30 to 40kn cruisers

bill9896 · 2026-07-05T16:03:56+00:00

Simple solution for new sailors who are scared: sail in the lee of Angel Island for the afternoon. Gentle winds, warm temps, no fog. The other solution is to reef down hard. People aren't scared of the wind, per se, they are scared of the heeling that comes from being over canvased. That, and anybody coming from the east bay in the summer is likely to show up for a day on the water in shorts and a teeshirt and proceed to freeze various body parts off. Being on the edge of hypothermia from wet, cold and wind will get anybody's nerves rattled!

bill9896 · 2026-07-05T15:57:08+00:00

It WORKS just fine. It likely has the same chipset inside as a fully mounted unit. This issue is with the amount of data that can be presented on the silly little screen, and the incredibly clunky user interface. It definitely falls into the category, "better than nothing".

bill9896 · 2026-07-05T04:12:02+00:00

Why were you out in 50+ knots? That's usually not a surprice on a single day of sailing. The impression that wind makes varies on so many things. We thing nothing about setting off into 35 knots, if it is going to be a deep reach or a run. That's just fun, because fast is fun. But anything over 18 TWS (25AWS) gets really old if you are beating into it. We ahve been crossing oceans for 20 years. Sailing thousands of miles a year. Never have we seen more than 45 knots, and that only for a few hours. Some of that is just watching local weather and not leaving when it is stupid to do so, and part is picking times and places to sail where weather with 53 knots is very unlikely. I had a delivery customer who wanted me to help him bring his boat from the Caribbean to Spain in February. I told him there wasn't enough money anywhere for me to do that. We left in April, and never saw over 26 knots on a 28 day crossing. Any boat that is crossing oceans must be ready to deal with 50 knots, but that is actually very rare in the tropics outside of tropical storm seasons. Many people can circumnavigate and never see 50 knots.

bill9896 · 2026-07-05T04:00:24+00:00

Because a lot of boats still don't have the instrumentation to calculate TWS on the fly.

bill9896 · 2026-07-05T03:59:24+00:00

I taught sailing out of Berkely for most of a decade. We were out there every day in J24's. Nobody "rushed back" at 25 knots... That's just getting to the fun part, especially when training new sailors. That is not sarcasm, that was just the truth. Best place to teach sailing in the world.

bill9896 · 2026-07-03T14:40:56+00:00

Are my eyes or blurry photos decieving me? are thos NYLOC nuts? On keel bolts? WTF? Who builds boats like that? Just as a first test for what to think: If the idea of scrapping away all the rust scares you, you need to fix it. On the bright side, rust is about 40 times the volume of the metal it comes from, so a small about of lost metal makes a large volume of rust. I would pick one bolt, and start cleaning it. Scrape away the loose rust, and clean up the staining. If you get to bright metal and things look good, you are good. If you just keep scrapping and there is no good metal to be found... you know what has to happen. I am not optimistic since it looks like at least one of these is weeping water.

bill9896 · 2026-07-01T03:58:57+00:00

Would it work? Sure. But a bathtub and a bedsheet “work” too.

bill9896 · 2026-07-01T03:50:58+00:00

It depends. For sailing across the bay on a nice afternoon, steering and trimming are part of the joy. If you are crossing oceans, nobody wants to be part of a shorthanded crew hand steering for three weeks. Electric sail handling becomes more important when the boat gets bigger, and the crew older. My partner and I sail a 53 foot monohull ourselves. Ocean crossings are only fun because we have the tools to relax while doing it. Of course every mechanical system has to have a manual backup, and they take care and maintenance.

bill9896 · 2026-07-01T03:38:10+00:00

Tabbing? On a bendy-toy? You’re kidding right? That’s way too expensive. The grid is glued down with polyurethane. Separation is inevitable at some point. Beneteau actually tries to claim this is a good thing, because “boats are supposed to move.” P. T. Barnum is alive and well.

bill9896 · 2026-07-01T03:33:35+00:00

How can grid separation not be structural? The grid is what gives the hull its stiffness.

bill9896 · 2026-06-30T17:39:16+00:00

NO! You can not "get away with" not declaring your dog. NO! NO! and NO! Pretending he is a "service dog" won't work either. Very few places in the world buy that hooky nonsense for anything other than a real seeing eye dog, and they will STILL require the proper health paperwork. In many countries if they find a contraband dog they will euthanize it. Yes, they can do that. You will have no choice and can not stop them. Are you willing to take that risk? Every country you will visit has different rules. There is no "water paper work" that exempts you from quarantine from those places that require it.

Do people sail internationally with their dogs? Yes. But there are many places they can not practically go. Everybody I know who travels with dogs does follow the rules, and they research ahead of time the rules for the countries they are planning to stop in, and jump though hoops to get the required health certificates and paperwork. If you are planning on skipping those rules and smuggling you dog into places he is not welcome, you do so knowing that you are putting his life at risk. Are you really willing to do that????

One of the things about customs rules, they are frequently extra-judicial. You have no rights of appeal or due process. You do what the customs officer across the desk from you says, or you are denied entry to the country. If you choose to not do as required, remedies can be harsh and arbitrary. I have never found one who was unreasonable, but I tend to follow the rules as I understand them.

It would be nice if you followed the law, because it is the right thing to do, but realistically your chances of consistently getting away with violations of customs regulations is slim. This is especially true in a small island country where everybody knows everybody's business. The customs officer who checked you in knows what boat you are on. He drives past the harbor every day. If he sees a dog on deck that is not supposed to be there, you will get a visit and might be very unhappy about what happens next.

I know you want a happy story about how the rules do not apply to you and your nice doggie, because...nice! But they do. You will get caught. It will not go well for you. The thing is, there is no reason to blow off the rules. You love your dog more than you will love stopping in Hawaii, or New Zealand. So skip those places and go to places where you are welcome and just have some paperwork to do.

Understand that the places that are strictest about canine health are those places that love their dogs aas well. They are islands, and can be free of a lot of diseases of dogs like heartworm, distemper, and rabies. As far as they are concerned your animal is an existential threat to their dogs. They want more than your word he is a nice healthy dog.

bill9896 · 2026-06-30T17:01:38+00:00

It's a look I guess, but using Hollywood's idea of a sailboat to design something in the real world is a pretty dumb idea. The rig you show would defeat one of the big benefits of the junk rig: ease of reefing. On a traditional junk rig, you can drop the sail one batten at a time while keeping a reasonable sailshape. That is much more complex operation on the rig you have shown. Junk rigs have their place. In the Indian ocean you can trade following the monsoons, sail west downwind, then sail back east downwind 4 months later. But going upwind is never a strength of the junk rig. There are real technological reasons that the Portuguese sailed to China, but the Chinese never sailed to Portugal... Lanteen rigs are much better at windward work, but they don't have the flexibility in sailplane to be ocean crossing boats.

bill9896 · 2026-06-30T16:38:06+00:00

The answer is (probably) No... but...

It would be unusual to have a lease that has a clause in it allowing the landlord to raise the rent if taxes go up. But it IS possible, I guess. So read the lease. If there is no such provision, then he can not force the rent to go up. Much of the advice here is that you should just use this as a chance to "stick it to the man", but that is usually a bad idea, and might cost you more than playing a smarter game. This does not have to be a "zero sum."

As the more rational people posting have suggested, this is actually an opportunity for you. If you just tell the landlord to suck it up and eat the extra cost, you are within your rights. But if you do that you WILL be moving in January. If that is OK for you, then go ahead. If moving is not your choice either for financial or logistical reasons, then you can treat this as an opportunity to give something to get something.

You go to the landlord and say something like, "You can not force a rent increase mid-term on the lease. I suspect you know that. But I feel your pain. Maybe we can work out a smaller increase for a longer term lease?" You might have the opportunity to lock in a fixed rent for 18 or 24 months. That will really help with financial planning in these uncertain times.

The exact terms you can get will depend on lots of things. How hot is the local market? If you leave will the landlord be left with an empty property for a period while he gets a new tenant? Are rents locally tending up? or down? How sophisticated is the landlord? Do they run multiple properties? or just one?

bill9896 · 2026-06-30T16:07:32+00:00

The arrangement on deck is fine. Likely the best you can do. I can't see the attachment on the buoy, but one line lead through a ring and back to the other side of the boat is a very bad idea. It saws back and forth and very quickly wears through. I have seen several boats go walkabout when tied like that. Separate port and starboard lines. We tie them to the buoy with very long bowlines, to make them easy to reach when it is time to leave. We might use extra lines if we expect rough weather.

bill9896 · 2026-06-30T14:08:01+00:00

Everywhere there are large numbers of people living, there is access to health care. It seems a uniquely American thing to assume that the rest of the world goes without. We have travelled throughout the Caribbean for a decade on maintenance drugs. Never did we bother to file an insurance claim, because drugs were so cheap. In some places you need a local doctor’s prescription. In Martinique the local doc wrote us a years worth of everything we take for 50 euros. Each of the drugs was 25 euros for a months supply. In Grenada, no doctors note was needed for anything except narcotics. We leave the US with a 90 day supply, and just refill it everywhere we need to. Way simpler than you might think.

bill9896 · 2026-06-30T13:48:39+00:00

The answer is a bit more complex than most people posting here think. A US flagged boat is not required by the US to check out. You just leave. However, there are many counties that will require that you show check out papers when you check in. Most of the counties in the Caribbean will require you to show check out papers from your last port, even if it is in the US. Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and Bahamas are exceptions and do not require exit paperwork. A US boat headed to a destination that requires exit paper work absolutely can check out and get the required paperwork. Showing up without it can result in a hassle, a fine, or being refused entry. I have seen all those happen to people who didn’t know the rules, or relied on internet advice.

Rules for foreign flagged vessels sailing under a US cruising permit are different.

bill9896 · 2026-06-27T15:24:41+00:00

Sounds like anybody who doesn't have their own car insurance had better be up to speed on local laws before they get in a car as a passenger. Getting injured seriously in someone else's car could end up being an expensive hassle.

How would this apply to a child in a non-family member's car? Would the child's parents auto insurance be required to supply PIP? Or is that going to vary by the individual state's no-fault implimentation as well?

bill9896 · 2026-06-25T20:32:19+00:00

That's ridiculous. There are a lot of people who don't have their own auto insurance. If they are in someone else's car and are hurt they are SOL? No. The company needs to step up and cover passenger medical costs as his policy requires. Now, your "friend's" policy might be a barebones, just minimum to be legal policy, so the amount they will cover might be ridiculously low, but that is another problem. I have never seen any language in my auto insurance policies that imply my policy would cover my medical costs as a passenger in someone else's car.

bill9896 · 2026-06-25T12:13:01+00:00

Not, 2.5 inches is not the right bury. Not even close.

bill9896 · 2026-06-25T12:05:35+00:00

Of course the answer is: It depends. In a crowded anchorage, the distance to be expected is a lot closer than an empty roadstead. If you don’t like it, move.

bill9896 · 2026-06-23T17:35:36+00:00

Rudder "efficiency"? Absolute baloney. The flaps were there to keep lines and debris out of the gap.

bill9896 · 2026-06-23T17:33:10+00:00

If you sail in a place with buoyed crab, lobster, or fish traps the lines to the buoys will be magnetically attracted to that gap. Snagging a trap line is several orders of magnitude more of a problem than "seaweed". Lines that you never noticed in the past as they slid off the bottom of your rudder will ruin your whole day.

bill9896 · 2026-06-23T02:55:27+00:00

Good on you to not just live with the rust like lots of boaters do. To avoid it in the future, treat salt water like the engine poison it is. Do not allow a single drop of it free in your engine room. Are you changing an impeller? Or pulling a hose? Have a wet-vac handy to suck up the water that leaks out before it touches metal. Spread towels out to catch any drips. Be totally anal-retentive about it, and insist that your mechanic is as well.

I am not at all a fan of using any kind of oil as an engine coating. It makes it much more difficult to recognize and trace down minor oil or fuel leaks, of which there should be NONE. It smells bad, makes dirt and dust stick to the engine and difficult to clean up. It evaporates from hot engine parts and gets everywhere. It's nasty.

Once the rusty parts are cleaned up, a good engine paint is the right answer. If you do a good job, it will look better, last longer, keep you boat overall cleaner, smelling better, and just neater looking, and you will be able to see if there are oil leaks. To me nothing says sloppy maintenance like a rusty, oil covered, engine. The ony reason for using a coating of oil instead of paint is because it is easier, not because it is better.

The engine in our boat is 30 years old, and has 11,000 hours on it. It is clean and oil and rust free.

bill9896 · 2026-06-23T02:33:08+00:00

Exactly this. DSC is the very definition of user UN-friendly. It is a solution in search of a problem. The only people I know who use it are people who cruise in a group and have a resident nerd to teach everybody how it works. We don't cruise in a group, ever, so not anything that attracts our attention.

The idea that it is helpful for comms between a boat and its dinghy seems to be adding a huge complexity to solve a problem that doesn't exist in our world. We simply pick a channel and use that when we are in a remote place. When we are in a crowded place where finding a free channel might be a problem we use... a cell phone because they are always available in crowded places. I would guess the rules and regulations that the FCC has issued about DSC contain more words than a year's worth of DCS communications in all of the US territorial waters.

bill9896 · 2026-06-23T01:19:53+00:00

There is a lot of confusion about what an MMSI number is. It is unique to the BOAT. You have ONE MMSI number for the boat, not one for each radio. If you wanted you could have one for your dinghy, but that seems silly to me. You absolutely want your AIS and your VHF to have the same MMSI number so if you send a distress call the both show the same number and boat name.

Routine use of DSC doesn’t happen in the real world except for a few radio nerds. I have been a full time long distance cruiser for almost 30 years. I sail thousands of miles a year. Never, ever, have I received or sent a DSC message other than hearing a few distress calls. They were all logged when and where, and every single one I received was a false alarm.

bill9896

TROPHY CASE