Cruising

By Simon Currin, Cruising Club of America Boston Station   The shrill squawk of our VHF’s Mayday Relay alarm disturbed the predawn peace and shook me out of a deep sleep. We had been sailing reefed down overnight to be certain of making our landfall in daylight. Our watch change was about to take place when the VHF blurted out the spine-chilling news that a yacht was aground on the outside of Raroia’s fringing reef. We were…

She is aluminum, mostly pre-2024 vintage aluminum. Her name is Virginia. She is waiting patiently to be fully built out in a high shed in a boatyard in Mystic, CT, known as Fort Rachel. This is a yard south down the Mystic River as it flows past Noank toward Fishers Island. In that yard facing south is a high shed, probably 75 feet long by 40 feet wide. Virginia is in there, cool grey and tan accents…

Story & photos by Nico Walsh, Cruising Club of America, Boston/Gulf of Maine station     In 1978, as a young college student in London, I found myself emerging from a Dockyards bookstore owning a copy of Eric Hiscock’s Wandering Under Sail (1939). Hiscock and his wife Susan became famous for their extensive voyages and their cruising accounts and manuals, including Voyaging Under Sail, Sou’West in Wanderer IV, and many others. I have since read most of…

Story and photos by Heather Hild-Atwater November 4 -11, 2023       Day 1: It’s all about the preparation…Port Louis Marina, Grenada We gathered for the first time in Grenada at Port Louis Marina at noon. Nineteen sailors aboard four well equipped catamarans: two Moorings 5000s, Fantasea and Gone Sail About and two Moorings 4500s, Amity and White Bird. Our skippers were Nate Atwater, Chris Felling, Eric Buth, and Jim King. The first day of a…

Although you’ll need a bit more than thruppence and sixpence each day, an unforgettable experience awaits your family in the Exumas. By Lily Flack A global pandemic, too much time indoors and a little inspiration – it only took this much for our family to make the move from living on land to on the water. Every night during quarantine we would sit and watch the Soggy Dollar Bar live stream camera from the dinner table, watching…

By Estelle Cockcroft, Catamaran Guru For many couples worldwide, the dream of leaving land life behind and embracing the open seas is becoming a reality. The liveaboard lifestyle — a perfect mix of tranquility, adventure, and constant discovery — has captivated the hearts of many. As this trend grows, attention to the specific requirements of marine living has intensified, emphasizing a vital component of the liveaboard vessel: the electrical system. This system, responsible for handling everything from…

By Simon and Sally Currin, Cruising Club of America Boston Station Shimshal arrived in Labrador in 2018, and our intention was to continue to the western Caribbean and New Zealand the following year, but as all sailors know, plans frequently change. The scenery and the Newfie welcome detained us for a season, and when we eventually crossed the Cabot Strait in 2019, we fell in love with Cape Breton and decided to linger. A head-on encounter with…

By Jil Westcott, Cruising Club of America Boston Station, Narragansett Bay Post Having sailed Moon Shadow, our 2000 Aerodyne 47, to Lagos, Portugal, in 2019, John and I are eager to return, but COVID-19 intervenes. When can we go? Our reservations change — we have an April 2020 departure, then August 2020, then April 2021, and finally May 6, 2021. Two days before our flight, however, we receive an email from SATA (Azores Airlines) refusing passage. After…

By Valeriia Povysheva It is easy to take lighthouses for granted now that GPS and other navigational technologies exist. Sailors today use buoys, radars, and online nautical charts for navigation. And yet sailing used to be dependent on lighthouses. From their impact on local communities to the whaling industry (since one of the primary uses of whale oil was lamps), lighthouses hold a huge historical and cultural significance. In fact, the first public infrastructure program by the…

By Chris Otorowski, Cruising Club of America Pacific Northwest Station and Narragansett Bay Post The long-anticipated Newfoundland Cruise finally happened in July 2022. This was the first CCA cruise to Newfoundland in about 30 years, and Bill Bowers and the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club did a beautiful job organizing it. The run-up involved numerous Zoom meetings with members of the RNYC and multiple year-long delays due to COVID exigencies.     We had the newly published CCA…