.com | 888-385-6177 Learn To Sail | Cruising Vacations | Family Sail | Women-Only Courses | Racing Clinics | Passage Making | Team Building BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS: Scrub Island, Tortola • FLORIDA: Captiva Island, Fort Myers Beach, St. Petersburg, Cape Coral

{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES }

Rachid led us on a brisk walking tour of the wonderful narrow blue painted streets of the medina; below shopping at La Botica de la Abuela Aladdin

and enjoyed siestas at the hotel, but Amanda headed back to one of the few shops open during the holiday. She had previously spotted some Moroccan jewelry and met an interesting guy named Fatah who is studying sociology. After chatting for nearly an hour, Fatah mentioned that he also offered to guide walks into the mountains.

When Amanda returned to the hotel I suggested we make arrangements to meet him the following morning.

For sunset, we all headed up the mountain a short distance to the Spanish Mosque, built in 1920 during the Spanish occupa-

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tion, but never used and perched on the mountainside overlooking the town. Here dozens of locals and tourists gathered nightly to visit while watching the sunset.

Amanda spoke with an Australian mother and daughter who had been traveling around the country for three weeks, organizing their own travel and enjoying seeing the Sahara and many different parts of the country. Their travels intrigued us.

That evening we had an excellent dinner in Casa Hassan’s restaurant, located across the street from the guest house. The interior, like the hotel. was eccentric and very artis-

tic; the kitchen had a glass wall and looked surprisingly modern and spotlessly clean and we were given our own little alcove. The food, service and prices were excellent.

We were all awoken by the 5 am call to prayer and I enjoyed yoga on a semi-private rooftop courtyard before wandering around the deserted streets. Breakfast was included and we all ate together in a lovely quiet and tranquil outdoor courtyard.

Upon meeting up with Fatah and his friend Assan, they took us to the water source where artesian springs pumped an impressive amount of water, some of which was piped for the town water supply, Some was sold as bottled water and some was funneled into two roofed public clothes washing buildings. For yet another amazing panoramic vista, we hiked up the back of the valley all the time asking questions about life in Morocco and their university courses.

Our tour ended at Fatah’s mother’s house where Amanda, Lisa and Peixi were invited upstairs to meet the women of Fatah’s family and Islam, his three-month-old nephew. Fatah was interrupter as his sister-in law Hajar hennaed Lisa and Amanda’s hand while his mother served Moroccan mint tea, lamb kebabs and layered cream cake. The Fatah family is Berber and Amanda, Lisa and Peixi really enjoyed their quiet time with the women and were surprised how friendly, relaxed and outgoing everyone was.

All too soon it was time to meet Rachid and head down the mountain to Marina Smir. As we approached the marina, we noticed multiple policemen and soldiers on every corner. Rachid explained that the king had just arrived at his summer palace, adjacent to the marina. There was a very impressive giant black powerboat anchored offshore and Rachid said the king loved jet skis and fast cars!

BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

Our guide Fatah's sister-in-law, Hajar hennaed Lisa and Amanda's hands while his sister Jihan and his nephew Islam looked on; below, Queen's Quay Marina, Gibraltar

We thoroughly washed down Mahina Tiare, did laundry in buckets and I cleared out with the marina and immigration so we’d be able to set sail for Gibraltar at first light. Amanda and I look forward to returning to Morocco at a later time and spending more time ashore exploring. We were impressed with how polite, kind and helpful everyone we met was and the country’s rich history.

GIBRALTAR

The 30-mile crossing to Gibraltar was a fast beam reach with a volume of high-speed ferry and commercial traffic that had us tracking and avoiding up to six vessels simultaneously. What a great learning experience!

I’d earlier heard back that Ocean Village Marina, where we’d docked several weeks earlier, had no slips available, so the day before I’d emailed Queen’s Quay Marina asking if they had space for us.

Another option would have been sailing a mile further north, on the other side of the airport that marks the boundary between Gibraltar and Spain to La Linea, the new Spanish marina where Peixi had sailed many times, working toward her RYA Yachtmaster training and had several friends. As our goal was mooring MT close to the mountain, whose summit our crew were keen to hike up to, and to the amazingly well-stocked Morrison’s supermarket, we were pleased when, just as we entered the harbor, we got an email from www.bwsailing.com

Queen’s Quay Marina saying they had room for us for one night only.

Once we’d gotten MT secured stern-to with the help of twin mooring lines, we had lunch aboard and our keen crew took off, hiking the 1,300 feet up the Mediterranean Steps to the top of the rock and then down the mountain, across the airport border (between flight landing and taking off) and over to the Spanish side to check out Peixi’s favorite tapas restaurants. Meanwhile we headed to Morrison’s for our final shop of amazing fresh fruit and vegetables.

After showers, most of our crew returned to the Spanish side (45-minute walk) for more tapas.

Amanda and I enjoyed a late night hike around town, checking out several new areas. The architecture

was interesting, with no signs of graffiti or rubbish and the town was festooned with banners celebrating the 50th anniversary of the referendum when Gibraltarians voted to remain British.

Interestingly, customs, port and immigration clearance are obtained electronically by the marinas, making the inward and outbound clearance process quick and easy. We left at first light Monday morning, dodging the intense traffic, motorsailing into fresh headwinds until we’d crossed the channel and were heading down the Moroccan coast. By early afternoon the winds clocked allowing us to unroll the genoa and head southwest on a fast reach. The ship traffic was heavy and we sailed just inside the shipping lanes along

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{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES } John fueling up for the 600 mile passage to the Canary Islands; below, Lisa and Tommy celebrating 31 years of marriage

the coast with the destination of Lanzarote, Canary Islands, 600 miles away.

TO THE CANARY ISLANDS

We had brilliant downwind sailing and only one night did the winds peak at 30, gusting 34 knots with rambunctious seas. Even triple-reefed with only a sliver of genoa sheeted flat for stability our competitive crew hit low 10’s always trying to out-do the previous watch. Matthias earned the surfing record having hit an impressive 10.3 knots!

Highlights of the passage were a full moon that illuminated the towering seas, sunny warm skies during the day and celebrating Lisa and Tommy’s 31st wedding anniversary. Our near-surfing speeds and brilliant wind conditions held the entire way to the Arrecife, Lan-

50

zarote, harbor entrance with Dan calculating that we averaged more than 165 miles per day for three straight days.

We kept our speed up, hoping to reach the harbor entrance before dark, which we nearly did. We could just make out the newly-extended outer breakwater and thanks to the updated C-Map and Navionics electronic charts we very carefully and slowly motored down the well-marked fairway to the three-year old Marina Lanzarote. The very efficient marina office had a slip reserved and a marinero waiting to take our lines. What a surprise to be moored right in front of a fancy marina shopping center directly in front of Sunglass Hut! It only took our crew minutes to find a superb gelato shop owned and run by a Spanish sailor who makes his fruit-infused gelato on site!

Since we were two days ahead of schedule, we had a birthday celebration for Peixi,, who sadly had to leave the next day for a new job in Kazakhstan, at the most amazing waterfront tapas restaurant in nearby Arrecife before setting sail west to Playa Quemada, a semi-isolated fishing village where the goats and sheep vastly outnumbered the humans.

Amanda and I (mostly Amanda) worked hard at scrubbing the failed International Ultra antifouling paint off MT’s hull, readying to haul out and repaint just after the expedition ends.

Sunday we moved to Puerto Calero where we topped up fuel, filling all of our jerry jugs for the first time in years for our November Atlantic crossing and were delighted to discover moorage was free since we had pre-paid more than one month at Marina Lanzarote, owned by the same company.

Changing oil and transmission oil was one of our several endof-leg classes, along with Cruising Medicine, Clearing Customs Worldwide and Leaving Your Boat in a Foreign Port.

After the Sextant Navigation class, Amanda planned to test our crew with a real-life overboard incident on our sail back to Marina Lanzarote, so “fell” off the swim platform as she was showering, giving Lisa an excellent training opportunity.

Before we knew it, we were back in the same slip, with crew checking on hotel and flight reservations and Amanda and I checking in with the boatyard. We learned they had been able to source Micron 77 antifouling paint locally so that problem was solved. We had only a few days to get MT hauled, painted an put to bed before we flew home to San Juan Island.

Up next, Leg 7 across the Atlantic. BWS BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

IN THE BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS

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{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES } In Their Own Words....

Here’s our truly extraordinary Leg 6 crew Dan, 64 I recently retired after 25 years in the software business (and 25 years before that as an architect) in Connecticut. My dad taught me to sail at an early age and enjoyed sailing dinghies until 2005 when we bought a 40-year old Pearson to sail on Long Island Sound. More recently we bought a 1983 Southern Cross 35 and have spent most of the last eight years upgrading all of her systems. This expedition has confirmed my love of the cruising life.

Marty, 62 I’m a builder from Colorado and have been sailing off and on for years, but didn’t start taking sailing seriously until three years ago. I joined John & Amanda for Leg 3 and sailing on Leg 6 I learned so much more.

Tommy, 59 I work in our family propane business in Nevada and Lisa and I have dreamed of sailing for over 25 years. We are keen water skiers have two ski boats, a Mastercraft and a Ski Nautique plus a Hobie Cat and we love being on the water, but ocean sailing is new to us. I’ll be retiring soon and doing this expedition has opened doors for us to be able to safely fulfill our dreams.

Lisa, 60 I am a yoga instructor in landlocked Elko, Nevada. Tommy and I want to discover exotic places in our own boat. We did this excursion to see if we are cracked up for blue water sailing. My experience is very limited: basic sailing course on Utah Lake (there really is such a place!), a BVI charter with friends and sailing our Hobie 16. We will now be buying our own boat to explore our wondrous world!

Peixi, 27 I’m an environmental engineer working in the energy industry. Originally from Tianjin, China, I moved to Montana when I was 16. Since graduation from university, I have been very fortunate to have worked in Texas, British Columbia, offshore Angola (where I was one of the only 10 females among 2000 people), and now Kazakhstan. My rotational work schedule has been flexible enough to allow me to travel the world on my time off. About two years ago, I started learning sailing in Gibraltar as a novice and immediately fell in love with the sailing lifestyle. I have since sailed 4000NM in Gibraltar region, Mediterranean, UK, and Antarctica. Currently I am preparing to obtain my RYA Offshore Yachtmaster with the hope of purchasing my own blue water boat in the next 3-5 years to continue exploring the world. This goal has led me to join Mahina Expeditions to learn more about practical sailing, various aspects of owning and maintaining a boat, and the true lifestyle of cruising around the world. John, Amanda, and Mahina Tiare III couldn’t have been a more perfect combo to take me a step closer to realizing my goal.

Matthias, 47 I am a telecom manager for local governments in Silicon Valley, CA. I enjoy sailing on San Francisco and Monterey Bays and love introducing friends to the fun of sailing. I plan to buy a catamaran in three years for living aboard and circumnavigating. I’ve enjoyed the adventure of learning on an open ocean passage in the company of like-minded new friends.

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BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

Resources used on Leg 6, Palma de Mallorca to Morocco and Lanzarote, Canary Islands:

boats are heading to the Canaries in preparation for their Atlantic crossing.

WWW.WINDY.COM

General Anchoring Conditions: Morocco has some anchorages, but officials are very clear in expecting all visiting yachts to clear in first at a customs port of entry. The Canary Islands are frequently subject to strong winds and rolly anchorages. Marinas start filling up in mid to late September with sailors prepping for their Atlantic crossing. It is certainly worth emailing ahead of time for a berth reservation, even if your exact ETA is subject to the weather.

Cruising Guides: Imray Costas del Sol and Blanca, Islas Baleares, North Africa, Atlantic Islands (brilliant cruising guides, frequently updated), Imray charts: M11, M12, M3, C20, E18 Electronic Charts: C-Map running on Rose Point Coastal Explorer Navionics Silver running on both our lovely new Raymarine MFDs (multi-function displays), one at the chart table, and for the first time, one in the cockpit under the hard dodger General Sailing Conditions: The passage from Palma de Mallorca to Morocco is subject to frequent changes in weather conditions. From Gibraltar to Canaries NE winds are generally predominant in late summer when many

www.bwsailing.com

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{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES }

SUMMER SAILING VACATION GUIDE

How to plan a summer sailing vacation that will take you to new cruising grounds and help you build cruising skills along the way

B

efore we took off to sail our own boat on an extended cruise that ended up being a circumnavigation, Rosie wanted to build her sailing and boat handling skills on her own so she could confidently handle the boat in an emergency.

She signed up for a week at the Offshore Sailing School in the BVI and took the Learn to Cruise course.

By the end of the week, she could manage all of the basic cruising tasks from docking, anchoring, sail trim, helming and much more.

Then she signed up for an “expedition” course that took her offshore with an expert skipper and three other students on a five day passage from Long Island to Bermuda, across the Gulf Stream.

They ran into a full gale the first night but got through it fine. When they made landfall in St. George’s, Rosie was a seasoned old salt and ready to be a full sailing partner on 54

our own boat.

Whether you want to build skills or just get away for some fun cruising, this summer is the perfect time to sign up for a charter, a sailing school or an expedition.

Here’s how.

CHARTER VACATIONS

Summer is the season for chartering all around America and offers a great opportunity for you and your family to discover cruising grounds far from your home waters.

Surveys of our readers over the years have shown that the Pacific Northwest is the most popular region to charter in summer in the continental states followed by New England and the Great Lakes.

Enjoying a sail aboard a Catana catamaran from Dream Yacht Charter

The Chesapeake Bay is popular in spring and fall but can be too hot and airless for summer cruising.

Florida, also, is great in spring and fall, and can be fine all summer but the humidity and frequent rain squalls can be an issue.

In the Pacific Northwest you can charter either a sailboat or a powerboat and since the wind is often light in summer and the current between islands very strong, a

BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

HHHHH BVI’S

BEST DEALS ON KEELS

{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES }

Idyllic Pacific Northwest

boat with a good motor is the key to happy cruising. There is good cruising all around Seattle and the

You will see bears and eagles and dine often on wild salmon.

The Great Lakes are too often

great pleasure of sailing in sweet, fresh water. The favorite places to charter will be the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior, near Duluth, Green Bay, Sturgeon Bay and Door County in Lake Michigan and the famously beautiful waters of the North Channel in northern Lake Huron. Great Lakes cruisers swear that the North Channel is America’s finest summer cruising ground, rivaling the Pacific Northwest and the coast of Maine; if it is not on your cruising bucket list, it should be.

The Coast of Maine is famous for it’s thousands of islands, harbors and rivers that combine to offer a lifetime’s worth of sailing

Beautiful Brooklin, ME

islands or you can point the bow northward and head for the wild region around Desolation Sound.

One of the many lighthouses on the Great Lakes 56

overlooked by sailors on the coasts but the lakes have some of America’s prettiest cruising areas and the

and cruising opportunities. It can be foggy in early summer so the best times to explore Maine under sail are in late July, August and September. Old timers will tell you that on foggy days you should sail to the heads of the bays for better visibility and on days when the wind clears from the north, you can venture to the offshore islands like Matinicus and Monhegan. Along the way you can stop in charming towns like Booth Bay, Rockland, Camden, Castine, Blue Hill and Southwest Harbor and learn to speak like a Maniac.

Ehyup.

Southern New England is the East Coast’s summer yachting capital and the heart of the region BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

2018 Mahina Offshore

Cruising Seminar Series

Technical guru Nigel Calder joins John & Amanda Neal to co-present 8 hours of detailed instruction with PowerPoint illustration that follow the included 260-page Offshore Cruising Companion course book.

Vancouver, BC March 24

Anacortes, WA April 7

Richmond, CA April 21

at Granville Island Hotel, sponsored by Bluewater Cruising Assoc.

at Marine Tech Center, sponsored by Cruisers College

at Pacific Boat Show

This intensive, exciting and interactive seminar features 18 topics including: Choosing the Right Boat, Equipment Selection, Storm Avoidance and Survival, Piracy & Security, Safety and Medical Concerns, Communications, Anchoring, Sails and Rigging, Galley Essentials, Managing Your Escape and Cruising Routes Worldwide.

Seven months a year John and Amanda conduct sail-training expeditions worldwide aboard their Hallberg-Rassy 46, Mahina Tiare. This seminar incorporates the knowledge gained from their combined 658,000 sea miles and 81 years’ experience.

For course outline & registration: www.mahina.com

{ WORLDSAILINGADVENTURES }

tering all summer long and you will find great off-season rates to keep the cost as low as possible.

This summer, the charter companies in the BVI, USVI, Puerto Rico and St. Martin will be eager for your business and will be offering great deals to keep their fleets busy. The Caribbean in summer is slightly more humid than winter and it tends to rain more often.

But, it is still the Caribbean and the hospitality can’t be beat.

SAILING SCHOOLS Sunsail charter boats enjoying the BVI

will be Newport, RI. That’s the place to start and from there you can head east to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket or west to Long Island Sound and famous destinations like Block Island, Mystic, Shelter Island and Oyster Bay. You will sail in company of some of the grandest and most beautiful sailing yachts in the country, will see everything from Optis to 12 Meters racing around the buoys, and will catch sight of an osprey or two circling above your anchorages. July and August are the height of the season, but June and September can be lovely and less crowded, too.

The Chesapeake Bay in late spring and early fall is one of the East Coast’s most interesting places to charter. Starting in Annapolis you can head down the Bay to St. Michael’s, Oxford and Tangier Island or sail north to the Magothy and Sassafras Rivers or even

photo by Patrick Bennett

downtown Baltimore for a night on the town.

Florida is a sailing and chartering destination all year around and the two best destinations will be Ft. Lauderdale on the east coast and St. Petersburg on the west coast. You have to keep an eye out for summer squalls and always have a plan B when making coastal runs. Also, Florida is America’s lightning capital, so keep a weather eye for storms.

The Bahamas offers great summer cruising and will be less humid and have steady trade winds all summer long. You can either cruise the Abacos out of Marsh Harbor or explore the Exumas from a charter base on New Providence Island (Nassau). Old time Bahamas cruisers will tell you they prefer the spring, summer and fall seasons to the winter simply because the weather is more settled and the crowds gone.

The Caribbean is open for char-

Learning to sail with Blue Water Sailing School 58

Building sailing and cruising skills while on summer vacation in some exotic destination sounds like a perfect combination of fun and travel for the whole family. There are two branded sailing school operations in North America, schools associated with U.S.Sailing (the sport’s national governing body) and those affiliated with the American Sailing Association (ASA).

Some of the larger and older schools, such a Colgate’s Offshore Sailing School or J/World, are U.S. Sailing schools that follow the curriculum created and maintained by U.S Sailing. ASA has 350 schools around the world and provides a similar curriculum. The choice between the two systems will often come down to where you want to sail and what you want to achieve.

It is interesting that ASA has many international affiliates. There are 37 ASA schools in China and there is even one in Egypt. If you have your heart set on sailing in French Polynesia, you can charter a bareboat or you can fly in and attend a ASA affiliated school and build sailing skills.

US Sailing has dozens of schools all around the U.S. plus schools in Bermuda, The Bahamas, the Caribbean and Mexico. So, however you slice it, wherever you want to travel, you will be able to find a sailing school nearby. To find a sailing school log on to www.ussailing.

BLUE WATER SAILING • March 2018

org and www.asa.com.

EXPEDITIONS

For those who want to get some real blue water sailing experience and learn seamanship and cruising skills from sailors who have hundreds of thousands of miles under their keels expedition sailing is the way to go. The most well known offshore instructors are John Neal and Amanda Swan Neal who sail with their students aboard their Hallber-Rassy 46 Mahina Tiare.

Every year for the last 35 years, they have roamed the planet under sail while offering in-depth instruction on everything to do with offshore sailing from weather forecasting to engine maintenance to man-overboard drills and much more.

John Kretchmer is a veteran offshore sailor who has sailed all over the world and now run expeditions

in the North Atlantic, Caribbean and the Med aboard his Kaufman 47 Quetzal. He usually has four to six paying crew aboard and everyone gets to manage the boat, stand watches and learn the ropes as they do. Kretchmer is a great guy, a fun story teller and a good teacher of all things to do with blue water sailing. In 2018 he will sail from the Caribbean to Florida and the Bahamas, then to Annapolis before making the crossing to the Azores.

For the rest of the summer he will be cruising north to Scotland and Ireland before finishing the season in Spain. www.yayablues.com.

Andy and Mia Schell have jumped into the expedition business with both sea boots and run six to 10 expeditions per year aboard their Swan 48 Isbjorn. Andy has vast offshore experience and was closely aligned with the Ca-

ribbean 1500 for many years. He also has one of the most popular podcasts available anywhere and is a frequent author. In 2018, Isbjorn will be focused on sailing in the Norwegian Arctic and will end the season with a passage south to Portugal where the boat will be staged to begin the 2019 season. www.59-north.com.

Paul Exner runs a smaller expedition program aboard his 31-foot cutter Solstice. He can accommodate three guests and has focused his sailing in the Caribbean. In 2018, he is branching out and is running expeditions from the BVI to Panama, through the canal, up the west coast and then to Hawaii.

If you are looking for small boat experience and an intimate environment, Paul has just what you are looking for. www.moderngeographic.com. BWS

Offshore Sail-Training Aboard Mahina Tiare III, a Hallberg-Rassy 46

With a combined experience of 665,000 miles and 81 years, John and Amanda Neal’s unique curriculum offers you a dynamic hands-on learning experience including seamanship, navigation, storm avoidance and heavy weather tactics.

w w w. m a h i n a . c o m www.bwsailing.com

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{ BLUEWATERBOATS }

Moody Deck Saloon 54 The new Bill Dixon design is a proper yacht that a couple could easily sail around the world

by George Day

I

t was a beautiful autumn morning when I met up with the new owners of the Moody 54 that had been in the just finished Annapolis Sailboat Show. The sky was bright blue and the breeze was blowing at 8 knots or so out of the west.

As we waited for Alan Baines, the boat’s U.S. dealer, I had a good look through the boat.

As most readers will know, Moody was a premium English brand that built sensible, ocean sailing cruising boats for owners who expected both traditional style and quality. The brand was bought by the Hanse Group several years ago and went through a serious transformation. The Moodys

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of today are seriously modern, Euro-style cruising boats that press the design envelope in both pure naval architecture and interior design.

The new Moody Deck Saloon 54 is a Bill Dixon design. Dixon has spent most of his time in the last decade or two designing large, luxury, custom sailing yachts so it is no coincidence that when he once again turned his hand to a production cruiser, the result would have a lot of yacht style and yacht innovations. The 54 has all of that and more.

BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

INNOVATION BELOW A true deck-saloon cruiser, the raised main saloon has the large galley just inside the sliding cockpit doors to starboard and the U-shaped dinette to port. The wrap-around windows offer a fine view while seated in the dinette or standing in the galley. Forward of the galley on the starboard side there is a nav station with great visibility forward so you can operate the boat from inside under power.

Going forward and down four steps, you find the master cabin in the bow and two quarter cabins tucked in under the raised saloon floor. The master cabin has a cen-

www.bwsailing.com

terline double berth and plenty of storage. There are two heads forward and these are shared with the two guest cabins. On the boat we sailed, the port guest cabin had an athwartships double berth while the starboard cabin had a standard fore and aft double.

Variations on this basic theme show the galley down from the saloon and in the space where the starboard cabin was on our boat.

The area in the saloon where the galley was is now open and can be modified with another settee and cabinets to provide a large social area. Also, if you want to have twin singles in the port guest cabin, that

is an option. The layout we sailed was perfect for a couple who like to have another couple or two join them while cruising.

There is a fourth sleeping cabin in the boat that is tucked under the port side of the cockpit. This has twin singles and its own head and is accessible via a staircase that is just inside the sliding cockpit doors and across from the galley.

This would be an excellent crew cabin as it is separate from the forward sleeping cabins, close to the galley, and has easy access in and out without disturbing the owners forward.

The huge engine room is under the raised saloon floor and accessible through a floor hatch. It is not often you see such a huge engine room in a 54 foot boat but the Moody 54 is more of a yacht than a boat and has many amenities of a proper yacht‌like a true engine room. There is plenty of space for the large Volvo, so you can work on both sides of it easily. Plus, there is room for a genset, air conditioners, inverter, batteries, a

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{ BLUEWATERBOATS }

watermaker and a large hot water tank. Being right over the boat’s center of gravity, this engine room keeps as much weight as possible in the middle of the boat.

The living spaces below decks are all of good size and there is excellent headroom throughout. The joinery is solid and finely finished.

You can see that the designers in Dixon’s office and at Moody/Hanse in Germany have thought through every detail and innovated to get a very pleasing result.

CREATIVITY ON DECK The cockpit on most cruising boats is where those on board spend most of their time so the more comfortable and secure you can make it the better. Dixon and

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Moody decided to go with a lounging cockpit that is down a step from the twin helms and all of the lines, line stoppers and winches that you need to sail the boat. This way those sailing are not tangling the loungers in genoa and mainsail sheets.

The lounge has a U-shaped cockpit hardtop that provides shade and protection from light rain. In its center there is a retractable shade or soft top that can be folded away in good weather and closed in bad.

The tail ends of the hardtop extend aft to the helms on both sides and it would seem that rain would flow directly on to the helmsman but we did not have a chance to test that.

One of the downsides of the large hardtop is the restriction of vis-

ibility forward for people under about six-foot, two inches.

The boat is easy for a single watch stander to manage with the autopilot steering. All lines lead aft and with electric winches and line stoppers, you can trim, furl and reef the working sails from one spot. And because the headsails are on electric furling systems, you can deploy the self-tacking Solent jib when going upwind and then furl it and deploy the big genoa when reaching or sailing downwind.

Moving fore and aft along the side decks is a completely new experience. The boat has bulwarks and get to be quite high as you get to the foredeck. All you do when leaving the cockpit is walk around the back of the helms and you are on the side deck; no climbing over cockpit seat backs or ducking under a dodger or Bimini. Only the new Jeanneau 440 and 490 have anything like this. You feel completely secure everywhere on deck since the top lifeline is a solid stainless steel hand rail that you can grip for balance or lean against.

The transom folds down to make a huge swim or boarding platform. The open space beneath the cockpit is large enough to stow an inflatable dinghy when going to sea.

Again, the designers at Dixon’s office and the Moody/ Hanse engineers have come up with very creative soluBLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

tions and have delivered a cockpit and deck layout that is tailormade for safe, dry, comfortable family cruising.

SAILING SIMPLIFIED Alan arrived and we were soon underway with the boat’s new owner at the helm. The wind was holding us onto the dock, but with the bow and stern thrusters engaged, we peeled away and motored down Back Creek to the Severn River mouth and the Chesapeake Bay. It was a perfect day for sailing so we were all looking forward to putting the 54 through its paces.

In the middle of the channel we headed into the wind and rolled out the mainsail, trimmed for close reaching and then fell www.bwsailing.com

off and headed out into the bay.

The self-tacking jib rolled out easily and soon we were sailing upwind with the engine off and making six knots into the eight to 10 knots of wind. Very pleasant. Once out into the open water we put the 54 through a series of tacks which involved only turning the helm and sailing through the wind to the new tack as the jib lead slides across the boat on the foredeck traveler.

The 54 had a L-shaped bulb keel and a fairly high aspect spade rudder. Hard on the wind, it sailed at about 42 degrees to the true wind and tacked in just over 80 degrees.

This is quite close winded for a big cruising boat but with the selftacking jib it is possible to sheet to quite close angles. The feel on the helm in this light breeze was very light and the boat turned smartly and carried good speed through the tacks.

With the double-headed Solent rig, we were able to make the big sail change right from the helm.

We rolled up the self-tacking Solent and then fell off the breeze and rolled out the big genoa for some power reaching. The big sail took

hold of the wind and soon we were sailing at over 7.5 knots in roughly 10 knots of true wind. The 54 has a long waterline and an easily driven hull, so she was able to make the most of what breeze we had.

To say the that the 54 is a pleasure to sail is an understatement.

She has great balance and poise and will certainly carry her crew in great comfort in a wide range of wind speeds and conditions. This is a boat that you could easily sail around the world and I’d be quite happy to give it a try. BWS

Moody Deck Saloon 54 LOA 56’1” LWL 51’0” Beam 17’0” Draft )std.)

8’5” Draft (shoal) 7’4” Displacement 53,550 lbs.

Ballast 16,300 lbs.

Sail Area (w/jib) 1,578 sq. ft.

Sail Area (w/genoa) 1,739 sq. ft.

Mast height 83’0” Water 214 gals.

Fuel 138 gals.

Engine 150 hp.

Moody Yachts/ Berthon USA Newport, RI 02840 401-846-8404 sale@berthonusa.com www.yachts.group/moody

65

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67

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68

BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

The number one source for buying and selling Pre-Owned Leopard Catamarans.

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FEATURED BOATS OF THE MONTH

2018 PASSPORT VISTA 545 CENTER COCKPIT (Sistership shown in photo)

The winner of CRUISING WORLD’S 2012 Full Size Cruiser and SAIL magazine’s 2012 Flagship Monohull. The Passport Vista 545 Center Cockpit, Hull #110 is currently under construction and available for delivery in 2018. This thoroughly modern and stylish yacht offers an abundance of room and comfort yet keeps a sleek, low profile. The modern reverse transom and raised deck house will appeal to those who prefer a contemporary look. Truly a modern world-class cruising yacht with all of the quality and custom touches you have come to expect from a Passport.

The high tech composite hull and deck are designed for speed, comfort and the highest level of safety. The Vista series sail plan with its Solent headsail design with self-tacking jib and mainsail furling system are unparalleled in ease of handling and efficiency. Smartly equipped with a bow thruster, electric winches. reverse cycle heat and air conditioning, generator, refrigeration and freezer systems, autopilot, multi-function display at helm and at navigation station, customized interior layout, faux leather upholstery, colored Corian counter tops, Skycreens, and custom interior and exterior lighting.

Although modern in their specification, Passports are still hand built by old world craftsman skilled in the art of fine yacht building. From the safety features of the custom fabricated stainless steel deck fittings to hand crafted raised panel and louvered doors, every detail large and small is taken into consideration. Our interiors are not modular in construction but hand built, piece-by-piece, to create an interior that flows flawlessly from stem to stern.

If you would like to see and learn more about the Passport Vista 545 give us a call at 410-263-0008, or drop by our website www.passportyachts.com anytime. We are always happy to talk about our spectacular line of cruising yachts. Whether new or previously cared for, there’s a Passport to suit you.

For more information on these and other previously owned yachts, please contact us: ANNAPOLIS: Yacht Haven, 326 First Street, Ste. 404, Annapolis, MD 21403

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2009 PASSPORT CLASSIC 470 CENTER COCKPIT

The perfect balance between performance and comfort. Fully equipped with double walk through, two stateroom two head layout. Ready for your next offshore adventure. If you think that a new yacht of the very highest quality and one that can be enjoyed for a lifetime is in your future, please don’t hesitate to call us. Asking $535,000.

2012 PASSPORT 585 TWIN Unsurpassed quality and construction. Call for details.

Asking $1,245,000

2008 PASSPORT 470 CC Fully equipped for cruising. Excellent condition with unique double walk thru, 3 stateroom layout and shoal draft. Asking $524,000

2004 PASSPORT 470 CC Very well equipped with arch, wind gen and solar panels. Refit in 2016.

Asking $369,000

1996 PASSPORT 470 CC Georgeous joinery, dark blue hull, 3 staterooms and teak decks make her a real head turner. Well maintained and constantly updated. Asking 350,000

1989 PASSPORT 41 AC Dark blue hull with unique two stateroom two enclosed head arrangement. Well equipped.

Asking $189,000

CLASSIC PASSPORT 40 AC Beautiful example of the legendary Robert Perry cruising yacht. Four available.

Starting at $97,750.

2006 GOZZARD 41 AC A solidly constructed, extended range blue water yacht designed primarily for the liveaboard cruising lifestyle.

Well equipped. Asking $335,000

GOZZARD 37 AC True cutter rig with shoal draft designed for offshore cruising but is equally pleasing for coastal and bay sailing. Two to choose from $225,000

1995 GOZZARD 36 AC Well cared for and constantly upgraded.

Asking $179,000

1987 PASSPORT 51 CC Classic Stan Huntingford double ender design will take you anywhere in the world with comfort and safety, turning heads everywhere she goes. Asking $229,000

1999 CATALINA 470 Catalina’s blue water cruiser. Owner’s have updated her and maintained her to the highest standards.

Asking $215,000

1986 BRISTOL 40 YAWL One of the last Bristol 40’s produced the last yawl version delivered. A beauty to behold and will serve her new owners elegantly. Asking $79,000

For more information on these and other previously owned yachts, please contact us: ANNAPOLIS: Yacht Haven, 326 First Street, Ste. 404, Annapolis, MD 21403

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72

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www.selfsteer.com 73

{ BROADREACHING }

by ANDYCROSS

WINTERING IN THE GREAT LAND

A

fresh blanket of snow covers Yahtzee when I arrive to tackle another day of boat projects. Before heading below to switch on heaters and plug in power tools, I spend a few minutes shoveling the cockpit and decks, and pushing snow off the solar panels on our hard dodger.

Pretty soon the sun breaks over the tops of the mountains to the east and fills the marina with light. I stand for a moment soaking it in, watching it slowly illuminate freshly covered peaks that tower above town with a brilliant alpenglow. Savoring moments like these is part of what makes wintering in Alaska so special.

Gone are the tourists. Gone are the cruise ship passengers. Gone are the campers. Gone are the visiting fishermen and boaters. Gone are the seasonal workers. Gone is the picture of Alaska that is care74

fully presented in glossy brochures and advertisements to people in the lower 48 and elsewhere. What’s left is a truly unique place that I’m glad we’re getting to experience.

But stopping here has also helped me get the picture of what it means to take a break from the cruising life and the many rewards it has to offer. Hitting the pause button allows us to reset and refocus. It provides a fresh perspective on where we want to go from here and how we’ll likely find ourselves stopping like this in destinations throughout the world.

The truth is that pausing along the cruising journey means different things for every cruiser. And it’s different every time you stop. For some, it entails pulling the boat from the water, putting it on jack stands and leaving it for hurricane season. For others, it’s winterizing and covering. Yet for others, it’s leaving it tied in a slip with a web of lines and hoping for the best.

While we’re enjoying the

fruits of winter in Alaska, cruising friends have buttoned up boats in Vanuatu and Fiji. And while those locales are vastly different in their geography and weather than here, the dance of putting away the boat isn’t all that dissimilar.

Sails come down, get folded and stowed. Provisions get removed, eaten or donated to locals. Canvas comes off and running rigging gets tidied up.

And though the effort involved with putting the boat away can be time consuming and difficult, it’s the anticipation of setting it all back up again that keeps us going.

Yes, spring sailing is a welcomed glimmer in our eyes — even if we are snowboarding and skiing at the moment. BWS Andrew, along with wife Jill and sons Porter and Magnus, are currently residing in Alaska while working on their Grand Soleil 39 Yahtzee. Follow their adventures at threesheetsnw.com/ yahtzee.

BLUE WATER SAILING

• March 2018

Join the Salty Dawg Rally and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow blue water

sailors. Sail to and from the Caribbean, attend free safety and seamanship seminars and demonstrations provided by veteran passagemakers and the U.S. Coast Guard. And, benefit from the many valuable discounts that are available only to Salty Dawg Rally members.

Events in 2018

(Check the website for the exact dates: www.saltydawgsailing.org.)

May: Spring Salty Dawg Rally from the B.V.I to Hampton, Va. July: Salty Dawg Rally to Maine October: Salty Dawg Great Lakes Rally to Hampton October: Safety and Seamanship Seminar in Annapolis, Md.

October: Visit the Salty Dawg booth at the Annapolis Sailboat Show October: Safety and Seamanship Seminars in Hampton, Va. October: Annual Family Halloween Party and Raffle in Hampton, Va. November: Fall Salty Dawg Rally from Hampton, Va. to the B.V.I.

Go to saltydawgsailing.org for more information.

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