Table of contents for March 2015 in SAIL

New England can be a cruel place to sail. You never can tell just what the months of March and April will bring, so you have no idea when your boat will actually touch the water. Woe betide you if you dare dream of an early launch date; like as not, you’ll find your spring commissioning plans thwarted by April snowstorms and lingering sub-Arctic temperatures, and you’ll be lucky if you’re in by Memorial Day, let alone the Fourth of July. Only twice in the last decade can I recall being fully prepped and launched by mid-May, and both times we were hammered by vicious two-day nor’easters that had me wishing the boat was still on the hard. And yet...once you’ve launched, all is forgiven and forgotten. A good sailing…

In “The Many-Headed Hydra” (posted on SAIL feed on December 10), Paul Calder wrote of his trip down the East Coast back to his home port of New Orleans, and the experience of adjusting to life back on land. Here are a few of our readers’ comments: What a great description of becoming a single unit built out of many people. Must be really nice when it works out like that. On a lighter note … I’m imagining the potential for funky smells in that saloon you have pictured! In all seriousness, I’m sure it’s an experience that will not soon be forgotten. @MikeMcGuire We sailed for 10 days on a 30-footer in the Sea of Cortez with our adult daughter and her soon to be husband. We became a…

If there’s one thing all San Francisco Bay charters have in common, it’s that they are so different. From the bay, you could just as easily find yourself in anuran marina walking to a Giants game as you could a picturesque Napa Valley dock walking to awing tasting. Strong breezes, fog, commercial traffic, a bustling race scene and multiple bridges make this an ideal region for seasoned salts, especially those seeking mild weather year-round. The “San Francisco Bay Area “refers to the estuary spanning 50miles north-south between Banjoes and San Pablo Bay, with an east-west span of between three and 12 miles. To the east, the bay transitions into the Delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers wind through 1,100 miles of cruise able grounds. Each of these areas…

In his famed novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville observed that “those grand freshwater seas,” as he called the Great Lakes, “possess an ocean-like expansiveness…with many of its rimmed varieties of races and climes.” Same goes for the charter possibilities, of which there are many. Far to the north, the adventurous can enjoy a true wilderness experience exploring Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands. Farther south, there are the warm, shallow waters and beaches of Put-in-Bay and the other small islands at the western end of Lake Erie. And roughly midway in between is Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, a narrow, but surprisingly large body of water just around the corner from the famed Straits of Mackinac and Mackinac Island. Comprised of a pair of east and west arms, separated by the Old Mission…

WE CHARTERED WITH THE MOORINGS (moorings.com).April through Octobers tourist season in Croatia. Typically April, May and October are rainier, while July and August represent peak season, meaning charter fees are higher and the nightlife is more exciting. FOOD PRICES are roughly comparable to the United States. The best value will be found on the mainland at the larger discount stores—Lidl, Metro and Konzum. For a midweek provisioning on the islands, most towns also have a small grocery store or two. MANY CAFES & BARS HAVE WI-FI and play as-you-go SIM cards are inexpensive and easy to find. Our Moorings charter boat had Wi-Fi onboard, including limited data, with the option to purchase more on board. This made it easy to checkmeteo.hr, Croatia’s best weather website. THE MOORINGS in Croatia operates…

On a recent voyage I used Weather 4D to view National Weather Service (NWS)Global Forecast System (GFS) weather prediction data, commonly distributed as GRIB files. Of the myriad apps that can be used to display GRIB files, I found Weather 4D to bathe most useful way to download and review NOAA’s GFS model GRIB data over cellular or Wi-Fi networks. What sets it apart is the stunning layered display of data elements and its ability to project changes over time, similar to an animated video display. This is a brilliant app that shows wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, temperature, wave height, period and direction, current speed and direction, precipitation and cloud cover. Weather 4D uses “weather zones” to define the data included in each GRIB file. This zone definition…

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? The estimate for the labor on a 45ft boat for thehullsides alone will be between 60 and 80 hours from sanding and prepping through the final coat of primer. Eighty percent of the job is preparing the boat, 20 percent is applying the finish coat. The time it will take a dedicated do-it-yourselfer to apply the finish coat will be at least double that amount. In general, most repair yards estimate the job by the foot, so the estimate for painting the hillsides from the waterline to the gunwale with the gel coat in good shape and maybe some minor crazing might be around $300 to $500 per foot from start to finish. Decks and anything from the gunwale to the coach roof may be…

I often see poor electrical installation son boats, but here is a real classic. The owner of this boat wanted to install a switch for the air-conditioning water pump, but there was no room for it on the shore power breaker panel. So, he simply attached it to the waste pipe under the galley sink. When I questioned him about this, um, unusual installation, he replied that it had been working fine for years! What’s worse, this is a 120Vbreaker and all it would take is an accidental contact with its live connections to bring your boating days to a premature end. Clearly, water and electricity do not mix, and all breakers should be correctly mounted in a suitable panel. Therapy rules on shielding are very clear: “Energized parts of…

Dick Everitt has sailed thousands of miles in various parts of the world. He has been an illustrator, journalist and engineer for more than 40 years…

This is Cali, our rescued Calico cat from Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas. Before Ike, Cali was an island cat and lived on Galveston Island. We adopted Cali as she was abandoned after the hurricane. As sailors, we are slowly introducing Cali to our sailing adventures. We bring her on most of our shorter sailing trips and overnights on the boat. The first few times she got seasick and threw up. On a recent trip down the Houston Ship channel to Galveston Island we must have tired her out. If we could read her mind, we are sure she is saying, “Are we there yet?” and “This is boring,” much the same way as our two-legged children, just a little quieter. Priceless!…

The 28th ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) finished up in St. Lucia in mid December, and a stroll around the docks at the IGY Rodney Bay Marina yielded some interesting sights. Not least among them was the number of general-purpose production cruisers that weren’t specifically built or marketed as ocean boats, but are obviously well capable of transiting the Atlantic in good time and in good shape. Many—but by no means all—of these boats had been owner-modified in one way or another, and the nature of the mods was interesting. Most of the rigs looked standard, although some owners had added removable inner forestays for heavy-weather headsails. The most obvious differences showed up in the cockpit area, where extra gear deemed important for extended cruising— davits, solar panels, assorted antennae,…

Many of sailing’s great names have won the Melges 32 World Championship, but until now these wins were always one-offs. Jason Carroll, 37, of New York City, grew up sailing on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake before matriculating at Harvard, where he sailed Larks and Interclubs. Next came Vanguard 15s, which he raced while he built Hudson River Trading, a quantitative trading firm he co-founded. Carroll entered the Melges 32 class in 2007 with some college sailing friends and slowly improved the team’s performance. Come 2011, Carroll’s Argo program was a serious blend of Corinthian and professional talent, including tactician Cameron Appleton. The team won the Melges 32 Worlds in 2013, and then, in December 2014, Argo stunned the racing community by repeating. We caught up with Carroll to…

The San Juan Islands area part of the San Juan Archipelago in the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington state. You could spend a lifetime exploring the 450 islands, most of which are uninhabited, but on weeklong charter with these five highlights on the itinerary, I’ve found I can’t miss. To set the mood, start with Friday Harbor on San Juan Island (23nautical miles from charter bases in Anacortes) where friendly staff at the marina will find you a spot even if it means being side-tied three deep. Walk up to town with its variety of great restaurants, bars, and art galleries. Friday Harbor has a true Pacific Northwest vibe with live music pouring out of coffee houses and culture that is obviously tied to the water. It’s also…

To the uninitiated, chartering boat in southern New England doesn’t have anywhere near the same romantic appeal as, say, sailing in the Caribbean. But once you’ve bitten the proverbial bullet and booked boat there anytime between late May and the end of September, you’ll know why the local sailors love these waters so much. Thesis the beginning of one of the country’s—no, the world’s—great cruising grounds, stretching from the tip of Long Island Sound althea way up the Maine coast to the Bay of Fundy. Leaving Maine out of the equation this time around, your only problem will be narrowing down the area you want to visit. Since bareboat charter companies are concentrated south of Cape Cod that decision is kind of made for you. I say “kind of ”…

I have over 20 trips on the ICW to my credit, but I never imagined that I would be leading a fleet of sailboats, 18 of them in fact, Southdown the Ditch. But there they were, heading out from Hampton, Virginia, everything from a Macgregor 26 to a charter catamaran tan Irwin 44, each of them carrying every sort of crew, plus a couple of kids and no fewer than seven dogs—and two cats. All of this came about as the result of a discussion between Sail’s editor-in-chief Peter Nielsen and myself, plus two years of planning and work by the SAIL staff. Nothing like this had been done before, sowed had nothing to guide us and no real idea of how it would work out. What were we thinking?…

Refurbishing a deck is very different from the hillsides. First, there is the labor required to get all the deck hardware removed or taped off. Even more taping is involved around the non-skid areas. Cracking around cleats, stanchions and chain plates will also need tube repaired, and if the bedding compound is old and cracked, there may be rot that will need tube repaired before refitting the hardware. You may be able to save some of the yard cost by removing the hardware yourself. My advice here is to not only to take a lot of pictures, but draw a map and label where everything goes. Check with whatever yard is doing the worktop makes sure this will, in fact, save you some money. Some yards use this procedure as…

BAD PLUG? Q: Do marine electronic plugs just go bad on their own? I have a GPS chart plotter that sometimes go off intermittently until I reach backend wiggle a certain multi-pin plug connection. Is this common? Gene Ballard, Chicago, Il GORDON WEST REPLIES This is common if you leave your electronics on board during the winter. The tiny pins in the plugs may develop residue if not exercised at least once a year. How do you exercise them? With your equipment turned off and no DC voltage passing through them, plug and unplug each connection10 times. This will help clean the connections, and you should be good to go for another year. Each manufacturer has its own favorite type of contact pin spray cleaner, so before you spray the…

KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS The January SAIL Spotlight “Singing Sea Shanties” reminded me of one Sunday morning about three years ago. The whole family was in the car, when suddenly from the backseat our then nine-year-old son surprised us by belting out his rendition of “What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor.” I was very grateful the laser beams shooting at me from my wife’s eyes weren’t lethal! Cincinnati, OH, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com…

Looks can be deceiving on the Chesapeake. It’s a body of water than can be both intimate and absolutely enormous all at the same time: a cruising ground where you can enjoy first-class meal one night and rough it on the hook the next, without ever having to sail more than a few miles. It’s the kind of place that will continue to surprise even the saltiest of sailors after a lifetime of exploration. Integral to any Chesapeake charter is the bay’s deeply crenulated shoreline. Countless bays and creeks provide literally hundreds of anchorages large and small, motto mention the raison d’être forth dozens of shore side communities—also both large and small—that play such an important role in the life of the bay. Ground zero for chartering and sailing in…

During our seven-week odyssey, the Snowbird Rally stopped in many marinas, anchorages, towns and cities. Here’s a quick look at a few of them, in no particular order. FERNANDINA BEACH—the first stop in Florida and the first really warm weather of our Rally. Des pitea somewhat industrial water front, the downtown is lovely, with many great pubs and restaurants. The Rallyers found all of them I believe. Well worth spending time here, as unlike further south, the town isn’t overrun with tourists. PECK LAKE—a gorgeous, quiet anchorage just a short distance south of the St. Lucie inlet and a few steps over the dunes to the Atlantic beaches. Well worth spending a few days for some chillaxin’ after a long haul to get here. You can hear the ocean at…

30ft sailboat waterline to gunwale will approximately require: ⌖ 1½ Gallons of Primer ⌖ 2–3 Gallons of High Build Primer ⌖ Fairing compound as needed SUPPLY LIST ⌖ High Build Primer $100–$125 per mixed gal ⌖ Fairing Compound $110–$125 per mixed gal ⌖ Finish Primer $100–$125 per mixed gal ⌖ Thinners for the above $40–$70 per gal ⌖ 1-Part Primers $30/qt–$90/gal ⌖ Thinners for the above $12/qt–$42/gal SAFETY EQUIPMENT ⌖ Tyvek Suits $6–$12 ⌖ Gloves $12/box ⌖ Respirators $14–$400 45ft sailboat waterline to gunwale will approximately require: ⌖ 4 Gallons of Primer ⌖ 5–6 Gallons of High Build Primer ⌖ Fairing compound as needed Painting Supplies ⌖ Sandpaper ⌖ Masking tape ($6–$30 per roll) ⌖ Mixing pails ⌖ Stirring sticks ⌖ Wipe down rags ⌖ Tack cloths ⌖ Paint strainers…

European builders caught on early to the anchoring needs of cruisers, but one issue with older U.S.-built sailboats is the lack of dedicated anchoring systems. Right up until the 1980s, and income cases later, many otherwise functional and well-thought-out boats appeared with either no bow rollers or ones that were so undersized as to be useless. This leads to problems for many sailors who snap up such older boats, often at bargainbasementprices, and are then faced with upgrading the anchoring setup or settling for a second-best solution, i.e. leaving it as is. Often, the best solution is to have a stainless steel extension fabricated to hold one or two anchors and perhaps a tack point for an A-sail. Even then, because of the pulpit and its mounting points, it can…