Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Long a top honeymoon destination, St. Lucia has lots to love for all visitors. Its lush, natural beauty, rich history and culture, delectable food scene and welcoming atmosphere beckon cruisers to drop anchor and linger awhile in this lovely and laid-back Caribbean port of call.

The Pitons

The twin peaks of the Pitons are the beloved symbol of St. Lucia and the island’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site. Formed 30 million to 40 million years ago by a volcanic eruption, these iconic peaks are now blanketed with a lush tropical forest that’s home to 27 bird species and many rare plants. The shorter, steeper Petit Piton (2,438 feet) is a realm for professional climbers only. But the taller Gros Piton (2,619 feet) is popular for its guided day hikes.

Castries Central Market

Replenish your provisions at the colorful Castries Central Market, opened in the heart of St. Lucia’s capital in 1891. The produce and spice vendors are considered the highlights among the 100 stalls, but you’ll also find handicrafts and souvenirs. It’s busiest on Friday and Saturday mornings, and closed on Sundays.

Diamond Falls Botanic Garden and Mineral Baths

This 6-acre retreat checks all the boxes for a relaxing afternoon. Hummingbirds flit between the hibiscus, heliconia and other beautiful tropical blooms filling the flower gardens. Stroll along the winding path to the 55-foot-tall Diamond Falls, its surrounding rock face a kaleidoscope of colors. And, naturally, follow in the centuries-old tradition and take to the therapeutic mineral waters, choosing between a public or private soak. Guided tours are available, but this is a place where a leisurely wander can be equally rewarding.

Pigeon Island National Landmark

Once the lair of a 16th-century French pirate nicknamed Wooden Leg, Pigeon Island now attracts a variety of visitors for far more legitimate reasons. The trails crisscrossing this 44-acre national landmark off St. Lucia’s northwest tip lead up to the remnants of Fort Rodney, an 18th-century British garrison, as well as to the museum and interpretive center, which provides context for the island’s ecological and historical significance. The island’s two small, calm beaches are considered among the top beaches on St. Lucia and are popular picnicking spots. (A pub and a restaurant are on-site too.) The island is at its liveliest every May when it welcomes music lovers from around the world for the wildly popular St. Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival.

Big Chef Steakhouse

For an indulgent dinner out on St. Lucia, reserve a table at Big Chef Steakhouse in Rodney Bay Village. Since 2007, chef Rosie Joinville and her husband, Marc, the manager, have served up mouthwatering steaks and seafood, wickedly rich desserts, and well-curated cocktail and wine selections.  

The post Cruising Stunning St. Lucia appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Summertime belongs to boaters. Whether it’s on America’s coasts or all along the inland lakes and rivers, boaters spend more days out on the water during the summer months than at any other time of year. And pretty much everywhere a hook can be dropped or a line can be tied off, there’s a festival, a rendezvous or another type of event for boaters to enjoy.

One of the most perennially popular summer experiences for boaters is the Newport Jazz Festival, held each August in Rhode Island. Boaters can avoid the crowds by anchoring out and listening to the music as it wafts across the water. The best seats in the house are on deck in the sunshine and fresh air. This year’s lineup of artists (as with most years) includes a who’s who of musicians, with Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall and Jon Batiste all scheduled to perform.

Another must-do event for boaters is the Fourth of July holiday. There’s nothing quite like witnessing the glow of fireworks from a boat, whether it’s in Boston Harbor, New York Harbor, San Francisco Bay or somewhere else. While everyone ashore is looking up at the show in the sky, boaters can experience the broader view that also includes the city lights and all the reflections dancing across the water—again, often while avoiding a lot of the crowds. And boaters have no need to scramble for a place in line at a barbecue joint on July Fourth. Boats with onboard grills are already set up with everything required for a grand-scale waterfront cookout of burgers, hot dogs, fish and whatever else the folks on board want for the holiday feast.

Yet another rite of passage each summer is the rendezvous, which comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Boaters can organize a rendezvous at a marina, in a harbor, on a sandbar—anywhere there’s a spot for lots of boats to gather. These events showcase the camaraderie that exists among like-minded boaters, whether they’re owners of the same brand of boat or the same style of boat, or are people with similar cruising aspirations.

MarineMax locations host rendezvous known as Aquapalooza at various spots around the country each year, with live music, giveaways of keepsake items such as T-shirts, and other kinds of fun. This year’s Aquapalooza event in Boston is scheduled for July 15. It will take place in Perry Cove off Peddocks Island, which is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.

Marine museums are another great location for boaters to gather in the summertime, with festivals and exhibitions that are specific to the maritime community. In August, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels hosts Watermen’s Appreciation Day, which is a celebration of the heritage of people who have worked on boats in the region for generations. The event includes a “watermen’s rodeo” boat-docking contest, along with live music, steamed local crabs and other family-friendly fun.

Attendance at this festival can be combined with a look at the museum’s exhibits and floating fleet, which includes classic power and sail vessels such as a 1912 Delaware River tug, a 1909 crab dredger and an 1889 bugeye that is registered as a National Historic Landmark. Members of the museum can dock at its marina, including overnight stays with a reservation that’s made in advance.

Up the East Coast a ways is the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, another of the nation’s best keepers of nautical heritage. In August, this museum hosts the Antique Marine Engine Expo, which is celebrating its 30th year this summer. This expo typically includes more than 300 exhibits, with many of the engines still able to operate just as well as they did on the day they were first purchased. Anyone who enjoys getting their hands dirty in a boat’s engine room can find all kinds of marine machinery here, including steamers, inboards, outboards and more. This expo is a good reminder of just how much easier today’s boaters have it down below, compared with boats of the past.

As interesting as all these getaway ideas are, they’re just a handful of the many waterfront festivals and events that boaters can attend with family and friends this summer. Untie the lines and go. So many memories await.

The post Summertime Boating Fun appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Trinidad and Tobago reward cruisers with far more than merely beautiful beaches. While best known for the Carnival celebration, these twin isles tempt travelers ashore year-round with awe-inspiring architecture, bountiful biodiversity, and memorable mouthwatering meals. Continue reading to learn more about our favorite destinations in Trinidad and Tobago.

This article was adapted from our Island Icon Series in the June 2023 Edition of Yachting Magazine.

1. Magnificent Seven

The 260-acre Queen’s Park Savannah is the nexus of social and cultural events in Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain, particularly during its internationally renowned Carnival and steel-pan festivals. But any time of year, visitors can take a stroll along its western edge to take in the Magnificent Seven. This architectural sampler of resplendent early 20th-century mansions fully lives up to its moniker.

Castle Killarney—also known as Stollmeyer’s Castle—was the first to arise on the block, its design inspired by Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The Palladian-style Whitehall takes its name from the gleaming coral used in its construction. The Archbishop’s Palace melds Indian Empire design with red granite and marble brought over from Ireland. Intricate iron railings adorn the elaborate Roomor, while stonework stands out on the French Colonial-style Hayes Court. A 93-foot-tall clock tower dominates the German Renaissance design of the Queen’s Royal College. The elegant French Provincial Mille Fleurs was originally built as a gift for Port of Spain’s mayor and still stands as a gift that keeps giving to all who pass by.

2. Maracas Beach

The 1.25-mile crescent-shaped Maracas Beach on Trinidad’s north coast is as much a destination for its natural beauty as for its “bake and shark” vendors. This classic street food wraps shark meat in fried flatbread and slathers it with condiments of your choosing.

3. Asa Wright Nature Centre

Trinidad’s remarkable biodiversity is on full display in the Asa Wright Nature Centre in the Arima Valley. Schedule a tour to this 1,200-plus-acre preserve, where more than 600 butterfly species flit among the more than 2,000 varieties of flowering plants. The center’s 400-plus species of birds draw in enthusiasts eager to spot tanagers, toucans, colorful motmots and the elusive oilbird.

4. Veni Mangé

For a culinary and visual feast, dine at Veni Mangé in Port of Spain. Opened in 1980 by a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and her sister, this bustling, art-filled restaurant sets the standard for authentic West Indian fare on the island. It’s best known for its rendition of callaloo, Trinidad’s national dish, as well as oxtail.

5. Fort King George

If you’re spending time on Tobago, see the restored 18th-century colonial buildings and beautiful vistas at Fort King George, overlooking Scarborough and Rockly Bay. The officers’ quarters house the Tobago Museum and its collection of Amerindian artifacts, 17th-century maps and military relics.

Other Island Hopping Tips:

• Best Places to Unwind on Bahamas’ Harbour Island
• Things to Do and See on Catalina Island
• 3 Unique Things to Do in BVI

The post 5 Places to See When Cruising Trinidad and Tobago appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

The southwesterly breeze had filled in nicely, and perhaps with a tad more punch than I would’ve hoped for; in my slip off Buttonwood Cove on Florida’s Gulf Coast isle of Longboat Key, the prevailing beam-on winds had me pinned tightly against the pilings. As I scratched my chin and contemplated exactly how I might extricate myself from the dock, it occurred to me that this might not be such a great day to go sailing.

It was a fleeting thought. I’d had this February afternoon marked off on the calendar for a couple of weeks, at least. It would be my very first sail, under my own command, since I’d purchased my classic old Pearson 356, August West, the previous spring. I was going sailing.

I’d recruited my old mate Dan Spurr as crew, which was appropriate since I’d bought the boat from his son, Steve. Dan had logged plenty of miles on the vessel, and, for that matter, so had I, but never as its skipper. So, my mouth was a bit dry as we tossed off the dock lines and I backed into the cove. The Pearson is a notoriously poor performer in reverse, and there are many obstacles in my marina, specifically sandbars and tightly spaced vessels. But August West backed out like a champ—a happy omen, I thought.

It’s a fairly long motor out a narrow, winding cut into the deeper sections of Sarasota Bay where we could hoist sail and maneuver freely. That time gave me the opportunity to realize it was a whole lot breezier in the open waters than it had been in my protected slip.

Hmmm. Was this still a good idea? Too late. The die was cast.

I swapped the helm with Dan and went forward to raise the mainsail, which is when I remembered I’d not yet addressed the rather fundamental matter of running the reef lines on the quite powerful, full-battened main. And it certainly wasn’t going to happen now. A full-hoist mainsail it would be.

Sarasota Bay was choppy and flecked with whitecaps—“sporty” and “dramatic” were words that popped to mind—and I guessed it was blowing 16 to 18 knots, with gusts in the low 20s. Well, at least we needn’t worry about being becalmed. And while there wasn’t much I could do about the main, with my furling headsail, at least I could unroll just a scrap of it to keep things tamed and civilized.

We hardened up on the breeze and threw in a series of southbound tacks, which carried us past the mansions and museum of the late John Ringling, the circus entrepreneur who is synonymous with Sarasota, and onward to the city’s skyline. With boat speeds steady in the high-6-knot range—not bad for a beast built in 1977 with a 17,000-pound displacement—it dawned on me that we were having a cracking great sail. The helm was light and easy, the motion downright pleasant. “The boat has no bad habits,” Dan said, and he was right.

Near the city front, we turned and eased sheets for a fast reach back toward Buttonwood, notching a nifty 7 knots at times.

Once the sails were doused and furled, perhaps prophetically, I missed a channel marker on the way back to the marina and squished into a sandbank. Being a good friend, Dan just laughed. “You’re officially a Florida sailor now,” he said. “Everyone goes aground. No worries. It’s just sand.” It took a bit of wrangling to get off, which we accomplished after I unfurled the jib again, and we were able to sail back into deep water. Lucky should be my middle name.

And just like that, we were back in my slip, safe and secure, where we cracked one cold beer and then another. True, August West has no bad habits. But me? That’s another story.

The post First Sail on a New Boat appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Pat Healey, the president and CEO of Viking Yachts, minces no words about the situation facing owners of boats 35 feet and longer: “If this would go into effect, it shuts down boating on the whole East Coast from November 1 to anywhere from the middle of April to the end of May.”

He’s talking about a proposal from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would impose a 10-knot speed limit along much of the coast for much of the year, as a way to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. The highly controversial proposal has drawn the ire of recreational boating and fishing groups, which say the idea poses an existential threat to all recreational boaters.

Since the rule-making process began last summer, Healey and others have been trying to sound the alarm, as well as come up with a solution. Now, he says, they think they have one the government might like: a task force called Whale and Vessel Safety, or WAVES.

“Our objective is to go to NOAA and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to develop a way to track the whales: tagging them,’” Healey says.

The idea is to take the same technology already used to tag and track marlin, tuna and other species, and now apply it to whales—in a way that lets boaters see the whales on their plotters, just like they’d see an oncoming boat with an AIS signal. “You’ll be able to alter your course and avoid them,” Healey says.

The sport-fishing community has been most vocal about concerns with the government’s proposal. Madelyne Rowan, tournament director of the White Marlin Open, says about 40 percent of participating boats in that tournament are chartered. If those boats can’t operate normally the rest of the year, they’ll go out of business—along with all the tackle shops, fuel docks, marinas and other businesses that make up marine communities, ultimately affecting all kinds of boaters.

“A lot of people don’t understand the potential scope of the economic impact that this restriction will have,” she says.

Healey says it’s an uphill battle to get NOAA to listen, but he likes his odds with the task-force concept: “This is a sensible way to get all stakeholders involved, instead of having complete governmental overreach.”

What’s Likely to Happen Next?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its proposed rule on August 1. A public comment period was then held until October 31. As of this writing, NOAA was still reviewing all the comments it received. After that process is done, the agency can issue its final rule with or without changes, as early as this summer. At that point, federal legislation or lawsuits become options to try and overturn the rule.

No More Day Trips?

Sport-fishing boats like this one often zip out to the canyons and back in the same day. Their speed makes this possible. If they’re forced to slow to 10 knots, boaters say, there won’t be any time left for actual fishing.

The post Boat-Speed Restrictions May Be Coming appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Located just off the northern tip of Eleuthera, Harbour Island doesn’t have a to-do list so much as a just-be list. While cruisers can certainly go offshore fishing and snorkeling in its crystal-clear waters, the island’s Pink Sand Beach invites visitors to simply sit back and relax.

Pink Sand Beach 

This waterfront expanse is the magnet and money shot of Harbour Island. Its always-cool powder-soft sand beckons the barefoot to stroll its 3-mile stretch along the eastern, Atlantic Ocean side of Briland, as locals call their home island. The sand’s trademark pale-pink hue, which stems from the pinkish-red shells of a single-celled organism called foraminifera, has landed the beach in countless social-media snaps as well as on several “best beaches in the world” lists.

Queen Conch

To riff on Bubba’s shrimp rhapsody in the movie Forrest Gump, Queen Conch is renowned for serving up this mighty mollusk in a multitude of delicious freshly prepared dishes: conch fritters, cracked conch fries, conch pasta, conch ceviche and, especially, its house specialty, conch salad, which often runs out before the dinner crowd. Customers from all over pull up a chair on the restaurant’s colorful open-air patio and pair the restaurant’s fare with great harbor views and a Goombay Smash, the official drink of the Bahamas, or a bottle of Kalik, a popular Bahamian lager.

Dunmore Town

Rent a golf cart, and explore the bougainvillea-lined streets of Dunmore Town, one of the oldest settlements in the Bahamas and the only town on Harbour Island. Its Georgian architecture, upscale boutiques and jet-set clientele draw comparisons between Harbour Island and Nantucket, Massachusetts. Start your morning at Arthur’s Bakery & Café to sample its jalapeño cheese bread and doughnuts, among other temptations. Stop in and browse at The Sugar Mill, the treasure trove of a boutique co-owned by India Hicks, the British designer, relative of the royal family and longtime resident who is the celebrity face of Harbour Island. Her book Island Style captures not only Hicks’ own design aesthetic—a combination of carefree Caribbean culture and British colonial formality—but also the overall Briland vibe. For dinner, there’s no shortage of refined restaurants. At The Landing, pair a bottle from its Wine Spectator-lauded list with contemporary seafood dishes. Or, at The Dunmore, enjoy “beach chic” and Caribbean-influenced seafood surrounded by vintage photographs in the clubhouse or with the gorgeous views on the patio.

The post Unwind on the Bahamas’ Harbour Island appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Two weeks before Christmas, when most Americans were ready to relax with friends and family, the U.S. Coast Guard command center sprang into urgent action. The 30-foot Catalina Atrevida II was not where it was supposed to be. Sixty-four-year-old Kevin Hyde, 76-year-old Joe DiTomasso and his dog Minnie had left Cape May, New Jersey, on November 27 for a cruise to Marathon, Florida. For a while, everything went fine. According to news reports, DiTomasso was known for losing his phone, so his family didn’t worry after the men left North Carolina on December 3 and then went silent.

But by December 11, that quiet was deafening. The US Coast Guard Fifth District Command Center in the mid-Atlantic was notified. Rescuers immediately issued urgent alerts and reached out to commercial vessels in the search area. Multiple aircraft and cutters were launched; vessels from the US Navy’s Second Fleet started searching.

By the time a tanker crew spotted the Atrevida II more than 200 miles off the Delaware coast, 10 days had passed. The boat was dismasted. The men were exhausted. They had no fuel or power. All their radios and navigation equipment were dead.

What likely saved their lives was the fact that they were waving a green flag—pretty much their only remaining option.

The Human Factor

Kevin Ferrie knows stories like this one all too well. He’s a retired US Coast Guard commander who now serves as a civilian with the US Coast Guard Office of Auxiliary Boating & Safety.

“The majority of accidents that are in our database—the root cause is human factors. Somebody did something or made a poor judgment call,” he says.

Ferrie knows what’s behind those statistics on a level that most boaters never will. He also provides shore-side support for the annual Salty Dawg regattas that guide groups of sailors down the East Coast to the Caribbean and back. And he’s a long-distance cruiser himself, having sailed from Maine to the Caribbean aboard a 45-foot Jeanneau with his wife, their four kids and a pair of Labrador retrievers. He once found himself in a situation where his autopilot broke, and he needed to use an Iridium Go! as well as a Garmin inReach to communicate with shore-side help. He didn’t need 10 days to start losing his mind; disorientation from trying to fix the autopilot hit him in a day and a half.

“It was in the lazarette. I had to pull out all this gear to get to it and contort my body in all kinds of ways,” he says. “Off and on, it took me like 36 hours to fix it, including communicating offshore and waiting for responses. I was exhausted.”

All his experiences have taught him one overarching lesson about offshore cruising: Preparation is key. “The minimum federal safety standards are important: You need your life jackets, your distress signals, your VHF radio,” he says. “But that’s really baseline. If you’re heading offshore, it’s not enough.” 

Communications

In terms of offshore preparation, communications technology that lets boaters summon help includes everything from cellphones and VHF radios to personal locator beacons and EPIRBs. Having as many types of communication as possible available is key, he says, because, in a lot of cases, simply being able to call for instructions or help can stop a bad situation from escalating into a dangerous one.

One recent example he encountered was with a vessel that lost its rudder this past fall off the East Coast. The husband and wife who were aboard set off their EPIRB and used their Garmin inReach to communicate with the Coast Guard and shore-side support.

What the couple initially feared was an emergency became a solvable problem because they were able to communicate, and because they knew other people were keeping track of them.

“At first, they were like, ‘Oh, my God,’ and we had to help them get through that mental problem,” Ferrie says. “Ultimately, they ended up with the Coast Guard arriving on scene and towing them in. But with help, they were able to make way toward the coast and rendezvous for help. They had the communication devices and the spares. They needed somebody to say, ‘It’s OK. You’re prepared for this.’” 

The Float Plan

Next on Ferrie’s list of important preparations for offshore cruising is filing a float plan. The US Coast Guard has a float-plan form online—for free—that boaters can download, fill out and leave with a responsible person ashore. It includes details such as the boat’s make and model, and the types of communication devices on board, and details about where the boaters expect to be, and when—all information that rescuers will need if the boat doesn’t show up where it should be.

In the case of the Atrevida II, family realizing the boat was overdue was a key component in the search efforts. That information is the essence of what makes filing a float plan such an important step in the offshore-cruising process. A float plan can sometimes be a boater’s only way to “signal” for help if an onboard emergency develops quickly.

“In a fast situation, the float plan is incredibly important because you may not even have time to make the mayday call,” Ferrie says. “Fire can happen really quickly on a boat. It can block access to everything except your way overboard.” 

Shore-Side Support

Having designated shore-side support people is different from filing a float plan. With shore-side support, a boater has volunteers or paid professionals helping to keep an eye on their course and anything happening around them, including developing weather systems.

“It’s more of an active person that’s watching out for your best interests,” Ferrie says. “With shore-side support, they’d be proactive and reach out to you. They’d say, ‘Hey, did you know this? Are you watching the weather? This is what I’m seeing heading your way in 12 hours.’”

Having shore-side support in place keeps everyone’s mind at ease both on the boat and ashore, he adds. During the Salty Dawg rallies, boaters are required to check in with the shore-side support teams at fixed intervals. Everybody involved knows that as the boats are making their way down the Atlantic coast, a failure to check in means something has gone wrong. For a boater having an emergency offshore with no other way to communicate, simply knowing that shore-side support people will take action can make all the difference between staying calm and panicking, which makes the onboard situation worse.

Safety Gear

Buying a bunch of top-notch safety gear and loading it onto the boat is not enough, Ferrie says. All the gear in the world won’t do a boater any good if he doesn’t know how to use it. “If you just buy a life raft, but you don’t know how to deploy it or what’s in it, that’s bad money spent,” he says.

Life jackets are a hugely important safety-gear requirement. According to the US Coast Guard’s most recent boating-accident data, 81 percent of fatal boating accidents involved people drowning, and some 83 percent of those victims were not wearing life jackets.

“Offshore, you should always wear a life jacket, and, with the inflatable designs, there’s no excuse about comfort anymore,” Ferrie says, adding that for sailors, “you also should always be attached to the boat. Run jacklines from the stern to the bow and clip your life jacket into them.”

He also thinks of communication devices as a form of safety gear, if boaters understand what each device on board can, and cannot, do.

“A personal locator beacon is basically an EPIRB for a person,” Ferrie says. “It will alert the authorities that there’s an emergency. But there’s also an AIS MOB beacon that alarms any boats in the area with AIS and gives them the position. So if you went overboard at night and the crew were sleeping, a personal locator beacon would not alert the crew, but an AIS MOB would wake them up.”

As for life rafts, they’re not required for offshore passages, but Ferrie highly recommends having one on board. He urges boaters to take advantage of the opportunities that come with every life raft’s required service intervals, which are a great time to learn how that particular piece of safety gear works.

“If your life raft is due for a service, talk to the service company, and be there when they open your raft,” he says. “Examine the raft. Visit the facility, and understand what rations come in the raft. Do you need more emergency rations? A ditch bag? You need to prepare that, and it depends on where you’re sailing. A coastal hop down the East Coast of the US is a lot different from a 30-day passage to the South Pacific. You have to think about how long it might take for people to find you.” 

Spare Parts

When Ferrie thinks about spares, his mind takes him to places well beyond parts and tools. Yes, those things are important, but he thinks about spare everything—including food, water and fuel—because in an extended emergency, a boater may need more than a 10 percent reserve of all three.

Carrying extra water is a must, he adds, because human beings can survive without food for a while, but not without water.

“Water tanks offshore can get contaminated in rough weather if you have saltwater intrusion,” he says. “Don’t count on being able to make water in a rough sea state. Have some water in five-gallon jugs.”

Many decisions about which spare parts and tools to stow boil down to the individual vessel and what its critical points of failure could be. “A lot of it’s in steering gear, the halyards if you’re sailing, fuel filters. If it’s rough, you may stir up sediment in your tank, and if you do that, you’ll have clogged filters,” Ferrie says. “You need to know how to fix that and have the critical spares on board.”  

Crew Endurance

Having enough crew so that everyone can be focused on-watch and resting off-watch is also “a huge one” that Ferrie thinks about in terms of preparations. If whoever is at the helm is exhausted when something goes wrong, the odds skyrocket of a solvable problem getting worse.

“There’s a saying: People typically break before the boats do,” he says. “At some point in a heightened-stress situation, it becomes a mental game.”

He adds that boaters should never, ever get themselves into a situation where they will feel forced to arrive at or depart from a certain location on a specific day or at a specific time, for any reason.

“You need to understand the weather,” he adds. “There’s a saying in cruising: If you have visitors coming, you can pick the location or the time, but you can’t pick both. When you’re forced into a schedule, you tend to make poor decisions. You feel like, ‘I have to get to this island because my mom’s going to arrive.’ Be patient, and wait for the weather window that suits your skills and ability and your boat.” 

Take Classes

Another key piece of advice is to  take boater-education courses. Many people wrongly assume that only beginners need classes; in fact, every page of this article includes a sidebar about advanced classes available for powerboaters and sailors alike. Classes can be taken nationwide, not only for offshore route-planning and passagemaking, but also for gaining a detailed understanding of how communication devices and mechanical systems work.

Everything a boat owner learns in those classes can be passed along to other crew members, including those who join a passage only for a short leg at a time.

“Think through possible worst-case scenarios and how you would respond to them,” Ferrie says. “Do that as an exercise with your crew. What would you do in a man-overboard situation? Do they know to stop and stare and point at the person?”

Yes, simply being able to keep eyes on a boater in trouble can sometimes make all the difference, as it did for the Atrevida II. After the tanker crew spotted the sailboat’s waving green flag, both the men and Minnie the dog were able to get aboard the tanker and hitch a ride back to New York. The men were exhausted and beaten up from the weather. They were taken to a hospital for observation to make sure they didn’t have hypothermia. One described his legs as feeling like rubber from trying to stay upright for so long.

But they both lived to tell their tale, just like the more than 75,000 people the Coast Guard Office of Auxiliary Boating & Safety has saved during the decades since its inception. And in a bad situation, that’s the statistic any offshore boater ultimately wants to be.

Learn the Basics

America’s Boating Club (previously known as the US Power Squadrons) offers an entry-level course for beginners who want to learn the basics of everything from navigation to safety equipment. This course also meets most states’ boater-safety education requirements.

Add New Skills

Boaters who complete the America’s Boating Club basic class can move on to higher-level courses. One course focuses on offshore navigation, with lessons in things like celestial navigation as a backup in case GPS equipment fails beyond the sight of land (and landmarks that can be used to navigate back home). This course also covers ways to set offshore navigational routines.

Cruise Planning

Another class that America’s Boating Club offers is focused on cruise planning. It covers how to plan a longer-term itinerary, as well as equipment the boater may need, key safety gear, crew training, communications, dealing with weather, handling emergencies and tips for cruising outside the United States.

Teaching the Tech

Yet another class that America’s Boating Club offers focuses exclusively on marine communication systems. It helps students understand the differences between VHF radio, the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, radiotelephones, long-range communication systems and other technology that can help keep offshore boaters in contact with civilization.

For Sailors

The American Sailing Association has more than 300 schools across the United States as well as locations in other countries. After passing the basic keelboat sailing class, boaters can advance to basic coastal cruising, which teaches lessons focused on operating a boat during the daytime with wind conditions up to 20 knots.

Advanced Sailing

Upper-level classes from the American Sailing Association include advanced coastal cruising and offshore passagemaking. The passagemaking class is designed for boaters who want to sail extended offshore itineraries that will require celestial navigation. Sail repair, offshore first aid, abandon-ship protocols and other skills are also part of this course.

It All Comes Down To Preparation

“The minimum federal safety standards are important: You need your life jackets, your distress signals, your VHF radio. But that’s really baseline. If you’re heading offshore, it’s not enough.”

Basic Problems To Avoid

According to US Coast Guard accident data, top problems include operator inattention, improper lookout and excessive speed.

Main Types Of Boating Accidents

The US Coast Guard’s top five are collisions with other boats, collisions with fixed objects, flooding/swamping, grounding and falls overboard.

Watch The Weather

The US Coast Guard’s top 10 factors contributing to accidents include weather, which killed 30 people in the most-recent-year statistics available.

Being Offshore Is Different

The US Coast Guard’s most recent data shows that more boating accidents happen offshore in the Atlantic Ocean than in any single state. 

The post Offshore-Cruising Safety Tips appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

About halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, the city of Anacortes, Washington, stands as a terrific jumping-off point for some of the best cruising in the Pacific Northwest. And it’s not just geography that makes Anacortes a great stopover; it’s also the region’s marine services, which offer just about everything.

More than two dozen boatyards and service centers are here or close by, focused on electrical systems, carpentry, re-powers and more. Gig Harbor Marina & Boatyard handles gelcoat repair, plumbing, mast rigging and other needs. Over at CSR Marine, boaters can find a pair of 70-ton Travelifts for haul-outs of boats as big as 80 feet length overall. Lighthouse Marine has outboard engines in stock for yachtsmen whose tenders need a boost. Others offer upholstery repair, paint jobs, prop work and additional specialty services.

One reason there’s so much dedicated marine knowledge here is that Anacortes has a busy marine terminal. Recreational boaters should be prepared to see—and steer clear of—shipping and ferry traffic in these waterways.

But just beyond the main routes, there are beautiful spots to explore, including the San Juan Islands. They’re about 20 miles away as the crow flies, making them accessible for day cruises as well as longer itineraries. Yachtsmen have long loved the San Juans for their scenic beauty, with occasional whale sightings, great hiking trails and memorable views of Mount Baker.

But don’t give Anacortes itself the short shrift; the historic downtown has buildings that date to the 19th century. One that sells marine supplies today used to house an eclectic mix of groceries, cigars and shooting galleries. Some of the restaurants are worth a stop too, for a sit-down meal or for takeout. The menu at Adrift includes burgers made with locally sourced cod, salmon or oysters, just in case you get skunked out on the boat trying to catch your own fish.

Check Out More: Yacht Towns

Cap Sante

This marina is within walking distance of historic downtown Anacortes. Amenities for boaters include free wi-fi, along with showers, laundry, pump-out and loaner bicycles. A dog park is across the street. The on-site restaurant is Anthony’s, which serves lunch, dinner and a Sunday brunch featuring smoked salmon scrambled eggs.

City History

Anacortes is named for Anne Curtis Bowman, whose husband, Amos, was a railroad surveyor who founded the town in 1879. Fishing was a mainstay of the economy from the start, with the town eventually growing into a city whose nickname was the Salmon Canning Capital of the World. Steamships and launches known as the Mosquito Fleet helped people get around Puget Sound in the days when water travel was preferable to traveling by road. Today, the most frequently visited destination for many visitors is the Washington State Ferries terminal, which provides access to several of the islands in the San Juans as well as to British Columbia.

The post Escape to Anacortes, Washington appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

The voyage was a ludicrous proposition from the outset, and, in retrospect, there was only one way it could’ve ended: tragically. In July 1991, a well-known and controversial cruising sailor named Peter Tangvald set sail from the Spanish Virgin Island of Culebra southbound for Bonaire, ostensibly to safely negotiate the onset of hurricane season. Joining Tangvald aboard his engineless 50-foot cutter was his 7-year-old daughter, Carmen, but the kooky part of the enterprise was the towline to the leaky 22-foot sailboat trailing astern, commanded by his 14-year-old son, Thomas. The elder Tangvald had decreed that the boy stay aboard the smaller vessel to bail it out along the way so it wouldn’t sink beneath him. Neither boat carried a VHF radio; there was no way to communicate beyond waving and hollering.

Four days into the trip, on a dark night off the windward reefs of Bonaire, Thomas came on deck just in time to watch in horror as his father’s boat careened into the shallows along the surf line. He was barely able to scramble onto his surfboard before his own craft crashed into splinters. Neither his dad nor his sister survived the wreck, but, after six hours, Thomas made it ashore.

All of this is the opening scene in marine journalist Charles J. Doane’s new book, The Boy Who Fell to Shore: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Thor Tangvald. The title is a nod to the 1976 sci-fi movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is about an alien who crash-lands in New Mexico and experiences incredible success and debilitating failure. David Bowie was the film’s fall guy, just as Thomas is the protagonist in Doane’s story. Each of them suffers a similar fate.

Tragedy was nothing new to the Tangvald clan. Twice, Peter Tangvald had sailed over the horizon with young wives who never made it back, and, in the cruising community, there were loud whispers that he had plenty to do with their disappearances. Thomas was born and raised at sea, and one of the women who went missing was his mother.

Read More: Silent Running

After falling ashore himself, Thomas was whisked away by old cruising mates of his father’s, who’d been recruited for the task in the event anything happened to the elder Tangvald. Thomas was taken to the mountains of Andorra. For Thomas, who’d lived his entire life in the tropics, it was as incredible and bizarre as anything Bowie’s alien encountered in the desert. Remarkably, at least at first, he thrived. Though he had no true education whatsoever, beyond the books about science and naval architecture aboard his father’s boats that he devoured, he possessed a genius-level IQ. After two years’ worth of studies crammed into one so he could attend college in Great Britain, he enrolled at the University of Leeds to study advanced mathematics and fluid dynamics. He seemed bound for a far-different path from that of his father.

Except that, like his old man, he was always drawn back to the ocean. In the same vein, at this juncture, Doane’s narrative also returns to the sea. Many boats are involved, as are copious helpings of drugs and alcohol. Women come and go; kids are sired. In many unfortunate ways, as far as family men go, Thomas was a chip off the old block.

And yet Thomas is not unsympathetic; he’s even a compassionate character. His core values, his love and respect for nature and the islands, and his hopes and strivings are all solid. He was a hell of a seaman, that’s for sure. Which makes the disappearance that concludes this tale a mystery indeed.  

The post Lost at Sea: Thomas Tangvald’s Story appeared first on Yachting.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Yachting email newsletter. Subscribe to Yachting magazine for $39 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Not too far from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, there’s Catalina Island—a cruising oasis that provides yachtsmen an escape from the mainland, immersing visitors in all things rest and relaxation, from trying out Lady Luck to exploring the island’s wildlife.

Catalina Casino

This landmark opened in 1929. It’s an iconic legacy of the millions invested by chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. and his family to make Catalina Island the tourism destination it is today. The casino was built not for gambling but for entertainment and dancing in the world’s largest circular ballroom. The 1,184-seat Avalon Theatre in the casino’s lower level was the first designed specifically for talking pictures. Its stunning art deco murals depicting Catalina’s cultural evolution were painted by John Gabriel Beckman, whose work also graces Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

Today, visitors to Catalina Island can take a behind-the-scenes tour of the casino, watch movies in the Avalon Theatre on the weekends or time their visit to coincide with one of the galas held in the ballroom throughout the year.

Catalina Island Fox 

The Catalina Island fox, a cute 4- to 6-pound fur ball, is a tremendous conservation success story. In 1999, the canine distemper virus wiped out all but around 100 of an estimated 1,300 animals and later landed the fox on the federal endangered-species list. Thanks to an intensive campaign of vaccinations, captive breeding and population monitoring, the fox now thrives, numbering around 1,800 today. Scout out these survivors along the island’s 165 miles of hiking trails or on the naturalist-led Catalina Island Conservancy Eco Tours.

Garden to Sky Trail

The moderately challenging Garden to Sky Trail rewards hikers who tackle its steep incline with some of Catalina Island’s best views. The 2.8-mile, paved out-and-back trail starts at the Wrigley Memorial and Botanical Garden, and peaks at Divide Road, where the breathtaking panoramic views take in the coast, the Pacific Ocean and the other Channel Islands. Be sure to pack water, snacks and sunscreen, and obtain the free (but required) day-hike permit from the Catalina Island Conservancy online or from its office in Avalon.

Buffalo Milk

While on Catalina, raise a glass of the island’s buffalo milk. This mixture of crème de banana, crème de cacao, Kahlúa, vodka and half-and-half is named after bison that have resided on the island since 1924. A dozen were ferried over for the filming of The Vanishing American, one of more than 500 productions shot on the island over the years. After the crew returned to Hollywood, the bison remained and multiplied, now numbering around 150.

Tip: Two Harbors on the island’s west end offers more than 700 moorings and anchorages in more than a dozen sites.

The post Cruise to Catalina Island appeared first on Yachting.