Innehållsförteckning för November/December 2020 från Cruising World

German sailors Annemarie Auer and Volker Frank, aboard their CNB 66 yacht, Escape, have a near-perfect strategy for sailing through these uncertain COVID-19 times: They have no plan. OK, they can tell you where they’ll be next week, and they will explain how they expect to get there and where they might be on to next. But the big picture? They want to see the world. That’s it. Their timeline is open-ended. And as for destinations, they’re keeping an open mind about that too. I met the couple on a sunny, warm early-October morning in Annapolis, Maryland, where we were taking a lay day from our Boat of the Year sea-trial duties. Escape’s carbon mast was by far the tallest stick in the marina, tucked just inside the bridge at…

Cap’n Fatty Goodlander’s sobering article “Pondering a Pandemic” (August/September 2020) was a gentle gut punch (Fatty-style) about how he and Carolyn, and frankly most of us, are dealing with our existence on what he calls our beloved Mother Ocean. Fatty’s articles are always served up with insight, humor and humility, and this month was no different, although it was a stark reminder of the pandemic’s impacts, our future, and the importance of connectedness with loved ones, friends and even strangers. The Goodlanders’ lives, floating on a mooring in safety but uncertainty, is a departure from reading about their next exotic destination. As an American kid in Singapore, I learned to sail on a Sabot “borrowed” not far from the Changi Sailing Club harbor that the Goodlanders now call home. I…

Zanzibar: the very name evokes exotic images of sultans, spices and 18th century explorers. I was traveling in Africa with my brother Dan, and it was time for him to head back to California—but I couldn’t go home without a quick visit to Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of Tanzania. I was so close, and I doubted that I would ever sail there aboard my own boat. My guidebook talked about beaches, restaurants, hotels and history, but the photos of the traditional sailing craft were what really hooked me—somehow, I was going to sail a dhow. The plane landed in the dark, and I was whisked off to a hotel in the heart of Zanzibar City, a crumbling collection of Arab- and Indian-inspired old buildings that remind one of…

Any sailor with even the mildest case of wanderlust has gazed longingly at the gentle curve of a tabletop globe, tracing imaginary routes from their hometowns to faraway ports with the tips of their fingers. For West Coast sailors, these lines are likely to lead south; perhaps meandering along Baja’s rugged Pacific coast and turning the corner at Cabo San Lucas, headed for a place where the water is said to be bluer, the air warmer, the fish just a bit more colorful. This magical place, of course, is the Sea of Cortez. And if that narrow strip of water tucked between mainland Mexico’s Sonoran Desert and the Baja’s beckoning finger is, in fact, the setting of your cruising daydreams, then you are in luck, because exploring the sea has…

SYSTEMS It has been our pattern ever since we began cruising on Ganymede, a home-finished Cape George 31 cutter, to take the already simple systems we began with and simplify them further. And so, the motorcycle battery first used to start the outboard got chucked in favor of pulling the cord; the fuel now lives in a 5-gallon Mexican fabric-softener jug with a hole cut in it for a hose (it actually leaks and smells less than the OEM tank); the hand pump for lamp oil is in a junk heap in a Colombian boatyard. The list goes on: Suffice it to say that nearly everything is simpler and has fewer moving parts than when we began. Only one boat system, in fact, has become more complicated, and that was…

1. VOORMI RIVER RUN HOODIE • $129 • VOORMI.COM After field-testing this versatile sun shirt over the summer, the River Run hoodie has earned a permanent place in our sea bag. The extremely lightweight, full-cover Merino wool hoodie keeps the sun and sweat away during the daylight hours, and is a handsome, good-looking layer to toss over a T-shirt when the temps drop after sunset. 2. ECOXGEAR ECOPEBBLE LITE • $40 ECOXGEAR.COM Big tunes come in a tiny package. The Ecopebble Lite Bluetooth speaker is only 3 inches square by 1.5 inches deep and weighs just 3.2 ounces. Secure the attached bungee in the cockpit while out for a sail or clip it to your backpack while on a hike, and take your music anywhere. The speaker is waterproof to…

While cruising aboard our Tayana 58 in Florida, the Bahamas and Caribbean in recent years, we managed to weather several hurricanes as well as countless storms that approached our harbors. Once it appeared that a storm might impact us, if there was time, meal planning began in earnest, so when it was time to hunker down or move off the boat for safety reasons, we’d already eaten our way out of the freezer. § One year, I devised this recipe for a small, whole turkey. It provided plenty of food to weather a storm: After a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, we used the leftover meat for turkey hash, turkey sandwiches and turkey soup. The recipe below is a scaled-down version, using turkey parts. For a whole small bird,…

The anchor chain vibrated beneath my hand as Scott hit the throttle and Quetzal eased astern. That’s not what I wanted to feel, the anchor and chain skidding along the bottom, and I willed the usually reliable 66-pound Bruce to set. It chattered, then seemed to bite, then chattered again. We were tired, cold to the bone and ready to drop below for a hot meal, a wee dram of whiskey and a sound sleep. Instead I hit the up button on the windlass remote and started hauling up the anchor—for the third time. We needed to take the strain off the windlass with the engine, and Gretchen, next to me on the bow, relayed my directions to Brant, who was positioned amidships, and he passed them along to Scott…

By now, of course, we’ve all come to realize that the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world in ways previously unimaginable, and as we go into the first uncertain winter with the coronavirus, nobody knows what lies ahead. One of the ways in which our lives have changed is the way in which we consume sports—admittedly a small item in the grand scheme of things. But sports have always been important to me, going far back to my own athletic career, the highlight of which was captaining my college football team (back in those ancient times when the ball was a rock, but still….). Despite COVID-19, the NBA and MLB somehow made it through successful (if abbreviated) seasons. In years past, I would’ve been on my seat devouring the NBA…

Attention southbound sailors! If you’re looking for a little camaraderie this winter while still cruising in your own social bubble, check out the Panama Posse 20-21 Rally. It’s not your typical rally because you can join anytime between November 20 to June 21, or anywhere along the way from California to the Caribbean and Florida Keys. Benefits include savings from more than 30 marinas, live group chats and calls to cover weather, safety, logistics, seminars, and even a dedicated Panama Canal agent. More than 500 anchorages along the way are vetted and updated by participants and shared via a live cruising guide. Registration is $150 per boat. For more information or to sign up, visit panamaposse.com. Talking Trash It’s a constant issue for cruisers: what to do with your trash.…

I was waiting for my husband, Steve, to fly back to the Philippines, where I was overseeing a few boat projects. All that was left was to tidy up some details and slap on a few coats of antifouling. We were a couple of weeks away from relaunching Kate, our Newport 41, when something very unexpected happened. The world went into lockdown in an attempt to control a pandemic. With international flights grounded, land transportation stopped and all marine traffic prohibited, I suddenly found myself stranded in a foreign country. Not only that, I was high and dry and all alone in a boatyard. No husband, no other cruisers, and only a skeleton staff charged with keeping an eye on things at the yard. I will admit that the first…

As a clumsy Chicago teenager, I worked at Blatt’s restaurant on Michigan Avenue—the cheese blintzes were to die for. One day Nat, the manager, asked me to replace a fluorescent bulb. I broke the first one attempting to withdraw it from its skinny carton, and I broke the second one while attempting to insert it while standing on the counter. Not good. This gave me a lifelong respect for the fragility of fluorescent tubes. A few years later, while still a teenager and sailing with my wife-to-be, Carolyn, I came across another fluorescent tube, this one in the Cozumel Channel between Yucatan and Cuba. It was dancing on the face of a giant breaking wave during a full gale. The unexpected sight of it in such a bizarre, storm-tossed circumstance…

If we end up on the rocks, we stay on the boat. OK?” The storm arrived so suddenly, and was so fierce and unexpected, it took not only our anchorage by complete surprise, but much of southern Spain, and later, after sweeping through the region, would have local news stations claiming it to be “a storm unlike any in living memory.” The following details the experience and our individual perspectives on the most violent wind to cross our decks in 13 years and 48,000 nautical miles of world cruising, and how, by working together, and with a little help from Dream Time, our Cabo Rico 38, we survived without injury or damage. NEVILLE: Our 254-nautical-mile passage west, tracing latitude 39 from Sardinia, Italy, to the Balearic Islands, was a cruising…