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As a red-haired, fair-skinned kid growing up sailing dinghies in Southern California, I have extensive experience with sunburn. And, after helping put my dermatologist’s kids through Harvard, I now resemble Lawrence of Arabia on my bareboat outings.  

Do you tell your friends you don’t worry about sunburn because you have a good base tan? That you wear a baseball cap to shade your face? That you put on SPF 15 sunblock when you’re on the water?  

You, dear reader, are a prime candidate for skin cancer.

According to Tom Cutter, a former emergency-room ­doctor and a dedicated bareboater (and also ­red-haired), “There is no such thing as a base tan.” Whether you’re sprawled on deck in the islands or just ­sitting outside a coffee shop sipping a triple latte, the sun will damage your skin. You might not notice it now, but sun damage is cumulative, which is why construction crews and lifeguards often have skin that resembles beef jerky.  

There are two areas we’ll ­focus on here to defeat devil sun. First, how to prevent sunburn, and second, what to do once you get it (yes, you will).

Sunburn is the same first- or second-degree burn you’d get from a hot pan or flame. Blood vessels dilate, and cell damage occurs. Generally, a sunburn appears two to five hours after exposure, with maximum effect in about 24 hours. First degree is redness (erythema) with pain, depending on the exposure. Even a mild sunburn has side effects, including itching, nausea and fever.  

Second degree means clear blisters as the burn extends deeper, the skin turns white under pressure, and local infection is a possibility.

Your best protection against sunburn is to stay out of the sun. But, of course, we go bareboating to savor the sunny days and warm waters. So, find ways to protect your skin, and that means hats and clothing. A baseball cap is an open invitation to skin cancer, because it leaves the sides of your face and your ears unprotected. Best choice? A wide-brimmed floppy hat. A number of these on the sailing market won’t make you look like a dork.  

Next, you’ll want tightly woven, long-sleeved shirts and long pants, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. You might at least consider the long-sleeved vented shirts aimed at fishermen. Those shirts are cool and protective. When snorkeling, Cutter says, “absolutely wear a T-shirt to save your back.”

The next step in protection is a physical sunscreen such as zinc oxide, which acts as an opaque barrier to the ultraviolet rays. These sunscreens are ideal for highly exposed areas such as the nose, lips and tips of your ears, but only if you reapply regularly.

Chemical sunblocks, though mostly transparent, are rated by SPF (sun protection factor), which is a multiplier of your sunburn time. If you normally burn in 10 minutes without protection, then an SPF 15 sunscreen should keep you from burning for 150 minutes. Note that the SPF measures only ultraviolet-B rays; there is no current measure of UVA protection.

Dermatologist Edit Olasz Harken (of the sailing gear Harken family) says: “Skipping areas is very common. About 10 to 20 percent of body ­surface can remain unprotected.” She notes, in particular, that “the skin around the eye is the most common area that is missed.”

Tip: The American Academy of Dermatologists recommends a minimum of SPF 35. I recommend SPF 50, unless you want Christmas cards from your dermatologist. And, because you might be in the water or taking spray, a sunscreen must last through at least 40 minutes of swimming (or 80 minutes of sweating) to be labeled “water-resistant.”

Don’t forget your eye protection either, because the overexposure of your eyes to bright sunlight has both short- and long-term effects. Your eyes will react to an overdose of UV rays with intense pain, redness, swelling and teariness, just as mountaineers’ snow blindness is caused by reflected sunlight. Ongoing eye exposure can lead to cataracts and damage to the retina. The solution is to wear sunglasses that filter out all UV rays and that have wraparound side panels to protect the cornea.

OK, so you got a sunburn. Unfortunately, time is the best cure for a sunburn, and you should minimize your sun exposure while healing ­because your skin will be overly sensitive.

To treat the symptoms of pain, apply cool compresses for 15 to 20 minutes regularly. Topical steroids (such as 1 ­percent hydrocortisone cream) can relieve the pain and swelling, and soothing lotions containing aloe vera are also helpful. Dermatologists are divided on the use of commercial “-caine” products (such as Solarcaine) that claim to relieve sunburn pain, but many users say the numbing effects are essential.

Take anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen, and follow the label ­instructions carefully, especially with children. Acetaminophen and aspirin will also reduce the pain of sunburn.

Blisters should not be opened because they contain the natural body serum that is a protective layer. Opening a blister slows the healing and is a route for infection. If blisters break on their own, apply an antibacterial cream with a bandage.

Drink plenty of fluids because sunburn changes your metabolism and causes fluid loss through the skin, leading to dehydration.

The best cure for sunburn is to protect yourself beforehand. If you practice “safe sun,” you can still enjoy bareboating to the fullest. 

Chris Caswell is editor and publisher of chartersavvy.com.

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Just because you’re sailing in paradise doesn’t mean you can let down your guard. Wise skippers (and crews) should be prepared for any crisis that might occur. These are boats, after all, and stuff happens.  

First, it’s important that you make full use of your charter briefing. Pay ­attention and ask questions. Your charter company’s briefer can point out the location of fire extinguishers (and how to operate them), life jackets, the propane stove, fuel shut-offs, bilge pumps (electric and manual) and the emergency tiller. Ask to be shown all the seacocks for the engine and heads. Understand everything clearly, or ask more questions.  

During the briefing, be sure that at least one crewmember (besides the skipper) understands VHF radio procedures and how to reach the rescue/aid service in your charter area. Check to see what channel the charter company monitors too. Even if you manage to fix a problem, be sure to report it to the charter company at the end of your trip. Let’s look at some possible issues.

Engine failure

Arguably the most likely scare is when the engine doesn’t start or suddenly dies. I recommend (based on several such “adventures”) that you keep the mainsail up all the way into the anchorage, thus giving yourself backup propulsion in case of the Dreaded Silence. Check to see if the engine kill switch is in the right position, if the gearshift lever is in neutral, if the battery switches are all on, and if the engine is overheating. If the problem is that last one, then the cooling-water intake is probably clogged.

Anchor dragging

This can be dangerous or embarrassing, or both. My wife says that I sleep so lightly that a mouse couldn’t cross the deck without me jumping up and looking. You should be an alert skipper during the night too. If the water against the hull stops going slap–slap and instead goes splish–splish, it might mean your boat is drifting.  

Assuming that you ­anchored properly, you should have taken bearings just after sunset, so you could use them at oh-dark-thirty. You should have noted the water depth as well. If the depth has changed or the bearings aren’t right, you’re dragging.  

Your first move should be to make sure there are no lines in the water (the tender ­painter?), and then start the engine. If you’re not close to other boats, try paying out more rode. If all fails, re-anchor. You have no choice. Awaken other crewmembers, turn off interior lights to save night vision, and move the boat very slowly (with a bow lookout to spot tenders and buoys) to another spot that you hopefully chose during daylight hours as your Plan B.

Fire

Fire is likely to be human-made, usually with a cigarette, match, propane or other type of fuel. The absolute first thing to do is shout, “Fire!” Then, grab the fire extinguishers and aim them at the base of the fire, not flames. Stay away from using water, especially on gasoline or fuel fires because water will only spread them. If, in a few moments, the fire is still uncontrolled, have a crew member send a distress call on the VHF radio.  

A barbecue fire is often on the transom. Most rail-mounted grills can be turned to dump the burning coals into the drink. Check to make sure they didn’t land anywhere on board or, even worse, in the tender.

Flooding

Stepping into the cabin should be step-step-step, not step-step-splash. If you see or feel water, hit the electric bilge pumps manually because they might not have triggered automatically.  Then find the cause of the flooding.

Short of a collision, that cause is likely to be a seacock: The hose either came loose or is leaking. Work through the boat: sinks, heads, engine intakes. If you find a pulled-off hose, then you should shut off the seacock, reattach the hose, and watch it carefully. If the seacock failed or you found a hole, stuff it with anything you can, including beach towels or pillows. The next step is to head for the nearest port and alert the rescue services about your problem. If you don’t find the leak and you’re on an ocean charter, taste the bilge water (I know, yuck!). If it isn’t salty, your freshwater tank is leaking.

Collision

Before departing, remind your crew that if a collision is imminent, whether with another boat or a piling, you absolutely forbid them to try fending off with their hands or feet. Pushing off a moving 10-ton yacht is both impossible and simply stupid.  

After the Big Crunch, check to see if you have any injured crew or if anyone is overboard. If so, forget about the boat and deal with your crew instantly. Next, evaluate the damage. Hole in the hull? Fill it with towels, bedding, whatever you can. Get the name of the other boat, hailing port, charter company, and skipper. Notify your charter company via VHF radio or cellphone as soon as you have things in hand. The company will assess the situation and either send you a chase boat or give you instructions on how to proceed.

Wrapped prop

I’ve endured a few wrapped props, most notably one that actually yanked the prop shaft out of the hull, leaving us not only engineless, but with a solid stream of incoming ocean as well. That’s a story for cocktail hour. 

I now make it a point to have someone appointed Tender Captain (often an older kid) to keep the towline out of the water during maneuvers.  

When you realize that the propeller is eating rope (clue: the towline is disappearing under the boat at an amazing rate), shift into neutral quickly. Don’t try to outthink a piece of rope; stories about shifting into reverse to unwind the prop are old sailor’s tales, and outright lies. If you’re in calm water, then it’s time for the sharp knife and a swim. If the boat is rolling or pitching, don’t even think about it. Be sure the swimmer has a safety line tended by someone on deck, and just carve away the line. Tip: Don’t cut yourself in the process, either with the knife or a prop blade.

Yes, there are a multitude of other possible emergencies, from breaking a stay (stabilize the rig with a halyard) to anchor windlass failure (hit the reset switch and keep thy fingers at a distance). But preparation and prevention are your best guarantees of a problem-free charter. Listen carefully at the briefing, and ask questions.  

And always have a Plan B.

Chris Caswell is an award-­winning journalist, and the editor and publisher of Charter Savvy, a digital magazine specializing in bareboat charter. 

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The trip is over. All is well. I almost slept. 

After two nights at anchor on Catalina Island, I’ve got a bunch of photos that make me look way cooler than I am in actual life. 

The sail over to the island was a breeze. On a clear, So-Cal morning, my pal Thaddeus and I motored out Santa Monica Bay, close hauled across the San Pedro Channel, then boomeranged around the back of Catalina Island. At sundown we slipped into Cat Harbor, found a cozy spot in ten feet of water, and dropped the hook. 

After 18 months with my Cape Dory 25 Delilah, and more than 180 days on the water, it was my first time anchoring overnight. Shockingly, it was mostly a success. That first night, I closed my eyes, shut off my brain, and honest-to-god slept. But, on night two, things got wacky—or, at least I did.

Around midnight, after a couple hours of snoozing, I poked my head out of my sleep sack and nearly shat myself. The ten feet of water we’d started the night in was just five feet now. Over the next hour, I hemmed and hawed as the tide continued to fall, my imagination ran wild, and a small mental health crisis ensued, leaving me asking myself questions like: Does the Coast Guard perform rescues in knee deep water? Will the helicopter lower the basket if the evacuee can simply walk to shore? Does my tow boat membership include tele-therapy? 

Move to deeper water or stay put? I debated but couldn’t decide. Anyway, by 3 a.m. I was a full-blown mess. I stood on the deck in my underwear, my white thighs aglow under the light of a full moon, mentally preparing for a long list of emergency scenarios that would never happen.

“I’m thinking we’re fine,” Thaddeus eventually said, after calmly weighing each of our options aloud with me. “Sometimes, there are no good choices. Sometimes the best move is to hold tight, stay observant and do nothing. But, I really do think you should put a shirt on.” 

He was right. We weren’t dragging anchor. Delilah hadn’t gone aground. Truth was, the scariest thing happening was the moonlit silhouette of my softly round dad bod. 

“Point taken,” I said. Thaddeus’ level-headedness was just what I needed, and I was grateful. 

Back in Delilah’s cabin I put on a shirt, snapped a photo of the depth sounder at 3.6 feet, then climbed back in my sleeping bag. We never did go aground that night, and I didn’t sleep. Instead, I spent the rest of the night lying awake, chatting endlessly about my feelings (like real captains do), wondering what I could learn and how I might do things differently next time we anchor overnight. In the morning, the sun rose, and the tide lifted and brought my confidence up with it. After caffeinating, Thaddeus and I readied Delilah and began the 41-mile sail home to Marina Del Rey. 

“Sorry about last night,” I told him. “I totally ruined a good night of sleep.” 

“It’s alright. Honestly, I learned a lot about your personality,” he said. 

Touché, bro. I learned something about me too. 

You see, in recent months I’d read a good bit about ground tackle—about anchors, rope, chain and scope. But what I hadn’t considered was the strong mental game needed for overnight anchoring. One thing’s for sure, I’m going to need more confidence next time I “sleep” at anchor. 

My ocean cruiser friend, James Frederick, tells me that confidence comes with experience. 

“Starting out, I used to keep an iPad in the v-berth with Navionics running and checked it like 20 times a night,” he told me. “But, the anxiety completely disappears after anchoring for a while in various situations and high winds. Nowadays, I sit anchor watch for the first hour after anchoring, and then I rarely even think about it after that, even in 45 knots last week.” 

The other thing I’m going to need is a stronger mental approach. Recently, Fatty Goodlander wrote about psychological crew management and how captains can keep a nervous crew calm by keeping them busy. “Get the mind off the blow. Focus on the everyday mundane, and the fearful what ifs lose their bite,” he wrote. “The difference between ordeal and adventure is attitude.” 

So, yeah, I’ve got some work to do. With practice and a solid head-game, I’ll gain experience, build skills, and grow the mindset necessary to anchor overnight. Maybe I’ll sleep; Maybe I won’t. Only time will tell. But, the next time the tide falls and the moon rises, at least I’ll have my shirt on.

Click here to read more from The Noob Files

David Blake Fischer is a “noob” sailor living in Southern California whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s, BuzzFeed, the Moth, and Good Old Boat. He hasn’t crossed oceans. In fact, he’s only recently crossed the Santa Monica Bay. Follow him as he fumbles out the channel, backwinds his jib and sometimes drags his fenders on Delilah, his Cape Dory 25. Stalk him on Instagram.

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Charley Morgan picked up on the first ring.

Three years ago, while doing research for my latest book—a biography of sailing greats Steve and Doris Colgate called Off shore High—I placed a call to the legendary Florida sailor, boatbuilder and raconteur, hoping to get some insight into his one and only America’s Cup campaign, aboard Heritage in 1970. That campaign was 50 years earlier, and Morgan was now 90, so I wasn’t really expecting much. I could hear the age in his voice, for sure, but after I explained the reason for my call, I also recognized a fresh perkiness.

“Oh, that was quite a summer,” he said. And over the next hour or so, it was crystal- clear that he remembered every bloody bit of it.

Morgan, who forged a fabled career of his own in just about every facet of the marine industry, passed away shortly after the new year, and I was so grateful to have had the opportunity to chat with him before he did. Along with being one of the most successful racing sailors of his generation, he left an indelible mark on the cruising world.

I met the man just once, on the night Dennis Conner won back the America’s Cup in 1987 in Fremantle, Australia. Morgan was tall, gregarious and as handsome as a movie star, and my lasting memory of the day was not Conner’s victory but knocking back a couple of cold ones and talking boats and sailing with him.

Of course, I already knew a lot about him, as did everyone working in the boating business at the time. He got his start as a sailmaker, opening the Morgan Racing Sails loft in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1952. And he was already a fierce competitor on the racecourse. This anecdote accompanied his nomination for the National Sailing Hall of Fame: “Charley was so aggressive at the tiller, a competitor once said that he wouldn’t have let his mother win even an insignificant race. Fortunately, Mom didn’t sail.”

Where he really made his mark, however, was as a builder and designer. He founded Morgan Yacht Corp. in 1965 and ultimately designed more than 50 boats—sail and power. None was more influential than the one he created specifically for the fledgling bareboat charter business, the Morgan Out Island 41, of which more than 1,000 were built.

Ironically, the only arena in which he ever failed to roll the competition was in the America’s Cup aboard Heritage, the drop-dead gorgeous wooden 12 Metre he designed and built himself (and aboard which Steve Colgate was recruited as tactician in the waning stages of the campaign). Short on time and money, Morgan actually sailed the boat, hardly an offshore cruiser, from Florida to Rhode Island for the event, which is as crazy as it sounds. But she sure was pretty (and is to this day).

After an early trial race in which Heritage was creamed by Intrepid, which went on to defend the Cup, Steve Cady of The New York Times wrote, “Heritage (at least) won first prize in the beauty contest. Her mahogany hull glistened in the hot sunlight and her light-air spinnaker was the prettiest seen so far, a top-to bottom dazzler of blue, orange and white.” That was the dark cloud’s silver lining. Otherwise, Cady concluded, “at day’s end, Morgan was shaking his head like a baseball pitcher who has started a game by serving home run balls on the first two pitches. …These are only preliminary trials [but] on the basis of today’s developments, it would appear Heritage has a long way to go.”

Morgan and his labor of love never got there. “I’d been fascinated by the America’s Cup since I was a child,” Morgan told me. “But I stretched myself too thin with technical things. But I don’t have any regrets about it, that’s for sure.”

My only regret is that I didn’t spend another couple of hours talking with him that day, and moved the conversation away from the Cup and into his long and stellar career. For Charley Morgan was nothing less than an American original. And our sport and pastime grew and flourished from his presence.

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I didn’t see the wave coming that tossed me to the end of my tether; I was too busy trying to secure a headsail on the thrashing foredeck of my dad’s old J/44. We had recently peeled from a heavy J1 to a high-cut J3, and my job was to ensure that the big jib made it into its blue North Sails bag and not into “The Race,” that often-choppy slot of water separating New York’s Long Island Sound from Rhode Island’s Block Island Sound. We were roughly 60 percent of the way through the 2005 Block Island Race, and our helmsman was clearly tired as he stuffed our bow directly into an oncoming square wave. 

That’s when my sea boots left the deck. I landed atop my buddy, someplace near the port shrouds. I was happy that I hadn’t cracked my head on anything stainless steel or ­fiberglass. My buddy was happy that I was still on the boat. Two minutes later, we were back in the business district, sorting out the sail.

Yes, I finished my watch as wet as a rat in a drain ditch, but there’s no question that my tether, which was clipped to a foredeck padeye, saved my bacon. Thankfully, my PFD didn’t deploy unnecessarily, and I gained confidence in the system. 

Many years have slipped astern since that Block Island Race, but the basics of personal flotation devices are the same, as is the safety they afford. 

PFDs come in five types. Type I is for cruising, racing and fishing offshore, and for use by commercial ships, or when boating alone, or in stormy conditions. It can be inherently buoyant or inflatable (or a hybrid of the two), and provides a minimum of 22 pounds of flotation. 

Type II typically refers to the chunky orange-foam affairs with at least 15.5 pounds of positive flotation, but the type can also encompass some inflatable vests. It is best for daysailing in small boats. Type III is for activities such as sailing regattas, dinghy races, water-skiing, fishing, canoeing and kayaking, and provides at least 22.5 pounds of positive buoyancy. Type IV, with 16.5 pounds of buoyancy, is a throwable device such as a horseshoe buoy.  

Then there’s Type V, which has 15.5 to 22.5 pounds of buoyancy, is inflatable or hybrid inflatable and inherently buoyant, and is designated as a “special-use device” for activities such as inshore and offshore sailing. 

This article will consider eight Type V PFDs. Their designs may differ, but they all rely on an empty air bladder, a filled and sealed carbon dioxide cartridge, and a release mechanism. Some employ water-­soluble discs or capsules that trigger the spring-loaded firing pin that pierces the carbon dioxide cartridge, while others have a hydrostatic mechanism that fires when the vest is submerged in a few ­inches of water (water pressure on the hydrostatic sensor serves as the tipping point). While both types work well, hydrostatic systems are less likely to fire accidentally if exposed to huge amounts of on-deck water.

 Additionally, Type V PFDs all have a manual-release rip cord and an oral inflation tube in case the built-in systems fail, or if the air bladder needs topping off later. In all cases, it’s important to read the manufacturer’s care and use instructions, and to replace key components per the manufacturer’s guidelines.

I evaluated these PFDs by considering their features, wearing them with sailing gear, and floating in them at my local pool. Here’s what I found.

Mustang Survival MIT 100 Automatic Inflatable PFD

This PFD has more going on than initially meets the eye. Most PFDs employ an inner air bladder protected by an exterior jacket that breaks away when the jacket inflates. This US Coast Guard-approved PFD instead has Mustang Survival’s Membrane Inflatable Technology and the company’s clever “one-fold design.” The combo means the PFD’s air bladder is physically housed inside a protective jacket. When the jacket deploys, two Velcro strips rip away, revealing the jacketed and inflated bladder. This same design makes the MIT 100 the easiest PFD in this article to repack: Just bleed the air, rearm the carbon dioxide cartridge and trigger mechanism, and fold over two flaps. While the MIT 100 doesn’t have a tether hardpoint, its lower price point could make it a good choice for inshore cruising or blue-sky daysailing. The PFD’s waist belt is easily adjustable for guests, and an inspection window lets you evaluate the firing mechanism’s status. In the water, this PFD is comfortable, but there isn’t much behind-the-neck head support.

Mustang Survival HIT Hydrostatic Inflatable PFD With Sailing Harness

This is an affordable PFD with a full sailing harness, a hydrostatic trigger mechanism, and US Coast Guard approval. Its air bladder comes bundled in a sturdy jacket built from 500-denier Cordura, and it sports a neoprene-lined collar. A beefy harness with two equally beefy stainless-steel D-rings allows for attaching a tether. There’s an inspection window for checking the trigger mechanism’s status, a strobe-light holder, and Mustang’s SecureZip breakaway jacket-­closure system. The PFD’s Hammar-built hydrostatic sensor needs to be submerged to a depth of at least 4 inches to fire its carbon dioxide cartridge (read: no accidental deployments). Once inflated, the PFD delivers 38 pounds of buoyancy, and its high-visibility air bladder and even higher-visibility SOLAS-level reflective tape help ensure that you’ll be seen. The PFD also has a tidy-size zippered pocket. One consideration, however, is that rearming this PFD is more involved (Mustang’s instruction video runs 12 minutes, 30 seconds), but it’s a worthwhile trade-off. In the water, with the crotch strap attached, this PFD did a great job of orienting me face up and providing head support.

Mustang Survival EP 38 Ocean Racing Hydrostatic Inflatable Vest

As its moniker suggests, this PFD is made to take you from offshore racing on wet, fast boats to adventure cruising in wet climes. The US Coast Guard-approved PFD has a Hammar-built hydrostatic inflation mechanism, a sturdy sailing harness with an easily adjusted (even when wearing gloves) waist belt, a soft-loop tether-attachment point, and a small, integral backpack-style pod that houses the vest’s shoulder straps, spray hood, and removable crotch straps. While the backpack pod feels a bit bulky, its contents are a treasure trove when floating. This pullover-style PFD also has a low-profile design that allows for unencumbered athletic movement, and a zippered pocket that can house emergency essentials such as lights or electronics. There’s also a stitched-in lifting loop for emergency MOB retrievals. The vest’s hydrostatic mechanism is prominently situated on the front, behind a three-­dimensional inspection window, for a ­military-esque aesthetic. The EP 38 felt great to float in, especially once I ­deployed the crotch strap and spray hood.

Onyx A/M-24 and A/M-24 All Clear

Consider these PFDs if you’re seeking a basic Type V PFD and don’t need a tether attachment. Both are US Coast Guard-approved, employ lozenge-style automatic firing mechanisms, and can be used in automatic or manual mode, or converted to manually operated PFDs (which can be useful aboard wet boats, so long as the MOB is conscious and able to pull the manual-inflation rip cord). Both vests also have a Velcro-enclosure system, high-­visibility inflation chambers, and wide neoprene necklines that felt comfortable when worn with a T-shirt, and that added padding when worn with a jacket. 

While the two PFDs are similar in design and features, there are some differences. The A/M 24 is no-frills, with a side-release waist buckle and a plastic D-ring attachment that’s not for use with a tether, but it is useful for attaching a handheld VHF radio (see CW, August 2022) or an emergency beacon. The A/M 24’s firing mechanism is hidden in the Velcro-enclosed outer jacket, meaning a user must unpeel several inches of hooks and loops to ensure that the jacket is properly armed. 

The A/M-24 All Clear has some ­upgrades, most notably a plastic ­inspection window on the jacketed front that gives an at-a-glance status report of the firing mechanism. Additionally, the A/M-24 All Clear has a zippered front enclosure, a beefier nylon waist belt, and a smaller-profile D-ring attachment (also not for use with a tether).

Neither of these PFDs has crotch straps, and this absence was noticeable when floating. In our test pool, the ­A/M-24 All Clear failed to trigger ­automatically for almost two minutes.

Onyx A/M-33 All Clear With Harness

If you’re ready to go offshore, this PFD could be right for you. The US Coast Guard-approved vest has a sailing harness with dual soft loops (port and starboard) for attaching a tether, a beefy nylon waist belt with sturdy stainless-steel adjusters, a high-visibility inflation chamber, a breakaway zipper enclosure, and a  window for at-a-glance status on the vest’s firing mechanism. The vest’s back has shoulder-strap padding that doubles as ultraviolet protection, and also adds a bit of cushioning when leaning back in the cockpit or lounging on deck. 

This PFD also sports a zippered front closure (with an elasticized zipper garage to ensure that the vest stays put) and a thin neoprene neckline for extra comfort. As with its little brothers, the A/M-33 All Clear can be operated in automatic/­manual or fully manual modes, but it differs by delivering 35 pounds of buoyancy once fully inflated. This extra lift was immediately noticeable when floating; there’s no crotch strap, but its absence wasn’t an issue.

Spinlock Deckvest LITE+

Lightweight, low-profile, unencumbering—this PFD’s design (when packed) is wide at the neck, allowing about 165 degrees of head rotation without chin contact. The bit that does contact your neck is neoprene-covered for comfort. This is a side-entry PFD that arrives in automatic/manual mode, but it can be converted to manual-only with a kit. The LITE+ has a single crotch strap with a hidden receptacle clip, and it comes with loops for attaching Spinlock’s optional Chest Pack, which is handy for storing emergency essentials. 

The PFD also has Spinlock’s clever breakaway zipper system, a soft-loop attachment point and—when deployed—an emergency haul loop. The LITE+ can be upgraded with Spinlock’s Pylon Light, which is a water-activated flashing LED; Lume-On patches to illuminate the inflated bladder; and a spray hood. Customers also can purchase the LITE+ with an integrated Ocean Signal MOB1 AIS beacon. The LITE+ is approved to CE and ISO standards. In the water, the Deckvest LITE+ provided good head ­support and face-up orientation, ­especially once the crotch strap was properly deployed. 

Spinlock Deckvest 6D HRS

There’s a lot to like about this innovative PFD. It’s built to CE and ISO standards. Once inflated, it delivers 170 newtons of ­positive buoyancy. It can be ordered with 275 newtons, but this adds bulk. The PFD has Spinlock’s Pro Sensor Elite firing mechanism, which activates only when ­water flows upward into its cap, so there are no wave or rain deployments. It also has Spinlock’s Harness Release System, which has a load-releasable tether hardpoint. If the MOB is getting dragged, she pulls a rip cord and immediately separates from her tether. 

Once in the water, the automatic/­manual vest opens to reveal a spray hood, emergency haul loop, Spinlock Pylon 360 light, and Spinlock Lume-On air-bladder light. A crotch strap resides in a small pouch on the back of the PFD’s harness. Additionally, there’s a user-friendly waist-belt buckle, an inspection window for the firing mechanism, and compatibility with Ocean Signal’s MOB1 AIS beacon. The Deckvest 6D was one of the most comfortable PFDs to float in, and its design made accessing the spray hood a snap.

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Sailing rallies come in a lot of shapes and sizes. They’re a smart way to try long-distance cruising or a transoceanic passage with a group, to check out a new destination with people who know it well, and to meet some like-minded sailors who share your cruising goals. 

You don’t have to be an America’s Cup-level sailor to join a rally. Just the opposite: Many people join rallies as a way to improve their skills while having fun. You can be an entry-­level sailor and participate in all kinds of rallies. You can use your engine whenever you want a little extra oomph. You can bring the kids and the family dog along as crew. 

Being part of a rally is a way to become a part of a sailing community, only without the pressure of a timed race. You’ll very likely find yourself learning helpful tips and tricks to improve your cruising experience as you make lifelong friends.

Rallies happen at all times of year, on both US coasts as well as all around the world. Here’s a look at some rallies you might want to try if you’re thinking about getting involved with a rally for the first time.

Salty Dawg and NARC Rallies

The Salty Dawg Sailing Association is a nonprofit organization whose rallies focus on the United States and Caribbean. These rallies are open to all sailors, with some experience requirements. The group prides itself on offering preparation help, as well as weather briefings, a daily forecast, personalized routing guidance, and more. 

Salty Dawg’s Homeward Bound rally starts in Antigua in late April, headed for the US Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and, finally, Virginia on the US East Coast. The group’s Caribbean Rally makes the opposite journey every fall, starting in Virginia and heading south. 

In fall 2022, the Salty Dawg folks started working with Hank Schmitt and the NARC Rally, which has sailed from Newport, Rhode Island, to Saint-Martin via Bermuda since 2000. There are talks to combine the two rallies in the future, including sailors who want to start or end in New England, as well as those who want to start or end in the Chesapeake Bay.

Additional Salty Dawg rallies include the summertime Maritime Rally from Massachusetts to Maine and Nova Scotia, and the Downeast Rally, focusing on Maine.

The ARC Rally

The World Cruising Club organizes the ARC trans-Atlantic rally from Gran Canaria in Spain’s Canary Islands some 2,700 nautical miles to St. Lucia in the Caribbean. This rally welcomes cruising couples, families, and boats at least 27 feet length overall with at least two people on board. Departure is in late November, and the crossing takes most boats 18 to 21 days. The ARC offers two additional start dates and routes: The ARC Plus is a two-stage trans-Atlantic rally that departs in early November from Gran Canaria, with a stopover in Cabo Verde and a final destination of Grenada. The ARC January follows the longer, traditional route to St. Lucia, with a January departure.

WCC also organizes the west-to-east ARC Europe rally, leaving the Caribbean or US East Coast every May, with a stop in Bermuda and the Azores, as well as the seven-stage ARC Portugal, which sails south across the Bay of Biscay from Plymouth, UK, to Bayonne, France, and then on to Portugal, and continues south along the Portuguese coast.

If you really want to go for the gusto, there’s also the World Arc, a 26,000-nautical-mile circumnavigation leaving from St. Lucia and Australia. 

Panama Posse 

The Panama Posse sails between Southern California and Annapolis, Maryland, by way of the Panama Canal. It’s a go-at-your-own-pace, 5,500-nautical-mile rally, with stops that can include Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Jamaica, Belize, Cuba and the Florida Keys.

Singlehanded sailors are welcome to participate in this rally, and some boats include families and pets on board. A list of participating boats is on the website; many are in the 30- to 50-foot range of length overall.

The Baja Ha-Ha

Held in late October and November, the Baja Ha-Ha is a rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It’s a 750-­nautical-mile journey, with two planned stops: in Bahia Tortuga and Bahia Santa Marina. Organizers make the schedule in a way that gives even the slowest boats about a day and a half of rest at each stop.

Boats that can participate in this rally must be at least 27 feet length overall, and be designed, built and maintained for open-ocean sailing. Organizers will also make exceptions for some smaller boats on a case-by-case basis, and powerboats can join as well. Each boat must have at least two sailors on board. 

Coho Ho Ho

The Coho Ho Ho is a rally from Seattle to San Francisco on the US West Coast. It departs at the end of August and makes it to California in early to mid-September. From there, some Coho Ho Ho participants join up with the Baja Ha-Ha rally and continue on down to Mexico. 

This is a smaller rally with about a dozen participants, and it occasionally includes powerboats along with sailboats. –Kim Kavin

Rally Shots?

We’d love to see your rally photos. On Instagram, tag us @cruisingworldmag or email us at editor@cruisingworld.com.

Newport to Bermuda

When Hank Schmidt of Offshore Passage Opportunities told me about a couple who had bought a slightly used Southerly 535 and were planning to sail it in the 2021 North American Rally to the Caribbean, known as the NARC rally, I needed very little convincing to join them and their professional skipper as crew.

Southerly built only two of the 535s before Discovery Yachts acquired the brand. This boat was Hull No. 1, berthed in Boston, where I stepped aboard for one night and got to know the boat well ahead of the rally. My first recommendation to the husband: Add a second anchor on the bow.

“Once in the Caribbean, you’ll be at anchor most of the time,” I said. “Put two anchors on the bow. You’ll feel better.” 

We looked at the steering system, engine, main reefing and furling systems, and retractable keel mechanism. This Southerly had in-boom furling and a Solent stay, a prerequisite for any offshore voyage (that, or an inner stay on which to hoist a storm jib).

It was a well-thought-out and nicely designed yacht that they had christened Schatz Sea, which they tell me means “my ­beloved” in Germany, where the wife is from. 

A few weeks later, they sailed Schatz Sea down to Newport, Rhode Island, in late October, ahead of the NARC rally the following month. As they entered the bay, things began to come apart. The starboard helm wheel disconnected from the rudder linkage; the bow thruster failed; the boom furling system jammed; and the mainsail ripped. Fortunately, the port helm still worked, so they got the boat safely into a slip at Newport Yachting Center Marina, where the NARC fleet was ­gathering. I joined them there as repairs were underway. Soon, our ­professional skipper also arrived.

While we were getting ready, so were the crews on 21 boats other boats. Seventeen were leaving from Newport, with another four departing Chesapeake Bay, all set to converge on Bermuda as their first stop. The fleet included five Swans, two Caliber 40s, an Amel, a Discovery 55, a Southerly 534, one Oyster, a Passport 43, a 50-year-old Hinckley 48 and one catamaran. The Newport crew totaled 75 people, some 22 of them making their first offshore voyage as crew. A few of the boats had made the trip a dozen times since the NARC began in 2000.

Off We Go

Bermuda is 640 miles southeast of Newport. At 6 knots, that’s 4 days, 12 hours. At 7 knots, it’s 3 days, 16 hours. A piece of cake, right? 

No. It seldom is.

Because hurricane season usually ends in late October, there are only a few three-day weather windows for leaving Newport. Weather Routers Inc. was predicting Friday afternoon that “this could be the easiest crossing you’ve had in years. Conditions on Sunday morning will be unpleasant, after a big storm on Saturday, but improving. Winds south-southwest, 10 to 15 early. By midmorning, as you get farther offshore, they will increase 15 to 20. Seas 5 to 7 feet, building farther offshore. The tendency will be for those winds to become more southwest, then west-southwest by the evening.

“You’ll have to contend with residual south-southeasterly swells, 8 to 10 feet, left over from Saturday’s storm,” the forecast continued. “The period is long, 8 seconds, but these will diminish over the day. The winds will continue to shift into the west, northwest and north, then drop. Monday, winds should be northwest, 14 to 18 knots. The southeast swells will be replaced by southwesterly swells, but on the beam.”

Although the start was delayed Saturday, with the predicted storm raging outside, we were all optimistic as we backed Schatz Sea out of its slip Sunday morning at 8:15. We motored out of Newport with a dozen other NARC boats, to be met by a brisk south-southwest wind blowing 15 knots up the bay. The sky was filled with yesterday’s storm clouds—an ominous start—but off to the west, behind us, was a hint of open sky. 

We hoisted half the main, unrolled the working jib on the ­inner Solent stay, turned off the engine, and made a left at Brenton Reef onto a southeast course. We then chased the storm clouds out into the Atlantic.

By noon, it was still cold on deck, but the sun was out. The wind, forward of the beam, was blowing 20 knots. The boat was heeled over, making 7 knots, climbing up and over yesterday’s southeast swells, only to plunge down into the troughs. 

It was then, I realized, that I had failed to take my seasickness medication. Off watch, I lay on the couch in the main cabin, looking out the windows at the horizon. I was still sick when I went to the cockpit at 2 a.m., but I was able to perform my watch. The wind had gone into the north, 15 knots. The ­southeast swells were unnoticeable. Around 4 a.m., I felt better.

By Monday morning, we’d traveled 190 miles, averaging nearly 8 knots. The day was sunny, winds northerly 12 knots. White, puffy clouds ahead told us that the Gulf Stream was near. We entered it around 2 o’clock that afternoon, 30 hours out of Newport.

The Gulf Stream

I’d downloaded the Gulf Stream chart from Windy before we left Newport and picked out a possible entry point. It’s a phenomenon to contend with: a narrow, fast-flowing current of warm, tropical water that comes up through the Florida Straits, glances off Cape Hatteras’ shoal, and heads east out into the Atlantic, eventually warming the shores of Ireland and England. The Gulf Stream is a moving river of water, a conveyor belt. You can use it, but you can’t avoid it. 

We were fortunate to have the Gulf Stream take a southeast meander, right on our rhumb line to Bermuda. All we needed to do was hop on as it turned southeast and ride it for 10 hours, exiting it when it turned north again. We’d pick up a 3- to 4-knot kick.

The wind turned light, over the stern, as we entered the Gulf Stream. We rigged the pole with the genoa so that we could run wing on wing for a few hours. The Stream was now pushing us along at 9 knots. 

Making Landfall

By Wednesday morning, our third full day at sea, we were less than 100 miles to Bermuda, with a projected arrival of 4 a.m. Thursday. The wind had clocked into the east, so we sailed for the afternoon. By dusk, the wind was southeast, 10 knots, 15 knots over the deck. In came the sails, and on went the motor. The southeast breeze kicked up a chop, and Schatz Sea ­shouldered into it, her flat bow pounding. 

I couldn’t sleep below, so I joined everyone else in the cockpit as the loom of Bermuda’s lights raised above the horizon. We headed through the narrow Town Cut into St. George’s Harbour at 3 a.m. and anchored in the Powder Hole, positioned to clear customs and immigration later that day. We were 3 days, 18 hours out of Newport. 

The weather forecaster was right. It was the fastest voyage I’d made in 20 years. –David H, Lyman

Read more of David Lyman’s stories of sailing in the Caribbean at dhlyman.com

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I had always imagined, looking at world globes and navigational charts, that the surface of the earth would somehow feel different the farther north you went. That perhaps gravity would pull you at a slanted angle, or that the horizon would look narrower as the longitude lines drew closer together. I imagined one would get shortness of breath or vertigo as the polar regions were approached. 

Not surprisingly, as far as those things go, everything seems the same even several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The horizon is as expansive as ever, water stays level in a glass, and my head is not swimming from lack of oxygen.

What is different, though—shockingly, disconcertingly different—is the perpetual daylight. Long before Polar Sun, the Stevens 47 we’re cruising in Greenland, reached the Arctic Circle, we had left the night behind. The last darkness we saw was when we left Flowers Cove, in northern Newfoundland, at 2 a.m. to catch the downtide to Mary’s Harbour in Labrador. After that, with the bows pointed north into the Labrador Sea, though the sun would briefly set, the twilight endured until it rose again just a little to the right of where it had gone down.

It was good that it should be so because there are icebergs about in late June in the Davis Strait, and though we didn’t see many, the ones we did see made us grateful for the light and a sharp lookout. There was little else to look out for, though. Between putting Labrador astern and fetching Greenland ahead five days later, we saw only one coastal ship between each place. It was a surprisingly benign passage at first, given what I’d been led to expect about the Davis Strait. For three calm and pleasant days, we alternated between the engine and the “whomper”—a huge, yellow ­asymmetrical spinnaker—and ­congratulated ourselves on our luck.

As luck will, it ran out two days from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. From just north of the aptly named Cape Desolation, we were treated to a strong following breeze with some confused cross swells that slammed the boat onto its beam ends every so often, and made heavy weather for the Hydrovane self-steering unit. It was a finicky business, tuning the vane, the deeply reefed sails and the helm so that everything would work together, but when we finally had it sorted, Polar Sun scooted along at 8 and 9 knots for hours on end without us touching either the wheel or the sheets. It was a good thing too because one of our number was down for the count, hugging a gently sloshing bucket of vomit in his bunk. The rest of us felt lucky if we could boil a kettle in the violently slamming boat to make ramen or coffee in a thermos without burning ourselves.

Even in the inner harbor of Nuuk, the wind was shrieking along the quays, making the boats tug restlessly at their warps. As is the custom in these parts, one that we got used to only with time, we rafted up to the first convenient tugboat and turned in. When you think about it, rafting up, especially to something big, is far preferable to grinding up and down a grubby commercial bulkhead with 15-foot tides giving your spring lines and fenders a workout. Better to let them deal with the headache of the inside tie, and ride up and down tied comfortably short. 

Besides, it’s a great way to make new friends. Farther north, in Ilulissat, we wound up in a six-deep raft-up, which made for quite the jolly social scene as everyone crawled over each other’s boats to get to and from the fish wharf.

I had expected Greenland to be much like northern Newfoundland and Labrador in the way of food and groceries, which is to say more packaged food than fresh, and more burger-and-fry joints than other sorts of restaurants. And once again, my imagination was incorrect. Being still heavily Danish, the grocery stores are crammed with European as well as Greenlandic foods, and best of all are the ubiquitous bakeries full of fresh bread and pastries. While the restaurant prices might raise the eyebrow of the cruiser accustomed to street tacos in Mexico or pupusas in El Salvador, the food is quite good, and we tried musk ox and reindeer and whale, as well as codfish and halibut. There is a bent toward the gourmet in the preparation and presentation that initially struck me as out of place in what should have been rough-hewn fishing towns, but that was just me projecting preconceived notions again.

I had no notions or ideas about what to expect of the coast between Nuuk and Disko Bay, nor could I have imagined the snow-girdled mountains that rise straight from 100-fathom fjords to 3,000-foot peaks. And not just once, mind you, but everywhere you look, for days and days as you cruise north. There is an inshore passage that begins about 50 miles north of Nuuk, and treads a winding, sheltered path behind coastal islands and through narrow, winding tickles scarcely twice the beam of the boat. This route crosses many fjords, and you can pick one at random and explore—up, up, along water ever more aquamarine, until at the head, the glacier can be seen, pressing a wall of ice toward the water and sending frozen chunks out along the silty glacial stream.

We alternated between anchoring in remote coves and tying up to commercial docks in villages. It’s luxurious, with perpetual daylight, not having to hurry to get somewhere before dark or to get up before dawn to catch a fair tide. But it’s terrible for the sleep schedule, and your daily rhythms go all sideways. Breakfast at noon? Why not, if the next boat in the Sisimiut raft-up was partying till 3 a.m. and heffalumping back and forth across your deck in clunky sea boots. Coffee at midnight? Why not, if you’re still in brash ice, three hours from Aasiaat, and calving icebergs have strawed your path with growlers and bergy bits. We eventually found it preferable to arrive and tie up after working hours—there was less bustle in the harbor, and whomever we rafted to was unlikely to be about to cast off and leave.

Aasiaat is on the southern shore of Disko Bay, the center of Greenland’s tourism industry. At the back end of the bay, a river of ice 30 miles long empties its bergs into open water. From there they fan out, drifting slowly with wind and tide so that, as far as the eye could reach, as we sailed north toward Disko Island, huge mountains of ice floated in solemn silence on water 200 fathoms deep. After stops at the secluded Whale Fish Islands and in Godhavn, we finally reached the real prize of Disko Bay.

Situated at the very mouth of the fjord from which all the bergs issue, Ilulissat is guarded by a barrier of floating ice chunks that looks impenetrable when approaching from seaward. This band of concentrated ice was 5 miles wide when we crossed it, and extended for dozens of miles both north and south. Bergs of all sizes floated amid myriad smaller pieces, but an intricate path could be woven between them, avoiding all but the smallest brash. Even when the way ahead looked shut, if you carried on, there was always an opening. 

All adventure has some risk, and if we were going to sail into the Northwest Passage, ice was one danger we were going to have to get used to.

 Back in the States, people had shown us diagrams of the closest safe approach to ice, which had proved ludicrous already in the narrow tickles south of Aasiaat, and were now simply laughable as we passed an arm’s length from hundreds of bergs of all shapes and sizes. Was it safe?  Who knows—it’s a long shot whether a berg will calf or roll in quiet water while you’re next door—but what choice did we have? All adventure has some risk, and if we were going to sail to Baffin Island and from there into the Northwest Passage, ice was one danger we were going to have to get used to.

We couldn’t have chosen a better place to acclimatize to ice than Ilulissat. More days than not, smaller bergs come bumbling into the harbor with the tide, and often, as they drifted back out, we had to direct them away from the boats with some special ice poles I had made. They were mostly harmless in the calm water of the harbor, but a passing wake would set the smaller ones knocking on the hull and have us out with the ice poles again.

Chasing Icebergs in Greenland

Beyond Ilulissat and Disko Bay, the coast of Greenland stretches northward, ever more remote and frozen, and is visited only rarely by cruising sailors. Farther yet, it becomes a land where both sea and air are freezing all year long, and even icebreakers with supplies for the handful of settlements are seasonal and occasional at best.  

I’ll cruise that direction someday, perhaps, but for this trip, our northing in Greenland was done, and Polar Sun’s path lay to westward across Baffin Bay, and from there into the winding paths of the Arctic Archipelago. 

While his wife conspires to turn him into a chicken rancher, Ben Zartman runs away to sea whenever he can. When not delivering sailboats, he runs a rigging business out of his garage, splicing line for local racing fleets.

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The captain of the 55-foot Holman sailing yacht was crouched down and leaning over me with great anxiety. “Are you OK?” he asked. “Dad, are you OK?”

I was, indeed, OK, which was as much a surprise to me as anyone else, given that I had hurtled across the galley like an unstrapped astronaut at liftoff. The boat had pitched, I hadn’t been paying attention, and I had gone flying so fast that I would have just kept going if not for a cabinet that stopped my midair trajectory. 

My ego was bruised—“Pain, Dad, is a great teacher,” he said—but I was fine, which is more than I could say for the cabinet door. And that, in itself, was really saying something, because the boat dated to 1985 while I dated to 1939.

Yes, my friends had told me that I was “loco” to sign on as crew at age 78 for a 2,850-nautical-mile passage from San Diego to the Panama Canal. It wasn’t the first time that my son, Christian Pschorr, who is service and program director for Hylas Yachts, had asked me to join him on a passage, but for the past few years, I had refused. Days and nights of getting pounded by bad ­weather, I feared, might leave me unable to hold up my end of the responsibilities. I didn’t want to let down the rest of the team.

It’s not that I was unfamiliar with boating, or with tough physical challenges. At age 22, when I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as an ROTC Marine option, I was a commissioned US Marine Corps officer. The philosophy back then was to break the recruits physically and mentally, then build us back up and teach us that we were capable of doing far more than we imagined. And, in my 30s and 40s, I’d spent plenty of time as crew on my uncle’s 45-foot steel-hull ketch, cruising from New York’s Long Island Sound up to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts. I also owned an 18-foot Mako. I loved to fish off that boat.

So, I had the right background, albeit no recent experience on the water. I agreed to join Christian this time because the Holman was his boat, one he had just bought and wanted to move to its new home port. No deadline would force us to push our schedule in bad weather as we cruised in a straight shot from San Diego to the Panama Canal. 

This time, I thought, I ain’t getting any younger. I’ve never done a bluewater passage. I’d like to try it.

My close friend Mike Johnson, an international award-­winning sailor and adventurer, became my mentor and coach. He urged me to step up my usual workouts at the gym, so I enlisted a personal trainer, who increased my treadmill and elliptical speeds until I was doing intermittent jogging and running. The trainer also helped me build strength with free weights and on machines where I used my legs to push. There were pushups and situps, just like at Quantico a half-century ago.

I heeded more good advice from Mike, who he told me: “You’ll always be the father. Christian, he’s your son, but he’s the captain. So keep your mouth shut. Be quiet and do your job.”

From the moment I stepped on board, that’s what I tried to do—an admittedly difficult task for someone with my bullish disposition. Our fellow crew were a married couple, Nathan Zahrt and Vivian Vuong, who had sailed with Christian before. Nathan was close to qualifying for his US Coast Guard captain’s license, and Vivian was a professional photographer as well as a great cook. My job was to follow orders and research everything we’d need to know about taking a boat through the Panama Canal—a job Christian was smart to give me, because I could do it well, building up yet more confidence before we set off. 

As we left the dock on May 9, I felt good, but nervous about my first overnight watch from 0300 to 0600. After everyone else was asleep below, I had to rely on myself to settle down. Finally, I thought, quit babying yourself. You have a job to do. I did it—and everything went just fine. There was simply no room for fear.

A few days out of San Diego, our engine failed. It had run well during the boat’s sea trials, but it wouldn’t cooperate now. That malfunction meant we not only had to make an unscheduled repair stop, but we also had to hand-steer for long periods of time because we couldn’t charge the boat’s batteries if there was insufficient sunlight for the solar panels. No battery power, among other things, left us without the autopilot.

With the autopilot on, I was able to adjust and hold the boat’s course, but without the autopilot, I found it a lot harder to maintain our course, heading, and speed with all the water high above and all around us. I kept saying to myself, I will not use bad language. My friend Mike had told me: No swearing on the boat. So, I said to myself, Expletives deleted.

Instead, I focused on doing whatever Christian ordered me to do, and I gained a new appreciation for why so many of his Hylas clients and students had complimented him as a teacher over the years. I got to see my son as other people see him, and I was more impressed than ever.

For instance, there was a time when I was steering through the vast harbor of Panama City—doing six hours straight at the wheel—and a huge rock loomed ahead. Christian said, sharply, “Dad, you’re luffing.”

Now, I know better than to argue with the captain. But I replied that I was altering course slightly to avoid hitting the rock.

“Lose our headway, and we will hit the rock,” he said. “Hold your course, and do exactly what I say.”

He was right. “Aye, sir,” I said, suggesting that he explain everything to me in simple terms, as if I were his Boston terrier. 

I always knew he was just footsteps away in case I needed him. I had done a lot of studying to learn about lights at night on boats, but once we were at sea, a lot of the lights seemed to be the same color. The first couple of times I saw them from the wheel, I was nervous because I couldn’t identify the vessels around us. I could see their courses, sort of, but I took comfort in Christian’s rule for the whole crew, which was to get him on deck immediately if there were any doubts. 

For the most part, I just had to get over myself and try. Only once did I feel real panic. It was blowing like all the Furies of Hell, and I couldn’t see with all the water coming into my face. Christian went forward, and I lost sight of him. I thought he’d gone over the side.

This was my beloved son. I was in a momentary state of terror, calling, whistling and yelling his name. 

Finally, he reappeared. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I told him.

“Dad,” he replied, “I’m not up there sightseeing.”

Enough said. 

I found new levels of my own confidence—albeit with a dash of mutiny. One of Christian’s rules was that when we were on deck at night, we were not to leave the cockpit. We were tethered to a metal eye by the wheel. Well, one night, I could hear something flapping up forward. I got tired of the damn flapping. I knew the rule about staying in the cockpit, but I unhooked, attached myself to the jackline that ran bow to stern, and went forward to secure the piece of sail. I then took a big, deep breath and went back to the cockpit, where I snapped back into the metal eye.

Nobody was the wiser. I did tell Christian after we were home again, and he was not pleased. But I got away with it, and I felt useful. 

There was also a lot of fun. Christian is a vegan, and Vivian is a great cook, but on my night in the galley, I got to make sushi from freshly caught fish. We had a red-footed booby perch happily on the pulpit one day, soon joined by others that sat on our bow railing and spinnaker pole, jostling for their favorite positions. One afternoon, I looked up just in time to see a huge manta ray leap out of the water. The majesty was breathtaking.

There was one night under beautiful, starry skies when I was doing a great job at the wheel. The boat was planing with sparkling phosphorescence in the bow waves and wake. I couldn’t help but start to sing in a bad impression of the Beatles: “Lucy in the sea with diamonds…” 

Shortly after that, I saw the Southern Cross for the first time since years ago, when I had been on a hunting safari in Namibia. It was a glorious sailing night. You sure can’t do those kinds of things unless you take a chance and step aboard.

My run-in (or, should we say, fly-in) with the galley cabinet was not the only harrowing experience either. Both the Gulf of Tehuantepec and Punta Mala—just outside the Gulf of Panama—can have sudden, strong winds that extend 100 miles into the Pacific. I felt like I could see the gods smirking as they pounded us for days and nights. We had quite a few evenings of absolutely fierce lightning. I had never heard thunder like that booming stentorian basso profundo. Not since the monsoons of Okinawa, Japan, during my 13-month tour with the 3rd Marine Division, had I encountered such torrential rain. And we were truly alone out there—so much so that Christian, at one point, told Vivian to call out on the VHF radio, just to see if anyone answered. Nobody did. You know that cliche about how small we are? Well, we are.

It was during one of those storms that I took my header across the galley, but that moment was just one among many that were overwhelmingly positive. When we cruised into Panama City’s harbor under sail, amid all the ships anchored and underway, I was at the helm. Christian sat in the cockpit, calling out headings to me, while Nathan and Vivian stood as lookouts.   

Suddenly, a huge container ship loomed, brightly lit from stem to stern. “Dad,” Christian said, “when she clears our bow, fall in behind her. Follow in her wake until I give you the new heading.”

I prayed that the wind would not die. I had to keep the sails full and maintain course. High above, I watched as the stern of the more than 1,000-foot-long container ship passed us. 

From there, Christian wanted me to take our boat in, but I relinquished the wheel to Nathan, not wanting to push my luck. It was midnight on June 10 when, after a month at sea, we tied up at the pier. We had made it with no injuries to the crew and no damage to the boat. And I had accomplished my goals. I had stared down Neptune in his angry moments without flinching. 

As I write this, I am now 83, and I don’t think I could trust myself to handle the physical or mental rigors again. But I’m very glad I made that trip with my son at age 78.

It was a highlight of my life. 

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The morning breeze was light as we ghosted past Sable Island. The mainsail and asymmetrical spinnaker were keeping us moving off the Canadian coast, and we embraced the moment, knowing it wouldn’t last. Wind was coming our way: The forecast called for near-gale-force winds by midnight. We were bound for St. John’s, Newfoundland, 400 miles across the Grand Banks. 

By late afternoon, with the apparent winds steady at 18 knots, we doused the spinnaker, unfurled the genoa, and set the whisker pole. By evening twilight, it was time to reef the main. Quetzal, our Kaufman 47 cutter, is fitted with traditional slab reefing. We were on a sweet reach with the apparent winds 110 degrees off on port tack. Without changing course—that’s right, keeping the apparent winds well abaft the beam—we tied the first reef in the main and rolled in a bit of headsail. A few hours later, with the winds steady at 25 knots, we furled the genoa completely, dropped the pole, unfurled the staysail, and tied the second reef in the main. We didn’t change our heading and didn’t flog a sail. The wind kept ­building and, just past midnight, increased to 30 knots sustained with gusts in the low 40s.

We were flying, punching out double-­digit speeds, but it was a rough ride. The Grand Banks is infamous for raising nasty seas in a hurry. It was time for the third reef in the main. The idea of coming up into the wind to reef in those conditions was madness. While still on port tack, the winds had clocked slightly to about 90 degrees off. We fell off a bit to tie in the third reef before resuming course. We also rolled in a bit of staysail, to keep the sails balanced. The boat settled down, and we charged through the night sailing fast but in control. As conditions moderated, we shed reefs in the same fashion, off the wind without flogging or drama. 

When we reached St. John’s, we learned of the tragedy of the CNB 66 Escape. Just a week earlier, while on passage from Bermuda to Nova Scotia, husband-and-wife owners Karl and Annamarie Frank died from injuries sustained while trying to reef the main head to wind in a Gulf Stream gale. It’s a profoundly heartbreaking story. Reports indicated a struggle with the headsail and boom furling systems. The ensuing chaos of a flogging headsail, the boat rounding up violently, and a wildly out of control mainsheet proved a deadly combination. (For more, see “Deep Thoughts” by Herb McCormick, Cruising World, October.)

The tragedy triggered a sober ­discussion on Quetzal. Coming upwind in those conditions to reef the main comes with a mountain of risk. For that reason, we always reef off the wind. It’s a proven technique; we’ve completed 161 offshore training passages aboard Quetzal and logged more than 150,000 miles. We’ve encountered several deep ocean storms. Reefing off the wind requires good gear and the coordination of several moving parts, but it is not a difficult process. 

However, before we discuss the details, it is critical to understand that falling off the wind, to flatten and stabilize the boat, should be the first step in nearly every offshore sailing maneuver. We are taught to come up into the wind to deal with issues, including reefing the main. To my experience, it’s almost always a bad idea. Sailboats are remarkably stable with the wind abaft the beam, and the apparent loads are dramatically reduced. Flogging your sails and running rigging is dangerous on any boat, but especially on a big boat.  

Our strategy for reefing off the wind begins by steering down (or up, if we’re on a deep reach) to 100 to 110 degrees off the apparent wind, and making sure the boat is happy on that heading. We dump the traveler to leeward to shorten the mainsheet, and we tighten the preventer to keep the boom under control. The boom preventer is always deployed when reaching, and it runs from the end of the boom forward to a fitting near the bow and back to the cockpit. If you don’t have a rigid vang, make sure the topping lift is relatively tight. With the boom secured, it’s time to reef. 

Our main halyard is led aft to the cockpit. As it’s eased, the reefing outhaul, which is also led aft, is tensioned. It does not need to be a simultaneous operation, and the more slack in the halyard, the easier it is to secure the reef outhaul. The sail might bunch a bit as it drops, and occasionally, the sheet needs to be eased to reduce tension, but the sail never flogs, and there’s no tendency for the boat to round up. We don’t lead a separate reef tack line aft, so someone goes forward and secures the tack to the rams horn. With the boat flat, it is not dangerous to make your way forward. Sometimes, a bit of tugging along the luff helps the sail drop, but usually at this wind angle, the sail drops on its own. 

Once the tack is secure, and the reef outhaul tight to the boom, the halyard is slowly hoisted. A bit of sheet control might be required as the sail goes back up. Once the halyard is tensioned, we stay off the wind and rig reefing ties, making sure not to lead them around the boom. They’re not for sail shape, just for gathering loose sail.  

With the reef deployed, we take a minute to make sure everything looks right. Reefing isn’t frantic when you’re off the wind. When we are satisfied, we trim sails and resume course.  

Naturally, there are nuances. Reefing off the wind means that loads stay under tension. You need stout gear, from halyards and blocks to winches and clutches. Also, always reef early, because doing so is the essence of good seamanship. I have a simple rule: If the thought of reefing flashes through my brain, even for an instant, I reef.  

With slab reefing systems, the first reef is the most challenging. You are dealing with more sail area, so the sooner you take it, the better. Taking the second reef is significantly easier if the first reef is in place. The same goes for the third reef. Also, the sail flakes better on the boom when it’s reefed sequentially.  

Quality mainsail cars and a slippery track are vital for effective reefing off the wind, especially if you have a ­full-battened mainsail. Full battens create side load on the cars, and I am not sure why bluewater cruisers insist on full-batten mainsails. Quetzal has a “two plus two” main, with the top two battens full (where you need them the most) and the bottom two partial, allowing us to reef off the wind with ease. 

Selden, Harken, Ronstan and others make ball-bearing cars for full-battened mains facilitating off-the-wind reefing. Replacing the main halyard with smaller-­diameter, less-stretchy Dyneema, and replacing the sheaves at the masthead and in the boom, will reduce friction. Tides Marine offers a one-piece, low-friction, ultra-high molecular weight (UHMW) track with custom slides and batten receptacles that can be added to almost any mast. 

Friction is your enemy reefing off the wind, which is why I don’t like single-line slab reefing systems. There are too many turns, adding friction at every bend. Lazy jacks are also problematic for reefing off the wind. Quetzal is fitted with retractable lazy jacks that are quick to deploy for dropping the sail, and easy to retract when sailing. If your boat is fitted with a lazy bag and fixed lazy jacks, talk to your sailmaker about finding a way to retract them for offshore sailing. 

In-mast furling systems are ideal for off-the-wind reefing. You need to maintain balance between the outhaul, furling line and mainsheet as you reduce sail. Back in my delivery skipper days, I made several Atlantic crossings with in-mast furlers, and successfully reefed off the wind using the same principles used for slab reefing. 

Remember: In every off-the-wind reefing situation, start with establishing boom control. Off-the-wind reefing with in-boom furling is more challenging. The tragic tale of Escape is a graphic example of trying to cope with a boom furler on a big boat in heavy weather. However, it can be done. I recently sailed a Tayana 48 across the Atlantic and a Hylas 49 from Hawaii to Seattle. Both were fitted with boom furlers, and we consistently reefed the main off the wind. Boom angle and the ­coordination between the furling line, which is almost always controlled by an electric winch, the halyard and the ­preventer, is critical. You need to be patient, and you can be if you are not on the wind flogging sails and plunging into waves. 

Manually turning the furling winch is hard work, but it gives you more feel as you reef, and sensing resistance helps prevent the sail from running forward at the gooseneck. Also, sheeting the headsail tight, despite being well off the wind, backwinds the main, which helps it reef more smoothly. Reefing early and ­incrementally is paramount with in-boom furling. 

  Fitting your mainsail for off-the-wind reefing, and practicing the technique in moderate conditions, will make your next offshore voyage safer and less stressful.  

John Kretschmer has been sailing professionally for 40 years, logging 400,000 miles and completing his 30th Atlantic crossing this past summer. He is the author of the international bestseller Sailing a Serious Ocean. John Kretschmer Sailing offers training passages, workshops, ­webinars and Captain’s Hour—a monthly meeting about all aspects of offshore sailing.

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One of the most enjoyable things about sailing and cruising—to me, at least—is the extensive collection of books and literature associated with the sea. From Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick to Bernard Moitessier’s The Long Way to Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm (all of which reside on my bookshelf, among many others), the collective works of this salty genre are long and storied. During the past couple of pandemic years, I’ve enjoyed having the time to catch up on some of the most recent arrivals to this canon. As many folks prepare for upcoming charter vacations, it seems like a good time to pass along some recommendations. 

The best place to read a ­seagoing book, after all, is when going to sea. All the following are worth tossing into your duffel and are available from online booksellers. 

A Peril to Myself and Others: My Quest to Become a Captain
by David Kilmer
Before he was a professional skipper, seasoned cruiser, accomplished writer and frequent contributor to Cruising World, David Kilmer was a mountain man with zero sailing experience who’d come to a fork in his personal road. He had two options: Settle down or set out. He chose the latter, hopping a plane to the Caribbean with dreams of making a living on the deep blue sea. What transpired next—terror, ­comedy, self-awareness—unfolds like a voyage unto itself in this witty, insightful, most ­pleasurable seagoing ­coming-of-age account. 

A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes
by Eric Jay Dolin
In this lavishly illustrated, surprisingly engrossing and meticulously researched book (the footnotes alone account for more than 50 pages), author and historian Eric Jay Dolin pulls off a rare feat. By delving deeply into the lives and personalities of the forecasters, ship’s captains, journalists, and everyday folks who found themselves in the crosshairs of some of recorded history’s most terrifying tempests, he takes a subject that might otherwise be weighed down in science and numbers, and imbues it with the kinds of context, subtlety, and drama one might expect to find in a great work of fiction. 

Bargain Boats and Budget Cruising
by Todd Duff
Hey, we’re sailors. When it comes to our boats, we all want a bargain, right? Marine surveyor (and longtime CW writer) Todd Duff, who’s owned a small fleet of cruising boats himself, totally gets it. In the first half of this fun, informative tome, he discusses what to look for and where; the pitfalls, practicalities and pleasures in finding and fixing up an older vessel; and tips on safe cruising and raising kids aboard. The second half addresses the nitty-gritty: 42 capsule reviews of what he considers the best cruising-­boat bargains of all time.

Green Ghost, Blue Ocean: No Fixed Address
by Jennifer M. Smith
A first-person memoir and narrative written in the spirit and style of the great Lin Pardey, Jennifer Smith’s honest and entertaining recounting of 17 years and 40,000 nautical miles rambling all over the watery world serves as both a guide to such adventures and the reason to seek out your own.

Bound for Cape Horn: Skills for Expedition Cruising
by R.J. Rubadeau
The goal? Cape Horn. The problem? It was a 16,000-nautical-mile round trip from the author’s island home in Maine. As someone who has lived and loved high-latitude sailing, I was absorbed by every facet of this book: the planning, execution, seamanship, log entries, and especially Rubadeau’s terrific prose.

Three Years in a 12-Foot Boat
by Stephen Ladd
And now for something completely different. Stephen Ladd has written a couple of cool books about small-boat wanderings, but this is my favorite: a personal, poetic, almost unbelievable tale of rivers, coasts and the high seas experienced aboard a tiny sailing/rowing boat called Squeak.

Sailing Commitment Around the World
by Capt. Bill Pinkney
Got young kids on board? Bring them this treat: a beautifully illustrated children’s book with valuable lessons therein. The story is about a recently honored member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame’s record-setting solo round-the-world voyage via the Southern Ocean, the first ever by a Black sailor. Those lessons, by the way, apply equally to young and old. 

Herb McCormick is the author of five nautical books and is a CW editor-at-large.

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