Across Islands and Oceans

One of my favorite sailing writers of all time is James Baldwin, of the Pearson Triton Atom. Over the years I have eagerly looked forward to his magazine articles in Cruising World and Good Old Boat, and have learned much from the great resources he has published on his website: Atom Voyages.
Certainly what has attracted me to Baldwin's writings on the subjects of ocean voyaging, choosing and preparing a boat for cruising, and finding ways to finance the lifestyle is his overwhelmingly can-do, positive attitude. Unlike so many of the the advertising-driven articles that make up the bulk of most sailing magazines, James Baldwin goes against the tide in writing about simple and modestly-sized boats, a simple cruising lifestyle, and an attitude reminiscent of Moitessier about work and money. Baldwin didn't wait for comfortable retirement and the means to buy a 40-foot plus yacht before going to sea in search of adventure. Instead, at the age of 21 he spent everything he had to purchase a 28-foot Pearson Triton, took some shakedown cruises to see what he needed and what he did not need, then sailed the boat around the world - not once, but twice.
James Baldwin has since been based in Brunswick, Georgia with his wife Mei, who he met on his second voyage. I've corresponded with him a number of times on various subjects ranging from publishing books and choosing a suitable cruising boat to discussions of Wharram catamarans.
He told me he intended to write a book about some of his experiences, and now he has gotten around to doing so, posting it online chapter-by-chapter where you can read it free of charge. At a later date he intends to offer it as a Print-On-Demand book on Amazon. I really hope he does this soon, as I will be one of the first to order it and it will reside on the shelf with my favorite cruising and adventure narratives.
To read Baldwin's online version of the book, go to Across Islands and Oceans. Sixteen of twenty-two chapters are now posted for reading at your leisure. I can guarantee that reading this book will make you want to cast off the docklines and go.

Interview on Furled Sails Podcast

A few months ago I posted this article about the Furled Sails podcasts that I enjoy listening to so much on long road trips. While putting together the article, I corresponded with the hosts, Christy and Noel Davis, to ask them about the program and how they came up with the idea to start this series of interviews with sailors, boat designers, boat builders, kayakers and other nautically obsessed individuals.

When I wrote this piece about listening to some of my heroes of small boat voyaging and boat design, I had no idea that Christy and Noel would want to interview me for the program. But my interest in their podcasts led them to take a look at these pages and to read my book, On Island Time, and shortly after I was answering their questions and talking about my kayak trips and other boating adventures in a telephone interview.

The interview is currently posted as the most recent one at the top of the Furled Sails website, accompanied by the photo below of me and my Tiki 26 project. The direct link is at http://www.furledsails.com/article.php3?article=776 for those readers who want to check it out. I was talking on my cell phone and the sound quality on my end is rather poor compared to the interviewers, but hopefully you can understand it. Like all the Furled Sails podcasts, this interview can be downloaded in MP3 format or you can stream it directly from the page on the site.

Furled Sails Podcast On the Road

In the past few months I've been spending a lot of time on the road, including several 14-hour one way trips to south Florida to work in the Boatsmith shop with my friend David Halladay. I like time on the road to think, and often drive with no music or other distractions, but there's no doubt that the time can pass faster when you have something interesting to listen to. Last summer I purchased my first Ipod and uploaded all of my music library, clearing up space in my small truck by eliminating the need for carrying all those CDs around. But even though I love music, I get tired of it after a few hours and want to hear something else.

What could be better for a sailor, boatbuilder, and kayaker than a series of interesting podcasts featuring interviews with some of the leading small boat adventurers and designers in the world? When I discovered Furled Sails, billed as "the world's first sailng podcast," I knew I had found something to help those long hours on the road fly by.

Furled Sails is hosted by Noel and Christy Davis, who are based in the Florida panhandle and are active small boat sailors and adventurers themselves. They had the excellent idea of creating this podcast by conducting telephone interviews with noteworthy individuals in the world of small boat sailing, building and design, and now the site contains well over 100 archived interviews that you can download and listen to for free. Noel and Christy have managed to land interviews with some of the biggest names in boating, and their list of guests includes the likes of John Guzzwell, Lin and Larry Pardey, Webb Chiles, Ted Brewer, George Buehler, Jimmy Cornell, and Reese Palley, to name just a few. Their boating interests seem to lie closely in line with my own, in that most of the designers and adventurers profiled are proponents of small, simple vessels, both wind-driven and human powered with paddles or oars.

It was really interesting to hear some of my favorite boating authors describing the adventures they wrote about in their books that I had read many years previously. I especially enjoyed the two-part series featuring John Guzzwell as he shared many interesting tidbits about his solo circumnavigation in a 20-foot homebuilt boat that were not included in his book:Trekka Round the World The Webb Chiles series was great as well; hearing him describing his ocean crossings in an 18-foot open boat (Chidiock Tichborne) and the intentional sinking of his perfectly seaworthy cruising boat: Resurgam.

If you are a sailor, boatbuilder, kayaker, canoeist or just an armchair adventurer, you are certain to find something of interest among the archived podcasts on Furled Sails. Here are are some of the most recent shows, in chronological order:

Serge Testa

Floating Fox

Fine Tolerance 1

Fine Tolerance 2

Mississippi voyage

Lugnut 1

Lugnut 2

Robby Smith 1

Robby Smith 2

Sailing Grace

Jimmy Cornell

Webb Chiles 1

Webb Chiles 2

John Wellsford 1

John Wellsford 2

Duckworks

Shane St. Clair 1

Shane St. Clair 2

You can download and listen to these and all the other podcasts directly on the Furled Sails website, or if you have iTunes installed in your computer you can go to the iTunes store and search under the "podcasts" category for "Furled Sails." You can then upload as many of the individual shows as you like for free into your iTunes library and sync it to your iPod. This is what I do each time I am anticipating a road trip and I look forward to hearing four or five new interviews each time I head to Florida. Since most of the interviews are more than 45 minutes long, the miles slip away as I get inspired by the words of people doing the things I am most interested in. This is way better than anything I could find on the radio - and best of all - there are no commercials. Christy and Noel are providing a great service and it's obviously a labor of love. Check it out. You won't regret it. http://www.furledsails.com/

Dispatch Photo Service for Long-Distance Boat Buyers

Below is an old Alberg 30 from the late 60's, looking good at the time this photo was taken, with new topside paint and good sails. If you're looking for a sailboat like this to buy, especially one that's located far from where you live, you want to be sure the seller's photos are current and accurately represent the condition of the vessel. Now there is an easy way to get the photos you need without depending on the seller. Read on for more.

If you've ever been in the market for a specific type of boat, particularly a cruising sailboat in a certain size and price range that fits your needs, chances are you've had to look beyond your hometown unless you happen to live in a major boating center like Annapolis, Maryland or Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Popular online classified services like Yachtworld and Boat Trader usually have at least a few examples of every type and size of production sailboat, but the ones you might be interested in can be scattered far and wide.

After losing my Grampian 26, Intensity to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, I was in the market for a replacement cruising boat until I eventually gave up on finding the right one and decided to build my own. Naturally there was a shortage of good boats left on the northern Gulf coast, since so many were either badly damaged or destroyed like mine. Several hurricanes in a two year period had greatly reduced the available choices in much of nearby Alabama and north Florida as well. I perused the online ads for months, seeing many likely candidates listed in New England, the Annapolis area, south Florida and on the West Coast - all far enough away to make going to look a time-consuming and expensive proposition. Of course most online advertising sites allow the insertion of photos, and many of the listings included lots of views of the interior and exterior of the vessel for sale.

Naturally the owners of these boats want to project the most positive image possible because they want to make a sale. Many of the photos used in ads are low image quality, making the boat look pretty good overall but lacking sharp details that make a real analysis possible. When calling or emailing about a particular boat for sale, a common response I got from boat owners is that "I don't have any recent pictures" or "these pictures are a few years old." Other boat sellers will use downright deceitful techniques, posting photos of a boat in her better days and representing them as current. This is especially true of ads on sites like EBay, where sellers hope to make a sale before the prospective buyer even sees the vessel in person.

So what can a boat shopper do? If there's a particular vessel offered for a deal that seems just right for your needs, you can do like I did several times and take a chance on going to see it. I took two 1800-mile round road trips to south Florida, as well as some shorter trips to look at boats that were all much worse in real life than in the advertiser's photos. The Alberg 30 shown in the photo at the top of the page is a prime example. I was interested in this boat after finding the ad for it on an Alberg 30 online message board. There were no photos in the ad, but the owner responded to my email query by sending a few, including the one above and the collection shown below. For the price and the included equipment, this deal seemed too good to pass up. After a few discussions with the owner, who lived in the U.K., but kept the boat in south Florida for winter sailing, I drove 800 miles to yard where it was stored, with high hopes that I had found a suitable cruising boat.

What I found when I got there was an old, dilapidated Alberg 30 in need of everything. Nothing short of a total restoration would bring her up to my standards, and it was obvious that some time had passed since the photos above were taken. Below is just one sample of the forward deck area. I wish I had taken more photos, but I was so disappointed I didn't bother. The interior was a wreck, and the engine was a rusted hunk of metal covered with old, peeling paint and grease. It was a project I would not have taken on even if the boat itself was free. Even all the extra equipment advertised, such as the self-steering windvane, was rusted, frozen up, and useless.

Another potential candidate for my next cruising boat was a Wharram Tiki 30 catamaran that was for sale in the Boston, Massachusetts area. I had long been interested in this design and was already considering building either a Tiki 26 or Tiki 30. At the time, I also owned a smaller Tiki 21 that I was restoring, but already knew was too small for my long-term needs. When this Tiki 30 came up for sale at a reasonable price - actually less than the cost of materials to build a new one, I was excited about the possibility of going to Boston and either sailing it home or loading it on a rented trailer to bring it back. The owner pointed me to a site where this photo was posted, showing the Tiki 30 as it appeared when he bought it from the original owner several years previous. It looked good then, but as you can see, this photo reveals very little detail.

I asked the seller for more photos, considering the distance involved for me to come look at it, and he obliged a few days later, sending me more than a dozen current photos taken with a high resolution digital camera. Opening the photos on my computer and viewing them at normal size, the boat looked fine. But the advantage of high resolution images is that you can crop small areas and resize the photos to zoom in, revealing things you would otherwise miss. Below is view from the bow, showing the whole boat, which looks pretty good.

And here is a close crop of the same image, showing the port bow detail, where you can tell much about the build quality by looking at the shape of the sheer line and seeing how it is not very fair. (You can click on these images right here to see a larger version and see what I mean)

Here's another view of the boat, showing the port hull interior and bunk. It looks pretty decent here.

But look at this crop, showing the overhead hatch. The opening looks like it was chopped out with a dull hatchet.

These are just two examples. Using Photoshop, I could examine all the images and crop details from other parts of each photo. What I saw was a Tiki 30 that appeared overall to be okay, but was built and finished way below professional standards in almost every detail.

Some may think I'm being too critical of this particular boat. For the asking price it was still a good deal for someone. But having built a smaller Wharram cat and at the time being in the process of restoring an amateur-built Tiki 21, I knew what to look for and what would be involved in bringing a catamaran like this up to my standards. I was grateful to the owner for sending the high-resolution photos, as it saved me a trip to Boston.

But what do you do if the owner of the boat you're interested in does not have a good camera or is not willing to send you images of good quality? For one, you could look up a marine surveyor in the area and have the vessel inspected, but if it turns out to be a no-go like these above, you'll be out several hundred dollars. It might be less than a trip to see the boat in person, but could get expensive if you have to go through several boats.

A new and better option, at least if the boat is in North America, is Tim Purpura's

Dispatch Photo Service.

Based in Dallas, Texas, Tim Purpura has built a network of professional photographers in major U.S., Canadian, and Mexican cities to serve the needs of businesses and individuals who need photos taken in a particular location. The members of the network are all equipped with high-resolution digital cameras and high-speed Internet access, so they can go out and take the photos you need and have them on your computer screen in as little as two hours in many cases.

I think this is a great service for boat buyers, as there are network members in most major coastal cities and the list is growing. From the Dispatch Photo Service website you can scroll through the state and city listings and find the photographer for the area where the potential boat is and then email or call to request exactly the photos you want. Most of the photographers will also have a cell phone on the job with them, so when they get to the marina or boatyard, they can communicate with you about the details you want photographed.

The price for the service is quite reasonable. Tim asks that all members keep their hourly rates in the $35-$50 range, with a two hour minimum. In many cases the two hour minimum is enough, especially if the boat is in a city where the photographer does not have to drive far. So for $70-$100 you can have all the high resolution photos you want of the boat, which is a fraction of the cost of a marine surveyor or a trip to see it in person.

I think Tim Purpura has hit upon a brilliant idea and I'm sure the network will continue to grow as more people in need of remote photography learn of this service. To see sample photos and learn more about the service in different cities, go to Dispatch Photo Service and view the listings. Many of the members have their own websites with more about their photography experience and services offered.

Boat Forums I Like

To me, some of the best entertainment reading on the Internet can be found in online forums. I also frequently peruse the forums on topics I'm interested in or want to know more about because of the wealth of knowledge usually posted in them by other enthusiasts of the same topic. Think of practically any subject you want to know more about, and you can probably find one or more active discussion forums online full of informative posts. When it comes to popular subjects like sailing, boatbuilding, or kayaking; there are many more forums out there than most of us have time to even find, much less read.

I thought I would share of few of my favorite boating forums with you here. These are the ones I read most frequently. Some I drop by most every day to see what's new, others less often, but all of these have been informative and interesting.

The Wooden Boat Forum Wooden Boat Magazine's forum for wooden boat enthusiasts. This is a very active forum with enough archived material to keep you reading indefinitely. Lots of good threads on boat designs, tools and techniques, and material choices. Most of the members lean to traditional wooden boatbuilding though, and there's a lot of epoxy bashing going on there from time to time. And don't dare mention fiberglass boats to these folks - to them this material is simply "frozen snot." The forum is divided up into these sub forums: Building/Repair, Designs/Plans, People/Places, Resources/Product Search, Misc. Boat Related, The Bilge.

The Sailnet Forums This is one of the most active sailing forums I know of. There's always something new here and lots of long and sometimes intense discussions from knowledgeable and not so knowledgeable sailors. I especially like some of the threads in the Buying a Boat forum, where everybody has got a different opinion as to what constitutes an "offshore" or "bluewater" sailboat. There's lots of bias towards monohulls and bigger boats, but some other points of view as well. Other sub forums at Sailnet I like are: Cruising, Gear and Maintenance, Living Aboard, Sailboat Design and Construction.

Sailfar.net This is a small and relatively new online forum, but full of good discussions by those who are generally interest in the kind of older, smaller sailboats John Vigor writes about in his Twenty Small Sailboats to take you Anywhere. These people on this forum are fixing up older boats and actually taking them cruising. See the sub forums, Routes and Destinations, Boat Discussion, and Sailing Stories.

Cruising World Forums This is another big forum connected with a magazine, Cruising World. Although much of the focus is on larger, more complex boats than I'm interested in, there are still some good threads, especially on destinations. Lots of these forum members are real cruisers and speak from experience. Check out Boats and Gear and Destinations.

Boat Design Forums These forums have some in-depth and technical discussions of boat design, some of them by naval architects or people in training to become one. I occasionally drop by the sub forums Multihulls and Sailboats. In any multihull discussion, Wharram catamarans are sure to come up from time to time, and these forums are no exception.

Living Aboard Forums Lots of discussion regarding boater's rights, legal issues, and boats suitable for living aboard, as well as how people finance their boating lifestyles. As a sailor who has lived aboard in the past, I find some interesting reading here.

Scott Brown's Multihull Forums Great stuff on multihulls with lots of emphasis on Wharram Catamarans and other homebuilt designs. This is probably the best forum resource online for those of us who are building Wharram catamarans. You have to change the settings to show all the older posts to find them, but there are literally hundreds of archived threads on Wharram cats. There are also sub forums on most other popular multihulls, so if more than one hull is your thing, this is your forum. The only downside is that the forum has had technical problems a lot recently and is often down.

The Wharram Forums Probably the most focused discussion of Wharram catamarans anywhere, this one is found on James Wharram's own website. Surprisingly, this forum is not as active as you would think it would be. There are lots of old threads with good info, but new posts only trickle in.

Boatbuilder Central (Bateau2.com) This forum is associated with Jacques Merten's designs and Boatbuilder Central online plans and boatbuilding supplies. Really good stuff on building techniques, as the designs are wood-epoxy composite. There are in depth technical discussions on epoxy use, fairing and fillers, fiberglassing, and priming and painting. You'll also find lots of active builders here posting updates on their projects.

Small Craft Advisor Message Board This one is associated with Small Craft Advisor magazine. The focus here is on small, trailerable sailboats, and the idea of cruising and voyaging in them. There's a lot here for those who like small simple boats.

Sea Kayaker Magazine Online Community Sea Kayaker magazine is the authority on serious sea kayaking. Here you'll find all the experts and the kayakers who are out there paddling all over the world. Lot's of good information here.

Messing About.com B&B Yachts Forum This is another good forum hosted by a designer, Graham Byrnes, of B&B Yachts. Most of his boats are not yachts, however. He is the designer of many small, simple cruisers and daysailors, like the Core Sound 17. On this forum you'll find many builders discussing their projects.

I'm sure I'm leaving out some, but these are the main forums that come to mind and the ones I visit most. In future posts I'll take a look at some specific threads I'd like to comment on and share with readers here. Oh, and if I'm missing some great boat forum you'd care to recommend, be sure and leave a comment here so I can check it out.