Yacht surveyor and designer Andrew Simpson cruises
with his wife Chele in his own-design 11.9m (39ft) yacht
Shindig. Read his blog at http://www.offshore-sailor.com
Monthly musingsMonthly musingsAndrew Simpson
A
sk most cruising sailors
what their most challenging
experience has been and
they’re likely to describe a
brush with ugly weather:
“Struggling to claw our way around
Portland Bill against a westerly six and
a foul tide.” You know the sort of tale;
dramatic in content and designed to
elicit both awe and sympathy from the
audience – particularly non-sailors.
And, yes, of course we have all probably
experienced it. There are few cruising
sailors that haven’t confronted such
challenges – sometimes capitulating and
slipping into some cosy anchorage, there
to wait for better times.
This is the heroic stuff, of course. But
sometimes quite the opposite conditions
can pose frustrating challenges. Yes,
robust weather can make for bruising
passages but I’ve come to believe that the
absence of wind can be worse. Back in
1978, in company with friends Bruce and
Martha, Chele and I were delivering
Vaquero, Chele’s somewhat elderly Cal40, from Texas to the Leeward Islands.
Designed by Bill Lapworth in the early
1960s, with a keen eye towards
performance, we couldn’t have asked for
a more suitable boat for the passage.
Except that is for a couple of minor fl aws:
the sails were tired beyond redemption
and the four-cylinder petrol engine had
convinced itself that it was unseemly
to run for more
than a few
minutes before
overheating.
We opted for a
simple passage
strategy. It was late October – the tail end
of the hurricane season with the
meteorological risks reducing. The pilot
chart for that month indicated prevailing
easterly and north-easterly winds of no
great hostility, and the dodgy engine was
a powerful discouragement from marina
hopping around the coast. We therefore
decided to sail directly from Galveston to
The Florida Keys – nearly 800NM in a
generally south-easterly direction.The rough
or the smooth?
Battered or becalmed... a complete lack of
weather can be just as bad as too much
The voyage started encouragingly. We
departed Galveston and for the fi rst
couple of days threaded our way through
the inevitable shrimp boats and oil rigs,
there to sail into what was to develop into
a persistent calm. It took 12 days to reach
Key West; tantalised by the occasional
puff that would gain us a few miles.
In our search for wind we courted every
cloud or rainstorm that might have some
under it. We were conscious of the anxiety
that must be rising among friends and
family back in Texas, not least my mother
who was to bring the children out to us.
Given a competent crew and a sprightly
boat, the expectation was that the Gulf
crossing would take no more than a week!
Just over a decade later found us in the
Mediterranean – more specifi cally in
Mallorca participating in a Classic Boat
Rally, one of the features of which
included a race around Palma Bay. We
were crewing with the owner aboard his
Laurent-Giles designed cutter Fairlight,
built in 1938. We made a poor start but, in
very light conditions, we managed to claw
our way through the fl eet only to have the
race offi cially abandoned as the sea
subsided from a light chop to mirror glass.
Light winds are great levellers.
The photo here is of Poole Bay, shortly
after the start of a race. The boat in the
foreground is Hope and Glory, a 50-foot
Ron Holland design and certainly no
slouch around the cans. With very little
energy to be harvested from such tranquil
conditions her size and weight are a
handicap, calling on great skill to wring
whatever propulsion could be gained.
You’ve probably observed that there’s a
total of fi ve boats in the shot. Note further
that although Hope and Glory’s spinnaker
isn’t drawing as lustily as it might, it’s
doing rather better than the others and
there’s even a feeble wake.
It’s my belief that the greatest and most
intriguing crew
challenges arise
when the wind is
light – not when
there’s an excess
of it. Yet you
rarely hear tales of how people cope with
paucity rather than plenty. I once met a
man who in decreasing strengths had
spent 60-odd days (he’d lost count!)
sailing a 20-odd-footer from Bermuda to
the Azores. With food and water having
run out, he survived by eating the goose
barnacles encrusting his hull.
I’m not entirely sure about the wisdom of
his decision but it beats my own wind-
starved whingeing into a cocked hat.Even racing yachts can struggle to
make way when breeze is lackingRobust weather can make for
bruising passages – but the
absence of wind can be worse