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 two chapters I covered why a true cutter is a great rig for short-handed offshore voyaging and how to decide if the cutter rig is right for you.
Now I'm going to cover what it takes to successfully convert a sloop or even a ketch to get most, or maybe even all, of the benefits that we true cutter owners are so damned smug about.
Also, if you have a cutter, but are less than happy with her, read on. Making a cutter rig work really well, like so many things in offshore voyaging, requires getting the details right, and that's what this chapter is all about.
