lin & larry pardey of gear people feel guilty if they don’t buy it. But safety comes from having a partner I really trust and from having him help me gain the confidence in what we’re doing and in handling this boat in all conditions. Larry: There’s nobody I’d sooner have on watch than Lin. I trust her implicitly. If the job needs two people, she calls me. 38: So how does a couple gain that trust if they don’t have a Bob Sloan in their life? Larry: It’s the hardest part of this whole thing: Getting sea
and 85 percent were in over their head. It wasn’t that having the gear was wrong but with it, people didn't have to serve any kind of apprenticeship before they set off cruising, they could just go. They set off without an accurate picture of what life would be like when they had to take care of things themselves. Larry: It gives them something else to blame when something goes wrong. If they don’t learn to navigate, and they have a GPS, and something wrong happens — they go aground or whatever — they can blame the GPS: “It wasn’t my skill as a navigator, this machine broke down.” They’re kind of half suspecting that things will go wrong. So are people who buy metal boats. They say it can bump on a reef and come off without any damage. Which means they’re planning on bumping on a reef. Often they bump on a reef on the weather side and they never come off. By the way, we don’t have any strong opinions or anything (laughs). 38: Talk about hulls and materials. Has having a wood boat made you more safety conscious? If the steel guy says I’m going to bounce this thing, are you thinking, "I have no margin of error?" Larry: I think more important than the material is the shape of the keel so when you hit things it doesn’t fall off. You have a keel like Taleisin’s and you ride up on the object and it disperses the energy. Often you’ll just slide off again. But if you come to an abrupt stall with the fin hanging down it does serious damage to the keel bolts, and so on. Lin: Let’s talk about safety. Safety is something that’s being sold. The minute you put the word safety in front of any piece
"You might criticize Cabo San Lucas for its opulence, but overall, the area of Baja has improved for the average person."
COURTESY TALEISIN
'Taleisin' creaming to weather.
time. You’re in an office and you’re working hard to buy a boat, and you get two weeks off. That’s your sea time, if you don't spend it fixing the boat. So it’s very, very hard for the normal, modern man to get sea time. Lin: And part of it's going out sailing every day in the summer, even for just a few hours. And don’t fix the boat up to the perfect cruising situation. Don’t put the extra equipment on. Start out with the most basic sailing boat you’ve got, put on just enough gear so you can go sailing. You might find out you didn’t need that gear. Larry: We have friends helping bring a boat back from Bermuda, and that’s a very good idea. Lin: Take some time before you jump into this game. We’ve actually met many people whose lives were devastated because they took three or four years getting a boat ready to go, then they got out there and didn’t like it. Larry: We’re great believers in sea trials. It’s kind of an oldfashioned thing. I’m also a great believer in racing. You don’t have to end up in the top. If you wind up in the middle of the fleet you’re still in the game. You can sail a boat. Lin: But notice we keep talking about sailing. Larry: The great thing about racing is that in order to finish the race you have to sail in heavy winds, light winds, lighter winds. And in close quarters. It’s very healthy. There was an article by Uffa Fox years ago where he said the best way to prepare for cruising is to do a little racing. 38: We’ve talked a little about some memorable sailors. What about memorable boats? Larry: Peter Tangvald had a boat that impressed us, Dorothea. He had a lot of influence on us because we were building a boat, and we decided not to put an engine in our boat because of him. Lin: His engine never worked so he just threw it away. He said that’s when he started having fun and was challenged by the sailing. So we thought we’d try it, and see if we liked it. 38: But who cruises without an engine these days? Lin: Right now I know about 10 boats out there sailing without an engine. Larry: And the interesting thing about these engineless sailors is that their boats are so similar. They’re all like Taleisin: cutters with long underbodies, rudders attached, long bowsprits. The reason is they give you confidence. They never fail to come about, they handle heavy seas, they’re great in light winds. It’s when a boat doesn’t respond the way you expect it to that you rely on the motor. Lin: Let’s get this straight about sailing without an engine. We do it for fun. We don’t do it to prove anything. Do we recomNovember, 2006 •
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