The INTERVIEW WITH A CRUISER Project

10 Questions For Totem

2013-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

Jamie, Behan, Niall, Mairen, and Siobhan Gifford sail on Totem, an S&S designed Stevens 47 (47’) hailing from Eagle Harbor – Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA. They began cruising in 2008 when their children were 4, 6 and 9. The kids are 8, 10 and 13 at the time of this interview.

They say: Departing Puget Sound in 2008, we hopped down the US west coast to Mexico. We explored much of the Pacific coast of Mexico and a hurricane season up in the Sea of Cortez. In 2010 we sailed the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society Islands, Suwarrow in the Cook Islands, Vava’u Group in Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Lifou in the Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, and on to Australia. After parking in Australia for a bit to recharge the cruising kitty, we sailed north to Papua New Guinea in 2012. Early 2013 finds the Totem crew heading west through Indonesia. We keep our position current and our ruminations semi-current on the blog.

Anything else readers should know about you?

We met sailing. Behan sailed a little growing up, but college dinghy racing got her hooked. Jamie grew up sailing in Mystic, Connecticut, and has broad racing, coastal cruising, and sailmaking experience. In 2002, we began family cruising in Puget Sound with our children, then a 3 year old and a 14 day old. Seasons didn’t matter, family time together on the water did. As our family grew (with a 3rd child), so did our family boating experience - one weekend at a time.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?

I am sure we made many, but the lingering memory was that we believed everything onboard Totem needed to be perfectly prepared by departure day. When our milestone day arrived, project lists remained uncompleted. We were ready enough and cast off without hesitation, but with some trepidation; especially after exhausting months of preparation. Jamie’s image of being perfectly prepared grew out of calibrating our budget to the right safety gear, the right sailing gear, proper systems with full documentation, generous spares and tools, and common comfort amenities. All of this is well and good, but everything onboard is a compromise in one way or another; and there will always be work onboard fixing things. Even high quality, expertly installed stuff can and does fail prematurely. What we realized is that lots of time spent weekend and vacation sailing is the closest you get to perfect preparation.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you found particularly accurate?

“Stop and take your own pulse first”: From a physician and friend Curtis Edwards, who taught us wilderness first aid. The context is of a first responder to a medical emergency, but the notion definitely applies to cruising. In a stressful situation, take a little extra time to calm yourself and really assess the situation.

“Be able to fix it yourself, live without it, or don’t bring it”: From Jim Jessie, our cruising mentor, marine surveyor, racing sailor, circumnavigator, and salty dog. As a typical cruiser’s onboard systems continue to increase in both quantity and complexity it may appear that less skill is ok and comfort is easy to come by – but when things break, do you still feel as comfortable and secure?

“Listen to other cruisers, but don’t trust a word of it.” From an unknown fellow customer in Downwind Marine in San Diego. It’s not a paranoid stance, rather a reminder to be open minded. Very often we’ve heard about how awful or great a place is, and yet we found it to be just the opposite. A town or an anchorage or a situation is created by countless variables easily changed; making it different for the next person.

What is a tip or a trick you have learned along the way?

Be prepared, e.g., it may be a picture- perfect, protected, glassy calm anchorage- but put everything away, keep decks clean and be prepared for a 2am squall that throws it all to hell. Be prepared enough to readily get away in the middle of the night so that in the rare even that it occurs, you’re ready.

There are dangerous herds of group-think that form around major passages. When you choose to leave the harbor, remember that it was YOUR choice. Similarly, when you enter an anchorage and see two boats at one side of it, their presence does not indicate “the best spot.” Use your judgment (and give us some room!).

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?

In no particular order:

Cabin fans. We’d never go the A/C route and the fans are great for comfort level… probably present at the moment because we’re only about 25 miles from the equator.
Cockpit shade. It seems like you can’t get enough.
Fish finder, because you not only know where the fish are, but the topography of the bottom- great for spotting bommies in the tropics. Cheaper than depth sounder and doesn’t require putting a hole in the hull.
A dinghy with some oomph. We know lots of cruisers love to love their rowing/hard dinghies, but you miss a whole lot of exploring if you don’t have at least 15hp to jam to the outer reef. We also have a 3.5hp to sip fuel when we don’t need the extra zoom, and like the redundancy. It sucked when our 15hp died in French Poly and we finished the Pacific run with a shared 2.5.
Cocktail shaker. We don’t even make ice on board but this is an essential part of the Crew Morale Package.
Proper plates and glasses, because plastic stinks for many reasons.
Rock solid anchor and ground tackle. Too much depends on it.

What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike?

We love the camaraderie, the fact that we can know someone we’ve just met in an anchorage better within a day or two than some of our immediate neighbors from land life. We love the bias between cruising boats to offer mutual aid, although it seems to be on the wane as cruising becomes more accessible and a rapid-fire circumnavigation something money can more readily buy.

What we try to distance ourselves from is the group think that tends to occur when a group of cruisers are gathered with a similar goal (e.g.: at a jump off point before a big passage engaging in weather analysis paralysis, at those ports around the world were cruising boats tend to get stuck to the bottom).

What advice would you give to parents thinking about taking their children cruising?

Tip toe in, and if it’s working, then run with it. Friends, family, and fellow sailors will give you many “great” reasons why you shouldn’t go: safety issues, irresponsible parenting, ruined education, financial doom; your kids are too young or old, etc. It’s true that cruising isn’t financially enriching, but be it a yearlong sabbatical or longer sailing lifestyle choice for some it sure beats the routines of mainstream life.

What we’ve found is that it gives us a strong bond as a family, is providing our children with excellent learning in many more dimensions then a conventional education, and- well, it’s just a lot of fun! We think it provides a tremendously fulfilling childhood. Despite my fears, their education has not suffered. At some point, it won’t work for everyone on board, and then we’ll stop…but for now this is as much a joy to the kids as part of their identity, and we see no sign of stopping soon.

In reality there are a so many individual reasons/dynamics why cruising will work or fail for a family. My optimism about what worked for us may be just as unsuited to your situation as the pessimistic opinions you’ll get. Spend time as a family unit afloat, and find out for yourself.

What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?

Being shorthanded and with kids, we lean towards the crews’ conditional awareness more than formality. A crews’ rested condition is like the daily balance on a credit card. Sleep is the asset that keeps your balance in check. Or lacking sleep is a liability from which you barrow against and can pay big for with fatigue.

In daylight boat chores are much easier. So we have no daylight watch schedule and a strong emphasis on keeping up with, or catching up on sleep. We have some structure to night watch, worked out to fit our natural sleep tendencies. Behan can stay up late and get up early, but isn’t as happy in the middle. Jamie does fine in the middle and is ok waking early. So we setup for that schedule, though watch change vary somewhat based on conditions. When it’s colder or rougher, watches are shorter – 3 hours or less depending on severity. On nice nights when rested, we’ve done 4, 5, and 6 hours watches.

Our method works well for us because we can each “read” the others conditional state AND neither wants the other person to get fatigued. It also helps that we have trusted Niall, now 13, to stand a short daylight watch since he was 10. Or, if Jamie’s feeling sleepy on a night watch but want to let Behan sleep longer, he’ll wake Niall with the news that we have dolphins around the boat. Sometimes they may not be there by the time he is tethered in cockpit, but his enthusiasm is always energizing!

Describe the compromises (if any) that you have made in your cruising in order to stay on budget.

Cruising seems to cost whatever you have. We scale expenses to work with our budget with an eye on local rates. We could afford to eat out in Mexico and Fiji because it was delicious and cheap. In pretty much the rest of the Pacific, it didn’t fit our budget to go to a restaurant. We try to avoid environments that suck money from you, like posh towns or marinas. There’s a lot of extra gear that we have shunted into the “luxury” column: we’d love to add a lot of discretionary items, from sat phone to SUP board, but we don’t need them. Ultimately, we parked t work when it was time to refill the kitty- but a pause, not an end, to adventuring afloat.

Where was your favorite place to visit and why?

This is one of those impossible questions- but that’s the good news, right? Jamie and I both keep coming back to Suwarrow, in the Cook Islands, as a favorite place, for two reasons: partly the wild remoteness and natural beautify of the place, but also because of the great experienced shaped by the rangers who were stationed there during our visit. Their active involvement in helping us really understand the nature of life in an atoll made it truly unforgettable.

We both agreed as well that some kind of special mention has to be given to the Sea of Cortez and to Papua New Guinea. They are all very different places, but like Suwarrow, the affinity draws from a combination of raw beauty and remoteness. It takes work to get there, and to stay there, but if you’re into that kind of thing- the rewards are tremendous.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What is it about the cruising life that drives and fulfills you?

Meeting other people in the countries we visit: sharing stories, making them as welcome on our floating home as we have been made in theirs ashore
Living a leaner, greener life. We tried to live with a light footprint ashore, but it’s impossible to compare with the way we’re able to live on the boat. We reduce, reuse, and reuse again: with limited space, every item is considered before acquisition. With no garbage service or utilities, you think more about unnecessary packaging and what goes overboard
The opportunity to raise our children in an environment that helps them internalize from their earliest days the beauty of our planet, and the importance of taking care of it for foreseeable generations

Favorite IWAC Quotes

2013-01-22T11:39:00.001-08:00

I am reading all of the past IWAC interviews for a talk that I am giving at the Seattle Boat Show. While doing so I am posting my favorite quotes to the IWAC facebook page which you can "like" to follow along.

In other news I have a new interview which will be coming out soon. Stay tuned.

Cheers, Livia

10 Questions for Happy Monster

2012-04-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hans and Dory sail on Happy Monster, a 36 feet Najad made in Sweden. The inside is not original Najad, but made by the first owner. They bought the boat in 2002 and left Holland in May 2005. They crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific and arrived in 2007 in New Zealand. There their plans to sail around the world changed and after a year working in NZ they continued sailing up and down in the Pacific. You can learn more about them on their website.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?

Wendy, our wind vane. She is a Dutch made Bouvaan and steers most of the time. Our new hard dodger we put on in New Zealand, the lights underneath and the solar panels and hand grips on top are very helpful. The Spectra water maker with Z-brain now two years old and never failed. The Z-braine keeps it clean so that we don't have to flush or pickle when we don't use it.

What is the next piece of gear you would add to your boat if it were free?

An AIS transmitter, so that other ships with AIS will always see you. (if they look) Of course there are some fancy chart plotters with worldwide maps, we really don't need them.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?

Not knowing we had to grease our rudder shaft often.

What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?

We do a 3 hour watch starts at seven. Every three hours we change, so we have both two time three hours of sleep in the night, on the day we sleep mostly both two times an hour.

Do you have any specific advice for couples cruising?

Start with loving each other very much and you have to like to be together 24/7. Try to do things together as much as possible so that both know how things work.

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way?

Never be lazy if it comes to prevent accidents, like reefing, taking your shoes out of the dinghy while you still can (next morning they were gone). Learn to be patient if you deal with customs and immigration. It takes often a lot of time and if you plan that it will cost you a day, you are feeling good if it is faster.

What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike?

We like the fact that the cruisers world is one big family, you all do the same and you help each other with whatever problem. We like the freedom we have and the friends we make. We don't like the goodbye's, and we have to say that a lot.

Have you found "trade goods" to be useful on your cruise? If so, what kinds?

Before we left we had made many lighters, balloons and t-shirts with our Happy Monster on it and they still are very good give aways. We also ordered some inflatable globes to give away on schools and we point out on these globes the trip we made. For the rest we have the usual pencils, flashlights etc to trade or give away.

Where was your favorite place to visit and why?

We have visited many many favorite places. Sometimes it is nature and sometimes it is the people that makes the place special. We are now in Fiji and we think that as well the people as the nature as the climate is so good that we call this our most favorite.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What is a good reason to go cruising?

You can sleep in your own bed and cook your own food while you have a new backyard every time after sailing. You have the one million view on a very low budget. If you want it just do it.

10 Questions for DreamKeeper

2012-01-23T03:00:00.000-08:00

Gar Duke and Nicole Friend circumnavigated from the winter of 2006 until the summer of 2011 aboard SV DreamKeeper, a Pacific Seacraft 40 hailing from Sausalito, CA, USA. You can learn more about their journey on their website.

They say: We started in our home port of Sausalito in the San Francisco Bay, CA, and went south in winter to Mexico then across the South Pacific to New Zealand. Year 2 took us thru Melanesia to Palau, Micronesia, with a 4 month layover in Palau. Year 3 we dropped south into West Papua/Raja Ampat around PNG into east Indonesia and all the way to Bali, then up to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Year 4 was a big mile year, first crossing the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea, thru the Med, across the Atlantic and to the Caribbean to end the year. Year 5 started heading west to Bonaire, the Kuna Yala of Panama, then thru the Panama Canal, up the central American coast and Mexican coast, and finally Baja-bashed it back to San Diego with the last leg up the California coast to San Francisco. 4 ½ years total San Francisco to San Francisco.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?

Gar: there were a lot, but here’s a few:

First mistake we made was day 1 out the gate of San Fran, where we turned left and proceeded to do an overnight passage to Monterey Bay. We were so fast we had to heave-to in the bay all night in sloppy seas, super cold temps, and pitch black conditions leaving me seasick all night long in sensory deprivation and Nicole needing to deal. I was a total mess. In hindsight, we should have planned better and just done a day hop down to Half Moon Bay to finally GO and commit to the journey, but in a much easier way for where we were at then. Thankfully we had leftover Thanksgiving dinner for brunch the next day in Monterey as I was famished!

Leaving the US without a few spares that we wanted for the South Pacific and thinking they’d be easy to get in Mexico. Not easy and definitely not easy to ship to Mexico either. Nicole had to fly back to the US and load up a couple bags full of gear so we had what we wanted for the South Pacific and then still brave the dreaded “green light/red light” at the Mexican aeropuerto customs. Unlucky you if you get the red light!

FYI, It’s much easier and way cheaper to get everything you think you might need in the US on your boat if you can, but at that time we were still very much “green” on our boat and figuring everything out. All this being said only because we come from a place of liking to be very self-sufficient and prepared for as much as possible and also our intention to head west quickly across the South Pacific the first season out. If you stay in Mexico long enough, like most cruisers, you will probably be high-tailing back to good ‘ole USA anyways at some point.

Worrying about and spending time and energy getting a HAM radio license. So many people told me I should DEFINITELY get this license in Mexico before the SoPac, but, for me, not being a big radio talker, I never really used this with the exception of the services of winlink in the beginning of our journey. Later, after seeing the advantages and convenience of using the services of UUPLUS email thru our satphone, winlink became only a back-up for us.

And not to say we never chatted on the SSB with friends or on radio nets, but none of them were ever “Ham only” nets, so my whole ordeal of getting a HAM license was, for me, a waste of time. If you LOVE to talk on the radio, then by all means, get a HAM, but if not, forget about it and go surfing or do something fun instead.

Nicole: Telling my mom I would call her by a certain date. My parents bought us a sat phone for emergencies and perhaps more specifically so we could talk while on passage and they wouldn’t worry about us. I made a bad call and told my mom I would call her by a certain date. Somehow, we didn’t quite figure the sat phone out while travelling south along the Mexican coast and my phone date was passing. I knew my mom would be worried sick and start calling anyone she could think of so we had to detour to Abreojos, a tiny fishing village along the Baja Pacific coast, in deteriorating conditions to make that call. We found a phone card and then found the phone. I called to let her know we were fine and then we headed back out through bigger surf and out to our bucking boat. Note to self, never give anyone a time line you can’t keep.

Describe the compromises (if any) you have made in your cruising to stay on a budget?

Gar/Nicole: For us, our budget living on the sailboat was a lot cheaper then our budget living on land. We had just sold our home, cars, and most everything else we owned that wouldn’t come with us and so we axed everything like property expenses, utility expenses, auto expenses, and all the other pieces that add up so quickly living in the US. In cruising, boat expenses are hands down the most expensive reality. But…most of the boat expenses can be coined “luxury” expenses like good electronics, a water-maker, a new sail, etc., and you can get by with very little if your boat itself is solid and safe.

In our opinion you can cruise on almost ANY budget once you own a boat. It’s all choices and how you tailor your lifestyle and choices around your “wants” in life. It’s no different then how you choose to live your life on land. If money is tighter for you cruising, then don’t eat out much or use the engine as much or buy lots of fancy boating gear you don’t really need. And, lastly, learn how to fix and work on your own boat; that, in itself, will save you lots of money in the long run.

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid of that they shouldn’t fear?

Gar/Nicole: Passage-making. It’s scary at first if you have never been offshore on your own boat with a small number of people and we get that. But, in reality, this is a great time to actually just “be” with the ocean at all times of the day and night that you will most likely never experience any other way.

For us the first few days are the most difficult of a passage as we are adapting to a new schedule. But, if you plan well with the weather, make some pre-prepared meals, have a good book (or 2 or 3) put aside, maybe some podcasts or audiobooks for rougher weather, and have a good watch schedule so you get some rest when you need it, you will most likely really enjoy the experience. Keep a journal or write a daily blog just to keep notes on the little things you see and feel and hear. It’s a unique experience, embrace it and don’t fear it.

What is something potential cruisers don’t worry about that perhaps they should?

Gar/Nicole: Being thoughtful about locking your gear and boat up. Cruisers have a tendency to be very lazy sometimes. Lock up your dinghy and outboard, put away or lock up any gear on deck that is worth anything to you, and lock up your cabin when you are away from your boat. It seems so simple, but we have seen boats all over the world complaining in hysterics about how someone stole their laptop from their un-locked cabin or stole their unlocked outboard or dinghy in the middle of the night. Well, did you lock your cabin? “uhhhh…no, I never do…it’s just so hot.” Did you lock up or raise your dinghy at night? “Uhhhh….no, it was windy and rough and rainy out and I thought no one would come out on a night like that” (but that’s when they always do).

Cruisers need to realize that no matter what their budget is or how non-fancy their boat is, they are still looked upon as “rich” in almost any country around the world they travel to. So many of the cultures you will connect to will be living with almost nothing and there are always people on the look out to make a quick buck the easy way. Also, it felt important for us to acknowledge some communities don’t have things like private property so ours was even more interesting. You will still stand out even if you are dirt-bagging it with a half sunk boat and not a penny to your name. Ask any long-term backpacker traveller you meet, it’s not about being paranoid, it’s just being extra-aware of where you are.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?

Gar: Electric anchor windlass and oversized anchor, wind generator, and AIS system.

A good solid and reliable electric anchor windlass with an oversized anchor makes a huge difference when you are cruising. Of course, these are still luxury items, but they do make life much easier and safer when you drop your hook and don’t worry about it dragging and also know you can always get it back up without a hurting your back in any conditions. I can’t count the times we have needed to move anchorages in inclement weather in the middle of the night because of bad weather or change of wind or swell direction and how thankful we have been that our electric windlass was working well.

We have a KISS and wouldn’t think of having another type of wind generator unless it had the same specs. It is quiet, simple, and puts out lots of juice. If you have a noisy wind gen you will absolutely hate it and so will your neighbors, plus they usually don’t make much energy anway. We try to anchor in places with some wind in the tropics as it cools down the boat and usually keeps us pointing into the prevailing swell so you don’t roll as much. We cruised without a generator onboard, so a good wind generator makes a huge difference in keeping your batteries up regardless if you have solar or not.

We added an AIS system halfway around on our circumnavigation when we were in Thailand. It made a huge difference with piece of mind and safety when it came to passages through busy shipping areas and especially at night with just 2 of us onboard. Radar was still a great tool for us to use, especially for fishing vessels not usually on AIS, but the reality of today is that AIS is used now on ALL big ships and you will wonder how you got by without it once you start using it. A simple AIS receive unit is not very expensive and will be invaluable if you are choosing a route where you will be in shipping lanes and around shipping traffic often. Of course, if you are only a coastal cruiser and are one not to be crossing oceans much or ever, then an AIS will be just another ‘not needed much’ luxury piece of gear.

Nicole: OK I love all three pieces of gear Gar mentioned and would prefer not to go without them. All three in my mind are fabulous luxury items we were grateful for every day. The AIS completely changed my stress level on night watch. I, for some reason have always had a hard time with depth perception even with using radar and tracking and all of the tools I could use. The AIS system changed all of that. I still kept a thorough watch but I could tell where ships were going and coming and if I needed to make a course change without any guess work.

And another piece of boat gear, our Monitor windvane. I can’t imagine having left without him. He has served us well as third crew on all of our passages that had wind.

Also, with regards to food and fishing gear, I loved our fishing hand-lines and squid lures, my “yo-gourmet” yogurt maker (bought in New Zealand), along with our jar sprouter, and Braun hand blender. Sometimes it’s the little things that mattered like being able to eat fresh things on day 20 of a passage.

In your own experience and your experience meeting other cruisers, what are the common reasons people stop cruising?

Gar/Nicole: If you are a younger cruiser, then most folks are only out for a short time and need to either stop to work or could just make a season or perhaps 2 work. Retired-from-work aged cruisers usually stop because of health issues or because they are over the novelty of cruising and want to be home again closer to kids and grandkids.

But there are still many people of all ages that go out for a bit and just realize that it’s not for them for one reason or another. The reality of the cruising lifestyle is very different from where most people are coming from before jumping on their boat. I would say that most people have no idea how much work both physically and mentally it is if you are a full-time cruiser and actually moving your boat around. The romance of margaritas in your cockpit while the sun is setting can definitely ring true sometimes, but the other pieces of constant wear/tear on your boat and body and the need to be constantly ‘on it’ in regards to planning, maintenance, traveling, and safety takes a lot more energy then most non-cruisers or wanna-be cruisers realize until they do it for a while.

The people we met who were out there for a while moved their boat less, and stayed places longer, they over-wintered and spent two summers in the Med, they spent two winters or more in Mexico or the Caribbean, they stayed in Fiji for hurricane season. Or they tied up their boats and went home or somewhere for a 4-6 month break or to go back to work and then returned to their boats again.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn’t find to be true?

Gar: I read quite a bit about cruising before we left on this journey and so feel like I had a pretty realistic picture of what it all entailed. However, that being said, I think I still had an unrealistic perception that the cruising “community” was a pretty adventurous, and mostly open-minded, and just plain open to everything and everyone, group of people. What we experienced quite a bit, unfortunately, was a lot of people traveling on boats that were more interested in their easy “nationality clicks” and “sundowner” lifestyles then really putting themselves out there to embrace local people, local cultures, and other cruisers from other countries. We always pictured all these different folks from random countries hanging out together and hanging out with locals onshore (which certainly happened), but we felt like this was really a minority of the people we met cruising around the world. The boats that were more like this were the ones we really wanted to get to know and spend time with cruising, but were pretty few and far between.

For us, what was very important, was that we really tried to make a conscious effort to get out of the cruising “American-only click” circles and befriend folks from other countries traveling, as well as do our best to meet and embrace the local people in the countries we were visiting. We feel lucky we made some good friends. For us, this made a big difference in our experiences and we hopefully feel like it made an impression being more-thoughtful, conscious American ambassadors in the world too…which we feel the world could really use more of right now.

Do you have any specific advice for couples cruising?

Gar: First of all, if you don’t know how to communicate with your partner, you are in for a long ride or perhaps a short ride with one of you leaving the boat. You absolutely have to talk to each other and, more importantly, listen to each other. And don’t just “listen”, but actually HEAR what they are saying. Did you say this was just for cruising couples? J

Next you need to learn to compromise. You will be sharing a pretty small space, perhaps for years, and it’s not always possible to just leave that space. For many couples this will be the first time ever in this situation.

You will have different needs/wants/desires for your own experience and to be who YOU want to be while cruising, but you need to also remember that your partner has the same. Talk talk talk about what you can each do to help support each other with their own personal process’ and what will keep him/her happy, content, and full while living this unique lifestyle. This will, of course, change over time so you’d better keep communicating so you can do your best to keep understanding where each other are at as time goes by.

And if you need a time-out, you’d better learn to take one. And if your partner says she/he needs a break from the boat SOON, you’d better listen and make it happen somehow.

Nicole: Ok, seriously, communication is the key! In addition, be sure no matter how long your “to do” list is, go have fun regularly. It was easy for us to get sucked into needing to do all of our jobs and fix everything that needed fixing. But, truthfully, there will always be something waiting for you to do, so I say, play, do something spontaneous, get exercise, go on walks together, go snorkeling and just have fun whatever it is.

What is your most common sail combination on passage?

Gar: For us, on a cutter-rigged boat, on passage we always had our mainsail up for stability possibly with a reef or 2 tucked in and the genoa out. Down wind, we always had a preventer on. Don’t ever get lazy and not rig a preventer. The last thing you want, especially in the middle of the night, is an accidental gybe.

We have both our jib and our staysail on roller-furlings, which we really like as the reality is that we are usually single-handing while on passage, so we can easily make jib changes and reefs based on the weather by ourselves in the middle of the night. Having a staysail has been a great option for us when the wind and seas really pick up and as it allows us to shorten sail while keeping our boat balanced and very stable.

Lastly, I will just add that the reality of cruising around the world on a sailboat is that it’s not always so dreamy with the sailing aspect. We have been thru so many parts of the world that the wind is just non-existent or non-cooperative or directly on our nose and we did many times choose or have to run the engine. That being said, this was a conscious choice to travel to places that didn’t always have great sailing potential, like in PNG, eastern Indonesia and the Red Sea, but were high on our list for being really cool travel destinations. If you were only after good sailing then you would need to stay in the higher latitudes or the Pacific to have the more consistent, but stronger winds. For us, we feel we have always been more interested in being travelers and adventurers then purist sailors.

What piece of gear seems to break the most often?

Gar: What doesn’t break? Seriously, at one time or another we have had to fix or repair or replace something, or all of, every system on our boat. If you are pushing your boat hard and making lots of miles each year, then parts wear out. If you are sitting around a bay in Mexico for months at a time or only moving a few hundred miles a season then you will fare way better then the passage-making sailor crossing oceans.

One of you on your boat should definitely learn how to wrench on a diesel engine, repair a sail, test and repair electrical wiring, and be able to take apart the toilet. If you don’t know how to do it all, that’s OK, just have a good resource library that will walk you through repairs and if you aren’t too far off the grid, there will usually be another cruiser close-by that can help you out if you get in a bind. If not, you will learn to live without something. Most of the stuff that breaks are luxury items anyways. Toilet broken, use a bucket. Water-maker broken, catch some rainwater or run jugs to shore. Generator broken, use less energy or turn off the fridge.

I would say from our experience the pieces of gear that cruisers are wrenching on the most are generators, water-makers, diesel engines, and outboards. The other pieces of gear that give lots of people trouble are autopilots and laptops, not always possible to fix yourselves. Please just don’t throw your laptop overboard if it breaks like some cruisers do. Seriously.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I’ve asked you and how would you answer it?

What are some tricks and tips you’ve learned for being a more thoughtful and conscious cruiser around the world?

Within the cruising community, say hello or wave to your neighbor who anchored next to you who you don’t know, especially if he/she is from a different country. It has been amazing to us how many boats drop their hook beside us and never even smile or wave when we initiate a greeting. The other side of that is if you find yourself anchoring in a more remote place, then don’t just drop your hook right next that one boat there already, give them some space and drop your hook some distance away so you can both enjoy the remoteness of that special place. But, when you do see the other people, don’t ignore them, actually say hello and smile. It’s the little things in this community that make a big difference.

Regarding the ocean and reefs, if you truly care about the health of the planet, the cleanliness of the water, and enjoy traveling to pristine coral reefs and visiting island communities, then give back, police yourself, and be conscious of your actions.

In small communities find out about the customs and proper protocol before arrival or immediately after arrival. Following this gains you acceptance, respect, new friends, and the opportunity for unique experiences.

If you catch a big fish or lots of big fish, bring some of them into the village and share with the locals who live there. This goes a long ways and will immediately open doors for you within that community.

When you drop your hook on your big boat or your dingy, look where you drop it and do your best not to damage the healthy coral around you. Seems like a no-brainer, but in our experience, we have seen countless boats in crystal clear water dropping their anchor and chain haphazardly directly over pristine reefs and not even thinking about the reality.

Don’t just throw your compostable trash overboard where you anchor, but actually put it in a container and take it in your dinghy out into the deeper water hopefully where there is some outgoing current or at least away from the shallower anchorage area where all the eggshells and banana peels pile up in the coral underneath your boat.

Only fish in areas where there are still an abundance of fish and make sure in an island community that it is allowed to fish a certain area as many of them are locally managed as protected for their sustainable use.

When you are remote, do not leave your trash on an island as they most likely have a trash problem themselves already. Separate trash well. When you are out on passage in the deep water this is where you should sink your cans and glass (if you don’t have enough room to store it) and get rid of other non-plastic trash. Aluminum can sometimes be recycled on certain islands and some of your trash you will most likely have to burn at times. Some of it you will probably have to carry with you until you make it to a larger city or port. Point is, be thoughtful about it and do your best to manage your waste well.

If you feel comfortable with the locals, invite some of them out to your boat for soft drinks/coffee/tea/cookies/dinner or whatever. They will love it. We have been to so many communities that always invite cruisers in their homes but many would tell us no one would ever invite them out to their boat. Reciprocate.

10 Questions for Delos

2011-12-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

Christine Myers and Stephan Regulinski are on their second Amel SuperMaramu 2000 (53’ ketch). The first was Delos hailing from San Francisco, CA, USA and now Hanalei, hailing from Kailua, HI, USA. They cruised from 2000-2005 and will begin cruising again in 2012. On their first cruise they visited Turkey, Mediterranean Europe, Atlantic Europe, North Sea, British Isles, Ireland, Scandinavia, Canary Islands, Morocco, Gambia, Cape Verde, Caribbean, Panama, Galapagos, South Pacific, & New Zealand. You can read more about them on their website or at their blog.

What do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?

Colleges are going to love that your kids made this trip.
Your family will become very close.
This is not a vacation; it’s a way of life. Save something for the next trip.
It takes six months to adjust.
Don’t rely so much on the internet in port or e-mails at sea.
Just about every port in Europe has a different kind of plug.
What happens at sea does not stay at sea.
Tahiti is overrated, overpriced and overcrowded.

What has been the most affordable area to cruise and the most expensive?

Turkey was least expensive, along with La Gomera (Canaries) and West Africa.

Norway; Porto Cervo, Sardinia; and French Polynesia were the most expensive.

Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?

Solar panels.

What did you do to make your dream a reality?

We sort of won the lottery the first time; this time we are selling the house.

What is something you like about the cruising culture and something you dislike?

I love the openness, friendliness and mutual support of the international cruising culture. I dislike the focus on alcohol, especially in the Caribbean and South Pacific.

With the benefit of hindsight, what are the boat criteria you would use to purchase a boat for long-term cruising?

More energy-efficiency. But having said that, we just bought another boat and it’s exactly the same. I would consider length vis-a-vis European dock length pricing.

Describe a ‘typical day’ on passage on your boat.

It takes us about three days to adjust to passage time. Before that we’re all a little spacey while adapting to passage time. Typically I would stand the early morning watch, put out fishing lines, then do roll call on the net at 8. Kids will be up later. They’ll do schoolwork or read, depending on how rough it is. Back to sleep until noon or so, then up for the next watch. Chop vegetables in the afternoon and work on meal prep, check fishing lines. Dinner at 6. Everyone except watchstander goes to bed early, soon after dinner.

How did you gain offshore experience prior to leaving?

We crewed on friends’ boat from San Francisco to Santa Barbara.

What advice would you give to parents thinking about taking their children cruising?

DO IT! DO IT NOW!

When you meet another compatible kid boat, change your plans and hang out together. They don’t have to be the same age. Social interactions become incredibly important.

Try to get some homeschooling experience before you leave, and at least make sure you have good supportive resources. Don’t get stuck with set curriculum or try to recreate a classroom.

Adapt curriculum to your cruising experience and kids’ learning style.

Be flexible and creative about when ‘school time’ happens.

What question do you wish I had asked you … and how would you answer it?

How did your kids adapt? What were their challenges?

Here I’d point you to the blog because the topic is too big.

10 Questions for Leander

2011-10-31T01:00:00.000-07:00

Paul Robertson, Sima Baran, and Alexander Robertson have been cruising since 2007 aboard Leander, a Bristol 41 hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, United States. They have taken a circumnavigation route, starting in Boston, heading down the U.S. east coast, through the Panama Canal, through the Pacific Ocean and Islands, visiting New Zealand, Australia, SE Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and are now in the Eastern Mediterranean. Readers can read about their adventures on their website.

They say: Paul is originally from Boston, and Sima from Istanbul, Turkey. We met when we were both working in Boston. We had only modest prior sailing experience, and we started cruising as a husband and wife team of two shortly after we bought the boat, our first, and got married. We’ve since been joined by a third crew member, our young son Alexander, who was born in November 2010.

Why did you decide to cruise?
We were both working long hours, Paul as an attorney and Sima a management consultant. We thought that our all-enveloping careers were causing us to miss out on other meaningful aspects of life. For two non-sailors, the prospect of sailing across oceans to far-away lands posed a particularly exciting challenge, and would be a good way for us to see a bit more of the bigger picture.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Most marine vendors do not share your goal of having quality work done at a reasonable price. Learn to do as much as possible on your boat, and be vigilant in those situations when you must pay for parts or services. Time and again we’ve paid for work that was both overpriced and deficient, and typically found we have no recourse after the fact. Who cares about you – you’re sailing away to the next port! With a little bit of practice, reading, and speaking to others, you will ALWAYS do a better job than someone with less of a vested interest in the outcome. When others must be called in, define the scope of the work as concretely and narrowly as possible, get things in writing, and watch the work like a hawk.

Over the time that you have been cruising, has the world of cruising changed?
Useful information available for cruisers on the Internet has exploded. Sites like IWAC, “Wiki Cruising,” and the numerous blogs and photos posted by other cruisers are providing a more complete picture of the cruising life and potential cruising grounds.

Describe a positive experience you have had with local people somewhere you have visited?
The people on the island of Tanna, in Vanuatu, were exceptional. In the place of TV, the internet, and consumerism, there were nightly kava rituals, community meetings, and a family garden. And the islanders reached out to us. During our three-week stay, Paul drank kava and played soccer with the local men and Sima learned to weave mats with the local women. It was pleasant, relaxing, and magical.

What is something that you were dreading about cruising when you were dreaming, that is as bad or worse than imagined?
The amount of work we need to do to keep the boat in shape. Non-cruisers sometimes don’t get it, and when we tell them of how much time we are spending on fixing this or maintaining that, they wonder if our boat is a “lemon.” But we’re all out here doing the same thing. The ocean environment beats on things, and although our boat is one-tenth of the size of the house that we lived in before we left, it is ten times as much work. Really.

When have you felt most in danger and what was the source?
Traversing Pirate Alley – the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the start of the Red Sea. We made the passage in 2010 after concluding that the odds were strongly in our favor. But our hearts were still in our throats for the month and half it took to get through. In light of the subsequent attacks, we wouldn’t do that that trip now. And as we think back, maybe all the preparation we did gave us nothing but false comfort, and was an attempt to control things over which we had, in retrospect, no control.

How has cruising affected your personal relationship?
We figure that one year of life together on the boat is the equivalent of about seven years of life on land. All the time together has accelerated the pace of our relationship. Challenges that might have developed five or ten years down the line had we been together less, have become manifest more quickly. But we’ve also been able to develop tools to anticipate and resolve problems at the same quickened pace. So, in the end, we’re in a better place. (Said another way, laughs Sima, although I’ve become more accurate at throwing frying pans, Paul has become just a little more adept at ducking them!)

What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?
We have found that watches of less than four hours are not practical for us because we each need sleep in chunks that are at least that long. We are both on watch during the day. Sima takes watch from 8 p.m. to midnight, Paul from midnight to 4 a.m., Sima from 4 a.m. until Paul awakes in the morning, and Paul from that time until Sima awakes later in the morning. But this was before young Alexander joined us, and we will perhaps need to modify this.

Share a piece of cruising etiquette.
Bend over backwards to be polite to others. You’ll find people on the water who are willing to mix it up with you if you’re game, but it is a draining game. Try to assume the best. Smile and wave at the next boat you encounter, even if the three before didn’t return your greeting. Accept that the boat has anchored a little close. They couldn’t find a better spot, probably. And don’t you remember? Last time that was you.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What has it been like cruising with an infant son?

Challenging! We figured that with Alexander, we’d have one less person with a free hand, but he often takes us both out of commission. So things take twice as long as before. For us, an “early” start now means 10:00 a.m. And we don’t do drinks with others at sundown so much anymore. But he loves to hike with us, and we can strap him to our back and go explore, one of our favorite things to do. We certainly wouldn’t want it any other way.

10 Questions for Brillig

2011-10-24T01:00:00.000-07:00

Rika and Andrew have been cruising for more than a decade aboard Brillig, a 31ft “Trewis” (means nice and cosy} steel yacht built in Holland 1960. She has sailed 53,000 miles with me and will soon be ready to go again on completion of the present major refit. Andrew is an artist.

What are some of my favourite pieces of gear and why?
Andrew: The ARIES VANE GEAR. This piece of gear is by far the most influential in our cruising life. Alice as she is fondly known has now crossed the Atlantic eight times with only the plywood vanes breaking. Each long passage the steering lines have been replaced, consequently none have broken. Alice has just had a rebuild after 53,000 miles involving replacement of the bushes, sheaves and blocks. She has performed faultlessly in extreme conditions, and can be made to steer off the apparent wind when powering out of high pressure on ocean passages at least long enough to make a cup of tea. All she asks for is regular twice daily oil and a chunk of grease on the bevel gears every few days. We only occasionally need to steer when under power or entering port, for the rest of the time this water powered wind sensitive miracle of engineering unfailingly guides us to our next anchorage. We don’t have an electric auto pilot.

My SEXTANT allows freedom to sail where you will. The GPS is on all the time we are sailing and certainly has a home aboard, however it could shut down for any number of reasons. The sextant allows us to be independent and self-contained, conditions that lie at the very core of ocean cruising. Long passages can be boring, traditional navigation is an enjoyable occupation giving an enormous sense of satisfaction even when competing with a GPS.

Grundig yacht boy radio receiver. This small radio receiver can pick up the all-important SSB weather information, accurate time signals and provide endless entertainment. When cruising the Atlantic it is very interesting to listen to weather routing for yachts, there are so many of us out there we can invariably listen in to a daily report from another yacht in our region.

Two 100m warps. One is nylon for stretch the other polyester. I love these two pieces of rope because they have got us out of trouble so many times. The 19mm nylon used to extend the anchoring depth when needed. Berthing in small fishing ports has often needed anchors and warps to feel secure when the weather deteriorates. Unexpected grounding allows me to place a kedge anchor well into deep water. Joined together they make a big enough bight to stream astern when running before the wind in heavy following seas. 200m is enough to induce a break far enough astern to avoid being pooped, most of the time!

Rika:

Taylor’s paraffin (gimbaling) cooker – Always safe to put a cup of tea at sea. Without this, I couldn’t survive life on board; I managed to stay on board for 13 years because I got interested in cooking.
Wind vane –Let us rest and sleep when sailing. We call that “Alice”, she manages to steer Brillig as long as there is wind, very reliable gear. Andrew often oils Alice, keeping her smooth.
35lb genuine CQR anchor – Always holding us, the insurance. We survived a minor flood, gales, storms.

What pieces of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
Andrew: The sheet winches. Brillig no longer has a cockpit well. The present simple winches are not big enough and do not self-tail; this makes it difficult for me to sheet in the headsail and virtually impossible for my 90lb wife.

Rika: Aluminium oars– Totally crap! In Spain, in August 2010, our newer Avon dinghy (we had 2 the same) with outboard bracket, varnished oars were stolen and I bought cheaper aluminium ones next day. They slip, rotate and even lose plastic paddle parts when I want to row against the currant with carrying 40 litres of water!

Head sail sheets – We bought good quality sheets in America but it can’t go through on the metric English block very well!

Is there a place you visited where you wish you could have stayed longer?
Andrew: The Azores. These Portuguese islands are so yacht friendly, beautiful and fascinating to cruise I could easily spend another year or six there. The major ports are full of ocean sailors while the smaller harbours are a fascinating insight into the Azorean way of life. These coastal villages are where you may need some long ropes and some short lengths of chain to prevent chafe when berthing.

Rika: The Azores – If I didn’t have to worry about the Visa, we could have stayed longer and could have avoided the Knock-down. Those islands are so beautiful and its’ mild climate makes our life on board easier. All people we have met are sailors, many characters, very interesting to exchange the stories. There are plenty of concerts to attend, food is fantastic and lovely Azorian Portuguese people I love.

HOW OFTEN HAVE YOU FACED BAD WEATHER IN YOUR CRUISING? HOW BAD?
Andrew: On two occasions Brillig has been knocked down on trans-Atlantic voyages. At 31’ she is a small boat and does not have wind instruments. I decide when to reef based on how the boat is handling usually when the lee toe rail is going under. The effect of increasing wind and sea is very difficult to judge especially when running down wind, one moment you are making good time the next your over. The first occasion at around 40 degrees North on the way to the Acores from the Caribbean a good summer gale struck, I kept going since it blew from the west a big wave broached us. A fair amount of water got in but no serious damage.

The second time was due to gear failure, namely the slides on our mainsail. Hove to south of the Azores in gale force conditions all was well until the top slide on the deep reefed mainsail popped with seven more going in short order. That failure sparked of a chain of events ultimately leading to a knockdown in heavy breaking seas.

Both events were bad, I felt the taste of fear, but survived and felt more confident in dealing with severe conditions. The good side of these experiences is when things begin to ease off. Fear has passed; the sea is in a grand mood offering some of the best sailing I know.

Rika:

Knock-down. The article was published in Yachting Monthly November 2007. Two pressure systems (just 200 NM south of Faial, the Azores) made gale and big sea conditions more than we expected. UV damaged main sail slides popped to flap the main sail was the start, Brillig couldn’t face to the weather well and one wave rolled us from quarter port stern in the midnight, Andrew flew to the deck head and landed on my bunk. There were 10 items damaged or lost. The most serious one was drinking water. It was scarier when we realized what happened to us.
The passage from Georgetown, South Carolina, USA to Tortola the British Virgin Islands, we were against the Trade wind for 2 weeks. Brillig was constantly dropped to the lower side of the waves but never stop going. We both lost weight because those impacts and motions; hitting the green water made the saucepan on the cooker jump.
The last trip from Galicia to Falmouth, we had force 9 in the middle of the Biscay. We hove-to for 26 hours as Brillig didn’t slow down even Andrew changed the sail 3 times that day. However, Brillig managed to maintain her position just southerly wind area to keep going north to Falmouth.

WHAT MISTAKES DID YOU MAKE IN YOUR FIRST YEAR OF CRUISING?
Andrew: A lot, the worst mistake was to convince myself the land I could see was the Tiede a huge Volcano on Tenerife the Canary Islands often visible for 40 miles according to my pilot. Navigating with a sextant from Lisbon this was the longest ocean passage to date. The volcano was the object of my greatest desire. With very little wind I fired up the old Sabb and chugged towards our destination. The day wore on and more features appeared, more or less as described. Delighted to have found land I kept going confident everything was correct. When 3miles offshore breakers were spotted ahead. That was when the panic hit, this should be a clear passage along the coast to Santa Cruz no reefs were shown on my chart, in fact neither was the island seen for the past few hours. Tiredness and the overwhelming desire to get in I had made the information fit. There was a volcano and it seemed big to me. One moment confident of our position the next lost. Offshore I could see the people driving along the coast road and fishermen out working. Arriving 20 miles to the east of my position could be described as not too bad after a week at sea, Gran Canary turned out to be a great place. Exhaustion and accepting often small discrepancies in information available is how this happened. From then on I have been very careful when making landfall after a long passage, especially getting a good sleep before the last night. Even now we have GPS.

Not stowing the boat carefully enough, the first bit of rough weather demonstrates if it can move it will! Stuff banging and rattling is almost impossible to sort out at sea. It can add to the misery felt in bad weather trying to deal with this in an already difficult situation. Anything that helps the crew to keep rested and able should be done, time well spent.

Rika:

When we were in Portugal before sailing to the Canaries, I was too shy to express myself; I didn’t like to socialize. I luck lots of confidence, I wasn’t comfortable enough to my English, I wasn’t comfortable to boat life; I simply didn’t know where to start.
Waiting forever; I have learned if I didn’t push myself, nothing would happen or come to me. When I couldn’t row the dinghy, I always had to ask Andrew to take me ashore, I didn’t have my freedom. I had to learn handling the dinghy, tying and keeping her safe until I came back; rowing, correct knots, movement of the wind and the tide; then I could go out whenever I wanted. These activities were nothing to Andrew but enormous effort for me at that time.
Change my mind to be more philosophical; boat is always moving even when anchored so that everything I do should be slower than usual otherwise one thing or mistake brings problems and it could make a snow-ball effect.
Organizing the cabin - Andrew always tells me to tidy up otherwise our cabin looks smaller and we can’t find the thing we need that moment.
Without any experience or knowledge, I had to believe what Andrew said about everything, but what he said and what I felt or thought were very different. He said that crossing the Atlantic would be very nice but what I felt was uncomfortable all the time. Years later, getting used to uncomfortableness and controlling seasickness I understood what he meant. Beginners never feel the same as those who went sea many times.

WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT ASPECT OF THE CRUISING LIFESTYLE?
Rika: Not only at sea, even at anchor we have to manage with what we have got because of living in the nature. Not enough water, not enough fuel, not enough food but if the weather was so bad we can’t get what we need. Always checking the weather and prepare for it. Whatever the situation would be, there seems usually a solution.

Boating, cruising is expensive for yachties. As we don’t get jobs in other countries, keeping cruising fund for unknown time schedule is impossible. Priority goes to keep the boat float and safe so we naturally save the money for food but there is limit to do this. We are lucky to have skills, Andrew paints watercolour and I play piano classical music to make exhibitions wherever we are and if these events brought us some money we could keep going for another while. I have learned how to eat with very little money. I have a book about my cruising life experience, mainly about food and cooking.

Andrew: Changing from a life driven by the clock and schedules directed by work/family to one where the weather and seasons dictate your movements. To be comfortable with this does not come quickly, perhaps years. Once there I discovered a wonderful sense of natural order within myself and chosen lifestyle, harmony often missing in the hum drum shore life of today. Sailing for me is all about natures forces; time is determined by the passing seasons.

HOW DO YOU LEARN ABOUT THE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF YOUR NEXT PORT OF CALL BEFORE ARRIVING OR DO YOU JUST ARRIVE AND FIND OUT?
Rika: Yes, we do just go and arrive at a new place after researching the information from cruising and navigation books then will find out how the place would be. Our cruise started, visiting where Andrew had been before. But after some years, wondering where to go next, other sailors bring us idea to visit somewhere they have been or they have heard of, to enjoy the view, culture and climate of the place.

Andrew: Getting as much information as possible from other cruisers and pilot books is always best. Mistakes can be very stressful.

Arriving in Brazil my wife did not have the correct visa. We were told to leave within three days. Having just completed 30 days at sea with many problems, mainly the mast delaminating this was a very bad situation with the nearest port outside of Salvador Brazil around 1000 miles whichever way you went. The solution was a three day bus trip to Fos da Iguacu where Argentina, and Paraguay touch Brazil. Having the right information leads to a happy cruising couple arriving and finding out is best avoided.

WHAT IS A TIP OR TRICK YOU HAVE PICKED UP ALONG THE WAY?
Rika:

To be professional foreigners; do not argue with local peoples’ traditions, not force our traditions, to learn their culture, custom, language and habit and their food, we somehow get along with natives.
For safety, we stow sterilized liquid (baby bottle cleaner) when we are not sure about the quality of the water.
It is important not to be fussy eaters and to try local recipes. It brings you problems and unhappiness if you can eat only particular food.
Open mind to visitors; all sailors have different points of view, different way of speech and different ways to solve the same problems. Respect each other not to criticize straight away, especially how they look like.

Andrew: Having a strong eyelet fitted around the mainsails centre of effort.
When sailing in light conditions with any kind of swell the boom is always on a vang, this will stop you getting brained but it does not stop the main collapsing causing loss of power and a slow passage getting slower. One of the running poles is rigged in the mainsails lee and a very thick piece of bungee cord and rope joined are tied to the C.E. eyelet and hauled outboard on the pole. This has the effect of holding the sails shape when rolling and has proved very effective.

IN YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE AND YOUR EXPERIENCE MEETING CRUISING COUPLES, CAN YOU CONVINCE A RELUCTANT PARTNER TO GO CRUISING AND IF SO HOW?
Rika: A reluctant partner was made by a wimpish captain, saying that you must learn sailing, what would you do if I were over-board? Sailing is entirely for men’s business, women I have met during my 13 years of cruise, never thought they were going to live and cruise on a yacht with their partners. The captain shouldn’t hustle their non-experience partner to become the Ellen McArthur within weeks of preparing time. Blame yourself, Captain! Also the partner should acknowledge that there is only 1 captain necessary in one boat. Andrew is the captain and he says I am the Admirable.

A good way to start learning sailing is to have very boring sailing experience; a sunny day with not much wind on a calm conditions; which gives everybody confidence on board. Living on a boat for a while makes person familiar to the facilities on a yacht. Gently and slowly start combining the life on the land and boat; the difference is huge and sailors don’t understand how the beginners feel about. Don’t read or give too much scary stories of sailing before you start your cruise.

I didn’t have time or choice to say no to Andrew when he decided to leave England. My choice was to stay with my mother-in-law until Andrew arrived at Madeira and flew to catch him up or to go with him like a passenger as he could do everything. As both seemed to hell to me I decided to go, it seemed better to try a new hell experience. I believe I was right.

Once I learned and saw Andrew’s ability to be a captain and Brillig’s integrity – trusting Andrew and Brillig after 3,000 NM, my seasickness decreased and liking travelling on a yacht grew. However, I am THE reluctant partner; I went, so anybody could. Though I am willing to take Brillig to Japan; rather hoping her taking me home. Do not compare yourself with other capable people, do what you can and be happy.

Andrew: To leave the security of an ordered shore life when you are happy with it will lead to unbearable tensions aboard a cruising yacht. The compact living environment amplifies tension. If as a cruising couple planning to go you feel that persistent nagging sense of spiritual emptiness common in our society you may well discover things within yourself that bring harmony to your life by living closer to nature, as my wife and I have.

WHAT QUESTION SHOULD I ASK?
Andrew: How long can you expect to sustain yourself aboard without any support from ashore? A week, a month, six months or more?

Rika: What you have learned from sailing/living on a small yacht with your partner?

Sailing always shows me my weakness; life on a sailing yacht, life travelling through water by a yacht is independent, solitary, slow, tough, adventurous and dangerous. Wherever we arrived safely, it is a great achievement. I have met more than 10 people having lost their boat –a home, it can happen anytime to us. Careful preparation, loads of information and knowledge, books will help but to manage and solve problems at sea, needing mind strength to stay calm and choose a right decision in flash. Successful sailing is to choose a right vessel, this is the start.

Living and cruising on a small yacht with a partner for years makes the relationship stronger and tighter. Because we live on such a small space, we can’t avoid seeing each other, can’t keep even a small secret, we know everything and have to be honest.

10 Questions for Silas Crosby

2011-10-10T01:00:00.000-07:00

Steve Millar on Silas Crosby completed a self-interview in the Newly Salted style. You can read the original interview here or the perspective of another crew member, his niece Meredith, in her interview.
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At age 56, I am in the middle of another long (metaphorical) cruise.

I started sailing at age 9 just south of Vancouver in a 9′ dinghy, then, in high I school built a 17′ catamaran and cruised the Gulf Islands of BC. My parents didn’t sail or know anything about it.

After several years of race boat crewing, I helped sail a 40′ cutter from Auckland to Vancouver over 6 months in 1974. A good taste of the South Pacific. After a hiatus of about 6 or 7 years of not much sailing, my wife and I bought a Spencer 35 named ‘Cor Leonis’ in 1986. We did an initial trip to Haida Gwaii, then took off again for a classic 3 year trip to Mexico and on to New Zealand , where our son was born.

Returning to BC via Samoa and Hawaii, in 1991, we settled in the Comox Valley, sold the Spencer 35 , had another child , and built the Brent Swain 36 steel twin-keeler, ‘Silas Crosby’ . The construction was a joint project with my brother John , and took 2 yrs and 4 months. After launching in about 1994 we cruised far and wide on the BC coast.

In 2001 the 4 of us did a north Pacific triangle cruise over a year, to Mexico, Hawaii, and home to BC again.

About a year ago in Sept 2010, we set off again to try to fulfill a long held dream., to explore the cruising grounds of the channels and islands of southern Chile and Patagonia. This time the crew was Steve (56) , my brother (69), and niece Meredith (25). John sailed with us as far as La Paz in the Sea of Cortez before returning to Vancouver.

The idea of sailing from cold water in BC to colder water in southern Chile did not appeal to my wife Barb, so she elected to stay home and live the good life, untroubled by boat fanatics.

We are now in Valdivia, Chile, reaching the end of the austral winter. We arrived about 4 months ago via Easter Island, Galapagos, and Mexico.In the next week or two we plan to continue south eventually reaching Puerto Williams on Isla Navarino sometime around March 2012.

Tell me your favorite things about your boat.
Steel hull , twin keels , continuous tube liferails. We pay a little bit for the twin keels when hard on the wind , but we still had a good passage from Galapagos to Easter Island with the wind forward of the beam the whole way.

The solid liferails are very sensible. I think only Amel installs them as standard on a production boat. Recommended safety item.

Tell me your least favorite thing about your boat.
Concern about rust. Not too big a problem in the first 17 years , but one does have to pay attention, despite flame-spraying during construction.

I would have loved to be able to justify the expense of a folding or feathering prop. Probably good for 1/2 knot on the wind , maybe more in light winds. The right deal has never come up in a 17 x 15″ 3- blade prop.
Of course, we need a 50′ boat to live aboard in rainy weather but only a 36′ boat to sail and pay for.

How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?
Our worst weather was the last week coming in to Chile. We were really psyched up to get some bad weather, and would have been surprised had we not. So the two fronts that passed over us were uncomfortable, but OK.

Until that time I had used the storm jib and trysail only once before to slow down in strong winds coming in to New Zealand in 1987.

Can you think of a sailing tip (e.g., sail trim, sail combination) specific to offshore passages (e.g., related to swells)?
This is interesting. We really use our whisker pole a lot, and try to sail wing and wing as much as possible because it is so comfortable, steady, and just generally easy on our boat. When we arrived in Valdivia we have found several cruising boats that don’t even own a whisker pole and make their way downwind by jibing. These are all boats that have sailed thousands and thousands of miles to get here.

Another interesting thing we’ve discovered is how many crews do not keep a watch system. Many of the solo sailors just go to bed and get up whenever. Also some of the couples both turn in at bedtime and get up for breakfast. Some have AIS and radar watches but some don’t.

We tend to generally enjoy the night watches, sort of for private time.

Over the time that you have been cruising, has the world of cruising changed?
Starting in 1974 we navigated the old, scary , approximate way. The last week coming in to Cape Scott with an RDF and DR was sketchy. GPS is excellent .We have occasionally dug out the sextant, mostly to look at it in wonder, but we don’t push the ‘off’ button on the GPS. But really, the fundamentals have not changed at all. The people are still the same, great and friendly and helpful. The wilderness areas are still wild.
People still run up on reefs

Navigation is a lot easier, and much less stressful. That’s good.

Engines are more reliable. Sails are stronger and more durable.

What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
We have a 10 1/2 foot Portabote, a 7 1/2 foot inflatable , two 13′ solid plastic kayaks with sprayskirts, drysuits etc, and a 2 hp outboard. We haven’t actually used either of the dinghies since sometime in Mexico. It is a lot of gear to be hauling around. I expect we will need the inflatable in Patagonia for shoreline etc.

What do you miss about living on land?
My family.

While cruising, what do you do about health & boat insurance, medical issues, banking and mail delivery?
DAN emergency health insurance and 2 yr coverage from BC government health system. I went to medical school to prepare for cruising , probably overkill (!) but it is helpful. I was offered a pre-emptive appendectomy , but declined , and brought injectable antibiotics instead.

Banking , taken care of by Herself at Home.

Mail : what mail?

Why did you decide to cruise?
Reading Slocum , then Chichester as a 10 or 12 year old.

What did you do to make your dream a reality?
Became Obsessive.

Finish this sentence. “Generally when I am provisioning…”
I think that food (any food) is important. Also I am associated with experts in the form of Barb and Meredith.

How do you fund your cruise?
Savings.

Are you attracted more to sailing itself or cruising-as-travel and has that changed over time?
The romance of voyaging under sail in a small capable vessel to interesting and far-off lands has not faded for me in the least. Miles Smeeton was the first writer that conveyed that to me. It is the travel across oceans under sail. Sailing is important.

Where was your favorite place to visit and why?
As a general lesson, for me, when the ‘Cruising Blues’ set in, it is time to leave town. It happens more often, but not exclusively, in the cities.

I have been back to the Baja side 3 times and around Vancouver Island 6 times, so those must be my favorites.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?
After several voyages without an HF transmitter on board , I am really enjoying blabbing on the SSB and Ham nets , and on informal scheds. I find that there is still lots of time for watching the birds , the waves, and the insides of my eyelids. The 2 x 85 watt solar panels are plenty to power the radio and the little Engel fridge(also a first for us)

The crude windvane, built to an old design is invaluable.

What is the next piece of gear you would add to your boat if it were free?
Fluency in Spanish. It isn’t free, though. I has cost me many, many hours to get to the early intermediate stage.

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way?
Mast Up and Water Outside. Hot tips.

How much does cruising cost?
$17,345.43 per year, plus or minus, depending on beer.

10 Questions for TimeMachine

2011-10-03T01:00:00.000-07:00

Editor’s Note: There are actually 14 questions answered (my fault – the readers’ gain) and TimeMachine introduces themselves: We are Cheyenne & Joshua from s/v Time Machine. We left San Francisco in 2005 and sailed down the Pacific, through the canal, and up the Caribbean back to TX, landing in 2007. I had never sailed before but Joshua grew up in and on boats and had tons of sailing experience; his father built a 40-foot version of our boat in the late 70s-80s. Time Machine was a 31' Jim Brown Searunner (trimaran), home built out of plywood, fiberglass, and a crapload of epoxy. The boat looked kinda Star Wars and sailed beautifully. We bought it with the initial intention of toodling around the bay but that immediately turned into "Let's quit our jobs and go to Mexico!" and six months later, we did, and we just kept going. We are taking time now to raise a kid but are planning the Next Trip as soon as the toddler moves beyond the highly volatile tantrum stage and becomes more predictable. We started a blog when we purchased the boat and chronicled our trip through June 2007.

Describe the compromises (if any) that you have made in your cruising in order to stay on budget
I guess this sounds weird, but we really didn't have a budget. Cruising was the cheapest way we had ever lived, and we always lived fairly conservatively. We could easily have halved our expenditures if we had cut out the booze, but we like booze. Part of this might have been because we sailed a fairly small and spare boat: no refrigeration, no windvane, no radar, no through-holes in our hull of any kind, no SSB radio, no inboard motor (though we had a 6-horse outboard), no oven, no dodger, we did our dishes in a bucket at the edge of the boat, and we did not pull up alongside a dock or marina after leaving the US until we landed in Texas 18 months later. There just wasn't a whole lot that could go wrong. We did break the rudder though off Honduras; we jury rigged it with some rope.

What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why? I had a few things packed that I didn't end up ever using--and of course which took up precious real estate. As one example, I envisioned us dining upon Caesar salads nightly (I actually brought along a small salad spinner.. I know!) but this notion was shot all to bits when we discovered romaine to be nearly nonexistent in Mexico. Furthermore, lettuce of any kind doesn't keep worth a damn onboard in the tropics. Ditto cilantro, but that's another story. About 14 months in, we had a lot of little expired tins of anchovies to attend to... Things got creative then.

What is the most difficult aspect of the cruising lifestyle? My absolute least favorite part about cruising was the possibility of having to pull anchor in the middle of the night and get out of there because of prevailing wind change, sudden lee shore squall, etc. For example, we were happily sleeping nestled amongst the gorgeous Murcielagos off Costa Rica when we had a sudden and alarming wind change at 1am. Fearing the start of the dreaded "papagayo" wind, we beat upwind until we were somewhat in the lee of the mainland, trying to get coffee started on a bouncing boat, all of us grumpy as all get-out (we had a guest with us).

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why? Handheld backpacker's waterproof GPS (our primary). It was blue and sparkly and the size of a cell phone. It was also tough, easy to carry around with us if we felt like taking a land excursion, and it did well with batteries. Other things I could not have survived without: Really good knives and nice general galley gadgetry. It is a pleasure to cook in a confined space when you are dicing with a Shun santoku, on a beloved mesquite cutting board, with some good rum in an actual stemmed glass next to you... We went with the theory that when one is paring down to the essentials, one should select really excellent essentials. I would also have to nominate the kayak for a favorite piece of gear (we had an inflatable due to space issues). It's so lovely to be able to slink around the ocean silently, efficiently, discretely. You get to sneak up on so much wildlife this way, fit through narrow channels, up streams and rivers; the kayak was our dinghy most of the time.

What piece of gear seems to break the most often? The citrus squeezer. Seriously; you'd think limes were made out of acid or something.

How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad? We were very conservative sailors (my doing, most surely) and did not budge unless the weather was favorable. That said, we did not always encounter following seas and fair winds. We had 15-18' seas and a gale rounding Pt. Conception, of which I had no idea until after since it was 3am, I only had two days of sailing experience under my belt when I took over watch/driving, and all I could see anyway was glowing green foam (whoa, groovy). We got 50+ knots of wind along the Tehuantapec, which was so unpleasant I had to change clothing to skin-tight things lest I get shirt-burn (shirt burn is serious business!). We had the worst sea conditions coming around Punta Mala (Point Bad, and it was) into the Bay of Panama, where we played frogger all night long with the tankers in large and confused seas. And finally, our very last day sailing crossing the Gulf of Mexico, we got hit by the nastiest squall we had ever seen. It was raining lightning bolts everywhere and Joshua saw balls of lightning racing along the wavetops. It all sucks pretty badly while it is happening but once you are through it, you remember it as just another wild story.

In your own experience and your experience meeting other cruisers, what are the common reasons people stop cruising? We met many people who had started off on their around-the-world cruise but had stopped along the way. Every single port we visited (starting with Ensenada) had at least one boat that just found what it had been looking for and needed to go no further. And there they stayed, three, ten, twenty years.. They always had good stories and LOTS of advice. We never met any of the people who had stopped cruising for other reasons because they had apparently gone home.

In your own experience and your experience meeting cruising couples, can you convince a reluctant partner to go cruising and if so, how? I started out being afraid of open ocean, deep water, tipping over, sharks, of being along sailing a boat at night, of sea monsters... basically everything one could possibly be afraid of on a boat. I didn't know how to sail when we left, but it turns out that it's really pretty easy, and boats like ours don't easily tip over. Once I was forced to actually do all of the things I feared: be miles offshore in the ocean in the dark at night by myself sailing the boat, with sharks and sea monsters surely lurking beneath, it wasn't actually bad at all. I had just never done it before. Joshua always said we could call it quits when it stops being fun. We decided to take our break when I discovered I was pregnant but I wouldn't necessarily say we have quit yet.

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way? You can keep cheese for a long time if you put it in a jar covered with oil. You can buy the cheapest, plainest, most tasteless white cheese, pack it under veggie oil of some sort, and after three weeks to a month, it starts to get sharp. The longer you leave it, the sharper and better it tastes. I also kept ginger in vodka for a long time (ginger always went bad immediately otherwise).

Is there a place you visited where you wish you could have stayed longer? My favorite places were the Sea of Cortez; we were there in the winter and so had to split for hurricane season (we decided to go south). I would like to spend a spring and summer there as well. Then we loved the western Islands of Panama. So much to see and so many deserted islands. We were down to half an onion and some random tubers by the time we got to Panama City.

How do you learn about the rules and regulations of your next port of call before arriving or do you just arrive and find out? We had various cruising guides (i.e., Charlie's Charts) that listed the basics, but regulations and procedures change quickly everywhere. We always brought everything we thought we could possibly need and then expected to be directed from there. Usually we ended up crossing town a few times to visit various auxiliary offices for random stamps or additional copies, etc. We ended up with amusing stories with every check-in and check-out, so I'd say it was always worth the hassle.

What is your most common sail combination on passage?
I think we did them all with regularity and probably averaged 2-3 different jibs per day. Maybe we were finicky with our sails but our boat was very lightweight and touchy. We did not have a roller furling but rather a hank-on system. We had four jibs: the mule, the 170, a gennaker, and a storm jib for those exciting moments that are only really exciting when you look back later, you know, knowing you lived through it and all that.

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid about that they shouldn't fear? And what is something potential cruisers don't worry about that perhaps they should?
Sharks. Whales.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What is your favorite part about cruising?

Arriving in an anchorage after a passage--more so of course if a nasty passage, but even the smoothest passages were best ended with a lovely quiet cove in which to rest. We didn't draw much so we always had the pick of the place as to where to drop our anchor. First we would sit for a moment, soaking in the calm. Then we would start wandering around the boat, picking things up, stowing the sails, tidying up things that got knocked around. Maybe jump overboard to cool/rinse off and check the anchor. Once things were relatively squared away, the rum would come out and we'd sit on the top of our cabin checking out at our new temporary home. We would talk about how to spend the remaining day, where we would go tomorrow. And plan something awesome for dinner.

10 Questions for Gallivanter

2011-09-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Kirk, Catherine & Stuart began cruising in 1994. They have cruised in two vessels since that time: Polly Brooks, a Worldcruiser Pilothouse 37 and Gallivanter, a Hylas 47 they turned into a 49 by adding a new style transom. They started in Hawaii and sailed west on an "Orange Peel" course across four oceans. They have yet to cross their outbound track in 40,0000nm. Kirk’s former career involved manned submersibles.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?

Anchor Windlass, chart plotter, autopilot - like having a strong crew (physically & mentally) who are always eager to help, don't eat much, get in the way or complain.

What is your biggest lesson learned?

Make your own choices & decisions - avoid the "Pack Mentality".

Where was your favorite place to visit and why?

Caribbean, Fiji, SE Asia, Turkey, Malta, Spain - Interesting cultures, affordable, availability of services & supplies.

What do you think is a common cruising myth?

That it's always easy and cocktails are served at sunset every evening.

In your experience, how much does cruising cost?

It costs everything you've got.

How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise?

Go now. One can never be fully prepared.

Describe a positive experience you have had with local people somewhere you have visited.

STARGAZING with traditional navigators on the beach of an uninhabited atoll in the Caroline Islands. Dancing with savages in Papua New Guinea.

With the benefit of hindsight, what are the boat selection criteria you would use to purchase a boat for long term cruising?

Choose a strong boat purposely built & designed by a reputable team. One-off racing boats do not necessarily make for a comfortable cruising boat.

What is difficult for the parents of cruising children and what is difficult for the children themselves?

Kids add another level of enjoyment. I have found no difficulty added when our son was born and joined the crew. Lego is his one best entertainment.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What has been the hardest part of this lifestyle?

Having to learn how to say "Goodbye" in so many languages.

10 Questions for Hotspur

2011-09-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

Jim & Meri Faulkner have been cruising since 2008 with their children Tim (16) & Carolyne (11) on Hotspur, a 41' Tartan TOCK (Tartan Offshore Cruising Ketch) hailing from Olathe, Colorado, USA. You can learn more about their voyage on their website.

They say: We went from San Diego down the Baja peninsula and into the Sea of Cortez. We loved the Sea of Cortez so much that we spent 2 summers cruising there. We headed off to mainland Mexico and are preparing our trip south to Central America this fall. Our sailboat is our home and we are taking our time to get the most out of our travels and enjoying the people we meet.

We left Colorado and began our cruise on a 35' Cal Cruiser, Windfall. We upgraded to a 41' Tartan TOCK mid cruise when the kids began getting too big to share the V-berth divided down the middle.

Our trip south to Central America was postponed in 2011 due to failing equipment. We're currently waiting out hurricane season in Mazatlan, and plan to head to El Salvador in November after replacing the SSB & HAM radio and VHF radio.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?
Our biggest mistake was not upgrading our watermaker. It made only 1 gallon every 45 minutes. It simply did not provide enough fresh water for 4 people and a dog. Our children, however, disagree with us. They will tell you that having them share the V-berth was the worst mistake we made.

Describe the compromises (if any) that you have made in your cruising in order to stay on budget.
We began with a budget divided into categories and soon realized it was unrealistic to try and stick to the confines within each category. We now follow a simple annual budget. This allows us freedom and alleviates stress. We can purchase boat parts for repairs or go to special events or travel inland when it strikes our fancy. We then pull back - anchoring out for longer periods of time if needed and spending no money whatsoever - enjoying nature - when we want to conserve.

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid about that they shouldn't fear?
Though we aren't personally fearful of pirates, that seems to be the biggest question we get from non-cruisers anymore. Aren't we afraid of pirates? No, we are not. The dangerous areas are well publicized and represent a minuscule percent of the world.

The second question we get a lot: "Why are you in Mexico? Aren't you afraid you're going to die?" No. We've cruised all over Mexico and it will be hard to leave this country. The people and marine life have been exceptional. Our encounters have been rich and the loveliness of the culture and terrain is forever etched in our minds and in our hearts. Cruising Mexico is wonderful.

My personal fears were very different - more general and seem silly to me now. An online article I wrote called FEAR ON THE WAY describes my feelings at the beginning of our cruise.

And what is something potential cruisers don't worry about that perhaps they should?
A floating dinghy with an outboard motor bobbing up and down in the water when the crew is asleep is an easy opportunity. Dinghy and outboard theft is common everywhere in the world and most times it happens when cruisers leave their dinks in the drink at night. Raise your dinghy out of the water each night and lock them up - the same as you would probably lock your car every night on a dark street.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?

**These answers are from a family poll**

Solar panels: We watch movies at night, use the computer, run our watermaker, sewing machine, shop vac - and, enjoy cold beverages from the fridge on hot days.

Watermaker: Fresh water showers make such a difference in crew morale. We can do laundry aboard if needed, dishes, wash the decks - and no running back and forth to land with jerryjugs. Our watermaker aboard Hotspur makes 6 gallons an hour and is sufficient for our crew.

Engel Freezer: Can you say 'ice'? That may not mean much now, but being at anchor in the tropics with 95% humidity - ice is so nice! Our Engel uses only 3 amps when running. We make ourselves smoothies, enjoy ice cream and frozen yogurt and have a place to put that 40 lb. fish we landed that we can't eat in one day.

SSB/HAM/Pactor modem: Our connection to the outside world is important to us. Ham and SSB Nets, emails and weather faxes are wonderful when you are at anchor and don't have internet capabilities.

Autopilot: Though we have to hand steer at times if weather conditions are rough, the auto pilot does the work 95% of the time. We carry spare parts for our autopilot and our passages are more relaxing because of it.

In your own experience and your experience meeting other cruisers, what are the common reasons people stop cruising?
Because so many cruisers we've encountered are retired, many of them have to abandon cruising due to health problems or aging parents.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn't find to be true?

"Cruising is easy".

I find myself saying mind over matter frequently. Boat equipment breaks in the harsh conditions or from constant use, weather can produce sleepless nights, spending 24/7 with your loved one(s) can make you cross eyed, and doing laundry in a bucket with a toilet plunger sounds quaint - but isn't. It's hard work and sometimes it's frustrating.

For example, I was feeling very pleased with myself for finishing up a new outdoor shade cover my husband designed and I constructed. The day I scratched it off the list felt so rewarding - until on the very same day we added to the list: repair outboard handle, repair leaky porthole, and termite alert. Scratch one item off the list - add three more.

Do you have any specific advice for couples cruising?
Plans are good, but let your plans be loosely woven. Go with the flow - be as flexible as possible. I think that is a good recipe for this kind of lifestyle - because it is ever changing and moving, just like the tide.

What is your most common sail combination on passage?
Our 16 year old son has been doing watches since he was 13. We have 2 hours on and 4 hours off at night between three people. Super nice! During the daytime hours, we give our 11 year old daughter an hour watch every so often, supervised. She still daydreams and gets distracted easily, playing mean homeschool teacher with a bag of clothespin "students".

What piece of gear seems to break the most often?

Outboard motor: In fact, we've spent 4 days looking for a part in Mazatlan as I write this. The part is obsolete - no longer made. We'll either luck out and discover an old engine that can be parted out or we'll find a machinist to build us one... I hope.

Head: We always have spare head rebuild kits aboard. Our head seems to need something every few months - clogged hose, joker valve, new hose clamp, stuck Y valve... endless! We use vinegar regularly to clean and de-calcify. And, we learned early on that the captain gets cranky when working on the head. Now, the crew leaves the boat when the head needs servicing.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What is a clever tip that you have learned while cruising to help solve a problem?

An Australian sailor told us you can use honey in a pinch if you have a slipping belt on the engine. We tried it and it works better than belt dressing!

10 Questions for Pelican

2011-09-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

Jonas first started cruising when he was 24, on a 32 ft Pearson Vanguard, "Tabasco". He completed a two year coastal cruise from California down to Costa Rica and back in 1995-1997. In 2006, he found Pelican, a Pearson Alberg 35, in Seattle.

He says: I left on what turned out to be a nearly five year single handed circumnavigation. The route was Mexcio, South Pacific, refit in New Zealand, Melanesia, north of Australia, up to the Andaman side of SE Asia, Sri Lanka, East Africa, Cape Agulhaus, Brazil, north coast of South America, Caribbean, Panama Canal and back to Mexico. In my homeport of San Francisco I am an active member at the Cal Sailing club in Berkeley where I regularly volunteer teach sailing.

You can learn more about his circumnavigation on his website.

Have you found "trade goods" to be useful on your cruise? If so, what kinds? Yes, in some areas they can still have value. Cell phone digital cameras are popping up everywhere but a printer with photo quality paper to actually print the pics out (especially family portrait photos as gifts) is great to have. 22 caliber bullets in the Marquesas and you will be treated like a king. Plain old aluminum oxide sandpaper in Tikopia got me praise from the chiefs! Cheap dive masks in any underdeveloped island community.

What are your impressions of the cruising community? Too much money in the cruising scene... The go now and go modest philosophy isn't popular at all. There is an informal club out there called "under 40". It isn't just about being out cruising while under forty years of age but also having less than forty thousand US invested in the boat. This is rarer than being younger. When you came across another member, the "club" is always a topic of conversation as it is pretty rare to meet young cruisers on a budget. The community makes one feel that cruising is not a lifestyle to get
away from the "real world" as much as it is a reward for having done well in it...

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way? When you get to an anchorage off a village and you need to figure out where to put your dinghy, instead of locking it up or paying money for someone to watch it, loan it to a local that wants to go fishing. Initiating that sort of level of trust and sharing will open a lot of doors and in a small village everyone knows everyone else.

What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why? Storm trysail and separate track if single handling on a small boat. The reality I found is that by the time you want to set it up, the motion of the boat is so much that it is unsafe to set. A deeper third reef in the main is a better solution.

How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad? The saying that it is much safer offshore than close to land in a blow is really true. I was in an anchorage in the San Blas when a strong squall ripped through in the middle of night. It was literally airborne dinghies, a lot of screaming on the VHF, and so much rain you couldn't see who was dragging and who wasn't. Luckily most squalls don't last long so no boats were lost. Some boats scrapped against the reef and there were destroyed windlasses. The same squall offshore would have been nothing serious.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising? I made the mistake of not taking enough chances. During my first season through the South Pacific, the lagoon passes with descriptions like "outbound currents up to 9 knots", or "not visited by author" or
"even the locals respect it" were skipped. I chose destinations that had reliable charts, that had facilities and were not too tricky to get in or out of. I should have done a bit more of the opposite... In the trades, you only get one downhill pass so you need to make it count. Get over the fear of losing the boat and you will see places few do.

How do you learn about the rules and regulations of your next port of call before arriving or do you just arrive and find out? I remember being in Chagos when the Seychelles were surrounded by Somali motherships. About half the cruising boats in Chagos that were originally west bound decided to not go any farther and instead went
back to Asia. A handful of boats that were bound for Madagascar, including myself, took a huge detour to go south of the Salha de Maya Bank and ended up in Mauritius or Reunion. From there we made landfall at Saint Marie on the windward side of Madagascar. The entire exchange of information from rules and regulations of checking in to the latest on locations of the recent pirate attacks was handled by SSB and nets that were set up by boats in the area.

How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise? Most people who dream of cruising have usually only daysailed in pleasant conditions and need to have a major reality check before taking the plunge. At my homeport of San Francisco it is consistently
25 knots and 7 to 8 foot seas right outside the Golden Gate Bridge. I recommend all local wanna be cruisers to leave the protection of the bay, find a spot outside the shipping lanes and heave to for 48 hours
before coming back in the bay. If this sounds like a crazy and senseless masochistic sort of torture session then you aren't ready for cruising.

Is there a place you visited where you wish you could have stayed longer? Being single, full of youth and out cruising on your own boat was a place that I could have stayed a little longer!

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

Have you ever wanted to quit cruising while still in the midst of doing it?

Yes, a couple of times. It got miserable enough that I ended up making a vow to never set foot on a boat or go to sea ever again. The worst loneliness, extreme physical discomfort, and plain old gut wrenching fear can get to you. These are not true tragedies though and can be put into perspective.

I think those low moments when it doesn't seem like it is worth it happen to anyone who has been out long enough. The feeling always passed...

10 Questions for Alianna

2011-09-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

Sim and Rosie Hoggarth began cruising in June 2004 aboard Alianna, a Corbin 39 hailing from Falmouth, United Kingdom. They bought Alianna in Antigua and sailed the loop, down the Caribbean chain, across to South America, up Central America and North American as far as Washington DC and back down the Bahamas to the East Caribbean. You can learn more about their journey on their website.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
I had very limited sailing experience but my husband had been sailing for years. I had complete faith in him and everything we learnt we learnt together. Ignorance is bliss they say and we have enjoyed the whole learning experience. I don't think there is anything we wished someone had told us before we got here, otherwise we might never have got here.

Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
We are a pretty basic sailing boat - we have all the necessary safety and navigational equipment but we don't have radar and I have always felt that it would help when we are on passage to check which way storm heads are moving. We have managed 7 years without a water maker and other items that some cruisers feel essential - its all a matter of personal comfort. Sim wishes that we had built a bigger frame to house more solar panels, we physically can't carry any more, while there is always a need for more power.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?
We were very very cautious the first year of cruising, getting to know the boat and living together in a small space. I don't think that we made any major mistakes, except in perhaps spending money on items thinking we were going to sail around the world that we now don't need - maybe we shouldn't have been so hasty in that respect.

What is the next piece of gear you would add to your boat if it were free and why?
That's a tough one, I would be torn between a radar for reasons explained above, new sails as ours are very old and baggy or a freezer for ice at cocktail hour - can I have them all? Sim says an extra 10ft but I don't think it matters how big your boat is you will always need more space for something. If an extra 10ft is unrealistic he would like furling gear for the inner staysail as at the moment it sits on deck and hardly ever gets used.

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid about that they shouldn't fear?
We both agree that the fear the unknown whether it be weather related, country related or boat related most of the time its never as bad as it seems and the cruising community is a tight knit of people who are always willing to help.

And what is something potential cruisers don't worry about that perhaps they should?
Obviously that same can be said if you don't have any concerns about the above either. Have some respect for everything from the sea, to your boat and the countries you are visiting. Also you need to be able to do a lot of your own maintenance, everyone has to call in some help sometime but unless you have bottomless pockets the ability to do the majority of your own maintenance makes the lifestyle much more affordable to people who are on a budget.

In your experience, how much does cruising cost?
Cruising can cost as little or as much as you want it to. We consider ourselves to be at the lower end of the scale - we try to live on a US$1000 a month with additional expenses of about $5000 per annum accounting for overspend or haulouts or insurance etc. We know people that live on less and many that live on more.

How did you (or did you) gain offshore experience prior to leaving?
I had very little experience sailing on a yachts although I had clocked up a few sea miles of off shore sailing on Tall Ships as deck hand and watch leader, I joined a dinghy club before we left and took my day skipper course. Sim has been sailing his whole life, racing Hobie cats, working on the Tallships as a marine engineer and doing deliveries. He had his own 20ft sailboat in Cornwall and an RYA Off Shore yachtmaster certificate.

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way?
This is not a tip or trick, its just sensible. Get the best and biggest anchor you can afford. Buy good quality. You will have many peaceful nights if you have confidence in your ground tackle.

Where was your favourite place to visit and why?
I don't think I could choose a favourite place and why - The reason we love cruising is that each place tickles a different spot, that's the beauty of being able to move your whole home from one place to another. But in general terms the East Caribbean offers the easiest sailing with short hops between islands and beautiful comfortable anchorages for most of the time. I do love the Western Caribbean for its different cultures and life styles.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

How do you decide when you are ready to go cruising?

Sim felt that at the time he was young enough to go away cruising for 5 years and still be able to get work when he returned. Rather then wait until has was at retirement age. I was at a time when I was ready for a change of lifestyle. Once we made the decision to go sailing we sold up and shipped out within 6 months. Best decision we ever made.

All good things must come to an end

2011-09-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

This is a heads up to let the IWAC readership know that I will be putting the project on intermission.

What does that mean? As I post this, there is another month worth of interviews already scheduled. Interviews will continue to roll out, as per usual, for at least the next 4 weeks. I have a number of interview requests out and as those interviews come in I will continue publishing them on the site. However, I will not be actively recruiting new interviews and after the next month, I will not be posting interviews on every single Monday.

Why?! First, I've accomplished my own personal goals. There are now a large body of interviews, chock full of opinions and experiences, publicly available for free. Second, we seem to have reached a point in the information gathering process where most interviews contain information that has already been mentioned. Third, and not least, our cruising plans are taking us out of easy wifi connectivity and so the project will become even more work for me.

Why do you say intermission? I reserve the right to come back to this project, at a later point, and expand on it.

Why didn't you hand off the project to someone else to continue? Mostly because I would love to see how a different person would approach the task. I encourage someone else to start their own version. In fact, I'll pimp any cruising, interview based projects out here once they are up and running as I have done for other interview projects in the past.

Thank YOU. It's been a good run and I very much appreciate the time the interviewees have given to the task and the support of the readership. I want to thank everyone who put a badge on their own page, linked to the project, suggested interviewees or questions and who provided some liquid motivation by direct donation or by visiting the ads. I hope that people will keep the badges up on their websites and continue to direct cruisers-in-prep or armchair cruisers to this project as a cruising resource. The interviews will still be new to those who have never seen the site.

This is a good death. There is no shame in this, a project's death, a project that has done fine works.- (mis)quote from the movie Serenity

10 Questions for Nuage

2011-09-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

Nuage is a Philbrooks Fast Passage 39 cutter rigged hailing from Vancouver, Canada. Nuage left Vancouver in 2005 sailing offshore Vancouver to San Francisco and then coastal cruising to San Diego, through Mexico, the Sea of Cortez, Central America and Panama, to Ecuador in South America.

Her owners say: We are a retired couple who began sailing in 1990. We joined the Bluewater Cruising Association in Vancouver to meet other wannabe offshore sailors and educate ourselves about the lifestyle and skills needed. We started our trip in 2005 and have returned to Vancouver each year for the summer.

What is the next piece of gear you would add to your boat if it were free and why? We are equipped to suit our needs so it would have to be something frivolous like a generator to satisy the Captain's ongoing quest for power, but space is the issue here rather than cost. Or perhaps a satellite phone but we don't know who we'd call (!).

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid about that they shouldn't fear? And what is something potential cruisers don't worry about that perhaps they should? Cruisers, both dreamers and doers, worry about weather and breakdowns. Preparation is more useful than fear. We try to evaluate weather information available onshore before making a passage, and at sea we monitor daily weather updates via GRIB files downloaded through SSB. We carry a plethora of spare parts and David is capable of fixing almost anything on the boat. Not all offshore cruisers have learned to maintain their boats and this should be a BIG worry. Even if you have access to and can afford qualified tradesmen in port, you still have to be self reliant at sea.

Where was your favorite place to visit and why? Our finest cruising grounds between Vancouver and South America were the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. White sand beaches, beautiful blue, warm water, snorkelling, spear fishing, day sailing and good weather forecasts. For onshore exploration, backpacking in South America is fascinating with each country different from the next, and very cheap living and travel. We camped in Tierra del Fuego, on the Beagle Channel at the tip of South America and luckily found a last minute cheap(er) exploration cruise from there to Antarctica. We like taking our time and exploring the countries we visit.

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way? We learned Spanish. It's a work in progress but, apart from being an interest and a lot of fun, it allows us to travel with confidence and enjoy the local people so much more. It's good for bargaining too!

Are you attracted more to sailing itself or cruising-as-travel and has that changed over time? We didn't have an opinion before we left but we are definitely cruiser/travellers and, although passages can be a zen experience, we are always pleased to be at anchor in a new destination with exploration ahead of us.

What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike? We like being part of a community and having an entree to meeting new people with the minimum of formality. The sociability of cruisers in Mexico is outstanding; however, as you venture out into more challenging sailing areas among a diversity of nationalities, there is not as much boater interaction. Panama City is an example, being the crossroads of the world where boats are in preparation mode for either a transit or a crossing. Dislike - cruising is a lot of physical work - more than is generally realized and in hot countries this can be wearing.

What is the most important attribute for successful cruising? Attitude - stay calm, be outgoing, respect and appreciate your crew, be open minded, be generous, have fun.

In your own experience and your experience meeting other cruisers, what are the common reasons people stop cruising?
At some point cruisers can get tired of the level of work involved with sailing a boat offshore and want to move on with land-based interests. Or people can be attracted to the travel but not enjoy the passages. Many young people can't afford more than a targeted one or two year cruise. We know of only one boat which returned home after one year due to the crew's nervousness on the water. You have to remember, it's OK to give it up - at least you tried.

In your first year of cruising, what transitions did you find the most difficult? For my husband it was being away from family. For me it was ensuring that business back home was being taken care of. Neither are boat related - the first year was not a challenge to our enthusiasm for cruising.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What skills are necessary prior to casting off?

We crewed offshore prior to our trip and we preceded this with many years of coastal sailing and navigation in British Columbia in a variety of conditions and locations. My husband installed most of the equipment on the boat, becoming completely familiar with her in the process. What he didn't know, he learned, which has proved invaluable to us offshore. We also rely heavily on HAM/SSB radio and contact with other operators while on passages so getting the HAM licence is wise.

10 Questions for Blue Sky

2011-08-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

Jim, Emma, Phoebe (13) & Drake (11) began cruising at the end of 2005 and stopped in mid 2011. They cruised a Westward Trade Wind Route aboard Blue Sky a DownEast Ketch 45 hailing from Redondo Beach, California, USA. Readers can learn more about them on their website.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Emma: You must stock up on provisions when inexpensive and or available. If you see it buy it.
Phoebe: Knowing what will not be available in the next cruising area.
Drake: Happy that it was all a surprise.
Jim: How much work was involved with Boat/Home schooling.

What is something that you looked forward to about cruising when you were dreaming, that is as good or even better than imagined?
Phoebe: The various shades of blue the ocean can be.
Drake: Seeing animals in their natural habitats.
Emma: The beauty of the people & their countries.
Jim: The pure joy of being on the boat under full sail when all conditions combined to creat the optimum sailing experience. The best was 48 hours in the coral sea covering 348 nm.

How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?
Emma: Not often, Because we always checked the weather.
Phoebe: Did not notice as I was usually down below if conditions were not perfect.
Drake: Less than 2% of total 5.5 year voyage. Not bad.
Jim: Downwind passage 95+ % so even squally, rainy 25+ knots of wind was comfortable. Upwind, current & swell on the outside of Baja, California was the most unpleasant.

What piece of gear seems to break the most often?
Emma: Watermaker.
Phoebe: Portable DVD players.
Drake: Headphones.
Jim: Hoseclamps.

What do you think is a common cruising myth.
Emma: Less work than Home/Profession.
Phoebe: Mermaids.
Drake: Sharks are scary.
Jim: It's always sunny & warm.

Across a year, what do you spend the most money on while cruising?
Emma: Provisions.
Phoebe: Ice Cream.
Drake: Toys.
Jim: Preventative or replacement parts for the boat.

How did you recommend securing your vessel while going ashore? And your dinghy?
Phoebe: Closing hatches & windows for rain.
Drake: Removing the engine kill key from the dingy.
Jim: Very rare to lock the vessel, make certain that dingy is above the high tide line ashore and hoisted in the davits EVERY night.
Emma: Only once did we need to keep a watch on the vessel while crew went ashore to perform check in/out procedures. Same watch person also dropped crew ashore via the dingy and returned the tender back to the vessel.

Of the changes, choices and compromises you had to make along the way, which were you happiest and most satisfied about, which do you wish you had chosen otherwise and why?
Phoebe: Simplified our lives but wished for better shower facility. Ours was on deck.
Emma: To see the world through the children's eyes. Amazed at the lack of solitary free time. We were called the floating chandlery, even so we would have purchased more spares at home (because of availability and low cost) to prepare, prevent or protect components from breaking down.
Drake: Our home moved. All the chores like knocking back the slimy anchor chain.
Jim: Breakfast, Lunch & dinner as a family every day. During the re-fit I was talked into re-using equipment rather than purchasing new. These were the items that most often failed.

Was there anywhere you visited that you thought was overrated (not as good as you had heard)?
Emma: Carribean.
Drake: The silty brown water in Singapore/Malaysia.
Jim: The Great Barrier Reef - disappointing after the South Pacific.
Phoebe: Aruba. Expensive tourist trap, overrun, large military presence because of Venezuela & South American drug cartels.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What about insurance? Including: vessel, health & emergency evacuation.

We had vessel insurance the whole way around the world. Now with hind sight we would have self insured ourselves once we left Mexico and would not have reinstated it until we returned to Mexico and the US (the only two countries that asked for it.) Health insurance is unnecessary as health care and dentistry around the world is available and affordable. However, we were fortunate and did not have a major incident. For emergency evacuation, we utilized DAN. All cruisers we met we told them about this service and we think for the cost/benefit this is an absolute must have!

10 Questions for Bika

2011-08-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

Henrik Nor-Hansen and Nina Kristin Nilsen have been cruising since 2005 aboard Bike, a Contessa 26 hailing from Stavanger, Norway. Since 2005 they have cruised through Europe, Africa, Caribbean, South America, North America. The boat is currently in Mexico and they have an upcoming Pacific crossing. You can follow their journey on their blog or website or by email (sybikaAThotmail.com). Henrik & Nina say: We spend short stints on land in between, but have no plans of moving back ashore. The freedom of the cruising lifestyle is too addictive. Also, the questions are answered by Nina only.

Where was your favorite place to visit and why?
Oh oh. Uneasy question. Brought up as a good Norwegian social democrat, I have a hard time singling out favourites. As there's no escaping the Scandinavian mode of thought, as a cruiser I must give every place equal opportunity to charm me with music, stun me with scenery, I must look upon each stranger as an unknown friend. But I'll work around your trick question by picking out this one: Bika. Our boat is my favourite place to be. Because the scenery constantly changes, new friends are always to be had, I'm travelling the world with my best-friend-husband, and I wake up aboard every day feeling immensely free.

What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike?
The one-big-family aspect of cruising is both a blessing and a minor curse. It's wonderful being able to knock on any hull, for whatever reason, just because we are fellow cruisers. The strong sense of sharing among cruisers is what makes it possible to live wonderful lives at the edges of society. Money can't get you that lifesaving spare part in a remote anchorage, but a fellow cruiser can. Then there's the sense of belonging. None of your friends and family living on land can truly understand what it's like to live afloat. But other cruisers do. And the minor curse? Because you find so many friends among fellow cruisers, you find less local friends.

Across a year, what do you spend the most money on while cruising?
Food and drink. A flight back home to visit family and friends. The boat. Generally in that order, but as we recently have done a major refit, the boat expenses have taken a temporary lead.

While cruising, what do you do about health & boat insurance, medical issues, banking and mail delivery?
We've had health and boat insurance while cruising in the US, but generally do without both. We have some buffer money for whatever emergency may arise, trust local medical services (for prevention we live a healthy lifestyle and carry our own remedies), we use internet banking and have most mail delivered electronically.

How did you (or did you) gain offshore experience prior to leaving?
Like the average cruising couple, I was the rookie while my husband had grown up sailing. To find out if cruising could be for us, we went on an eight week long sailing trip along the Norwegian coast. We went offshore to see if I'd freak out from loosing sight of land or heeling over, we navigated by lighted buoys through dark nights, we ran out of butter and bread. And loved it. Henrik had sailed since he was a baby, even crossing the North Sea and Skagerak, while I only had one year of mostly coastal cruising when we took off.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Skip the plans, skip the prearranged route (we had them, but soon dumped them).

What is the most difficult aspect of the cruising lifestyle?
Having to go back on land to earn a little money now and then. Office work, set hours, TGIF, all that.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?
Our pressure cooker, as it saves time and gas, doesn't give off steam, has a lid that stays on in bumpy seas and cooks healthy food. Radio podcasts (Radiolab! This American Life! The Moth!) on our mp3-player, for night watches. The newly installed AIS receiver, for peace of mind, and because ships reply more if you use their name. The SSB receiver for weather offshore. The sailmaker's bag for offshore repairs. Our laptops, for almost everything.

What did you do to make your dream a reality?
We set a date, May 15th 2005, and stuck to it. Our decision was based on trust and enthusiasm. Trust in the seaworthiness of a small and affordable boat, and in us as a couple. And enthusiasm, as you can just do it, if you really really want to.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What gear or gadget do you cruise happily without?

Ha ha, most! Inboard engines are not essential for small boats, you can charge your battery from solar power, and sail into harbours (as, being sailors on a sailboat, really makes sense). Chart plotters, well, paper charts never fail, and need no electricity. Fridge or freezer? We do like our grandparents did, we salt and dry fish and meat, top our butter off with brine, wax cheese and know that eggs stay almost forever. But we wish we had a dinghy we could sail, and a sat phone, just in case.

10 Questions for Reflections No. 1

2011-08-15T01:00:00.000-07:00

Alex Kao sailed out of Vancouver BC in the Fall of 2007 on Reflections No. 1, an Alexander 30. He now owns a Moody Salar 40 with his wife Leah and they plan to fix her up, save money for the next two years and take off again.

Alex says: I moved onto a Cheetah 26 when I was 20 and lived and sailed around Vancouver. 5 years later I sold her and I spent 2 months backpacking Venezuela and Tobago then lived in an apartment for 4 months. I missed the boating life so I bought and moved on to "Reflections No. 1". I spent the next 5 years sailing the BC coast and testing and fixing her up. She is a Alexander 30 sail boat. It is like an Alberg 30. The builder took a Gulf Island 29 mold and raised the freeboard about a foot. It has a 3/4 full keel. It is 29'6" long. My first leg was Victoria to San Diego. I took 2 crew: Greg and Jen. We did the trip in September. I left the boat in San Diego and returned to Vancouver to finish the work year. I returned on Dec 20 and solo sailed from San Diego to Puerto Escondido, Mexico stopping along the way. Then met a surfer named Jeremy and sailed to El Salvador. I wanted crew to cross the Gulf of Twanapec. I put the boat in a boat yard in May 2008 and returned to Vancouver to work. I returned to the boat at Christmas 2009. I did a lot of inland travel, ran a small boat yard and did a lot of fishing trips off the coast of El Salvador. Greg came down again in 2009 and sailed from El Salvador to Costa Rica with me. Leah, my now wife sailed from Costa Rica back to El Salvador in 2009. I also solo sailed from El Salvador to Nicaragua in 2009. I put the boat is storage again in May 2009 and returned to Vancouver to work. Leah and I came down together on Jan, 1 2010 and sailed from El Salvador to Costa Rica, Panama, Galapagos, Marqueses and Hawaii. I sailed solo from Hawaii to Port Renfrew BC and back to Vancouver in a August 2010.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn't find to be true?
That you need all of this equipment and toys. We got by with out a water maker, radar, sat phone, our SSB only received and had a safe and great time but some other cruisers thought we were nuts. At every port I saw someone fixing or cleaning a water maker. If I remember right I could get 5 gallons of bottled water for $2.50 a most places.

How do you fund your cruise?
I worked along the way by fixing other cruisers boats and returned to Canada to work full time. I am a Marine diesel mechanic and worked along the way and when I ran out of money or hurricane season I returned to Vancouver to work.

What is your biggest lesson learned?
I learnt a lot about weather and how slow a hurricane travels. When we were sailing from Marquises to Hawaii. There were 2 hurricanes off Mexico, 1000 miles away from us. We saw them on weather fax and were nervous until we found how slow they move.

Finish this sentence. "Generally when I am provisioning..."
I buy too much canned food and not enough fresh. I forget how long fresh food will last.

Describe a perfect cruising moment that will make cruisers-to-be drool with anticipation
We stopped at a island in Northwest Panama and had it to our selves for 5 days and never saw anyone else. It was so desolate I could get coconuts with out climbing trees.

What do you think is a common cruising myth
We had some smooth passages on a 29 footer (Galapagos to Marqueses - 24 days). Sure it would be more comfortable on a bigger boat but you sure don't need a 45-50 footer like most of the boats we saw out there.

When have you felt most in danger and what was the source?
We had a freighter sneak up on us. We were doing 18 min watches. It was Leah's watch and I was awake reading. I heard the VHF buzz and since we we 1000 miles from anywhere I knew there must be another boat around. I went up and scanned the horizon. The sun was setting and we had the main out all the way on a broad broad reach. The freighter must had been in the sun and I didn't see it. I went back down below, 5 min later we were hit by a bigger than normal wave. I commented to Leah about it but didn't get up. 1 min later we were hailed by the freighter, I popped up to the deck and it was a quarter mile away after passing in front us.

Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
After that freighter scare I bought a AIS receiver in Hawaii. I love it and wouldn't go off shore again with out one.

What was the most affordable area to cruise and the most expensive? What was affordable or cheap about each area?
In Panama beer in the grocery store was 35 cents but every cab driver charged different prices for the same ride. In Marquesas restaurant food when available cost a lot but you could trade for fruit and veggies. Galapagos burgers were $3.50.

10 Questions for Seayanika

2011-08-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Katriana Vader cruised from 2004 until 2006 aboard Seayanika, a custom 49-ft Bluewater Pilothouse Cutter hailing from Vista, CA, USA. From California, Seayanika traveled through Baja and mainland Mexico and then through the South Pacific (Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society Islands, Cook Islands, Nuie, Tonga & Fiji). She left California with the Baja Ha Ha in 2004 with a party crew of four and had several other crew members join her at different stages of her cruising. Readers can learn more about their voyage on their website or through email (info@seayanika.com).

Katriana says: I have traveled my entire life from the time I was 17 years old, have visited over 100 countries and speak six languages. My daughter Lanika (whom the boat is named after as in “Sea Ya Nika”) traveled with me for ten years between the ages of 3-13.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
I suppose what I was most surprised about was how tiring and boring the passages were. I had this idea in my head that the longer crossings were going to be endless days of contemplating life, looking at sea life and birds and maybe looking for some wind. Aside from the paltry sightings of marine life, the occasional flying fish and squid that landed on deck, and the messy but amazing boobies (bird), the 23 days from Mexico to the Marquesas were mostly devoid of punctuation marks. Also, I was expecting nice even rolling waves during the majority of the passage, maybe somewhere between 3-15 footers. Instead of a relaxing up and down movement on the swells we encountered confused, washing machine seas the entire passage. Even in the ITCZ! The constant erratic movement of the boat (for nearly 600 straight hours) required continual bracing, I swear, even during sleep. The upside is that upon arriving in the Marquesas, although worn out from all the involuntary isometrics, I was in the best muscular shape I had been in a long time. Wind was never an issue…it was constant.

When you are offshore, what keeps you awake at night (that is, what worries you most)?
The biggest worry of course is to make sure I STAY offshore and off reefs. I mostly experienced this fear when nearing Fiji as I had been warned that there were uncharted reefs and I needed to keep a sharp eye out. Unfortunately, I am pretty night blind so it wasn’t an easy thing to do. In the six months Seayanika was in Fiji, all the “planned” trips were during daylight hours. The “unplanned” ones were mostly emergency moves due to wind shifts and lee shores.

Is there something from your land life that you brought cruising and feel silly about bringing now?
Well…my bread maker. I didn’t use it, not even once. We found it more enriching and calming while on the passages to prepare the bread ourselves than to turn on the generator to power up for a high AC load. Plus it helped fill in time.

Describe a positive experience you have had with local people somewhere you have visited.
There were so many wonderful people and experiences it’s hard to pick out just one. However, the locals on Palmerston Atoll are well known for their hospitality. They literally adopt you when you arrive; feed you lunch every day, and share their way of life without asking anything in return. When Seayanika was visiting, we were accompanied by friends on three other cruising boats, and we did our best to reciprocate. Sam Peterson on Moana worked on the island’s computers, someone else provided mechanical assistance, and everyone dug into their larders to help out with the island’s shortages, butter and toilet paper. I had also brought a lot of baby clothes along, and since there was a baby girl on the island I was able to find a home for some of them. The grandmother, (oh how I wish I could remember her name) was so thankful that she made me a purse out of a coconut and sent it along for me with Moana, who stayed an extra day. While on Palmerston we were all treated to a "sports" party in our honor by the 65 inhabitants. There was food and drink, games and contests…ping pong, darts and they even played Euchre! Who would have thought that particular card game would be popular in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

What did you do to make your dream a reality?
Built our own boat. To insure safety, comfort and reliability we felt it was our best option. It took four years of back-breaking labor to build, but the end result was worth it. Every safety feature, every redundant system, every luxury that I felt I couldn’t live without (ice maker, bow thruster, water maker, washer/dryer, drawer refrigeration), I got it all without having to make compromises. Safety was paramount, and by building the boat ourselves we knew it was solid and safe, and where absolutely every piece of equipment was located, why, and where to troubleshoot when problems arose.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn't find to be true?
I read a lot of books about cruising before setting off on this adventure and found most everything to be spot on. I didn’t really have any illusions that it would always be easy or idyllic, but at times it certainly was. The view was ALWAYS great! I’ve traveled internationally almost my whole life, so the only aspect I had to adapt to was the “cruising life”.

Is there a place you visited where you wish you could have stayed longer?
Without a doubt that would be the Tuamotus. The “Dangerous Archipelago”, made up of all those beautiful, tropical atolls, is my personal ideal when thinking about the tropics. Pristine white sand islands, swaying palms, coral reefs, tons of fish and shells….who wouldn’t love it. Unfortunately, much of the time the weather is problematic for cruisers with rainstorms, squalls and dramatic wind shifts. Being anchored in shallow lagoons with little or no protection from the winds can be challenging. After less than one month visiting only three atolls I decided it was best to leave. But I really, really, really wanted to see more.

Tell me your favorite thing about your boat.
I love that my boat is open and light, but still has plenty of places to hang onto while navigating around inside. I love that she is so solidly built without being unnecessarily heavy, and that she comfortably and safely took me cruising around Mexico and the South Pacific. On rough, cold or rainy days I love, love, love my pilothouse.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?
When I’m trying to dock is tight spaces I love my bow thruster. It is surprisingly useful when anchoring and even saved me the embarrassment of getting caught in irons a couple of times. At hot, remote anchorages, there’s nothing better that having an icy cocktail that clinks complements of the ice maker. The ice maker was also an excellent redundant system for the refrigerator and freezer, when the compressor developed issues in Tahiti. The water maker worked flawlessly and provided an abundant source of the purest, softest water. I enjoyed being able to provide friends with endless hot showers after a passage. I only found the trash compactor useful on the long passages, it now goes mostly unused. And I highly recommend a memory foam mattress. Much better than being tossed around on a spring mattress in rough seas.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

Would you do it again?

And my answer to that would be both yes and no. I would not do another crossing or passage of more than a few days. It was always a bit of a 'crap shoot' when you were looking for a weather window for more than that period of time. Uncertain weather was always my fear, not so much because of safety issues, but because of comfort. I guess you could call me a fair-weather sailor. The “yes” portion of the answer is for the island hopping within an archipelago or island chain, the camaraderie among cruisers and the wonderful local people you meet. Everyday of cruising is different, and most of it is good.

10 Questions for Irie

2011-08-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Kilty and Liesbet Collaert have been cruising since 2007 aboard Irie, a Fountaine Pajot Tobago 35', hailing from Newcastle, Delaware, USA - they've never been there. They went down the ICW to Florida and then have spent their time in the Bahamas,Turks and Caicos, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, USVI, BVI, St. Maarten/St. Martin and the Eastern Caribbean island chain down to Grenada. You can read more about their travels on their website and their blog or reach them by email (crew@itsirie.com).

Liesbet says: I am a former teacher, freelance writer and avid traveler from Belgium and my husband Mark is an ex-software engineer from the United States. We left the US with our two wonderful dogs (Australian Shepherd mixes) Kali and Darwin. We lost Kali in Puerto Rico at the age of 10.5 and recently lost Darwin during a visit to the US at the age of 9.5, both to cancer. It changed our lives and our family. Mark and I belong to the younger side of the cruising community and new family members are considered.

Why did you decide to cruise?
I love to travel, explore and expand my horizons any interesting way; Mark likes to sail. He was sick of the "American Dream", after 10 years of hard work and I'm just open to anything new. He planned on going cruising at some point in the future and meeting me made it (kind of) happen a bit quicker. I'm the traveler (I do like to sail as well), Mark's the sailor and together we are cruisers! We love being mobile with our own house. This interview covers our second attempt (the first one failed after two days) to be cruisers, even though back then I didn't even know what "cruising" meant!

What did you do to make your dream a reality?
Nothing special really. We just followed "the steps" to make it happen, just like any other time I had an adventure in mind. But the story goes like this: When I met Mark in California while camping around the US in 2004, he had a long-term plan of going cruising. Since I decided to give up my travel plans to be with him, I encouraged him to do it sooner, so we could go travel by sailboat, something entirely new to me. Mark bought a 25 year old monohull, quit his job, sold all his belongings and all four of us moved into F/Our Choice/s for 5 months, working on her hard every day and getting her ready to go cruising. Two days out of San Francisco Bay, the dogs hated the heeling of the boat and were uncomfortable. Within 5 weeks, we sold the monohull, bought a camper and traveled overland to Panama and back for 1 year. Then, the sailing bug bit Mark again. We sold our set-up, bought a small pick-up truck (initial plan was to move to Belize, but that was right before the sailing bug bit) and camped in a tent with our dogs for two months in search of a decent and affordable catamaran. We found her in the Annapolis area, right before our self-appointed two-month deadline was up. Take two started after four months of preparation, in October 2007. The dogs loved it!

What do you think is a common cruising myth?
That life on a sailboat is (always) romantic, easy, wonderful, exotic and something to be envious of. That sailing equals freedom. That we cruise, because we are fortunate and/or rich! The reality boils down to one word: choices.

Describe a perfect cruising moment that will make cruisers-to-be drool with anticipation.
The wind is blowing a perfect 15 knots out of a favorable direction (off the beam), the sails are full and we are moving through the water smoothly. The sun beams in a blue sky and the breeze keeps us cool. The autopilot does the work, the crew is smiling, and the pup is relaxed in the cockpit. We approach the coastline of St. Lucia, where the giant Pitons loom picturesque on the horizon. All of a sudden a pod of dolphins greets our sailboat with playful jumps and speedy group movements through the clear water off our bow. Wow! (Oh, and then we catch a giant tuna and have sushi for dinner)

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way?
Keep an eye on the weather and use a "weather window" to get to your destination, instead of a deadline (like meeting friends or family at a certain day). This is common sense more than a tip, but it is so true. Nothing is more annoying than having to bash into heavy wind and seas to HAVE to get somewhere.
Talk to other cruisers to find out about the lay of the land (custom and immigration rules, points of interest, good harbors .)

ALWAYS make sure your anchor is set, no matter how light the wind is.
Do as much as you can yourself; it saves money, frustration and time, you know it's done right (albeit after a few tries sometimes) and who to blame and you learn more about your boat.

In your first year of cruising, what transitions did you find the most difficult?
Our first year of cruising was actually the best one. We discovered new places, enjoyed being with our dogs on all the beaches, didn't stress about finding and having jobs, had a sailboat in good working order and I was living in my biggest "house" ever! What I remember as finding "difficult" was the fact that there are barely any other young cruisers out there and that we were soooo dependent on the weather (and had to find safe havens each time a cold front made it down), something -in my opinion- that takes away from your sense of freedom. Being so reliant on the weather (which means skipping new places, islands and countries) still bugs (and restricts) me.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you found particularly accurate?
I didn't really hear or read about cruising before we started doing it ourselves. But, what I would like to add as a benefit to cruising (which I might as well have read, or written about myself) is that it is very easy to meet other cruisers and be part of the cruising community, that it can be done cheaply, that you become accustomed to "social drinking", that there is a lot to do (1, 2) and that sailing in perfect conditions is awesome.

What I heard from other cruisers before we left the US is that The Bahamas are one of the best and most pretty cruising grounds. Back then I found that hard to believe (they are relatively close, the closest, to the US), but now, after three seasons in the Eastern Caribbean, I have to admit that I do agree (so far)!

Are you attracted more to sailing itself or cruising-as-travel and has that changed over time?
I am a traveler by heart, not a sailor. I just love exploring new territory and experiencing new cultures, languages, sights. However, when the conditions are "right", I do love the sailing as well. Just feeling the boat, the wind, the elements, and staring at the horizon. Very peaceful. I have learned to really enjoy it, especially during daytrips while and after months of sitting in the same place, working.

Of the changes, choices and compromises you had to make along the way, which were you happiest and most satisfied about, which do you wish you had chosen otherwise and why?
During this second sailing attempt, we decided to get the boat ready enough to live and sail comfortably, without more gadgets than needed. We made that "mistake" the first time around, and worked on that boat for eight months in total to turn it into the "perfect" cruising boat. This time, we got her going after a few months (note: Irie was a newer boat than our previous one as well) and learned through experience what was needed.
Since we've left, we bought and installed solar panels and a wind generator, very good decisions. We also collect water in an efficient way now. Living off and with Mother Nature is very satisfying! Sitting in Luperon, the Dominican Republic, during a whole hurricane season was easy and safe, but not good for the boat and a bit boring (that was before we had jobs as well). We vowed not to do it again and rather pick a hurricane destination where some exploration and sailing can be had (like Grenada).

We started our own business from our small sailboat in the Caribbean and are still not sure whether that was a wise and good decision.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

How can you afford to cruise?

Since Mark and I are relatively young, we get that question asked a lot, especially by non-cruisers. Obviously we are not retired and by choice we want to live this lifestyle longer than a one or two year sabbatical. We can only function and be happy onshore for a couple of years at the time, so a floating house is a good compromise of having our own place and being able to travel.

How we afford it is by working along the way, what in turn takes away from the cruising experience. Most of the time, we are stuck in one place trying to make money and the enjoyment of cruising, sailing and traveling has dwindled down to only a few weeks out of the year.

We pick our anchorages based on WiFi (wireless internet) availability (and dog friendliness in the past). I write, translate, find miscellaneous jobs, and help out with our business, Mark runs the business, customer service, website, part of the sales, and so on. Not always easy from a simple boat in a simple location. Together we run the daily boat errands and fix all the boat issues. It's a busy life to be cruisin'!

How many of you have read ALL of the interviews?

2011-07-31T11:09:00.000-07:00

Some of you have been reading the Interview With A Cruiser Project from the beginning. Some of you joined in the first year and some of you are recent readers.

How many of you have read all 78 interviews?

((Comment OPEN on this post))

10 Questions for Reach

2011-07-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Cole and Michele Kelly began cruising in 2008 aboard Reach, a Manta 40 catamaran hailing from Mystic, Connecticut, USA. They traveled from the East Coast US to the Bahamas, Eastern Caribbean, Venezuela, ABC islands, Columbia, and now San Blas Panama. Readers can learn more about them on their website.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Michele: Be true to yourself. Before cruising, we soaked up as much information as we could from all available resources. Our friends and seasoned cruisers delighted us with their tales from the high seas, but wisely told us that ultimately, you won't know what cruising is like until you're actually out there. Not only did this prove true, but we also learned that to be happy you have to figure out what works best for yourselves.   It helps when the boat feels like home. There is no right or wrong boat or way to cruise since it is about personal choices and it always surprises me when people are adamant otherwise. We try to apply this basic principle to our choices in boat type, primary navigation, boat systems and life in general, which for us includes keeping a good sense of humor, not taking ourselves too seriously and enjoying what we do in both the exciting and the mundane.

Mark: It is in my nature to gather data and to group, distill and analyze it before making decisions (I’m a scientist), so I spent a lot of time asking advice from other cruisers, mucking through the various discussion boards, reading all books I could find, etc. So far, I haven’t found that there some particular fact or circumstance I should have known before setting out, but there were three things I was told that I think all potential cruisers should hear.

The first is that everyone I talked to, without exception, who retired at the usual age and then went cruising, told me that they wished they had gone cruising when they were younger. Two reasons were cited: that certain aspects or intensities of cruising slowly close down as one ages, and that many of those things one stayed shoreside working toward like a “proper” retirement package, new cars, bigger houses, more entertainment, etc become so unimportant and trivial when looked back upon from a cruising lifestyle. No one complained that cruising wasn’t fulfilling, fun or was a bad decision - simply that they wished they had gone when they were younger. Intellectually, we took this to heart and it became the driving mantra to go cruising for us. Yes, this is an old saw that is repeated in many books and discussion boards; however, it took being out cruising full time until we truly understood what it means and why. Potential cruisers will need to intellectualize it, like we did, while having faith that it is true and that they will discover why only after they have been out cruising.

The second thing was not so much a piece of advice, but rather a condensation and synthesis of discussions with cruisers. When talking to cruisers from a wide variety of backgrounds, from boats spanning 60’s pocket cruisers to expensive large yachts, from personal fortunes ranging from a few dollars to many millions, from those staying close to home to those ranging the globe, all of them described the exact same experiences of meeting people and cultures, living by one’s own ethos and standards, enjoying the scenery, fixing things that break, sharing stories of bad passages, reveling in the sublimeness of good passages - in essence, all these cruising people were the same. No one out here debates any of the pedantic stuff littering the bulletin boards about what makes a “proper” cruising boat and a “real” cruiser. It just doesn’t matter out here - we are all seeing the same things and having the same experiences.

Related to this is the third piece of advice - again, an old saw that is only really appreciated once you make the break and see it from the other side - which is “Go Now”. We were told that our boat would never be “ready”, that there would always be shore-side “commitments”, “obligations” and “emergencies” that would just take “one more year”, that our retirement plans would never be “secure”, that our families would never become “more comfortable” about our plans, that our house would never be “ready” to sell, that our jobs would easily go on without us “winding them up for transfer” - essentially, that the list of things we thought were influencing our departure could easily be wrapped in “quotes” and tossed away. In the end, the only piece of sticky tape remaining for us (really, me - Michele was innocent in this) was the belief that we could sell our house for a bit more money if we waited a little longer. Luckily, our good friends (and long-time cruisers) stepped in and convinced us (me) that the difference we were holding out for would not begin to cover the costs of the missed experiences of the first year out, and that we (I) would forget about that “lost” money immediately. Today, I have forgotten the price at which we sold our house, and what amount we wanted to hold out for.

I once read a letter to a sailing magazine describing a couple who worked hard while waiting to retire, purchased the boat of their dreams and spent two years completely refitting it. While backing out of their slip on the dreamed of day, waving good-bye to all their friends as they departed on their long-awaited and well-deserved cruising lifestyle, the husband had a fatal heart attack. The wife, writing the letter, described how she wished they hadn’t waited so long and urged everyone considering cruising to “go now”.   I have never forgotten that letter. The first point about “Go Young”, coupled with “Go Now”, really lit a fire under us to wrap things up and go.

When we left in 2008, Mark was 45 and Michele was 39. Our families understood, our house sold easily, our retirement plan is what it is, and our jobs didn’t even hiccup without us. Our boat is still not “ready”, but we haven’t noticed that for a couple of years now. After three years cruising, Mark is currently 35 and Michele is 29.

No one told us we would get younger out here.

Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
Michele:   During summer seasons, we coastal sailed on "Reach" before selling our house to live aboard and go cruising full time. One system that had never been commissioned until a few months out was the watermaker. While it is possible to take on water at marinas in the US or Eastern Caribbean, it was another chore and we had to watch usage. We live at anchor 98% of the time and the watermaker gives us complete independence. Water is not as abundant in some other countries we've visited; for example, there are little to no water sources in some of our favorite places, like the southern Bahamas, Venezuelan out islands and the San Blas. I prefer fresh water for showers, dishes and laundry as opposed to salt water, since things like hair and clothes don't dry out from residual salt. For us, this is a critical piece of gear.

Mark: AIS (Automatic Identification System). These existed before we left cruising, but with radar, good charts, a radio and many years of navigation experience around ships and shipping, I just couldn’t see the point of wasting $189 for an AIS receiver. After 1.5 years out, we installed an AIS receiver. Wow. It is one of the best things we have put on the boat and certainly THE best thing under $200. We don’t miss having a transponder model or a full bells and whistles system, although others may want them. The simple receiver interfaces easily to the chart plotter and shows all commercial ships and information (and any recreational boats with a transponder). The difference in navigation ease and information over radar and VHF is tremendous - particularly during night passages.

Also, a water catchment system. It doesn’t have to be fancy. After 1.5 years, we added some inexpensive gutters to our bimini and lead the water through a filter before the tanks. No sense letting all that free water go to waste.

Our boat was very well equipped when we bought it, and has full navigation electronics, radar, autopilot, watermaker, diesel generator, inverter/charger, air conditioning, SSB/HAM radios, a large solar panel installation, a good refrigeration/freezer system, large RIB dinghy with 15hp outboard, etc. What we consider essential for our personal cruising lifestyle is the GPS, autopilot, watermaker, SSB, solar, reefer/freezer, inverter (just large enough to run small appliances off and charge computers) and a good wifi system. One must have some type of dinghy and we personally would not want to be without a RIB with an outboard large enough to plane with two people and a healthy amount of cargo. If we didn’t have the diesel generator, I would get a portable Honda generator. If we didn’t have the room for solar, I would get a wind generator. I would consider the radar essential only if cruising in areas where fog is common. The watermaker is not essential if your cruising grounds are in areas with a lot of marinas or other water supplies. For us, it is essential since we have been cruising in areas such as the Bahamas, where you have to jug water (this gets old very quickly) and the San Blas, where you have very limited access to sporadic or questionable supplies. Air conditioning is not essential and wouldn’t be on our boat if it wasn’t already installed. Regardless of lifestyle and comfort choices, I would have at a minimum a good, trustworthy autopilot/self steering and a GPS.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?
Michele: We have each bottomed out in shallow depths in soft sand or mud while at the helm. That was the result of exploring off the beaten path so it's usually worth it, less a little bottom paint. It's not the result we'd want in rocky or coral areas, however. Also, I was fairly radio shy at first on the VHF, but have mostly gotten over it as this is our primary means of communication.

Mark: Fortunately, we didn’t make any big mistakes - certainly nothing that cost us money or set back our cruising plans. While not really a single “mistake”, a couple of passages in snotty weather did teach us to wait for good weather windows and not push on to a schedule. It also taught us that our boat would do just fine in those conditions.

What is the next piece of gear you would add to your boat if it were free and why?
Michele: OceanAir hatch screens. At anchor in a nice breeze you typically don't need screens, but when you do find yourself in a buggy place you really need it! We were trapped inside by swarms of mosquitos for several becalmed days at the ironically named "Dos Mosquises" islands. We have removable hatch screens that when not in use, just lay around various cabins in the boat and get in the way. It would be a luxury to have sliding hatch screens, but they are very pricy and we have 6 hatches.

Mark: Possibly a wind generator. It would be a mounting challenge for us, but we still might add one someday. If gear is being handed out, I would replace our 6 gal/hr DC watermaker with a larger output (~20-30 gal/hr) AC powered one that could also be run off the inverter when a charging source is present. Water is such a differential out here in terms of lifestyle, particularly in the tropics where a good rinse after swimming and a nice shower before bed is in the realm of necessity. To be able to wash down the boat after a salty passage is not a luxury, but indispensable maintenance. Even with a large solar installation, there is a limit to how much we can run our watermaker and still maintain the batteries. DC watermakers really only work to spec when the battery voltages are in the charging range, so we end up running it when motoring or during the height of sunny days, or running the generator during less sunny days. When motoring or running the generator, we are providing more energy than the watermaker consumes. It would make more sense to run a larger output one during these times and fill the tanks in a shorter period. If we didn’t have a generator, I would get a portable Honda for running the watermaker.

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid about that they shouldn't fear? And what is something potential cruisers don't worry about that perhaps they should?
Michele: Is it scary? Some potential cruisers worry about multi-day passage-making for various reasons. Well-planned and executed passages (clearly an understatement) can be one of the most pleasant times spent on your boat, traveling along with your entire home in peace and solitude. A truly good passage lets your mind travel to new places as well. We get into a focused "zone" when passage-making and become relaxed and well-rested, keeping low stress no matter what the conditions. By running 3-hour watches from 8PM-8AM and catching naps during the day, we sometimes get more total sleep on passage than normal. Passages are always one of our favorite experiences on "Reach".

To worry or not? It's easy to relate dinghy travel with as much as certainty as driving a car on the road, until something goes wrong (or even worse, drifts away or is stolen). It's important to be aware of your environment and think about what you would do if something went wrong; for example, if your prop spins out when you are miles away from your boat as happened to us. Fortunately, it still got us back to the boat at idle speed. I find myself always double checking things in our dinghy to be prepared for excursions with a handheld VHF radio, sufficient gas, spare prop and a good anchor. If you are alone in an isolated region, that VHF probably won't do you any good anyway, but oars, a bottle of water or small ditch bag might.

Yes, Worry. Most of us are aware of incidents of violent crime targeting cruisers. We've made decisions not to travel in questionable areas without a "buddy boat" nor in some areas all together. For us, it just isn't worth the risk, independent of others' experiences or attractions. On a weekend when we were considering making a particular trip alone, another single boat taking this route was boarded and robbed and it certainly hit home that this could have been us.

Mark: Almost universally, potential cruisers (any many actual cruisers) are afraid of storms and sailing in bad weather - particularly at night. I think this fear actually ends some cruising plans before they are implemented, and there are cruisers out here who travel only by daytime hops in calm weather because they still fear it. And bad weather sucks. We hate it and avoid it as much as possible and experience fear when we are caught in it. It is OK to be afraid as long as you confront your fear for what it is, understand that it is natural and unavoidable, and go on with your plans knowing that you will meet it again. So while it is OK to fear storms, you shouldn’t let that fear control you or your plans. For most cruising grounds, getting caught out in a storm is remarkably rare unless you are foolish enough to have an unyielding schedule or not learn to understand weather patterns.

There are two things potential cruisers don’t worry about that will shut down their cruising plans immediately: Schedules and “Knowing Thyself”.

Schedules are a killer. While they are completely normal and expected on land, out cruising they will break you, make you miserable, lead you into taking your boat out when and where it doesn’t belong and, in general, completely muck up your life, if not actually damage you or your boat. Unbelievably, we have met new cruisers who have shown us DETAILED schedules for the next TWO YEARS of their cruising. And I mean details like: Jan 4 - Port A, Jan 6 - Port B ... for the next two years! One was traveling from the Chesapeake to the Caribbean with scheduled plans for every single day and passage times and dates for the whole year like it was a package vacation with airlines and trains! It is OK to have general plans, but if you are a potential cruiser with a detailed schedule, tear it up now before you get into trouble. If you are the type of person who compulsively needs to have detailed schedules, you are not going to make it as a cruiser.

Know Thyself: it is an ancient piece of advice, but advice that shore life rarely requires one to learn. Out cruising, however, not recognizing or understanding your personal needs, desires and requirements will end your cruising lifestyle. We can recognize these cruisers within 5 minutes after being introduced. It is that obvious to everyone except them. By this I mean if you require fancy restaurants and fine entertainment and think you can fulfill this out cruising, you won’t make it. If you are being torn away crying from your house that means the world to you and think the boat will be a substitute, you aren’t going to make it. If you have grandchildren that you must spend a lot of time with and spend most of your cruising days pining for them, you aren’t going to make it. Similarly, if you have a newly married son/daughter with plans for children, and you know those grandkids will be the most important thing in your life, starting a cruise is a waste of time. If you are a type-A personality that can’t sit still and/or needs to “run the show”, you might make it. You will be the one staying in popular anchorages organizing all the cruiser field trips, potlucks, games, community benefits, making arbitrary “anchorage rules”, policing the VHF, etc. Overall, the cruising lifestyle is very rewarding, but very different from any lifestyle shore-side. Like any choice, certain options are available only at the expense of other options. Successful cruisers have embraced the cruising lifestyle while willingly giving up their previous lifestyle. If you cannot give up your shore lifestyle, and hope to meld it into the cruising lifestyle, you should either plan something like “6 months out, 6 months at home” type of cruising, or forget about going cruising - there are much easier ways to see different places and experience different cultures than dragging yourself to them on a small, slow boat.

In your experience, how much does cruising cost?
Michele: We retired early to cruise indefinitely so we have had to plan well, first to build our savings and then to make it last. I track our spending using Quicken so we can see how we stand against our budget goal of around $30k a year. About half of our budget is spent on mandatory costs that come from personal decisions about health/boat insurance and boat maintenance. These costs can be high so we actually spent 40% more than intended the first two years out in the US, Bahamas and Eastern Caribbean. No matter how much outfitting thought we'd covered before leaving (chain, new canvas, rigging), we ended up making major boat investments in the past two years (haulout, bottom paint, new props, sails, generator, chain) due to more wear and tear when cruising 365 days a year versus seasonally and some system failures. Our discretionary spending has been low and is easier to control. We rarely eat out, so groceries are one of our major expenses averaging $115 a week. We expect annual spending to decrease in the SW Caribbean.

Mark: Whatever you have. Really. Everyone wants to see actual cost figures and breakdowns, but this question will never have a meaningful answer. There are so many gradients of costs of living and lifestyles and so many cruising grounds offering different bang for buck and too many options for adjusting one’s lifestyle to one’s money availability to make a descriptive equation or algorithm. If the Eastern Carib is draining your money, go to the Western Carib. You can live forever on very little in Mexico. The minimum cruising requirement is to maintain a sea-worthy boat, operate it safely and have enough to eat. So you must spend a finite amount to achieve this, but it could represent the cost of some decent galvanized rigging, a handheld GPS and a handline and/or pole spear to catch fish, supplemented with rice and beans. Everything on top of that is optional, although these options may be considered non-optional for many cruisers. But the one thing about cruising that seems identical to land-life is that if you have the money, you will spend it. There will be times when the money is flowing out so fast you can’t count it and other times when you can’t remember where your wallet is since it has been that long since you needed money. We have spent more than our budget goal the past couple of years because we made some specific decisions to maintain a certain cruising lifestyle. New sails, new generator new anchor chain and new propellers were unexpected expenses that we undertook. While anchor chain and propellers are somewhat essential items, the sails and generator were not necessarily so. So whatever money you have, you will spend it and be happy. It is almost impossible to become destitute out here as long as you don’t have a money-draining problem such as alcohol, drugs, etc. And the overall enjoyment of the lifestyle seems to be wholly independent of the amount of money thrown at it, as long as one’s expectations/requirements are matched to one’s wallet.

How did you (or did you) gain offshore experience prior to leaving?
Michele: My first offshore trip was a six-day trek to deliver our newly purchased catamaran from Florida to Connecticut. We recruited three friends to join us so we all had partners for night watches, which helped me learn a lot. It was a good challenge to participate in weather routing, provisioning and offshore navigation for the first time. It was a beautiful trip riding the Gulf Stream currents, watching dolphins, sunsets and sunrises, and catching fish along the way. There was also some rougher weather and the boat was new to us, yet everything still went well. Fortunately, this was a great experience and I was immediately comfortable offshore.

Mark: I have been sailing essentially all my life. I started gaining true offshore experience in the mid-80’s when I bought a 26’ sailboat with a friend and we spent summers cruising it. Offshore experience really just boils down to three things: knowing your boat, having navigation skills and understanding/controlling your personal fears. Potential cruisers shouldn’t worry much about a lack of offshore experience - the first two aspects can, and should, be acquired while coastal and day sailing, and the third aspect is only mastered by going offshore. So offshore experience is a tautology - the only way to gain offshore experience is to experience sailing offshore. Just go do it - take shorter overnight sails if you are concerned, and wait for good weather windows.

What is a tip or a trick you have picked up along the way?
Michele: The secret to clean onboard laundry is wringing. I started off using laundry machines or services in the US and Eastern Caribbean. Then I realized that we could buy new clothes for the cost of washing them over time. In the SW Caribbean onboard laundry is a necessity. I use a Wonderwash pressure washer, but was never totally satisfied with the final results as fabrics dripped-dry on our lifelines and ended up hard with un-rinsed dirt and soap. An article in the Caribbean Compass magazine caught my eye about an electric spin dryer and I realized this was the answer for me. It is essentially a big salad spinner running for a minute or two on 110V power. I use it to remove soapy water, which helps get rid of the dirty water, and again after the fresh water rinse. A thorough wringing makes line-drying extremely quick and probably helps to extend the lifetime of your clothes by reducing wind and sun damage.

Another important discovery was that Claritin (loratadine) works wonders to stop bug bites from itching.

Mark: Two tips we have learned that are invaluable. First, wait for a decent weather window for a passage and, when it arrives, take it and go as far as possible while it holds out. This may mean shortening or lengthening your original stay and plans and possibly skipping some stops along the way that are less important to you. For example, the trip from the Bahamas to Puerto Rico is a notorious upwind slog through strong trades, squalls and large waves. It is mostly done through short hops through Mayaguana, the Turks and Caicos, the Dominican Republic and across the Mona Passage, and is only reasonably done during lulls in the weather - which can make the passage take weeks or even months in total. While in the Bahamas, we had a whopper of a cold front come through and, after riding out the first hit, jumped on the 20-25kt Northern winds on the back of it and had a four day broad reach straight to Puerto Rico - an almost unheard of event. This did mean that we shortened our planned stay in the Bahamas by a week or so, and we did miss visiting the Dominican Republic, but our goal was to get to Puerto Rico.

Second, always have the boat prepared for the unexpected. If you are anchoring in trade winds that NEVER blow from the West, make sure you are clear to swing when the wind blows from the West. If you are going to walk a beach on a clear and cloudless day, close the hatches before you go so that the rain doesn’t soak the interior. If you are just going to motor 1 mile across that flat lagoon, don’t leave anything on the counters/table that will break when that single wave from a far off wake rolls you. And if it is going to blow 40 knots at anchor, it WILL be at 2am, so prepare the boat every night before going to bed.

Where was your favorite place to visit and why?
Michele: I'm sure we both have the same response here - the Jumentos in the southern Bahamas. It is a secluded place where you must know what you are doing and fend for yourself. It draws other independent people like ourselves with whom we have a lot in common and have made life-long friendships. It was exactly what we'd both envisioned for our cruising life and more: sailing and seamanship challenges, hikes and beaches, excellent fishing, meaningful encounters with cruisers and locals, solitude and independence.

Mark: There are so many great places with such wide varieties of experiences, and even the not-so-great places are nice. Overall, I enjoyed the Bahama out islands the best - particularly the Jumentos/Raggeds - due to the isolation, fishing, required self-sufficiency, spectacular water and rough and rugged beauty. The San Blas islands are similar and a close second.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

Michele: What do you love most about cruising?

People. Cruising brings a new twist to relationships. It removes many social barriers and/or expectations in modern life (keeping up with the neighbors, rat race, new toys, etc). We have to figure out who we are without our careers to dictate our identity. We spend more time with our partner than ever imagined before we went cruising. We reconnect with family and friends in new ways. We have so much spoken and unspoken in common with other cruisers. And we meet and relate to people in the countries we visit. Not surprisingly, human nature is universal and we find curious, shy, funny, nosey, bossy, friendly, rude, helpful, clever, caring people in various encounters. It keeps life interesting and in my first year cruising, I found that I naturally sought out role models when trying to figure things out for myself.

10 Questions for Asylum

2011-07-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

Jim and Katie Coolbaugh are cruising aboard Asylum, a Tayana V42 (42 ft), cutter-rigged sloop hailing from Bethesda, MD, USA. They began cruising in 1999 and are still at it.

They describe their route as: Down the east coast of the US, partly on the ICW to FL; down the Thorny Path thru the Eastern Caribbean to Trinidad and Tobago; west to Panama via Venezuela and Colombia with a N/S detour thru Haiti and Cuba; thru the Canal to Ecuador, which provided a base for land travel in South America; across the Pacific to New Zealand via French Polynesia, Suwarrow Atoll in the Cook Islands, American Samoa, Tonga; then back up to Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and soon to Palau.

Readers can learn more about their travels on their blog or via email (asyluminmates@gmail.com).

Over the time that you have been cruising, has the world of cruising changed?
We are about to pass the 12-year mark as live-aboard cruisers and as we reflected back over those years, several changes in the world of cruising came to mind:

Cruising boats seemed to get bigger. In the early years, Asylum at 42 ft was on the high end of average boat size, but now, on average, cruising boats seem to be bigger.
There are more cruising catamarans. In the beginning, we almost never saw cruising catamarans. They were all charter cats. Now, it’s not uncommon to have as many cruisers on cats in an anchorage as on monohulls. I even wrote an article about “catamaran converts,” people who’d switched from monohulls to catamarans after setting out to cruise, and could have added many more to the 4 couples profiled.
Communications are much easier, faster, cheaper. When we left, there was no sailmail or winlink, no wifi, Skype, or pre-pay cell phones that you could activate anywhere. Communications were often a time-consuming challenge and expense in the early years.
ATMs are almost everywhere. No longer do you have to carry a wad of cash or a stash of traveler’s checks. Yes, there are still a few remote places out there without ATMs, but they’re very remote and the next town with one usually close by.
Navigational technology gizmos have mushroomed. We left with a modest radar, a GPS, and paper charts. We now have electronic charts, a chart plotter, a forward looking sonar, and AIS—all of a relatively modest ilk. On some boats we’ve visited I feel like I’m the bridge of an aircraft carrier!
Much more cruising information is (instantly) available. With Noonsite, SSCA on line, and everyone keeping and emailing copious notes on their routes, it’s easy to get up to the minute information about your next destination. Sometimes almost too much information…
The world seems a wee bit more dangerous. We have read with dismay reports of growing violence and cautionary “don’t go there” tales for many places in the world. In the beginning it never occurred to us that we wouldn’t head up the Red Sea to the Med when the time came, but now the expanding range and relentless acts of piracy along that route, a route that old-timers used to rave about, are giving everyone pause. Other areas that we or friends remember fondly have had reports of life-threatening assaults on cruisers, incidents much more dangerous than a stolen dinghy or snorkel gear nipped from the deck.

What is something that you looked forward to about cruising when you were dreaming that is as good or even better than imagined?
Approaching the next anchorage and arriving to find it empty…no other boats there, having it all to ourselves! Not that we don’t love hanging out with our friends in an idyllic spot, but empty anchorages are increasingly hard to come by, so when you find one, it’s especially sweet.

Is there anywhere you sailed to that was a disappointment?
Not really. For the most part, cruising destinations are what you make them, and to the extent we’ve been “disappointed” it’s mostly been because we didn’t have enough time in a given place (like Cuba). That being said, Papua New Guinea has been something of a disappointment because of security issues. We were boarded and robbed our fourth night in the country and that made us more cautious about where we subsequently have visited than we might otherwise have been. There is considerable “don’t go there” advice even from the locals, which we respect. So our hope of exploring remote interesting villages here in PNG has been largely unrealized and therefore something of a disappointment, but we’re still glad we came.

When have you felt most in danger and what was the source?
For us, there are 3 main sources of danger out here: bad guys, bad weather, hitting something pointy that could hole the boat. Fortunately, we haven’t had to deal with the latter two. Our weather bad weather experiences mostly have been uncomfortable, not dangerous.

But we have had 2 scary encounters with bad guys, one in Colombia many years ago and one recently in PNG. In both cases, we were boarded at night by armed men (in Colombia, 5 with guns; in PNG, 2 with knives). We won’t take the space for details here; both incidents are described in our blog and on Noonsite. Frankly, the second was scarier because the guys actually got into the boat. In the first, we were able to repel them with pepper spray, but in the second, we couldn’t get at the pepper spray fast enough since they landed on top of us when we were asleep. I think the important thing was that in both cases, scared shitless as we were, we breathed deeply, didn’t panic, assessed the situation, kept our wits, and got out without injury.

Share a piece of cruising etiquette.
Don’t anchor too close! Just because you can get your boat into that skinny slot next to mine doesn’t mean you should. Perhaps our greatest pet peeve is how close other boats feel compelled to anchor, particularly when there’s an enormous bay of space to choose from. There seems to be a herding mentality out there that results in everyone anchoring on top of each other and we hereby beg our fellow cruisers to resist it. We don’t want you to have to listen to our generator and we don’t want to have to listen to yours. Drop your hook a healthy and respectable ways away. And if you’re the new guy on the block and someone asks you to move because you’re uncomfortably close, honor their request.

What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?
After some experimentation we have landed on 4 – 4 – 3 – 3. That is, we each get an initial 4 hour sleep, and then we each get 3 hours of sleep, usually starting around 7 p.m. Because I come from a family of night-owls and it’s easier for me to stay up longer, Jim usually takes the first 4 hour sleep. It’s also easier for me to sleep in daylight, so I get the last 3 hours (which also means I can “sleep in” in the morning). During the day, we’re both up or catch a cat nap as needed.

Why did you decide to cruise?
I’ve always been one of those people who preferred to regret the things they did rather than the things they didn’t do. So, after visiting some sailing buddies who had left to go cruising a few years before we did, we pondered the notion on the flight back to Washington. I said to Jim that I didn’t want to wake up in a nursing home when I’m 85 and a doddering old fool and say, “Damn, I wish we’d gone cruising!” We love to sail, travel, dive, experience odd and out-of-the-way places, eat weird food, meet interesting and unusual people, learn new stuff; I, in particular feared ruts and routine.

Living smaller, cheaper, simpler had great appeal. And perhaps we could even do some good along the way…

In your own experience and your experience meeting cruising couples, can you convince a reluctant partner to go cruising and if so, how?
The crux of any persuasive argument like this lies in zeroing in on the source of the reluctance.

Is it fear of pirates? Talk about the odds… (ok, well, the Gulf of Aden is a problem these days).
Is it fear of bad weather? Talk about the odds of encountering really bad weather if you plan your routes and seasons carefully (and read the zillions of blogs and websites where cruisers routinely report that they’ve never really encountered seriously dangerous weather in all their years cruising). And of course a good sound boat is important. A line from a long-ago cruising article has always stuck with me and I quote it often: “A sailboat will scare you to death long before it kills you.” Also, read books and articles about awful weather! People thought I was nuts reading about the Queen’s birthday storm and the Fastnet race disasters (“doesn’t it scare you to read about that stuff?”), but that’s how you learn strategies for coping with those situations and how not to make the same mistakes.
Is it lack of amenities? Figure out what’s important to you and make sure your boat has it. (It’s amazing, though, how quickly all those really important things become unimportant. I hate washing sheets in a bucket but in the end, it’s just not that big a deal.)
Is it missing friends and family? Invest in good communications and plan your cruising itineraries to include places where you can leave the boat and fly home often. Lots of cruisers do it.

Finally, I’d say: Give it a try. You can always quit if you don’t like it but you’ll never experience the immense rewards of cruising if you don’t give it a shot.

What is something you think potential cruisers are afraid about that they shouldn't fear? And what is something potential cruisers don't worry about that perhaps they should?
Most potential cruisers seem to worry about bad weather. It’s not that they shouldn’t worry about weather, it’s just that weather shouldn’t be a crippling fear. There’s so much weather information available now—forecasts, weather patterns for every corner of the world, principles of weather systems, strategies for dealing with it—that the prudent cruiser should be able to plan around and avoid the worst of it. Most people complain about too little wind, not too much. We’ve all been caught by surprises, though, and that’s when a boat you trust and your good seamanship come into play to help allay your worst weather fears.

There is also so much advice and information out there for potential cruisers that it’s hard to imagine anything that’s been missed on the “things to worry about” lists, but one thing that does come to mind is anchoring: both equipment and technique. When it comes to anchors, size matters. Bigger is better. Everyone we know has either started out with or moved up to a bigger anchor than was “recommended” for their boat. But it’s not only size that matters; other key considerations are the type of anchor for the bottom you’re in and the type and amount of rode you carry (and deploy). We have 200 ft of chain, which, in some deep Pacific anchorages is barely enough. When it comes to something to worry about, dragging at night—or being dragged into by the other guy who didn’t worry about his anchor—is a big one.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

There are so many good questions we would loved to have answered, but since we’ve spent a fair amount of time talking to each other about this issue, we’ll go for this one: With the benefit of hindsight, what
are the boat selection criteria you would use to purchase a boat for long term cruising?

If we had it to do over again, we would do more homework about the implications of boat design: construction, weight, length, waterline, rig, and all those ratios that define and explain “performance.” In
the end, it may be that we still would have opted for a safe, heavy cruising boat, but it would have been a better-informed decision than the broker-led and somewhat emotional choice we ended up making at the
time. Then we would weigh all those performance standards that are so critical for moving the boat from place to place against the equally critical comfort factor because, after all, you spend a lot of time sitting still while cruising and this is our home. In a line I’ve stolen from a cruiser friend, “I didn’t sign up to go camping.”
Implicit in all the number crunching and analysis, of course, is the issue of the seaworthiness of the boat. It won’t matter how comfortable you are if you worry that it will fall apart every time a wave slaps the hull. And “safety” includes not only sound construction, strong rigging, and rugged sails but also the ability to sail the boat with a two-person crew.

After that, the various aspects of liveaboard comfort come to play. Asylum is a 42 ft, aft cockpit boat, and much as we love and trust her, there are times we wish she was a 48 ft center cockpit boat. We sleep in the V-berth, which, on Asylum, is a bigger bed than the aft quarterberth. If we had it to do over again, we’d go center cockpit (we just didn’t like the lines of any of the center cockpit boats we looked at when we were buying a cruising boat, but we’ve gotten over that!) with a roomy aft cabin and a bed you can access from both sides. But it’s the little things you don’t think about when you’re in the flush excitement of buying a cruising boat, like a place for files and all the paper you accumulate along the way; a place for dirty
laundry; the comfort of the seat at the navigation station; plentiful, accessible storage, especially for all the tools and spares you carry; counter space around the head sink (Asylum has an airline-sized bathroom sink and counter space the size of a postage stamp). It’s hard to think about those things when you’re still living in a house and your current sailboat serves you fine for weekends when none of that other stuff matters (you take your laundry home with you and there’s a chandlery around the corner).

Yes, in 12-year hindsight we’ve decided that a little more waterline and a little more space would have been nice. But at this point, we wouldn’t trade Asylum for the Queen Mary!

10 Questions for Scream

2011-07-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

Darusha Wehm and Steven Ensslen began cruising in 2008 aboard Scream, a Huntingford custom 45' hailing from Victoria, BC, Canada. They left British Columbia heading down the Pacific coast of the Americas to Ecuador, over to the Galápagos, then across the Pacific to the Marquesas. From there, they sailed to New Zealand via French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga. You can read more about their voyage on their website.

In your first year of cruising, what transitions did you find the most difficult?
It was tough leaving people and places so quickly. At the time it seemed like we'd never see folks we'd really gotten to like again. It also took us a long time to settle into a watch schedule that worked for us. We kept following the advice of other cruisers and trying to do what worked for them, even though we thought there was a better way for us, but no one was doing it. Eventually, we just tried it anyway, and it turned out to be the most successful.

Steven found leaving his job difficult. Our society expects everyone to be busy making money, and looks down on those who aren't.

What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
Scream is a generously sized boat. We have lots of stuff on board that we rarely use, like our folding bicycles and inflatable kayaks. So while there are things that we have never used, I'm not sure that I'd leave anything behind. That having been said, there are cruisers trying to sell storm anchors and drogues everywhere and I don't know of any experienced cruiser who doesn’t sail high latitudes who thinks that they are worth the space they take up.

Tell me your favorite thing about your boat.
Darusha — Scream is a heavy double ender, very stable in a sea. We've never been pooped and with our enclosed cockpit we almost always stay dry. I love that we have a cockpit that is comfortable enough to live in at sea (and anchor) and that the boat feels secure.

Steven — The enclosed cockpit. When you're taking waves and spray all the way to the stern while you're trying to talk to the coasties on the VHF, it really helps not to be covered in salt water. More typically, it is nice to be out of the rain.

What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn't find to be true?
We heard a lot of warnings about theft, especially in Costa Rica. I think we might have had a better experience If we'd been less wary and actually been robbed. As it was we were overly careful with the boat and suspicious of the locals and never experienced any theft issues.

We also prepared a lot for heavy weather and have thankfully seen no more than 35 knots at sea since passing Cape Mendocino.

What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike?
Darusha — I love that we are a floating small town that dissipates and reforms constantly. You keep meeting up with your neighbours all over the world, and there's nothing like the feeling of seeing good friends pull into an anchorage unexpectedly. However, all small communities have problems with gossip and we all can get too much in each others pockets.

Also, there's a fine line between the wealth of information and help you can get from other cruisers and nosy neighbours trying to tell you what to do.

Steven — We enjoy the camaraderie and community spirit. I'm not sure I dislike anything.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Darusha — It’s not that hard. Just go.

Steven — Go as soon as you can. Don't wait for everything to be perfect. Incidentally, many people gave us this message.

Of the changes, choices and compromises you had to make along the way, which were you happiest and most satisfied about, which do you wish you had chosen otherwise and why?
We spent two months in an anchorage we’d planned to spend a couple of weeks in, and we often talk of going back. Being free to change your plan when you find a place you love is one of the highlights of cruising.
I wish that we had visited Panama, rather than mainland Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government makes cruising almost impossible and Panama has better anchorages as well.

What is your biggest lesson learned?
Cruising is hard work. Boats need a lot of maintenance. Cleaning and cooking and provisioning are more difficult than they are on land. Watches need to be kept on passage. Living on land is easier, and for many people more relaxing. It’s not all mai-tais in the hammock.

What did you do to make your dream a reality?
We arranged our entire lives to make this happen. We have no children, no pets, no cars, and went years between minimal vacations. We skimped and saved, and sailed as much as we could. I can't exaggerate how much we did for this as we did everything we could.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?
One thing that I have noticed is that many people outfit boats for long ocean passages when their interest is to cruise in a specific foreign territory. I recommend that people who want to sail in a specific place to buy a coastal cruising boat in that location rather than outfitting a boat for offshore passages. Boats are cheaper in Mexico or Tahiti or New Zealand than they are in California. And you need less of a boat with less gear aboard than you would for ocean crossings or sailing in higher latitudes.

10 Questions for Freya

2011-07-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

Barb Peck and Bjarne Hansen cruise aboard Freya, a Vogel-Hunter 30 ft, fibreglass double-ender, hailing from Victoria, Canada and built in Vancouver in 1976. They cruised outside of Canada from 2004 – 2006 and will go again. During their cruise, their route was: Victoria - Hawaii - Marquesas - Cook Is - Nuie - New Zealand - Tonga - Fiji - Samoa - Kiribati - Hawaii - Victoria. Readers can learn more on their website. They say: We quit our jobs to go sailing for two years whilst in our 30's, and have no regrets about the experience. We're back at our old jobs, sailing coastally when time permits, and intend to cruise again in a few years.

What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
"Sailing all the time is hard work." Actually, someone (Tony Gooch) did say exactly that but it didn't really sink in until we were out there ourselves, covering 8400 miles in 4 months. Happily we were able to slow down and really enjoy the scenery the following 20 months.

Routing also seemed more straightforward when reading about it than in reality. Unpredictable details like weather and currents made some of our choices more challenging than we had intended.

Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
We decided early on in our preparations to Keep It Simple, for the good reasons of reducing costs, shortening prep-time, and minimizing failures at sea. No fridge, no watermaker, no shortwave transmitting
radio. We were generally very happy with that decision. The only item I (Bjarne) really missed was roller-furling on the genoa. We had removed Freya's antiquated and undersized furling before leaving, opting instead for the bulletproof hank-on method. Sometimes, during the 13th sail change on a given day, I could be heard over the sound of the sea cussing my failure to embrace this marvel of modern sailing: roller-furling.

Can you think of a sailing tip (e.g., sail trim, sail combination) specific to offshore passages (e.g., related to swells)?
Spinnakers on dark nights can be tricky - the swell can wrap one around the forestay in a jiffy when you aren't able to keep an eye on it. Like most folks we tended to be more conservative about sail area at night; it allows the off-watch person longer sleeps with fewer interruptions to assist with sail changes. Of course, had we had roller-furling...

Share a piece of cruising etiquette.
Go introduce yourself to the villagers ashore (if there is a village). You are, after all, anchoring in their front/back yard. It's also a great way to meet new friends and perhaps get some fresher provisions.

What do you miss about living on land?
The expansive room of a house, where you don't need to put away all your hobby/tool/writing/repair items before making dinner. I suspect now that had we taken a break from cruising midway through the two years
I might have suffered less from cockpit-fever.

How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise?
Take enough courses (CPSS, CYA, BCA all put on good ones) to be competent; outfit your boat to be safe; and then GO! You can always add more gear later if you decide you need it. There are also aspects of mental and emotional preparation - what are your reasons for going cruising, what do you hope to get out of it, and are they compatible with your partner's goals? We had embarked on shorter sailing vacations before
going cruising so we were pretty sure we'd get along fine.

What was the most affordable area you have cruised and the most expensive? What was affordable or cheap about each area?
I'd say Fiji was the most affordable. It has an excellent mix of remote islands and villages where you can't spend any money if you tried, though you might part with a few boat supplies in trade. Fiji has decent medical and dental services at low cost, which we needed to avail ourselves of (though nothing too serious). We had our liferaft repacked/certified at 1/4 what it would have cost in New Zealand, and the service work was competent (as confirmed by the Victoria Zodiac dealer who bought our raft when we returned).

The most expensive was Hawaii. We stayed at the Ala Wai Harbor for several months, and while the dock fees themselves were not outrageous (especially considering that Waikiki beach is mere footsteps away),
Honolulu has hordes of shops, entertainments, and tourist-traps making it easy to empty the wallet. We did have medical insurance while in the USA, but happily didn't need to use it.

Throughout the S. Pacific one can spend plenty of money buying imported foods - we generally tried to avoid that except for the occasional treat, like broccoli at Kiritimati Is.

What are your impressions of the cruising community?
It's an entertaining mélange of people: young, old, loners, stoners, carefree, careful, rich, poor, etc, etc. Most everyone is helpful, and many exhibit the cruisers' disdain of schedules: this makes it easy to get together for impromptu beach parties and potlucks. Because of the transient nature of cruising, people tend not to get too deep/serious in their relationships with other cruisers, at least not at first. You can usually find someone you click with in an anchorage, and if you are lucky you will remain friends through many miles.

What did you do to make your dream a reality?
Pointed our boat west.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?

What non-essential gear do you get the most happiness from having on board?

An underwater camera (Olympus with housing rated to 30m, but there are other models too). We also brought our dive gear and two small scuba tanks. The underwater scenery is so fascinating! Whether you snorkel or dive, there's life of all sizes and colours to behold. Our favourite experiences include a moonlit snorkel at Minerva Reef, a red & yellow coral wall in Fiji, and Mariner's Cave in Tonga.