The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site
We discuss what Phyllis and I have learned about motorboats and particularly our impressions as filtered through our experience of tens of thousands of offshore miles in sailboats. We look at seaworthiness, fuel burn and my thinking on the related environmental issues, and then finish up with what all of this means to Phyllis and me personally.
What’s it really like to make a passage on a trawler? John and Phyllis report on a crossing of the Gulf of Maine in a Nordhavn 55.
When John realized that the large bilge pump on Morgan’s Cloud was not really suitable, he went looking for an alternative in the commercial and industrial world and found a good solution.
Buying a boat is really difficult: What features are vital? Which features are dispensable? In this chapter, John comes up with a way for you to figure out what you need in a boat…and what you don’t.
There is not a lot of point in writing about maintenance without addressing the 800-pound gorilla in the room: what it really costs to maintain a cruising boat. Get this wrong and your cruise will be miserable and short. In this chapter we give you a simple, but surprisingly accurate, tool to estimate what maintenance is going to cost.
Some thoughts from Colin on vital training for voyaging sailors. Taking the steps he suggests could save your cruise.
One of the best pieces of gear we can fit on a cruising boat.
Analysis of the abandonment of the French yacht Tao. The disaster started with a capsize, as yacht losses so often do. And while researching the weather at the time, I discovered something interesting…
Do you need a diesel generator to go cruising? It’s a surprisingly simple decision governed by only two criteria.
An easy to use spreadsheet that makes deciding if a diesel-electric, or all electric, drive is a good option for your boat.
Buying a poorly designed boat is one of the most costly and heart breaking mistakes anyone can make. But maybe if we understand how bad designs come to be, we can avoid that.
Part 2 of my article on preventers. In Part 1 I explained why a proper preventer is vital and in this part I share how to make rigging one easy and safe.
A head injury is a terrible event wherever you are, but at sea far from medical help it’s even worse. Rigging a proper preventer is one of the surest ways to reduce the risk to you and your crew. In part 1 of this two part series we look at the risk and what constitutes a proper preventer.
Lightning strike! Just the words can make us cruising sailors, who sail around the ocean with the highest thing in hundreds of square miles sticking up above our heads, nervous. In this chapter Matt, AAC Engineering Correspondent, will help you understand how lightning strikes happen and what you can do to reduce the associated risks.
We start this Online Book with a list of important seamanship rules.
Matt examines lithium ion batteries in detail and answers the question, Should I use lithium ion batteries for the house bank on my boat?
Analysis of the loss of two very different yachts in the North Atlantic. One fully crewed and one single handed.
You can have the best anchors and associated gear available, but if you don’t use that gear properly you won’t get anchored and stay anchored. In this post we carry on from Part 1 with some tips for techniques to help make you a happy anchorer.
How to buy and install a real live-aboard cruiser’s alternator that will be reliable over the long term.
Are you struggling to get out there cruising? Do there seem to be a million obstacles between you and your dream? We have 10 sure-fire tips that will help you get out there sooner, and have more fun and be safer when you do.
We continue our series on desirable offshore motorboats, for those retiring from sailboats, with a design analysis by AAC Technical Correspondent, Matt Marsh, of the Artnautica LRC58 currently in-build in New Zealand. Even if you are not interested in this particular boat, you will want to read Matt’s insightful analysis of hull form and cost considerations.
In the last chapter we compared sailboats and trawlers. In this one we look at the design parameters that if exploited properly could result in a better motorboat.
In the last chapter on chain we looked at the three grades of chain normally used for anchor rodes on cruising sailboats. In this chapter we carry on from that base and examine the trade-offs between the grades and the things that you need to know when selecting the right anchor chain and gauge for your boat.
John believes that any boat over about 45 feet that will be sailed shorthanded needs lazyjacks. In this chapter he describes the lazyjack system that allows him to set, reef, and strike Morgan’s Cloud’s 600-square foot mainsail without resorting to complex gear like roller furling masts or booms.
What are the trade offs of insisting on watertight bulkheads in a cruising boat?
The sad fact is that many, perhaps most, production sailboats are not built to take the loads imposed by even a moderate collision or grounding. In this chapter Matt, AAC’s Technical Correspondent, explains the engineering and shares what to look for before buying a voyaging boat.
Matt carries on from the last chapter and examines how the various materials voyaging boat hulls are built out of will survive a collision with a hard object.
We have written a lot about gear in our ongoing Crew Overboard Prevention Online Book, but all the gear in the world won’t keep you safe if you don’t heed this tip.
Let’s compare a cruising sailboat under power to a typical trawler. After all, we sailors don’t want to take a step backward in efficiency and speed as we transition to power.
Matt takes a look at the materials available that offshore voyaging boat hulls are generally built of and explains the benefits and drawbacks of each one.
We have covered a lot of ground and many details in this Online Book. So I have ended with a chapter the key points in this chapter.
It’s a sad fact that most production boat companionways are potential boat-sinkers. But it does not have to be that way. In this chapter I provide solid suggestions on how to stormproof your companionway.
Theory is great to learn from but real world experience is always better. In this chapter I relate an email interview we conducted with a reader who survived a killer storm south of New Zealand using some of the techniques that I have discussed in this book. It’s a long chapter, but read it carefully because doing so and acting on the information could save your life.
One of our most useful tools in dealing with heavy weather at sea is our engine and in this chapter I relate how we used ours to good effect in a nasty lee shore situation. But the sad truth is that in many cases a yacht’s engine is disabled by heavy weather making it useless at the very time that the crew need it most, so I go on to share some solid suggestions of things you can do to storm proof your engine.
In the previous chapters we have talked about heaving-to and various drag devices, but none of that is going to help us if we are caught on a lee shore. In this chapter I write about when that exact scenario happened to me and what we have done to prepare ourselves and our boat should it ever happen to us again.
Continuing on with the theme of learning from the best, this chapter is about the many things we learned from Tony and Coryn Gooch about storm survival and drogue retrieval—they know what they are talking about after decades of voyaging in some of the toughest parts of the world’s oceans and Tony’s single handed non-stop circumnavigation.
There’s always more than one way to skin a cat—or retrieve a Jordan Series Drogue—so when Hal Roth, a man with 200,000 miles and three circumnavigations under his belt, makes a suggestion, we listen.
You went out and bought a Jordan Series Drogue, but now you need to put together the gear and procedures to get it safely deployed when you need it and in this chapter I share exactly how to do that.
The storm struck, you deployed your Jordan Series Drogue and rode it out without problems, but now the wind is dropping and it’s time to retrieve the drogue so you can get sailing again and head for port before the next blow hits. But you are shorthanded and tired and the task seems insurmountable. In this chapter we share our tested method for drogue retrieval.
As wonderful as heaving-to is, done wrong it can be dangerous. In this post we tell you about when heaving-to went wrong for us, and what to watch out for.
As we have shared in earlier chapters in this Online Book, we now believe that for extreme weather where large breaking waves may be present, a Series Drogue, as designed by Don Jordan, is the best survival strategy. That said, heaving-to is still a technique that not only can save your bacon in a gale, but is also surprisingly comfortable and useful for taking a break from the demands of shorthanded voyaging. In this chapter we tell you how to set up just about any boat to successfully heave-to.
Before discussing the actual nuts and bolts of our gale and storm survival gear and strategy, I’m going to write a bit about the goals that Phyllis and I keep in mind when we are putting together gear and thinking about strategy for dealing with heavy weather at sea on our own boat, Morgan’s Cloud—you can’t set a course until you know what the destination is.
Many of us buy storm survival gear, throw it in a corner of the lazarette, and head off to sea congratulating ourselves on our foresight and seamanship. But when we do that, we have not really prepared for a storm at sea. In this introductory chapter I explain why having a real storm survival system is so important.
Most cruising boats, both power and sail, have interior arrangements that are designed to look good at a boat show, not work well offshore or when living aboard for extended periods while voyaging. Here’s how to fix that.
In this chapter, John applies the theory of cycle loading that Matt explained in the last chapter to come up with solid rules you can apply to boat and gear purchases.
Electric and diesel-electric (hybrid) drives have become all the rage in recent years. But are they really a more efficient option for offshore cruising sailboats? In this chapter we take a solid and arithmetically rigorous approach, based on advice from two professional engineers with substantial experience of electric drive use on land, to cut through the hype and answer that question.
Colin discusses how to set two anchors when there is no other way to anchor safely.
It’s an all too common story: a boat that has been structurally fine for years while sailing inshore starts to come apart as soon as she is sailed offshore. This chapter explains why and will give you a good basis in the underlying engineering theory that will help you choose a boat that won’t let you down offshore.
Your harness, its fit, and how you use it are among the most important parts of staying safe on a boat offshore. In this chapter I share what we have learned in 140,000 miles of offshore sailing, most of it short-handed, about harnesses and lifejackets, the features to look for, and their use.
Colin has some great tips that will help you maintain your engine’s raw water system.
Before we can come up with good and effective crew overboard prevention systems, we need to think about and clearly understand the risks we are dealing with, which I examine in this chapter.
There are countless articles, books and courses that focus on recovering a crew overboard, but what really matters to the short-handed crew offshore is making as sure as humanly possible that a crew overboard situation never happens in the first place—we need prevention, not cure. This chapter introduces this Online Book and that basic concept.
A fundamental fact is that, even if you are rich, you can’t have it all in an offshore voyaging boat and that goes double for the rest of us with more modest means. So the most important step in selecting a boat that will be successful for you is to identify the things that you really need. In this chapter I give you an easy to use and apply test to do just that.