Innehållsförteckning för May 2022 från Cruising World

While cruising around the world, one of the things we seek is a connection. Whether it’s a fellow cruiser lending a hand or a local resident with a good story, people stand out in our cruising lives. They make us remember a time and place better than we might have otherwise. The same could be said for beaches. The last thing I want is to become indifferent to the white sand and azure waters. So, I look to build a connection to the beaches I visit, through shells. In my seven years as a liveaboard and circumnavigator, I’ve walked across a hundred beaches. At first, I was excited by shells that I thought were pretty or whole. But after enough beach walks, I learned to find shells that are rare…

Every bluewater sailor has a comfort food. Mine is soup. Ever since my first ocean crossing 15 years ago aboard Celeste, our 40-foot custom cold-molded wooden sloop, my midnight-to-4 a.m. watch has started with a cup of soup. I find it comforting in those dark hours, and the sustenance helps to keep me awake, alert, and able to perform my tasks. § I’m not above opening a can of Campbell’s, but nothing beats homemade soup. One of my favorites is this Hungarian mushroom soup. It’s made with the humble white mushrooms that are available almost anywhere, but you can experiment. Recently, my husband, Seth, and I were in Hawaii after a 20-day passage from French Polynesia, and I discovered locally grown ali’i mushrooms, also called king oysters or king trumpets.…

OF ALL THE WAYS I HAVE TRAVELED, I LOVE MY SAILBOAT THE BEST. A WANDERER SINCE CHILDHOOD, I HAVE CLIMBED GLACIERS WITH A HEAVY PACK, FORDED AFRICAN RIVERS BY MOTORCYCLE, AND LANDED ON REMOTE FJORDS BY FLOATPLANE. NONE OF IT COMPARES WITH CRUISING. I AM CERTAIN THERE IS NO BETTER WAY TO ENCOUNTER THE WORLD THAN BY BOAT. I’ve discovered that my humble craft has an alchemical quality, a certain trick of distilling the places, weather, events, people, and, yes, the scares and repairs too, into an extraordinarily pure essence, a rare and wonderful possession for life. This treasure can only be earned, never purchased, and cannot be lost or stolen. A few words are enough to conjure it all. “Did you go up the Rio Dulce?” another sailor might…

Based on a thorough dockside inspection of the Grand Soleil 44 Performance, followed by a spirited test sail in near-ideal conditions a few days after the close of the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, CW’s Boat of the Year judges agreed on three essential points: The GS 44 is stunning to look at, sails like the proverbial witch, and, without a doubt, earned the title of 2022 Best Performance Cruiser. “It truly defines a racer/cruiser in my mind,” noted judge and systems expert Ed Sherman. “I think, ultimately, it’s a very well-built boat.” Our colleague Tim Murphy was quick to add, “I think it’s a really beautiful boat to look at, especially when we saw it on the water.” Right on both counts, but for me, the boat…

A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE BITTER END If you’ve sailed in the British Virgin Islands, then you know the Bitter End Yacht Club. Its marina, bars, restaurants and watersports facilities have been a mainstay in Virgin Gorda’s North Sound since the ’70s. Sailors around the world were crushed when the property was destroyed in 2017’s Hurricane Irma. Now, after massive rebuilding efforts throughout the BVI, the Bitter End is back—and on course to be better than ever. Just before the winter 2021 holidays, the club raised the burgee and welcomed guests to a quiet opening of onshore amenities. While there is still much more to come, Kerri Quinn Jaffe, the Bitter End’s chief marketing officer, says that the Quarterdeck Marina, Reef Sampler Beach Bar, Buoy Room restaurant, gourmet market, and…

HEART OF HILO When sailing into Hilo Bay, Hawaii, it’s hard not to think of history. Outrigger canoe club boats are hauled up on the beach, bringing to mind the first settlers who came from Tahiti and the Marquesas in great voyaging canoes. The nearly landlocked basin of Radio Bay (now closed to sailors) once welcomed postwar ocean voyagers such as Miles and Beryl Smeeton, who moored there on their final voyage home in the 1960s. The green parks along the waterfront where neighborhoods once stood remind you of the two terrifying tsunamis. As you follow the narrow, shallow channel into the Wailoa River, you find a little basin presided over by Suisan Fish Market. This is where my husband, Seth, and I kept our custom 40-foot cold-molded wooden sloop…

We were tied to the fuel dock in Marathon, the midpoint of the Florida Keys, in the early part of 2022, when I realized our mistake. Other cruisers traveling the Great Loop were on the loop’s southern stretch of the route, while some bluewater cruisers were starting to stage for passage to the Bahamas and beyond. I asked the dockmaster if any slips were available, and learned that it’s perpetually high season in the Keys, including at that moment. Along with cruisers and sailors, fish migrations change throughout the year, calm summer conditions attract divers, and festivals bring in the party crowds. “We’re always booked out,” he said, shaking his head. Then he paused, perhaps realizing that he’d just sold us a total of 6 gallons of diesel. “Wait, what…

John and I have been sailing our 50-foot cutter-rigged sloop, Atea, through the Pacific, Asia and the Indian Ocean for the better part of 10 years with our two children, Braca and Ayla. We had two choices when considering our route back into the Pacific from the Atlantic: south through Patagonia, or north through the Panama Canal. While the remote beauty of Chile was appealing, we’d dragged our kids around the globe with very little same-age companionship, and we felt it was time to show them that they weren’t the only children living on boats. We knew that there was no better place to demonstrate this than the Caribbean. We chose the northern route from Africa, bound for party central. We arrived in the West Indies in early 2021, amid…

SAILS With 25 to 30 sailboats making their North American debut at the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, each fall, it’s a logical place to look for design trends. Hard chines in the hull, galleys forward in the saloon, and grills and sinks incorporated into the transom are a few recent trends that multiple builders have adopted. But looking at this year’s fleet, what really jumped out at me was the number of boats being designed to fly self-tacking jibs. By my count, 11 of the 27 new models in the Class of 2022 were rigged with roller-furling, non-overlapping headsails that get sheeted to a car mounted on an athwartships track on the deck, forward of the mast. Typically, the sail’s single sheet is then led to a…

Sailboats are getting bigger all the time. Gone are the days when a boatbuilder like Catalina would pump out hundreds of Catalina 22s in a production run that would last decades. Profit margins for builders are far greater with larger vessels, and more and more buyers—even first-time buyers who’ve never owned a yacht—are coming into the market searching for boats 40 feet or greater. It’s kind of amazing but also true. That’s why it’s interesting and exciting when production boats under 30 feet debut, and it’s even better when our Boat of the Year judging panel has a dedicated class of nifty new offerings to inspect, as we did for model year 2022. What’s cool about the trio of boats that comprised this year’s Pocket Cruiser/Daysailer division—the Tartan 245, J/Boats…

People handled the COVID-19 shutdowns in all kinds of creative ways. My wife, Pat, and I had hoped to buddy-sail our Pacific Seacraft 34, Taravana, through the Bahamas and Caribbean with our friends Teri and Lee, aboard the Hallberg-Rassy 37 Glendora, but instead, we all decided to explore the Northeast. We christened our trip the Lobster Roll Rally, and set out to taste and rate as many lobster rolls as possible throughout New England. We set sail up the Intracoastal Waterway in mid-March, just enough ahead of the crowd to enjoy beautiful, empty anchorages, along with space in restaurants. We explored the Chesapeake Bay in May, overindulging in crab cakes. (We unofficially christened this leg of the journey the Crab Cake Crawl.) While it was unseasonably cold and wet for…

ENGINE ROOM So, you’ve decided that you are sick and tired of hearing your boat’s diesel engine clattering away for hours on end while you’re recharging your batteries via your engine’s alternator. You keep your boat on a mooring, so gaining access to shore power to run a dedicated 120-volt-battery charger isn’t normally an option. Solar panels or a wind generator could help, but you’re not too keen on the aesthetics or the reliability. That leaves three options to satisfy your appetite for amps. You could install an onboard AC generator, which will take up a considerable amount of space, is expensive, and will be just as noisy as running your main engine. You could add an additional alternator that is dedicated to supplying your house battery bank, leaving the…

MARINE MAINTENANCE The requirements for designing a diesel-engine exhaust system are relatively simple, but when things go awry, they usually do so in a dramatic or expensive manner. Water ingress via the exhaust system is a common malady that affects auxiliary diesels, and it nearly always leads to significant damage, up to and including destroying an engine. Fortunately, nearly all of these failure modes are well understood and easily avoidable with proper planning and material selection. While engine manufacturers don’t supply complete exhaust systems, virtually every one that I’ve encountered clearly details the design requirements necessary to keep water on the correct side of the engine. Following these instructions is of paramount importance. Engine manufacturers do not warranty against water damage caused by ingress from the exhaust system. Among other…

Fourteen to 18 knots of southerly breeze flowed across Puget Sound on a gorgeous day this past summer. My friend Jonathan had invited me to go daysailing aboard Dark Star, his Riptide 44. We hoisted the squaretop main and jib, and sailed uphill from Seattle’s Shilshole Bay Marina past West Point Lighthouse. Glancing at the angle to Port Madison, where we were headed, Jonathan decided that we should hoist the spinnaker. Perfect! We were soon ripping toward Port Madison at 11 to 12 knots. Then we noticed a container ship plying the southbound Vessel Traffic System lane. Given that our hands were full of sheets and steering wheels, I was relieved to glance at the chart plotter and see—via the boat’s Automatic Identification System—that the ship was passing clear east…