I'm loving your well planned out approach to passage making. I'm curious whether your analysis has gotten more scrupulous on a catamaran than it was on a single hull vessel. I know that cats tend to be more stable to live in, but when the sea is rocky, I imagine it becomes even more rocky in a cat than it is in a single hull. Just wondering if that has changed the way you plan your passages.
Or is your detailed passage planning more a factor of this is your 2nd cruise and have decided there is no need to make things rough if you can avoid it.
I met a couple in Niue, who hated sailing and often waited for the smoothest seas possible and then motor through as fast as they could. I never understood what they were doing out there, other than they wanted to sail their boat to New Zealand to sell it there. But you could tell they were miserable.
Great article, very clear, well written, and not dictatorial (hate those guys)!!! Worried about being able maintain 8 kts and departure/arrival anchorage issues so need to go at night? (Pam's favorite!!!)
Hola Alfredo! Thanks for the note. You have seen this sausage making first-hand.
These 8 to 12 hour passages are 'tweeners. In theory we could leave at the crack of dawn and get to the destination before dark. If we were arriving into our home slip in our home marina we'd have no hesitation finishing the passage in the dark. Out here it is different. We rely heavily on visual navigation to not run into things (like reefs). We like to arrive in the morning so that we don't have any time pressure working against us.
We've had a few occasions where we were chasing the fading light trying to get moored or anchored. It takes the fun out of it.
Arriving off an island in the morning gives us all day to enter the pass and sort out where to anchor.
The biggest challenge is keeping the boat speed down so we don't arrive off the island in the wee hours. There is risk in that as well. That happened the last time we sailed to Huahine. We got careless and didn't slow down early enough and wound up standing off the pass for several hours.
Exactly! You are wise and careful and a good pilot and I’ve been using the phrase “making sure there is plenty of runway” often here. People look at me, then they get it!! Its a classic risk/reward equation.
Ha! Running out of runway. The image that always comes to mind is screaming downwind with the spinnaker up pointed at the entrance of the Berkeley Marina thinking, "...damn, I hope we can get that spinnaker down..."
Loved the article. Sure a lot different than 23 years ago when we simply looked out the window, loaded up Esperanza, sailed out the gate and turned left. We’re actually here in La Paz this week. This morning we walked down to Marina Palmira where we lived through Hurricane Marty.
Enjoy your sail, looks like it will be a bit more comfortable than our crossing!
Hola Miguel! Miss you guys! Yes, these tools are nothing short of miraculous. And for short passages of up to 3 nights, you have a good shot at completely avoiding bad weather (not so when it takes 16 days to cross the Pacific).
I remember our first Mexico cruise in the mid-90s. Not even weather fax back then. We tuned in the HAM radio and listened to an amateur forecaster in LA tell us what to expect. Things have changed!
It was on the Ham nets. Chubasco net IIRC. "Tango Papa's Weather" was the title of it. "Tom" was something-Tango-Papa. He had an HF rig in his car and many times he was pulled off to the side of the freeway giving his weather broadcast. Followed by all of the cruiser check-ins giving their barometer readings which went down 1MB at night and up 1MB during the day, day after day. And nobody knew what the heck to do with that information. Back then, the weather was what you got that day.
I'm loving your well planned out approach to passage making. I'm curious whether your analysis has gotten more scrupulous on a catamaran than it was on a single hull vessel. I know that cats tend to be more stable to live in, but when the sea is rocky, I imagine it becomes even more rocky in a cat than it is in a single hull. Just wondering if that has changed the way you plan your passages.
Or is your detailed passage planning more a factor of this is your 2nd cruise and have decided there is no need to make things rough if you can avoid it.
I met a couple in Niue, who hated sailing and often waited for the smoothest seas possible and then motor through as fast as they could. I never understood what they were doing out there, other than they wanted to sail their boat to New Zealand to sell it there. But you could tell they were miserable.
Great article, very clear, well written, and not dictatorial (hate those guys)!!! Worried about being able maintain 8 kts and departure/arrival anchorage issues so need to go at night? (Pam's favorite!!!)
Hola Alfredo! Thanks for the note. You have seen this sausage making first-hand.
These 8 to 12 hour passages are 'tweeners. In theory we could leave at the crack of dawn and get to the destination before dark. If we were arriving into our home slip in our home marina we'd have no hesitation finishing the passage in the dark. Out here it is different. We rely heavily on visual navigation to not run into things (like reefs). We like to arrive in the morning so that we don't have any time pressure working against us.
We've had a few occasions where we were chasing the fading light trying to get moored or anchored. It takes the fun out of it.
Arriving off an island in the morning gives us all day to enter the pass and sort out where to anchor.
The biggest challenge is keeping the boat speed down so we don't arrive off the island in the wee hours. There is risk in that as well. That happened the last time we sailed to Huahine. We got careless and didn't slow down early enough and wound up standing off the pass for several hours.
Exactly! You are wise and careful and a good pilot and I’ve been using the phrase “making sure there is plenty of runway” often here. People look at me, then they get it!! Its a classic risk/reward equation.
Ha! Running out of runway. The image that always comes to mind is screaming downwind with the spinnaker up pointed at the entrance of the Berkeley Marina thinking, "...damn, I hope we can get that spinnaker down..."
Loved the article. Sure a lot different than 23 years ago when we simply looked out the window, loaded up Esperanza, sailed out the gate and turned left. We’re actually here in La Paz this week. This morning we walked down to Marina Palmira where we lived through Hurricane Marty.
Enjoy your sail, looks like it will be a bit more comfortable than our crossing!
Hola Miguel! Miss you guys! Yes, these tools are nothing short of miraculous. And for short passages of up to 3 nights, you have a good shot at completely avoiding bad weather (not so when it takes 16 days to cross the Pacific).
I remember our first Mexico cruise in the mid-90s. Not even weather fax back then. We tuned in the HAM radio and listened to an amateur forecaster in LA tell us what to expect. Things have changed!
We're getting geared up to start moving west!
Don the amateur weatherman from maybe Santa Monica? He was a must listen in 2003.
It was on the Ham nets. Chubasco net IIRC. "Tango Papa's Weather" was the title of it. "Tom" was something-Tango-Papa. He had an HF rig in his car and many times he was pulled off to the side of the freeway giving his weather broadcast. Followed by all of the cruiser check-ins giving their barometer readings which went down 1MB at night and up 1MB during the day, day after day. And nobody knew what the heck to do with that information. Back then, the weather was what you got that day.