Innehållsförteckning för November/December 2019 från Cruising World

I enjoyed your article “Cruising California” (August/September 2019). However, I wanted to bring your attention to the Oil Islands, which were briefly discussed. Each of these four islands was named for an astronaut who died during the Apollo and Gemini space programs. Three of them—Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee—perished during a training accident while preparing for Apollo 1. They were in the capsule on top of the rocket when it caught fire. Thus three of the islands are named Grissom, White and Chaffee. The fourth island is named for Theodore Freeman, who was an astronaut in the Gemini program. He died when a military jet that he was piloting went down. All four men gave their lives during our space race with Russia and should be remembered for…

1 HOIST Hoist the sail with minimum halyard tension then sheet the sail appropriately for the point of sail. Now tension halyard just enough to remove any horizontal wrinkles emanating from the luff. You can leave just a hint of wrinkles in light apparent wind velocity. In more wind, more tension is needed—and vice versa. Use the cunningham to make minor adjustments while sailing. 2 POWER The deeper the curvature in the sail shape, the more power and heel it creates. Sail depth is controlled by outhaul in the lower third of the mainsail and by inducing mastbend in the upper two-thirds, usually with the backstay. Less outhaul and mastbend adds depth and power. Increase them to flatten the sail and depower. Upwind, you generally want a flatter sail than…

1. RITCHIE NAVIGATION LIFE LIGHT • $24 • RITCHIENAVIGATION.COM Don’t let its diminutive size fool you. This U.S. Coast Guard-approved light is visible for over 2 miles, and once activated, the strobe will provide 300 hours of full brightness. The Life Light is ideal to attach to a life raft or PFD. 2. FORESPAR STA-PLUG MINI • $20 (2-pack) • FORESPAR.COM If a hose clamp or another fitting below the waterline fails, you need to act quickly. At 4 inches long with a 2-inch-diameter base, the Sta-Plug Mini is the ideal size (and price point) to have several on hand for emergencies like this. It’s made out of an elastomer composite material that will stay flexible for years. 3. GARMIN GPSMAP 86SCI • $650 • GARMIN.COM The new 86sci handheld…

As the holiday season approaches, it brings back fond memories of life aboard our gaff-rigged ketch, Dolphin. She was a 63-foot Colvin design, built like a steel battleship. At the time, we were anchored off Red Hook in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. It was a holiday tradition for us to hop in our dinghy and putter around the anchorage singing carols. When we arrived at a boat, we’d inevitably be welcomed aboard and poured a glass of a locally made holiday favorite, guavaberry wine. (Guavaberry wine, which also contains rum, is definitely an acquired taste.) We’d always set out on these sojourns laden with gifts for the other boats: small loaves of home-baked cranberry-walnut bread—simple beer bread made festive with the addition of dried fruit and nuts, and tied…

You’re 100 miles offshore, and a watch mate finds bilge water up over the floorboards. Is your boat leaking or flooding—and why, in this of all moments, do you care which it is? This was just one of many high-stakes questions posed to some four dozen sailors in Rhode Island this past January at a daylong hands-on Safety at Sea seminar sponsored by the Cruising Club of America. Since the club would also sponsor the biennial Newport Bermuda Race the following June, and many folks in the room were either planning to take part in that event or make other imminent ocean passages, the presenters had our full attention. For my part, I had attended several Safety at Sea seminars in the mid-1990s, and back then as a Cruising World…

LIVING ABOARD When my husband, Ken, and I sailed up Guatemala’s Rio Dulce, we never dreamed that our Morgan 38, Mary T, would reside there so long in our absence. Twenty miles inland, at the head of the river, the town of Fronteras (also known as Rio Dulce) is one of the finest hurricane holes in the Caribbean. It’s beautiful, inexpensive, the people are nice, and you can get almost every kind of boat work completed there. It’s one of those “stuck places,” where many cruisers end their sailing days. That, however, was not our plan. Our plan was to leave the boat for the hurricane season, go back to the States for a visit, and return in October. What do they say about boats and schedules? That they’re mutually…

On the one hand, when last year’s Boat of the Year judges and I first visited the Island Packet 349 for a dockside inspection during the U.S. Sailboat show in Annapolis, Maryland, we sort of knew what to expect from the full-keeled ivory-colored hull that awaited us. After all, the brand’s been around since 1979, and this boat—with a Hoyt Jib Boom mounted on the foredeck, like many of its predecessors—had that Island Packet look that’s long been a hit with a certain legion of cruising sailors. Surrounded by gleaming white hulls, hard chines, fold-down swim platforms, in-mast furlers, twin wheels and the like, the Island Packet stood out from the crowd in a retro sort of way, though we’d soon learn there are plenty of new elements to the…

As I stood in the darkness of a seaside cave, I noticed water dripping from the ceiling while a fire crackled in front of me. I watched Yahtzee bob gently at anchor just off the beach, and snow fall silently to the ground and sea. The last vestiges of daylight were slowly fading with a remarkable bluish hue. At 60 degrees north, this winter twilight can last seemingly all day, as the sun sits behind low-lying clouds, never quite reaching a glorious noon crescendo. That is part of the magic of winter in Alaska. While other boats sit on the hard or beneath shrink-wrap in the marina, it is important to us to get out and find these joys of cruising when the days get shorter. Because when the weather…

After deciding to stay in the Bahamas for hurricane season aboard our 33-foot sloop, Pelican, my partner, Eric, and I looked around for the best hurricane hole and chose Man-O-War Cay, just across from Marsh Harbour. The harbor at Man-O-War is protected by high hills and has two entrances, which allow storm surge to flow out. Buddy, who rents moorings at Man-O-War, said they’d never lost a boat, even in 1999’s Hurricane Floyd, which was a Category 4, with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. I liked Man-O-War’s proximity to Marsh Harbour, with its international airport and the fact that Man-O-War has a good hurricane shelter. We secured a mooring with Buddy and continued exploring the Abacos until August 27, when Hurricane Dorian began making a slow beeline for…

Not much beats a desert sunset, where the clear, dry air and the red earth seem to sharpen it and bring it that much closer—except maybe an ocean sunset, where the scattered clouds and ever-changing waves bring dynamic color and movement to it. Combine the two, and it makes for a photographer’s dream. As an offshore sailor, I’ve spent a lot of time photographing ocean sunsets, occasionally frustrated by my inability to use low shutter speeds on rolling decks, but mostly appreciative of how everything in that pelagic world is different every day—the light, the swells, the clouds. But the question of subject stays pretty much the same: to include the boat or not, and if so, which part? There’s the classic shot from the cockpit looking at the sails…

The sun peeked over the gentle rolling ocean swell, smearing the underside of the clouds with Crayola colors. Janna Esarey sat on a creatively fashioned dock box-turned-cockpit seat as DogBark galloped across the Pacific at 10 knots, under a reefed main and full genoa. She was sailing almost due south, 900 nautical miles north of Hawaii, with 25 knots of breeze over the port beam. DogBark was in her element, with the strong trades fueling her drive to sail fast. Janna’s confidence in her boat’s aptitude permitted her to sip coffee casually while admiring the stunning sunrise. She contemplated the winding path that led to this moment, charging across the Pacific on a 60-foot boat she had learned to love and call home. This is the story of a family,…

SEAMANSHIP I scrambled out of the dinghy onto Minh’s transom steps as a last-minute addition to the crew, the required fourth line handler needed for a transit of the Panama Canal. The French-flagged 41-foot Fountaine Pajot catamaran was weighing anchor in the Flats anchorage near the Port of Colon, a staging area for vessels preparing to enter the waterway, bound for the Pacific. Amid a flurry of activity, Bruno, the only English speaker, offered me a kindly welcome aboard as we felt a bump on the port side: Mr. Tito, the rental agent, was delivering four tires wrapped in plastic bags to use as fenders, and four stout 125-foot polypropylene hawsers, which were also necessary for the passage through the canal. In another moment, on the starboard side, a 40-foot…

REFIT There aren’t a whole lot of places to hang out on Ganymede, our 31-foot Cape George cutter. Or you could say, given that there’s five of us on a 31-footer, there’s nowhere, by necessity, that we don’t hang out. And yet, while it’s not unusual on any given day to find one child on the foredeck reading, another dangling her legs off the side deck and a third reading down below on the big bunk, the cockpit remains the center of all boat life. When we’re offshore, it’s the limit of the children’s range; when at anchor in the tropics, with an awning overhead, it’s the coolest spot in case of sun or the driest in the rain. The cockpit is where dishes are washed, meals eaten on hot…

After a multiyear run at completing its Cruiser and Vision series of sailboats, German builder Bavaria Yachts has added a third range to its lineup, and it brought two of its new models, the C45 Style and the C57, to this past winter’s Miami International Boat Show. The C line—which also includes a third sailboat, the C50—heads in a new direction looks-wise, compared with the company’s two other Farr-designed ranges, thanks to the creative team at Italy’s Cossuti Yacht Design. The new models were first introduced in 2018 at Boot Dusseldorf, the sprawling wintertime indoor German boat show. Debut festivities included an acrobat ascending to the ceiling on flowing white drapes, billowing smoke, pulsing lights, a booming soundtrack and drummers floating above the boats, suspended on cables. Its North American…

While VHF radios have long served mariners, many sailors aren’t fully utilizing all the capabilities of modern VHF units with Digital Selective Calling. As a result, many VHFs show wear on only two controls: power and volume. Vesper Marine’s revolutionary new Cortex safety and communications platform dramatically simplifies VHF operations, and delivers Automatic Identification System, cellular, DSC and Wi-Fi communications to a dedicated handset or smartphone app. Even better, Cortex provides smart alarms with “situation views” that prioritize concerns. Hardware-wise, Cortex is comprised of an IPX7-rated (waterproof) black-box M1 processor and one or more optional-but-recommended H1 handsets, plus two smartphone apps (Cortex Onboard and Cortex Monitor). The M1, which is mounted to a belowdecks bulkhead, features a built-in AIS B/SO transponder, an embedded SIM card, an integrated VHF splitter, a…

I sat on the cockpit coaming, clear of the doghouse, where I could scan the horizon for fishing boats, ships or other yachts. In this position, I was also clear of the Bimini and, as the moon had not yet risen, I could clearly see the Milky Way and the Southern Cross. Sahula was beam reaching under yankee, staysail and mainsail, with Valerie, the windvane, in control. We were surging onward at a steady 7 knots over a relatively smooth sea. Far off to starboard, a dim glow marked the town of Mackay, Australia. To port, a large beacon flashed three times every 15 seconds. It indicates the entrance to Hydrographers Passage, which leads through Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and out to the Coral Sea. It’s been two months since…

Several years ago, I learned something profound by observing my then-toddler grandson, Liam, wearing a life jacket, step aboard his uncle’s catboat for the first time. His eyes twinkling in expectation, he set out on a tour of the cockpit, spinning a block here, pulling a sheet there, and cheerfully swinging the tiller from side to side. Then he got adventurous. Leaning over the rail, he asked, “Uncle Will, may I touch the water?” “Yes, Liam,” Will replied, with avuncular authority. “But be careful.” And so Liam carefully touched the water. He was becoming a sailor. A truism of the life we sailors have chosen is that, at heart, we are equally adventurous and wary—tugging on bowlines, testing lifelines, asking questions. Our biggest risk, I think, comes when we make…

While safety tethers and lifelines are the first line of defense when it comes to keeping everyone on board, the hard-boiled reality is that people still end up in the water. Fortunately for sailors, electronic safety technologies have evolved to give those still on board a better chance of ensuring help is on the way. Here, then, is a look at the latest electronic emergency kits for cruisers. When it comes to electronics and safety at sea, the conversation begins with emergency position-indicating radio beacons. These lifesaving devices are registered to the vessel—not its individual sailors—and broadcast on the 406 MHz and 121.5 MHz frequencies. Today’s EPIRBs have a 360-degree strobe light and, depending on the model, they can be activated manually or triggered hydrostatically. Once active, EPIRBs transmit a…

CYOA AND ACY JOIN FORCES CYOA Yacht Charters, with nearly 40 years of operation in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Atlantic Cruising Yachts, one of the largest sailing yacht dealerships in North America, have joined forces. The deal means that CYOA, based in Frenchtown, St. Thomas, and ACY, based in Annapolis, Maryland, will each benefit from investment in expansion and enhancement of the operations and facilities of CYOA’s current home charter base. Christian Bent, president of ACY, will acquire a partnership interest in CYOA, along with John Jacob, the president and current sole owner of CYOA. The new ownership group will contribute investment and working capital to expand the marketing and service operations, and significantly increase the fleet capacity of CYOA. ACY is one of the largest sailing yacht dealerships…

SANDCASTLE - 1999 ISLAND PACKET 380 Palmetto FL $178,000 Sandcastle is an extremely nice example of the Island Packet 380 - a fantastic bluewater cruising sailboat! She is very clean, well maintained, and constantly upgraded. If you are looking for a good mid-size cruising sailboat that is ready today to set sail, this boat should be on your “must-see” list. Some of her better features include: Generator, Solar Panels, Air Conditioning, NEW Holding Tank, Electric Winch, Rebuilt Engine, AutoProp, Cruising Spinnaker, NEW Lifelines, and NEW Salon Cushions. Whiteaker Yacht Sales 1035 Riverside Dr. Palmetto, FL 34221 | 941-776-0616…