New sail

When we surveyed the boat I suspected the Genoa had seen better days as there was a large section in the front that appeared to be delaminated. It seemed someone had attempted to put some stitching in to avoid it spreading further. We used it on our trip from the Bahamas to the Chesapeake last summer and it worked fine but I knew when I took the sails off for maintenance this winter they would tell me it's done. About a month ago I got the call. The loft told me it was basically junk. If I wanted to put a couple thousand dollars into it they could keep it alive for a bit longer but it would be best to put that money towards a new sail. On a good note though.. It seemed our mainsail was in reasonable condition, our self tacking jib was still in good shape but the sun protector was not on correctly which had lead to the stitching holding the battens to fail. This seemed to be an easy fix and I was able to get a couple new battens made to replace the ones we lost overboard for the jib. For some reason I did not drop off the Parasailor for inspection. Maybe I'll do that next winter?

So now the dilemma is what to do. It seems that the boat came with fairly high end sails which are now six years old and have presumably served a fair amount of time in the Caribbean. I'm guessing these fancy sails probably help make our big heavy cat perform slightly less like a big heavy cat? Unfortunately when it comes down to it I really know nothing about sail design or materials. After hearing 2-3 recommendations from a couple of sail makers and doing some reading I decided to stick with a higher end newer generation laminate material called Hydra Net Radial. The universal suggestion was to go with the 9oz or 393 HNR blend for our boat size. The marketing says this should last twice as long as the traditional Dacron material would and will be well suited for the number of miles we are planning to use it for during our circumnavigation. Based on the very small sample of material I got it seems tear proof unless I took the scissors to it but it did seem to loose its shape from my attempt to tear it which is a bit concerning?

I stopped by the sail loft today to pick up my newly repaired sails and put down a deposit for the new Genoa. I was given the choice of ordering it in black or white, adding a graphic or something fun. I went for plain white and could not think of a cool graphic. Even if I did go with some kind of graphic I'm sure I would spend a fair amount of time wondering how that might effect the resale value of the boat if someone thought the amazing picture of me on the head sail was dumb. I'm told the new sail will be manufactured overseas somewhere then shipped to the loft sometime before June. I'm hoping we will have it prior to leaving to bring the boat around to the Great Lakes this summer. Unfortunately having not spent a great deal of time with the original sail I will probably not be able to tell a difference in performance with the new sail. Instead I'm looking at it like preventive maintenance. One was well worn and now it's time to just replace it. Meanwhile I'm trying not to think of the cost. Don't let anyone tell you sailing is inexpensive or cheaper than fuel. For the cost of this one sail I could probably pay for the fuel to do the Great Loop twice in my Nordic Tug or I could buy two brand new Yanmar replacement engines for this boat. I suspect somewhere along the trip we will need to purchase a new main sail and possibly a new jib as well. I'm hoping we don't but we have budgeted for it none the less.

Its time to sell the tug

Some people say the best two days of boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I disagree. I have generally enjoyed all of our boats. It's weird to say but I think you have to love them like a family member in that some days they really frustrate you and some days they provide an absolutely blissful experience. Not to mention they are a bit like your kids in that both are always needing more money and attention. The other side of that you have to put a lot of your trust into them that they will take care of you along the way ensuring you arrive at the destination safely.

When we bought the tug we originally planned to do the Great Loop in it and sell it when we were done moving back to the sailboat. About the time we were coming back from the Bahamas we realized how little many of the boats down there actually sailed, we were running out of time and would have to skip the Canadian canals, and that we really liked doing the rivers. We also knew we wanted to do the Down East Loop and maybe even the Inside Passage to Alaska with it one summer which would not be ideal in a sailboat. So we decided to put our sailboat that was in storage up for sale and keep the tug. For better or worse the sailboat sold really quick which made things easy. Unfortunately over the last three summers we have not made the time to use the tug as much as we would have liked as it seems that all our kids activities have kept us pretty busy only allowing us to put around 75-100hrs of engine time a year on it.

I have been fascinated with circumnavigation since I was a kid. But it never seemed possible or something that I might be able to do until I found the world of YouTube sailors maybe ten-twelve years ago. Once I saw them doing it and found groups like the Oyster Around the World Rally and the World Arc I knew it was something I really wanted to do. It took a bit of talking but I got Amy to agree to the idea of trying to do it one day. Now that both of my parents have died and my kids are almost out of the house I realized there are not that many more one days so we sat down and put a date on when we wanted to leave. The key was to balance our youth/health, my in-laws health/needs, our kids needs/weddings/grand kids, and the time/money equation. As you can imagine there are a lot of conflicting priorities there but January of 2028 is what we came up with for a date we wanted to leave for that trip. This is basically a long way of saying while we still want to do all of the adventures we planned with the tug. However, we feel like many of those can be done between or while balancing the other life events and maybe its best to do the circumnavigation now and then come back to those smaller adventures closer to home later.

With all of that said I officially signed with a broker today to sell the tug and start focusing our time on learning the sailboat we bought last year for the circumnavigation. I'll miss the tug. It's been a very reliable, easy, and a comfortable boat for us. I hope we can find as nice of a boat once again when it's time to sell the sailboat and buy the boat for the next adventure.

Another busy month went by

It's been a busy month. We've been pretty lucky with the extra warm weather we got here in Michigan up until this week when the weather finally started moving back to normal. The nice weather let us do crazy things like playing with the jetski and sailing dinghy well into October still enjoying the 80 degree days. Unfortunately it's now the end of October and the weather is now moving back to something more normal and its now time to put the water toys away and getting everything ready for winter.

The Tug was the first to come out. It's now winterized and sitting in a barn which will hopefully keep it warm and protected. I've started taking all of our stuff off of it and begun the long process of getting it cleaned and shined up with hopes of listing it for sale  this spring. Unfortunately there is still a lot cleaning and a few small projects to take care of before I can do that which of course include redoing the teak, oiling the wood, lots of scrubbing and polishing trying to get her looking her best for the potential new owners. I've heard the boat market is slow right now so I'm assuming we may get to enjoy her on the Great Lakes much of next summer. I would love to take her up to the North Channel for a month but am not sure how that will workout with Max's schedule and having the other boat that we need to learn to use as well?

In between playing with water toys we have been going to as many of Max's tennis matches as we can this season. It's his Senior year and has been fun seeing how much he has improved from when he started tennis last year. 

While we have very much planned for it, it still seems strange to think we will be empty nesters this time next year. I've heard that between birth and the age of 18 is when one gets to spend 80% of time they get with their kids so I'm going to make sure I enjoy it while I can. 

On that note we have been continuing our college visits. This month we went to check out Western Michigan University, Michigan State, and Hillsdale. The only schools we have not visited are University of Toledo, Ferris, and Eastern Michigan. Two of those he will do as a field trip in school and with his sister going to Ferris I'm not sure he has much interest in following her footsteps. He has worked hard to get good grades over the years and with some effort during the application process should be able to choose from any of the schools he wants. 

At this point he is thinking he wants to be a doctor and is looking at Pre-Med programs. His second thought is something with engineering but he has not found anybody doing fun stuff in the real world that has excited him about that. So we are simply encouraging him to pick a school that offers a lot of choices in majors should he want to make a change after taking a few classes in the subject.

As I write this he is just now starting to fill out a few college applications. It will be interesting to see if he is too late for scholarships and placements has I'm seeing a lot of friends with seniors posting various collage acceptances and scholarships awarded in my Facebook feed recently.

Personally I'm still hoping he will take a break/gap year or more after his first year of school to join us on our circumnavigation. It will be interesting to see where he ends up and what he decides to do?

Annabelle turned 21 a few days ago. She is back doing the Disney College program again this semester working as a lifeguard this time and asked us to come down to celebrate with her by drinking around the world. In Disney speak this means going to Epcot and getting a drink at each of the country's. As it also happens to be their food and wine festival so they have some carts set up for bonus countries as well. She managed to talk us, her grandparents, aunt, and one cousin into joining her for this expedition. I think we ended up having drinks and snacks from 15 different countries by the end of the night. The strangest snack was defiantly the onion cake from Germany. It was a fun way to celebrate and everyone had a good time. We rented a place for a week in Orlando going to the Disney Halloween party, various shows, and spent some time just hanging around the pool for a bit while getting to see Belle when she was not working. It was a good time. Unfortunately Max is still in school and could only join us for a long weekend but it was nice to have both of our kids together even if it was only for a couple days.

As our sail boat is pretty close to Annapolis we decided to attend the annual sailboat show again this year as it's always fun to walk around looking at shinny new sailboats and gear for a few days. One surprise was that a Privilege 510 we looked at last year (and waited too long to make an offer on) was there on display. After getting to see that boat and about a dozen other cats we confirmed that we made a good choice and didn't have any regrets on buying our Xquisite. While there we were able to meet up with three other Xquisite owners to have lunch and chat about experiences and future plans with the boats. From what I can tell it seems most are pretty content sticking to the Bahamas and Caribbean with theirs. We seem to be the odd balls that want to sail around the world but then again three of the four we meet were fairly new to boating and big boats in general. So maybe they will get there and come join us ;).

While at the show we attended an informational session on the World Arc and a cocktail party they had the next night confirming that its probably still the direction we are going to go with when it comes time to circumnavigate. However the Xquisite folks are talking about setting something up soon as well and plan to announce it at the annual owners party this year. I'm looking forward to seeing what their plan is and how much interest they get. Its always better to have choices :)

Life vest testing

This is the first used boat that I've bought that did not come with life vests. Before we left Florida we purchased the minimum find the body West Marine orange life vests to ensure we meet the minimum safty requirements before crossing over to the Bahamas. Knowing that the World ARC folks have some specific requirements for life vests I planned to figure out what they were and order them when I got home, then bring them back before bringing the boat back to the US. This was all well and good except for the fact that one cannot fly with self inflating life vests :(. Luckily we met a boat that was for sale and attempting to sell off all their stuff. Rummaging through their various items we found three very basic self inflating vests that looked like new and snagged them so we would at least have something more comfortable to wear on deck if needed. Fortunately I didn't need it but I did have it on while out on deck during the small storm we went through. Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself...

Life vests we purchased

When we came home from the Bahamas I spent a couple nights reading and watching YouTube videos about the various merits of different life vest systems. There is a lot of information out there but the one that came up as number one or two over and over again was the SpinLock vest here. There are a few versions one can get but I decided when it came to safety and having the best chance of being found at night having the additional lights and releasable harness system was the way to go. According to the marketing the vests had two lights in them. One is inside of the part that inflates and the other is on a stick that pops up to blink adding additional visibility. While I could imagine how this might work unfortunately I have not seen any videos showing the lights in action. I also purchased a set of three point safety lines (also an ARC requirement) ensuring we can be well attached to the boat should we need to go forward on deck in bad weather. Additionally we will eventually add personal locater devices to each of our vests. Hopefully we will find them on sale at the boat show this year. Either way it was easier to spread the costs out a bit as these vests were not cheap.

Personal locator

As I started to mention earlier I had purchased these thinking we would take them back to the Bahamas with us only to find out we could not fly with them due to the CO2 cartridges. I supposed we could have pulled them out and simply planned to manually inflate the vests if needed but that would not due much good if one of us were knocked out or otherwise hurt. Luckily we stumbled across the other vests so we hopefully had something better than the basic orange vests for the return trip home.

While we were out there during my night shifts it really hit me how hard it would be to find someone that went overboard. In the past doing overnight trips on the Great Lakes we could generally see shore even if it was five miles off there was still a certain amount of ambient light. This was not the case in the ocean and with the much larger swells one would be lucky to just keep an eye on someone if they watched them go over but I'm guessing after the first or second swell they would be quickly out of sight. Once the crew could get folks on deck to get the sails down and the boat turned around it might be 5-20 minutes. I would guess the person would be out of sight then they would have to locate the person in the dark probably during bad conditions. I can't imagine the changes are great they would be found easily. With all that said I think I want to be well lighted and as easy to find as possible. Additionally I think the personal locator beacon may help as supposedly as soon as it hits the water it sends out a radio signal that will create an alert on any nearby chart plotters that someone is in the water and needs help. Additionally it will show roughly where they are. While not cheap it seems well worth the money if ever needed and I have seen videos of several folks trying them out showing how effective they are with the chart plotter alarms and integration.

After experiencing dark nights at sea I wanted to see if I had purchased what I hoped I had. Spinlock has what appears to be a number of part numbers and options one can get for their vests. I thought I got the one with all the lights but was not sure. I also wanted to see what it felt like when the vest inflated and how visible the lights would be while also having an idea what I might be looking for if one of us happened to fall overboard. Fortunately my sister in law has a pool and was up for letting me test it out one evening. I also got to test out our new dog's swimming abilities but that's the subject of a different post. The video here shows me testing what the vest looks like in the water and the neat thing is there is a dongle that hangs down so the vest knows when it's in the water. When I got out of the pool it immediately turned the lights out. Pretty impressive as I even jumped back in again to ensure they would turn back on and once again everything worked as it should. This quick video shows the vest in use with the spray hood up. The hood seemed to do what it should. I'm sure it will fog up with heavy breathing but it would defiantly help keep the waves and water out of your mouth making it easier to breathe should one fall off in bad weather.

Three point safety lines

Over all the vest felt like one of the orange vests above and easily kept me afloat in fresh water. It should work even better in salt water. When deployed it was snug around my neck. The strap between my legs was not uncomfortable and the lights appeared to do their job. Hopefully the harness system works as they say it does should I or another crew member not be able to get in the boat the crew could attach a line to the vest using a halliard and electric wench to pull the person out of the water. The only item I was not really impressed with was the included whistle. It took a bit to blow the water out of it and did not seem very loud while in the water but my wife and her sister claimed they could hear it clearly.

Next step learning to repack the vest, replacing the CO2 cartridge, and water deployment sensor. While not an inexpensive test to do I'm glad I tried it out. I now have trust in these fancy new life vests and just hope that it will still deploy correctly after I replace the spent items and get everything zipped back together. After trying it I'm guessing with the addition of a whistle and a light the basic orange vest would work just as well but time will tell if this one is more comfortable to wear during life at sea.

The next adventure

 

Having loved the idea or fantasy of a boat, thinking about how it works, and where it could take me has been a bit of an obsession since was a little kid playing with toy boats in the bathtub. I got pretty excited about the idea again after I graduated college and found myself doing some consulting work for the US Navy. I was doing pretty well financially and had been able to save a lot of money that seemed to growing exponentially as the dot.com bubble continued to rise. It was during this time that my wife and I first started talking about buying a sailboat, taking a year off to sail the East Coast and "the islands" for a bit before we had kids. Well the bubble burst and our cash stash did not look so promising anymore thus we put that dream on hold for a while. About 10yrs and two kids latter we came back to it and finally bought our first sailboat that we purchased in Sea Bright New Jersey. Concidently we flew up to look at it the same day Captain Sully landed the USAir flight in the river. We were actually scheduled to be on that flight but changed our plans at the last minute to go on an earlier flight. Getting back to the story we brought that boat back via the Erie Canal as documented in previous posts here and sailed it on the Great Lakes for a few years before upgrading to a bigger sail boat that we also enjoyed on the Great Lakes. Then COVID happened and my step mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. At that point we were reminded that time is finite and decided it was time to revisit the day dream buy a trawler and do The Great Loop with the hopes of one day doing more. Well it seems life is once again passing us by pretty fast and as Ferris Buller says "it's time to slow down to take a look around" once again. After completing the Loop and another year of prodding my wife we have expanded our goals and decided to try a circumnavigation. YouTubers make it look pretty easy, we should be able to manage this right? Seems my wife was not so confident in our abilities and frankly was not enthusiastic about an open timeline to complete it in. She likes seeing her friends and family regularly and frankly after a couple of days finds that I don't meet her conversational needs. So I went googling to see what kind of options might be available for group travel and came across the World Cruising Club. Over COVID we joined several of their virtual webinars to learn more, then went to one of their breakfast events during the Annapolis Sail Boat Show where they brought in several sailors that seemed just like us that had just completed the rally or were in the process of it. They did a great job of making it feel achievable and real. After that my wife was sold. We were going to do it.. One day.

Last summer I got a call from the Sailing Fleet Captain at our boat club asking if I was willing to stand in as the committee boat for the racing fleet that night. I said no problem but had no clue how to do the flags, horns, scoring, etc. He said no problem he would send a bunch of experts with me. After dropping anchor I got to talking to the guys with me and it turns out one of them had recently done an Atlantic crossing with a friend that went on to do the World Arc and he would put me in touch with the guy. After a few weeks of back and fourth I managed to set up a dinner with the this guys friend that had just made it back from his circumnavigation with the World Arc and only lived 15 minutes from us. I hate to admit it but I was in full fan boy mode and pretty excited to talk to both he and his wife about the adventure. I had found his blog and read everything I could find on them. After what felt like forever.. Maybe a week :) We finally got together for dinner with Eric and his wife Yong. They answered all our dumb questions and more and encouraged us to do the trip ensuring us it was much less intimating that it sounded. He was a fantastic resource for us and we even ran into him again at the Annapolis show again last fall. After that dinner we went home and decided it was time to put a date down to do the trip. We decided we are going to join the 2028-29 World Arc fleet. Now we just need to get the boy graduated from high school and sort out all these minor logistics like what do we do with the house, what do we do with the dogs, will the kids be ok at college if we are not in the country. Then there is the fun stuff like we need a new boat, what should that be (catamaran or mono haul, maybe a big trawler), what sails do we need, safety equipment, etc.

For a bit of background the World Cruising Club was initially started to help group folks together for Atlantic crossings then having helped a lot of folks tackle that task went on to create an around the world trip that they run once a year that follows the trade winds and allows cruisers to hop on and off with them at any time. If one follows their route/schedule it takes about 18 months to do the trip leaving from the Caribbean. From what we have been told some boats will stop for a season in Austrila or New Zealand then rejoin the next years group as they come back around allowing them to spend additional time in French Polynesia which I would like to do but may still be up for negotiations at our house. Below is there high level outline for the trip. There are several other groups that do similar rallies but a few of them require you own a certain boat (Oyster, Gun Boat, other) and there does seem to be a new one starting up soon but for now I think we are going with the ARC.

Route: First Half from Saint Lucia

Month	Details	Miles
January	Saint Lucia to Panama	1100 NM
	Sail independently to Colon, Panama
	Transit Panama Canal
February	Las Perlas to Galapagos	850 NM
	Cruise Galapagos
March	Galapagos to Hiva Oa, Marquesas	2980 NM
	Cruise French Polynesia
April	Cruise Society Islands
May	Bora Bora to Niue	1055 NM
	Niue to Vava'u, Tonga	230 NM
June	Tonga to Fiji	290 NM
	Cruise Fiji
July	Fiji to Tanna, Vanuatu	450 NM
	Cruise Vanuatu
	Port Vila, Vanuatu to Mackay, Australia	1150 NM
August	Cruise the Great Barrier Reef

Route: Second Half from Australia

Month	Details	Miles
September	Darwin to Lombok	920 NM
	Lombok to Christmas Island and Cocos	625 + 525 NM
October	Cocos to Mauritius	2350 NM
	Mauritius to Reunion	130 NM
November	Reunion to Richards Bay, South Africa	1370 NM
	Cruise South Africa
January	Cape Town - Namibia	715 NM
	Namibia - St Helena -Recife	1215 + 1785 NM
March	Recife to St George's, Grenada	2300 NM
	Cruise Caribbean
April	Saint Lucia parade of sail
	Final prize giving in Saint Lucia

We have lots to figure out and what seems like a long time to do it. I'm excited to have put a stake in the ground that we are going to do it. It gives us something to be excited about and a goal to be working toward maybe as a family. If it goes anything like our last trip everything will seem like it we have loads of time right up until the last two months before we have before we leave from the dock!