CONTENTS Acknowledgments 7 Foreword to the Third Edition 9 Introduction to the First Edition 13 Section I PREPARING TO GO 19 1 Parameters for Choosing a Cruising Boat 20 2 From a Wish to a Design 40 3 What Does Cruising Cost? 50 4 Boat Insurance, Medical Insurance— A Matter of Risk Management 62 5 The Question of Children and Cruising 68 6 Medical Preparations for Cruising 77 Section II CHOOSING THE GEAR TO GO CRUISING 87 7 Buying the Gear to Go Cruising 88 8 Can You Buy Safety? 97 9 Getting More Out of Your Cruising Staysail 99 10 Bowsprits for Offshore Voyaging 107 11 Cruising Tenders: Choices, Improvements, and Storage 121 12 Outfitting Taleisin 135 Section III TAKING CARE OF YOUR BOAT AS YOU CRUISE 145 13 Cruising Canvas Care 146 14 Taking the Emergency Out of Steering Failures 156 15 Rigging Repairs at Sea 164 16 Safety Aloft 169 17 Bare Wood—The Salty Scrubbed Look 178 Capable Cruiser Section IV TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF AND YOUR CREW AS YOU CRUISE 193 18 Sixteen Ways to Keep Your Lover 194 19 First-Time Voyagers—What Did They Worry About That Never Happened? 205 20 Cut the Shouting Out of Sailing 214 21 Writing and Cruising—Does It Pay? 221 22 Getting the Photos That Sell Cruising Articles 235 Section V SEAMANSHIP AS YOU CRUISE 243 23 Sail Insurance—Take the Emergency Out of Engine Shutdowns 245 24 Engine-Quits Drills 253 25 Things They Forgot to Tell You About the “Milk Run” 263 26 Coral-Reef Cruising: The Sailor’s Venus Flytrap 272 27 “No Oceans to Cross” 285 28 Murder in Turtle Bay 297 29 The Jinx 300 Section VI AT ANCHOR 307 30 What Happened at Cabo San Lucas? 309 31 Voyagers Lament 325 32 Technical Report from Cabo San Lucas 329 33 Ground-Tackle-System List 346 34 Selecting Chain 351 35 Stern-Anchor Systems 362 36 Your Anchor Light—A Friendly Beacon for Other Sailors 372 INDEX 381 Acknowledgments The seeds for this new edition of The Capable Cruiser were sown at a supermarket in Ventura just as we were buying provisions for a voyage south from California to New Zealand. A young man came up to us and said, “You have really helped my wife and me keep our dreams alive.” Cliff Unruh then went on to mention some information he’d read in a previous edition of The Capable Cruiser. As Larry and I voyaged southward, Cliff’s words, combined with those of many others who have kindly written to us or spoken to us at boat shows, got us thinking about finally rewriting, updating, and bringing the best parts of this book back into print. We would definitely like to thank all of these folks for their encouragement. During our most recent voyage, we met several first-time voyagers who generously filled out questionnaires and submitted to interviews. You’ll meet them later in this book, but we have also included information gleaned from many other cruisers and folks ashore in Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, and New Zealand who are not named elsewhere—people such as Gene Busch, Molokeine and Rafe Tollemach, Doug Schmuck, and Henry Genthe. Thank you for your input, friendship, and help. We interviewed a great many people as we updated the chapters in this new edition, and we’re particularly grateful for the professionals who generously gave their time for the chapter on writing: Bob Grieser, photographer; Herb McCormick, editor at large for Cruising World; George Day, editor and publisher of Blue Water Sailing; Elaine Lembo, managing editor of Cruising World; Karen Larson and Jerry Powlas, coeditors of Good Old Boat; and Tory Salvia, founder of the Web-based Sailing Channel TV. Fatty Goodlander not only gave his time but also gave us permission to include on our Website two articles for potential writers. I read a wonderful story in Cruising World magazine written by Jordan Rich, a youngster who was suffering reentry problems after three years of cruising with her family. When I contacted Jordan, she also gave us permission to include comments from her story in this book and also to put her complete story on our Website. Thank you to all for your input—we hope that what we wrote is an accurate and complete reflection of your ideas. 7 Capable Cruiser The three chapters on the disaster at Cabo San Lucas would not have been possible without the assistance of Keith Taylor, at that time the editor of Sail magazine. With his assistance, we were able to fly to Cabo San Lucas to interview the unfortunate people involved in the story. We’d also like to thank those we met at Cabo for their candid answers to our questions and their willingness to share what they learned from this devastating event. A separate and heartfelt thank you goes to Patience Wales—journalist, circumnavigator, editor of Sail magazine for 14 years, and now a political activist. For all her years as editor—and, in fact, almost from the time we began writing—she served as a helpful sounding board for many of our ideas and articles. She often pointed out instances when we appeared cranky, and she guided us through the emotional aspects of writing about the people who lost so much at Cabo San Lucas. Our thanks also go to all those who have helped provide illustrations for the first two editions of this book as well as this new one. The late Lyle C. Hess provided us with the drawings and plans for Taleisin. Bruce Laybourn, Jim Townsing, Mike Davidson, and Darren Emmens provided photographs. Stephen Davis created the isometric drawing of Taleisin. Many individuals are involved in shepherding words from ideas to print to final publication. We have a grand team working with us, including Kathleen Brandes, an editor who remembers what we said in books we wrote 10 years ago and makes sure we keep the facts perfectly aligned; Moira Durham, our designer; Sandra Farrell, who always seems to withstand the pressure as she does the final job before any book goes to print—creating a comprehensive index; Jim and Matt Morehouse at Paradise Cay Publications, who are indispensable partners as they handle the distribution of our books and our Website; and of course the folks at Midpoint Trade Books, our trade distributor. Thanks to all of you. Many of the chapters in this book appeared first as articles in magazines, including Cruising World, Cruising Helmsman, Sail magazine, Yachting Monthly, Yachting World, Practical Boat Owner, Cruising Skipper, Good Old Boat, Blue Water Sailing, German Yachting, and South African Yachting. 8 Foreword to the Third Edition When we wrote the first edition of this book and focused on the title, we debated whether to use competent or capable. Then we turned to the dictionary and read: “Capable—having power and ability, efficient, competent.” To us, capable seemed an almost perfect word to describe the important attributes of a successful voyager: the power to choose your own path, the ability to translate your plan from a dream to reality, the efficiency to contain your life and needs in the limited space of a sailing yacht, and the competence to keep that vessel and her crew in good condition and good spirits. In 1986, we sat down in a rented cottage on the seashore a dozen miles north of Auckland, New Zealand, to write The Capable Cruiser. We had spent the previous two years voyaging through the Pacific on our 29-foot, 6-inch cutter, Taleisin. We’d grown a bit tired of moving on and felt that we needed a change from life on board. So we settled in for the winter to work and to learn about this small country that had attracted so many ocean voyagers over the years. Because of Taleisin’s relatively small size, it was easy to find a safe mooring for her nearby. We kept her ready for the weekend races, which provided an enjoyable change from desk work and gave us a way to meet local sailors. Larry set to work on a boatbuilding book and I set to work reading through the practical articles we’d written over the previous years of voyaging. One conclusion we reached as we discussed the contents of The Capable Cruiser was that we could never cover the whole subject of ocean voyaging in one book. The subject is far too broad, too changeable, too dependent on individual preferences and finances and time constraints. Creating a true compendium on ocean voyaging would mean relying on what was written by other people who might or might not be heavily influenced by commercial interests. So we decided to stick to what we had learned from our own experiences, our own research into matters that deeply interested us. We hoped that by showing our general philosophy, we could provide readers with a starting point for their own research. Our life has literally and figuratively come full circle since we wrote that first edition. Fate or luck or a fit of insanity led us to buy a definitely 9 Capable Cruiser distressed property on an island 15 miles north of that winter’s lair. It had a small summer cottage, a jetty, a boatshop, and a mooring. We spent most of the next few years—“most” because we did sail off to Australia and other parts of New Zealand at times—upgrading what could only be called “the ultimate fixer-upper.” We felt it would be the perfect place for that distant time when we wanted (or needed) to retire from sailing.