My husband and I sailed together for 24 years, half of which were in the Mediterranean with our 37 year old 31ft Hallberg Rassy. Max was a retired sea captain and marine pilot so he was used to giving orders on board which I obeyed without question.
Sadly he died earlier this year and his very last voyage was when his ashes were spread at sea. Needless to say I was devastated and faced with many challenges after his death.
Each day there was a new hurdle to get over and there were many difficult decisions to make. One big question was to decide what to do with the boat, which was standing on the hard in a boatyard in Greece.
I decided to take up the challenge of keeping the boat and sailing alone. I was very uncertain if I really could do it and afraid of crashing into something, falling overboard or ruining the boat etc. but at least I would give it a try.
I have now spent more than 3 months sailing around the Saronic islands and apart from a few mishaps it has been a great success. It has boosted my self confidence, doing things I never thought I could, and I don’t regret for a minute that I decided to keep the boat.…Read more
There is a fantastic two-day seminar on long distance cruising that is coming up in three weeks and Women and Cruising is a part of it. The seminar has a number of unique aspects.
The first is the incredible line-up of speakers. You will have a chance to learn from
Jimmy Cornell (World Cruising Routes, et al),
Lee Chesneau (meteorologist),
Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger (World Voyaging Handbook and two-time circumnavigators),
Pam Wall (circumnavigator, expert on outfitting, and who we all love…),
Laura Sudarski (medical expert),
Richard Hudson (high latitude sailor),
Steve Bowden (communications specialist),
and Doina Cornell (who sailed as a child, and later ran the popular website Noonsite).
There will be classroom time plus a poolside liferaft demonstration and a view from the bridge simulation.
The seminar will be held at the Maritime Institute Conference Center in Linthicum, Maryland – so you can attend both the seminar and the Annapolis Sailboat Show during the same weekend. …Read more
Imagine your house. Now shrink it down to your living room and kitchen. That’s the size of the boat my husband and I lived on for two months with seven people as we sailed across the largest ocean on the planet on Llyr, a 53-foot steel ketch. Now take that space and shrink it down to 40 square feet. That’s the size of the space Rob and I shared for our 33-day passage between Panama and the Marquesas Islands, and for the weeks of prep-work at Shelter Bay Marina beforehand. Currently, we’re sharing 30 square feet on a 43-foot Polaris bound for Tonga.
I know what you’re thinking … and, no, we’re not midgets, dwarves or leprechauns. We’re just brave, or really stupid, depending on your point of view.
One year ago, we decided to start our sailing adventure by crewing on boats, rather than buying our own right away. This allows us to:
Make sure we REALLY like the cruising lifestyle before dropping tens of thousands of dollars;
Learn more about blue-water sailing;
Test drive a variety of boats to see what we like best;
And travel much more cheaply through the South Pacific.
You can read reams of blog posts on how couples transition from living in comfy, spacious homes to living aboard a sailboat. Our growing pains aren’t that different, really, except that we moved into one small part of someone else’s sailboat, rather than having a whole boat to stretch out into. When we started planning for our “hitch-sail around the world” adventure, I hadn’t really thought ahead to how crunching into tiny new spaces might affect Rob and me, individually and as a couple. …Read more
Cruising Life: The Best Stories from Caribbean Compass
I first read Ruth’s article about going overboard when it was first published in the Caribbean Compass back in 1999.
It was an amazing story and I wondered if I could possibly be as resourceful as Ruth if something like that happened to me. Before I went cruising, I thought if anything bad happened out on the sea, well, there is no way I could possibly cope.
Once cruising though I began to learn however, that occasionally the inthinkable does occur (as it does on land as well), and I started meeting people who had coped with all sorts of emergencies and survived.
This knowledge of course doesn’t make you complacent, in my case it made me less panicked and more able to think: what is the best way to avoid a major problem, and how should we respond in an emergency.
We all eagerly await the monthly arrival of the Caribbean Compass in the anchorages down island, and it is a special achievement to have an article published in the Caribbean Compass. Probably nothing gives a truer picture of what Caribbean cruising is like in all its variety than the articles that Sally Erdle, editor and former circumnavigator publishes in the Compass.
Thank you Sally Erdle and Rona Beame for putting together a book of all the best stories from the Compass! I am sure I have missed some of these stories the first time around, and others like Ruth’s, I was glad to have the chance to reread again and be amazed.
— Kathy Parsons, Women and Cruising
We were sailing our Morgan 41, Sea Dream I, from Grenada to Antigua. The Christmas Winds had arrived early and were in force. We’d had a truly awful night sailing from Carriacou to St. Lucia — black as the inside of an elephant with winds that never dropped below 30 knots, plus hourly squalls of 40 to 45 knots.
In spite of all that, my husband, Vern, and I weren’t expecting what hit us just north of Martinique: a squall with 55-knot winds and gusts to 60. It lasted only ten minutes, but felt like ten hours as we clung grimly to the wheel.
The main blew out and then, once the winds calmed down to only 40 knots, Vern noticed a line trailing along the lee side of the boat. I was upset to realize that it was all that was left of our Fortress anchor. We had lost 100 feet of chain and 200 feet of rode. A lot of water must have come over the bow during the squall, with enough force to lift the pawl off the windlass gypsy and let the anchor run.
With the main blown, we needed the engine and didn’t want any lines tangling in the prop. Vern said, “Be very, very careful!” as I went out on deck and up forward to haul the line in.
I was sitting on the foredeck with the windlass between my knees and one hand on the windward lifeline — and them suddenly I wasn’t! Sea Dream and I had parted company. …Read more
As I prepare for a brief 4-day jaunt to Biscayne Bay with my ketch Annie Laurie, a trip I’ve been planning for weeks, I realize it’s been close to 3 years since I’ve taken the boat out sailing on my own. I’ve decided it’s high time to try again, to remind myself that as much as I love sailing with others, there’s something to be said for the feeling of accomplishment that comes with doing it on your own.
I’ve always been one to be overly prepared when setting out alone, and this time has been no different. I’ve double and triple checked all the engine essentials and spares. I’ve carefully stowed everything below, checked the entire rig, top to bottom; shackles, blocks, lines… I have everything set and ready to go, so upon arriving at the bottom of the Miami River, I should be prepared to quickly and easily set sail on my own.
So, it’s 10:30 AM, and I’m finally ready to set out.
Wait, just let me put those books away. Oh, and the anchor that’s lying loose on the deck. And the A/C unit. No use in carting that out to sea, without having the power to run it while I’m out there. …Read more
Before our role as committee boat for the Rolex Regatta, I had no idea what would be involved.
The concept, as I understood it, seemed simple enough: Clean up the boat then stay handy and out of the way at the same time.
The morning of the first day, a breeze blew through the salon and a quick look at the sky showed only a few puffy white spectator clouds.
We motored from our slip in Red Hook on the east end of St. Thomas to Cowpet Bay. Shortly after hooking a mooring ball we heard a dingy approach. It brought a delivery of large shopping bags of sandwiches, cans of soda and enough bottled water to float a fleet. Two more visits by the dinghy and the race committee was on board. Our 48’ catamaran, Take Two, was as crowded as we had ever seen her.
With an eye on the sky and a finger to the wind, the Principal Race Officer (PRO) immediately set to work with my husband examining charts in the salon and discussing where to position Take Two for the day’s races while the IT guy plugged his laptop into power at the chart table. …Read more
This is the second half of a 2-part article by Daria Blackwell, first published in the Ocean Cruising Club publication Flying Fish.
You can read part 1 here.
Photo: James Dagmore
Bizarre whale tales
Who can forget the photos of the 40 ton southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) that breached onto a 33ft sloop in South Africa in 2010, breaking the mast before sliding into the water with an ‘eerie groan’? Amazingly, Ralph Mothes and Paloma Werner were not injured and returned to harbour on their own, and a nearby vessel managed to record the whole incident on video. …Read more
This article was first published in the Ocean Cruising Club publication Flying Fish.
A fin whale preparing to dive beneath ALERIA’s bow. Photo Alex Blackwell.
Most sailors setting off on a passage dream of encountering wildlife at sea.
Yet ask blue water sailors about their biggest fears, and near the top of the list is likely to be ‘striking a whale’. It’s one of the events most likely to be catastrophic at sea. Today, we can usually avoid really bad weather, but can we avoid a sleeping whale at night?
And what is the likelihood of a chance encounter with a whale? It may not be as rare (or as common) as one might think, depending on location. The likelihood appears to be increasing as protected whale species increase in numbers, and like many cruisers Alex and I have had a few very happy encounters.
Fortunately, several lessons can be applied to reduce the risk and enhance the experience. …Read more
“What did we sign up for?!” I thought after our first day at anchor in the Sea of Cortez. We had spent the prior night and wee morning hours fighting through a 30 knot coromuel to get to the anchorage. Both us and the boat were covered with salt.
Alone at anchor in Puerto Don Juan
We took a pitiful shower in the cockpit with the already partially broken Solar Shower but without a watermaker we didn’t have enough water to clean the boat. Instead we walked around the deck spraying the hardware with a water bottle in hopes of preventing corrosion.
We had barely slept the night before and were expecting another sleepless night due to a repeat performance of coromuel winds.
After dinner I leaned over the side of the boat to scoop salt water in to a 5 gallon bucket. The very bucket that I planned to use for the summer to wash the dishes in salt water before a fresh water rinse.
I don’t like doing dishes in the first place, and now I am doing dishes in a salty bucket? Looking out on the uninhabited island of Isla Espiritu Santo, my husband and I asked each other, is this seriously going to be our life for the whole summer? Is this really what we signed up for?! …Read more
The Women’s Sailing Conference, held each June in Marblehead, is great fun. I’ve been involved one way or another many times. It amazes me how many women come back year after year. It also astounds me how quickly and enthusiastically women learn from each other.
This year the conference is about women extending their range. That might mean different things to different participants:
First overnight cruise
Doing all the navigating for a short trip
Going to Maine for two weeks
Crossing the Gulf Stream
Moving aboard
The one-day conference – Saturday, June 1, 2013 – will be moderated by Beth Leonard, long-time and long-distance sailor and Technical Editor for BoatUS publications.
Capt. Nancy Erley of Seattle, founder of Tethys Offshore who has twice circumnavigated with all-women crews;
and me, Betsy Morris of Marblehead, a long-time cruiser.
There’s more information available at www.womensailing.org, including the registration form. There’s a nice discount for those registering before May 15th.
Returning to our starting point of Ensenada felt like the definition of failure.
At 16o 36.050 S and 97o 31.080 W we turned around. It was not equipment failure or dangerous weather; it was fatigue.
Heading south from the Galapagos.
Next stop Easter Island.
We were half way to Easter Island from the Galapagos and from there we were headed to the fjords of Chile.
But it was not to be. We knew we would only get more tired and the safety of our family in a vast empty sea would be at risk. I had resisted abandoning the plan. I wanted the children to see that dreams and plans can be fulfilled.
And suddenly, with a turn of the wheel, we had no plan.
The captain put me in charge of getting us from point A to point B. I was responsible for upping anchor, route planning, navigating and dropping the hook at our destination.
My cruising life started and nearly ended in 2007. It just wasn’t what I thought or hoped it would be.
It was clear: never darken the boarding ladder again, or find out for myself what I wanted from cruising. My own approach to living in this watery world for months at a time.
I wondered what other cruising women were thinking about and doing on their boats. So I started to ask them. One of the areas we talked about was educating ourselves.
Common amongst the women I spoke with was a learning style based on doing. …Read more
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I am sure I have missed some of these stories the first time around, and others like Ruth’s, I was glad to have the chance to reread again and be amazed.
In spite of all that, my husband, Vern, and I weren’t expecting what hit us just north of Martinique: a squall with 55-knot winds and gusts to 60. It lasted only ten minutes, but felt like ten hours as we clung grimly to the wheel.
Before our role as committee boat for the Rolex Regatta, I had no idea what would be involved.
This year the conference is about women extending their range. That might mean different things to different participants:
