I’ve moved up on Dylan’s journey around England in his 19′ boat because I didn’t find the posts too interesting since they didn’t show other boats. This one does.
Category Archives: cruising
More Dylan Winter
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Engines on Sailboats
This is a tricky subject to tackle. Whole books have been written about what place an engine has on a sailing vessel. The Pardeys and Jay Fitzgerald are powerful proponents of sailing without engines on board.Then there is the whole “blow boater” vs “Stinkpotter” rivalry.
I’m no purist by any stretch of the imagination. In my 20 year career of professional boating (18 as a captain) all but one of the boats I ran was a power boat. My last gig was on a boat unabashedly labeled as a motor sailer.
(You have to excuse the condition of the picture as it lived in the humid atmosphere of a boat)
Jolie Aire had a pair of Gardiner diesels which are, in my opinion, the finest engines ever built. Even if you know absolutely nothing about engines the reaction to your first glimpse of a Gardiner will be “now THAT’S what an engine should look like.”
And we used those engines, too. When we brought the boat from Europe to the States we ran the engines to keep the battery banks charged up and admittedly when wind power wasn’t enough to maintain what we thought was a suitable speed we kept one of the engines engaged. We made the crossing from Grand Canary Island to St. Thomas, USVI, in 13 days 6-1/2 hours. Since we were doing a delivery time was important but if it had simply been a “cruise” I don’t think I would have run the engines any longer than it was necessary to keep the batteries topped off.
It always amazes me when I’m down by the beach in Fort Lauderdale to see probably the majority of sailboats running under power alone without a single sail up. If that’s the case why not just get a power boat? Sailboats are for SAILING!!!
When I first saw my Nancy Dawson one of the things that caught my attention was the outboard motor bracket on her transom. I knew that 1) the price would be less than if it had an inboard engine and 2) the space where an engine would reside would give me a lot more storage space for the cruising I intended on doing.
Again, I have to admit that I did use the outboard from time to time. For instance during the two and a half days when there wasn’t a breath of wind as I was trying to get across the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Isla Mujeres, Mexico. That section of ocean is one of the most heavily trafficked in the world. Trying to get across it is akin to being a pedestrian trying to cross an interstate during rush hour.
For the most part, though, I SAILED my boat. One afternoon stands out vividly in my mind. I wanted to visit Ranguana Caye in Belize. I’d met the man who owned the island and was putting up three cottages that he intended on renting out to tourists. Unfortunately the island was dead to windward. I spent the entire afternoon tacking into the trade winds for several hours gaining headway bit by bit until I finally reached the anchorage. Honestly it never once crossed my mind to lower the sails, drop the outboard and motor in. I could have accomplished the whole exercise in one tenth the time it actually took me. I did the same thing Colombus, Magellan and Slocum would have done. I SAILED to my destination. After all, it was a beautiful day. The wind was strong, the sky was blue, the puffy clouds were like cotton balls. What else did I have to do?
A couple of months later when I was on the Rio Dulce in Guatemala I sailed everywhere. I would sail off my anchor and would come to my spot in the anchorage under sail as well. I spent most of my time either anchored off of what passed for a downtown area of Fronteras or by Mario’s Marina. I’d pull out as much anchor chain as I needed (I carried ALL chain rode and it was a blessing) and flake it out on the deck. I’d find a spot in the anchorage where I could pull up to head into the wind, get to where I wanted to drop the hook, let the sheets fly, scamper up to the bow, lower the anchor and then, back in the cockpit I’d manually back the mainsail which, in effect, put the boat in reverse. The chain would rush out over the bow as I backed up until the anchor bit into the bottom and held. I never once had to try a second time and I never dragged, either.
You just have to read a few cruising blogs before you find someone on a sailboat who, in the middle of their cruise, go into a complete panic because their engine stops running. Instead of continuing on their adventure they spend days and sometimes weeks paying dockage somewhere waiting for spare parts to arrive.
One of the excuses people give for having a stinky, oily hunk of iron on their boats is for a “safety factor,” but I bet more sailing vessels in the past half century or more have been lost because the engine failed than for any other reason. Engines are nasty, evil entities just waiting to screw their owners.
I’m actually looking for a new sailboat again, and there are some with engines in them that are actually deal breakers. I wouldn’t buy a boat with a Volvo in it if you held a gun to my head. I’d tell them to pull the trigger and hope they missed a vital organ. Parts for Volvos are almost impossible to get in any third-world country and will devour most of your cruising kitty if you’re able to ever get them anyway.
I’m not a no-engine fanatic like Pardeys or Jay Fitzgerald but pretty close. One thing I liked about Nancy having the outboard was that it served double duty. It got me out of the shipping lanes when there was no wind and it was also my dinghy engine. I’d go for the same set up in the future.
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Another Dylan Winter Episode
This is the sixth posting of Dylan Winter’s single-handed trip around England in a 19′ sailboat but it’s his seventh episode. I thought the sixth was rather boring and there weren’t enough shots of other boats in it. Since one of the themes of this blog is boats and sailing I’ve decided that if there aren’t a lot of boats in Dylan’s scene I’m not going to post it. Hey! My blog, my decision. Anyway, if a YouTube post here sparks your interest I hope you’ll have enough initiative on your own to go to YouTube and check things out.
Anyway, here is this week’s contribution.
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A Good Day’s Sail
This picture has intrigued me for a long time…
It’s of a young Hungarian, Aron Meder, sailing around the world in a 19′ boat. It’s not something I would want to do, sailing around the world that is, but the picture tickles my imagination. The wonderful thing about sailing is that if you have enough food, water and desire the whole world is open to you. Another thing I like about this picture is that it is sort of a kick in the pants to those people who believe that the only way you can go cruising is if you have at least a 40 foot boat to do it. I’m not saying people should try and circumnavigate the globe in an eight foot boat like Kristofer J. “Harley” Harlson intends on doing, or an 11’10” boat as Serge Testa did. But I’m a firm believer in the credo that if you want to go cruising take the boat you have and go.
Ninety nine and forty four one hundredths of a percent of people who dream about going cruising never do because they’ve been brainwashed by the slick commercial boating publications who perpetuate their advertisers propaganda that if you somehow manage to clear the breakwater in anything less than a 40 footer you will instantly die. So they toil away at jobs they basically detest trying to save up enough money to buy that unatainable dream and it’s nearly always impossible to sustain a dream that long.
Sterling Hayden hit the nail on the head in his book Wanderer when he wrote: “‘… men often say ‘I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can’t afford it.’ What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of ‘security.’ And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine–and before we know it our lives are gone.
“What does a man need–really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in–and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all–in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
“The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it the tomb is sealed.”
We also have to address the definition of “cruising.” Too often people, I think, believe that a “cruise” has to be something of epic proportions. A circumnavigation or at a minimum crossing some vast body of water. That is patently absurd. A three day weekend, like the one coming up this forth of July, can contain a cruise. Someone who packs some food and a tent in their skiff, leaves on Friday, spends a couple of nights out under the stars and is back home Monday night has made a cruise and their souls are better for it.
Another reason I like the photo is because it brings back the memory of one of the best day’s of sailing I ever had. I left Placencia, Belize, heading for the Rio Dulce, Guatemala, in my beloved Nancy Dawson, a Kaiser 26.
I had cleared the Sapodilla Cays in lower Belize and was into the Bay of Honduras in the early afternoon when the trade winds kicked in. Instead of being in the sheltered waters of the Inner Channel, as the call the water between the reef and the mainland of Belize is called, I was now being lifted by ocean swells which were about the size of what you see in the photo above. The sky was blue, the clouds were pure white, the waves were azure and the wind was coming in on the port quarter at about 2o knots.
I put a double reef in the main but kept the genny flying, set Florence, my windvane steering system named for an old girlfriend since they were both French and often a pain in the ass, and delighted in my down-wind ride. My dingy pranced behind like a puppy chasing along in play.
I never knew how fast I was actually sailing. Back then (’92) I couldn’t afford a GPS and I was way out of Loran range. I had a speedometer but who knows how accurate it was? I always felt that if the speedo was clocking along at 5 I was doing well, and I factored in that towing the dinghy slowed me down by probably a knot. But now the speedometer was holding steady at between 6 and 7 knots and as I would surf down the face of the swells the needle would often peg out at 10! Again, I won’t vouch for the veracity of the thing, but the ride was exhilerating. For four hours I froliced along in delight and was actually disappointed when I approached Cabo de Tres Puntas which meant my day was over. I wished I could have gone for days like that.
Keep Turning Left Part 5
Well, it’s Friday and time for another Dylan Winters episode. I actually thought about skipping this jump of his as it’s not exceptionally interesting except for his observation at the end about a large apartment complex on the water, not unlike how developers have managed to screw up a great deal of the coast line of the eastern US and the Gulf Coast so I opted to include it here.
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Not All Who Wander Are Lost
It’s not important that you won’t understand the narration…you’ll understand the meaning…
Keep Turning Left
The second in Dylan Winter’s trip around England in a 19′ sailboat
Go Before It’s Too Late
I’d bet the majority of people who click into this site have the dream of going cruising. Unfortunately most will never do it. They’re probably a lot like I was 30+ years ago. Stuck in a job they aren’t really happy with if they have a job at all in this economy. They read the magazines, they drool over new boat designs, surf the internet reading cruising logs of people that are actually out there doing what the reader wishes he/she was doing.
I did all that, except for the internet thing…we didn’t have it back then. One day I realized that 1) I was never going to earn enough money to buy one of those shiny toys in the magazines working as an assistant public relations director at a hospital. 2) I wasn’t willing to do what one needs to do in order to earn that kind of money, and 3) if you ARE willing to do what it takes to earn that kind of money then you don’t have enough time left over to spend the time needed to enjoy the boat in the ways you dream about. If you don’t believe that, then just go down to your local marina for a few consecutive weekends and see how many of the boats are in the same spot week after week after week.
So I found another way of achieving the dream. When I got divorced, and having dodged the kid bullet, I was able to do whatever I wanted to do with my life. I got a second chance to create myself. Having wanted to “mess around on boats” from the time my father built a little eight-foot pram when I was about seven or so, I got a job as a deck hand and worked for next to nothing the next couple of years until I acquired enough sea time to sit for my 100-ton license. I then found people who were willing to do all the work required to buy that boat and then pay me to play with it. The down side is that most of those people are real assholes that you don’t want to be around in the first place and you don’t get to choose where you go or when you get to go there.
At the end of my career working yachts and small commercial craft I finally bought my own small boat and took off after rereading Don Casey & Lew Hackler’s wonderful book Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach. “A Philosophic & Practical Approach to Cruising.” Thoreau, as we know, was heavily into what we know refer to as “simplified living” and Casey and Hackler have distilled his philosophy and applied it to the idea of cruising.
I must warn you. This is a dangerous book. It can change your entire life. Below are some excerpts. The italicized portions are from Thoreau.
“We have seen too many perfectly good little cruisers sitting at the dock or on a mooring while the owner struggled and sweated to get the right boat for his dream cruise. More often than not, it is not the sea that beats back the would-be cruiser; it is his attitude.
“…Thoreau in a very real sense tells us if cruising is what we want, then it is what we should be doing. Take the boat you already have and go. If you do not have a boat, then buy one you can afford and go. Life is too short and too full of wonder to spend the mass of it:…laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.
“Cruising is a lifestyle, an attitude, a state of mind. Contrary to contemporary wisdom, a cruise can be just as successful in a 20-footer as a 40-footer, most likely more successful.
“To postpone cruising indefinitely in order to earn enough money to purchase just the right boat is to risk missing them altogether.
“Far too often, recent cruising books of an instructional nature have assigned a length of 40 feet or longer to the ideal cruising boat. If you read that opinion often enough you begin to believe it, no matter how happy you may be with your current 28-footer.
“The fact is there is no ideal size for a cruising boat. The ideal size depends upon its intended use.
“You need cruise only for a short time to recognize that, given seaworthiness, a smaller boat with its shallower draft actually opens up more of the world to the cruiser than the larger boat.
“Many of the world’s best cruising areas can be fully explored only with a shallow draft.The most often mentioned (point of comparison between large and small boats) is that larger boats are more comfortable for living aboard is entirely true. … For cruising, however, the cost of such comforts may be far greater than their value. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances…
“We have no guarantee of tomorrow. If you dream of cruising, start today. Take the small cruiser you have now and go cruising. Buy the small cruiser you can afford now and go cruising. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in his profession.
“The perfect boat is not the one you dream about. It is the boat that takes you cruising. We seem to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
“Think of cruising sailors you have read about. How many bought a boat, then waited five years to go cruising? The dream is difficult to sustain that long. If you wait too long, you will never go. It is as simple as that. If you want to go cruising, find a way to do it now. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center.
“Make your plans and go cruising now. If what you have ashore is keeping you from going, store it, sell it, or give it away. I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.
“Possessions have a way of owning you instead of the other way around; it is a difficult bond to break.
[Here I would like to insert a quote by Betty Wilson from her book Away From It All: “If we’re really going to start a new life, we have to kill the old one. That’s why most people never really start anything new. They’re claimed by old lamps and bureaus left to them by their grandmothers.”]
“The day-to-day cost of cruising is no more, often a lot less, than the day-to-day cost of living ashore. Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.
“Calculate the cost of the cruise you have in mind – sensibly- then dedicate yourself to earning and saving. When the bank account hits the magic number, do not delay another day. Load the boat and go. There is no glory so bright but the veil of business can hide it effectually. With most men life is postponed to some trivial business…”
I would also offer this, from Richard MacCullough who wrote in his book Viking’s Wake
And the bright horizon calls! Many a thing will keep till the world’s work is done, and youth is only a memory. When the old enchanter came to my door laden with dreams, I reached out with both hands. For I knew that he would not be lured with the gold that I might later offer, when age had come upon me.
One More Good Adventure 