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 Sorry you are supposed to have sirens here Didn't see one on this topic, and it is something I know enough to be at least a little dangerous about. Personal cruising / yachting / passage making is way less popular than it was. I'm going to go into a little bit of history from the first international pleasure sailor who successfully circumnavigated the globe, a few other notables, what the gently caress happened in the 70s and where we are today. From there, covered will be some posits regarding why anyone would ever want to do this, and how it can be explored as an alternative to everything and how one might do that. Maybe people have talked about sailing and specifically cruising over in TGO, but I am going to address the concept of sail boats as a unique means of travel, as opposed to day racing, "gunking", club racing, or what I generally call "wine and cheese" sailing. Just for my own non-bonefides, I have owned three sailboats, all used and from the 60s-70s. The longest single voyage I have taken was from Seattle to Baja California with a pit stop in San Francisco. I think we were over 500 miles off shore for most of it. This was for two reasons. Wave period is MUCH greater off the continental shelf which makes for a much more comfortable sail (less chop, milder swells). Also right off the continental shelf is designated commercial shipping lanes (which take at least a day to cross) and you CAN be in those, you don't want to be. Commercial ships can run you over and never know it, and a lot of debris hangs out there. So you have to get past those too. I also worked for 10 years in a senior engineering position at a large company in the yachting business and got exposed to a lot of the science in all thing sail craft. From personal dingys to stuff sold to national cup teams, russian oligarchs and Saudi royalty. My opinion is dumb and not worth the effort, but I have spend a non-zero time giving a poo poo about this stuff, so maybe I can at least whet your appetite. At the outset I'll say two quick points. 1. The youngest person to sail around the world alone is currently Laura Dekker. She was 15 when she did it. Sailing can be serious business. There is a lot to learn and to skill up to, plenty of cash one can spend on gear to help mitigate potential disasters, planning and prudent thought can help, but at the end of the day, solo or small groups on a small glass gravy boat with a sheet on top face a terrible RNG machine that is completely nihilistic. Life long professional sailors have perished in the best boats and all the high tech gear on board and the angry sea still won. On the other side, plenty of families, individuals, and inexperienced sailors sail around the world without issue, every year. 2. Sailing is one of those horrible things like eastern mysticism or music theory or even aspects of engineering. It is entirely or somewhat esoteric to a LOT of folks out there, yet there is no shortage of opinions on the thing. There are many inside sailing jokes that point out just how dumb it all is, and how many opinions are wrong and there isn't a good system in place to ferret out truth. Whether that covers what sails and by who to carry, are sea anchors a must? What is the utility of an EPURB really? Red sky at what? Rudder or Wheel? Which Boat? Time of Year? How ever many questions you can think of you will find 10x the amount of answers within a solid mile of any marina or yacht club. What is sailing? Sailing is the art science and craft of balancing turbulent forces and basic vector physics to make a thing go through water with wind. The whole of a sail boat is a means of translating mechanical energy. A stupidly over (under?)designed gear box if you will. Sailing covers a lot of ground, in terms of the various designs, applications and purposes and can be overwhelming at first. But the learning curve isn't that bad compared to other esoteric pursuits. At a minimum, you have a thing in water that floats (this part is critical) and you have some thing that is semi or non permeable to air. That thing then applies some force in some direction, so a stick that's fixed to the floaty bit which becomes a moment arm, with the moment somewhere near the attachment point of the stick and the floaty bit. Preferably, this applied moment is enough to overcome the current and drag in the water and moves to boat in some direction. The direction of travel can be changed with some flappy bit under the water. This used to be strictly an act of pushing the boat in the same or very similar direction of the wind, where as any more, the faster direction is to sail with the wind coming AT the front of the boat from +/-maybe 10 degrees from dead on due to um. Vectors I guess. From a travel perspective, sail boats are effectively have the highest power density of anything on the water. There are very very few types of water vessels that have the range that sail boats do, which, ignoring wear and tear on systems is effectively infinite, with zero fuel. That is incredible. Ocean freighters, and Naval platforms are pretty much the only two others that can match that, and you will never afford those. Its also (potentially) the greenest ways of traversing continents. I believe Gretta used one to show up to talk the the UN in NYC. It was a whole thing. In addition there are MANY places that are only accessible by sail boat. Imagine far flung atolls and archipelagos that are to impractical to access by sea plane, have no airport, and cant accommodate large vessels due to a lack of a nearby deep water harbor? You got to sail buddy. Or Kon Tiki that poo poo but yikes. One last item, while there are many weird laws every where you might make landfall, many of which may seem annoying and dumb, 12 miles off shore, there are no rules pal. Where there is international maritime law, but otherwise, go off. Bring a pillow, rip the tags off. Its hard to come up with a Great Chain of Being that neatly packages all types of sailing stuff into a nice tree, but very broadly speaking, in terms of modern sail boats, there are three main categories. Racer, Cruiser, and Cruiser/Racer. Cruiser typically means they are design for comfort and safety and the ability to make moderately difficult passages in less than ideal conditions without going full gray. Racers are just that, speed is paramount, all other things be damned. The Racers almost never have any sort of accommodations and typically go out for a half day or less. Racing is a whole different thing with arcane rules, safety issues, angry alphas and the rest. If that's your thing I encourage you to do it, but I'm not the guy to tell you anything about it. Why is sailing? Obviously a means of locomotion. The basic motion is a sum of forcers / conservation of energy problem. As hinted on previously, the modern approach is that the boat has a mass being pulled upon by gravity, buoyancy in the water exerts a normal force on the bottom of the hull. That's the down forces. The water can move (via waves, wavelets, currents) and the air can move (wind). The wind is captured by the sails. More sail area = more wind caught. The sails are fastened to one or more masts that are perpendicular to the boats deck. The wind pushes then, and (with the exception of downwind sailing - wind coming from behind +/-30 or so degrees) the mast which wants to roll the boat. So there is a force down, a force up, and a force coming from some direction translating from the wind to the sail to the mast to the boat. Then there is a rudder in the water, which is typically used for steering, but it basically deflects a large amount of water, which causes the boat to deflect left or right. Ignoring the negligible stuff like drag in the water, air resistance, phases of the moon, red tide, etc the basic sum of down, winds from the side, and ruddering in the water, ends up being forward. The magnitude of the resultant vector is the speed (minus the negligible stuff and current). This effectively means that reducing the down force, increasing the side and rudder forces gives a bigger resultant vector. Since these things are design variables, boats can now go faster into the wind than away from the wind. All the old nina pinta santamaria crap belong to a family called "square riggers" with those big square sails. They were pushed only and therefore had to rely on the prevailing winds (had to travel the Atlantic in a circle, literally could not go back the exact same way they came from because they couldnt sail up wind). History I don't know. Pirates. Vikings, Ancient Greeks, sea peoples, spice road water babies, pre-western civilization Chinese armadas, lil' Moses apparently, who knows. But the poo poo is REAL old. For the sake of this, we'll restrict it to small craft solo or small party cruising. The first person who is typically cited as completing the first solo circumnavigation (it may be apocryphal but it is pretty widely agreed upon) was Joshua Slocum who's first hand account is a joy to read in an afternoon or two called Sailing Alone Around the World. This guy was a ocean liner captain in retirement who hand made a little boat and did some real wild stuff. Very fun and short read. Jumping ahead like a hundred years or something, there was a WILD solo circumnavigation race for amateur's in the 1968 sponsored by the London SundayTimes. There is a book and I think there was a film, but the book, again, a great short read called A Voyage for Madmen. It involves adventure, intrigue, heroes, villains, madness, suicide, existential crisis...seriously give 'er a tug. That fine voyage gave the world a certain "Bernard Moitessier" who is an absolute personal hero and very much in the Camus tradition of rebelling against the absurd. He ended up penning several books (as many life long cruisers do). My favorite of which is called A Sea Vagabonds World and details how he created a life around being on the ocean alone, including what he thinks is important on ocean vessels, how to do permaculture on deserted islands and everything in between. He is a warrior poet, a true liver of life and a wonderful author. The 1968 race, headlines, and literal yacht rock actually did create a huge sailing boom in the 1970s. Canonized in cheezy popular songs that have their own XM station, sailing became a lifestyle brand of sorts that was some form of rebellion against the failings of the 1960s social movements, and those folks had a bit of cash. Some became organic hobby farmers, or went to communes. Some bought RVs, and others, decided to sail, and specifically to sail the world. This lead to a huge demand for personal water craft that could traverse oceans safely. There is a rich history of specific boats, models, designers, and ship yards around this time. Brands like Hans Christian, Tayana, Tartan, Choy Lee. Designers like Robert Perry, Bruce Roberts, Tom Colvin. And the famous Ta Shing ship yard. To this day, boats of this era are still some of the best and most tested, dependable boats you can find without shelling out a literal half a million dollars plus. This period, say 1969-1984 represents the golden age of modern sail. If and when you look for a boat, and want to do some serious business with it, DO NOT overlook certain boats of this period. They are gorgeous, comfortable, thick, sturdy and you can retrofit / repair anything on them. In this high finance reganomics days of the 1980s, the people that wanted to sail the world either did, or decided not too, but the demand itch seemed to be scratched. Ocean fairing in personal craft seemed to lose its mass appeal and production turned toward a new trend in the market. People less wanted to do ocean cruising and just wanted a Sunday cruise or an afternoon on the bay. These are the wine and cheese cruisers or racers (doing what they call "beer can" races, for a few hours one evening a week). The manufactures responded to this by making cheaper boats with less amenities, and there is still a lot of that today. Sure, its a sail boat, with maybe enough below deck to enjoy an overnighter here and there. But the equipment to manage the sails is smaller and cheaper, the rigging isn't typically as strong, the hulls are thinner and weaker, and they tend to not be designed as "off shore" cruisers, and at best "gunkers" which are boats intended to sail in the day, and anchor or moore at night, "gunk holing" from wet camp site to wet campsite. You can still buy new "off shore" cruisers but boy are they expensive, and I'm not altogether sure they are any better than a reasonably maintained and somewhat updated 1970s boat (which are 5-20% the price of a new one). While offshore cruising is again somewhat gaining in popularity as another generations worth of ennui sets it, most of the market is still cheaply constructed "production boats" Why would anyone want to do this? I see a couple reasons. 1. Frustration with other options. I used to love driving around the inside of the US on vacations, just car camping and getting lost. You can't do that anymore. Anywhere you stop for more than gas or food or some other capitalist supporting enterprise, you WILL be approached by some cop, forestry / fish and game person / land owner / state police, etc and told, "you cant be here, move along" which sucks. I am hard pressed to find a place on land where I am allowed to be a free roaming individual who can experience earth on earth's terms without some armed tax collector telling me I don't belong. Untrue on the ocean and many places you can make landfall. 2. There are many, MANY places on earth that are only accessible if you are on a sail boat, or are a billionaire or pals with one and they also want to go. 3. It CAN be an incredibly green way to travel. Right up there with walking (and honestly about as fast). 4. You can go to all the major places and completely avoid the typical funnel of how you get in there and experience it. It is much more gritty, real and personal. Locals treat people that show up on a sail boat quite differently (sometimes not a good thing) but there does seem to be much more curiosity, interest and hospitality you see rather than stepping out of the airport terminal with cargo jorts wearing a sign that says "I'm carrying cash". You are not seen as that kind of tourist, which nowadays, is real good. 5. The "Oceanic Feeling". Doesnt happen for everyone. But it sure happened to me. Many times. It is hard to put words to and I don't want to speak for any experience outside of my own. But for your average, white, engineer type...that feeling is by far the closest thing I have ever come to seeing the face of a god. Slocum, Moitessier, and countless others including myself have had it. These searing moments that happen in an instant that change things forever in a way that is extremely useless to try and put into words. It is the only experience I've ever had where "there are no words" is literally the only appropriate way to articulate it. It can be life changing in unpredictable and powerful ways. What would anyone get out of this Gray hair you didn't have, definitely money you won't get back, leathery skin, liver spots, possibly melanoma, possibly death before anything like that even has a chance to grow. Injury, dismemberment, trauma, burns, on and on. But that, may very well be, the cost of the absolutely greatest adventure and experience currently possible to average people in the world we inhabit. It has the promise of transcendence in a way that only those that have experienced can understand and will only acknowledge it to each other with a knowing look and maybe a nod. Its sacred and deeply personal. What do you even do out there? Your average large passage is typically around 3 weeks. That's very roughly how long it takes to cross maybe half the pacific. During that time, you don't do a whole lot. There are always little projects to do, quality of life improvements, repairs, upgrades, cool hacks, optimize things, cook food, eat, try to sleep, learn skills (navigate better, learn stars, pick up the guitar, do knots, whittle). Someone might say "why not fish?" Typically you are moving to fast. Or at least fast enough that most things wont think you are trawling actual food due to the speed, or might chase it a bit and decide, F it. Think of a dolphin, they are fast as hell. They can keep up with a boat under 40 knots of wind, but they have a hard time keeping up with that speed at length. Also most of the open water, certainly in the pacific is actually an ecological desert. Which isn't cool, but thems the brakes. You can fish, but its a big mostly dead ocean and you definitely need to slow down or stop ("heave to" that's a fun phrase). Every day there are a few activities you WILL have to do, which is trim sails (adjust) for either faster or more comfortable sailing, adjust your heading and check over critical systems, probably run the engine for a bit and see to any failing systems or hardware, and check where you are and update your logs. What types of boats are there? Sail and power. Next. The big thing to consider with any sail boat choice is what am I going to do with it and where. I think most folks agree, that there is little substitute to be made for a big think badonkadonk keel with real lead ballast. If you are careful and not over jagged rocks, you can literally beach these things by anchoring and letting the tide go our and work on the bottom. Cannot do with other ones. If you get a fin, skeg, or modified keel, people will make arguments that they point higher, (can sail more directly into the wind) don't heel as much (lean over against the wind) and other stuff. But again, you have to consider what and where you are going to use it and make the decision right for you knowing that no solution is perfect and everything is a trade off (this is true for every system on the boat). Sail boats for the confines of this post, are mono-hull and multi hull. Monohulls being boats with one hull, and the others are catamarans (two pontoon hulls) and trimarans (three pontoon hulls). Catamarans and trimarans USE to be quite dangerous. Capsizing and / or knock downs were more likely than in monohulls (which are mostly like weebble wobbles....they always turn back upright. This is not true if you jab your mast top into the ocean floor, or the water force on the sails during an event rip off the mast. It will likely still turn upright but god what a mess). Modern cats and tris have had considerable design changes are are much safer than their dad's and offer quite a lot of advantages over regular monohulls, but they are VERY expensive by comparison. If you are going to cross oceans in a multihull, I wouldn't try one with a production year much earlier than the early to mid 90s. Monohulls have "keels" or bottoms. There are a variety of styles, Full (looks like the underside of a bathtub), fin, skag, modified, modified full, on and on. I always would prefer a full keel with real weighted ballast. Large fins in the water are designed to deflect an amount of water similar to what is displaced by a traditional keel. Great for transportable boats, small dingys, day sailors...people will have their opinions. But as my dad would say about car engines, "there is absolutely no substitute for cubic inches". Differentiating boats further is typically done by its "sail plan". What is a sail plan? which includes the masts, placement of them, and relation to each other. Commonly referred to as "rig" which are a few types of aggregate sail plans, which include individual types of sails, or optional change outs based on the standing rigging (typically steel wire braided rope that olds up the masts and such both fore and aft and port and starboard) and to a lesser extent, layout and type of running rigging (ropes you use to wrangle the sails). Basically what sails and of what size and in which arrangement CAN your boat carry. I won't list every kind here, but for those interested see this The main types you see around are sloops, ketches, yawls, and occasionally cutters and schooners. You may have thought these were types of boats, but are actually types of sail plans or "rigs". Id say 80-90% of the boats you would buy today new or used are bermuda (or marconi) rigged sloops. Single masted, carry a main sail and a fore sail (jib, genoa, jennaker, spinnaker, storm jib). Typically the mainsail is the only one you have, or have a similar or identical spare. The foresail can be changed out for various types of conditions assuming they are in your inventory. For example, those big billowy colorful guys are spinnakers or gennakers and are only used to go down wind. Jibs and gennakers, genoas, storm jibs are all for different upwind conditions and "points of sail" (which direction are you going relative to the wind direction). What safety measures are minimally appropriate? This is a very personal question. On my big voyage, we had gently caress all because we were young, broke and dumb and didn't know any better. But when the shore disappears, your cell phone doesn't work, and the depth sounder reads ----, its a feeling that makes sure you were a little better equipped. Some of things are required by regulations made by the origin of the vessel (came from US, has coast guard regs). PFD - Personal floatation devices. You will want to spend some money on one of the auto inflatable ones meant for oceans. These are also "harnesses" which you can use a tether to tie yourself off to stuff. They inflate when they hit the water with a CO2 cartridge and need to be serviced after each release and annually. These are low profile and comfortable. You can always have them on and not be encumbered. You can get a few of the foam cheap ones for guests. You want to wear this thing 100% of the time you are on deck, for sure. For some, just all the time. Life Sling / man over board equipment / throwable PFDs (and do drills!!!) - These are pretty required at a minimum by USCG. The odds of rescuing someone who has gone overboard is very low in even the best conditions, but not impossible if you drill. There are steering and sail adjustment maneuvers, search patterns and specific roles people need to play in a man over board scenario. Too much for me to go into here, but it does happen, more often than you think and never on a nice easy sunny day. Jack Lines - These are wide long pieces of nylon webbing that you anchor to somewhere on the front to somewhere on the back on both sides of the mast. The goal of these is that you can carabiner yourself from your PFD / Harness with a tether. The boat heaves a lot, some swells are bigger than others and unexpected, storms are a thing that you sometimes have to be in, and most of the sail problems that can happen occur in the middle or front of the boat which requires you to leave the safety of the cockpit or cabins. Its super easy to slip and not have anything to grab onto and die. Basic rule here is that if you are not INSIDE the cabin of the boat, which excludes the cockpit, then you should wear your harness / PFD, be tethered to something, and if you leave the cockpit, tether yourself to the jack lines you installed. That way, whatever happens, you should still be on the boat. One may ask "what if I capsize and am tethered and get pinned and drown? They all come with a nifty big quick release on the caribeener...you just feel around for some ben wa balls on your chest and yank. Radios - There are a few different types of these, single side band....some other band, uhf, idk. Its RF so its line of site. Basically once your are in international waters, they don't work. Handy though for SOS and mayday calls, chatting with nearby cruisers, or calling the local dock master to check conditions or slip / mooring availability. There are also satellite phones that come with a pretty pricey monthly rate, but in a real offshore emergency, the almighty EPIRB is the standard. EPIRB - Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. The preferred oh poo poo button for the saltiest of dogs. There are multinational agreements covering these guys, but its basically a floating radio beacon that stays off in your boat until you need it. Some of them go off when they get wet (like modern PFDs), but the basic use case is, if you need some boat or helicopter to come save you, you fire this puppy off. It floats, blinks a light, and does some data blip that broadcasts its location, the USCG or other national naval domestic agency will then head out for you. Worth noting, they will come get you, your nephew, lover, dog, whatever, and 100% sink your boat. Fire Extinguishers / First Aid - Just have them. Get the ABC type fire extinguishers. Maybe keep a small K in the galley (kitchen) or just don't deep fry poo poo on an open flame numb nuts. Also ensure that you have plenty of whatever medication you need as it won't always available. Typically if you tell your doctor you are going out of country for 9-12 months, they are happy to load you up with that duration worth of supplies. Other little guys like flares, signal mirrors, survival rafts, radiation pills, Dramamine in bulk, what level of first aid kit you need are at the nexus of a personal account of your needs, comfort level and budget. Tools. You need to be able to service the systems on your boat which include electrical systems, plumbing, engines, engine cooling, water management, sails, mechanical components, fiber glass repair patches and resins, etc. Lack of tools can turn into a life or death safety issue PDQ. There are other things that some might consider safety and others as conveniences, again, tailor to need and taste. For example ways to collect fresh water / make it from salt water, fully equipped life rafts, an extra outboard motor, ways to generate power, enough tools to construct an entire replica of swiss family robinson on some island only to find out if belongs to Nicaragua and you are in jail now. It takes time, research, prioritization and a hard look over what you are doing this for anyways? I see an awful lot of folks in campgrounds that bring a full size RV named "vengeance" or some poo poo and bring out an entire sectional couch, sound system, big screen flat TV, and a generator the size of a volkswagon all to watch Cars in the great outdoors. You don't need to be that guy. They are out there, and you will encounter them and experience envy but thats okay. You are here to know yourself and the universe, not to do the suburbs somewhere else. How to I find my way around out there? Old school and newschool. Old school, you can still do paper charts, astrolabes, sextants, chronographs and all that. And I encourage you to buy, study, bring that stuff and make it part of your routine. But a modern Garmen GPS and chart plotter while expensive is loving nice. If and when it fails for a million reasons, you'll be happy to have your 12th century BC know how. Modern chart plotters also contain NOAA weather info, which can even be updated on open water with a subscription packages. How can I rank up? If you have never sailed before, there are often (provided you are near water, even smallish lakes or municipal man made ones) you can often join clubs (collegiate or club based) that do lessons or have little regattas. These are mostly on dinghys (row boats with a sail) and are a GREAT way to learn how sailing works, and develop intuition and muscle memory critical to being an effective sailor. You will likely capsize these and thats okay. Another level is to contact your regional ASA (American Sailing Association) office. They will do regular classes for everything from intro to the basics all the way up to getting your first Captains license (which allows you to ferry up to 6 people for money). From there you can add additional endorsements that increase in terms of the size and type of the vessel you can captain. You can actually make a career at this. The most often is "deliveries" where some rich guy buys a boat in the Netherlands but wants it in the Bahamas, so he flies you to the Netherlands and you sail that puppy down to El Caribe for money. (Strictly speaking you don't need a captains license to do this, but you will to have your trip ensured, which the owner will want with you as the operator). The most important thing you can do to increase your rank so far as the USCG is concerned (idk how it works other places) is LOG HOURS. You go buy an actual book called "Captain's Log" and EVERY time you are on the boat, sailing or not, you log it. This is the only recognizable proof that you have x amount of hours, and graduated ranks require some threshold of logged hours. There are some tricks like, overnighters count for double hours (XP Boost) etc. Kickin Rad Lore? There is so much. You get cool honorifics like "Honored Member of the Golden Shellbacks" when you do certain things like cross the equator alone and stuff. You get to do rituals, cross dress, have booze, make offerings, pray to the old gods, beg for forgiveness, do witchy prayers and chants...its extremely deep and very cool. If you think you know all about sea lore, you probably don't. Renaming a boat? Better to the right ritual and incantations or Neptune gon eat your whole rear end. Want to know more? (resources) https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/ - An old BB based forum like this one. Also called SA. That is kismet friend. Also fairly similar in tone. https://48north.com/magazine/ - This is 48 north. There are other ## north magazines (maybe ## south?) These are free rags you can get in any US town with a marina that caters to sailors. Its actually pretty good, regionally focused, and a great free resources to just read and see what the whole scene is about. https://www.cruisingworld.com/ Another magazine with a forum. There are a LOT of magazines out there that are just glossy boat show full page adds. This one is good and worth a pick up, or at least peruse the website. https://www.westmarine.com/Pretty stupidly expensive online and brick n mortar retailer for all things boat. Their inventory tends to be regionally focused. For example the seattle one is SUPER sailing focused, where one in Salt Lake is focused just on power boating / wake boarding etc. Its a cool place to look, wander around, and check out the latest tech, but it is HANDS DOWN the most expensive place to buy boat poo poo. Look online or go OEM direct or buy second hand whenever possible. https://www.yachtworld.com/ Shop boats with good filters. So, this is the thread. I am sure SA has plenty of sailors or folks that are interesting. I don't do many effort posts, or any really (I mean I did a cooking one ages ago)...but its a topic that I am passionate about and care a lot about and hopefully one day soon will realize my dreams of doing it full time for the rest of my life and am happy to give any dumb opinions to answers for realistic and earnest questions. Happy to update the OP with better info than that which I have amatuerishly provided. Basic Poster fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Mar 16, 2021 |
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