John was born and brought up in Bermuda and started sailing as a child, racing locally and offshore before turning to cruising. He has sailed over 100,000 miles, most of it on his McCurdy & Rhodes 56, Morgan's Cloud, including eight ocean races to Bermuda, culminating in winning his class twice in the Newport Bermuda Race. He has skippered a series of voyages in the North Atlantic, the majority of which have been to the high latitudes. John has been helping others go voyaging by sharing his experience for twenty years, first in yachting magazines and, for the last 18 years, as co-editor/publisher of AAC.
In the last chapter I covered why a true cutter is a great rig for short-handed offshore voyaging.
And since I have infinite confidence in my powers of persuasion, I'm assuming that you are all now chomping at the bit to convert your sloops and ketches to the cutter rig.
But before we get into the how of adding cutter capabilities, let's look at a bigger question: When does a cutter make sense, both when buying a new boat and considering a conversion?
